Poker Tournament Strategy Makeover
With so many television shows these days focusing on some kind of makeover - be it clothing, housing, career or whatever else, it may be time to take the same lesson and apply a makeover to your online poker tournament strategy.
Why would you want to do this? Well you may be one of the following predicaments that demands analysis of your overall strategy. Your ROI for tournament play has always been in the negative. You tend to tilt out of tournaments even the times when you have built a big stack. You have never reached a final table. You rarely make it past the first hour of play.
If some of these issues have been going over in your head after getting eliminated from a tournament, especially if they occur frequently, then you just might be primed for a poker tournament strategy makeover.
First of all don’t feel bad that you are losing. No sense in getting yourself down about it. You should actually feel quite good about yourself that you are concerned enough to be recognizing a problem and considering some sort of redirection. Usually a good poker book can go a long way in getting your mind straight but I find, overall that the one thing that can get you back to solid play, is simply playing book tight poker.
Tournament poker is often about giving action to get action but that really only applies, at least successfully to higher buy-in events. If you play online, some of the best ROI tournaments happen regularly, even hourly in the $2, $5 and $10 entry fee tournaments.
This is where a tight-aggressive playing style will reap the most benefits as there are many willing opponents that will offer up their stack playing top pair, middle pair, or even draws with their whole stack in the wrong stage of a tournament. Sit and wait. Play tight. The monkeys will come to you and get your game back on track. Furthermore, decisions are so much easier when you know you are going into a hand ahead of your opponent, and that will lead to your poker tournament makeover.
MzoneReport: The Game Critical Intersect
Knowing your MZone in a poker tournament is going to give you an advantage over your opponents, but it won’t save you from bad beats, better players, and mental errors on your part. However, there is a way that (knowing) your MZone can help you make better decisions that will ease your decision making process and thus your second guessing.
The concept is called the Game Critical Intersect or GCI for short. What the GCI does for your game is somewhat like having a little coach sitting behind you and telling you if you should be involved in a hand or not. It can eliminate huge losses from bluffs that don’t work, get you off of dangerous boards, and make you more sensitive to position plays. Not only that, the GCI can make your all in decisions much easier especially when you are getting near the money.
Here is how it works. There are five color zones of M you can have and I like to divide them between two good mzones that are named yellow and green, and 2 weak mzones that are named red and orange.
Being in one of the good mzones of yellow and green you have the ability to have a more flexible game allowing you to make moves at pots, steal blinds, and see lots of hands in late position for cheap. This is because your ratio of stack to the blinds and antes are at least comfortable at this point. We can call this situation a PLUS stack, where you are likely above the average stack size of the tournament.
If however you happen to be red or orange mzoned, you don’t have much, if any of that kind of flexibility. Chances are you are already looking for a hand to go all in and double up in a heads up confrontation. This we can call a MINUS stack where you are likely below the average stack size of the tournament.
The difference between these two stack situations is that very often you may be involved in a hand that threatens your position in the tournament in to becoming a MINUS stack where you started the hand in a PLUS stack situation. In such a hand then, you are in a GCI moment, and the type of hands you need here, are the nuts, or very close to it. In other words, as your stack depletes in a tournament, the more your game should open up. You would easily let your red or orange stack ride on top pair, but with a PLUS stack you want more than that if it means a huge hit to your tournament hopes.
This is just one of the ways knowing your mzone allows for better decision making and adds a clear advantage to your game strategies.
MZone Report - The Five Stages of a Tournament
You may be confused about this title.
After all the likes of Harrington, Gordon, Hellmuth, Duke, and even Vorhaus have reinforced through numerous writings the idea that there are three stages to a tournament. Maybe they believe that, but I really think they may be holding back the goods. I will tell you some of the goods right here and now. Three stages to a tournament is far too simplistic and none of these writers really play by that belief either, whether they believe it or not.
Here are the stages for online poker. See if you can recognize them and judge for yourself if they should be thought of as segments on their own.
Early stage. This is a no-brainer, but with most online poker tournaments it can usually be defined as the first hour of play. In the tournament I enter that’s about four blind levels. In that first hour you are going to get to look at about 70, maybe even 100 hands played. It’s also the level that will see about half the field eliminated. Most of them will be monkeys and the ones who didn’t survive the all-ins against monkeys. So sad. Oh well.
The Middle Stage is called just that, because you have reached and surpassed the middle of the field and the real chip-up or get out stage begins here. How you emerge from this stage into the next will determine a lot about your strategy for the rest of the tournament. Now we get down to about 25% to 40% of the field.
Near The Money Stage or NTM. Oh, Dan and Phil didn’t mention this stage did they? No bother, it didn’t really matter did it? Of course I am poking fun at them. It is actually a critical stage because many players have a lot of things on their mind in this stage - most of them having to do with money. There is quite a shift in thinking when real money is on the line. Many players’ bankrolls are going to be their mind as well, and this creates a different playing environment. Some will tighten, some will loosen, and some will become prone to error and over betting. For a lot of fresh players, this is the most stressful part of the tournament.
In The Money or ITM. Ok now a lot of stress has been alleviated but oddly a new “anxiety” has entered the game as bankroll considerations are less of a burden now. The thing is, just inside the money, really isn’t that great, especially if you paid full pop to get in, rather than a satellite. This anxiety emanates from decisions about advancing deeper into the money. ITM can be a drawn out segment involving many difficult decisions. It is here where bad beats are feared most because a double may assure you of a final table appearance and possibly serious cash. These are often the bad beats that are most talked about too. On the other hand if you are orange or red mzoned in this stage, a go for it attitude against certain players may take a lot of limp-money pots which by this time are substantial.
Final Table. The prize structure is really important here and is one of the main factors in deciding to play a hand or not. In other words, the value of your hole cards becomes stronger here and how you play preflop may win this tournament for you, as many more hands are likely to be determined way before the river. The top three usually get the bulk of the cash so players really have chops set on that, but other short stacks may just be happy to have made the final table and could very well be playing relaxed and win some hands with sub-par holding. There aren’t going to be many (any) weak players at this stage no matter what your buy-in, so the final table often turns into a game of cunning and will.
Next time you play a multi-table tournament online, don’t forget to divide by five.