How’s it going everyone? Quick update since my last blog: I’ve been trying to get in as many tourneys as possible lately but this full time job stuff is starting to wear me down…it has however been up and down to say the least. I know that I’ve been being impatient because I haven’t been playing as much and as soon as I stop pressing I know things will turn back around. I’ve been trying to build up some TEC’s to get in the Aruba tournaments cheaply and playing a lot of limit on the side to try and keep a couple of bucks in my account.

Anyway, last week I played in the $100 buy-in, $17k guaranteed and the $200 buy-in, $65k guaranteed tourneys on Ultimate Bet. I managed not making the break either time after both times being seated at crazy-aggressive tables and getting caught up in all the stupidity. That’s just not my style; I got away from my game and was out quickly because of it. <READMORE>

In the $200 tourney I finally caught a halfway decent hand and considering the action at the table, I wanted to see the flop when I was dealt pocket tens. The flop was 8 high and after the raiser bet I went over the top. Then another guy behind me went all in and caught his flush draw which just made me sick. I didn’t think I would run into something like that so early in a larger buy-in tourney, but I suppose if a donkey wins a satellite or makes a good salary, that it doesn’t mean he has a winning strategy.

Taking that beat got me started on thinking about some of the dumb moves that I see people make over and over and over in the early rounds of tournaments. Once I started brainstorming, I came up with about 10 to 12 common mistakes…then decided to drop a few and combine a few and narrowed them down to these three. Now this may not be everyone’s personal top three because people make all kinds of crazy moves all throughout tournaments, but just possibly what I see most often that get people in lots of trouble and cost them mounds of chips.

#3: Calling raises and/or raising from the blinds

I will use the blind structure on Ultimate Bet for my example because it is the site I am most familiar with. In the first hour of a tournament you have 4 levels of blinds: 5/10, 10/20, 20/40, and 30/60. If you play 60 hands in an hour then that’s 15 hands at each level, and with 10 people at a table, your big blind will come around 1.5 times at each level per hour.

Now if you didn’t follow all of that, then just know this; if you were to call every minimum raise during that first hour, it would cost you 205 extra chips on top of blind. Out of your 1500 starting chips, that’s 13% of your stack gone because you played every raise from the blinds – and that’s just a minimum raise. A 3X raise would cost you 280 extra chips, 19% of your original stack, and a standard 4X raise would cost you an extra 390 in chips, 26% of your entire starting stack…and that’s not even mentioning how far behind you possibly are calling a raise just because you already have money in from the blind.

Another thing that I see often is when people raise a very small amount from either of the blinds. I completely understand the concept of building a pot with an average hand per chance it should hit, but I also understand that that is for the most part, a limit poker strategy.

I don’t believe that a lot of people are raising to try to build a pot either. A lot of the prize pool builders (PPB’s) are raising because they have something like A9 suited…and since the PPB’s don’t fold aces and don’t fold suited cards, by-god they’ve got the best of both worlds! Therefore, they figure they might as well raise it up--but only from 20 to 40. They wouldn’t want to push anyone out considering the monster they're holding!

I know that some people also raise from there with small and medium pocket pairs. However, in that situation, you either want to raise enough to get some/all of your opponents to fold, or check your big blind. If you raise just a small amount so that everyone that had originally limped in still calls your raise, then you are making a double mistake. First, your raise is obviously telling everyone at the table that you have some kind of above average hand. And second, if you are raising from the blinds, after the flop hits you are stuck in the worst position at the table, having to act first with a mediocre hand that you’ve tried to take the lead with by making a less than intimidating pre-flop raise. (Hmm, that’s almost a full page of material on just the blinds…and I didn’t even mention defending the blinds or playing against the blinds.)

Hmmm, anyway….

#2: Bluffing/Draws

I am putting these two together because they are very similar in concept for the idea I will simply explain. Whether you are bluffing just trying to pick up a pot or calling off chips trying to hit a straight or a flush draw, you are essentially doing the same thing; putting chips into a pot without a real hand.

I had been playing poker for a while online before I started to get into the tournaments, and when I did first try my hand at tourneys, I was clueless. I didn’t give a second thought to my opponents or position. In one of the earliest tournaments that I remember doing well in, with about 75 or so people left I was in first place with 80k in chips and the guy in second only had about 30k or so. To make a short story even shorter, it paid 40 spots and I didn’t even make the money. There towards the end, I assume I just stopped hitting the draws I had hit earlier when the blinds were smaller. When they got bigger and I was missing my draws, I was out before I even knew what had happened.

I can’t really give many examples on bluffing or how to play a draw, because they all depend on where you are at in the tournament, your opponents, your stack, along with other factors. All I can suggest is this: if you are losing a lot of chips in these kinds of situations, try to play an entire tournament without bluffing or chasing. I know that a lot of people say that winning in NL is all about bluffing, but I am just throwing this out there as a suggestion. Make sure that you are getting value out of your big hands and aren’t wasting chips on your bad ones and I would bet that you’ll finish higher on average than when you were a bluffing and chasing machine.

And #1 by far and away: Emotional Attachment

This is the one that makes experienced players just point and laugh; and what gets your name added to countless buddy lists if you’re a cash game player. What I mean by emotional attachment is not being able to fold what might have been a good starting hand when you are obviously beaten, smoked, torched, and just outright flattened. It sounds so simple but if you have been playing for any length of time you have probably seen it hundreds of times…someone tries to be sneaky and limps in with kings and can’t fold when an ace hits the board. This is the same guy that can’t fold AA with 9876 on the board. Oh yea…and it is 100% ok to fold AK and AQ after a 9 high flop and someone bets huge in front of you or raises huge behind you. I see more people lose countless amounts of chips in these situations, and it just absolutely makes my head spin. If you’ve got AK after a bad flop, all you’re holding is ace high. AK is not AA!

Emotional attachment goes right along with chasing your draws, and playing connecting cards and suited cards….oh my god suited cards. I don’t know if anything gets people in more trouble than playing suited cards. The odds of hitting a flush or four to the flush preflop with any two suited cards is around 12%. 12%!!! And if you flop 4 to a flush, your odds of actually hitting the flush from there are only 1 out of every 3 times. Therefore, if you flop 4 to a flush, you go from 12 to 33 percent…good luck banking on that strategy for big wins. But yet some people still are just convinced that suited cards make their hand stronger. For all those people that limp in under the gun with K4 and Q5 suited, when you flop a K or Q, the fact that your cards are suited does NOT make your hand stronger. I’m done talking about this because if you’re a suited card player and those couple of sentences aren’t enough to at least make you think a little bit, then I want you at my table as quickly as possible. (Side note: Playing a ring game in St. Louis a few months ago I told the guy next to me--just in random conversation--that I would have hit a flush with the J4 I mucked preflop. I swear he looked me straight in the eyes in total disbelief and said, “You don’t play your suited hands?”)

I could have talked a little bit more about some of these ideas but for god sakes that’s enough freakin’ typing for now. Maybe you can take a few of the ideas I threw out there and make a few adjustments to your own game and hopefully see improvements. Maybe not. I just wanted to give everyone a few numbers to look at and a few new things to think about if you are new to the game. As always if you see me at the tables feel free to stop in and say hi. Good luck to all of you and see ya around.
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