Low-Stakes Online Tournaments

When the stakes aren't huge, your opponents can become very unpredictable. Low-stakes online poker is a great example.

If you play in the smaller online tournaments, you're very familiar with the routine. In the first round, 2-4 people per table seem to go all-in. Sometims one of them will have a great hand, but often enough you see people with A6 or KJ risk their whole stack.

Is this a good strategy? The thinking seems to go "it's cheap anyhow, so I'll take a gamble and try to get ahead." In a game with 3000 or so players, risking everything to double- or triple-up really isn't wise. On average the final table players will have perhaps 300x their starting stack. An all-or-nothing ploy with so-so cards to get to 2x is just a bad bet.

So what is a good strategy?

First of all, realize that lots of players will take themselves out of the competition in the early-going at no risk to you. Then realize that an early chip lead doesn't matter very much, at least not if you take unnecessary chances to get it. Often the early leader gets to that point because he takes lots of risks and wins. Think about it, if you have 1500 players (half the field) taking lots of risks, SOME of them will have to win and end up with large stacks. What usually happens, though, is that the tight-aggressive players bide their time until they have a great hand, then they take monster-size bites out of the loose-aggressive players. Pretty soon many of the early leaders are gone.

What you should do:

Early On (2/3 or more of players still in)

• Almost never play a hand in the first few rounds of play (even your AA can get drawn out on, but I would still play that one, even all-in)
• Only play your very best cards from early position until 1/3 of the players have been eliminated. For me this means AA, KK, QQ and AKs.
• In later positions you can play a few more hands because the chance of someone going all-in behind you are smaller.
• Drawing hands like 87s or 66 will usually just cost you money early on because someone will overbet their hands and wreck the pot odds for you.
• Never bluff. Some fool will call you.

Mid Game (2/3 gone but not close to the money)

• Start to play more hands, especially drawing hands like 87s or 66 when you get the proper pot odds (lots of players in the hand without much raising).
• Bluff now and then.
• Try to steal the blinds now and then.

Late Game (close to the money)

• DON'T GET ELIMINATED. Nothing worse than making 102nd place in a tournament that pays the top 100.
• Play very tight poker. Play only your best hands, and only continue after the flop if you connect solidly.
• Use all time you are alotted to think about your hand - even if the decision is clear. Let some other guy get knocked out on another table while you "think".
• Some people will intentionally disconnect from the network because most sites will give some time to reconnect. I don't do this because I consider it cheating, but I want you to be aware so you'll know what's going on if it happens.

The Final Table

• If you have a large stack, try to push around the people with small stacks by betting at them and sealing their blinds.
• If you have a short stack, avoid going heads-up with a large stack. They will push you around.
• If you have lots of chips compared to the size of the blinds, wait for good cards.
• If you have few chips compared to the size of the blinds, you will have to take more chances.
• As the field gets smaller, you don't need as good of a hand to win. Heads-up, Ace-anything is favored to win.

From Texas to Omaha

I grew up playing 5 card draw, but then went off to college and a career and didn't play for years. In the last few years my friends got me interested in Texas Hold'em, which I learned to play well enough to win consistently. Before yesterday, I had never played Omaha and had only a vague idea of how to play. The rest of this post will show why one basic poker concept is so important, and how they apply to most any form of poker.

Early Thanksgiving morning, I was just waking up and decided to play a bit of poker to wake up. There is always a game available online, so I pulled up my laptop and logged into Full Tilt. A tournament caught my eye: A freeroll (free to play) tournament with a $100 prize pool. 2700 people can play for free and the top 9 split the prize money. Groggy from just waking up, I figured a free tournament was just the right thing for me. There was a catch though: After signing up, I noticed the tournament was for Omaha Hold'em (did I mention I was groggy? :-)

With 25 minutes to go before he start, I googled the rules and basic strategy. Since I had only a short time to prepare, and had never played before, I only played the very best starting hands.

And I kept rising in the standings.

Many hands came along that I could not decide whether or not to play.

And I kept rising in the standings.

Some hands came along that were clearly excellent hands. I played them very aggressively.

And I kept rising in the standings.

A few hours into the tournament, only 81 of the original 2700 players were still in the tournament.

And I had the chip lead!

Ignorance of all but the most basic points of strategy forced me to play very tightly, and very aggressively. It's certainly not the most fun way to play, after all I watched many hands play out without me. But it was a very effective way to play.

This experience reinforced for me the importance of one of the most important rules of winning poker: Play only the very best hands, and take no prisoners when you do.

The tournament encouraged me to experiment with other forms of poker. Even if I do play mostly my traditional Texas variety, playing other games gives insight into poker that you would not otherwise gain. In Omaha, you get four cards in your pocket and must play the board with exactly two of those cards. Playing Omaha, you basically see every flop with the equivalent of six different pocket pairs each hand (since there are six ways to combine four cards). That gives great insight into how different pocket pairs can play the same flop.

Why do four cards make six pockets?

Call the cards A, B, C and D. The ways you can combine them are:
AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, and CD.

So how well did I place in the tournament? I came in 30th. However, I'll never know how well I could have done. Thanksgiving dinner was served when the tournament was down to 30 players, so I withdrew. After all, family is more important than poker. Right?