Are You Trying To Win Too Much Money (Playing Tournaments)?

Last time I discussed the ways gamblers try to win too much money in all different forms of wagering, including sports betting and the lottery. Now let’s focus on poker tournaments.

Imagine you enter a $1 buy-in, 100-player tournament. It pays ten places, with 10th place paying $2, all the way up to $30 for first. Regarding your strategy and style of play, if you are like most players, then you are probably not too worried about locking up the bottom prize of $2. You are going to play in the manner that maximizes your chances of winning the $30 top prize. Now increase the money tenfold. You might give a little more consideration to collecting $20 for making the money, but you’ll still be focused on the $300 for first place.

Multiply the money 10 times again. Now we begin to separate the pros from the amateurs. Amateurs might start to sweat the $200 bottom prize as the bubble approaches, whereas most tournament regulars will still keep their eyes on the $3,000 top prize. Let’s multiply by 10 again. Now even professional players’ attitudes will shift noticeably. When 11th place pays $0 and 10th place pays $2,000, a lot more players will rely on a strategy that maximizes their chances of making the money, rather than maximizing their chances of winning the $30,000 for first place.

Hopefully, it is clear that the correct approach should not depend on the absolute amounts of money involved. When first place pays 15 times the 10th-place prize, as it did in all of my examples, then your strategy should not be aimed at simply making the money. If you were playing the same tournament five times, you’d much prefer to bubble four times and win it all once, rather than finish ninth or 10th-place all five times. The reality is that, as the money involved gets larger, many players lose sight of those facts, even some tournament “pros.”

Some would argue that it’s the size of the buy-in that affects people’s strategies. I disagree. In all cases, the player could afford to enter the tournament. It’s the size of the bottom-tier money that most affects their mindset. If you leave a tournament with $0 when the next place paid $2, you’re not going to lose any sleep. But leaving with nothing when the next place paid $2,000 can be a lot more psychologically damaging.

But if it’s going to be psychologically damaging, then you shouldn’t be playing a $1,000 tournament in the first place! That’s the whole point. Just because you can afford the $1,000 buy-in does not mean that it is a tournament you should be playing. I’m not saying you should have exactly the same monetary mindset as you would in a $1 tournament. There should be some level of pain when losing; otherwise you might not take it seriously enough to play your best. But if the need to avoid that pain makes you become too conservative — willing to lock up an in-the-money finish at the expense of drastically reducing your chances of winning — then you would be better off playing in a smaller tournament.

If you were playing aggressively throughout the tournament, but then as the money approached you found yourself short-stacked, that’s a different story. Sometimes there are circumstances out of your control. At that point, the only logical thing to do might be to try to squeak into the money since your chances of winning it all have become so small.

Other than that specific scenario, your reason for playing a poker tournament should be to win, since the top prizes are so much larger than the bottom-level money. That sounds pretty straightforward, but I’ll give you three quick examples of players who didn’t have that simple objective:

1. I once took a small percentage of a player who I knew was a decent cash-game player, but I had never seen him play a tournament before. As I gave him my share of the buy-in, he told me, “My first goal is to make it into the money. Then my next goal is to make the final table. Then my final goal is to win it all.”

I never took a piece of him again. It was nothing personal. I just didn’t want to stake someone with that mindset. If he was primarily focused on making the money, then he was worried about leaving the tournament empty-handed. Doubling his money was his first goal, which meant he was a cash-game player who brought his cash-game mentality into the tournament. He would have been better off staying in a cash game, and I would have been better off staking him there instead.

2. A friend of mine, whose style is conservative by nature, was playing a tournament. He got action on a bunch of big hands early and was the overwhelming chip leader about halfway through the tournament. He texted me, “I have enough chips to cruise into the money now.”

I texted him back, “You have enough chips to dominate the table! Don’t be content to cruise!” His first thought — even after taking a dominating chip lead — was about making the money. I was appalled. If the bottom-level money was such a concern for him, then he should never have entered the tournament in the first place.

3. I am not exempt from these criticisms. I played the WSOP main event five years in a row. I won my seat online every time, and even though I could have taken the $10,000 cash, I wanted to be a part of that unique experience.

But in truth, it was a clear case of trying to win too much money. I would be lying if I said that every play I made was geared towards winning the seven-figure first prize. In fact, the one year in which I cashed (2008), I clearly made finishing in the money a top priority in a way I never would have done if it had been a $100 tournament.

The following is straight from my notes. At the time I had 126,000 in chips, which was below-average but certainly not short-stacked:

At the start of this level, my mindset is that we will probably be in the money by the end of the level, so I can just pay my blinds and make the money. I will also be leaving myself too short stacked to do much more than that, but with the aggressive players at this table, I don’t have much choice. I’ll be at the mercy of my cards for the next two hours. If I pick up a premium hand, (A-A, K-K, Q-Q, or A-K), I’ll take my chances with it to some extent. Anything less and I will probably fold, other than possibly taking one shot at the blinds.

Those were my words. It was hardly a winning attitude. That’s what happens when you play a tournament and your goal is not winning it all. Don’t let that be you. ♠

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