European Poker Tour Notes

I'm at the European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Copenhagen, Denmark, as I write this. If you've never been to a poker tournament in Europe, you owe it to yourself to check out an EPT event. It's like every other poker tournament you've been to, except there are all kinds of interesting languages being spoken. And there's probably not a little mermaid statue (Copenhagen) or a real castle (Dortmund, Germany) in the places where you normally attend your poker tournaments. A lot of the North American regulars have worked it out so that it's a wonderful way to combine a vacation and some great poker. I've already seen Imper1um, timex, skier_5, ch0ppy, and charder here - and a lot of people with two names, too.

But, anyway, I'm here to talk about some strategic and tactical notes from the EPT Dortmund. Because I was doing the commentary for the EPT Live webcast much of the time, I was paying very close attention to the action. Depending on what particular role I'm assuming at an EPT event, I might not be so closely focused on the actual poker. But when doing the commentary and analysis for EPT Live, I'm thinking about poker strategy and tactics a lot. I have no doubt that doing so really helps my game, and I thought I'd pass along a few of those insights.

Aggression is good: No surprises here. When you watch a major brick-and-mortar casino tournament (or a major online event, for that matter), the players who are consistently pounding on pots are the ones who routinely reach the final table. Sure, there will be a few folks who were just sitting there when the deck hit them in the head, but it's really hard to get that lucky, and there's definitely no way to plan for it. When we got to the final table at Dortmund, there were four players who I thought had a good chance to win the thing. All of them seemed to be looking for signs that they could pick up a pot - whether they had the cards or not. It was fun to watch one or two of them (who had the big stacks) just constantly raising preflop. Everybody in the room, including the waitresses, knew that they couldn't have the hand that they were representing every time. But while everybody was sure that they weren't being completely truthful, nobody wanted to be the one to play sheriff and put a stop to the raise-bot nonsense. So, it kept working.

Know where the brake pedal is: While aggression is a good - necessary - thing, you have to know when to back off. In particular, one of the final-table contestants had been doing exactly what I described in the last paragraph. He was picking up pots left and right and generally making life miserable for the other players at the table. But then an interesting thing happened: One player played back at him. Mr. Aggression raised and got reraised. He thought for a while and then folded. You could almost hear everybody at the table thinking, "See! We were right! He doesn't always have a hand." Shortly thereafter, Mr. Aggression tried his maneuver again, and this time a different player pushed back. He had to fold a second time. So, he'd taken a major hit to his stack (he'd been the chip leader). Maybe those two guys really had hands - we'll have to wait for the TV show to be sure. But whatever, it was clear that Mr. Aggression needed to settle back down and wait for an opportunity in which he could stand the heat that his opponents were beginning to put on his raises. Instead, however, he seemed to go a bit on tilt. Still with a big, playable stack, he ultimately pushed all in with 8-7 suited from the big blind in response to an opening raise from the button. The button was one of the two people at the table who had more chips than he did. The button also had pocket kings and instantly called, of course. The flop came K-3-2, and Mr. Aggression, who everybody thought would be one of the last two or three players in the tournament, was drawing dead and out in the front half of the final table. I don't think it had to go that way. Mr. Aggression is a very, very good tournament player. He could have re-centered himself, and waited for a hand with which he was willing to go mano a mano with somebody if necessary. He had plenty of chips, plenty of time, and the skills to make good decisions to go right down to the wire and possibly win the thing. It was sad to watch him self-destruct.

Don't get half of your stack in and then fold for the rest: We had one player at the final table who was not very experienced. He was playing very passively and basically staying out of action. With three very active players at the table, he perhaps hoped to slide up a notch or two in the payout structure. He did, in fact, accomplish that when charder's A-K ran into timex's A-A. But pretty soon, he got blinded down to a pretty short stack. Then, a weird thing happened. He raised, and was reraised by Mr. Aggression (this was early at the final table). That reraise would leave him with only about half of his original stack - a fairly pitiful few chips. He did the unthinkable: He called the reraise, and then check-folded the flop. Had he pushed all of his chips in preflop, we would have applauded his courage. Had he called on the flop, we probably would have clucked and said, "Well, he was pot-committed at that point." As it was, he left himself with virtually no ammunition, and he was all in, beaten, and out of the tournament shortly thereafter. Of course, he took with him more than €100,000, so any comments I have about his play should be taken with a grain of salt.

That'll do for now. I hope that you found these lessons useful, or at least interesting. I know that my game has gotten better from watching the top people play for all of this money.

Lee Jones is the executive host for the European Poker Tour, and the author of the best-selling book Winning Low Limit Hold'em.