Good day people of the Realms
I am hosting the Stacked Deck Final Table in Clontarf Castle at the start of the new year. It is always great to see the 16 players battle it out. We have yet to know exactly who will be there, but it is shaping up to be a very competitive day. Thinking about that day, and that I will not be playing I thought I would offer up some thoughts on playing the game.
Quick note if you wish to be able to follow along or have an interest in Stacked Deck updates, please reach out to me and I will add you to the book of faces where such things happen.
In tournament poker the player that gets all the chips wins! Or if the time runs out the player with the most chips wins. In the upcoming tournament there will be 4 prizes. The player who comes in first will have a choice of a special Blue prize, or a lot of gold. Second place will then have a choice of whatever is left, third the same, and whoever comes in fourth will get whatever is left. I feel its most likely that first place will choose the blue prize. As of this writing the 4 prizes are; special blue, 950 gold, 470 gold, 150 gold. Depending on how many more tournaments we have, the gold might go up slightly.
So chips are important, you want to give away as few as possible and get all the ones you can. There are also times when how many chips I have changes my play. I have already shared some thoughts about hand selection, and position, now I would like to think about stack size.
If I have a large stack of chips and am playing against someone who has a small stack, then I am probably going to be a bit more aggressive. If I win, I get more chips, but if I lose, they can’t take all my chips. You can only lose the same amount as your opponent has. You might have seen this on a table before where someone says “all in” they are betting all of these chips. If I have more chips, then only the amount of the All-IN are at risk. You can’t win more than you have. If I have less chips, then I am ALL-IN and the player who went ALL-IN first only has the smaller amount of my chips at risk. Doing well in tournaments means outlasting. So not being at risk is kind of a big deal.
There are also times in a tournament where my stack size might govern how I play. If I am on the smaller size, I am looking for opportunities to “double up”: Go all-in against someone and win. Also let’s say that it is down to the last 5 players; only the top 4 get paid. If I have a small stack, then I might play very few hands to try to last into the top 4. But I might try this strategy if someone else at the table also had a small stack. At this point I am not really playing the other players, just that one player who can bust out to make me get paid.
Now sometimes you have very few chips and are looking to push any advantage you can. That is when you might go ALL-IN on any hand with an Ace or any suited hand, or really anything you think you night get lucky with. I have seen players go from very few chips late in a tournament and double up a few times and win the thing.
When I have a big stack, I sometimes also push small advantages, mostly I am looking to “push players out of pots”, maybe I am in late position with a medium strength hand; an early position player does a small raise, but they have a smaller stack. I can re-raise them with almost any two cards because I think they will not play and have to fold to my big re-raise. they don’t want to put their tournament at risk. So, with a big stack I am more likely to “widen” my hand selection range. Raise/call with cards that are not as strong.
I would also like to talk about bet sizing. Almost all of my bet sizes are in relation to the big blind. Because the blinds increase as the tournament goes on to encourage play, my bet sizes also have to change. Early in a tournament when the blinds are 100 for the small and 200 for the large, then a standard preflop raise is to about 3-4X so 600-800 chips. But later when the blinds go up to 200-400 then my bets should increase to 1200-1600. Once again, things that will go into the bet size are things like the strength of my hand, if I have a strong hand, I want to get paid, so I might bet more. If I am in late position and do not want to get called, or early position and do.
Now I do want to talk a little bit about something called “pot odds” let’s say I raised from late position with a strong hand like JJ. One player in early position calls me. the board comes something like 2 of clubs, 7 or clubs and the 9 or hearts. Right now, the pot is at 2000 chips. Simple odds say that if someone has two clubs in their hand, then they will make the flush about 1 out of 4 times. It’s also likely since the called my preflop bet they might also have an over card to my pair of Jacks. An Ace, King or Queen. If I bet less than about 500 then they have pot odds to call; 1 in four times they are going to make there flush, and maybe they can hit their over card, to have a better hand then I do. This means that I need to bet more than a quarter of the pot if I want to deny them the “pot odds” to call.
Now this does not take into account the idea of “implied odds” which is a slippery slope of optimism. The idea of implied odds is if I call, or bet my flush draw in the above example, then the “implied odds” of me betting or calling again and having someone call with a worse hand. So, in the example above, let’s say instead of having JJ, I had AK of clubs. Now I might make flush if another club comes on the turn or river. so instead of needing 1:4 odds of calling I need even worse odds, at the time I called. This depends on the idea that if I make my hand then the opponent will call another bet. Also, in this example if I hit an Ace or King my hand will also be good. There are reasons why Ace King is a fantastic hand to start with (especially if they are suited).
All of this takes into account the idea of the strength of the hand. Not the possibility of bluffing. When I am in late position, I might bet with any two cards as I can represent a strong hand, regardless of what I actually have. this is easy in late position, but a bluff in early position is also possible, because its more credible if I bet with a lot of players behind me waiting to act. Bluffing is easy, getting away with it is much harder.
Good luck and see you on the felt.
Duke Tao Ya Kang,