Tournament
Poker Strategy - Brought to you by UltimateBet.com
What a Long Strange Trip its Being:
The Story So Far
What's the first thing you need for success in online tournament poker? It's love of the game,whatever your game is--Texas Hold'em, Omaha, all the poker games. And not just love of the game, but love of the game in the face of cruelty and frustration. Many is the time I've wanted to break my keyboard over my knee. And I know I'm not alone.
You know how it goes: You play your best poker game, make the right judgment calls and plays, and get run over by someone or some hand that just sends you reeling. You walk away from your computer mumbling to yourself for hours afterwards. Well, we all take those beats. The thing is to keep your head on straight and keep playing through those beats and making as few mistakes possible. You need to maximize your wins, and minimize your losses. Simple lessons, huh? Yup. Simple lessons learned through long experience.
Online poker was my revelation because it provided me with a mountain of experience I could never have obtained in live play. With online tournaments available virtually every hour in every buy range, I could practice my game and temper my character, racking up a ton of crucial experience with no real risk to my bankroll. So, the first advice I give to anyone who asks is just this: Play more poker tournaments online, and don't be afraid to start small.
You can hone your game strategy, work on your moves and try new things, all for as little as $5.00 or even nothing at all. True, the quality of your opponents might be softer in the smaller online games, but even when you find yourself in big buy-in tournaments, you'll face a huge variance of skill levels on your way to that final table. So, the small online tournament scene is not completely irrelevant. Far from it!
Next, be prepared to move up. When I really started playing a lot online I found out very quickly that not only did I love the tournaments but also had a knack for them. I started playing every small buy-in tournament I could and really took each one seriously in trying to improve my game. Then, while I was at the US Poker Championships in Atlantic City a year and a half ago, I had a revelation.
A player that I met there, someone I'd played poker against a lot online, told me I was one of the most intimidating tournament players he'd ever faced in the lower buy-in tournaments online. But, he said, I didn't play nearly the same game in the higher buy-in tournaments. If I did, he offered, I'd be a force to be reckoned with. That really got me thinking, and wondering what was holding me back. The answer of course was fear. The fear of losing big money.
I started playing more and more Texas Hold'em and poker tournaments online, trying to get rid of that fear. I continued to play the smaller buy-in ones, but I played them aggressively and gradually opened my game. When I started playing the bigger buy-in tournaments the same way, some great things began to happen for me.
So that's what I mean by starting small but having a strategy to move up. Give this strategy to yourself. Don't wait for some stranger in a poker room in Atlantic City to wise you up.
Now let's talk about sit-and-go single table tournaments. They have to be the single most important tool that I've found and used online to improve my game, primarily because they give me a precious commodity: endgame experience.
To get final table experience in big poker tournaments, you have to make it through large fields--a rarity--and on the off chance you do, you'll likely get run over by players who have been there and done that many times before. That's why the sit-n-gos are a godsend. They give you short-handed and heads-up experience that you'd otherwise almost never get.
A ten-handed single table tournament is like starting your tournament at the final table. It gives you great experience at working through a diminishing field as people are eliminated. The six-handed sit-n-gos are even better, as they demand that you work on your short-handed skills from the very start. And the heads-up tables are priceless if you want to become a very strong player, since you'll eventually have to go one-on-one against somebody for the top prize.
Does this kind of practice really pay off? It sure did for me. Thanks to all my small buy-in and sit-n-go experience, when I finally found myself at the final table of a bigger buy-in tournament (the $1000 pot-limit Texas Hold'em event at Bellagio last summer) I wasn't really the rookie that everyone else sitting there thought I was.
What a tough situation! There I was, short-stacked and plenty intimidated, facing the likes of Mark Seif, Men "the Master" Nguyen, and TJ Cloutier. But my online Texas Hold'em experience helped me keep my cool. I managed to play well, and pick my spots well, and eventually got heads up against TJ - at a 6-1 chip disadvantage. Good times, huh? Spotting a huge chip lead to just about the best endgame player in the world.
Fifteen minutes later, TJ had me over an even bigger barrel, having pushed his chip advantage to about 8-1. I was intimidated, shell-shocked and playing poorly... just about to give up and go under. At that point, though, another UB online player, TXBANDIT, tapped me on the shoulder and said something like "Kanuck, close your eyes, relax, pretend you're sitting in front of your computer, forget who your playing, and just play your game."
Well, simple advice, but I took it and started playing my game. About 45 minutes later I found myself actually leading in chips and playing very well. All was going well until I fell in love with top pair and overplayed a hand, crippling myself. I ended up finishing second to TJ, but not without giving him a proper Texas Hold'em fight to remember. I felt that I had played as well as I was able, and was very happy with the result.
The bottom line: Online you can play more tournaments in a day than you could play live in a week. This makes for a steep learning curve--if you let it. Use the tools provided for you online to try new things, open up your game, and work on key situations like short-handed and heads-up confrontations. Online experience made it possible for me to compete with the big boys when it mattered most.
Knock 'em dead!
KrazyKanuck
A-K in No-limit Texas Hold'em Tournaments
Since this is my first article for UltimateBet, I thought that I would tackle one of the most important hands in hold’em - A-K. In most small buy-in no-limit hold’em tournaments ($300 or less), you almost never throw away A-K before the flop, but that doesn’t mean that within most no-limit hold’em events there won’t be a time in which you would want to throw this hand away.
Confused yet? I contend that if you are an average to pretty good no-limit hold’em player, then you should almost never throw A-K away before the flop. It’s just not worth it. Your opponent could have A-Q, A-J or a bluff? In that case you are a pretty big favorite over him, at most about 5 to 2. Even if he has a pair other then A-A or K-K, then you are only a 12 to 10 underdog, and with the extra chips already in the pot, you are about even money.
If you are a champion player some situations may come up where you know that you are supposed to throw this hand away. For example, player 1 raises and then player 2 moves all-in for a lot of chips late in a tournament. You know that player 2 is playing extremely tight, and that he most likely has your hand at least tied and maybe even badly beat with K-K or A-A. So you throw away your hand and wait for a better spot to put your chips into the pot. However, if you are an average player this is a good place to put your chips in. You are probably against a pair of queens or jacks, in which case you are about a 12 to 10 underdog with your hand. Occasionally, of course, you find out that player 2 has only A-Q which makes you a 5 to 2 favorite. Even if you are a 12 to 10 underdog, the extra money in the pot often makes the call here right for you.
A champion knows something that the average person doesn’t. He knows that a favorable situation will come up for him soon enough and he knows when he is in that situation. Of course, when player 1 raises, player 2 moves all-in and then player 3 calls, it is time for everyone to throw away their A-K, whether they are average, bad or a champion player!