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Bartcop Poker Tournament Guide Part 3:
Chaos Theory, Big Pots and Avoid Playing Poker
Should ol' Bart survive day one and we're on to
day two, now things get tougher.
The level of play will most likely be higher,
opponents will be sharper, more intelligent, more capable of bluffing or
sniffing out a bluff.
If you see your stack slowing being chipped down,
if you're getting lost in hands (Getting lost in a hand means you don't
know if you're
currently winning or losing) and find yourself
being outplayed, then it's time to stop playing poker. It's time to become
a "Move in Specialist".
This is simple, your only bet is an all-in pre-flop.
It doesn't matter how big your stack is, it doesn't matter how crazy a
bet this is in comparison
to the blinds. It keeps you out of trouble unless
your opponent does have a better hand then yours and does call. This play
puts big pressure
on your opponent and makes it hard for them to
call you without a huge hand of their own.
Pros want to take flops, they want to play against
you for hours, studying your betting patterns, do you limp with small pairs
hoping
to hit sets or do you raise with them? From the
hands you show down they start building up a profile of what kind of player
you are.
Everything you do gets studied, and they will
figure you out and start making sharper and sharper reads against you.
You combat this
by giving them no info, they want to play, it'll
cost them however much your stack is, and if that's more then they have,
they'll have to
risk their tournament life to see your cards.
Poker Pro Gavin Smith said the thing that most
annoyed him about playing tournaments is that people would get find a way
to get all in
against him with low pocket pairs. Now generally
this isn't a good thing, because at best a low pocket pair is only the
slightest of favorites
against two overcards, and is pretty much crushed
by any bigger pair.
The trick is, if you do get all-in and a pro only
has 2 overs, you're a slight favorite to beat them, Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson,
all the pros
are still 52% to lose AK Vs 77. Hell
I'll take the 48% of the AK Vs those guys, it's far better odds then you'll
get playing it out hour
after hour against them.
Now if your table happens to have a guy loaded
with chips who's playing like total garbage, then of course you play small
pots with him
and do all you can to play him as often as possible
and cheap as possible to take his chips, but those guys will be few and
far between
as we get into the home stretch. If the people
at your table are pros you know from TV, or young males from America and
Europe
(Most likely internet pros). It may be time to
just put them to the test by making them fight your all-ins.
I'll try to finish this up this week with part 4, the check list.
Next week: Part 4: The Check List .
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