Getting Lucky

and I am talking about girls here! Specifically, our ladies in the Chris Ferguson blog. No, I don’t have delusions of grandur about my chances. It is their intramural success. Two have real money and two are still on the freeroll bread lines.

First off… tournaments have variance. Variance is a term that a politician might have come up with. It is a bit of a euphemism. We could use a much shorter term – LOSING! Tournaments are a way for a decent player to lose more frequently. That is the nature of the beast.

Luck is a factor in poker. Of late I’ve played limit. I can be unlucky and unless I’ve let myself get short on the buy in – a mistake – I will have funds for the next hand where I just may get lucky or where my vastly superior skills (choke, choke) will prevail. Even if I were playing No Limit, I’d have funds available to refund and play the next hand.

That isn’t the dynamic of tournament poker. And the dynamic that adds to that mix is blind progression. At some point in that, the game moves from skill to gamble. The idea is to combine cards and skill to continue but that has the price of overcommitment. Early play in many tournaments is marked by overcommitting. It is where the term dead money comes from. You can call it by a number of other names but betting or calling without the next in an overly aggressive manner leads to overcommitting or Loose-Aggressive or the sidelines.

Early tournament play sometimes gives us cards and we feel like gods. Godhood is infrequent though. Most of the time we get the average mix we are entitled to and play it against the assumed average mix of our opponents cards. In this we are often wrong. Yet we can prevail by trying to play more small pot poker. When we bet we often lose sight of that objective.

Maxicat’s latest blog there points out the pitfalls of big pot poker. She played a marginal hand from the button with a call. She flopped the 3^rd nut flush against the blinds and went to war. The outcome was horridly obvious. She’d managed to run into the 2^nd nut. And that happened against someone happy to go to war with it. I freely admit I wouldn’t have laid down her hand either. I have a history against blinds that isn’t going to bring about envy.

Her betting scheme was a big pot approach and her opponent happily accommodated her. In small pot poker she might have checked and slow played the flopped flush. Done some calling or raising which might have made the guy with the best hand move into value betting. When the smoke clears, that play leaves you bruised but alive. That is the value of small pot poker.  (There is a tenancy, at times, for one to only consider that they are the far better player and that is a serious flaw — regardless of the competition.  Donkeys get big hands too.)

On the other hand, we might say that such a hand should be played like we hold the nuts. We see a lot of close to the nut hands win big pots. Well, that is luck. Not the huge luck of hitting a one outer but luck none the less. And, if we are ‘unlucky’, we are also broke. The objective always has to be to play the next hand too. At least up to the point where the blinds change the dynamic.

Look at the hand as harshly as possible. The stack was about 30 big blinds. The player was well positioned. The sad part is going from a solid position to the sideline. Ten people could come up with 10 different views of this. Seldom will one mention the big pot vs small pot approach unless there is a pro in the mix. Pros love small pot poker. They feel that the majority of the time they can outplay the norm. And, when that fails they are there to try that on the next hand. That is the strength of small pot play. If you aren’t a good player or hit a day where you don’t feel you have your best game, you want to play big pot poker and avoid having to make close decisions. But, there aren’t any excuses and my price for listening to a bad beat on that basis goes from $5 to $50.

The difference between success and failure is often the ability to lay down the best hand at times. That is a workable option if you don’t feel pot committed and small pot poker gives you that ability to live to fight another day. Play big pot poker only on your terms. You may be just as wrong; but, you are never wrong if you had a sound read and objective relating to your stack and the blinds.

ADDENDUM:

Well, I did make back about half of my Saturday loss on Sunday. I wasn’t as successful as the guy on my left. He was down to .90 at the table. Got that all in and built a winning flush which he’d run up to around $10 when I left. He made $2.70 on that hand but lost a bunch. The second pot dwarfed his winnings. Can you say “OUCH!!!”? Hands like his don’t show up every round or even session. You get a great hand and two people happy to cap and you’re all in. That’s a sad form of ’success’ and all your fault.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Journal, Tournaments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.