Play a Tournament With Me

In the summer of 2005, the state casino in my home country, the Netherlands, started a new event, the Holland Casino Poker Championships. Six qualifying events all around the country would lead to 18 finalists battling for the semiofficial title of Dutch Champion. As is usually the case with big and/or special events by Holland Casinos, I was hired as the official reporter. And as is usually the case, I tried to combine my reporting job with playing in one or two events, more than anything to get a "feel" for what's going on. This time, I opted to play in the first qualifying event (because it was in my hometown, Amsterdam) and the last one (because it was in a beautiful part of the country, where my girlfriend and I could combine poker with a little holiday).

All of the tournaments had a simple structure: a maximum of 60 entrants, $130 buy-in with unlimited $120 rebuys, and one optional add-on; 48 percent of the prize money would be divided through traditional payouts for the participants that day, and the other 52 percent would go to the finals. Three qualifiers per event would go to the finals, where 18 players would battle things out in a relatively slow-structured freezeout.

Qualifying Attempt No. 1
The first tournament was staged in Amsterdam, which is famous for having an extraordinary number of good and excellent players. For instance, just to name a few, Marcel Lüske, Noah Boeken, Rolf Schreuder, and Ed de Haas all live there. The first two could indeed be found in action, contributing to an incredibly tough field for an event of this (relatively limited) size. For instance, Noah usually plays in much bigger events, but he stated that he participated in this event not for the money, but solely for the semiofficial title of Dutch Champion, despite the multiple-rebuy nature of this event, which meant it could not actually be viewed as a "real" championship.

In contrast to regular tournaments, play started out unusually slow, with less than one rebuy, on average. I started out playing very tight myself. Inasmuch as this was the casino where I used to play my cash games for many years, my opponents knew me as a true rock who would sit and wait for a hand for hours, and who would never play more than 10, maybe 12, hands a night. Now, because I never play tournaments in Amsterdam, these people don't know that my tournament strategy is nowhere near my usual full-ring cash-game strategy. In tournaments, I usually play in an extremely aggressive, even maniacal, manner. It's a strategy that paid off big time for me when I still lived in Vienna and played five or six tournaments per week there. But with my opponents being blissfully unaware of this, I wanted to hold on to my tight image at least until the stage where the blinds and antes increased significantly - and the decisions mattered most.

We were down to two tables, 16 players. I had a below-average stack, and while in the beginning of the event the pressure of the blinds had been very low, the situation had changed quite a bit now. So, I knew this was the time to take advantage of my image and start accumulating chips. I was faced with some severe problems, though. To my left, I had arguably the best tournament player in Europe, Marcel Lüske, and seated to Marcel's immediate left was his protégé Noah Boeken, a rising star and winner of the 2005 European Poker Tour Copenhagen. And not only are they two great players - they were also the two chip leaders in the event. As all great players do, they love to take control, to play their position and the players, and in general play very well, especially post-flop. I also knew what they don't like: calling big bets and taking chances early in a hand. So, I decided to start using a strategy that most "good" players would find inferior: trying to win pots early by making huge preflop overbets when it seemed that no one had much, especially as the first one in, all in order to build my stack without needing to show a hand. In fact, I raised Marcel and Noah on every possible occasion, knowing that if I played the game their way, I would not stand a chance. When my opponents noticed my aggressive gambling approach, they started folding all of their marginal hands to me, and this meant that I had even more chances to win pots because of my "first-in vigorish." So, I succeeded in building my stack considerably - which was a good thing. A bad thing was that the two times that I did get a call from one of the short stacks, they doubled up - despite the fact that in both cases I happened to have the dominating hand. I knew that both Marcel and Noah were very eager to call me at some stage. But at the same time, I had accumulated a big stack and had become a serious threat to them - which meant that I had no intention of slowing down.

With 10 players left, my run was finally stopped. Again, everyone folded to me, and in the small blind, I moved all in for my entire stack without even looking at my cards - even though I had pretended I did. Finally, big blind Marcel woke up with a good enough hand to call me, Q-Q. With him having just slightly more chips than I had, this was a crucial pot, and the winner would be the clear chip leader of the event. I turned out to have two sixes, and as much as I started calling for sixes, they would not come. Marcel's queens held up, giving him close to 30 percent of the chips in play, and an easy ride to the final three. What it meant for me was that I would go back to covering the final table instead of playing it, knowing that my second qualifying attempt would be only five weeks later.

Qualifying Attempt No. 2
While, quite frankly, I had not taken this tournament all that seriously when it came to playing in it, something had happened that significantly changed things. I had gotten some criticism from some young players who (behind my back, of course) had said things like, "Well, yes, maybe he wins a bit of money in the cash games, but how many tournament titles has he won?" So, I arrived at the final stop in Valkenburg, where these critics of mine were also playing, with just one goal in mind: qualifying. In the end, here's what I did. Despite two table breaks at unfortunate moments and getting outdrawn in two crucial pots, I managed to bully my way into the final four. When the short stacks managed to survive more often than would seem normal, I ran into trouble after all. The pressure of the high blinds forced me to raise all in as the first one in with a mere 7-2 offsuit, knowing that the big blind played somewhat weak-tight and thus would not call me without a real hand. In an absolutely miraculous manner, I cracked my opponent's black kings with the 2 for a flush, and my crippled opponent was finished off just a few hands later. I knew I had gotten extremely lucky when it mattered most, but I also had brought myself into that position with the way that I had maneuvered throughout the event. The audience didn't think so, and neither did my fellow players - who, without exception, thought I was a total lunatic.

Anyway, I had done what I had come to do: make it to the finals. Especially after I had finished my reports, everybody in the Netherlands knew that I was that maniac who had risked his entire tournament on a 7-2 offsuit. So, I knew that for the finals, I couldn't rely on my tight image anymore - as I had torn that to shreds myself.

I'll have more on the finals, and my battle for the trophy in Part II of this column.

Rolf Slotboom is a longtime professional, specializing in limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, and, more recently, no-limit hold'em ring games. He is the co-author of Hold'em on the Come, the author of the upcoming book Pot-Limit Omaha My Way, the commentator for the Eurosport EPT broadcasts, and the Card Player Europe bureau chief. He is the semiofficial 2005 Dutch champion, and maintains his own site at www.rolfslotboom.com.