More On LHE Tournaments
Mike Schneider is a Lead Instructor at CardRunners.com and was the winner of the PartyPoker Million V for $1M USD.
After reading Ian's thoughts on LHE tournaments, I am writing this article to touch upon what ways my thoughts differ from his on limit holdem tournament strategy.
In today's LHE tourney structures, to me the first three hours are some of the most important of the entire tournament. They are the hours that either let you become a potential force in the tourney or else quickly send you to the rail so you can be well-rested for the next day's tournament (or cash games).
My entire mindset, presented as an analogy, would be like thinking about if you were storming into a dark house in pursuit of a dangerous, armed convict. You'd rather enter the house with 5 bullets loaded into your gun than 2, right? It's my goal to make it so by the 4th hour, if I'm not bust, that I have several bullets loaded into my gun. By the 4th hour, the people who have 5BBs left have, in essence, two hands left to raise preflop (two bullets). I don't want that. I want several chances to continue accumulating while also being able to withstand hits in case I miss.
This brings me to my second large thought regarding LHE tournaments: your table draw is HUGELY important. For this non-stop attacking strategy to be effective, you need your table draw to be a tight table. I have had great success in LHE tournaments the times I get tight tables, and I succeed by running it over. Brandon Wong, who finished 2nd, 10th, and 16th in the three 2007 WSOP LHE events, agrees with the strategy of essentially playing like a preflop maniac, doing a ton of continuation bets, and once played back at finally playing poker and making your postflop decisions (oftentimes folding since you usually won't have much).
So now, assuming you get a tight table draw, how loose is loose enough? I will open with probably close to half my hands from just about any position. If someone else is opening with what I'm guessing is a range larger than Sklansky's preflop charts suggest to do in 10 handed games, I will 3-bet those guys very lightly too. I will keep this up until someone plays back at me. Once someone plays back at me, I will continue doing this STILL.
If anyone begins to consistently play back at me, I will then and only then begin to tighten up and hope to catch a monster to punish the person(s) who is playing back at me. In my experience though, especially in $1000+ buy in LHE tourneys, the majority of the players are playing at a level where they know how to play tight, but they don't know how to deviate from it. Most the opposition is basically waiting for primo cards, or else sitting around folding and muttering about how the first four levels of LHE tourneys are worthless and should be eliminated.
Alright, lets say that you do succeed at getting 2x the average stack as you head into the 4th hour. Your strategy does not change at all; the only difference is that now half the table is getting to the stage where they're "picking" their hand to take a stand with. This means you'll probably succeed at stealing the blinds a couple times an orbit and then end up taking a flop once or twice versus an opponent. The goal here is for the blind steals to keep you afloat and pay for the times you raise and don't steal, so the times you do end up seeing a flop you're basically freerolling with your chips from the blind steals, since even though you're going to be an underdog against the opponent's range, you're still going to end up winning the hand sometimes (and you'll often fold on the flop or turn the times you don't hit).
It's pretty easy math: steal twice, and you're +1.5BBs. Raise once and get three-bet by someone, call, check/fold. You've broken even. Sometimes you don't check-fold, and you end up winning the pot. Sometimes you're lucky enough to get played back at when you do actually have a legit holding, and you win much larger pots than the guy that has been folding 50 minutes straight and now finally raises UTG+1 with his aces and then moans loudly when everyone folds and all he gets out of it is .75 BB.
By the 4th or 5th hours, 2/3 of the table is so small stacked that they're folding everything but huge holdings, and because of your hard work and diligence in the first three hours, you continually chip-up through constant, unrelenting blind steals (while keeping tabs on your image and others' images… You may throw away 85 suited UTG+2, for instance, if you've raised from there the past two times and the BB has defended both times and then played tough postflop).
The quick summary for the fourth hour and on is for you to continue to attack (as already described plenty) while applying the idea of only occasionally backing down if/when people begin to consistently play back at you.
So then, lets say you end up with a table draw that isn't so tight. What's that mean for you? It stinks. Now you're in no man's land and at the mercy of the card gods, because now you're treating this whole dilemma like a cash game, and basically playing fairly tight, though still loose enough to give yourself a shot at hitting a few big pots and accumulating some chips by the 4th hour. On these looser tables, though, you're much more at the whim of how the cards fall, since you're going to need to make some big hands to get yourself into a position to have a shot.
By applying some of what I say and what Ian has said and seeing what you're most comfortable with, you should be on the road towards LHE tournament success.
