06-20-05, LearnTexasHoldem:
Home Tourney And Aggressive Players
I was in a small 10$ no limit tourney yesterday. We all get 1000$ in chips. 10 players at the table. Some are very aggressive, almost maniacs, some are tight, some have no idea how to play. So it was a very mixed tourney. I try to be a tight aggressive kind of player.
A LOT of preflop bets go as high as 250$ early in the game. It is almost impossible to get to the flop for little money.I get dealt 7-2o, 10-4o, J-3o all night making it hard for me to call 250$ and sometimes 300$ to see the flop. I finally get pockets kings and i bet 300$. I get 2 callers and loose to pocket aces. I am now in a bad position with approx. 350$ left. The bad cards continue to come. I very rarely see cards higher than 10. Eventually I get QJo and, down to 150$ I decide to go all-in. Of course I get called and loose it all after only an hour and a half of play.
When I got home, I started thinking about what I did wrong and I came to two conclusions.
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Second conclusion: I could have been more aggressive. Althought it would have required me to go all-in many many times, maybe i could have folded my opponents. The reason why I wasn't more aggressive is because the way the tourney was going, I knew I wouldn't be able to fold some of the very aggressive players unless I went all-in early in the game (before my pocket kings loss). I could have done it once or twice but I would have gotten called after that.
If I was a good player, I know I could have done something about it. How does good players play when the cards are against them in a very aggressive no limit tourney?
Thanks!
Jeff
Answer: Whenever you sit down in a tournament, the first thing you should do is look at how the blind structure is and how quickly it increases with relation to your chip stack. The more gradual the blinds increase, the slower you can play. You can be tight and just wait for premium hands, slowly building up your chips. On the other hand if the blinds are ramping up really fast, you have to play fast. Fast play means you are in pots with less hand strength than normally you would be.
You mentioned that you went all-in with QJ because you only had $150 left. That is the same type of thinking you have to do at the beginning of the tourney if the blinds are really steep. Ideally, you would have liked to have been able to wait for the KK, AK, and other big hands to pick off the aggressive players, but if the blinds were moving too quickly though, that wasn't a possibility. I think next time you might try to pick them off with lessor hands. Try to get heads up with one of them with a hand that will do well against just one opponent; a hand like a pocket pair or an Ace high hand, like A9.
Fast blinds mean it is going to be more of a crap shoot. You just don't want to play so tightly that you have no chance to win. It would be better to gamble at some point and give yourself some kind of shot. Let me give you an example: You notice that one the aggressive players who has raised the past 4 hands in a row now raises when you have 99. Put all your chips in if you can get heads up. Now if you win this and double through, it gives you a little more breathing room.
Chips mean time in tournaments; you don't have to play as fast and you have more options. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't take down a mark if you see one. If you picked up AT against one these loose raisers, I would put him all-in. Just be careful you don't apply this same approach to players making raises with only strong hands. Also, this won't work all the time since they will sometimes get lucky or have a good hand, but that isn't enough to prevent you from playing this way. Not all good decisions and good play is rewarded in the short term, but in the long term you'll get them.
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