My latest poker strategy article, Surviving a Multi-Day Tournament, is now appearing in the April 2012 edition of Two Plus Two Magazine. The intention of this article is to get beyond cliches about “valuing your tournament life” to some in-depth advice about how, when, and why survival should factor into your decision-making. I believe that the key is anticipating bad spots and avoiding them from the very beginning rather than waiting until you’re actually facing an all-in bet and then making an excessively tight fold:
The now-tired debate about survival vs. accumulation is nowhere more relevant than in these well-structured events. If you really are one of the best players in the field, then the deep structure will provide plenty of opportunities for you to realize that skill edge. This means that you would do well to avoid close gambles for your tournament life or indeed for a large percentage of your stack, as losing these gambles would jeopardize your ability to take advantage of the many profitable spots you anticipate in the future.
Because this is no-limit hold ’em, the last of your chips could be threatened at any time. Thus, you should be proactive about anticipating and avoiding spots in which you could face a tough decision in a large pot. A good rule of thumb is that if you aren’t going to be comfortable facing a big bet on a future street, then you shouldn’t call a big bet on the current street. If you believe you can profitably get all-in on the current street, then raise; otherwise, fold.
As always, please let me know what you think!
I also want to bring your attention to an article by Philip Newall in this issue that gives a wonderfully clear and thought-provoking explanation of why concepts like “balance” and “game theoretically optimal play” matter and how they can improve your play:
One misconception about GTO is the belief that it’s possible to “solve” a given scenario and come to exactly the right play. This isn’t currently possible; poker is a much too complex game to derive exact solutions for, even with the most powerful computers available. To make GTO practically useful, you just need to imagine your entire range in a given spot, subdivide that range into groups of hands with similar values that’ll be played the same way, and then decide where your current hand slots into that range.
Oftentimes the right play will come to you via a process of elimination. You’ll only take so many actions with a hand in a given part of your range. Taking one action might make your overall strategy either too passive or too aggressive for the strength of that range.
After reading Newall’s article, you might want to have a look at my attempt to discuss similar concepts in the context of NLHE tournaments and dispel some common misunderstandings.
Hi Andrew,
I like your article, especially the bits about world-class players making life hell, since my home games and the live tournaments I play tend to have players of all skill levels ranging from hopeless to world-class players.
That said, your general argument isn’t really convincing me that I should avoid profitable spots. Rather, everything you are saying seems to be convincing me that these spots aren’t really very profitable at all and that avoiding murky spots is good. That’s a very valuable piece of advice, since its good to remember that being dealt AA pre in level 1 doesn’t in itself make me a huge favourite to win a big pot against someone who has more than a million dollars in cash games.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting that many of the deepest tournament runs come when very weak players donate huge stacks with atrocious errors, or from tripling up in pre-flop coolers around 70 BB deep or so. Just to be clear would you advocate knowingly turning down edges? (as opposed to avoiding murky situations where there may well be no edge at all)
Thanks for the feedback, Prabhat, and the kind words. The short answer to your question is “yes”. In the famous example of a player who open shoves 300 BBs on the first hand of the WSOP main event and exposes AK, I would fold QQ.
The point I mean to make is that realistically that’s not the kind of spot in which players find themselves passing up slightly +EV gambles. I would argue that in a cash game it’s not the end of the world to occasionally get yourself into murky spots if you believe you can navigate them for slight advantage. It’s high variance but ultimately profitable to do so.
In a tournament, you can’t navigate the murk as well because you are constrained by the need to value your survival. Best then to avoid those situations in the first place.