poker school
lesson 16: poker tournaments
Welcome back, this lesson we are going to focus on tournament play. We will go through some of the tournament structures that you are likely to encounter and then we will discuss some tournament strategy. This is a lesson that will help you out in your poker career. Let's begin.
Poker tournaments are organized competitions where a variety of players will come to compete for the grand prize. Tournaments are different from playing at a casino table where at casinos each hand is unrelated to any other previous hand. However, in tournament play the players can not quit and cash in their chips. The players in tournament play continue marching on until there is a champion.
Poker tournaments come in all different sizes and variations. We will first take a look at today's most popular tournament format: Elimination. The way elimination tournaments are structured is that all players buy-in to the tournament for the established cost and all players receive the same amount of chips. As players continue to get eliminated, the remaining players will move from table to table until the final table has been established. Play will continue until one player has accumulated all of the chips. The payout structure not only pays the champion but it rewards several players depending on the size of the starting field (for instance, if 500 players start, the tourney might pay out the top 50 finishers).
The next tournament style that we'll look at is "Re-buy" tournaments. The structure of these tournaments is a little bit different as for an initial period of time for those players who lose their chips have the ability to "re-buy" more chips and continue on in the tournament. You might have this structure in your home games, they can also be found at the World Series of Poker. Re-buy tournaments will typically feature real aggressive play early on in the event as players know that if they do lose their chips they still have the ability to re-buy. The major benefit to this type of tournament is it generates larger total prize pools for the players to play for as compared to the standard initial entry cost.
The third tournament style that we will look at is "shootout" tournaments. The structure of this tournament is when players get eliminated the tables do not get combined. Rather, each table plays down until a single winner is determined. Once all of the table winners have been established the players will proceed to the finals of the event. For example, if a tournament started off with sixteen tables, the winners from each table will then compete in an elimination style until a winner has been established.
The final tournament we will look at is "satellite" events. These events are ten-handed mini-tournaments in which players put up one-tenth of the buy-in to a tournament and the final player remaining wins a seat in the main event. You will find a lot of these events online and you could win seats at events such as the World Series of Poker or World Poker Tour events.
tournament poker
This section of tournament poker is all about strategy. We will discuss strategies in all the different areas from the beginning of the tournament and when you get down to the finals and hopefully earning some money.
Tournament poker is an entirely different entity than your typical ring game (ring games for those that don't know are non-tournament poker games where players may enter or leave the game at any time). There are different skill and strategical requirements needed in order to be successful in tournament poker compared to those needed in your ring games. Ring games require the player to play steady, precise, and being able to discard hands at the right times where tournament poker focuses on the ability to win a significant number of the pots you decide to go in.
In the beginning stages of a tournament the blinds are set at levels that are low stakes in relation to the size of your chip stack. This provides you the opportunity to play many more marginal hands than you might normally consider playing. For instance, you could choose to see the flop with suited connectors, a small pair and other marginal hands in order to have the opportunity to try and double your chip stack. In the early stages you could play real aggressive and try to build a sizable stack or you could play too tight to the chest and slowly build up your chip stack. Either way could be a successful move for you as long as you stick to your game plan. Remember that your main focus at this point is to continue improving on your chip stack and not being overly concerned with eliminating opponents. A good time for you to increase your chip stack at this portion of the tournament is when a player has a short stack they typically will try and double up quickly so if you have a strong hand don't be afraid to take the opportunity to knock them out and in the process increase your stack.
As the tournament continues to roll on, the blinds are continually being increased, and therefore your stack will start to slowly decrease. For this reason it is important to start trying to win the blinds. So, if you are in early position you should consider raising and you could steal the blinds because your opponents might not want to risk a large portion of their stack to call your raise. On the other hand, you might need to be careful with your calling as you don't want to see your chips dwindle on marginal hands. However, when you decide to take action on a hand, play it aggressively. Your stack size starts to play a significant role at this point in the tournament. Once your stack starts to slip below the upper limit, expect to be called more regularly because your opponents will realize that you will not be able to damage the larger stacks. So it is important to really focus on playing your superior hands and playing them aggressively.
If you get into a position where you are heads up with a player who is short stacked, ideally you should try and move that player all-in at your first opportunity. Eliminating this player will bring you a little closer to the money list. However, as always, play smart because no matter how few chips your opponents have remaining they can quickly regain their status in the tournament with a couple of good hands. At this stage of the tournament if you have twice the average stack size or more you are in a strong position.
As you progress into the later stages of the tournament and you are coming close to making it in the money, you can play aggressive and try to take control. The blinds will be increased to a real high level and the majority of players remaining will have chip stacks at or below the critical size (critical size is typically four times the upper limit). Also, you will start to see fewer and fewer hands because the game has begun to be progressively short-handed and your chip stack will continue to shrink due to the size of the blinds. If your chip stack is on the average or is larger than the average your strategy should continue to play conservative when calling but when you raise you should play extremely aggressive. If you get yourself into a position where your chip stack is lower than the average chip stack you should focus on playing with a tighter strategy. For example, if you have enough chips to see a couple more hands, by playing tight you will avoid the chance of being eliminated immediately and it will force your opponents to eliminate one another. This is to your advantage because you are underneath the radar and are quietly moving up the payout list.
Alright guys that's a wrap for the tournament discussion. I hope this has given you some inside information on how to be successful in tournament play. Tournaments are a lot of fun to play in especially if you are one of the lucky ones to cash in. That's all for now and we'll see ya next time.
good luck and enjoy your experiences at the poker tables
