Texas Hold ‘Em Poker Tournament

The IRC formula tells you how many hands you can wait for to be all in, and as a result the best possible hand you can expect based on your skill.  Harrington made “M” popular, Snyder introduced “True M” and now this is more of an “adjusted M”.

Take the patience factor spreadsheet to start with. This will give you a ‘pure blindoff time’ estimation. So fill that out and you will get an estimation if you play no hand. This will tell you how long you can wait until you blind off completely. Now I have filled out a standard online tournament I play in and it has a blindoff time of about 90 minutes. Now is this real? does this mean I only get 90 minutes before I blind down completely? Yes and no. For an autofolder, that may be about right. So if you only played an “all in or fold” game, and only had to go all in once, with about 90 minutes, and about 90 hands left at 1 minute per hand, you might see AQ, AK, JJ, QQ, KK, or AA 3 times. So you could wait for one of these hands, and simply hope that you win with it.  In reality though, good players will be able to come up with a steal every now and then. There comes a certain point when a player cannot steal without risking his tournament life, so although hypothetically 1 steal per rotation is enough to stay afloat at your starting stack, in reality it’s not.

So the real “adjusted M” is based on how much you expect to win on “low risk” pots. If you can never risk more than 25% of your stack, and continue to accumulate chips so that you always have 40 big blinds, you can win the tournament without ever being all in. In reality this isn’t likely either. So you have to be honest about your “skill” and figure out ROUGHLY how much you gain.

Make a new spreadsheet with the poker tournament IRC formula. Enter small blinds, big blinds, and antes and fill it out. Then at the top type “skill factor” and put in a number such as “1″ (a 1 indicates you make 1 steal or 1 “M” per rotation). Then at the top also type in “starting stack”. Then to the right of the blinds, you need to write an equation. Take the small blind plus the big blind plus 10 times the antes (the M) and subtract this number from the starting stack. Then take that M and multiply it by the “skill factor”, and add it to the number you just calculated. The result is how many chips after the first blind levels. If you then take the number you got from the last one, subtract it by the M at the next blind level, and then add the M times the skillfactor back on. Continue this all the way down. Now you want to figure out at what point you dip below 20 big blinds. For me personally, this is the point where I can no longer safely accumulate chips. At this point a standard raise is 15% of my stack, and having to give up 1 failed steal attempt will be trouble, especially since the blinds will be going up. So once I reach this point, I will be blinding down. From this point on, you must figure out how many minutes you have (at a skillfactor of 0). Now you simply add the blind levels. At 10 minute levels, if you can make it 10 levels before you get down to 20 big blinds, you can make it 100 minutes and see 100 hands. In addition, you will then have maybe a few more rotations before you blind down to nothing. So you can use this to gauge a MUCH better indicator of how to play. If you have “100 true hands left”, that means you can wait for the top 1% of all hands before risking an all in. Now consider you may not get called, and I like to say that’s my calling range, and I will push with TWICE this range, or 2%. Rather than confuse things, I prefer to just keep it simple and figure out how many hands I have before 20 big blinds, and push with that range. For example, if I have 50 hands before I dip below 20 big blinds and must wait for a hand, and 50 hands after before I go down to 0, I just use 50 hands, as my range and ignore however many hands after. So in this case, 1/50 or 2% of hands is my “all in” range, and I will push all in.

From that information and how many big blinds I have, I can actually generate an entire strategy of when to bet, when to reraise, and when to rereraise. In the poker strategy raise chart, we talked a little bit about how this is determined. But there is now an adjustment. If we had 40 big blinds, a raise would take us to 3 big blinds, a reraise to 9 and a rereraise would be all in. So now we work backwards. If we rereraise with the top 2% of hands, that means we would be raising with 4 times as many hands. 4*2 is 8%. So now given that we have 50 hands left WITH our skill included, we will raise with 8% of all hands, reraise with 4% of all hands, and rereraise with 2% of all hands. In addition, we may do whatever we were doing to maintain our skillfactor, whether that means attacking the situations, or flat calling or stealind with nothing.

However, there needs to be significant amounts of adjustments. For example, if you pick up QQ under the gun, you may be less likely to want to risk it all then if you had it on the button. However, JJ in the small blind vs the big blind after it has folded to you, you are going to be a much bigger favorite…

The reason is, people generally adjust and loosen up after more people have folded. If everyone has folded, then they are going to be much looser, So if you raise with JJ and they move all in, JJ is going to probably be much better in this spot, than if you raised as first to act, and the guy to your immediate left reraised you all in.

You need to make the adjustment…

Lets say for example you have a chart saying what percentage of hands you can raise with, what to reraise with, etc.. You are determining each of these by a percentage.  If there are 9 people in the pot, you raise with 1/9. You should be willing to go all in with whatever percentage is determined based on the IRC formula and your skill. In the example 2% is your all in range.

Lets say you can raise with the top 11.11% of hands, and based on your skill and the blind structure (adjusted M), you have 100 hands before your chips blind down, (100 adjusted M) but 50 before you you get below 20 big blinds (50 Mavs).

1/50 is 2%. With you and 8 players to act, you would normally raise the best 1/9 or 11.11% of hands. However, you will be raising with 8% now for the reason mentioned above. So 8%/11.1111 is .72. Your “multiplier” is 0.72. So you would figure out from every position what percentage of hands to raise with. so

1/9 =11.1111 then that times the multiplier of .72 is 8% of all hands.

1/8=12.5 then *.72=9%

1/7=14.3 *.72=10.3%

6 players left =12%

5 players left=14.44%

4 players left=18%

3 = 24%

2= 36%

From those numbers, you simply double the percentages to get a good reraising percentage. You quadruple them to get your “all in” percentage.

The skill chart accounts for your skill on low varience steal attempts and real small pots. You certainly will have to deal with varience, and make more bold aggressive steal attempts, and there certainly is something to be said about being able to deviate from your standard skill on low varience, and gain more on average with higher varience. This could be as simple as raising more when you’re getting action, so you play a bigger pot, or restealing, or any combination of “moves” that you might not normally do.  These should be done when there is less risk involved then the all in move with the biggest hand you will get.

Another thin you have to account for is timing.

A 70% chance of winning early with 1500 chips is not as good as a 65% chance of winning later when you have 15,000 in chips. You could certainly accept going all in later on in the tournament, or pass up what is just on the edge of going all in and folding with.

You still should always be willing to fold if you think you’re beat.  Just because the chart says JJ is good enough in any position, if you’re facing a raiee reraise and an all in, it’s probably beat, and even though you might not find a better hand, you can at least find a spot where you’ll have a better chance of winning. The evidence clearly points to you being unlucky to be up against a better hand, and although you could be wrong, this ability is what seperates the greats from wanna bes… Knowing they aren’t going to get a better hand, but still knowing they need to fold when they’re beat.

In addition, You should still be willing to put it all in with a lesser hand, if you’re a bigger favorite than you “will be”. If your formula comes to the conclusion that QQ in a certain spot is the best you can wait for, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t call if you know you’ll be in just as good if not better shape now than later… So JJ vs a maniac who’s all in every single hand is good enough…

If the play is passive and even though you can get it all in with AA before the flop you know you can get it all in with a set on the turn with your opponent having a maximum of 9 outs, a minimum of 0, you probably can get away with avoinding all ins before the flop in favor of getting them in after the flop.

Just because this is the LONGest you can wait for PREFLOP doesn’t mean you should risk an all in.

Just because this is the best hand you’ll see preflop doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be all in MORE.

Just because this is your raising and reraising range, doesn’t mean you won’t occasionally fold hands you can play according to the chart, but certainly also doesn’t mean that you can’t play additional hands.

Just because you make this chart, doesn’t mean that your skillfactor won’t change. Pay attention to changes in the dynamics of the game. In addition, simply playing with this range may effect your “skill factor” which will require continuous readjustments.

You also may want to adjust for the tournament structure and number of players. Odds are you will have to be all in more than once.  You may wish to take an all in with twice as many hands, and push with 4 times as many as the chart says you should call all in with.  The reason is, it may be less risky to take an all in twice with TT than it is to take an all in with QQ, then with AJ.

Unfortunately the IRC method won’t play poker for you, you still have to make crutial decisions such as “will I get a better situation then this” the IRC method will give you an estimate on whether or not you will get a better hand, and will do everything to give you strategies to make sure you WILL always live to fight another hand and gain lots of chips in the process, but only you can really answer that question.

Just because all ins are generally worth more later doesn’t mean they won’t be better to take early. If you take them early now, you can prolong how long before you’re all in next time, and the steals will be much more significant. If the situation dictates that having a chip lead will allow you to gain command of the table which will allow you a greater skill factor, why not go for it? “implied skillfactor” may have to be added to the vocabulary, as far as I know I invented the term just this second. I have talked about this concept before though. Essentially knocking out a “threat” who is preventing you from collecting all the chips from a table full of autofolders has an “implied skillfactor” of 8 steals per rotation. your skillfactor goes frmo whatever it was to 9, simply by elliminating that 1 player.

Making a move will likely add to your skill and the situations in which you can enter hands. In that case, it is worth a negative EV move if the implied skillfactor is high enough when you win, and will continue after the hand. One single win will continue to pay for itself, where as a loss will only be a small loss and you will live to take a chance later without risking a lot of chips for the purpose of exploiting your skill later.

chart for 20 hands left.

1/20= 5%

5% is 50% of1/10

10 players left 5%

9 players left, 5.556%

8 6.5%

etc

(basically you should be willing to get it all in when you have any ”resteal hand” with 20 true hands left)

40 hands left:

based on skill 1/4th of the hands you raise with which is basically your REREraise hand range).

80 hands left is the REREREraise (1.25 or 1/8th.)

100 hands is 1%.

So if you make the spreadsheet on your own, and you printed a copy of the poker strategy raise chart, then you can simply make this cheatsheet next to it, so you can make adjustments based on your “true hands left”

20 true hands left, you can raise all in with twice as many hands, so any hand you normally raise with can be a push, aside from your normall minraises and stuff (maybe).

40 hands left, any RERAISE hand you can push all in, any rereraise hand you can call all in.

80 hands left any REREraise hand can push all in, but rerereraise is needed to call an all in. The “rerereraise” hands should represent only the best half of the ReReraise hands  as mnetioned in the poker strategy raise chart.

160 If you are this good, and/or the tourney blind structure is this slow, you really shouldn’t be all in if you can help it. Wait until after the flop if you must get it all in.

Technically any re-re-re-raise hand can be pushed all in, and any re-re-re-re-raise hand can call an all in before the flop, but this basically means even on the button you will be only willing to move in with QQ or better plus AK, and only willing to call an all in on a button’s move in with AA or KK. With this deep of chip stack, I will suggest slow playing if you can, and understanding that you probably will not have an opponent going crazy before the flop unless he or she has aces anyways.

If you keep the standard raise, reraise, and rereraise chart in mind, and adjust for your skillfactor even at a minimum just using the rule of thumb of what you push with and call with, you should find yourself doing much better, maximizing the value based on your own skill, and advancing deeper with lower risk. If you understand when to shift gears and add some high varience moves at the right stage and eliminate threats that prevent you from having a large skill factor at the right time as well, you should be able to use your ability to advance deeply and convert it into a win.

Postflop play is all up to you, however, if you can master it and completely understand this formula and how it relates to your prize structure, you will be a DOMINANT force to be recconed with at the next poker tournament.

Well The IRC Method is pretty complete although I do want to do a section for postflop play and I still potentially have a lot of work to do if I can make a chart for postflop play and base the all in chart off of post flop play.

But the preflop strategy is pretty much complete.

But I do want to introduce one more concept of setting up an image, and taking that image to the extreme.

I like to deviate from the chart at certain stages when I can create an impact. Times when I can create an impact are when the blinds either first kick in, or jump up dramatically, or when I’m near or on the bubble, or when the average stack is low enough that I can easily launch to first in chips if things go right.

My favorite move is to start building a tight image. Rather than steal just enough to maintain my tight image, I want people to think “what the heck is going on” I want to play so tight that people fold, and then I’ll raise and raise again until they play back at me once or twice. Then I’ll fold a rotation or two, and the next time I raise,  It will be from late position after the blinds have gone up and it has folded to me. If someone reraises me, I move all in I might even do this a second time. Maybe I’ll get called, maybe not. But now I am going to come back raising again. If my opponents have learned not to reraise me unless they want to call an all in, and they suddenly seem timid, I will continue to raise until I have command, and then I will resume my normal play and wait until the next opportunity. If I get called and manage to win with a bad hand, I’m going to keep  raising. I want people to suddenly tighten up. If people start calling me, I’ll go back to playing normal, only slightly tighter than usual in terms of entering with a raise or reraise. If they continue to raise me, I’ll still start wback to normal with a tighter hand requirement, but I’ll reraise all in more.

This part of the IRC method is not about being in a position to make a strong push, it is being in a position to dominate from crutial points on. You might double up once or not at all up until this point, get called with the worst hand, win this hand and never be all in again. You will take down so many extra pots by people that are afraid to bet or raise that it won’t matter if you take the worst of it since you’ll have them all outchipped. This is the classic supersystem concept. I generally don’t believe in it unless you can take command and dominate with it. I believe you have to be incredibly patient until you get late enough in the tournament with good enough players to be able to get this crazy, and you have to be pretty good to not overdo it.

But I have seen a few top pros absolutely crush the game with a method like this. One more time to do this is in a top heavy payout with 2 tables left and sometimes even 3. You would love nothing more than to go into the final table with momentum and the chip lead.  It often might make more sense to wait until the final table, then establish a tight image and then start this, but it all depends. 5 handed is usually a great time to pick up the pace to maniac mode.

You want to wait for hands while occasionally picking a part the blinds after several limpers, and occasionally making a resteal. Occasionally making an isolation raise to get one or two callers and power your way with ace king and win a hand with nothing. You will have some big moves in your arsenal. The trick is to rarely use them. Then when you use them only in the right spots, you’re going to get into tough situation, and the trick is to be super disaplined. There are periods of time when I have 40 big blinds and I am powering away and accumulating chips but then I get carried away and call a guy down and get greedy, and suddenly I’m out of the tournament. Suddenly I forget how easy it is to be eliminated, and I’m only focusing on the one decision, rather than the big picture.

But learn all of the moves, and then keep things simple. Learn Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book front to back so you know how to play after the flop. Then learn all the moves, learn how tournament structure impacts you, and really understand everything about the game. The IRC method will guide you through a tournament, but after the flop is where you generate your “skill factor”, and is where you can really win. IRC does the best with what you’ve got, it’s up to you to make sure you have the best skills you can.

The IRC Method has selections of hand ranges that you can chose to raise and reraise with based on the structure and how often you need to steal. However, you will also want to adapt and go beyond this.

Beyond selecting the players that are weak after the flop, you possibly are going to face situations where you need to be creative and do the exact opposite.

This should not occur to much later in the tournament, usually after you win a big hand or make a big move and get a lot of chips…

Obviously you aren’t going to try to make a player who is loose fold. Calling stations are not targets. These players you just want to extract a lot of value out of. It is the tough aggressive players. It doesn’t matter if they are tight aggressive or loose aggressive. If you know they are aggressive but they don’t fold, obviously you aren’t going to try to mess with them without a hand. But if they are in a lot of hands, and they are controlling the action you HAVE to stand up not only to defend your blind, but also to make sure your opponent doesn’t take control of the table. If at all possible, you must also limit your opponents from getting a chip lead on you, and if they have one, you must not let it grow.

You must eliminate the threats. Now there might be a chip leader who has a huge lead, you can’t really reduce his threat to your stack so don’t bother. But if there is someone with slightly more chips or slightly less than you, you might do everything you can for 1 hand to just get away with a “suicide bluff”. I will do this when approaching the bubble, or when part way in the money. You are going to probably need to make a move or two to get deep.  You don’t just make a move to make a move, it needs to make sense. Ideally you look for a spot to attack this player immediately after his chipstack took a big hit. When your preditor is wounded, you have to pounce on him before he can recover.

This certainly isn’t always a ”must” but it may become a must depending on the structure and the opponent. If the opponent is raising big every hand and you don’t have the chips to wait, then yeah, you’re going to have to attack him and knock him down or go down swinging.  Some people prefer to take a shot at the shorter stacks, then if they lose they have another chance.  But often times if they lose they have such a slim chance at finishing top 5 in the tournament that it isn’t enough for it to matter anyways. If you’re going to be so constricted that you can’t make plays at the blinds and can’t get chips, then at least go down swinging at the biggest threat to you… who knows, you might even get lucky and win even if you get called… If you lose, you probably don’t give up that much value anyways with an opponent restricting your chances of picking up risk free pots. The fewer pots you can pick up without getting called, the luckier you will have to get to win a tournament anyways, so you might as well look the target square in the face and tell him to bring it. 

Personally I prefer to at least have some control and go after the guy who’s preventing me from picking up pots. If I’m raising and he’s reraising, I’m moving all in on him on a rereraise and I don’t care what I have.  If He’s the one raising and if I know he’ll move in on me if I reraise him, I’m calling him and I’m looking for a spot on maybe the turn to move in on him.  I know, this is completely contrary to the IRC style where the idea is to keep thing more consistent, and to have a winning system that you can follow without having to deviate too much. In fact, these are exactly the types of moves that I created the IRC system to AVOID… But it’s not making a move or two, that should be avoided… it’s losing focus and not having a definitive style, and just deciding to make big moves without reason.

The “focal points” of a tournament are when you should look to actually make these moves. This MUST be done with purpose, and CANNOT be done until 1 or 2 levels before the antes by the earliest, and 3 tables to the final table by the latest.

And if you succeed, you have a table that will be much easier. Whether you do it before the antes kick in so when they do you can take over and control the table, or before the bubble starts coming near, the concept is the same.

So figure out what style works to your strength, what weaknesses your opponent has, and what works best in the situation. Then determine the biggest threats towards you being able to play like that. Now when the chance comes to put this player out, or at least ake a big move that prevents him from ever being able to do much against you, go after him.

There’s a multitude of moves, but be creative about it. Whether that means you check raise him and force him all in, or check call then check raise the turn, or if it means you are going to just call him down until the river then push, or just reraise him, or rerereraise him. Big moves should be rare, but getting them right is extremely important and can mean a HUGE difference on how you do after that point.