Poker Tournament Strategy For Beginners
Many an online poker player has fallen into the trap of viewing tournaments as just larger versions of the cash games they’ve become used to, but that’s not the case at all. The easiest analogy would be to compare a sprinting to running a marathon, but there’s a number of unique factors that make playing in an online (or real-world) poker tournament different from anything else in the sporting or gaming worlds.
Poker tournaments require very different strategies from ring games and cash games. Many players who are fantastic in single-table games find themselves at a loss when playing for the sort of long-range goals that a tournament requires and vice versa. One principle of playing in cash games is to be bankrolled: when you have the money, correct play will win out in the long run. In a tournament, everybody starts with the same number of chips, and when you play stakes like $15/30, you won’t have $10,000; you’ll have more like $800.
Playing “mathematically correct” poker does not mean as much in poker tournaments - you have to make more daring moves to move to the next level and work to being in the money. Different skills are required to get ahead in tournaments and players need to realize where there strengths and weaknesses are. You wouldn’t hire Michael Bay to direct a renaissance drama and you wouldn’t ask Richard Petty to drive a truck full of nitroglycerine, but at poker, you can expand your skills for free in freeroll events and at free poker tables, learning what works for you in each situation.
The majority of really successful poker tournament players are fairly good to great at playing in ring games and good ring game players generally turn out to be decent in tournaments, but that’s because they’ve learned to adapt. “Change or die” is the motto of many poker players, and it’s a good one. While the core idea of “Play good, play correctly” is one worth praising, what makes good and correct play can shift radically based on the type of game or tournament being played, the stakes at hand, etc.
Winners in ring/cash games are winners 75% of the time when they play. Successful tournament players win maybe 25% of the time at most. This is the most difficult thing for many ring game players to adjust to when they begin to work their way into tournaments. It’s rare to win and hard to be in the money in a tournament, but the rewards can be far, far greater. Not every event is as big as the WSOP, but the numbers that are seen by people who have made a relatively small initial investment and fought to be in the money can sometimes be staggering.
by admin on November 11th, 2009 Posted in Poker | No Comments »
