Lessons Are (and Should Be) Extra

Since time immemorial, whenever one poker player has turned over a winning hand and the loser has exclaimed in disbelief, "How could you play that hand that way?" the winner has usually smirked and responded, "You paid to see my cards. Lessons are extra."

Recently, I was involved in a tournament situation where my opponent not only decided that lessons weren't extra, but that they would be given freely and loudly, and I think this approach worked to everyone's detriment on any number of levels, including the quality of the poker experience, how much everyone enjoyed his or her evening, my respect for the person involved, and the likelihood that some of the people playing might return to the tables.

Let's take a look at what happened, and you can judge for yourself.

At The Bicycle Casino's recently concluded Winnin' o' the Green $225 limit hold'em tournament, the 233 starters had been reduced to 16 players, all of whom were in the money, although the paydays for all but the top nine finishers were going to be tiny, barely in excess of the buy-in. There were a couple of small ladder steps involved for second-table finishers (perhaps $80 when you moved from the 16th-18th group up to the 13th-15th group, for example), but these steps were dwarfed by the prize money available at the top: $17,480 for first, $8,855 for second, and $4,430 for third.

As is usually the case in tournaments, the prize money dropped off pretty quickly after third, with the next six players to receive $3,030, $2,100, $1,635, $1,165, $935, and $700, respectively.

I mention the payout steps to show you the relative unimportance of eliminating a player when there are 16 players remaining. It's nice, to be sure, but unless you're someone who needs rent money (and if you are, you shouldn't be playing in a poker tournament), your focus at this stage should be accumulating chips in an effort to get the big money.

Someone who has never made a final table at a "name" tournament could also be forgiven for adopting the goal of making the final table and getting his name printed up on the daily report sheet and in Card Player, but I, and most other serious tournament players, love playing with people like this because they usually give away chips when they go into survival mode.

The blinds were now $500-$1,000, so we were playing $1,000-$2,000 limit poker. None of the 16 players remaining, including myself, had a monstrously huge stack. I was in pretty good position with about $16,000, but playing any hand to the river would put a significant portion of my stack at risk.

The small blind had only $300, and was all in for an incomplete small blind. I was in middle position, found A K, and raised. A player, to whom I will assign the pseudonym "Bob," called my raise cold on the button, and everyone else folded. This created a main pot of $1,200 and a side pot of $4,100 ($700 + $1,700 + $1,700).

The flop came A-J-10, I bet, and Bob folded angrily. "You don't know what you're doing, Andy," he instantly said in a loud voice. "We have a guy all in here, we have a chance to eliminate a player, and you're ruining it by betting and forcing me out of the hand. I had an inside straight draw and might have gotten there if you hadn't bet me off the hand."

Well, gee, shucks, golly, I thought that was exactly the idea. This is a pretty scary flop for my hand, even if I did flop top pair and an inside-straight draw of my own. Bob is a good enough player not to be calling raises with A-10, but if he had any two big cards, the turn and river are threats to my hand (as his protest seemed to confirm). The side pot of $4,100 is quite significant compared to my stack size, and if giving Bob some free cards lets him outdraw me, I fail to gain $5,300 (assuming no more bets). Sure, I'd like to see player No. 16 depart, but not enough to risk losing that much money.

The small blind turned out to have junk, and I won the hand easily, but Bob wasn't easing up. "I really can't believe you did that," he said. "We had the chance to eliminate a player!!!"

I was about to launch into a lecture of my own, explaining my reasoning, when I decided that lessons were indeed extra. I didn't owe Bob an explanation. Perhaps just as important, Bob had been behaving very badly. Suppose player No. 16 was someone relatively new to tournament poker, and heard Bob screaming about my failure to engage in an elimination conspiracy. For that matter, suppose that anyone at the table was fairly new to tournament poker, and heard this exchange? Wouldn't they come away from the table convinced that the "pros" gang up on the amateurs?

I was also left wondering if Bob was trying to assert some sort of psychological dominance over me. If so, I wasn't impressed.

When a ladder move is significant – let's suppose, for example, that this hand had come up when there were five players left, rather than 16 – the "check the hand to the river unless you have the stone-cold nuts" theory is usually correct. At a certain point in a tournament, the marginal equity you gain by increasing the chance of eliminating a player can easily exceed the equity you gain by increasing your chance of winning a pot.

But with 16 players left, a fairly big pot out there to be won, and the ladder step to be gained fairly small, you should be more concerned about maximizing your chances of accumulating chips. Almost as important, if you consider "the good of poker," you should not be making statements that purport to teach correct tournament strategy at the table. A "silent conspiracy" between players who understand the correct equity maximizing strategy is one thing; calling for a conspiracy out loud is quite another.

If your "lessons" are correct, the short stacks feel unfairly taken advantage of, and if your lessons are incorrect, not only do the short stacks feel abused, you lose the respect of the other players at the table.

Andy Glazer is the weekly gambling columnist for the Detroit Free Press and the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way. He is also the online poker guide for www.poker.casino.com, and welcomes your questions there, or via email at [email protected].