 | Written by Dave Homsher on Monday, 12 May 2008
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This past weekend I was fortunate enough to play in my first Texas Hold ‘Em tournament in quite a while. Although I was quite rusty, most of my old skills came back pretty quickly. The following list of tips can help any one of you be successful in your home tournaments. The best tables for these to work against are tournaments where there are 10-20 people and the blinds are raised approximately every 20 minutes. These events usually last between about 5 hours. If the tournament is any larger than that, you may need to employ a slightly different strategy. It’s important to note that I have no intention of teaching any basic strategy. If you want that, go ask a much nicer person to teach you how to play and the simple strategies and percentages associated with each hand. However, as long as you know the basics, this should be easy enough to follow.
1. Play tight in the early rounds. Since the blinds are very small, the pots are also very small, so it really doesn’t matter all that much if you win them. Now, that doesn’t mean that I think you should throw away AK and the like. I only mean that you should play the CARDS, not the people. If you have a good hand, play aggressively. However, don’t play anything marginal. I’d even throw away solid starters like KT and JT. With a full table the likelihood that you are beat is pretty high. Your goal in the first 2-3 blind levels is simply to OBSERVE. Get a good feel for the table. Who is tight? Who overplays marginal hands? Who is a complete and utter fish? Any information you gain here can only make things easier for you when you get more aggressive later in the tournament.
2. Loosen up later on in the tournament. Your new tight image is going to work for you. People will assume you have a good hand when you raise them (and you BETTER RAISE THEM or this whole article is pointless) and fold. You will be able to win a few several pots without much of a fight – just the way you want it.
3. The key to good poker, ESPECIALLY good tournament poker is decision making. For 99.9% of amateurs (you and me included) the key is to make EASY decisions. You want as many easy decisions in a poker game as humanly possible. For example, let’s use the best case scenario. You flop the stone cold nuts, and someone puts you all in. If that happened all the time to one person, as long as that person wasn’t a COMPLETE MORON, they would completely dominate their poker game. Early in the tournament, let’s assume someone makes a big bet, say ½ of your chips. You have AT and the board is A48 rainbow suits. Do you really want to play for ½ your chips (and then probably the REST of your chips on the turn) with a ONE PAIR with a CRAPPY TEN for a kicker? It’s just stupid. Whenever possible, you only want to be playing when you have can reasonably assume that you are going to win the hand.
4. Now that we know that making easy decisions yourself is the best way to win, what would you want of your opponents? You want them to make nothing but HARD DECISIONS. Who’s going to make their decisions difficult, the stinky kid to your right who smells like the elephant pen at the zoo? OF COURSE NOT – YOU are going to have to do it. If you are going to bet, BET! If you are going to call, RAISE! Don’t bet 5 into a pot of 80!! Most of the time, you should be betting AT LEAST 1/3 of the pot, and usually more. That way, your OPPONENTS make as many difficult decisions as you possibly can. Very, very, VERY few people can survive in a poker tournament making a multitude of tough decisions. They are bound to screw up BIG TIME, and it’s going to cost them in the end. Gus Hanson might be able to make the right decision 90% of the time, but the average amateur at your house game won’t be able to do the same.
5. Folding, AT WORST, is only a small mistake!! Let’s say you have AT with a board of AT784 with 3 spades. You decide to fold and save your money until later. Even if your opponent REALLY had AK and you would have won, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you STILL HAVE CHIPS! YOU CAN STILL WIN! What if you called and your opponent showed you KT of spades? Guess what – you can get in your car and drive home, because you just wasted any chance you had of winning.
6. This style generally leads itself to medium stack poker. You won’t be the chip leader too often, but you won’t be the short stack either. My personal preference is to attack the short stacks (who can’t hurt you much even if they win) and the other medium stacks (who won’t want to risk their chips with marginal hands). You can attack the big stack at the later stages in the tournament.
7. DO NOT let the blinds cripple you! Let’s say the blinds are 25 and 50, and a reasonable bet is 150. (You will need to judge a “reasonable bet” by seeing what people are normally betting on other hands.) If you only have 2-3 times the reasonable bet amount, in this case 300-450, then you should never bet ANYTHING other than going ALL IN. Either go all in, or fold. Make your opponents NEED a great hand in order to call. At this point in the tournament, the average stack is probably something like 600 or 700. For someone to call your bet of 400, they are going to need a MONSTER hand to call. Three important notes about this:
a. The blinds are big enough to REALLY MATTER in this scenario. If you do this a few times, you are going to build yourself a decent stack.
b. You WILL occasionally “get caught” by betting big like this. There is no guarantee that the person behind you does not have AA or AK. However, I WILL GUARANTEE that if you don’t bet aggressively like this, then you give yourself no shot at all.
c. There is ALWAYS the extremely tight guy who only plays premium hands like AA or KK. He knows all the percentages and THINKS that he is good at poker. Actually, he is just a huge douche nozzle. He does nothing but fold until the blinds consume most of his stack. Eventually, if he is lucky, he’ll get AA and double up from 100 to 200. But, when the average stack is 700, his all in is completely irrelevant to the outcome of the tournament. You can tell by his inevitable bitterness at his defeat that he thinks he was the best player at the table. This dude has NO CHANCE to win a tournament of any size without an INCREDIBLE run of cards. I generally just fold whenever this guy bets, but it’s even more fun to bluff him with some junk like 49. Unless he makes a HUGE hand on the flop, you can buy the pot off this guy EVERY TIME. It’s even more fun to show your bluff at set him ON TILT for the rest of the tournament. He won’t be able to believe that a LOOSE FISH like yourself “got lucky” against a superior player such as himself.
8. Most poker players always tell you how they “got a great read” or “picked up” on a person’s tell. Just about every single one of them is full of sh$%. The BOZOS at your home game aren’t good enough to pull off stunts like that. The dude picking his nose isn’t “bluffing”, he’s just a dirtbag. The chick scratching her quasi-mustache isn’t “slow-playing a monster”, she just needs a nice wax. However, I am going to let you in on a secret – there are a few reliable tells, and here’s two of them.
a. People who look at their cards early consistently give their hands away. You can’t tell EXACTLY what hand they have, but a lot of times you can tell whether it’s a good hand or a bad hand. Players on a run of bad cards will often become disgusted and you can tell that they are ready to muck their cards. Players who like their hand often make a motion that indicates that they want to continue playing, often by glancing at or even putting their hands on their chips (which they intend to bet). I haven’t met someone yet who looks at their hand early who is actually an excellent card player. You want to be a good player. NEVER, EVER, EVER look at your cards before it is your turn. It gives you an unbiased look at the hand. You’ve observed what happened from the players before you, and you’ve watched behind you to see if anyone gave away the quality of their hand. It will give you a good indication of whether to fold a marginal hand, or to try and raise with it and take the pot down right there.
b. When it comes to BEGINNERS, the following types are accurate over 90% of the time
i. Men – Male beginners are loose and they play too many hands. They think because they’ve seen the WSOP on TV that they know how to play. Since TV glamorizes fancy bluffs, they think that winning poker is played by “making a move” on someone with big bluffs and raises. When they make an oversized bet, chances are that they are full of crap.
ii. Women – Women beginners usually play very tight. They usually want to play for a while and have a “night of fun” attitude. They don’t want to risk being knocked out quickly. You will be able to win most pots from them before the flop. If they check and there are only 2 of you in the hand, you should ALWAYS bet. Most of the time you can take the pot down right there. However, it’s important to note that if they call on the flop they CAN NOT be bullied off a hand. They’ve decided that their hand is good, and they are going to continue playing it. Proceed with caution at that point unless you have a monster. It is important to note that you BETTER NOT make the mistake of classifying all women as beginners. Experienced poker playing women are very tough players who will DECIMATE any chauvinistic men at the table.
9. “First All-In” is extremely important. That means you want to be the first to make an all-in raise on a given pot whenever possible. Unless you have an excellent hand you NEVER want to call all-in. Remember what I said about decision making? Make your OPPONENTS decide whether or not to call. If your stack is medium or just below medium, go all in. Even the chip leader is going to have a tough time calling without a monster.
No one’s going to win every time, but these guidelines will lead to CONSISTENT top 5 finished in tournaments of 10-20 people. Feel free to send half of your winnings to me as a “Thank You” for helping you improve your game.
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By:Dave Homsher
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