Early Tournament Strategy

The title of this column sounds a bit exacting because, as you know by now, you must play your situations as they arise and not follow any set rule. There is no set "game plan" that you should ever have going into a tournament, other than observing and reacting to your opponents with your best option. There are, however, some thought processes that you can have to guide you in your decision-making. During the early stages of a tournament, you should be especially mindful of the risk-versus-reward concept. Whether you are playing a deep-stack tournament with $10,000 in starting chips and blinds of $25-$50 or a short-stack tournament with only $1,500 in starting chips and blinds of $10-$20, there are "value" questions that you must ask yourself. There is a large gap in flexibility between the two types of tournaments.



Let's first look at a live deep-stack tournament with $10,000 in starting chips. The blinds are $25-$50 and it is a $10,000 buy-in event. You watch the players at your table for a round or two and notice that they are playing fairly tight (as is often the case). Raises are rarely contested; people are talking and seemingly having a good time, and are very happy to be there. You pick up 9-9 in the cutoff position. A guy in middle position raises to $150 and you make it $500. Everyone else folds, he calls, and the flop comes K-8-5. He checks, you continuation-bet $700, and he raises to $2,000. You have to fold. The next hand you play, you get A-K two seats from the button. An early-position player raises to $150, another player calls, you raise to $650, the first guy calls, and the second guy folds. The flop comes 10-9-8. He leads out roughly the pot size of $1,500 and you have to fold again, leaving yourself with $8,150 in chips. That's certainly not a good result for those two hands, but it's OK. There was nothing out of the ordinary about your betting, and I don't think we can call either of your plays a mistake. You have plenty of chips and flexibility to work with, and you have a somewhat active image (because they didn't see either of your hands), which can be used for accumulation later. Sometimes the value in a certain play or bet is not chip value but image value. So, it's not a total loss.



Now, let's take the same sequence of events in a $1,500 starting-chip tournament. Using the same percentages of the blinds/pot amount as the deep-stack example, will we be able to play our good hands with the same aggression?



In the first hand, we had 9-9. A player raised and we reraised to 3.3 times his bet. We then made a continuation-bet of approximately 65 percent of the pot before we folded. So, with $1,500 in starting chips and $10-$20 blinds, this equates to the following: He raises to $60, we make it $200, and he calls. He then checks and we bet $280 before we fold. This action leaves us with $1,020 in chips. In other words, we just spent a third of our stack on one hand. Hmm. Moving on, we get the A-K hand with two players in for $60 and we make it $260 preflop. We then fold on the flop, leaving us with $760 chips. So, what seemed like acceptable tight-aggressive behavior in the deep-stack tourney now looks like way too much risk in the short-stack tourney – and it is.



Remembering a risk-versus-reward thought process, in the deep-stack tourney, we risked 12 percent of our stack in the first hand, plus another 7 percent of our remaining stack on the second hand. This left us with about 81 percent of our original stack and still 163 big blinds. In the short-stack tourney, we risked a monstrous 32 percent of our stack in the first hand, plus another 25 percent of our remaining stack on the second hand. This left us with approximately 50 percent of our original stack and 38 big blinds. Here, we see the gap in flexibility that I mentioned before. We certainly have much more flexibility in the deep-stack tournament than we do in the short one after playing our hands exactly the same way.



So, what can we do to correct this? In short-stack tournaments, try playing your middle pairs and big aces a little more cautiously. You could even make an argument for doing the same in deep-stack tourneys. Here's an example of a better early play in the short-stack tourney. You only call with your 9-9 for $60, bet the flop for $100 when it's checked to you, get raised, and fold. This leaves you with $1,340 in chips. Then, you only call in position with the A-K for $60. You miss the flop and fold to the bet, leaving you with $1,280. This leaves you plenty of chips and flexibility to continue on. Can someone argue that this is very passive play with good hands? Yes. But when you factor in value and ask yourself how much there is in playing this hand more aggressively, the answer is not favorable. As in the examples above, you would be risking $200 in chips to win a measly $90 by raising with the 9-9 hand. Then, after you get called preflop, you risk another $280, for a total of $480, to increase your stack by only $230 in chips. In other words, you have risked 50 percent of your stack to increase it by only 15 percent!



There is a very fine line between practicing avoidance and optimal chip extraction and accumulation. Sometimes, what you don't lose is more important than what you win. Pay close attention to chip counts, maintaining flexibility in your stack, and always weigh your risk versus reward when making decisions, especially during the early stages. With all of this said, however, do not be afraid to take a mindful risk early on to double up in a short-stack online tournament. The reward of having $3,000 in chips and the ability to abuse the players at your table is often worth the risk of busting out, because you can just register for another tourney.



Todd Arnold made the final table of event seven at the 2006 Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in December. He finished in seventh place and earned almost $18,000.