The Tortoise And The Hare

I played in a home-game tournament last weekend. Say what you will about these tournaments, but they are a lot of fun. They won't make you rich, but they don't cost much to enter, and they are over in the same night. Besides, if you're at the table with a few of your friends, it makes for a nice evening.

Anyway, I noticed two players at my starting table, two of the better players that I knew in the field. One we'll call the Tortoise, and the other we'll call the Hare. Now, as you can imagine, Hare played fast. He sought to build a stack early, and use it to push around the rest of the table as the blinds went up. Tortoise preferred the slower route. Start out slowly. Stick to premium hands, and stay out of trouble while preserving your stack until the big opportunities came.

Now, I'm not saying that one strategy is automatically better than another. But I did notice something about both that I hadn't noticed before.

First, let's discuss Hare. From the very first hand, he was hard at work. He was involved in more pots than anyone else. And he was in there challenging for every pot. He was also bluffing, running sophisticated moves, and setting himself up as the table captain. It seemed like every pot had to go through him, and he wasn't giving up easily. We started with 7000 chip stacks, and through his efforts he managed to work his way up to nearly 10,000 by the first break. He was one of the chip leaders, and some of the others were already tired of him.

But after the first break, things began to change. He was still in there pushing around chips. But this time, he was getting called. He was getting bet into, and he was having to give up on pots that he had won before. To make matters even worse, the other players were also checking into him and raising when he bet, knowing he was betting with a worse hand than theirs. The next two hours for him were not happy ones, and he never made it to the second break.

Now, Tortoise played with the opposite strategy. He folded nearly everything for the first several rounds, and played only premium starting hands. He was the tightest player at the table, and when he entered a pot, especially for a raise, it was noticed. He only showed one hand, and it was a pair of Kings. But he didn't win much with them, and when the first break came, he was still near his starting count of 7000 chips.

He continued to play tight after the break, after Hare busted out and other players as well. But something began to happen when the blinds rose to the sixth or seventh level. Hare began to open up his game, and raised more. Nothing crazy, mostly late-position blind steals and raises with hands like K-J and pocket sevens. But he was also betting after the flop, and because of his reputation, most of his bets were going uncalled.

So, Tortoise began to chip up. And then he began to run into players who were on their way down. He called with top-pair-top-kicker against an all-in player with an underpair. He called another player all-in with pocket Kings. He slowplayed a set and got more chips. And he made the final table in good shape to contend for the top spot.

Confession time. In this particular tournament, I was the Tortoise. I finished third, and took home a nice-sized bundle of cash. Not a fortune, but enough to take the wife out for the weekend. And I learned a little something about tournament poker.

Basically, there are two ways to play poker at the beginning of a tournament:

1. Play aggressively. You will pick up chips early, and people will play more loosely against you, which will pay off big when you're holding the nuts. You may go out early, but you won't be one of those poor souls who gets frustratingly blinded off waiting for a premium hand to play.

2. Play tight. You will bleed off chips slowly early, and miss some opportunities, but you will be able to steal pots when you need to later in the tournament. You will keep yourself out of trouble, and create opportunities for yourself during the later rounds, when the pot sizes are more meaningful.

Now, I will tell you that the biggest tournament that I've ever won, I won the first way, just like Hare. We started with 10000 in chips, and 45 minute rounds. I bluffed off 6000 in chips in the first two rounds, and then when I started catching cards, people were falling all over each other to call me. Once I had a monster stack, I could be the bully. I brought the biggest stack to the final table and never let it go.

But the problem is what happens if the cards don't come? What happens if you don't catch what you need to in the first few hours of a tournament to build a monster stack? Then you're in trouble, and you're probably going out quickly. You don't have the option of bluffing your way into a stack, because you've already established the reputation that will cause people to call you. So you're relying on catching cards in the first few hours to reach the money, which is a dangerous notion, especially in smaller tournaments and online events where the blinds go up quickly.

If you play your early rounds like Tortoise, then you are mostly folding in the early rounds. You will stay out of trouble, tread water for a few hours, and build a reputation for only playing good hands, and only betting or raising with the goods. Then you will be able to steal some pots in later rounds when the stakes go up. And your tight reputation will also help you steal some of the pots that you do play, with pot stabs and continuation bets that would have otherwise gotten called.

Tortoise didn't play many hands, but when he did play them for a raise, he could make bets after the flop hoping to take them down uncontested. Usually it works, thanks to Tortoise's reputation as a tight player. While you can't always make pot stabs on every flop, remember, we are only talking about four pots in three hours. Nobody is going to get a reliable read on you with that small a sample.

In a way, that's the opposite of what most people think. Generally, the thinking is that tight players must rely on catching cards in order to win tournaments, while aggressive, run-without-the-ball tournament players don't. But just the opposite is true. Eventually, guys who are aggressive early will need some cards to show down, because they're going to get called. But guys who have been folding for the first few rounds will have the opportunity to steal.

So if this works so well, why do so many tight players run out of chips midway through the tournament, just shy of the final table? Well, because genuinely tight players don't know how and when to steal pots. They don't know when the time is right to go after blinds and antes that nobody else wants. Pot stealing is a critical part of tournament poker, and if it is a skill that you don't have, then it is a skill that you need to learn. When you watch these tournaments from their midpoint on through the end -- and I'm talking about live, not on TV -- you see so many hands that are folded around preflop because nobody wants to even call the blind. There are so many opportunities to steal, it's not even funny.

But you have to strike a balance, of course. Do it too little, and you won't achieve your goal, which is to stay ahead of the rising blinds until a real hand comes along. Do it too much and people will start calling you, and then you're back where Hare was, having to wait for a hand to play. But the point is that you're in control of your own stack, and you can wait not only for cards to increase it, but also for opportunities to steal.

But there's something else that happens in tournaments toward the middle, all the way to the end. After a certain point, some of the players start to get desperate, and will begin calling and pushing with marginal hands once again. Players who have been playing a good, solid, game of poker will suddenly stick it all in with J-10 suited or A-4 offsuit, hoping it is good.

The trick here is to figure out who is desperate and who isn't. Don't try to steal from the desperate players. They're going to call you with a lot more hands than normal. Those are the players whom you want to challenge with the best hand, and hope it holds up. The other players, you can continue stealing from, so long as they don't have so many chips that they feel like calling a raise won't make a dent in their stack.

The best way to tell who is desperate is to watch their stack. Once it gets down to ten blinds or so, they know that they have very little wiggle room, and will need to make something happen before the blinds go up again. They're likely to go in next time they see something they like, and will call all-in with any top pair, or any flush draw. So, while lots of people believe that "big stacks pick on the small stacks," I think it's more accurate to say that big stacks pick on the medium stacks. But even if you are a medium stack, you can still pick on other medium stacks. Just don't pick on the big or small stacks.

So, you can choose to play fast, or you can choose to play slow. Just recognize that if you choose to play fast, you will eventually need to slow down and catch cards in order to keep advancing. If the cards don't come, then you're not going to get there. But if they do, you're going to be in good shape.

Likewise, if you choose to play slow, recognize that you will at some point need to become a thief. You will need to steal blinds preflop and pots after. You will need to use that tight rep you've garnered to put pressure on the right players in order to stay ahead of the blinds. And you will need to recognize what players are desperate enough to call you or bet into you with marginal hands, and be willing to take their chips from them. All in a day's work.

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