01 Apr 09 Playing Monster Sized Tournaments

Unless you’re able to fork over at least $1,000 or more to play in a WSOP event, your only chance to play in a tournament with a giant field is going to be online. These super events can be a lot of fun to play in, but the number of entries is so deep that it can take a very long time to find yourself in the money, and even then, the early paid positions usually just provide your money back plus an extremely small profit. In order to survive and strive, you need to be constantly looking to increase your stack, not just watch it slip away slowly while you stare at the money bubble.

Just yesterday I played in a $1.00 buy-in online tournament, and since this was the first time I had entered an event this cheap, I had no idea just how large the field was going to be. Well, by the time the first hand was dealt, over 7,000 players had signed up, making this easily the biggest event I had ever participated in. The tournament was a “double stack” feature, meaning everyone started with $3,000 in chips instead of the usual $1,500, with blinds at a modest $10/$20.

With a buy-in this cheap and stacks this deep, you know that chips are going to be flying from the get go. Ideally, what you want to do in the beginning is limp into as many pots as possible as you can with marginal to medium strength hands, hoping to flop something big. The players at these small priced tournaments will move all-in without thinking twice if they flop top pair, and with the blinds so low in comparison to the chip stack, you can really just sit back and wait for monsters without putting yourself at too much risk.

And that’s exactly what I did, I would call with suited connectors and small pairs, hoping to hit big and double up quickly. Well, things went a little TOO MUCH according to plan, and I was up to $30,000 in chips from my original $3,000 stack in about 20min thanks to flopping a set one hand and a straight a few hands later against multiple opponents. At this point, I can now go almost completely into cruise control with my hand selection. The blinds aren’t big enough to try to steal, and raising with anything other than top premium hands isn’t worth it at this point since I don’t want to put my dominant stack at risk this early on.

A quick look at the tournament detail board informed me that the payout positions started at 1080 players, meaning I had to wade through approx. 6,000 members of the opposition before I would get in the money, with the first payout position only doubling your entry ($2.00, yeah!!). I checked the leaderboard and my $30,000 in chips placed me roughly in the top 50 at about 30min into the tournament and already we had over a thousand players knocked out already.

Firmly placed with at least four times the stack of my nearest competition, I was able to sit back and take in a lot of information on how my table was playing. It came as no surprise to see that players were making terrible calls left and right, sometimes putting in all their chips to chase a very low percentage draw. I can understand that the money means nothing to do with a $1 buy-in, but not even enter if you’re not going to play seriously? All the more reason to pick your battles smartly and wait for the perfect dominant situation.

Over the next hour or so I slowly chipped my way up to approx. $36,000, which still put me far ahead of the average stack with about 3,500 players eliminated. Again, hand selection at this stage of the tournament is key. Why go all in with A-Q pre-flop when you can very easily find a much better spot to put your chips in? These deep field events are not aggressively type Sit & Go’s, you need to keep your patience and fold even fairly strong hands.

About a hour later we hit the money bubble, and as soon as it burst and the only the paid 1080 players were left, boy did things change. Apparently everyone was so happy about doubling their $1 entry (which equates to a single dollar in profit for over three hours invested) that now they wanted to play like the chips had no meaning. At this point you need to exhibit extreme caution with your hand selection, as players are now raising and pushing all-in with weak pairs and hands like K-10. Ideally, if you can afford to, you want to be able to single these players out and try to get them heads up when you have a big pocket pair. Still, if you’re in first position, you need you put in a large enough bet so that you can draw one or two callers at the most. Pocket aces can dry up quickly when you’re called by four other players simply because you just min. raised.

When it got down to the final 600 players, my stack had fallen down to about $22,000, the victim of a bad beat, when I caught A-K suited on the button. I put out a $4,800 raise (blinds were at $600/$1,200 at the time with $50 ante) hoping to collect the blinds and antes when the big blind raised me all-in. We were about equal in chips and I needed to double up in order to make it to the next payout bump, so I called. He turned over A-J off suit, flopped a Jack and then another Jack on the turn, and that was it for me. I ended up finishing in 525th place, outlasting about 6,500 players and netting myself a cool $3.50 for almost four hours of constant concentration and patience.

The moral of the story? Maybe I’m the crazy one for taking a $1 buy-in tournament so seriously, but to me, good poker is good poker. If you’re going to play these giant events, you need to abandon the survival mentality and instead adapt a chip collecting mentality. Big stacks lead to less pressure and better decisions. Better decisions lead to bigger stacks. Amazing how that works, isn’t it?

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Tags: Monster, Playing, Sized, tournaments