Dodging Bullets, Sniping, and Picking Up Free Chips

At the World Poker Tour event at Bay 101 recently, I unleashed the tactics that I have worked so hard on — tactics that would enable me to play optimal poker in the modern era — and I came away smiling (mostly). I decided to play extremely tight (no surprise), trust my instincts (no surprise), come over the top (no surprise), and slow-play some of my big pairs (surprise!). When I am “on form” (as they say in Europe) in a no-limit hold’em tournament, I am almost unstoppable. I have been working very hard on my poker game, including discussing tactics with Brandon Cantu, playing tons of hours online, and talking to math-oriented guys; overall, just thinking poker, talking poker, playing poker, and wanting to win with a huge passion! Check out my blog at www.philhellmuth.com.

At Bay 101, something just sort of clicked in, and it was this: my reading ability. When my reading ability is sharp, I can dodge bullets, and I become a sniper with deadly accuracy. What do I mean? While dodging bullets is an obvious metaphor for folding very strong hands and saving tons of chips, not as obvious is the sniper-with-deadly-accuracy metaphor, which means that I can come over the top (three-bet) at the perfect time. If someone raises with a weak hand, nine out of 10 times you will win the pot with a three-bet (reraise) right then and there. If the player decides to reraise anyway (four-bet), that’s OK, because if you’re reading perfectly, you just move all in (five-bet) and win a ton of chips. When my reading ability is ramped up, I am not afraid to push all in with nothing (five-bet or six-bet with nothing), and that is when I am at my most dangerous.

Because my reads were spot-on, it took all of the pressure off my chip stack. I mean, I won enough chips risk-free to always be slowly building my stack, and I was particularly locked into one aggressive opponent, and because that opponent didn’t slow down, I kept accumulating chips from him. At the end of day two, I had the chip lead with 530,000, and on day three, I quickly hit the 1 million mark. On day three, we played from 11 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. without even taking a dinner break! But I was so zoned in that I never dipped below the 1 million mark all day long, despite some turbulent times when I didn’t pick up many hands and lost some chips because I had a few “second-best” hands. During these lulls, I played extremely tight and made moves at the right times, reraising when I was locked into a read that my opponent was weak. This caused the other players to be wary of me, and I started to receive quite a few walks. I mean, looking at me from their point of view, why raise when I was in the big blind if they knew that I was going to reraise and force them to fold? The walks helped, because each walk gave me one free round of chips (blinds and antes), so I could remain patient and wait for a great situation.

Picking up free chips, if you can do it, keeps things smooth and easy. Many of you who try the same tactics that I am teaching you may eventually get called preflop by players who are sick of you reraising them. That means that you will have to read your opponent well again after the flop. So, my best tactics may not be your best tactics, but you do need to find a way to pick up free chips if you want to become a great no-limit hold’em player.

Learn more about Phil by going to his website, www.PhilHellmuth.com, and visit his webstore at www.PokerBrat.com.