No-Limit Holdem Tourney Self-Destruction

No-Limit Holdem Tourney Self-Destruction
by Jim Woods

If you're playing correctly in a NL Hold'em tournament you're not seeing most flops, which means you have time on your hands. Sure, you could order drinks, talk to a waitress, or peruse the fascinating array of daytime TV shows on the casino's multiple screens. But, if you use your free time to observe your opponents, you can learn a lot about them. And much of it isn't pretty...

The last tourney I played had a $60 buy-in, no re-buys, and a single $50 add-on. That affordability guaranteed that many of the 136 entrants were, shall we say, unlike Phil Ivey. Here are two examples of flagrant self-destruction that I saw.

Before the first break, a good player at my table made several good bets and at least one Grade-A lay down, and thus was one of the tournament chip leaders with 70,000 chips. Strangely, however, in the first hand after the break she went all-in under the gun with 99. The ONLY player at our table who had a bigger stack than hers also happened to have better cards...sharp tops, to be exact! The AA held (yes, Virginia, that does occasionally happen), and all of the lady's fine play before the break was for nothing!

Why would someone do that? Her explanation was, "I wanted to grab the blinds [3,000 chips] and set the tone for the second session." Well, a certain tone WAS set: Those of us left at the table had to contend with a 160,000-chip behemoth when our stacks averaged about 30,000! That gave a whole new meaning to "Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am."

I doubt the woman's explanation. I think a more likely cause was loss of focus, which I have observed in many players as a result of breaks (unfortunately including myself more often than I want to admit). We check our voice mail, calculate how much longer the tourney may last, contemplate moving back an appointment or dinner reservation, grab a quick snack, etc., and in a very short time we can forget what got us to our current position. Instead, we should resolve to be extra-conservative immediately following the break to take advantage of others who have gotten out of sync.

Another road to ruin in NL tourneys is wasting chips with questionable calls because "I can afford it." Another of my opponents in this particular tournament (let's call him "Randy") had a well-above-average stack of 50,000 chips after two hours of play, the second-biggest stack at the table. Randy and the chip leader had wisely avoided getting tangled heads up for a while. However, there were 35 players left and only the top 18 would get paid.

Randy had KJo in the 2,000-chip big blind. A player with 11,000 chips (I think his name was "Desperado") went all in, and everyone else folded. Without hesitating, Randy called, and he lost to A5o when neither hand improved. (Two sloppy calls and a bit of bad luck later, Randy was heading for the cash games.) But before he called simply because he had face cards, and could afford to lose 9,000 more, he should have asked himself these questions:

1. "What does Desperado probably have?"
KJ is a clear favorite over any K-rag, Q-high, or J-high hand and any small-to-medium connectors, but how many people go all in with those? Isn't it far more likely that Desperado is risking his tournament life on at least an ace, especially since he knows that Randy has him covered four times over? Randy should have taken a minute to recall all the times that he had seen short stacks decide, "This is the best I've seen in a while, and I have to make a move sometime, so I'm buckling my chinstrap and going in!" If he had, he probably would've admitted that most of those players had an ace, KQ, or a pocket pair. "Big deal," Randy may have retorted, "bring on that ace-rag!" Really? His KJo was about a 57-43 underdog to a random A2. It was even a slight underdog to pocket ducks!

2. "What table image have I projected to this point, and how (if at all) do I want that to change now?"
Randy had been playing well for a while to accumulate the 50,000 chips, but even if he'd been a bit loose and caught cards, he had a certain degree of respect from the others at our table. How long did he think that would last once they saw that he was willing to risk 20% of his stack calling an all in with just two face cards?

3. "If I'm going to play KJo, do I want to be the aggressor or the caller?" The answer to that one is obvious.
A venerable poker maxim is: "Make your opponent make a decision." If your opponent goes all in first, nothing you do can change the decision she's already made. Moreover, backing others down can pay future dividends. Few scenarios produce more action for a big hand than a previous hand in which you made a big pre-flop raise, stole the blinds, and casually showed a bluff or drawing hand.

4. "Why now?"
Even if Desperado's hand made the outcome a coin flip, was that the right time for a coin flip? The blinds totaled only 6% of Randy's stack, and he was still many places away from the money. If he beat the odds and knocked out Desperado, that wouldn't have been a significant step toward payday. Also, he had little risk of appearing too tight or too willing to give up his big blind. Any sensible player knows there are many hands one can have in the big blind that aren't worth defending for 4.5 times more chips.

5. "If I fold, am I making myself more vulnerable to Desperado later?"
Hardly. 14,000 chips aren't significantly more powerful than 11,000, which brings us back to the first question. Is Desperado's hand so weak that he's hoping no one calls, just so he can steal the 3,000 in blinds? Do we normally see small stacks bluffing?

But let's change the scenario slightly, and suppose that Randy had ace-rag. Would that have made his call smarter? I think not, unless Randy could read Desperado well enough to put him on an ace with a smaller rag or an outright bluff. I don't know about you, but only in the rarest circumstances can I read an opponent that precisely. Remember that the 8 is the middle rank. If you have an ace and a card lower than an 8, any other ace has you dominated.

In conclusion, NL Hold'em tournaments are tough enough with your opponents trying to beat you. Don't help them by shooting yourself in the foot.