Club Tournaments - Tournament action for charity

One product of poker's current popularity boom is that many clubs and fraternal organizations are now scheduling poker tournaments – often as fund-raisers or charity events. Sometimes, a no-limit hold'em tournament, "just like those on TV," is the feature event of a gala "Casino Night" or "Las Vegas Night." These tournaments are profitable and fun, and have been bringing in new players.

In April, I played in a large charity event at the Progress Club in the Rockville, Maryland, suburbs of Washington, DC. More than 90 entrants enjoyed great hospitality and a large cut of roast beef for supper. My C/H line (graph of chips owned at the start of each hand) for that tournament was the classic "slowly sloping mountain"; I managed to build up a big stack early, then held no playable cards and finally dwindled down and was sent to the loser's lounge just before the final table. But, I had a very pleasant evening and heard that the charitable contributions had exceeded all expectations.

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon in mid-May, I drove down Grove Hill Road in Midlothian, Virginia, to the Clubhouse, which is located beside a sleepy little pond with ducks. The eight-table no-limit hold'em tournament there was very well-run by manager Dan Allen. He had high-tech computer equipment that projected current player chip counts and the blinds. And the blind/ante progression was just about the best I've seen – slow and player-friendly.

I knew it was a good omen when, on the fourth hand of the day, my K Q "turned" into a straight flush and sent an unfortunate good player with the ace-high flush to the rail. But several hands later, as I was about to rake in another huge pot, my opponent hit a two-outer on the river and exclaimed, "Welcome to Midlothian, the suck-out capital of the world."

I hung in there with merely two to three times the original chip amount for almost four hours with very few playable hands. My big break came when my pocket sixes flopped a set and held up to win a giant pot. An hour later, I managed to coast to the final table with a medium-size stack of chips.

I won two big all-in coin tosses, first with pocket queens versus A-K, and then with pocket jacks, which got me to the three-player final. The player who had been the chip leader for several hours then eliminated the third player and had well over two-thirds of the chips. I noticed that he had "shifted gears" and was raising before the flop very aggressively.

With my big blind at $8,000, I called his raise to $16,000 with J-9 suited. The flop brought a 9 and two low cards. I checked and he bet $30,000. I certainly had to go for it here with top pair, so I reraised all in with my remaining $25,000. He thought and called with his A-K suited, didn't hit, and suddenly I had the lead.

The very next hand, with more than $140,000 in chips to his $105,000, I picked up the Q 10 in my $4,000 small blind. What would you do in this situation?

One of the guidelines I keep in mind for heads-up shootout situations when the blinds are very high is to try to wait for an ace (yes, pocket pairs are even better, but rarer) before getting seriously involved. You certainly want to have the percentages on your side when the inevitable all-in confrontation occurs. But here, I had Q-10 suited, which was clearly a pretty good hand, so I made it $25,000 to go.

He fairly quickly raised all in. What a revolting development. What would you do now? I immediately wished in retrospect that I had not made it $25,000 to go, as it would be easier to walk away from a smaller bet.

It was probably right to fold. Even if he had merely a king in his hand, he would be the favorite. I could let my $25,000 go and still have about $115,000 to his $130,000. But he looked too confident – like he had pocket aces and was bored with the hand. So, I called – and caught him with a mere Q-8 offsuit. My Q-10 held up and I won the event.

A winning formula for most poker tournaments is to build up some chips early, then coast (survive) along safely, waiting for a big hand or a big opportunity. During these coasting periods, it is critical to avoid big confrontations that you could lose. If you can maintain enough chips to stay competitive, you should eventually hit a winning hand or run into one of the inevitable coin tosses. With luck, you will increase your stack and survive to make it into the money.

Note that to win the above tournament, my set had to hold up, I had to win two coin tosses, and I had to hang on to win those two final hands. All of those good things together will happen only about one out of 10 times. Perhaps that is why they even invited me to come back for their big Omaha event that took place in June.