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Not long ago I noticed that I tended to have a better ROI in tournaments with faster structures. This is largely due to the fact that the faster a tournament's structure, the less time you will generally spend “deep stacked.” All of the skills I had learned when I began to play poker were best suited for this type of tournament. As I began to have some marginal success and the bankroll to play higher buy-in tournaments, my short-stack skills didn’t seem to be cutting it. I have aspirations to be as good at this game as I possibly can, so I decided to invest in learning the new set of skills I would need to move up.

I began learning to play on PokerStars in the MTT 180-man turbo sit and go’s. They were cheap and filled as quickly as you could want. With 1500 chip starting stacks and five minute blinds, you were in push/fold mode before you could blink. This was encouraging to me. I was bad at poker, I had no clue, but with this type of tournament all you needed was a few basic skills, common sense, and volume to luck-box some decent finishes. I had no concept of ROI . The bad beats didn’t get to me as much because I had no clue how far or behind I was, so how could I be upset over a beat?

Moving up into the better structures I realized that I would need to learn skills like accumulating chips, adjust ranges for relative stack size, post-flop play, and pot control. My original plan to study up a bit and learn as I played quickly became more costly than I was comfortable with, so what was my alternative? Cash games. I found that I could play at the most micro of levels and still practice the skills that I needed to. For the most part the players at this level weren’t extraordinary but I figured it was a place to start and as I moved up I could sharpen my skills against progressively better players.

In my first session of .01/.02 (I said Micro right?), I was dealt JJ on the button. The action folded to me, which I considered weird... I mean no action from the cut-off was strange in my world. I raised the traditional 3x, the SB calls and the BB blind three-bets, so without thinking I instantly four-bet. The SB again calls and this time the BB shoves, I’m thinking, "Who knows... maybe he has a small pocket pair that he doesn’t want to play out of position," so I gladly called behind. I was a little worried to see the SB call also but I figured perhaps he had a drawing hand that he’s getting the odds to play. I was stunned when the BB flipped up AA and the SB KK. All I could think was wow, I’m back to being a donkey and I have a lot of work to do.

As a turbo SNG guy, playing cash at the micro level was mind numbing at first, but I learned a lot. I learned that the ranges when you have players sitting above 60 or so Big Blinds are completely different and most of the time if you manage to get it all in pre-flop, you're normally facing a very strong hand. Most players just aren’t willing to risk that many chips because they just don’t have to. The blinds at this point are pretty minimal and they're just not forced to play. Sound familiar? Many of the better structured tournaments spend a decent amount of time with similar blind to stack ratios.

As I spent more time at the tables and studied more, I tried to introduce more aggression to my game. Ultimately, I wanted to spend a lot of time developing my LAG game. Most players, even the really good ones, spend a majority of their time at the beginning of a tournament playing a very tight game. There’s nothing wrong with that, unless you’re a skilled LAG player, it’s the only way to go. There are few drawbacks to that, for instance you're much less comfortable playing deep-stacked and therefore much more likely to make critical mistakes. You’re also much more predictable and for a good LAG player, that can sometimes make you an easy target. There’s a reason players like Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen can look down at any two cards and announce raise, not a bad tool to have right?

With working on my LAG game, I was also forced to work on my post flop skills. I found that No Limit Hold’em wasn’t providing enough action. Most hands simply ended on the flop or turn with a fold, making it hard to get a large volume of hands that put me in the post flop situation’s I wanted. Pot limit Omaha (PLO 6-max) was next, and I was instantly in love. Here was a game that I could play over half my hands and get action nearly all the time. There were always at least three players in the pot.

I quickly learned in my first session that top pair top kicker just wasn’t going to cut it. My AK34ss went down to a King-high flush and a full house. I was back to being a donkey but I was having a blast. I realized that in order for people to play for stacks they were going to need much stronger hands. If a guy is willing to stack off to you on the flop or turn when deep, he probably has at the very least a draw to a pretty strong nut hand.

Learning pot control was another great thing about playing PLO. I had to learn how to look at my hand, read the board, and determine how much I needed to bet (or not bet) to set up my river situation. That’s right, I said river, playing cash games required me to move from valuing my hands pre-flop to looking at all the possible outcomes and how many of them would allow me to safely extract value with my hand. With every action, you should re-evaluate the hand and determine how best to protect and grow your stack. Be careful not to fall in love with a hand and make sure your getting the right odds to continue profitably.

If your solid starting hand is now questionable against a solid heart board, you could consider letting it go early and losing 3 bb’s to avoid stacking off for 60 bb’s when you river a set against your opponents flush. However, I prefer to use the power of position and bet sizing to keep the pots small instead, minimizing the cost of getting to the next street. Proceeding this way allows me to control the action on the river as most of the time your facing a bet that is a % of the pot and we can either build that on early streets to maximize extractable value or use our actions to keep the pot small so we can make a reasonable call if we still believe were holding the best hand.  

I also had to recognize hands that would likely end in losing a big pot to a better hand (reverse implied odds). If I made my hand, would it be the first nut hand or would I lose my King-high flush and my stack to the first nut Ace-high flush? Would my set of 7’s run into a set of K’s and result in my stacking-off too light? When you're playing in a tournament setting and you're deep-stacked, be sure to consider the reverse implied odds pre-flop and again when you evaluate each street. Sure you may occasionally win that big hand by slow-playing AA, but in reality you’re probably going to lose more than you win in the long run.

All of these skills can be very useful in tournaments with good structures. As a warning I caution that without understanding and practice they can be disastrous. I absolutely encourage you to spend time developing these skills as you will certainly need them in your arsenal before you can successfully move up. Remember you need more than just the bankroll to continually make money at progressively higher stakes.