Are You a Closer?

As I was web-surfing a newspaper, I stumbled onto an ad that looked something like this:

Are You a Closer?

Job Title: Sales Closers

Employer: Major Widget Distributor

Source: Daily Newspaper

Location: Main Street, USA

Job Description: Sales – Commission Opportunity. If you are looking for a career as opposed to a job, with a professional sales organization that can consistently provide you with an opportunity to earn $1,000-$10,000 per week, call Joe Manager.

And then I thought, what if I changed a few words and it looked like this:

Are You a Closer?

Job Title: Final-Table Closers

Employer: Your Local Cardroom

Source: Card Player Magazine

Location: Main Street, USA

Job Description: Poker – Statistical Opportunity. If you are looking for a career as opposed to a job, with a professional poker organization that can consistently provide you with an opportunity to earn $1,000-$10,000 per week, call Joe Cardroom Manager.

These days, it appears that everybody and his mother are playing in no-limit hold'em poker tournaments: home tournaments, local tournaments, national tournaments, international tournaments, seniors tournaments, college tournaments, celebrity tournaments, televised tournaments, online tournaments, fund-raiser tournaments, professional tournaments, freeroll tournaments, single-table tournaments, rebuy tournaments, satellite tournaments, supersatellite tournaments, shootout tournaments, double shootout tournaments, multilevel qualifier tournaments, heads-up tournaments, championship tournaments, superstar tournaments, superstar championship tournaments, and so on. Poker tournaments seem to have become a national fad, and perhaps even an obsession. Why not? It beats flipping through 600 TV channels when you can't find anything new and interesting to watch.

But, are you a closer? Can you seal the deal? Do you have what it takes to win first place in a no-limit hold'em poker tournament if you make the final table? Do you know how to play shorthanded? Do you play well under pressure? Do you know how to say "All in!" a few times? If you're playing in one of those tournaments that lasts about 15 minutes and has about 1,000 players, the luck factor is extraordinarily high and the skill factor is very low. In this case, you need to focus on having fun and getting lucky. However, if you're playing in a longer tournament with a good structure, the skill factor becomes much more important, although the luck factor is still quite significant. Just a few years ago, it was difficult to get a lot of final-table shorthanded experience. Now, people have access to a seemingly unlimited number of single-table tournaments that effectively simulate being in a final-table situation. The experience gained from playing in single-table tournaments is priceless, and could pay off big when making a final table of a major tournament.

Most no-limit hold'em single-table tournaments start with nine or 10 players and usually get whittled down to two players in an hour or so. By playing these tournaments, if nothing else, you get used to the idea of the blinds coming to you more and more frequently, as well as the action coming to you faster as players are dropping out. And you're also adding more hands to the "playable hand list" each and every time someone busts out. When you go from 10 to nine players, you have more playable hands; when you go from nine to eight players, you have more playable hands; and so on down to heads-up play. The pressure keeps building up until heads-up play, which is the ultimate pressure cooker. You're always involved with a hand as one of the two blinds, and almost every hand becomes playable in an unraised pot. You also need to keep a keen eye on your opponents – not just to get a read on their tells, but to determine if they seem to be adjusting their playable hand list, as well.

No matter how many poker books you read or poker videos you watch, there's no substitute for experience in any form of poker. Play some single-table tournaments and find out if you've got the right stuff, and prepare yourself for that big final table in your future.

Are you a closer? I'll bet you are! Good luck.

Editor's note: Robert is the 2002 World Series of Poker champion and the instructor on the WiseGuys on Texas Hold'em videos, starring some famous actors from the Sopranos. The videos are very informative, as well as entertaining, and are available at wiseguyson.com.