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Evaluating Starting Hands In Tournament Poker
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Author: Marc Weinberg
In tournament poker you play the opponent first and your starting hands second. You make decisions based on the following factors: his position, his stack, his bet, his previous betting patterns, your position, your stack, your betting patterns...and then take a look down at your cards!
There are times in tournament poker when all those poker textbooks you read are useless and have less relevance to you than a conversation with your mother-in-law. These are the times when your ability to read a player and to read the tournament as a whole become vital. If it's the late stage of an event and your opponent is short-stacked what does his all-in move mean? What does it mean when he does the same thing on the very first hand with the blinds at 10/20? How will this impact your tournament life?
First you look at his position, both in terms of where is sitting and how he is faring in the tournament as a whole. In a recent tournament that I played in the following scenario came up, and my decision was determined by a host of factors of which my starting hand was the last of my concerns:
Blinds: 150 - 300
My opponent's stack: 1600 chips
My opponent's position: 3rd to act (out of position for the whole hand)
My position: Big blind, in for 300.
My stack size: 6000 chips
The average stack size in the tournament: 3000 chips
The average stack at our table: 3400 chips
These last two factors are also very important. If everyone at the table has a lot of chips it puts short-stacks under even more pressure. They might be doing okay in terms of the average across all tables (this is for multi-table tournaments only, obviously) but they deal with the perception of your table first and foremost. In this case my opponent was the short stack at our table.
My opponent moved all-in. What could his starting hand be? The key is to evaluate other potential starting hands before looking at your own.
In this case, with all above factors, I am almost 100% sure that he does not have a premium hand: I exclude AA,KK,QQ,JJ. How can I do this? There are very few players who would push all-in from early position with a short-stack and this type of hand, because the right play is to try and maximize your chips, so you want opponents. The all-in move is typically made by players that do not want action, or want to isolate a single opponent.
I must now put him on two high cards or a small to medium pair. I can also put him on a cold bluff because his prior play has been so tight and 450 chips are already up for grabs in the blinds. Now I look at my hand...
My starting hand here was AT unsuited. Against an opponent with position, or chips, or a solid history this is a hand you must fold. The problem is that your most likely hands to face are Ax and AT is easily dominated by likely holdings (AJ,AQ, and AK). But my opponent has nothing going for him, and I can afford to gamble that he is desperate. I conclude that he has a small pair and we'd be in a race or he has a horrible hand like KJ suited and is trying to steal. Either way my hand plays well, and even if I lose my tournament will continue in decent shape.
As it so happens he turned over K8 suited and lost the hand to my Ace high.
The point of the anecdote is that there are a lot of extraneous factors that go into tournament poker decisions and evaluating your starting hand can only occur after you first take those factors into account.
Related Poker Articles And News Items:
> Calling All Ins With Small Pairs - The Folly!
> Online Poker Tournament Strategy - The Absent Opponent
> Poker Tournament Bankrolls
> The Three Stage Theory Of Online Tournament Play - Part 3
> The Three Stage Theory Of Online Tournament Play - Part 2
> The Three Stage Theory Of Online Tournament Play - Part 1
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