What’s up bloggers? I’m Chris Hogan, a 23 year recent college grad currently living in Kansas City, Missouri. I have been playing poker for a couple years now but in the beginning it was all just casual games with family and college friends. I started playing online around two years ago, a few months before the 2003 World Series of Poker aired on ESPN which inspired the millions of Chris Moneymaker’s around the world to try their hand at poker. I consider myself lucky because I got into playing just before that aired and had a good couple of months to work on my game before the popularity of poker exploded. <READMORE>

After achieving moderate success during my first couple of months playing online, the dead money started caravanning to the online games and I haven’t looked back since. I have achieved most of my success through playing small to medium buy-in tournaments ($5-$50 range) and when approached to write a little bit of my thoughts and experiences for pocketfives.com, I jumped at the chance. My articles are going to be focused on smaller buy-in tournaments with large fields and why I feel I have been successful at them. (Note: If you are looking for advice on big buy-in tournaments/games, then Jsup is the man for that.)

Let me state my basic theory on my poker success right out of the gate: I am not at all a magnificently superior player who is outplaying all of my competition. I do however consider myself somewhat of an intelligent guy who realizes that there are truckloads of bad players out there that are just looking to have fun and kill some time while giving poker a try.

In discussion with my friends who also play online, we have typically categorized these types of newcomers as the Prize Pool Builders (PPB’s) of the online poker world. What I am referring to when I use that term is all of the new players that religiously watch poker on the Travel Channel and ESPN and think to themselves, “How hard can this be?” What these players don’t realize when watching those tournaments is that they are only seeing the final six or nine of a tournament that had anywhere from 150 to over 1000 entrants. These PPB’s hear Mike Sexton and Vince VanPatten talk about how ace high is the best hand….which is probably true when you are at the final table with three or four players left. However, a lot of these players take this to heart and feel the same when the game is ten handed and aren’t going to fold an ace preflop if you held a gun to their head.

Because of that, you have to adjust your game accordingly to these types of players that don’t have a real grasp of what it takes to win in the long run. If you have some experience, you know that the PPB’s have absolutely no chance of winning the tournament and very little chance of even making the final table. However, that does not mean that they won’t take you out along with another handful of players along the way.

My thoughts on the early rounds of a small buy-in tournament

I am of the opinion that you have to be ultra-conservative in the early rounds of a tournament, because that’s when the PPB’s are lurking just waiting to take you out with some kind of awful hand. There is nothing more frustrating than flopping a straight, going all in, and losing to some half-brain that calls off all his chips on a flush draw and catches.

You can’t bet this type of player off of his draw because to him four to a flush is just as good as the flush itself. In the early rounds of a tournament, if I am in a pot with a player that I know isn’t going to let his 4 clubs go, then I’ll lower my betting a bit because I know that he is going to call no matter what. If I just make a couple of medium-sized bets instead of betting the pot both times, it can work out well no matter if you win or lose the pot. If he misses then you’ve got a nice pot there waiting for you, and if he hits, you haven’t lost that much. If that flush card doesn’t come you can still increase your bet on the river, but if you make big bets on the flop and turn, knowing that he’s going to call anyway, then you are committed on the river if he makes his flush.

Now if I flop a set, I am going to play that full steam ahead and try and catch my opponent on some kind of a draw because his chances of winning are much less. If I have something like top pair top kicker, and my opponent holds a flush draw with 2 overs, then he’s 52% to win whereas if I flop a set, he is only 25.6% to win. I am obviously careful if the board is three of the same suit, but even if the board comes with two of the same suit I am going to be jamming that pot. If your opponent catches one of his slim outs, it might be one of the cards that fills you up.

Now let me clear this up by saying I don’t play this way for the entire tournament; these were just a few examples that came to mind. After the first couple of rounds, the PPB’s are usually knocked out when their crap draws don’t come home and then I get back to playing my regular tight/aggressive style of play. But for that first hour and a bit after, I closely watch my back and adjust my play to make sure I don’t bust to a newcomer who thinks he made a great all-in play. What I am trying to generalize here is that you have to be careful in the early rounds of these small buy in tournaments. If you want to go deep into a pot with a bad player you know nothing about, you had better have the goods to back it up because he might be calling you the entire way with nothing, but hold just enough to snap you off when its all said and done.

Summing up my intro article, I feel that I have been successful in the mid buy-in tournaments for a combination of several reasons. The main one however, is the realization that there are so many new players out there trying to bring their Travel Channel skills into the online arena thinking that they’re just as good as anyone else because they can beat their friends in a home game. If you can adjust your play in the early rounds of smaller buy-in tournaments and recognize that you are playing against Tommy Smith from Toledo and aren’t playing against Phil Hellmuth every hand, then your analysis of what’s going on each hand should start to improve dramatically. It’s important to think, “What is he calling/betting with right now” instead of “Why did he call me with that crap” after the hand is over and you’ve lost.

My next article will be up shortly where I’ll talk a little bit about my most recent successes; those being my 1st place finish in a $10 tournament on Tuesday the 11th, followed up by a 3rd place finish in a $30 tournament on Wednesday the 12th. Thanks for checking this out and if you have suggestions about something you’d like to have me write about, please shoot me an email at Hogan24Poker@hotmail.com.

Special thanks on this article to Adam Patterson.

Chris Hogan (A.K.A. Hogan24) just graduated from the University of Missouri, where he majored in Computer Science. He is now living in Kansas City, MO and is a part time player on ub.com.
</READMORE>