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Card Dead
‘I haven’t had a decent starting hand in hours! You just can’t win a tournament like this without picking up a few good hands’.
It’s a common refrain, and many poker players’ worst nightmare. You sign up for a tournament, and then sit there for hours as you’re dealt rag hand after rag hand. 8-3o. J-4o. 9-2o. The stream of foul cards is seemingly never-ending. You feel powerless, and watch as your stack dwindles until you’re finally forced to push all-in with a weak hand.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Poker is a game of people as much as it’s a game of cards, and over the next couple of pages, we’ll show you some techniques that will help you build a stack without ever needing to pick up a monster starting hand.
What is Frequency / Ideal M?
A ‘high frequency’ move can be pulled off once a round or more. A medium frequency move can be attempted more rarely, such once every couple of rounds. A low frequency move should only be tried once or twice in an entire tournament, and will typically be very risky.
Most good no-limit tournaments include antes as well as blinds, and when antes are in play, the common stack measurement of ‘x big blinds’ doesn’t cut it. M is a measure of how large your stack is compared to the blinds and antes, and is calculated by dividing your stack size by the sum of the blinds and antes. For example:
Blinds 100/200, Ante 25, 9-handed, stack size 25000. Your M is 25000 / (100 + 200 + [9 x 25]) = 47.6
Blinds 250/500, Ante 100, 6-handed, stack size 5000. Your M is 5000 / (250 + 500 + [6 x 100]) = 3.7
Move 1: Stealing the Blinds and Antes
Difficulty: 1 Effectiveness: 5 Frequency: High Ideal M: <20 Pre-flop play: YES Post-flop play: NO Tight image: YES Loose image: NO Position: YES Heads-up pot: NO Dry flop: NO
The importance of stealing the blinds is one of the first things most tournament poker players learn. You can’t simply wait for a good hand before you enter the pot, or you might run out of chips by the time you get one. So, to ensure your stack continues to grow, you sometimes have to raise without a strong hand, hoping everyone will fold and you win the pot uncontested.
Even in today’s ultra-aggressive poker world where everybody knows the technique, stealing the blinds is still one of the most important strategies in tournament play. However, it’s sometimes overused. In the first few levels of a tournament, when the average stack usually has an M of 40 or more, stealing the blinds won’t make much difference to your winning chances. Raising with weak hands in an attempt to steal the blinds at this stage is a recipe for disaster.
As the stacks decrease in size relative to the blinds and antes and your M drops below 20, it becomes more and more important to steal pots in order to keep yourself afloat. The lower your M, the more you should try it, because the reward for succeeding is proportionally higher.
There is another reason to steal the antes, too. If you only ever enter the pot with strong hands, your opponents will quickly notice this and you won’t get any action. Good hands don’t come along too often in tournament poker, and it’s important to maximise your wins when you get them. By raising occasionally to steal the blinds, you create a balanced strategy and increase the likelihood that you’ll be paid off when you have a strong hand.
The ideal situation for stealing the antes is like this – the stacks are not too deep, you have a tight image or your opponents are playing too tight themselves, nobody else has entered the pot, you’re in late position (ideally, on the button or in the cutoff), and hopefully you have a hand that is not totally worthless (suited connectors are better for stealing that 9-3 offsuit is).
Beware of stealing too often. If you become the predictable steal-raiser, your opponents will start to counter your aggression by reraising (which we’ll talk about shortly).
Summary: The easiest way to pick up some chips – just don’t try it every hand!
Move 2: The Three-Bet Resteal
Difficulty: 2 Effectiveness: 8 Frequency: Medium Ideal M: <15 Pre-flop play: YES Post-flop play: NO Tight image: YES Loose image: NO Position: YES Heads-up pot: YES Dry flop: NO
If raising to steal the blinds is such an important part of tournament poker, it figures that most players will understand it and use it often. So how can you defend against a steal raise, and not allow your blinds to be robbed every round?
The answer is that you need to resteal occasionally – a concept that’s well understood by the game’s top players. If your opponents are stealing the blinds frequently, they’ll often be entering the pot with weak hands. You should take advantage of that by reraising, whether you have a strong hand or not, knowing that if your opponent is weak, he’ll have to lay down his hand.
Early in a tournament, the resteal is much less valuable, for too reasons. First of all, your opponents will typically be playing tighter in the early stages, and are less likely to have entered the pot with a weak hand. Secondly, because the stacks are deeper, your opponent way well call your three-bet, hoping to win a big pot from you after the flop.
The ideal stack size for this move is such that you can three-bet all-in by slightly overbetting the pot. This denies your opponent of any implied odds, and if he has a weak hand, he will not usually be receiving the pot odds to call either. For example, the blinds are 100/200 and you have 3000 in your stack. Your opponent raises to 600, and you push all-in. This raise is 2400 more, and lays your opponent 1.6 to 1. This will not be enough for him to call if he has something like suited connectors, and believes you are strong.
If you have too few chips, your opponent will often be getting significant pot odds and will be likely to call even with a marginal hand. Indeed, when your M drops below 7, you’re better off trying to maximise your chances of winning the pot uncontested by pushing all-in as the first raiser.
Like before, it helps to have a tight image, and ideally you should have seen your opponent steal the blinds a little too often.
Summary: A powerful, but risky defence against opponents who are stealing the blinds and antes. Be sure to choose your timing carefully!
Move 3: The Stop and Go
Difficulty: 3 Effectiveness: 6 Frequency: Medium Ideal M: <9 Pre-flop play: NO Post-flop play: YES Tight image: YES Loose image: NO Position: NO Heads-up pot: YES Dry flop: YES
When you’re a short stack, you don’t have much room to manoeuvre. You don’t have enough chips to three-bet resteal with nothing – it’s too likely you’ll be called. So your options are limited- perhaps you pick a hand to shove with and hope to win the pot uncontested, or you call off your chips with a marginal hand, hoping to get lucky and double up.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A great way to avoid the variance of situations like that is to try the Stop and Go. It goes like this: one of your opponents makes a standard raise of about three times the blind. You’re on a short stack, with an M of less than 9, but higher than 3 (you’ll need to have chips left for the flop). You need to act first after the flop, which usually means you’ll be in one of the blinds. Lastly, you need to have a hand with some value, ideally a small pair or suited connectors.
Now, instead of moving all-in over the top of your opponent’s raise, you flat call, and move all-in after the flop. To see why this move is powerful, imagine your opponent has A-K, and you have a pair of sixes.
If you reraise all-in before the flop, you’ll certainly get called and you’ll be around a 55% favourite to win the pot, depending on the exact suits involved. The other 45% of the time, you’ll be out of the tournament, which is a disaster, particularly if the money bubble is close.
Now imagine you flat call, and the flop comes 9-7-4. You move all-in, and your opponent has to decide whether to call you with his unimproved ace-high or not. You’ve put him to a tough decision and given him the opportunity to make a mistake – he may be getting the correct pot odds but fold, or he may be getting insufficient pot odds, but call. Either way, you gain.
Usually, you move all-in regardless of what the flop brings. However, if you catch a dream flop, you’re actually hoping your opponent will call, so you might check and let him bluff instead. Rarely, you may also check because you have a good read on your opponent, and you’re sure he hit the flop.
Summary: A great way to reduce your variance and induce mistakes in your opponents. However, don’t try the stop and go with trash!
Move 4: The Float
Difficulty: 4 Effectiveness: 8 Frequency: Low Ideal M: 20+ Pre-flop play: NO Post-flop play: YES Tight image: YES Loose image: NO Heads-up pot: YES Dry flop: YES
Don’t you just hate it when you call your opponent’s raise, miss the flop, and then have to fold to their bet? If that situation sounds all-too-familiar, you may have a leak in your game and simply be calling too many raises, or you may not be floating often enough.
‘Floating’ is a relatively new term in poker, but it’s an age-old technique that works well in the early stages of tournaments, particularly against opponents who continuation bet frequently. Essentially, you are calling a bet, planning to bluff your opponent at a later in the hand. Here’s how it goes:
You call an opponent’s raise in position, and go to the flop heads-up. Both of you have deep stacks, so there is room for play on the turn and river. You know before the flop is dealt that your opponent is usually going to bet again in an attempt to take down the pot. The flop comes low and unconnected. Your opponent bets, and you sense weakness and call. The turn is a blank, and your opponent checks. You bet, and your opponent folds.
This move is an excellent defence against a common leak in intermediate players’ games, which is that they bet the flop almost 100% of the time after raising preflop. However, there are some conditions in which it should not be attempted.
First of all, don’t try this when you or your opponent is short-stacked. If you don’t have many chips, you simply can’t afford to call them off speculatively, when it’s possible that your opponent may bet again on the turn and you’ll have to fold. It’s also more likely than before that your opponent will simply move all-in on the flop, depriving you of the opportunity to make the play.
Secondly, don’t try the move when the flop is very draw-heavy or against multiple opponents. In this situation, it’s more likely than usual that your opponent hit the flop some way and you’ll be called when you bet, or that you’ll give your opponent the free card he needs to hit his draw.
Summary: An excellent defence against the continuation bet, and a great (although risky) way to pick up some easy chips early in a tournament.
Move 5: The Squeeze Play
Difficulty: 5 Effectiveness: 10 Frequency: Low Ideal M: 15+ Pre-flop play: YES Post-flop play: NO Tight image: YES Loose image: NO Heads-up pot: NO Dry flop: NO
The squeeze play is one of the most dangerous bluffs in poker, and yet also one of the most effective. Using the play, you can go from being the shortest stack at the table to one of the chip leaders, all in a single hand. But you can also be needlessly eliminated if your timing is wrong.
The squeeze play goes like this: a loose opponent opens for a raise, a second opponent calls, and you put in a big reraise with a weak hand. Both opponents fold. By reraising, you are ‘squeezing’ the first opponent out of the pot. He’s trapped between you, representing great strength, and your second opponent, who could be slowplaying a big hand. His only option is to fold unless he has a strong hand.
By flat calling, the second opponent shows weakness. This, combined with a loose initial opponent, makes the play tempting. However, you can’t make this move with a short stack as you will very likely be called, and you shouldn’t make it against either experts (who will see through the move, and call you) or beginners (who aren’t thinking about what your hand could be anyway, and will call).
To make this move, you need a good read on your opponents. It’s not the kind of move you can make more than once or twice in a tournament, and rarely should you attempt it twice against the same players. However, if you pick the right time, this play can completely change the course of your tournament.
Summary: One of the most impressive bluffs when it works, the squeeze play can also go disastrously wrong. Pick your moment carefully!
