Mind Over Poker: Minimizing Luck

A few years back, I went through a stretch of about six tournaments in a row in which I was eliminated on the very first hand that I faced elimination. What I mean by that is that in each tourney, the first time that I was all in against an opponent who had me covered, I lost. And, in each of those six tournaments, I was a significant favorite in the hand when the money went in. Was I unlucky? Perhaps, but it revealed a more fundamental problem with my game at the time.

I was reminded of this period of time during my last tourney. In that tournament, which I won, the first time that I was all in with an opponent who had me covered was when I was heads up. Since my adversary was drawing dead when the money went in, I was never in a situation in which I could have been eliminated. That’s certainly unusual. In deep-field tournaments, it would be extremely rare to accomplish that. You typically have to win a few coin flips to go on to win an event or even go deep.

The key to tournament success, however, is that you want to have your opponent covered when the money goes in the middle in a coin-flip situation. How do you accomplish that? By building up your chip stack before the later stages. One of the paradoxes of tournament play — especially ones with smaller buy-ins — is that the deeper you go, the larger the role luck plays. You face more critical all-in situations due to the size of either your stack or your opponent’s stack.

When I went through that period a few years back, I realized that I could blame luck or I could blame my play up to the hand that eliminated me. If I had been more selectively aggressive early on, I would have been less likely to face an opponent who had me covered later on. In the early stages of a tournament, when the stacks are bigger in comparison to the blinds, there is more play, and therefore, more of an opportunity to outplay your opponents. That’s the time to play poker. If you can implement your skill before the blinds get deeper and your stack gets shorter, you can prolong the time period in which skill takes precedent over luck.

So, take a moment now to reflect and be honest with yourself. Do you often find yourself covered by an opponent the first time that you are all in during a tourney? If so, you probably aren’t doing enough prior to that hand to build your stack. Don’t blame the cards if you lose those all-in hands if you haven’t done enough in the previous levels to avoid that situation. ♠

David Apostolico is the author of several poker-strategy books, including Tournament Poker and The Art of War, and Compete, Play, Win: Finding Your Best Competitive Self. You can contact him at [email protected].