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Periscope Up
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There are countless things that you could consider when you have to react to a situation in poker, so the game is ultimately about information management. However, you can easily overcook the info, think about it all too much and make the simplest thing complex. I have often fallen victim to this in the past. When I feel like I am doing that now I try to remember this film – particularly the moment when Gene Hackman, as the commander, leans over to Denzel Washington and says: “Keep it simple: your mission and your men.”
As this is my first article for WPT Poker, I should introduce myself. My nickname is ‘Nice Guy’, which sounds tame enough, but is a reference to Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs – a fun-loving character who will either try to make you laugh or blow you away.
IGNORE BUBBLES
I have been playing poker for about seven years, and I run a noncommercial private members’ club where we teach and play this greatest of sports. At this point in my own education as a player, I have come to the conclusion that if you play a tournament with a view to cashing and aiming at the title if the opportunity arises, it is unlikely to arrive –and even if it does, you are unlikely to have the skills or heart to take it.
I now feel that when you enter a tournament, you should have your eyes firmly fixed on winning the event outright. You may have to compromise this view in certain circumstances, but you should aim for the top. In the end you will cash less often, but when you do so, it will be more significantly. And if your skills permit, you will win tournaments.
Don’t play for the money. The money is a bonus to the title, not the other way around. It is inevitable that sometimes you are in a position or frame of mind when you feel damage limitation is necessary, but if this isn’t a rare occurrence, then you are playing at a level above what you are ready for. If the money is dictating your play, you are in the wrong game.
I used to approach big tournaments with a different mentality. I would be the first one to be up and about, watching the low chippers on the other table, willing them to get involved and knocked out so I could get to the final. I even remember folding monster hands because I was on the bubble and I wanted to at least make something on the night.
You may have heard the old adage ‘Poker is a marathon, not a sprint’. When your only aim is to make the money, then poker becomes a series of sprints. Each game is the whole world, and every tournament is effectively the last one you may play.
AIMING HIGH
The adage is there for a reason. The sport of poker is a marathon – but individual games are not. You need to see each game as just a part of your career. In every tournament, someone has to be the bubble, and sometimes it will be you. Focus on your table, focus on the opponents you have to deal with. Exploit the opportunities that present themselves, and avoid the minefields.
Don’t waste your time aiming for tenth place and missing your shot at top spot. The last two tables of a tournament are much the same as the first. Let everyone else get distracted and pre-occupied. Use their distraction against them. Your job hasn’t changed – it’s still you against eight or nine other guys.
If I’m going to “Keep it simple: your mission and your men,” then what is my mission? Let’s begin by recognizing that a freezeout tournament is a layered event. If Hold ’Em is the Cadillac of poker, then freezeouts are the luxury model of the range. A freezeout is a great leveler. Rich players can’t buy the game, loose players can’t steal it safe in the knowledge that they can reload if it all goes pear-shaped.
Every decision that every player makes will count for something. That means that, in the end, the one who makes the best decisions consistently will win. Those decisions are tough, and require immense focus, concentration and attention to patterns and details. Those details will, of course, change and evolve as the game unfolds.
RIDING CURRENTS
In the Gala GBPT event, I won because I seemed to sense the changes first and react to the conditions quickest. That doesn’t mean I was making all the moves – not by a long chalk. Sometimes it meant I had to sit back and let certain players take care of each other, or simply stay out of the way. In the end I decided that if I couldn’t be in control of the situation, then I would rather not be in it at all.
Job Number one in any tournament is to find out who you are playing. If one of them is a famous player, than you will have an idea about him and his style and ability. Just remember that he knows you know something about him. Most of all, you need to remind yourself that he may be good, even outstanding, but he is just flesh and blood like you.
If players are new to you, you have no information to manage. So I first watch, learn and test strengths and weaknesses. The ‘test’ part is very important. First impressions (or pre-existing impressions in the case of famous players) need to be evaluated. It is all very well to assume that you have a player’s number, but if you want to win, you need to do a little research.
Research costs in time and chips, but if you invest wisely and conservatively, it can pay huge dividends later. When you read that a company is making a miracle pill for $8 and selling it for $10, it’s easy to forget all of the research and development that the company has done to put itself in that highly enviable position.
FIRING OUT PROBES
So, that’s my mission – now, how about my men? When I first sat down to play the Edinburgh tournament, I was up against a pro (Stuart, a great guy who I like as a person and a player), a semi-pro, two tournament regulars, two players out of their depth, one player with heart firmly on sleeve, a dangerous Scandinavian (who brought that oh-so-popular style – in spades) and a pop star. I had played most of them before, and had my own ideas about them.
I had to test my theories about these players, so I decided I would invest 20% of my stack in the first hour or two, probing them and seeing if I could pick up some pots at the same time. This is the best time to probe, because the cost is low – although it is also low for others to follow you.
Conventional theory is that you should avoid getting involved when there is little to win, but I like to grow my stack from a series of small pots rather than a few large ones – it minimizes my exposure in the game. And I feel that I get much more than chips out of these small encounters – I learn a lot about the other players, and I control their image of me. If it hurts me – that is, the moves don’t work, but instead just cost me chips – then I will change gear.
CLOSING CONTACTS
There are a couple of things that I would prefer to happen for most of the game. I would like to turn my hole cards over as few times as I can, to keep them guessing. I also want to be totally exposed (all-in) as few times as possible. Several small encounters can give me chips, will certainly give me information and, if they work in my favor, will send a message out about me.
These encounters are also there to assist my imagination. I want to be able to imagine the game as my opponents see it. Like a detective in a novel, I want to see what my adversary sees, so that I can try to control the action. I don’t only want to send out the signals that suit me – I want to have a good idea how those signals will affect the game as they see it. I started by making small pre-flop raises, and continuation bets when there was weakness after the flop.
This helped me to pick up a few pots when others were overly wary about being too loose at the early stages. With blinds at 25 / 50, I could raise it up to 250 and still afford a continuation bet of 550. This proved to be too aggressive too early for these players. I was lucky here; I had already concluded that most of the players knew enough to not underestimate the significance of bets of this size.
So, because they reacted as they did, I dominated the table for nearly three hours. When someone raised, I re-raised. I called small bets and, if the board was strange, I bet out. When a possible flush hit the board, I bet out. I called flop bets so I could bet out on the turn, or re-raise. I almost never had to show a hand, so the other players had to conclude that I was either very good or was hitting big hands all the time. They maybe even knew I was at it, but they were waiting for a big hand to get me with.
The whole game didn’t continue like this, of course. In the last four hours of Day 1, I played a total of one hand. A lot of tables got broken down after four hours, and players redistributed. I got WPT champion Surinder Sunar – and hit a cold deck at the same time. To make it worse, the chemistry on the table changed, and people really loosened up in response to the growing pinch of the blinds.
SILENT RUNNING
All of this required a change in gear, and I decided to clam up. My image would last for an hour or two, so I stayed put and waited for hands.
Surinder, who has career tournament earnings of more than $3 million, had a big effect on the table. People can react strangely to superstar players. The only hand I played for the next two hours was against him. He was quite low-stacked, and I saw a chance to get involved with him. If it worked, I could pick up his chips, not expose all of mine, and send a useful message to the rest of my table.
I played a J-10 diamonds to his pre-flop raise. The flop delivered a Nine-high board with an Eight on it, and two diamonds. Wild horses weren’t getting me off that hand, so I called his all-in and hit a Q on the river. My confidence was up, my stack was up and my image was strong – all for very little investment. That move was, if you like, my $10 miracle pill for $8 .
I was then moved to another table where five players had as many chips as me, and six of the players must have had testosterone injections before they came to the game. They were insane. Raise… re-raise… all-in… it seemed to be a set script with them. There were two hours left of Day 1, and I decided to stay out of their way. I didn’t play another hand that day.
Day 2 I had to start all over again. However, overnight I had thought about the game and decided that, whatever happened, I only had one table of people to deal with. I decided that I would simply play it as if it were a single-table tournament and take my chances.
HOLDING COURSE
The people that return on Day 2 are the ones in form, otherwise they would be out – the lucky tight players, the crazies who make and lose monster stacks every hour, and the solid players that play their opponents and their cards as best they can. So, the standard goes up. The risk goes up, too, because there are now lots of chips on your table. But my job never really changes.
Because I saw it that way, Day 2 just rolled by for 14 hours, while all I did was keep it simple. Making sure I was watching my gears, changing my game and controlling what could be controlled, limiting my exposure. I had to take a few more risks as the blinds got big, but then I always had fold equity.
When I was starting to get close to losing it, I loosened up. When I had plenty, I waited for hands. There were a few times when I had to invest, such as when ‘El Blondie’ Colclough had won three or four hands on the bounce. I decided that if he made a play on the next hand, I would re-raise and try to calm it down. He raised the next hand, I re-raised and he laid down. We did the same dance the hand after that as well. Again, I invested little for lots of gain.
To win a tournament you have to be involved. You can’t wait for the big hands only. The game is much more creative and sophisticated than that. Getting involved may get you knocked out, but not getting involved will limit what you can achieve. If you lose and learn, then you never really lose. As Confucius said: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
There are myriad things you need to be aware of in a single poker game and in a specific hand. That said, you can only control a small portion of the game at a time.
GOING DEEP
Let’s assume you have skills in the math of odds and outs, reading opponents and how to use betting; that you accept there will be times when you have to sit back and let the game happen while you watch; that you have gears in your game and know when to use them. If you have all of that, then you are ready for big freezeout tournaments.
When you get there, you take all of that experience and skill in your ‘muscle memory’. Now what do you need? Just the temperament to be able to keep it simple. Don’t try to take on the whole game and every player in it. Don’t worry that there is a guy that already has 200,000 in chips after two hours, or that you have Surinder Sunar at your table. All you now need is to:
- Understand the other players at your table.
- Know the blind level time.
- Know the average chips in the tournament (and how that average relates to the size of the blinds and running antes).
These three simple elements will dictate all that happens for you. Of course, you will adapt when you get new players, or when your style clashes with another player. You may take a beat and need to loosen up to get back to average, or tighten up to rebuild. You may even have to let your chip stack slide in relation to the average because three or four players are going bananas. But if you have the skills created from thousands of hands and hours of reflection, then all you need is to keep it simple.
You can’t control the players at other tables. You can only try to control yours. The whole game is sat right in front of you, and all the other players in the tournament will take care of each other – until you get to the final table.
