Texas Hold ‘Em Poker Tournament

Now how to you win against poker players that don’t properly manage their bankroll? How do you gain an edge against players that play too high?

First of all, you play at a safe low stakes level.

Second of all, you play a high varience strategy.

Poker, while still having many years ahead of itself, is full of players who have already lost it all before. The poker boom has been around. Sure there’s a new boom and new players every year, but mostly, people learn that poker is a dangerous game. Now most people still have not been through mass varience, but regardless, they’re fearful. If players play too high, it is actually CORRECT for them to be conservative since it will cost them much more in the long run by taking on too much risk.

Regardless, it helps to know a near equilibrium strategy that involves pushing all in a lot.

Well, I came up with a few strategies. Yes, they are highly based off of “super system” but I did them in a way where your aim is equilibrium strategies. However, My focus is on shoving all in with sets and draws. The reasoning is that by doing this strategy, you force opponents to call you with more premium draws in order to exploit you. However, if they do that, there is still a counter adjustment.

You know that you will be moving in with a set. You hit a set roughly 12% of the time that you have a pair. If you push with a set, your average chance of winning when called might be something like  90%. it could be much better, or not nearly as good. on a 987 flop with all hearts when you have 77 it’s obviously not going to be good as often as a A27 flop with all different suits.

But if we assume your equity is 90%, we figure out how much you win. We then figure out when you move in on a draw that your chance of winning on average might be 25% (sometimes your opponent will call with a higher draw, other times you will be against a set, and sometimes you will push with a less than premium draw, and sometimes not all outs will be live). Based on these numbers and how many times the pot you shove, we calculate your equity. I assume you push for 5 times the pot. If this is the case, you can push with about twice as many drawing hands as you can without… 2.17777778 times more to be more accurate.

Now there’s an issue. You will flop a draw more often then you flop a set. 12% set, 15% draw. So that means that you should play 80% less drawing hands if you want a 1:1 ratio. We want a 2.1677778 ratio, so we must play 80% less than 2.167778. This is 1.742. So we will want to play 1.742 MORE drawing hands than pairs.

Now, if we’re raising in early position, we may decide that JJ+ and AK are hands we’re willing to rereraise with. This is significant because we don’t want to allow opponents to exploit us by reraising us. So we should raise with 4 times as many hands as JJ+, AK. That’s a total of 12% of all hands we should play.

Now we know that we will play 12% of hands. We will play AK and AKs. Now that makes up 1.2% of the hands we will play. We are left with 10.8%. These will be our drawing hands and pairs.

The equation x+1.742x=10.8 will tell us what percentage of pairs we should play. 10.8/2.742=3.93. So

3.93% of the pairs we play, 66+ makes 4.1% of all hands which is close enough. 3.93*1.74= 6.85% of drawing hands.

If we’re aiming for suited connectors we can play 45s up through KQs, we can play suited 1 gap connectors, 57s through AQs, suited 2 gap connectors 69s-AJs. That is it.

Remember we play 66+ and AKs and AK as well.

So our suited connector draw range is 66+, AK, AJs, KTs+, Q9s+, J8s+, T7s+, 96s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, 45s

Total hand range=12.2% of hands. So that looks great.

Now remember, I explained the problem with this. If our opponents properly adapt and start suspecting that we push with low drawing cards, they should play high drawing cards, and call on higher draws. The solution? Push slightly less often, and do so with premium flushdraws and premium straightdraws. So we will instead adjust our hand ranges.

We will still play 66+ and AKs and not. Additionally, we will still play 6.85% of drawing hands. In this case, all suited aces, All 2 suited cards 9 or higher, and K8s and k7s. Add 66+ and AK and AKs and it’s again 12.2% of hands, which is perfectly fine.

Big flush hand range: 66+, AK, A2s+, K7s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s

Now what will happen is a flop may come T87, our opponent will call with T9 for a pair with a straight draw properly adjusting to how we were playing before, as normally we would be likely to have 56, 67, T9 ourselves, or perhaps 78 or a hand like this. However, now instead we will have J9, and out opponent will need to catch a card. Additionally our opponent may call with a flushdraw expecting us to have like a 6 high flushdraw, when we have adapted and now we are the ones with a higher flushdraw. Now if we have t9 and get a flushdraw, we have to be more cautious if we think our opponents have adapted.

Now we might occasionally slow way down in our aggressiveness and make small bets at the pot. Psychologically we want to dominate our opponents and figure out what we can get away with. If our opponents let us, we will continue to bet at the pot. If our opponents come out firing, we rarely may call looking for a backdoor draw so we can move in on the turn, or we call with a set or made hand and do the same play. We will essentially play for the small pots, by winning the big ones.

Okay, but what if you’re shorter handed? Or if the first 4 players fold. You can play more hands! So I’m not going to do all the work again. I did it once, but I made the mistake of usin the 2.1667 multiplier and not adjusting for the fact that you will flop a draw more often than a set. So it’s a “draw heavy style” to adapt, simply be less likely to push with a draw and a set, and be more likely to slow play and take free cards, as well as just make standard bets instead. This may be an interesting spot to consider just betting the pot instead of moving in with both sets and draws. If your opponent just calls, you will give up on the turn if you miss, unless you have a straight AND flushdraw, OR a set, OR you hit your card on the turn, in which case you will push all in. This will essentially be just as profitable as on the flop. It will keep your chances of winning very high when you’re called, as your straight flushdraws will give you 12-15 outs with a 24-30% chance of winning. Actually, there will be more in the pot, so making this move will be a much more reasonably sized bet. You are more likely to get called but you will have a slightly better chance of winning with your draws, and you will have a much better chance of winning with your sets, and you will be a near lock to win the hand with you flushes and straights. Also, it’s a nice gear change. If your opponents start folding to scare cards, of course you can make this play with AK.

Late position 26.4% of hands. I think 5 players on is fine
22+, At+, KQ, QJ, JT, t9
A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J7s+, T6s+, 96s+, 85s+, 75s+, 64s+, 54s
that’s 26.4% of hands. We can then rereraise with 6.6% of hands.
77+, AJs+, AQ+

This is Doyle Brunson’s super system more or less. The difference is, we will be pushing near “equilibrium” and the main plan is to do so on the flop. This means that there’s nothing our opponents can do. We will expect to break even when we get called, however our opponents can’t always call. If they adapt by making really weak calls, we will have to make one more adjustment which involves playing the best preflop hands, and actually moving all in at equilibrium. We pick up so many small pots that we don’t care about getting called. We expect to break even when we get called, maybe even lose some, but we pick up so many of these pots that it adds up and more than makes up for our losses.

What’s equilibrium though? The quick way to find this is to just figure out the amount our opponent can never fold, and bet all in more than twice that frequncy with the best range of hands that it allows given the flop.

If the flop is 965 we of course would move in with any set, 78 and premium pairs. If we don’t play 78 offsuit, that doesn’t count. However, after that is where it gets fun. We have to keep in mind our opponents range of hands, and our own. Ideally we will have the same hand range, if not we could be making a huge mistake. Now if an all in is 5 times the pot, our opponent can never ever profit if he folds 6 times. He MUST call on the 6th time. this is 1/6 or 16.667% of all hands. We push twice that often, or 33.3% of hands. It HAS to be the TOP 33.333% of hands given the flop. The only way for our opponent to call with a better hand is to adjust and call only with the top 16.66677% of all hands. Additionally, as long as we still have equity in the hand (a chance of winning) when our opponent has a strong enough hand to call (which WILL happen), we can actually push MORE often than with the top 33.333% of hands, and should to reach equilibrium against opponents that either fold too often, or who play optimally. the exact number depends. Of course KNOWING whether or not you have the best 33% of hand range GIVEN your starting hands isn’t easy. It’s not the top 33% of ALL hands, it’s 1/3rd of the hands you enter the pot with. If you only play 10% of all hands, that means you will be pushing with the best 3.3% given the flop. The interesting thing is it should be the best hands in terms of the chance of it winning by the river against the optimal calling range. You would realize that on a 78A flop with 2 hearts that 9T of hearts although not a strong hand right now with ten high is worth pushing because it wins a very high percentage of the time against any calling range. 65 of hearts, 9t of hearts and JT of hearts are also strong candidates. I won’t get into all of the math to find exact equilibrium, but simply understanding where that point is, and understanding that you should push more against opponents who don’t call often enough, and push less often against opponents that call TOO often is enough to give you a pretty significant edge if you do some work in understanding your strength of hand based on the flop.

So the final adjustment is acheiving that equilibrium, which is super tricky, but you can figure it out really if you take the time and learn what you need to. Of course if you can have enough of an understanding so you move all in on the right amount of flops where your opponent can’t exploit you, and you play a solid game overall, and you occasonally mix it up and play a more “small ball” approach, you will do excellent?

If you want to play “small ball” use negreanu’s strategy. It’s essentially a different version of the “super system”. You may call with a backdoor draw when a more visable draw is available. You call with bad pot odds when you have the bluff equity to call. You call with strange draws so you can represent main draws. Sometimes you hit your draw, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you have the hand all along. Basically this works because you are calling often enough to play passive yet prevent your opponent from bluffing you. If your opponent bets the pot, you need to call on the top 50% of all flops given your hand ranges. You may call just to bluff the turn, or fold if your opponent bets. You generally will play passive but you will mix it up and check raise, and reraise every now and then. This is Game theory with a twist. The twist is that often times calling with A9 may be in 50% of your hands, but you know that if your opponent has A8 he won’t continue and will probably fold, so you might as well call with a longshot draw and consider betting the turn if your opponent checks. This allows you to still “keep an opponent honest” while also having drawing outs, and being able to bluff more effectively. It’s more of a psychologicacl edge, however, when you do hit that longshot draw, you get paid off, your implied odds are much greater, and you can actually bluff more effectively with scare cards. Of course, you have to not bluff very often against loose players.

There’s always a way to adapt!

I love poker!

=

Note, there are several other all in concepts like this that you can do. One style is a basic tight strategy where you generally only enter with 99+ and AK and AQs. You basically will push with 99 or better on the flop. You will start off shorter stacked, and raise large. If you are reraised, your opponent is essentially moving all in.  You will want to adapt to your opponent, but generally you can call all in with JJ+ or AKs. These are super powerful hands. You generally are going to be moving in on a very large percentage of the flops. You are looking for the overall strength of your entire strategy, not the actual hand. So if your range of hands pushing in on the flop is strong enough you push. If the flop is QJT and you have 99, that’s still a push. You could easily have AK AQ, QQ, JJ, TT. Since the pot will probably be 8 big blinds and you will have 16 in front, your opponent is not going to be able to counter it. I would not be suprised if pushing 100% of the flops is profitable. These strategies aim more at exploiting the looseness of your opponent more so than the mistakes they make after the flop. By the time you get to the flop you will have such a large edge that you will be able to push over your opponent and there’s no way he can call. Even though your opponent with unpaired cards like AK may hit the flop 1/3rd of the time, you will not only win 2 pots when he folds and only lose 2 when he calls, but you also will gain when you have AA or KK already. Additionally if he calls with ace high you gain even more. You still may hit a set even when he hits, and when he hits and calls, you still can suck out and win the hand. If you have a clear advantage against AK, imagine what advantage you have over other hands with this style? Your opponent is actually an underdog with AK going into the hand vs your range. A very slight one. AKs is a slight favorite preflop. Even so, your opponent would be better off moving in and forcing you to either call and allow him to see all 5 cards, or fold and give up equity.

A variation of that strategy is where you loosen way up in middle and late position, but you’re still fairly tight and you start with fewer chips. You should still push more than half the flops. Starting with like 30 big blinds can also be very powerful. It allows you to still make bets and such, but if the flop and situation is right you can still push.

I have seen Mike Matusow make some brilliant plays in cash games where he reraises out of position and moves all in on the flop with KJ. As it turns out his opponent folded 88, but this was a huge mistake as his opponent could not have asked for a better flop short of flopping a set. Even if his opponent called, Mike would have outs. Additionally, Mike may play that way with aces, kings, queens, jacks. His opponent made the mistake of calling BEFORE the flop, THEN made it worse by folding AFTER. The combination of both was horrendous. You can push for reasonably sized amounts with overcards to the board. Maybe 1.5 times the pot or 2 times the pot, but you better be sure your cards are live. if you have KJ and the board is T high, and you think your opponent will fold AK and AJ (which is a reasonable assumption). you’re much better than if you have AJ as your opponent could have AT.  You cannot be too wreckless or your opponents will probably adapt. just an occasional cautious play when you have a draw, and showing down your hand or even folding at some point proves to your opponent that you may not always be pushing weak hands. This is enough to convince them to be far tighter than they should, allowing you to continue to push and even push in some more marginal situations that are exploitable, but your opponents won’t know that you’re pushing so often.

I personally no longer impliment this strategy. It takes too long to wait for a hand, plus I much prefer the “super system” strategy where I sit in with 50 big blinds. It gets the table juiced up and full of action as people lose their mind and can’t be patient enough and eventually just start moving in and going crazy preflop or on the flop themselves.It’s just more fun for me. However, I certainly would consider playing this style to “switch gears”. It would be very optimal against opponents who start calling me with 67s and hitting a pair on the flop and willing to call my large overbet knowing that I may be on a draw. Additionally, if my opponents start to see me push with pairs, they will probably try to adapt, and again they would have to start calling with AK on an ace high flop. However, most opponents just do not adapt correctly, and will most definately call with top pair against my seemingly reckless style. In the long run though, they will be losing money as when I am ahead, I am ahead by much more than the 90% when I have a set as I estimated in my calculations. Additionally, when I am behind, I still have outs. When I have a pair with a flushdraw, my hand is suddenly much stronger than it would otherwise be against a different opponent..

Now I am going to teach you how to come up with your own strategy that is at equilibrium.

Whether you’re in a tournament or cash game, it’s nice to know how.

Basically you need to figure out your top hands to shove with. To start with assume your opponent has top pair. You will shove with all sets. Now you have to figure out that you will hit a flushdraw 15% of the time and a set 10% of the time. You have to figure out how often you will be shoving all in, and for how many chips. You figure out what you expect to be and you make sure that there is balance. Put yourself in your opponents shoes, you need to shove often enough where if they call they will basically break even. You win what’s in the middle when they don’t call, but when they do call you break even. That’s your edge. Your edge also comes when people call with inferior hands thinking you always have a draw when you don’t, and when your opponent think you always have a draw and folds superior hands. Your opponent will fold when they have a stronger hdraw than yours. This isn’t exactly equilibrium in the same sense of reality in that if your opponent knew your pushing range, they could exploit by calling with ace high flushdraws. You would then have to counter with pushing less with draws and more with sets and also with high pairs. The adjustment that is made depends on your opponent. There are true equilibrium strategies that are much different. To understand these, read “killl everyone” by blair rodman the sequel to “kill phil”.
I will not give you the actual math or an example of using poker stove and I will leave those who truely seek the knowledge and put in the effort to figure it out.

Behold, I rest my holy hands tactifully upon the keybord to greet you all with a post stating what is obvious to me and my superior brain. However, for you peons, I can understand how it may escape you. I pity thee.

For the regular readers, I’m sure that this is all elementary, but even so, sometimes the most obvious things are the only things you really need to know. Unfortunately, those who really need this information, will take years just to comprehaend the awesomeness and simplicity of it. The remaining of you need to ask a friend to read it to you. 

1) In life, as well as poker, being alive is worth more than not. Then again, I only can speak for myself. Unlike many of you lucky donks who stick it in with any two, the fact is that good players can gain chips if they are alive. You don’t even neccesarily have to be better than average to win chips. You can simply identify the good players and stay away from them and accumulate chips from the worst players. Why risk a 40% chance of elimination on a 1500 chip double up if you can win that 900 expected value in chips anyways. The 40% of the extra time you survive, you just have to make an extra 2.5 times that expected value. So make an extra 2250 the times you pass up that early all in and you’ll end up better off anyways. 

Sorry this may not apply to donks who would be lucky enough to be a 60% favorite. However, the reality is, is that most of the time, good players can be around several blind levels later, to the point where a single blind steal is enough to earn the starting stack. So an extra 40% of the time good players willl be making 1500 in chips regularly from a steal…. Hmmm… should I risk a 40% chance of elimination to get 1500, or give myself maybe a 80% chance to get to 15000 in chips where blind steals are worth that 1500 every rotation? If you’re alive, it will be easier for sharks like me to eventually get chips from you gradually over time after you get past the accumulation phase. Ironically this is why at some point, even the very good poker players will have to identify when there is no longer much upside in being alive because everyone they’re playing with is better than them. Even then, there’s STILL an advntage in avoiding volitility because although you may be losing chips or struggling to barely break even and the blinds are rapidly catching up with you, there are also several other players who ahave the same troubles. This is where it gets tricky and requires you to identify just how much you gain from a hand, how much you would gain if you win, how much you risk if you you lose, and then compare it to how well off you would be if you avoided this opportunity together. You have to try to determine an expected CASH value as a result of each decision, then act upon it. 

2) The better you are, the more valuable getting more chips is. Although this runs counter to #1, this is not in contridiction to #1,rather it is actually a compliment to it at times. The survival is worth more for experience players because they can get more chips, and if they are to survive, they must use their survival to get more chips. If they are unable to do so, their survival doesn’t have the same value. While some may use this as reason to justify risking elimination, many of the elite players know that the way to get more chips is to save themselves major losses of chips that will prevent them from being able to gain chips in the future. However, it does mean that the great players will have to maximize the value they get out of hands, without over doing it. There are certainly situations out side of the norm where over emphasizing survival is correct for the great player. There are other times when a good player is handcuffed to only waiting for cards and more chips are needed. The trick is knowing the situation, the format of the tournament and how the players aroud you play, and where the advantage is. In some situations you may absolutely need to be able to make continuation bets, feeler bets, and even feeler reraises to maximize earnings. Depending on how much more you gain from being able to make this move, you may want to seemingly take irrational risks in hopes of gaining greater utility. Imagine that a player with 20 big blinds is forced to wait and play all in or fold because he’s at an aggressive table. Imagine if with 30 big blinds he could make a consistent and regular resteal so that his chipstack steadily increased ahead of the blinds so that he would actually not have to be at risk the rest of the tournament. It would be worth it to seize this opportunity and take a chance, even on a 40% chance of winning if called to move all in on someone. If you lose, you’re out, but if you win, you have dramatically larger odds of winning the tournament. If you fold and wait your odds of being forced to be all in isn’t good anyways, and if you wait too long, the blinds raise and you may never be able to get back to 30 big blinds without taking more risk overall, an  thus will be forced all in multiple times. Just like in #1, you have to measure what you can gain now plus what you will gain in every other hand after this one compared to what you gain by giving up. But the numbers often dramatically change. A tournament is  result of all of it’s hands and if the probability is good for you to survive and accumulate chips, it’s worth a lot more than a situation where your reward is greater up front, but your chances of seeing profitable opportunities in the future are low. The same is true where being able to accumulate chips is worth a risk if the amount you are able to accumulate because of that risk is significantly greater than what you gain if you lose because of the succession or the larger edge you gain AFTER that hand. 

If the equation was 

$=(P*EV)0+(P*EV)1+(P*EV)2+(P*EV)3 …  …(P*EV)99, etc 

where the number represended the number of hands from nownext hand, $=money won which can be expressed by an equation that depends upon the payout structure and survival) P=probability of survival and EV=expected value, You can play around with it and realize that if winning gives you a greater ev fro hand 2 through 99 that it would be worth taking a slightly negative or in some cases even a dramatically negative EV in order to get that large edge. On the other hand, it can work in reverse where if your EV is naturally going to increase over time anyways because you have an edge, taking what is a dramatcially higher EV at risk of elimination means that if you have a 20% risk of elimination your EV for hands 2 through the final hand goes down by 20%. So if you fold a hand, your future EV of every hand won’t really change, but your probability of surviving also remains the same. You retain the full value of that EV because P remains at 1 and only starts to decay when you approach blind off time. 

1 and 2 aren’t a contridiction, they work within the same equation. If survival keeps probability high, it also keeps your $ high. If you can get more chips to increase your future probability it ccan helpas well. 

This is a very sensative equation that changes and can only be estimated based upon your own ability to read the situation. For example, you may move tables and you might only make it to 20 handsbefore the equation dramatically changes. You could try to estimate it for the whole tournament, but you may move from the hardest to the easiest table and completely change your perception on your ability to win hands in the future. 

Getting a big stack is valuable more so to good players than bad, and guys like Johnny Chan will simply be able to do so much more with a big stack that it’s just an unfair advantage. His overall EV in a tournament if he starts with a stack 3 times the size of his opponents who start out somewhat short stacked and medium stacked at half the amount is so much better than 3 tmies more valuable because he will use his chips to exploit his edge over the entire tournament. 

 That doesn’t mean it’s worth sacrificing your tournament life or a significant portion of your stack to get that big stack, although in certain situations it may be right to do so in order to gun for the win, or use your extra chips to get much more that you wouldn’t have access to as a short stack. So there are exceptions to every rule: at times, you will need to overdo it simply because there is more value in having a big stack than your survival, but this is rare, although some players like John Phan and Men Nguyen just skip right to that part fairly early on. 

To give you an example of how you migth best keep both #1 and #2 working together, risk more chips early, but risk elimination less often. Play slightly larger pots in terms of big blinds knowing that it represents a smaller portion of your stack, but get involved when you don’t think you will have to risk TOO much of your chips. If you have an 80% chance of winning, if possible you want to risk roughly 60% of your chips or less to maximize long term growth so that you don’t risk elimination or dramatic losses that make coming back from a short stack require too much risk to expect to hanle. However, if the blind structure is such that you will be forced to be all in at some point, you may be better doing it now if it increases your overall advantage. 

3)The target amount to risk in a tournament is slightly less than the Kelly Criterion. In other words, if you are 80% to win, under no circumstance should you ever risk 80% of your stack… think about it… if you did you will lose once out of 5 times. If you drop down to 20% your initial stack, it would take 5 bets at 80% of your stack to get back to even. Guess what, you expect to lose one of these. If you get lucky and don’t, just when you get ahead, you’ll drop down, and you will never be able to get ahead. You’ll be spinning your wheels in place and the faster you press on the accelerater, the deeper the hole you dig for yoruself. It’s entirely possible that a large loss will put you in a position you can never recover from without taking on even greater risks. Now tournaments are full of varience, and there certainly will be some periods of time where you just have to accept that, however ideally youwant to avoid taking on risks until it’s very late in the tournament if possible. That way, a good swing of luck can put you in a position to win in a few amount of hands. Compare this to early on in a tournament where an early swing means very little unless you are able to utilize a psychological edge and having a larger stack is one of your strengths to such a degree that you can take control. If you keep your varience somewhat low until you near when it will be forced to be large, and you are able to take coinflips with a larger amount of chips, you could potentially do much more. 

Consider 2 secnearios. 

Scenario 1 you double up early 60 times out of 100 and you basically win small low varience pots up to 11500 after that. 

Scenario 2 you get dealt the same hands in the same situations, but this time you pass up the first double up and accumulate to 10,000 chips. Now 11500 you have roughly 60% of the time which is very good in terms of survival goes, maybe there’s a 10% chance after you survive that you don’t make it so 60% of that 10%(as you won’t make it the other 40 is 6%. so maybe you have a 54% chance of getting to 11500, and a 90% chance of getting to 10,000.) Now even at this point, it still means very little unless you are able to do something with it. , but it seems pretty obvious that the 90% of 10,000 is worth a lot more than 11500. On the other hand, if the double up will likely lead you to a situation where every single hand you  play has a psychological edge and you can steal 20% of more pots, now your 11500 is worth 20% more or 13800. Now 60% of 13,800 still isn’t as much as 90% of 10,000 but things don’t always work out so simple. In fact, the 13800 may be better IF the person with 10,000 is forced to go into “all in or fold” mode, while the 13800 scenario the person can continue to steal blinds which are now maybe at 150/300. If this continues as the blinds go higher and the person who had 10,000 is stuck as the blind structure has them in quicksand, while the person with 13800 is just walking all over them, soon the person with 10,000 maybe expect to be at around 10,000 with 300/600 blinds and the person with 13800 is now at 16,000 with 300/600 blinds. But again its’ still difficult to say who is better off. If for example the person with 10,000 cashes, he instantly might make double his buy in back or a 100% return. Remember he’s doing this nearly 90% of the time. Now the person who now has 16,000 might only be alive 54% of the time so as of right now the person with 10,000 ends up with a higher ROI IF the person with 16,000 isn’t able to capitalize off of it. Now the person with 10,000 may start to take more risks. Risks that the person with 16,000 wouldn’t dream of taking and it wouldn’t make sense to. Now maybe the person with 10,000 does a resteal all in which risks elimination 10% of the time, but gets him 900 in blinds, 500 in antes, and 1800 from the guys raise if he folds. If the guy calls, the guy still has some odds to win, maybe 33%. But he doesn’t expect to be called so overall his risk is maybe 10% elimination, but his upside is 3200. He can opt for the more volitile strategy. If he’s called he’ll still end up with significantly more chips 33% of the time, but he’ll usually end up winning. If  he loses he still cashed. So now maybe he gets in a better position to win. sure, person who has 16,000 in chips could reraise, but he’ll be committing 1/3rd of his chips and it will have to be all in. I would say their probability of elimination is roughly the same, but the thing is the person with 16,00 may not be ready to jeopordize his position. or what if the person with 10,000 is faced in a situation where the whole table has put in 1800 and the small blind has pushed all in for 100,000 which has everyone covered. He has AA. Now the person with 16,000 has the exact same situation, but to the person with 10,000 he goes from 10,000 to 37000. To the person with 16,000 he goes from 16,000 to 50,000. This would seem like a huge advantage to the person with 16,000 but actually it’s not, and even more so if it was instead a situation where the hand was weaker than AA due to the insane amount of pot odds that the person with 10,000 gets compared to the person with 16,000. Nevertheless we can now look at it like this.

Person A cashes 90% of the time, then risks a 20% of elimination. This means that 72% of the time he ends up with 38,000.

Person B cashes 54% of the time, then risks 20% of elimination that means that 43.2% of the time he ends up with 50,000.

Who would you rather be?

In terms of overall chips 72% of 32,000 is 23,040 vs 43.2% of 50,000 is 21,600. Additionally person A is already going to have a very high win rate, low varience and high percentage chance of cashing. Person B may have a better chance of winning once he gets to 50,000 but ultimately the edge he has with more chips won’t last forever as morre people get more chips

This can go back and forth all you want in hypotheticals, but you can see what really matters is the skill and what people are able to do with the opportunities they create.

3) Just because being alive is valuable, doesn’t mean you should wait for aces. Sorry, but if you are paying more in blinds per rotation than you are gaining, you might as well just get your money in with AK, or just not play in tournaments. If your hand figures to be better than your opponents distribution of hands, you should play it if you can do so relatively safely. The quickest way to guess this is to take 1 and divide it by the number of players including yourself. That’s the top percentage of hands that 1 person is expected to get. If your hand is in that top % range, play it. If you get called a lot and opponents are entering a lot of pots, you should be able to exploit a greater edge postflop, or else play bingo. Therefore if need be, you can tighten up preflop even more, knowing that you will make up for it after the flop and play larger pots while still keeping them small enough. This is generally advized in tournaments, especially low buy ins as many players generally play too many hands, and get too carried away after the flop. However, with a deep stack, you also can play a lot more cheap flops looking to hit a monster flop as well. Just be advized that if you figure out which hand to play based on implied odds, you are making a mistake. The real thing to calculate is the Kelly Criterion based on the chance you hit, and use your R in the formula as the payout you get if you hit. If you call with 22 with a 12% chance of hitting a set knowing you’ll get paid off 10:1, you should be risking less than 3% of your stack to make the call. In a 3 big blind raise, that represents you needing 100 big blinds. This is not entirely correct if you are able to bluff profitably, and/or if you can check it down and occasionally win, but still emphasizes the issue most people ignore which is risk management.  Also if your entire system of play allows you to pick up chips in other ways to cover your losses, then risking more than 3% may be acceptable, but is generally not advized. Remember you might hit and not get paid off, nothing is a sure thing. You also may hit and your opponent may hit better. Generally though, at a bare minimum you should have a strategy that allows you to break even with the blinds and maintain your chipstack while you wait for aces, while still avoiding any situation where you have to risk beyond the Kelly Criterion. In reality, you cannot do this by simply maintaining chips, so you should be growing your chipstack. 

4) Until you know otherwise, you should usually assume you are beat if you are raised. If you are worried about being exploited, you can always rereraise with the top 25% of hnds you raise with. In other words, if you raise, you can safely fold 3 times, reraise on the 4th and make everything you lost plus potentially also gain the blinds (assuming a 3x your bet raise). If your opponents are only raising with the upper half of the hands YOU raise with, you need a better hand then them…. Since you should raise with the upper half they raise with, that makes 25% a very good number. If you think your opponents are not raising you much at all, you want to reraise a much lower percentage of the time. There is math to exploit this as well, but you need to be able to know how often your opponent raises to do this. To keep things simple, raising with 1/4th of the hands an optimal person would raise with in that situation keeps things balancedand usually is correct. 

5) Due to the post flop advantage of position, you should raise with slightly fewer hands in early position, especially if you’ll get called, and more hands in late position, especially if you won’t get reraised. However, due to opponents assuming early position raisers are stronger, and players in early position folding low cards while playing high cards, the optimal raising strategy often works just fine as is. 

6)If you can win a tournament without ever being all in, why would you take on any risk of elimination? You shouldn’t if you don’t have to. The reality is you PROBABLY WILL have to, and you need to understand at what point and how often. This is probably one of the greatest advantages you can gain, simply by knowing yourself and how to respond. If the average person gained 2 big blinds per rotation, you could simply use a spreadsheet to figure out at what point the 1000 players would be down to 150. Using rough estimations will allow you to decide when the bubble bursts, when the final table will occur, and based on that, how many times you need to be all in… Now anyone with a calculator and understanding of cards can figure out that if there’s 220 hands that you can play before you’re all in, and you need to be all in twice to win, that you should only be all in with aces or kings twice on average. However, anyone can also see that a double up with 1500 in chips will not really impact the number of hands left that you can survive, when you realize that before the tournament is over that it will cost you 2250 just to fold 10 hands. Therefore, you will need to be willing to make adjustments as the tournament goes. If 110 hands go by and you still have not gotten aces or kings, then aces or kings should come at least once within the next hand. However, if you need to double up twice, then QQ or JJ needs to be added. However, don’t forget about the fact that you may hit a set or flush or another big hand AFTER the flop, and you might be able to find a better spot after the flop. Plus the combination of being able to hit a set OR get AA or KK mand the fact thatthe more chips you have when you double up, the better, makes waiting for a better hand asfor awhile very advantagous, even if it means getting it all in with a smaller edge. 

7) Bluffing is usually for idiots that can’t play poker. In the real world, only the bluffs get shown on TV, and even so, they really aren’t that many bluffs. Once you get good at extracting value and controlling pot sizes, and exploiting weak opponents you will see that the only people that would need to bluff are those that can’t play poker. Sure, if you can’t win without bluffing, then you need to bluff, but if you’re playing at 12 minute blind intervals online, or even 10, bluffing is rarely needed. 

After much testing and debate, my conclusion is that there are only a few moves needed… The blind steal, the resteal, and the isolation/steal over limpers ith position. The “all in” is eventually needed, but only at about 10 big blinds. I have thought of all the moves known, and in very rare instaces, I may decide some tricky play to get back at my opponent. I may do a rereraise to counter an aggressive restealer who doesn’t let me raise, but I will do it so rarely that I am essentially only doing slightly better than breaking even. 

The blind steal is simple, raise 2.5-3.5 big blinds. Early in the tournament you can play with 4 and 5 big blind raises to build a big, yet manageble pot against loose players when you have the best hand. The isolation raise is simple. After a limper or two, raise the size of the pot or maybe twice the potsize. You don’t need to have much of a hand, just a recognition that your opponents are playing too many hands, and a belief that they are too weak before and after the flop. If you believe them to be limp folder, and even if they call be the check folder, this play is great. Make that big raise and try to take it down. If you do great, if you don’t, you probably just want to check unless you hit, but you should make this play after you have a feel for how your opponents play. 

The resteal should not be all in. It can be; however, I have posted more consistent results and better results by avoiding it, simply because people tend not to fold enough to make the play work. If you are going to reraise all in, make sure you have a high probability of having the best hand. Assume your opponent raises with what he/she believes to be the best hand, and move in with the upper 50% of their range i you must. The resteal should not risk more than 35% of your stack. Actually, probably not more than 20%. If you do, and your opponent is aggressive, you are just as well off if you have an afful hand, so that if your opponent moves all in, you can fold 

9) If you play well, and end up with a big stack, you need to deny other players the propper “kelly” to call, provided you don’t risk more than maybe 10% of your stack. This is how you can grow your stack significantly and appear by others to be a “luckbox” If you steal like crazy, and finally someone calls, they might win, but then you’ll continue to steal like crazy, and then they might win again. As long as you shut down when your opponents have too many chips, or when you no longer have a huge stack, you will be able to continue this, stealing a lot of blinds, forcing opponents to basically risk their tournament life while you continue to make back what you lost or close to it. Eventually you will get in a situation where you are at a table and you get lucky with the worst of hands, and you knock them out. They will think that you’re lucky, but the truth is, in the long run, they may not ever have a chance to come back from it, and it is unlikely that they’ll win consecutively enough to take you out. This image will help you against player who DO have enough chips to hurt you, as they will not want to reraise you, because they know that you are willing to call and they may be superstious. A big stack can become HUGE, and a chip lead, can become chip domination if you take control at the right moment. Especially if this occurs after he antes and after a major blind/ante increase. 

10) Any “moves” you do make, must be made when you have a huge stack, and they are primarily done with enough balance to “advertise” so that you can get action when you have a hand… In other words, you may move your opponent in for 4 times the pot, on a bluff, but more than 80% of the time, you should actually have a hand there. The propper math can balance the situation out so that you are making mathematically sound decisions even if your estimations are slightly off, you still could be profitable, especially if your opponents guess and are wrong. 

11) Always remember, there are players you will never be better than, such as myself. Always be responsible.