Three leaks Colossus event players should fix

The Colossus event, the smallest buy-in WSOP event ever at $565, drew a gigantic field of 22,374 players, making it the largest live poker tournament ever. When you get that many people together, you are bound to see some interesting plays. In this article, I am going to outline three leaks that I witnessed throughout my play of the event that I think most of the players could easily fix, drastically increasing their equity.

Overplaying Decent, But Not Amazing, Hands

It was quite common to see a few limpers then see someone raise to around seven big blinds with 50 big blind effective stacks with A-J, only to have the limpers call. The flop would come A-7-4. The player with A-J would bet the flop and either get called or raised. If someone called, the A-J would almost always go all in on the turn. If the A-J got raised on the flop, he would go all in. This is not a good situation to happily put your stack in when multiple people see the flop. You will find that your opponent almost always has two pair or a set. I watched numerous stacks be punted away in this manner.

Instead, consider not raising preflop or if you do, bet fairly small on the flop, around 25 percent of the size of the pot. This will make it much more difficult for you to go broke on any individual hand. Most professional tournament players succeed because they avoid “coolers” where other players go broke. While you are certainly going to lose some chips when your decent top pair gets beat, you do not have to blindly lose your entire stack every time.

Limping With Junk

I have never seen so many players limp with junk in my entire life! Multiple times per orbit, four or five players would limp only to fold to a huge preflop raise or, if they get to see a cheap flop, play passively when they miss. Either way, they are giving away a huge amount of equity. While it is nice to be able to see lots of flops, if you aren’t fighting for pots that no one wants to claim, you will either break even or lose with a passive limping strategy.

While I am more prone than most professionals to limp behind with speculative hands, mostly because I do not want to play huge pots without strong holdings or a great read that my opponents are weak, you should get a bit more out of line than normal in order to attack habitual weak limpers. If your goal is to make them fold, feel free to raise quite large preflop, perhaps to around 1.5 times the size of the pot. Your opponents will eventually adjust, either by limping with premium hands or tightening up, but by then, you will have likely stolen lots of chips.

Raising and Betting Large Amounts

When most of my opponents had a premium hand, they would bet a large amount, likely because they really did not want to get outdrawn. What they are actually doing is opening themselves up to going broke or losing a huge amount of chips every time they play a significant pot. There is nothing wrong with checking or betting around 33 percent of the size of the pot with decently strong hands. You have to realize that unless you make a huge bet, anyone with a good draw is going to call. The problem with betting huge with decent hands like K-J on K Q 7 is that if you get much action, K-J is usually in bad shape. You will find that betting small conserves chips when you are beat while keeping worse hands in that you crush. The last thing you want to do with your decent value hands is to play them in a manner such that you only get action when you are behind or against a premium draw. ♠

Jonathan Little is a two-time WPT champion with more than $6 million in tournament winnings. Each week, he posts an educational blog and podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com, where you can get a FREE poker training video that details five things you must master if you want to win at tournament poker.