Follow Your Own Rules

Instant karma's gonna get you …

This column features more on the subject of online no-limit hold'em sit-and-go tournaments. Or, maybe it's about hold'em in general, or poker in general. Heck, it may be about life in general.

When you go to the trouble of determining a rule to get you through a poker tournament (or life), follow it. If you can't follow it, find a better rule.

One of my rules for no-limit hold'em tournaments is that I will call up to 7 percent (call it one-fifteenth) of my stack with a pocket pair. That is because flopped sets are so hugely valuable in no-limit hold'em. Let me provide a fairly famous example from the World Series of Poker in 1993. During the final event, they were down to three players: Jim Bechtel, John Bonetti, and Glenn Cozen. Cozen was desperately short-stacked and almost sure to go out third at any moment. Then, Bonetti and Bechtel got into a pot with a flop of K-6-X. Bonetti had A-K and had flopped top pair, top kicker, but Bechtel had flopped a set of sixes. All the money went in, Bonetti busted out, and Cozen had sneaked into second place. The point is that sets are supremely valuable because they're so well-hidden. They are the sort of hand with which you can double through an opponent, and be almost certain that you have the best of it when the money goes in.

This brings me to two huge mistakes I made in the last couple of days. Both involved pocket pairs.

In the first, I was in the big blind with pocket threes. The blinds were $10-$20, and I had about $1,000 in chips. I was looking forward to checking and seeing a free flop, but then there was a raise to $80. It was a big raise – four times the big blind. Without thinking, I clicked the fold button, and within nanoseconds of clicking the button, I realized my mistake. It wasn't $80 to me, it was $60 to me – which was comfortably within my calling rule range (15 x $60 = $900). Of course, as John Lennon predicted, my punishment from the universe was quick and sure. The flop came K-8-3. The two players in the pot immediately went all in, A-K vs. K-J. Had I been in there, both of them would have been in huge trouble. And I had every reason to be in that pot.

The second mistake happened the next day in a very similar situation, and that's what makes it so embarrassing. I had pocket deuces in middle position and was hoping to limp in for $30 (the big blind). There was a healthy raise in front of me to $90. Frankly, I just wasn't paying attention. I had visualized in my head calling the $30, and when the raise occurred, I just stopped thinking. "Oh – a raise – I can't call now." I didn't bother to think that I had $1,500 in chips. Again, I should have called (15 x $90 = $1,350). Now, it's important to realize that I should have called no matter what the flop was. Remember, correct play is in the windshield, not the rearview mirror (hey, nice phrase – I'll have to remember that). But again, the universe wasted no time in smacking me upside the head with a deuce on the flop. I can't tell you what else happened, because, well, I was too busy smacking myself (on the forehead).

By the way, it's worth noting that when following the 7 percent rule, you need to adjust for your opponents' stack sizes, too. That is, if your opponents are short-stacked, you don't have the implied odds to call with a small pair; you can't win enough chips to justify your investment if you do flop a set. You also have to, at least theoretically, consider the possibility that you'll flop a set and it will be no good. I remember somebody commenting about a particularly tough player in the WSOP: "If the money is deep, and he gets all of it in the middle, top pair is no good." Fortunately, that is simply not true for online sit-and-go tournaments. Because players are so willing to commit all of their chips with only moderately good hands, if you flop a set, you can almost always get full value for it. Exactly how to do that will be the topic for another discussion. But there will be plenty of times when you'll be calling all in rather than raising all in with what is almost certainly the best hand. Poker doesn't get much easier than that.

But, of course, none of that good stuff will happen if you don't follow the rules that you've set for yourself, and I encourage you to follow this one – even if it requires thinking, paying attention, and doing some simple math.

… gonna knock you right on the head.