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May 4, 2004
Worst Article Ever
I think I have finally found the worst internet article on poker tournament strategy of all time. It is at pokersavvy.com, which in my opinion should be called pokeradvicewrittenbypeoplewhohavenofuckingclue.com. Here is the first quote, which heads off page 2 of the article and was my first indication that I was reading some seriously useless garbage.
First, you should put aside any notion that you're playing to win the tournament. By focusing on winning -- finishing first -- you aim at an unnecessarily small target. If, however, your goal is to make it into the money, your target is much larger and considerably easier to hit.
Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr WRONG! There are exactly 3 pieces of useful information in T.J. Cloutier’s book on tournaments, and one of them is that your goal in a tournament is to finish in top 3 because that is where the money is. Actually since T.J. wrote that book tournament payout structure has been greatly flattened, so now it may be more advisable to say top 4 or 5, but that is beside the point. Let’s take the Sunday $215 on Party Poker as an example. Last week 130 spots (out of about 1500 players) paid, with first being $63.2k. Bottom money was just over $300, meaning you would profit about $100 each time you hit that. How many times do you have to hit bottom money to equal one first place? 630. Lets say that you average finishing middle money, 60th place or so. That pays $1100, for a $900 profit. Now to equal $63k you would have to hit the money 70 times. That means you would have to do it every single weekend for a year and a half (impossible) if you averaged making middle money.
The “I just want to make the money” philosophy is one of the worst attributes plaguing the idiots on Party Poker. It is so funny how it takes forever for the 10 or 20 people just before the money to get knocked out, but once you are in the money 50 people will drop out in 15 minutes. I don’t think I have ever hit the money in a Party Poker tournament and not gotten at least half way to the final table because people just get knocked out so quickly.
In part 2 the clueless author goes on to say that you should avoid tough decisions in the early levels of a tournament. You should in reality just learn to make the correct decisions in tough situations. He lumps all pairs between 22-JJ in the same category, saying they are easy to play when you flop a set and easy to get away from when you don’t. Anybody who thinks that the top few pairs in that group or QQ are easy to play thinks so because they have no idea how to play them. JJ and QQ are often the toughest hands to play in a tournament, because you have such a good hand, but not a great one. Especially given the propensity to shove with anything AJ or better that people on Party possess, hands like JJ can get very tricky. He then continues with:
If you find yourself below 500 in the first 4 levels, your only goal is to double up. That means that you are only going to make plays where you double up or bust. Of the three options available to you pre-flop, calling is the least desirable. Why? Because you are not in the "let's see a flop" mode. If you waste valuable chips on calls where you hope to see the flop, you are wasting equity. Doubling up from 300 is significantly less meaningful than doubling from 500. Unless you hold A-A or K-K and your intention is to trap an opponent, calling isn't an option.
Wrong again. In the first level suppose you are down to 500 chips (big blind 15 chips) and you have 66 on the button with many limpers. What do you do? Also there is nothing wrong with stealing small pots when you are low, in fact it is more meaningful than when you have a big stack. 500 in the early stages of a tournament online is not that small of a stack, in fact it is somewhere between 10 and 30 big blinds on Party. If you found yourself in a tournament with 2 tables left and a stack equal to 30 big blinds you should be ecstatic. Why are you so anxious to double or go bust in the early rounds with the same stack? Ready for more misinformation? Here we go.
Going all-in will be your first choice on most playable hands. You are going to shove your stack into the pot with just about any pair. But use common sense. There are situations where you might exercise caution. An example would be if you held 7-7 and the action before you is a raise and a re-raise all-in. Faced with this action, you might want to think about looking for another spot.
What about raising? Here is where you are going to find a lot of controversy. You can go ahead and raise with medium pairs, or even A-K if the blinds are still at 10/15 and your stack is close to 500. But in most situations where you make any raise in the first level, you are going to get called. If your raise gets called, the majority of the time, the player is calling to see the flop. Why give opponents what they want? What if they are calling to see the flop, and you are raising to double up? If you only raise, you are giving them what they want. If you move all-in, you are dictating the terms. You will be surprised at how often bad players will bend to your strategy -- especially in the first four levels.
Yes this is a great idea, just shove in the early rounds with hands like 7 7, that way if nobody has you beat you steal the $25 in blinds, but if somebody has you beat you go all in as a 4.5-1 underdog. The best you can really hope for in this situation is a coin flip, and routinely taking 50% shots at getting knocked out is a great way to lose in tournaments. Sometimes you do have to go all in as an underdog or even money, but when a situation where you have a 500 stack with blinds of 10 and 20 is not one of them.
This is perhaps the greatest mistake I see on Party on a regular basis, people just shoving in situations where their opponents cannot make a mistake. They do silly things like shove under the gun with JJ or AQ for 30 times the big blind, where they will either win a small amount, coin flip for their stack, or be a huge favorite to lose it all. Hold’em is a flop game. Seek to outplay your opponents there, not shove it all in and hope nobody has a better hand.
There are numerous more things I could say about this article, but to do so would mean giving away more good advice than I already have. I don’t get paid to give away useful poker concepts. I get paid for being able to employ them more frequently than others. I had serious hesitations about posting this at all because there are a few key concepts which I think very few people on Party (including the author of this article) just don’t comprehend, but I just cannot tolerate these idiots writing articles on topics about which they have no clue.
I am giving serious consideration to writing a book on internet poker, which would cover many things that the few books already available on the topic either don’t cover or are inaccurate on. The problem is I do not think that I could make enough money off of it to be worth my time given that I have no name recognition. Sure I could write on the cover that I made 6 figures in my first year of online poker (and truthfully too) while working an average of 25 hours a week (what a lazy bum I am), but anyone could just say that so to the average person that may not be a great selling point. I could maybe write the book and send it to Two Plus Two or something, but I have heard that authors like me would make $5 of each copy sold. Even if I were lucky enough to sell a couple thousand copies that wouldn’t amount to enough to compensate me for the time spent on it.
I also fear that it might make the games tougher, though I suppose the only way it would do that is if a very large amount of people read the book, in which case I would make enough off of the book not to care. I also don’t know how much more I will even be playing online. I can’t imagine more than another year, except for maybe the higher limits where people don’t need my book anyway.
Posted by themaroon at May 4, 2004 11:59 AM
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Comments
I think you are overly critical of this article. Your counter arguments seem only to discredit parts of the stratagy, but from their you make the leap to discredit the whole thing becuase of one small disagreement. And you act as though the article is telling you to always go all in on any pair. When in actuality the article is saying if you find yourself down to 500 chips in the opening rounds you better think about risking them on a pair to double up. With a low stack you are likely to draw afew calls from people with not so great but playable hands. I've come back from big chip defficets late in a tourney by simpley waiting for my cards, or as the author put it, not wasteing chips to see a flop for a so-so hand. Everytime you call to see a flop with a low stack of chips and not so great cards, not only are going to see less hands if you don't connect. Now I agree that what this person considers "good" or playable cards, might be a little out of whack but the basic stratagey i think is a sound one. With a low stack wait for your hands then go all in when you get it...I think that is a far better choice than calling everything until you connect and then going all in with a smaller stack.. if you even connect at all... I'd rather ante and/or blind arround (this way you see WAY more hands) and wait for something strong to pounce on. it's a tough call you have to ask yourself "am I going to see a better hand than this before I go out on blinds?" if you think no then you should bet it all, if you think yes then hold on. but that's where the guessing game comes in.
Posted by: Andrew at August 1, 2006 7:02 PM