Being a corporate lawyer for close to twenty years, I have been trained to think critically on a daily basis. When I graduated from law school back in 1988, I went to work as an associate at a Wall Street law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. The first week on the job, all the new associates went through a rigorous and extensive training. What I remember most is one senior partner’s speech. He told us frankly that our work had to be perfect. Our clients were paying for, and expected, nothing less. We had to dedicate ourselves to that goal no matter what the task. If that meant skipping a few meals, then you skip a few meals. If that meant going without sleep for a couple of nights, then so be it. I would soon find out that he was not exaggerating. There were plenty of all nighters during my time there. We literally made sure every i was dotted and t was crossed—often working for over forty-eight straight hours.
I wish poker were that easy. As anyone who has played the game can contest, you cannot perfect poker. The goal should be the same, though: to play as perfectly as possible. By setting your goal in such a way, you will minimize your mistakes (although you will still make plenty) and maximize your profits on the way to becoming a winning player. To reach that end, always concentrate on the process and not the results. There is a lot of luck in poker, and you cannot be overly encouraged or discouraged by short-term wins and losses. Instead, take a critical look at your play to make sure you are striving for perfection.
So what is this book about? As I was writing this book, my game was going through a transformation. I had been playing so much that I had started to play by rote and was becoming too mechanical. Because poker is a game of imperfect information, you can never play perfectly. As a goal-oriented person, it is difficult to strive for an unattainable goal. Yet, to be the best player I can be, I still must have the attitude that I am going to do everything in my power to reach perfection.
In my quest for knowledge, this book took on a new direction. It became a potpourri of poker principles (and even some nonpoker principles) that have improved my game, and will, I hope, improve yours. I found myself learning in ways and in places I could not have imagined before—from low-stakes games with novices to game shows on television. I was training myself to look critically at many different situations both inside and outside of poker.
Rest assured, this book still contains a lot of poker and even some hand analysis that's sure to improve your game. More important, I hope that the reader will walk away with the ability to learn to think critically, with an increased awareness of what’s going on at the poker table, and with the desire to take that extra step and think seriously about events outside the poker arena and the way they can be applied to poker. (Note: While poker is a gender-neutral game, for simplicity’s sake, I have used the masculine third person where I could have just as easily used the feminine. It is meant to be neutral.)
Getting Started
Why play no-limit Texas Hold’em tournaments? You see them on television, they’re a lot of fun, it’s a great social activity, and everyone seems to be doing it. That may be what attracts many people to the game in the first place. But once players dip their toes into the water, many are hooked by the endless possibilities and strategies involved. No matter how much you play, there is always more to learn. Poker is a game of never-ending learning.
Where tournaments used to be played only by the poker elite in such prestigious events as the World Series of Poker® with buy-ins costing up to $10,000, they now have tournaments for players of all skill levels. In fact, millions of players participate in tournaments every week in venues ranging from the family basement to extravagent Las Vegas casinos. Whether you aspire to be a regular on the pro poker circuit or just want to dominate your local home game, there are many lessons to be learned from the action on the felt.
For those just starting out, let’s take a quick review of the structure of a poker tournament. In a poker tournament, every player pays the same entry fee and begins with the same amount of chips. Once you are out of chips, you are eliminated from the tournament. (The one exception to this is a rebuy tournament, which we will cover in a later chapter—see p. 39.) Play continues until everyone is eliminated but one player. That player ends up with all the chips. The chips in play do not represent actual dollar amounts but only serve as a way to keep score in the tournament. So the winner of the tournament typically does not win all the money, even though he ends up with all the chips. (If you are playing a single-table sit and go tournament—see p. 31—then the winner may take all the prize money, although the chip count will not represent the actual amount of the prize money.)
As a general rule, players finishing in the top ten percentile will be in the money. For example, if two hundred people enter a tournament, the final twenty players will each win money. The amount each receives will be weighted heavily toward how high they finish. The twentieth-place finisher will get back not much more than his or her entry fee, while the first-place finisher may end up with as much as a third of the entire pool of money. It’s important to study the structure ahead of time so that you can evaluate both your personal goal and your opponents’ goals.
Many players will be happy just to make the money. They are not concerned about winning the entire thing. Others are only trying to last as long as possible, that is, if they come in fiftieth place out of two hundred, they will feel a sense of accomplishment. That is the wrong way to approach a tournament. Success in poker is always measured in one way and one way only—by how much money you win. Anybody can play ultra-conservatively and outlast half the field. The problem with that strategy is that you have no chance of winning money. The goal is to win money and not just last as long as possible. That conservative fiftieth place finisher is not better than 150 other opponents are. In fact, he is probably much worse, since he never had a realistic chance of winning anything. It is better to go out early so long as you are playing to win.
There is nothing wrong for beginning players to be satisfied with making the money. That is a realistic goal. Ultimately, however, you should be less concerned about making the money and more concerned about shifting your goal to winning the entire tournament. That is where the real money is. And that is why in this book we are going to concentrate on playing to win.
One of the great aspects of tournament poker is that you know ahead of time exactly how much it will cost you. If it costs you $100 to enter a tournament, then that is your total cost. You cannot lose any more money, and you may end up playing for hours depending on how the tournament is structured. For instance, for your $100 entry fee, you may receive $1000 in chips. These chips are yours to play with until you are eliminated or you have won the tournament. They have no monetary value outside of the tournament. You cannot take them with you. As simple as this concept sounds, it is critical to your understanding of the nature of tournaments.
In a cash game, there is no limit to how much you can lose. Sure, you can try to limit yourself to how much you are willing to lose in a cash game, but the temptation is always there to reach into your pocket or run to the ATM for more money if you run out. In a tournament, once you are out of chips, you are eliminated and are not allowed to buy more chips even if you wanted to.
If you sit down to a cash game, it is up to you to decide how much money you want to bring to the table. In no-limit Texas Hold’em, this can create some real discrepancies in the game. Choosing the right game and knowing how much money to buy in for is a real art form. Since you are playing with real money, your entire stack can be at risk at any time if your opponents have bigger stacks. If you are not comfortable with that concept, you will not play your best. If your opponents are willing to risk that stack at any time, you are at a serious disadvantage. In a tournament, however, each player receives the same amount of chips to start. You do not have to worry about an opponent having deep pockets. In the world of poker, tournaments are the great equalizer.
In tournament poker, you can risk a little bit of money to win a lot. Let’s look at the payout structure of a sample tournament. Say that