When I ran Cross-Country in High School, our coach would video tape us as we ran so that we could then view the tape and critique our form. Despite posting decent times, I’ve always been an awkward runner. My legs kick out to the side in such an extreme manner that you’d swear Lawrence Taylor had gotten to them just as he did for Joe Theisman that memorable Monday night. I’ve always hated watching myself run, but my form really does improve when I pay deliberate attention to my physical mechanics.

The expertise involved with calculating odds, surmising hand strength with incomplete information, negotiating with bluffers, and staying within a bankroll all offer lessons that my daughters will eventually learn to apply to other aspects of their life journeys.  In this world, I think those are especially valuable lessons and applications for women to have learned.  Sometimes, as I attempt to continue the lessons the next day, I get some valuable insight into how play is perceived and how positive attributes are sometimes applied mistakenly to our opponents.

I recently hosted my regular Friday home poker game.  As is typical, I started an hour early for anyone who was willing to sit with my daughters before they go to bed to the sounds of chip splashing and explosive river beats. I stake them each for $5 (blinds are .25 and .50 in our no-limit game) and they get to keep any profit after one hour.  I eat the losses and they leave the table if their stake is gone.  While Emmie left the table after handing me her remaining 75 cents, Gabby paid off her stake and headed up to her piggy bank with $39 in profit (yes, that’s 78BB for an hour’s worth of table time). 

Her biggest hand went something like this:  Gabby limped into the pot from middle position and saw a flop of K-K-x with three others.  The player UTG checked to Gabby who then bet $1.  It folded around back to UTG who check-raised Gabby for $3.  She answered the raise and her opponent again checked to the blank that fell on the turn. Gabby bet another dollar only to get another check-raise from UTG.  Again she answered the two dollars.  The river brought a Q and this time UTG led out for the $3.  Gabby raised him to $5, he answered, and she turned over QQ for the full house to beat his trip Kings.  She sucked out good and the table erupted.

After Gabby left the table, the talk turned to her “fearlessness” and “gutsy bets”.  I’m warned that I’ll need to keep an eye on this one as she gets old enough to find herself stuck for more than the $40 she took tonight.  I quietly agree and start wondering how I’ll approach the hand history in the morning along with the lesson on not celebrating the highs too hard or over-thinking the lows too long.  Given that Emmie only got to see one flop with her dismal hands, we also had a great discussion opportunity on the differences in action for one session of cards. 

A few guys asked if Gabby  really knows what she’s doing.  I indicated that both of my daughters know what a strong hand is, but probably don’t know how to read their opponents very well.  In fact, they pretty much just play their cards.  In addition to that, Gabby is able to bluff and can disguise those bluffs pretty well.

But allow me to focus on the hand history discussion.  The next morning, I asked Gabby to tell me what she recalled from the hand.  Much like the answers I get to “how was school today”, I got a short response that lacked any depth whatsoever.

-          I dunno. 

-          Well, Gabby I continued.  What did you think he was playing? 

-          I don’t know she responded. I just saw that I had two Queens and I thought they made a good hand.

-          Do you remember what he turned over? I asked. 

-          He had three Kings.

-          Didn’t you think you were beat when he kept raising you?

-          I guess so, but I didn’t want to get rid of two Queens.

I asked Gabby how many of the hands that she won were won with an outright bluff and she recalled that two or three of them were bluffs.

Gabby’s “table image”, if you will, was that of fearless, gutsy, and unpredictable.  I’m not so certain she would have been classified as a maniac, but definitely hard to put on a hand.  It is important to distinguish, however, that she was actually a player who saw only her hands.  Gabby can bet her hands according to their perceived strength, but she still does so within a bit of a knowledge vacuum and certainly without enough regard for what her opponents might hold (as evidenced by calling check-raises against an obvious third King). 

A few big wins, a large chip stack, and one noteworthy suck-out encouraged the table to attribute all kinds of image that wasn’t necessarily accurate for Gabby.  Furthermore, she was approaching the game like many of the on-line opponents I see at tables as high as the $200 ($2/$4 blinds) no-limit tables and the $5/$10 limit tables.  Like Gabby, many of these players are focused more on their cards and the stand-alone strength of those cards, often unwilling to let go of big cards to inappropriate flops. These are players to whom I apply notes based on the chip stack with which I regularly see them sitting as well as the cards they either show down or willingly expose.  This is limited information at best.

Software like Poker Tracker also allows us to gather information about our opponents and conveniently packages their image into nice little icons and labels.  Granted, this information is much more quantified and objective than my player notes on each site, but to what degree do we overvalue these markers?  Certainly, when we’re looking at a hand like AQ out of position and our only opponent is recorded as seeing the flop more than 60% of the time, we’re going to have some information that informs our ultimate decision.  Nonetheless, I still find value in my conversation with Gabby on the morning after the game.  We so often scratch our heads and wonder just how these opponents can play the hands they play despite the obvious strength we’re indicating with our bets.  This gets especially exhausting and vexing when they land their two-outer on the river and take a huge pot that was rightfully ours.  Sometimes the answer is glaringly simple.

I don’t know she responded. I just saw that I had two Queens and I thought they were a good hand.

Play well.

Troy Headrick

For the sake of summary, the cheaper tournament had more players competing for a smaller ultimate prize (a seat into a $50k guaranteed tournament compared to a seat into a $200k guaranteed tournament), but the quality of play seemed much better. I ended up losing to a bad-beat in the second tournament just as we were approaching the final two tables in the first tournament. As it turns out, I was thereby able to really evaluate what evolved into some very solid bubble play by many players.

With 18 of us left, the blind structure was still mild enough to afford the small stacks plenty of time for making some moves. The top four chip leaders were well within striking distance of one another and changed leads frequently. The difference in chips between 4^th place and 9^th place hovered around the 2:1 range, so one double through would easily change the nature of those “temporarily in the money”. The chip difference between 9^th place and 18^th was hovering in the 3:1 range so. Likewise, standings were capable of changing significantly on any given hand. I was fortunate enough in the middle of the tournament to hit a few hands that kept me in the 3^rd – 6^th range for most of the tournament, dabbling as chip leader on a couple of brief occasions. Given the close range of stacks, I was able to leverage a lot of mid-stack players against one another to keep my own stack relatively free from risk of finding myself at the true bubble.

As can be expected with this sort of shallow chip dispersement, people exiting the tournament just before the true bubble were not blinding out, but became victims of big hands falling to even bigger hands. I pulled Aces twice in these rounds and set myself up to be third stack with 11 players left. The three shortest stacks, however, were still not in immediate danger of blinding out and could afford to tango with one another (can you tango with three people?) as they jockeyed for that 9^th position. They were still hovering in the 8xBB and 9xBB range, thereby holding on to a fair amount of folding equity. At this point in the tournament, my table was defined as follows:

Seats one and two were empty.

Seat three held short stack #1 with approximately 8BB left.

Seats four and five were empty.

Seat six held 2^nd chip leader.

I sat in seat seven as 3^rd chip leader.

Seat eight held a middle stack well within striking distance to my own stack.

Seat nine held short stack #2 with approximately 9BB left.

The third short stack sat at the other table and the three shorties rotated in rank for a few orbits. Then bubble play began in earnest and I realized just how strong my fellow chip leaders were. We quickly fell into this silent “agreement” that the short-stacks would not get a cheap or heads-up flop. I was fortunate to sit in the cutoff when the two shorties at my table were in the blinds. Given that the button for those hands was semi-protective of risk, I would just raise for ¾ of their stacks and steal the blinds without contest. If the large stack to my right came into these situations (UTG) it would be for a minimum raise that was easily affordable. I would call the raise, alerting the two shorties that they needed a big hand, they would fold, and the other big stack and I would play one another cautiously, not risking any more chips but forcing the shorties to fold any opportunity at a free flop. This smooth-call into a check-fest became key strategy.

The player on the bubble finally called my first-in raise, also alerting the two shorties of significant strength (given his protective nature). When he bet the flop, I folded and preserved my chip stack which was now fourth in rank. Have you picked up on the fact that I’ve not yet mentioned any specific cards? Please realize that the cards were no longer the most dangerous parts of our game at this point in the tournament. Three sizeable stacks were merely doing their part to apply leverage on a consistent basis in order to keep the two short stacks from having any control whatsoever. If a shorty did answer a raise, we could play the flop and still have plenty of chips for continued leverage despite the minor increase in the short-stack’s arsenal if they picked up the hand. The key here was unrelenting pressure. Ninth place was as good as first place and we had three, and then eventually two, players trying to sneak into that prized seat. With three equal short-stacks left to this grind, the first one to double up would still not have much additional leverage against the middle-stack players. Finally, with ten players remaining, the shorty in seat #9 went all-in from UTG. I had an easy call for only a few more chips from the SB (I happened to be holding pocket 7s) and the BB, now holding an equal stack to mine, had an even easier call. We checked it down and the turn brought my set which held up against the big blind’s pocket tens and the short-stack’s A7s.

I’ve been on the bubble of some big multi-table tournaments where an unrelenting big stack would not let me get into a flop. Often times, the table will allow that one bully to take on the solo task of eliminating the bubble players. I was struck last night at how three of the five remaining players at my table realized the important role they played in ending the satellite tournament and how they were able to do so with savvy play that remained well within the scope of solid, strategic play. In these satellite tournaments, such a role is an important one to take and differs from that you would play at the bubble of a straight tournament with significant differences in payout between all placings.

Play well,

BD

One of the most important things to keep in mind while playing an R&A tournament is that the first hour offers a very different style of play than just about any other possible Hold ‘em table. Typically, you’ll have a fair share of opponents playing a loose/super-aggressive style (LAGs). However, it would be a mistake to play these super-LAGs as you typically would in a ring game environment (where you tighten up and hope to trap the maniacs with a monster). During the first hour of an R&A tournament, you’ll have more than your average share of opportunities to double up. But you have to be willing to take those opportunities and you have to be best prepared for them.

First, consider how much you’re willing to spend on this one tournament. Let’s consider an $11 +$1 R&A tournament where re-buys and add-ons will cost you an additional $11 each. If you’re really only willing to spend the initial buy-in fee of $11 + $1, you really are better off looking for a freeze-out tournament of the same cost. By not considering the possibility of re-buying at least once and then adding on after the first hour, you are most likely going to place yourself into an almost immediate short-stack scenario. You can certainly hope to double through a LAG player, but this isn’t a ring game situation with an endless long-run. You’ve got one hour to compete with these players who are going to coin-flip at a much higher frequency. I recommend committing approximately five times the buy-in amount to any R&A tournament you enter. Hopefully you’ll hit the cards and an early coin-flip (or two) and keep that number lower. This is also the time you should be asking yourself if you are likely to win back the chips you are temporarily “loaning” the table as a better than average player. If you don’t think you’re strong enough to win back the chips you dump during the first hour of coin-flip central, then perhaps you’ll want to begin playing these tournaments with a lower number of re-buys you’ll allow yourself.

Once you sit down, keep a watch for how many players are taking the immediate re-buy. If nobody at your table is taking the re-buy, then you may decide to hold off yourself. If you all start with 1500 tournament chips, it will do you no good to be the only player with double that amount (which is where you’d be if you were the only player at your table to take the initial re-buy). You won’t necessarily be able to use that bigger stack to bully the other players, as you’ll still have plenty of opponents who will call your big bets on a draw or a gamble knowing that they’ll either double through you or re-buy. Rather, sit with the rest of the opponents and try to double up yourself. If you catch the right side of a coin flip, you’ll have taken yourself to the initial re-buy amount while saving yourself $11. Keep in mind, however, that you could also end up in “limbo-land” should you win a small pot (see below).

If, however, you have a handful of players (or more) that takes the initial re-buy, it is in your best interest to do so as well. You must keep yourself in a position to make the absolute most out of any scenario where you stand an opportunity to double up. Take my word for it – you’ll instantly regret having opted not to re-buy when you take your $1500 stack against another player’s $3000 when you are dealt rockets. You will have settled to save $11 to arrive at a $3000 stack level when you could have spent that extra buy-in and arrived at a $6000 stack.

But what if you’re in between those levels and hovering in limbo-land? Most R&A tournaments allow you to re-buy if you are at or below the starting chip level. This is another important factor to keep in mind. Perhaps you were in a situation where you didn’t re-buy due to the fact that nobody else at your table did. You’ve won a few small pots and now find yourself with a stack of $1650. Given the volatile coin flips you often see in these tournaments, you have opponents with anywhere from $750 to $7500. Perhaps you took the initial re-buy but have now blinded down and have lost a few pots, thereby bringing your stack to approximately $2200. You now don’t have the optimal stack against those who have gambled and doubled a few times, but you still have an average stack.

In such situations, I’ll often place very strategic bets pre-flop in order to either steal a few limps or set myself up to control the hand post-flop. If the re-buy threshold is at $1500, and I’m holding $2200, I’ll actually consider the fact that I’ve got $700 to mess around with and plan my bets accordingly. If the big blind is at the $50 amount, I can place a $200 pre-flop bet and look fairly strong. If I don’t win pre-flop, I can still put out a $500 bet on the flop and either take the hand down or fold on the turn to an obvious sign of strength. If I win the hand, I’m well on my way back to the $3000 range. If I need to fold, I’ve taken myself to exactly $1500 and re-buy to that amount anyway. Keep in mind, however, that I certainly try to make this sort of move with a hand that has a decent chance of evolving into a winner. I don’t make this sort of move if I’m holding a monster pre-flop.

If I’m holding a monster pre-flop, I’ll often push it all-in during the re-buy hour. I’ll sometimes use the limp with the hopes of taking an opportunity to re-raise all-in, but I’ll nearly always push it right away with the assumption that at least one opponent will give me the coin flip against my solid hand (AA, KK, QQ, etc.). I’m also not shy about forcing a few coin flip situations myself with any pocket pair or a suited slick. If, however, I’m approaching my upper limit of re-buys I’ve allowed myself for this particular tournament, I’d much rather start the aggression with a monster hand than answer it with a known gamble. R&A tournaments are all about pushing smaller edges with more aggression than is typical and pushing large edges with maximum aggression. Don’t pay too much attention to those chip leaders who are building huge stacks. Those are inflated rankings that are nearly always a result of short term tournament luck. As you play more and more tournaments at the same site, you’ll begin to recognize the consistent chip leaders who are credible well beyond the first hour.

As the first hour comes to an end, pay particular attention to your LAG opponents. Often times, many players will take one or more extreme gambles with the hopes of entering the start of the “real” tournament with a stack that will compete with the chip leaders. In the final five to ten minutes, you’ll see plenty of crazy plays. If you’re hovering in the $3,000 range, try your best to maintain your stack while looking for a solid coin flip opportunity yourself. Ideally, you’ll want to enter such situations with a solid hand that will hold up without improvement. If you’re on the low side of limbo land, try to dump some chips to the maximum re-buy level ($1500 in our examples) while remaining aware of the fact that a pre-flop raise will often get pushed all-in. If you’re not willing to go all-in, then bet yourself to exactly $1500 prior to the flop. I typically wait until I’m down to the $1750-$2000 range before dumping my chips. I’ll also wait to do so until I’m fairly certain the blinds won’t reach me and thereby drain myself down to less than $3000 chips again. If I’m holding $6000 or more during the final minutes of the first hour, I will often coast unless I have AA or KK. Many players with big stacks will actually sit out during this portion of the tournament (be on the lookout for blind stealing opportunities if these players are to your immediate left).

Once all of the tables have completed their final hands of the first hour, you’ll have the opportunity to add-on during the first break. Always add-on. Always. Once you’ve done so, take your well deserved break and prepare yourself for the “real” tournament. Play your solid MTT strategies and hit that final table hard. Keep in mind that many players will not shift gears appropriately once the re-buy period is done. Now you can play these jokers like the MTT LAGs that they truly are by patiently waiting for the best opportunity to trap them into handing over their entire hour-one stack.

If you’re willing to dance around a bit for an hour, R&A tournaments offer an opportunity to add subtly enhanced strategies to your game. Start with a low buy-in R&A event and enjoy the looser/more aggressive play than you typically play during a regular freeze-out MTT. Just don’t let it become a habit and remember to return to your solid long-run game.

Good luck! But remember … it’s better to be good than lucky.

Troy Headrick

AKA: BernardDogs