News flash: In order to implement a successful poker tournament strategy, you have to win all the chips. You cannot consistently win more than your fair share of chips if you don’t play aggressively and you cannot maintain maximum aggression if you rarely have a big stack. This all seems like common sense, but many players have a hard time putting this poker tournament strategy into practice because in order to build a big stack, you have to play big pots – and playing big pots is well…scary. This is true, of course, but it is the essence of the game.
Imagine how scary it must be to willingly get locked inside of a human-sized cage with a mahuman-sized fighter who has been offered thousands of dollars to knock you unconscious. Your only chance to win is to block out that fear and realize that the other guy is just as scared as you. We can’t all be Olivier Busquet. If you’re anything like me, the inability to overcome that fear would keep you from doing what you needed to do to win the fight, and so you choose not to play that particular game. Yet many of us sign up for MTTs with the same fear and unwillingness to do what needs to be done to execute our poker tournament strategy which causes us to get KO’ed over and over again.
Recently, I’ve come to believe that it is possible to use intelligent aggression to attack overly aggressive players in the small stakes tournaments I play. This gives me a reciprocality edge over the more conservative players who are not willing to let their guard down and fight for these chips. This allows me to make final tables more consistently than they do. I resolved to not be a sitting duck and have had good results because of it. Here’s the poker tournament strategy I use to fight back against the maniacs.
Poker Tournament Strategy 1: Pick On The Bully
Generally, in the early stages of a MTT, most decent players will be playing a tight aggressive strategy similar to how they would play in a cash game. Once the antes kick in and the stacks get a bit shorter, the aggressive players will begin to get out of line in an effort to win more than their fair share of chips. If I notice a player on my right starting to do this, then I pick a fight with him.
I’ve heard some people say that you shouldn’t pick a fight with aggressive players and that you should go after the dead money instead. The problem with this approach is that you can’t get many chips from a player who is just sitting there blinding off or playing fit or fold on most flops. Stealing these small pots will help you to survive, but they won’t give you the big stack you need to bully the table later. For this, you will have to go after the wannabe sharks who are going after the fish. Become the apex predator.
The way I pick fights with aggressive players on my right is by 3-betting them light preflop or raising them light post flop when I am a mid stack with a few gambling chips to spare. This is not to say I am just spewing chips with any two cards. If I have a hand that is clearly more profitable as a call, I call. If I have 72o, I fold. However, if the decision is at all close and my hand has any sort of decent 3-betting qualities, I always opt to 3-bet. This serves two purposes. First, it allows me to win some small to medium pots when the bully has air. Secondly, it sets up a dynamic that allows me to win a big pot when they decide to stand up to my aggression with a marginal holding. It may seem like a lot of chips to some, but I’ve had a ton of success recently by being either the shover or caller in this scenario because whichever one of us wins this pot will be in a great position to win the tournament.
The single biggest deterrent to playing a proper poker tournament strategy and continuing in a big pot against a loose opponent who is playing back at you is lack of a proper bankroll. This causes many players to have an irrational fear of busting a tournament. If you step into a cage fight knowing that you can’t afford to pay the inevitable medical bills, you will be less willing to let your guard down and attack. Similarly, not being properly rolled for the tournaments you play will hinder you willingness to engage in x-bet wars with the loose maniacs on your right.
Poker Tournament Strategy 2: Use Your Big Stack
In the past whenever I won a big stack, it was all luck and no skill. The Odds Gods dealt me AA and stuck some poor sap with KK. Not one to be ungrateful and squander such a blessing, I played uber tight after calculating that I already had enough chips to make the money. We all know how this story ends. The short stacks who “definitely will be out in the next few hands” always seemed to find a way to survive for another level or two. By the time the bubble burst, my big stack would become a mid stack and be losing one flip would have me fighting for my tournament life like everyone else. Clearly, this is not a winning poker tournament strategy. Blessing squandered.
Nowadays when I am the one fortunate enough to win the big stack, I instantly put it to use. At this point, I become a chip magnet looking for ways to get every chip on the table into my stack. This is easier to do because there is one less aggressive player at the table and the others who may have been thinking about getting aggressive saw what happened to the last fool. Most of them will stay out of my way and let me steal from the tighter players at will. I continue to pick fights with anyone who dares to throw rocks at the throne. In these future bouts, I have a new weapon I like to call “big stack insurance” – I can bust them but they can’t bust me.
Tournament Strategy 3: Change Gears As Needed
Even though the shorter stacks can’t bust me when I have a big stack, sometimes they get aces and occasionally I don’t suck out. When this happens, I am protected by my big stack insurance and my tournament life is preserved. At this point, I do not mind playing for a min-cash if the bubble is very close. If there are no bubble dynamics, then I change gears in accordance with my remaining stack size which informs the correct poker tournament strategy I should take.
If I am left with a short stack, I go into all in or fold mode to try and get back to a mid-stack. This is not to say that I am desperately taking ill-advised gambles, but that I am taking every +EV shove and call available to me instead of making bet-fold plays or calling with speculative hands.
If I am left with a mid-stack, I continue picking fights with overly aggressive players. This is where I make my bet-fold plays. That said, I am much less aggressive with this at this point if the table has other alpha stacks compared to when everyone was mid stacked earlier in the tournament.
If there is already an established table captain, I may just have to play my mid stack more like a short stack. This is especially true deep in a tournament because, by this point, most of the worst players have already busted.
Poker Tournament Strategy 4: Ladder At The Final Table
If I am lucky enough to take a big stack to the final table, I continue with my aggression – to a point. I am willing to open and 3-bet light just as before, but I am less willing to get all in light for a couple of reasons.
For one, the effects of ICM on the final table can be huge depending on the size of the pay jumps. Earlier in the game, my poker tournament strategy may have included calling a big 4-bet shove with 88 or AJs if I thought someone was playing back at me. Now, I have to fold these hands due to ICM.
Besides, if players are shoving light in this spot in spite of ICM, they will bust soon enough and I can make money with no risk. This is a time to pick on people who are not fighting back. That brings me to the second reason for not calling off. The better players understand how ICM affects proper poker tournament strategy and know that they cannot fight back too much because of it; therefore when they do shove, they likely have a stronger than average hand. The worst hands I would normally call off with may not even be ahead of these tighter ranges. As a mid stack on the final table, I do not try to pick fights. I am content to wait for good spots as I ladder up the payout scale due to others committing ICM suicide.
If you pride yourself on how often you mincash, then you are using a bad poker tournament strategy. Mathematically, you won’t be able to outrun rake and variance in the long run. Even if this were possible, your hourly rate would be miniscule. There is simply no way to duck and cover your way to victory on a futile quest to become poker’s first Min cash Millionaire. If you want to win, you have to take a chance and fight back. What’s the worst that can happen? If you lose, just register for another tournament. Luckily for us, poker is not a bloodsport. We always live to fight another day.