Tournament Hold 'em Hand By Hand:. Neil D. Myers
AK, AQ, and AJ. Limp with AA and KK and move all-in if raised. See my comments in Middle Position on Chapter Two concerning this move. Fold everything else.
If there are limpers or raisers move all-in with AA-TT, AK, and AQ (suited or non-suited). Fold everything else.
IF YOU HAVE A SUPER-SHORT CHIP STACK—MORE THAN TEN AND FEWER THAN TWENTY-ONE BIG BLINDS (TWENTY AND THIRTY-ONE IF THE ROUND INCLUDES ANTES)—YOU WILL PLAY AS FOLLOWS:
LATE POSITION
If first in move all-in with any two cards.
ANY POSITION
Move all-in with any of the following regardless of the action: AA-77, plus both suited and non-suited AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ, KT, and QJ.
Fold in all other circumstances.
Though these are not the greatest hands, your stack size means you are forced to take risks. Playing this way will maximize the remaining positional advantage you have in late position and playing this range of cards out of late position will give you some hope of winning in a showdown if called. Your hope is that you will win the Blinds or be playing against only one or two opponents on the Flop and beyond. You are very close to the exit door and must play accordingly in a fast-structure tournament.
IF YOU HAVE A CRITICAL CHIP STACK FEWER THAN TEN BIG BLINDS (FEWER THAN TWENTY IF THE ROUND INCLUDES ANTES), YOU WILL PLAY AS FOLLOWS:
Move all-in with any hand containing an ace or king, any two picture cards (including tens as a “picture”), T9 (suited), and 98 (suited), regardless of the action or number of players.
If first in, you should also move all-in with the following both suited and non-suited: Q9, Q8, J9, J8, or T9.
You are almost a tournament corpse at this point. There is little real poker left to play, it is merely a question of selecting a hand and a moment and moving all-in.
Believe it or not, many players wait until they have fewer than ten Big Blinds before modifying their hand selections. There may be some merit to this in a slow-structure tournament, but in a fast-structure tournament, this is pretty much suicide. In a fast-structure tournament, when you are this low on chips, you must make moves in the hope of capturing pots or doubling up as soon as you have any reasonable chance. You do not have the luxury to wait for premium hands or you will simply be eaten up by the rising Blinds.
VARIATIONS ON THE METHOD
If you stick to these recommendations they will be serviceable in the vast majority of circumstances. Occasionally, in tournaments with a slightly slower structure or against opponents whose play you know very well, you may vary from this. Other than those times, if you follow these guidelines you will be a very difficult opponent to play against.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THE REST OF THIS BOOK
The hand problems that follow illustrate examples of following this method and plays you can make on the Flop and beyond, but before we get into the meat of that, here is a guideline and warning.
To succeed in fast-structure, multi-table no-limit Hold’em tournaments, you want to win pots as often as possible without going to the showdown. The further you progress in a hand, the more risks you take and the more times you go to a showdown, the greater the likelihood of mortally damaging your stack or being eliminated. Always remember this and play accordingly.
The idea of the problems is to ensure your thinking is clear and also to drum home these basic lessons. Get these right and you can enjoy an appearance at the final table much more often than probability alone would suggest is fair.
If you like you can jump straight into the problems. However, I suggest you peruse the ten short chapters that precede them, which cover some important points that maybe touched upon but are not fully covered in the problems. These chapters are self contained and you can profitably read them in any order. If you choose to go over the problems first (you impatient soul, you) then come back to them as they will round out your tournament thinking and greatly help you become a winning tournament player.
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