Posted by Dr Fro 10:03 AM
The big tournament was this past weekend and we had a lot of fun. You can view full results at http://home.houston.rr.com/friou/Updates.htm. Tournaments are a funny thing to use to assess one’s skill. The luck factor is a much larger component of your success than skill, so the rankings don’t tell the full story of who is better than whom. I am not going to waste anyone’s time talking about the luck factor, because there is absolutely nothing you can do to change your luck. I want to talk about tournament skill.

Skill is still a very important factor in tournaments. Skill comes in two forms: general poker skills and tournament-specific skills. As a general rule, the people with the most of both of these skills ended up in the top tranche (places 1-14), the people with good general poker skills but no tournament-specific skills ended up in the middle tranche (15-40) and people lacking in both ended up in the bottom tranche (41-49). This is a fairly accurate description of MOST of the people in each tranche. This is less likely to hold up for the bottom tranche than it is for the top tranche. This should make intuitive sense, but if you are knocked out in the first couple hours, you were in for a very short run, so you should expect luck to severely outweigh skill. Conversely, if you really sucked, you would have a hard time lasting 7 hours without eventually getting exposed and knocked out. So, maybe 60% of the bottom tranche was not very good and 90% of the top tranche really was good.

There is one more factor explaining why there are more good players at the bottom than there are bad players at the top, which I will explain later.

The people that lack in poker skills will necessarily lack tournament-specific skills but not the other way around. These people bet middle pairs against 5 players and are confused when they lose with the sixth best hand. They have no chance at winning in a cash game or a tournament game. They need to pick up some books and read or quit playing because they will lose a lot of money if they keep playing.

The next (and largest) group are those with poker skills, but no tournament-specific skills. They probably made up over half of the players. Here are some of the most common mistakes they make:

- Too tight. Being tight is a very good thing in poker, but in tournaments, you must give yourself a chance to increase your stack before the blinds eat you alive. This hurt me, Dan, Jan, Boyd and several others. It almost hurt Gordon, but he managed to win some hands at key times.

- Playing flush and straight draws. In poker, if the pot odds call for it, you should go for these draws, especially in no-limit. The problem with doing this in tournaments is if you miss 5 or 6 of these in a row, you may lose your stack. They have a positive expectation in cash games, but the high volatility increases the chance that you will hit $0 before you hit the jackpot. This was the mistake that hurt my stack.

[In cash games, every strategy has an associated EV and standard deviation. You can make some decisions that alter your strategy and eke up the EV with large associated changes in standard deviation. You should always make these decisions, because the s.d. is basically irrelevant and only your EV matters. However, this is an iterative calculation in tournaments, because the same decision that will increase your s.d., necessarily hurts your EV (as it increases the chances of busting out). If the damage it does to your EV exceeds the benefit you would otherwise receive, you find yourself in a situation where what is a good decision in a cash game is a bad decision in a tournament game.]

- Not playing enough with A-x. Most good poker players know that A-6 will get you in more trouble than it will help you. But the flip side of people playing less drawing hands is that it is more likely that you will win a heads up pot where nobody matched up, as long as you hold the Ace kicker.

- Not taking chances early. I am a proud man. I talk a lot of smack. If I got knocked out of my own tournament in the first 5 minutes, I would take a lot of heat. So, when the bottom tranche of 10 or so players are still in the tournament and making big bets with bad hands (this only lasts for about an hour and then they are eliminated) I SHOULD be calling. This increases both my chances of elimination and of having the chip lead. Having the biggest stack of chips is a huge advantage and when I avoid these big contests early on for sake of being eliminated, the fearless gambler either busts out or doubles up. Double up twice in the first hour and you can bully your table around all day. Don’t double up at all & you will get bullied.

By the way, I promised earlier to explain the other factor leading to good players ending up in the bottom of the standings and I just fulfilled that promise. John Greene and Chris Canonico are similar in skill, yet one was at the top and one was at the bottom. They both were aggressive early and had different turns of fate. I would argue that John’s strategy gave him a better chance of winning than mine did. My strategy maximised my chances of placing very high yet out of the money, which is precisely what happened.

I have talked about what people did wrong, but what did people do well, other than avoid the above mistakes? Plenty. But I will just focus on one for now. If you followed my advice so far and it is 2 hours into the tournament, you are either eliminated or have a big stack. If you are eliminated, then my advice is to start a side game with Ted Hoth. If you are holding a big stack, then I suggest you consider the following:

Say you have $3,200 and you are heads up against a guy with $100. Let’s also say you push all in every single hand. If he calls every time, he will have to win 4 straight hands against you just to have an even number of chips and a 50% chance of winning. Do you realise how improbable that is? He has a 6% chance of getting to that 50% chance. Overall, a 3% chance of beating you. Now say, he actually folds a few hands. That’s fine, you are picking up blinds and increasing your stack. It’s a win-win for you with a very improbable downside. Adjust this strategy slightly to not go all-in every single hand, but to instead make disproportionately large bets very often, and you lose the downside of being way overmatched pre-flop. So now do you see why you want that big stack early?

There is a counter-argument to this strategy, which is the basis for my play. If I just survive long enough by playing tight and avoiding situations that put me at risk of being eliminated, I will creep into the final table or final two tables. (this is also known as the Dan Wesson strategy or the “as long as I have a chip and a chair, I have a chance” strategy). Just a couple lucky hands late, and I will have enough to play with the big boys. Furthermore, since I am so much better than everyone else (which is what all players think of themselves), I can afford to let them win early, because with skill, I will eventually get those chips. This strategy isn’t a bad one, but I think it is the second best tournament strategy. It relies on all of the following to be true to be effective:

- It must be a very long tournament (say 6 hours or more). Otherwise, the blinds will ramp up too quickly. My tournament was marginally long enough for this strategy. (Actually, I wanted to use a format with lower blinds to increase the time and help my chances, but the popular opinion was that 7 hours was enough).
- You must truly be a lot better than everyone else. I hate to burst your bubble, but none of us, including myself, are as good as we think.
- You have to be playing against callers. If you use this strategy, when you do bet later on, if everyone folds, you are in trouble.

So, I suggest the first strategy, which is for the most part what the money winners did well.

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