Five Common Poker Tournament Mistakes by Beginners

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Poker is a seemingly simple game on the surface, but as anyone who has taken the time to investigate the strategies and theories about the game can attest to, once you peel back a layer or two the game becomes more and more complex. In this column I’ll peel back that first upper layer and take a look at some of the common mistakes made by tournament poker players who are just getting their feet wet at the tables.

Mistake #1: Bluffing When Your Opponent Is Priced-In to Call

One of the biggest mistakes I see casual poker players make is to make an all-in bluff when their opponent is priced in to call. Since you’ll find yourself playing a short-stack quite often in tournaments you need to understand when you no longer have any fold equity, such as when you are down to 1,500 chips with the blinds at 200/400 with a 50 chip ante. In this situation the Big Blind is going to have to call about 1,100 chips to win 2,500 chips and should be calling with almost any two cards. At some point you will have to shove and get called, but make sure you have something like Q5 and not 53: In the first instance you are 50/50 with Q5, whereas with 53 you are nearly a 2-1 dog against a 100% calling range.

This can also work in reverse: Imagine you are the chip-leader (blinds are still 200/400 with a 50 chip ante) and you decide to try to steal the blinds of a player with a stack of 1,500 chips with 56 offsuit. What are the chances this player lays their hand down? Unless they are flat out terrible it’s about 0.0. And what are the chances they have a hand that is ahead of 56? Chances are that they do, with about a 60% to win if they call with any two cards to put an exact number on it. The Big Blind will be getting over 2-1 to call you (he would have to call 1,100 to win about 2,500), so he simply can’t fold, and you’re basically handing him chips.

Another example of this is when you have a slightly larger stack (say 2,300 chips at the same blind level) and a player raise to 1,000 in front of you. You have to realize that you have ZERO fold equity here, when you push all-in your opponent has to call just 1,300 chips to win 4,300, and shouldn’t fold if one of his cards is his cocktail napkin.

Keep this in mind when you are pondering shoving with a hand like 57s or K8; even though you are desperate to get your chips in the pot, don’t do it when you’re opponent has to call and especially when they are likely to have a decent hand –considering they open-raised. If they opened 30% of their hands your 57s would be 62/38 dog, and your K8 is about the same.

Mistake #2: Playing to Survive

Another mistake I see all too often is when players try to survive and survive the bubble or move up in the money. This isn’t always an incorrect strategy (there are scenarios where it’s correct to play to survive), but for the most part if you have a healthy chip-stack, you should be playing to win and not to survive.

Think of survival mode in a poker tournament like the Prevent Defense in Football: Not only doesn’t it work, but it can get you into some bad short-term habits, and give your opponents the confidence they need to play their best game. Before you know it, your survival mode strategy can have you playing desperately, as you are no longer able to fold your way to the money and have to start putting what is left of your chips in the middle.

Mistake #3: Not Adjusting to Changing Stack to Blind Ratios

Every time I see someone with a 10BB stack call a raise I want to smash my head on the table. Ditto for when I see someone open-limp and then fold to a raise with a similar stack.

Here are a couple of rules of thumb to use:

• Do not even consider calling a raise with less than 15BB’s; and that’s even pushing it. In this scenario you are either pushing all-in or folding.
• If you have 12BB’s or less you should be moving all-in or folding if you are opening the pot.
• Be careful raising light with a stack in the 20-25BB range, as this is the perfect stack for other players to re-steal against.

Mistake #4: Investing too Much Time Building an Image

One of the mantras winning poker players have adopted over the years is to try to appear to be playing the opposite to how you are actually playing; in simpler terms we call this advertising or building a table image. However, when it comes to tournament poker there is usually little value in purposefully creating an image, as I’ll now explain.

For one thing, in tournament poker you never know when you are going to be moved to a new table, so spending an hour building a loose image is all for naught if your table breaks and you find yourself at a new table with eight players who have no idea you’ve been playing 75% of your hands.

Secondly, tournaments have different stages where you’ll have to play tight, or have to play all-in or fold poker. Additionally, your chip-stack often dictates how many or how few hands you can get involved in.

Basically, when compared to cash games the value of creating a specific table image in tournaments is much smaller.

Mistake #5: Not Factoring ICM into Your Decisions

ICM (The Independent Chip Model) is a tournament formula that helps you determine the real-money implications of different decisions. ICM is used mainly on the bubble or when there is a pay-jump, but it does impact every decision in a tournament to some degree.

In cash-games every dollar in the pot represents a dollar, but in tournaments the chips do not have an intrinsic value, so you have to factor in the payouts to get an accurate portrayal of your true pot odds – the difference between your actual pot odds, cEV (Chip Expected Value), and the ICM or $EV ($ Expected Value).

Think of ICM this way: Suppose you are playing in a $10, 10-man, tournament with four players remaining, everyone has 2,000 chips and the blinds are 50/100. 1^st place pays $50, 2^nd place pays $30, and 3^rd place pays $20. Now suppose you’re in the Big Blind with a decent hand like AJ and the button pushes all-in –the button is a very aggressive player that will open-shove 50% of his buttons in this situation. In any cash-game scenario or early on in a tournament this is a pretty easy call as you rate to be almost a 2-1 favorite against his range.

However, when we factor in ICM we get a different answer.

First off, we have to calculate your equity: All things being equal everyone left in the tournament has the same equity, $25. In the above scenario, two times you will call and win which increases your equity from $25 to $38.33 (while the other two players got a boost to $30.83 without winning any chips), and one time we call and lose and drop to $0 of equity. So our average equity gain in this situation is only $1.66! Still a profitable call, but much closer to a coin-flip than the 2-1 favorite it appears to be based on cEV.

Now imagine if the button is a bit tighter, shoving with only 35% of his hands, and you have the same hand, AJ. In this scenario you are a 60/40 favorite over his range; again an easy call in a cash game. But when we factor in the ICM of this situation we see that making this call will cost us a lot of money in the long-run: Over the course of 100 hands, sixty times we gain $13.33 (about $800) and forty times we lose $25 ($1,000), for a net loss of $2 per hand, which is a sizable amount in a $10 tournament.