In my last post I talked about relative chip value in tournament play. In the first rounds of a tournament the blinds are small, so this is the time to play speculative hands hoping to build your stack early, right?
Wrong!
The early levels of a tournament are when you should be playing your tightest poker. Your goal in these early stages is to gather information on your opponents. You do not want to gamble away even small amounts of money. If the tournament goes well, you will win big pots to build your stack. Don't worry about contesting a lot of small pots at the start. Save those chips to double up with later.
Doyle Brunson advises playing tighter in tournaments than in ring games because if you get busted in a ring game you can buy more chips. True, there are some re-buy tournaments, where people can go nuts trying to build a stack early knowing they can buy back in. Personally I just don't understand that structure and I won't give any advice on re-buy tournaments. For normal tournaments, protecting your stack is your first priority and building your stack is a secondary concern.
T.J. Cloutier was an old school road gambler who for many years lived in Houston Texas. He used to play regularly in a big cash game in Dallas but often had only enough money for one buy in - if he lost that, he was broke. As you might imagine, this situation taught T.J. how to play very, very tight poker. For example, while other players think AK is a great hand, calling it "big slick", T.J.'s name for AK is "walking back to Houston". To T.J. every Dallas game was like a tournament, so it is not surprising that he became one of the great tournament players with six World Series of Poker bracelets.
Sure there is a time for looser, more aggressive play in a tournament. That time is when everybody else is playing scared - not in the early stages when the pots are small and nobody is afraid to play them.
No comments:
Post a Comment