Patience In Poker Tournaments
In the world of poker patience is a virtue! This is especially true playing freezeout poker tournaments. Its something not a lot of poker players practice but the successful ones know it is an essential part of their game !
- Patience In Poker Tournaments Tournament
- Patience In Poker Tournaments 2019
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- Patience In Poker Tournaments 2020
- Interestingly enough, this was not the first time that the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker’s initial winner was disqualified. Back in 2007, a player with the handle “TheV0id” won $1.22 million in that year’s tournament. As it turned out, the winning account was registered to Natalie Teltscher.
- Poker Tip 1: Aggression Pays in Poker. The only way to win at poker is to bet – and the only way to win a lot is to bet a lot. Poker is a game of timed, focused aggression. And as you master the basics of the game, you’ll learn when you need to up the aggression at the table. Many novice players are simply too cautious, too much of the time.
I want to give you a few examples where patience will give you the opportunity to be successful but will first start with my poker genesis so you know where I’m coming from.
Improve Poker Talent & Skills Unlike re-buy tourneys which allow players with thicker wallets to overcome their lack of skills by re-buying and getting back into the game, freezeout tournaments don’t allow re-buys and hence are good for players who bank on their skills only. By playing such tourneys, you learn the value of patience in poker. In Arnold Snyder's book The Poker Tournament Formula, he writes in the first chapter about something called the Patience Factor. This term is a measure of how fast a tournament moves/blinds escalate compared to how many chips each player starts with. No, I don’t mean fold everything waiting for aces or kings. In most high stakes tournaments the structure will be quite deep, slow, and forgiving. Still be playing your ranges don’t nit it up waiting for premiums, nor loosen up because, hey, we’re so deep stacked you still shouldn’t be calling that raise with 85o.
Like many I played some poker at college with ‘the boys’. Nothing special, different games, we made a night of it and had some fun. This was the mid to late 90’s and poker hadn’t exploded into the juggernaut it is today. I really became interested in poker when Chris Moneymaker won the world series and, like many, said “hmmm … maybe I can make some money playing poker.”
I started playing online and reading poker strategy books. Sit & Go No Limit Holdem tournaments and multi table tournaments quickly became my game of choice. I started playing and had some early success. I also started keeping some notes as to my profit, percentage of cashes etc. Each year since 2005 I have increased my profit from playing poker and as far as I am concerned that means I’m doing something right and moving in the right direction!
Patience and Discipline
I read and learned early on that two things, above all else, are required to succeed in the poker world, especially in the type of game I was playing. They are patience and discipline.
You know, I hear a lot from friends and people in general that they tried being patient in a tournament and it just didn’t work. As I am sure a lot of you have heard, you must judge your results over a period of time and not a tournament, a day or a week. Poker is a game that has twists and turns, up’s and downs and cannot be judged over a short period of time. My response to my friends and to you is that poker is like baseball.
If a baseball player hits or walks one third of the time he is at the plate, he is considered a very successful player. He FAILS two thirds of the time he is at the plate and is a success! In poker can you imagine winning one third of all the tournaments you play !! Wow, that would make you thee most successful player in the world. Its not easy to practice patience and discipline, but it MUST be done in order to have long term success.
Lets take a look at some examples where these traits are lacking and how it effects your game. I’m sure you all have started many tournaments and low and behold you have two (or more) people all in on the first hand. This always amazes me ! Only once have I called an all in on the first hand and it was because I had aces. In my opinion you should only be calling with aces or kings. If I had queens I would look to see if I had notes on this person and then make a decision(usually fold). By the way, the one time I called, the other person had K 9 suited!
So this is where it starts, the first hand of a tournament.
Unless I get premium hands in the early stages, I like to sit back and watch the action and see who’s playing what. I like the action of playing a hand as much as anyone. Its almost like a drug sometimes isn’t it! I will admit I don’t adhere to this practice 100%. Once in a while I will play a less than premium hand when the right conditions present themselves, but knowing those situations and how to avoid getting yourself into trouble only comes with experience.
Everyone has their favourite junk hand to play, mine is 10-9 or 9-8 suited. I am an advocate of playing the odd speculative hand in the early stages, but only if it’s cheap and certain conditions are met. You must be on the button or in late position and you should be playing the hand to hit a monster hand (straight, flush or set), all mediocre hands you hit on the flop are considered to be beaten and folded to any resistance.
Lets take a look at another example. I believe that during a tournament you will fold the best hand sometimes, playing the tight style this guide advocates it is inevitable but also necessary to reduce our overall risk in a tournament.
I was in a small two table 20 player tournament and we were down to 8 players. I had 2,100 in chips and my opponent in this hand had 750. I had A9 unsuited. I was small blind and he big. The table folded to us and I called. The flop came, 9s 6s 2h. Now, I had notes on this guy that said, “loose, will bet on draws”. I bet out 100 and he thought for a moment and went all in and I folded. He showed 8s 4s. I knew I had him but why take the an unnecessary risk when your hand isn’t actually that strong and you are getting close to your goal of finishing in the top 3. Incidentally… he finished 7th and I finished 3rd.
You have to practice patience and discipline when playing a freeze out poker tournament. In some tournaments you may only play a couple of hands in the early and middle stages and others you may play quite a few more. That’s poker! It might not work all the time but I’m living proof it does work in the long run.
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In short, his formula is essentially just the square of the so-called 'blind-off' time; i.e., the time it would take to bust out due to blinding off, assuming you never played a single hand. For instance, let's assume we're going to play in a tournament with the following blind structure:
Assuming that each player began this tournament with T1000, we can see that somewhere between level 3 and 4, the cumulative cost of paying the blinds would exceed the initial stack size, and a player who was auto-mucking* would get blinded off at this point. Specifically, the player would get blinded off 1.3 hours into the tournament**. Squaring this figure*** gives us a PF of 1.6.
Once you have calculated the PF, you can estimate how much skill or luck a particular tournament will have in it, and therefore compare tourneys and find one best suited to your own abilities. Here's Snyder's chart that lists PF vs. Skill Level:
Patience In Poker Tournaments Tournament
Note that this chart is only for live play; online play is significantly faster (read: more hands per hour). Per Snyder, the way to account for this is to multiply the online blind level time by the ratio of hands dealt per hour online to that of live. In other words, if we assume that the average hands per hour dealt online in a tournament is 50, and the average live is 30, then we multiple the online blind period by 50/30 to get an 'adjusted' blind level period. This figure is then run through the spreadsheet and the new, adjusted PF can be plugged into the chart above to see how bad of a crapshoot the tourney is or isn't. Makes sense.
All-in for now...
Patience In Poker Tournaments 2019
-Bug*We're assuming here that the player never gets a walk in the big blind.
Patience In Poker Tournaments Real Money
**I'll leave it to the reader to figure out for themselves how to do this calculation. It's pretty straightforward to do, and in fact I put it into a spreadsheet format so I can calculate different tourneys and compare them. You might consider doing the same.