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June 20 — In no-limit tournaments, forcing your opponent to risk total effective stacks through the last bet is powerful

By the time you read this article, the 2015 WSOP will have concluded and hopefully I will still be in the main event waiting to come back to Las Vegas for the November Nine. This year, I played a full slate of tournaments (more than 30) and was able to cash seven times. Even though I played a lot of mixed limit events, long-fielded no-limit tournaments still seem to be one of my strengths. In the Millionaire Maker, I was able to finish 27th and in a $1,500 no-limit with over 2,000 entrants, I came in 42nd.

Every year I learn something new about tournaments through playing at the World Series of Poker, and this year I was able to fully understand how powerful a 20-big blind (BBs) stack can be. Every good player knows that 20 BBs use to be the old “golden zone” of reshipping. Someone would raise to 3-4x, and you could move all-in with 20 BBs and pick up a ton of dead money without showdown. If a hand like A-K called you, and you had reshipped with 8-6 suited, you still had okay equity, making the play extremely profitable. However, the times of people opening to three or four times the big blind are long gone. Most people now open to the minimum when antes come into play. This means that reshipping 20 BBs is risking far too much of your stack on a re-steal. In fact, sometimes, as little as 10 BBs can be a reshipping stack with fold equity if the opener is at the bottom of their range. But the power of the 20 BBs stack is still not to be ignored. It can be very powerful to have 20-25 BBs, and facing a min open, basically make a small three bet forcing your opponent into making the last decision.

Let us take a look at a hand that I played in a $1,500 no limit hold’em tournament at the WSOP this year. We were down to about 80 people and I had 22 BBs on the button. A younger, tighter player opened the pot to two times the big blind from middle position with about 38 BBs. There weren’t that many short stacks behind him besides me, so he did not have to worry about being shipped on all that often. I looked down at K 5 on the button. As a cash game player, my first instinct was to fold. K-5 suited has very little value and there was no way we were deep enough for me to flat in position to try to hit my hand. However, using a hand with a king or ace in it as a three-bet bluff can be very useful, as your opponent is less likely to have aces, kings, A-K or A-Q—hands that they might auto-stack off with preflop with these effective stacks. But instead of reshipping all-in and risking my 22-blind stack to win about six big blinds, I decided to make it five big blinds. That way the pressure was back on my opponent to make the decision of whether or not I was bluffing.

After a long time my opponent finally folded 8-8 face up and said, “if you shipped, I would have snap-called”. After playing with this opponent for several more hours, it was apparent that he was a recreational player and it is debatable whether or not he should have folded his pocket eights starting with 38 BBs. However, my play actually looked stronger to him than a reship (adding the most fold equity) and, if he did wake up with a monster, I would have easily folded to his four-bet all in and would have saved my tournament life.

June 25 — In split pot tournaments it is tough to get knocked out. Patience and not passing the big bet street without drawing both ways is key.

It is absolutely amazing how long you can remain short-stacked in a split-pot tournament. A lot of people do not realize that it is tough to get knocked out when you are all in, and since split-pot tournaments are either limit or pot limit there are no antes in the blind games. That means if you survive a round with one big bet you can go through an entire other round before getting it all-in.

In both the $10,000 Omaha eight-or-better and the $10,000 Stud eight-or-better tournaments this summer, I was down to one big bet with about forty people left. In both events, only two tables cashed and I was able to work my short stack up to the average and make it to the end. Obviously it takes a lot of patience and discipline preflop to do this, but also it takes discipline to not go past the flop or fourth street generally when you are not drawing to both sides of the pot. The chips are just too valuable in a split-pot game to lose the extra bets. If I can play four or five orbits with six or seven big bets, if I make a bad call on fifth street in Stud eight-or-better, I could lose an additional two bets for a total of three. That six to seven bets become three to four bets and suddenly, if I do not win a pot, I may be out in a couple of orbits.

This is why split-pot games, especially limit games, are really a different type of tournament than no-limit games. I truly believe that the best approach to the game is more defensive and is about saving bets, as opposed to trying to power through and accumulate chips like you may in a no-limit hold’em or pot-limit Omaha tournament. This is why you see some of the same names make it to the end of these split-pot events year after year. A player that might not know what he is doing may run hot for a period of time during the tournament, but usually the bad calls going for one side of the pot and the luck will run against him at some point. The players that tend to play slow and steady, that stay a within a few bets of the average, but never put their chips in drawing bad, tend to stick around and put themselves in a position to win the tournament.

Let us take a look at a hand that I played from the $10,000 eight-or-better with about fifty people left. I had six big bets, about half of the average and a player under the gun raised. A player in middle position called and I called with A 2 K 7. Now, this hand in itself is strong enough to three-bet, as it has both high and low potential and backup low draws. In fact, in a cash game, especially if the player in the middle hadn’t called, I would three-bet to isolate the raiser and drive the blinds out of the hand. However, this was a tournament, and like I said before, the name of the game is saving bets. I did not want to get into a spot where I totally whiffed the flop and was forced to call down light due to the size of the pot. Taking that line would burn up almost my entire stack. With this in mind, I just called, which also brought in the big blind. The flop came out J 8 3, the preflop raiser bet and the middle position player called. I then called with A-K-high, a backdoor spade, and Broadway straight draw, and, more importantly, the nut low draw, as did the big blind. So the pot now had six big bets in it and I had committed 1.5 out of my stack of six. The turn brought out 9, completing the rainbow. The under the gun player bet out again, and now the middle position player raised. So at this point, the pot was nine big bets and it was two cold for me to call. This is where the math can get a little tricky in split-pot games. Firstly, I thought I was absolutely drawing dead for the high. The middle position player really should have a minimum of J-9 for top two here and quite possibly Q-10 for a straight. I had to call two cold and most likely a third bet on the river to win half of the pot. Let’s say that if I did call the turn, the big blind would fold and the under the gun would call. On the turn, I call two to win half of ten (nine plus the under the gun player’s overcall), and then on the river another one bet to win half of twelve total. More importantly, if someone had A-2 along with me for the nut low draw, I could get quartered and call three big bets to win a quarter of twelve.

There also could possibly be other variables in the hand such as the big blind check-raising the turn or the under the gun reraising. The point is that I thought at that time it was not worth an additional three big bets, which would total 4.5 of my six bet stack, as if I was wrong, it would be devastating for my tournament. I ended up folding and only the under the gun player called. The river paired the eight and the under the gun player check-called with aces and the middle position player, of course, had Q-10 for the straight. I then was able to win the next pot I played in for a nice double up to get down deep in the tournament. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.