More 'Acceptable' Ways to Lose

In my last column, I discussed acceptable versus unacceptable ways to be eliminated from a no-limit hold'em tournament. Except for the rare tournament that you win outright, you will be eliminated at some point. As a tournament player, you must come to grips with that. You can't go through an entire tournament trying to avoid all manners of elimination. That becomes counterproductive, as it leads to a weak-tight playing style, which is problematic in any form of poker, but is instant death in tournaments.

One of the keys to long-term tournament success is to make sure that you are being eliminated in an acceptable manner as often as possible - acceptable in the sense that you can feel comfortable that you made the right play. This usually means that you took aggressive action for good reasons, or that you got your chips in with a hand that should be the winner in a given situation more often than not.

The simple example I used in my last column was K-K versus A-A. In the vast majority of situations, going all in with pocket kings and running into pocket aces is a completely acceptable way to lose, in the sense that it is practically unavoidable, and if you start trying to avoid such situations, you will probably be laying down the best hand too often. It is also acceptable - quite obviously - to get all of your chips in with the best hand and have your opponent draw out on you. There's not much more you can do than get your chips in with the best of it, and rather than be upset by the beat, you should take comfort that you made the right play.

There are many other "acceptable" ways to lose. I have enough space to mention three of them:

1. Set under set: This is very similar to K-K versus A-A. It's just one of those things that if you're on the right side of the confrontation, you'll double up, and if you're on the wrong side, you'll go broke. If you are folding a set for fear of being up against a higher one, you had better have a tremendously good read on your opponent. Otherwise, you're playing scared poker, plain and simple.

Here is a true story from one of my former poker students whom we'll call "Jerry." In the middle stages of a tournament, someone raised from late position, and Jerry called out of the big blind with 8-8. The flop came K-8-4 rainbow, and both players checked. The turn was a 3, and Jerry bet about half the pot. The preflop raiser then made a moderate raise. Jerry moved all in and was called instantly, and his opponent showed a set of kings, eliminating Jerry from the tournament. He then asked me if there was any way he could have gotten away from his hand.

I've had enough people ask me similar questions to know that sometimes they already know the answer. He knew he made the right play; he just wanted to hear someone else agree with it. But just in case there was any doubt as to whether Jerry could have even thought for a second about folding, the answer is an emphatic no.

Even if you are playing against the Rock of Gibraltar, who never seems to give any action unless he has the stone-cold nuts, you still can't start thinking about folding a set on a disconnected board. How could Jerry possibly throw away his set there? It would be ludicrous. If his opponent had the set of kings, bless his heart, as he was gonna get Jerry's money. With my students, I even refer to hands like that as "bless his heart" hands, as in, "Bless his heart if he has you beat, but there's no way you should be thinking about folding." Jerry got knocked out in a perfectly acceptable manner, and the same is true for almost all players who lose with set under set.

2. Pushing all in with a marginal hand rather than getting blinded down: Sometimes people get obsessed with the actual cards they are holding when they get eliminated. They don't want to go home and think to themselves, "I can't believe I went broke with a K-9." In reality, they often should be thinking more about the situation they were in than the actual cards they held.

This is especially true when short-stacked. You might have told yourself before the tournament that you didn't want to go broke with a marginal hand, but that was before you got short-stacked. Now, time is running out on you, and you have to take calculated risks in order to survive. If everyone folds to you in the cutoff, and you still have four times the big blind in chips, you should be pushing all in with a wide range of hands. You still have enough chips to discourage callers.

If you get called and lose, that's OK. It's a perfectly acceptable way to go broke. You were forced to take a chance, and you picked a good spot. You were the first one in, and you had to get through only three opponents to pick up a pot that you desperately needed. You just happened to run into someone who had a hand with which he was willing to call.

One time late in a tournament, Jerry had four times the big blind and he pushed all in from the cutoff with K-9, only to get called by the small blind, who had K-Q. After he was eliminated, he said to me, "I guess I should have waited for a better hand." That was the wrong way for him to look at it. Waiting for a better hand usually means entering a worse situation. I'd rather have a favorable situation and marginal cards than a semistrong hand behind a raiser and a caller. The situation was in his favor, and he did his best to take advantage of it. For that reason, he can consider his elimination an acceptable one.

3. A failed bluff attempt that was rooted in a bad read: When someone tells me that he bluffed all in and got called, all I really want to know is what his reasoning was. Why did he think it would work? Did he read his opponent as being weak? If so, why? If he can answer those questions, I consider his elimination acceptable. He made a read, and he had the courage to risk his tournament life on that read. Good for him. Hopefully, he will at least learn from his mistake and try to understand why his bluff failed, so that he can avoid doing it again in the future.

However, if someone bluffs off all of his chips with no rationale and just a shot-in-the-dark mentality, I consider that unacceptable. Winning poker isn't a guessing game. When you make a play, especially one that leads to elimination, you had better have a good reason for having made it. In general, if you risked your tournament life, you must stop and ask yourself why.

Otherwise, I don't see what's to stop you from doing it again and again. And that's simply unacceptable. ♠

Matt Lessinger is the author of The Book of Bluffs: How to Bluff and Win at Poker, available everywhere. You can find other articles of his at www.CardPlayer.com.