Playing the Percentages - Part II: No-Limit Hold'em Tournament Advice

Televised poker usually shows the percentage chance of winning next to each hand. When people see those percentages, they are often surprised that the "underdog" hand has a better chance of winning than they thought. That information can have a large impact on your playing strategies. My last column dealt with no-limit hold'em cash games, so today I will address no-limit hold'em tournaments, with three things I suggest you don't do.

Don't Go All In More Than You Have To

In no-limit hold'em cash games, you should be willing to put all of your chips in anytime you are a favorite to win the hand. The same does not hold true for tournament play. The next statement may sound obvious, but sometimes stating the obvious is important: Anytime you go all in and an opponent with more chips calls you, you are in danger of elimination, even if you've got A-A against 3-2.

Top tournament pros know this, and that's why they do their best to avoid all-in confrontations. In the later stages of a no-limit tournament, the blinds are often so high compared to the stack sizes that it's unavoidable. But in the earlier stages, you'll rarely see a good tournament player move all in unless he's sure he has by far the best hand, or that his opponents will definitely fold.

Let's say that in the first hand of a no-limit tournament, you raise preflop with the A K. One of your opponents reraises all in, and then his cards are accidentally exposed, so that you can see he has the Q J. Everyone folds around to you, and you're sitting there with what you know is the best hand. You'd call him, right? The thing is, you'd be knocked out of the tournament more than 35 percent of the time. I might make that call, too, but if I did, it would be with the understanding that I could very easily be out of the tournament on my very first hand.

Believe it or not, there are many tournament professionals who would fold that A K! They are so confident that they can get their money in as a heavier favorite later on that they won't take an early gamble as only a 65 percent favorite. They'd rather play "small ball" and try to increase their stack gradually, without having to risk all of it at any one time.

Remember the 2002 World Series of Poker? Many spectators saw Robert Varkonyi, the eventual champion, go all in with Q-10 against Phil Hellmuth's A-K to eliminate him and bring Varkonyi that much closer to the title. Many people thought Hellmuth was posturing when he said that he knew he had the best hand, but was not happy about being forced to go all in with it. What it boiled down to was that he suspected more weakness in Varkonyi's hand than he would have liked! In other words, he would have been much happier if he thought Varkonyi had A-Q or A-J, hands that were more clearly dominated. But if Varkonyi had two live undercards, which he did, he easily could have a 40 percent chance of winning, which would equate to a 40 percent chance that Hellmuth would be out of the tournament. No decent tournament pro wants to be put in that situation.

If you have to go all in, of course you want to have the best hand, but you'd much rather not have to go all in in the first place. If you manage to build your stack by winning showdowns with the best hand, you're playing a good tournament. But if you can build your stack without having to go to showdown – with no risk of an inferior hand drawing out on you – you are playing a superb tournament, and that is the type of performance for which you should strive. That's when you will become a feared opponent.

Don't Wait Too Long When You're Short-Stacked

Your goal should be to finish somewhere in the top three, where the bulk of the prize money sits. Never lose sight of that goal, and shape your playing strategies toward it. Unless you become terribly short-stacked, you should always look to put yourself in a position in which finishing at the top remains possible. As a short stack, that means not letting yourself get blinded off to the point where even a double-up wouldn't help you all that much.

Many short-stacked players say to themselves, "I'm going to put my chips in with the next decent hand I'm dealt." To them I ask, what is a "decent hand"? Sure, it would be great to get aces or kings in the next couple of hands, but they know that's unlikely, so then what? They'll probably go all in with ace-anything, but why wait for a hand like that? I'd just as soon gamble with a hand like 10-9 or 8-7. Someone willing to call an all-in bet probably will not have any cards like those duplicated, and that's extremely important.

As long as both of your cards are live, and you are not up against an overpair, you will usually have better than a one in three chance of winning against a single opponent. Why not take your chances in a spot like that, and hopefully gather some chips? That way, if you are lucky enough to pick up a premium hand, there's a chance you can double-up again, and then you've really put yourself back in the game. After all, you didn't enter the tournament hoping to finish 10th, did you? Don't worry about sneaking into the money with your short stack. Find two live cards and take a chance with them. As the percentages will show, you have a better chance of staying alive than you might have thought.

Don't Whine About Beats That Aren't Even That Bad

Let he who has never whined about a bad beat cast the first stone. Since I've done it, I won't suggest that you should never complain about an inferior hand knocking you out of a tournament. But at least let it be an extremely rough beat! I mean, don't tell people about how you moved in with the A K, got called by the J 10, and lost. You're going to lose that confrontation more than 41 percent of the time! If you consistently let beats like that bother you, you're going to be one very unhappy camper, or poker player, as it were.

If you absolutely have to complain about beats, so be it, but save it for times when you lose to one- or two-outers. That's when you might find an audience that has a shred of genuine sympathy. As the percentages will tell you, lots of your other beats weren't really so bad.

You can find other articles of Matt's in the Online Poker News, which is at www.cardplayer.com.