Poker Tournament Rule #1: SURVIVAL
Poker Tournament Rule #2: SEE RULE #1
If you take nothing else away from my website or blog, only remember this one thing: Nobody has ever won a tournament that has ran out of chips.
While some believe that chip accumulation early is vital to tournament success, I am strongly against this mindset. Here are a couple important observations in this regard:
We've all heard the "Chip and a chair" stories... and I would love some of those stories to be told in my blog. I will start it out with this blog post where I lost an internet connection and came back with 1/8th of one small blind with 35 players remaining.
One of the better examples of the survival strategy comes from this year's WSOP main event chip leader Martin Staszko. Erick Lindgren talks of how Staszko folded nearly 40 consecutive hands before the money to assure a payout. Staszko’s stack had dwindled down to just 12,000 on the money bubble (with the blinds at 2,500/5,000).
With the blinds and anties as prominent as they become in large tournaments, chip counts can have huge swings in short periods of time, but if you have already been knocked out of the tournament, it just doesn't matter.
Case in point, Staszko went on a rush and finished the day with nearly 400,000 chips... and goes into the November Nine Main Event Final Table as the leader with over 40,000,000 chips.
There is a valuable lesson to learn here: If you are not getting any hands to play, be patient and survive as long as possible to wait for an opportunity to accumulate chips.
This is the tournament basic strategy page. I have the opportunity to discuss a lot more than survival on this page... but I won't. I will leave those further discussions for the blog. I believe so strongly in survival strategy being the number one factor in playing consistently winning tournament poker.
In regard to tournament strategy, the game and the structure does not matter. Limit, no limit, pot limit... hold em, omaha, omaha hi lo, razz, horse, badugi... the strategy is still the same... SURVIVE TO BE THERE AT THE END and give yourself a chance to win.
Statistics are available. For the most part, when somebody I meet believes in chip accumulation, I find in their statistics that they are a losing tournament poker player. When they believe in survival, their stats usually prove them to be a winner.
Poker Tournament Rule #2: SEE RULE #1
If you take nothing else away from my website or blog, only remember this one thing: Nobody has ever won a tournament that has ran out of chips.
While some believe that chip accumulation early is vital to tournament success, I am strongly against this mindset. Here are a couple important observations in this regard:
- You will often go deep into the money with a significant amount of chips by NOT adopting a chip accumulation mindset.
- Even if you are short on chips, you are not at a great disadvantage to those that do have a lot of chips.
We've all heard the "Chip and a chair" stories... and I would love some of those stories to be told in my blog. I will start it out with this blog post where I lost an internet connection and came back with 1/8th of one small blind with 35 players remaining.
One of the better examples of the survival strategy comes from this year's WSOP main event chip leader Martin Staszko. Erick Lindgren talks of how Staszko folded nearly 40 consecutive hands before the money to assure a payout. Staszko’s stack had dwindled down to just 12,000 on the money bubble (with the blinds at 2,500/5,000).
With the blinds and anties as prominent as they become in large tournaments, chip counts can have huge swings in short periods of time, but if you have already been knocked out of the tournament, it just doesn't matter.
Case in point, Staszko went on a rush and finished the day with nearly 400,000 chips... and goes into the November Nine Main Event Final Table as the leader with over 40,000,000 chips.
There is a valuable lesson to learn here: If you are not getting any hands to play, be patient and survive as long as possible to wait for an opportunity to accumulate chips.
This is the tournament basic strategy page. I have the opportunity to discuss a lot more than survival on this page... but I won't. I will leave those further discussions for the blog. I believe so strongly in survival strategy being the number one factor in playing consistently winning tournament poker.
In regard to tournament strategy, the game and the structure does not matter. Limit, no limit, pot limit... hold em, omaha, omaha hi lo, razz, horse, badugi... the strategy is still the same... SURVIVE TO BE THERE AT THE END and give yourself a chance to win.
Statistics are available. For the most part, when somebody I meet believes in chip accumulation, I find in their statistics that they are a losing tournament poker player. When they believe in survival, their stats usually prove them to be a winner.