Tournament Hold 'em Hand By Hand:. Neil D. Myers
mathematical explanation for this: They were very lucky SOBs! They seemed to violate many of the rules of good cash game play and still do okay. Sometimes they would bust out early, other times they made a mountain of chips and dominated the other players. When I did run against these types in tournaments I hated it. My regular, somewhat conservative cash game seemed to be insufficient to get the job done. I often got to (or close to) final tables but I usually had a stack too small to be playable. I just figured I was an unlucky bugger and that the poker gods were punishing me for playing tournaments and guiding me back to cash.
But I could not ignore facts. I had to admit that these players were doing something differently and that is why they were getting exceptional results. I could not see what the difference was exactly, it was not obvious. I was suffering from poker myopia, actually poker cataracts. What was blinding me? Answer: Conventional poker theory!
It took me a long time to figure this out. You see, I was a good student. I read and studied the poker Olympians of theory. To this day I still believe David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth sit at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas (dressed in togas), dispense poker wisdom, and laugh at the foolishness of mere poker mortals like you and me. The problem was the Olympians and their acolytes had surprisingly little to say about tournaments. There was Gap Theory, Expected Value, Chip Value and extensive discussion about the various stages of tournament play. Despite these erudite writings, I was not satisfied that the Olympians knew everything they claimed to know about the best way to play tournament poker. The problem was those blasted facts again. The Olympians did not seem to do so well in tournaments or never entered any that I could see (why should they, when they were winning in cash games), and many successful tournament players seemed to flout the dictates of the Olympians yet they kept on winning.
Could it be that the Olympians had some gaps in their theories? Sorry, bad pun. Maybe, but I felt like a heretic for even thinking such dark thoughts. Any moment the poker thought police could accost me at the table and, like the furies, drive me from it. Okay, I’m getting a bit carried away. Maybe I realized that sometimes you have to think for yourself a bit and trust in your own observations, not just others’ opinions, however erudite they seem.
Slowly, the veil began to lift and I realized that to be a successful player in fast (one day or less) multi-table poker tournaments, one needed skills and a mind-set quite different from the one possessed by even very good and successful cash players. I knew that cash and tournaments were different but I did not realize how to translate this into a practical playing method.
The following chapters will reveal these methods and I will illustrate them in the format of hand problems as I did in Limit Hold’em Hand by Hand and No-Limit Hold’em Hand by Hand. If you study what is to follow and practice these methods, I guarantee that you will enjoy a significant advantage over the average player in fast-structure (I’ll tell you what I mean by this later) no-limit Hold’em tournaments, the most commonly played and easily findable tournaments of today. You will know what it takes to win and you will enjoy more top place finishes than ever before. To the players who read, study, absorb, and practice these methods, you will just be another one of those lucky SOBs whom the poker gods seem to favor. I hope you can stand the success. So jump in and let’s have some fun.
CHAPTER ONE
Who This Book Is For and What You Will Learn from It
This book is for players who share one or more of the following characteristics:
Players who know how to play no-limit Texas Hold’em and have done well in cash games. This book assumes you know how to play no-limit Texas Hold’em. If you are completely new to Hold’em then you should read my book Quick and Easy Texas Hold’em. That will cover the basics and give you a foundation for winning play. If you have only played limit Hold’em and never played no-limit Hold’em than you would do well to read my book No-Limit Hold’em Hand by Hand. This book covers many no-limit Hold’em concepts that will be valuable to your tournament play. Having said this I will emphasize throughout this book that no-limit Hold’em played for cash and tournament no-limit Hold’em are very different games and must be treated differently. If you are unaware of the essential differences you will play one, and possibly both, badly. Superficially they appear to be the same, but they demand different strategies. This is why some good cash players never do well in tournaments and vice versa; they fail to adapt their game to the different structures of cash and tournament play and suffer accordingly. If you are a successful cash player you will learn what it takes to do well in fast-structure, multi-table no-limit Hold’em tournaments.
Players who play tournaments regularly but have never done well. You somehow got bitten by the tournament bug. Maybe you watched TV poker, maybe you played small tournaments with friends, or maybe you played in a charity poker event. You may have actually played a lot of tournaments but have never or only rarely finished in the money. If this describes you a lot of this material will come as a revelation. Careful though! It may test some of your most fondly held yet erroneous assumptions about correct poker tournament play. Admit it, if you knew how to play well in tournaments you would have done better in them, right? It’s no use blaming bad luck or bad beats either. You know deep down that we all enjoy and suffer the same luck over time yet you have seen those players who regularly appear in the money. If you want to have any hope of joining them, put aside your ego, stop feeling like a victim, open your mind, and I’ll show you how to become a winner. You will learn why you have not done well and learn a method that with practice and application will make you a consistent winner. You will need to study but I’ll make it fun.
Players on a limited or small bankroll. One of the irritating facts of poker is that you need money to play. In my first book, Quick and Easy Texas Hold’em, I gave some basic bankroll guidelines for the casual player. These will serve you well if you only play the occasional low-limit game and play a fairly conservative strategy. However, even these moderate sums may be too rich for some. Also, if you plan on playing regularly your bankroll needs for a cash game may be considerably greater. Tournaments offer the rare poker possibility of strictly limited downside risk, namely your buy-in, and the chance for a big payday. Of course many if not the majority of the entrants have almost no realistic chance of a money finish. Poker players refer to this as “dead money” and it increases the “overlay,” or betting advantage, of the better players. If you follow the guidelines in this book your money will not be dead and you will have a far better than average chance of a money finish. The fact is you can play a tournament and receive 1,000 to 3,000 tournament chips or more, depending on the tournament structure, and experience the thrill of no-limit poker. The buy-ins are often less than $200 and prizes, depending on the number of entrants, can be in the thousands. If you get into the latter stages of a tournament that has a few hundred entrants you may find yourself pushing around $100,000 in tournament chips, all for the cost of the entry fee. Losing is always a downer but your consolation is all the thrills and hours of entertainment have not cost you your life’s savings. These days there are hundreds of regular tournaments to play in, both in land-based and Internet casinos. The next low-cost entry tournament is rarely more than a few hours away.
What Is Not Covered in This Book
Even authors of staggering genius are unable to cover everything in one book. I am not such an author and so this applies doubly to me. This book will be to your benefit if you play in multi-table, fast-structure, no-limit Hold’em tournaments. By fast-structure I mean tournaments that last less than one day, usually somewhere between four to seven hours on average.
You will need greater and more varied poker skills if you want to succeed in the big slow-structure tournaments such as the main event at the World Series of Poker and the many televised tournaments you have probably watched that form part of the Professional Poker Tour and the World Poker Tour. The skills you learn here will serve you well if you play in the tournaments but they are not enough to carry you through unless you are very lucky. Your opponents, especially in the latter stages will usually be of a higher quality than those you run across in the smaller tournaments and the slower structure and bigger stack in relation to the blinds will often mean that you will have complex poker decisions to make.
Some players specialize in Sit and Go tournaments that