Like Moths to a Light Bulb

The popularity of no-limit hold'em tournaments has soared recently, due in part to the tremendous success of the World Poker Tour tournaments on television. People who have never played poker before are drawn to the drama of tournament poker like moths to light bulbs. Seeing players risk stacks of chips as tall as the Stratosphere tower, trying to win pots the size of the Grand Canyon, is indeed mesmerizing.

What lots of aspiring new players don't realize is that it takes a continuous combination of patience, skill, and luck to arrive at the final table of a no-limit hold'em tournament, whether on television, in a brick-and-mortar casino, or at an online poker site.

Here is a letter that Dan, a new no-limit hold'em player who plays on the Internet, wrote to my writing partner, T.J. Cloutier: "I've been playing poker for about six months and have been doing well in Internet single-table tourneys. I played my first multitable tournament the other day with 1,500 players and came in 280th, not good enough. I sat and played for two hours, getting only a couple of hands to play, so I started playing hands that I would not normally play. The blinds ended up taking me out. I know that you need to survive in these tournaments, so my question is, 'Did I do the right thing?'"

T.J.'s answer closely parallels the advice that Brad Daugherty and I give novice no-limit hold'em players in our new book, No-Limit Texas Hold'em, which just came off the press. "Dan, when you go through that period of time in a tournament, holding very few hands, I find that picking up the antes and blinds will keep you at status quo in chips while you are waiting to pick up the quality of hand you are looking for," T.J. advised. "By observing your fellow players at the table, you will find out who is playing so tight that they will not protect their blinds unless they have a quality hand. They are the players you must attack when you are trying to steal the blinds."

T.J. continued with a suggestion that is especially valuable to players who have little or no experience at no-limit hold'em: "When you are attempting this strategy (that is, stealing the blinds), the hand you are holding does not need to have any value, since you are simply trying to win the pot right there. However, you must be willing to throw this hand away if you run into a reraise, or if you get called and don't flop anything. The whole idea is to pick up the blinds."

His final advice to Dan is well taken by new players as well as sometimes impatient seasoned veterans: "Playing hands that you would not normally play in the flow of the game will eventually eat up your stack. Unless you are reraising before the flop on a bluff, or trying to pick up the blinds, stay with your original style of play."

When T.J. and I wrote Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold'em in 1997, there was no way that we could have predicted that vast numbers of new players like Dan would want to learn how to play the game. At that time, no-limit hold'em was the elite province of a few top tournament players who had learned the game the old-fashioned way, by the seat of their pants. Today's no-limit hold'em scene is dotted with brand-new players, limit hold'em converts, veteran players, online players who have never played in a brick-and-mortar casino, young people in their 20s, grandmas in their 70s, plumbers, lawyers, and so on. With so many new players seeking guidance in no-limit hold'em, Brad Daugherty and I decided to write a primer especially designed for people who have little or no experience at playing no-limit tournaments and cash games. We subtitled it The New Players Guide to Winning Poker's Biggest Game. We figure that when players have mastered the basics that we teach in this new book, they can move on to the more advanced strategies that T.J. and I wrote in our book.

There's no doubt in my mind that after studying, practicing, and, yes, getting just a tiny bit lucky, you and I will meet one day soon in the winner's circle of a no-limit Texas hold'em tournament.

Editor's note: Visit www.pokerbooks.com or www.cardplayer.com for more information about No-Limit Texas Hold'em: The New Players Guide to Winning Poker's Biggest Game and Tom McEvoy's other books, which include the Championship Series (with co-author T.J. Cloutier) and Championship Satellite Strategy (with co-author Brad Daugherty).