Tournament Strategy

Well, it’s hard to believe, but I witnessed it again on Saturday. It never ceases to amaze me how some seemingly experienced tournament poker players will do everything in their power to keep another guy around, when their goal should be exactly the opposite. A new person to our Saturday game would probably naturally assume there was collusion, but I know the players involved, so I’m sure this wasn’t the case.

I’ll leave the names out so as not to embarrass anyone. Although I was in the hand, that fact is beside the point - I would be just as upset if it were someone else. In fact, I’m a little surprised nobody else at the table said anything. Perhaps they were daydreaming, talking or watching television, and didn’t notice the egregious blunder. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s good that they didn’t say anything - I’m just surprised. :-)

The hand in question came when blinds are $500/1,000 and we’re down to 7-8 players. Player One limps from middle position and it folds to Player Two in the small blind, who calls. This leaves Player Two left with only $1,400, so just calling the big blind pretty much commits him to the hand. I’m in the big blind with 6s-7s, and I check my option. Flop comes Kd-9s-7d, giving me bottom pair and a couple of backdoor draws. Player Two pushes in (as he should, hoping we make bad folds), and since I have no reason to believe I don’t have the best hand, I make the call.

Now basic tournament strategy #101 dictates that in a situation like this, the other players in the hand call the all-in and check it down, unless one has a monster hand. The painfully obvious reason is that two or more players have a much better chance of knocking out an opponent than one player does heads-up. The main goal at this point is to eliminate players, therefore bringing yourself one step closer to the money. I fully expect Player One to call and check it down with almost anything, especially since he’s the big stack at the table. Instead, he immediately announces that he’s all-in! Well, I figure it’s just bad luck on my part, and I ran into a set or something. Although I’m a short stack, it’s a pretty easy fold given the circumstances.

Player Two turns over queen-high. As I suspected, he has nothing, and is making the only play available to him. Player One turns over….less than nothing! He has some goofy crap like a six-high flush draw. The turn and river bring two bricks, and Player Two triples up with queen-high. I hope that if Player Two ended up cashing, he at least bought Player One dinner. I’m sure Player One had some kind of “strategy” that made perfect sense to his cannabis-clouded brain, but I really don’t want to know what it was.

Mentally, I was done with the tournament at that point. I figure if we’re not going to try to knock other players out (ie: play poker…), then I’d rather go home and catch up on some TV. I pushed all-in on the next hand with some crap like K-3, and got knocked out by, ironically, Player Two. Good for him - I hope he went on to win the tournament. If he got any more help from Player One, then he was a shoe-in…

See ya at the tables…
Rick