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Playing Your First Live Tournament
Playing in major poker tournaments is a daunting experience. If you’re used to playing poker on the internet, the environment may feel somewhat alien. Since the game is slower, you might find yourself being distracted by the other players’ conversation, the lights, the dealer, or the noise. You may find that you’re breaking a rule that you’ve never heard of before. Read carefully – and with a bit of luck, one thing you won’t find is that you’re out of chips.
Probably the most important thing you can do both before and during play is to make yourself feel comfortable at the table. If you’re comfortable, you’ll find that the distractions melt away and you’re better able to focus on playing your best game. Start with how you dress. If you hate wearing a suit, don’t do it, even if you want to ‘look smart on TV’. Wear whatever makes you feel most comfortable – heck, turn up in your pyjamas if you want, at least it’ll give you a fun image that you can use to build a sponsorship deal. Don’t bother with the sunglasses and baseball cap look, unless it’s how you usually dress indoors. Besides being a cliché, it gets very uncomfortable very quickly.
There is nothing more comfortable than familiarity. That means it’s time to venture down to your nearest casino, and take on the old men and the chavs for practice. If that sounds too daunting, then you should at least spend some time at home practicing how to handle chips and cards. There’s nothing that will give you away as an amateur more than fumbling your chips, or holding your cards at arm’s length while you squint at them.
Spend some time getting to know the rules, and don’t be afraid to ask the dealer or tournament director for advice if there’s anything you don’t understand. One of the most common beginner’s mistakes is ‘string betting’. On the internet, it’s impossible to make a string bet, but in live poker doing it could you cost you serious chips. When you make a bet or raise, simply count out the chips in front of your stack, then push them all forward in one motion without saying anything – let the dealer count them, that’s their job. By doing this, you won’t break any rules, and you won’t give away any information to your opponents. If you’re moving all-in, just say ‘All-in’ loudly and clearly, and push one stack forward (for the security cameras).
Another key mistake is to play too fancy. No matter how much practice you’ve had, you’re going to be under real pressure in your first major tournament, and your opponents will be stronger and more experienced than the players you’re used to doing battle with. It will be tempting to bluff a lot, or to play marginal hands extra aggressively, in an attempt to impress your friends, the audience, or even your opponents. Don’t fall into that trap.
In your first major event, you’re much better off keeping it simple and straightforward to begin with – that way you won’t put yourself in any difficult situations in which you can make a mistake. Play strong starting hands and be mindful of your position at the table. Bet aggressively with your strong hands to protect them and extract value, and don’t be afraid to fold marginal hands rather than commit a large portion of your stack. Study the players at your table, and learn who is tight, who is loose, and who is a weak player. Once you know that information and you’ve built up a bit of confidence, then you can start to mix up your game.
If you’re used to playing on the internet, you might not be aware of the importance of tells in live poker. A tell is a gesture or mannerism that could give away the strength of your hand, and while a tell isn’t going to win or lose you millions like the movies would suggest, your opponents are going to be looking for tells from you to help make their decisions. The better you are able to conceal your tells, the more difficult your opponents decisions are going to be.
There are two approaches to minimising the information you’re giving away. The first is to give away so much information that your opponents can’t tell the signal from the noise – let’s call it the Caro approach. You move around so much, make so many funny faces, and say so many things that any information you give away is well concealed. The second is to hardly move or speak at all – let’s call it the Ferguson approach. This way you can’t give away any information whatsoever. Exactly which approach you choose will depend on your personality, but you should certainly be prepared to conceal your tells one way or another.
The last adjustment you may have to make is to the deep-stacked play that is typical of such events. Major live tournaments aren’t like internet SNGs or turbo tournaments – they have long levels, with lots of starting chips and small jumps between stakes. That changes the value of some types of hands – especially those whose main strength is their high cards, like AK and AQ.
While in an internet tournament where the stacks are much shorter you would often be right to push all-in preflop with these hands, in the early stages of a deep stacked event doing so can result in disaster. You’ll almost never be called by a worse hand, so you’ll be risking a huge number of chips to win a small pot. Doing this enough times will guarantee your elimination from the tournament.
On the flip side, hands that have the potential to flop monsters go way up in value – hands like 44, which can flop a set, or 6♥7♥ which can make a straight and win a big pot, now become great hands to play if you can get in cheaply. These are hands which you will be glad to invest your whole stack in should you hit the right flop – and if you don’t, you’ll be able to get away from your hand easily without losing too much.
