Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1 (15 page)

All winning poker players are aggressive. If you take the passive route on most hands, you will find yourself losing money. If a winning player thinks a play is profitable, he will make the play. In fact, not making aggressive plays that you know you should make is similar to burning money. In order to take home first prize, unless you get a great run of cards, you are going to have to take some risks. The best way to take risks is to be aggressive. This will give you a chance to play some big pots, and pick up numerous small pots along the way.

Small ball does have its flaws, the primary one being that it is tough to get all-in with a strong hand. My slightly modified small-ball strategy will get all the money in whenever you want to while still getting the action that eludes the long-ball player.

Section 2

Playing Deep Stacked (125BB+)

  Chapter 3

Introduction

Poker appears fairly simple, but it just might be the most complicated game ever invented because it involves both math and psychology to varying degrees, depending on the hand. The next section will teach you pretty much everything you need to know to win in today’s tournaments. Of course, everyone’s general strategy could change, making the material less relevant in the distant future. You must be able to change with the times. Numerous older players, who used to be the biggest winners in the game, now just scrape by because they’ve failed to adjust.

The next section will teach you how to play based on your stack size. You should play A
-J
with 125BBs much differently than with 10BBs. I will explain how to play with several ranges of stack sizes: more than 125BBs, 60 to 125BBs, 40 to 60BBs, 27 to 40BBs, 6 to 12BBs and less than 5BBs. Techniques used with the biggest stacks often apply when you are shorter. I will note when this is the case.

I will be speak in terms of big blinds when referring to stack sizes throughout this book. Some authors list your stack size in the number of orbits before you blind off. I think this makes things too difficult for no reason. I can’t remember the last time I blinded off in a tournament. If you play as I suggest, neither will you. There will be little mention of playing with antes until I get to the short-stacked section. If you are deep-stacked with antes in play, simply raise a few more hands pre-flop than I suggest. I am a firm believer in making things simple. You will find that to be the case throughout this book. I do not address short-handed or heads-up play in this section. These will be addressed in the Stages of a Tournament section in Volume 2. Finally, I do not take prize payouts into consideration in this section. This section assumes you are not close to the money in a tournament.

Your stack size is one of the most important factors besides your cards. If you fail to adjust to everyone’s stack sizes, you are guaranteed to fail at tournament poker. Because of this, the next section will be quite long. I suggest you read and reread this material, as I will teach you how to play technically sound poker.

Playing Very Deep

For simplicity, I am going to assume you are very deep-stacked when most players at the table, including yourself, have over 125 big blinds. This may seem like an extraordinarily deep-stacked tournament to an online player, where most tournaments start you with less than 100 big blinds, but large stacks are quite normal in high-buy-in live tournaments. This is the main reason why so many professionals have such a large return on investment in live tournaments despite most tables being filled with the best players in the game.

Many of the concepts discussed here will be very applicable to smaller stack sizes. Basically, I am going to tell you how to play sound, deep-stacked tournament poker. From there, I will teach you how to adjust from this standard play as your stack size diminishes.

Every option is available to you when you are deep-stacked. You can continuation-bet, bluff, check-raise, float, or do anything else you can think of. You must be adept at putting your opponents on a range and exploiting their poor play. In deep-stacked poker, you need a large bag of tricks, as most opponents will catch on if you use the same few plays repeatedly. If you don’t know all your options, you are certain to fail at high-stakes tournaments. Buckle up and get ready to learn how to play deep-stacked no-limit holdem tournaments.

Think Ahead

In no-limit holdem, much like chess, one mistake early in a hand can quickly snowball, costing you your entire stack. Hence, you must minimize pre-flop mistakes. For example, raising with K-10o from middle position is probably fine, but if the button re-raises, especially if he is tight, you should fold, no matter how deep your stack, because you are almost certainly a huge underdog to win a large pot and a huge favorite to lose one. You may be slightly ahead of your opponent’s hand right now, but there is no profitable way to play this hand post-flop.

Another common situation is when a player calls a raise with junky suited cards, hoping to flop a great hand. Suppose you are on the button with 9
-5
and someone in middle position raises. If you flop a flush draw, you can’t fold but may find yourself calling multiple bets only to lose your stack to a larger flush.

Know what you are going to do on the next street, depending on which card comes. Say you raise with K
-J
and get two callers, one aggressive and the other passive. If it comes K
-9
-6
, you will probably continuation-bet. Before you bet, you should know what you are going to do if the aggressive player raises, if the passive players raises, and if one of them calls and you see either a good, neutral or bad card on the turn. If you decide you would have to fold to anyone’s raise and also have to check-fold a lot of turns, you should strongly consider checking, as that will get you to a showdown without being bluffed off a fairly strong hand.