At my starting table, there was a very nice, pleasant young man who was plainly scared to death. I was certain that not only was this his first $500 tournament, he hadn't played any $300 tournaments, and I thought there was a reasonable chance he hadn't played any $100 tournaments, either.
His hands shook, he seemed a bit unfamiliar with tournament procedures, and he lost his starting stack of $1,000 in tournament chips in two chunks, first when he called a big reraise with A-3 offsuit, and then when — with the blinds still at $5-$15 — he pushed the rest of his money in with 7-4 offsuit.
Tournament poker can be a great learning experience, but $500 tournaments are not the place to start. I don't think he was a millionaire, either, because a millionaire probably wouldn't have been as nervous as this very pleasant young man plainly was.
What I think has happened is that in recent years, the public has seen a relatively large number of unknowns (Kevin McBride, Jim McManus, Steve Riehle, and topping the list, last year's winner, Robert Varkonyi) perform so well in poker's ultimate event, the $10,000 championship at the World Series of Poker, that some players are starting to think "anybody who has played some poker can do it if he catches some cards."
Well, I've got a real news flash for these folks. Although the players I listed as "relative unknowns" certainly did not have impressive tournament resumes before their scores in "The Big One," they had played a lot of poker, and perhaps even more important, they all were pretty cool customers. Oh, I'm sure their hearts did more than their share of pounding, but you don't get to the WSOP final table without possessing at least a little bit of lion in the old (or young) heart, and if you're frightened at the first level of any tournament, you're playing in too big a tournament for your experience level.
I felt two regrets as the young man got up. First, he did seem to be a nice guy, and I hated to see him get drilled so fast; it would have been nice if he'd gotten to play a few hands and at least gain some experience. Second, because we had reached about hand No. 4 by the time everyone else at the table had figured out who the target was, I wanted my fair share of his chips, but I never got a chance to engage.
I ran into a very different kind of "What were they thinking?" later in the tournament, which had 382 starters. We had about 120 players left, my stack was above par, I was in the small blind, we had one limper (blinds $100-$200), and so I decided to play my 7-5 for another hundred to look at the flop.
The flop came down 8-7-5, kind of good news-bad news for me, because while it had certainly hit my hand well, it was a well-connected flop, just the kind that might hit a limper fooling around with 9-8 or a big blind who'd never been put to the test. I checked, the big blind bet $300, the limper called, and I thought, "Gee, this would be a nice time to pick up this pot here and now," so I made it $1,500 to go — an amount, I thought, that would get rid of anyone who happened to be holding a 6 or a 10-9.
The big blind thought about it for a while. He had $500 invested in the pot, and two players who had shown strength — the limper who had smooth-called his $300 bet, and me, the raiser. He decided to take his remaining $2,600 and shove it all in. This was a raise of only $1,100 of my bet, making it extraordinarily unlikely that I was going to fold.
My next surprise was that the limper decided to call this all-in bet for his last $1,800. At this point, I was reasonably certain I was beaten, but the pot was so huge, it was only going to take another $1,100 to see it to the end, so the call was mandatory, I thought.
Boy, was it mandatory! When the hands all got flipped over, the big blind showed Q-6 offsuit. With only $500 invested, and knowing he had virtually no chance of pushing me out of the pot, he had committed every single one of his chips to an open-end straight draw, and not only that, it wasn't even the nut straight draw.
He could have been facing hands like 10-6 (where the 9 loses for him), other hands like 7-6 that meant he was drawing for the same straight but didn't have the pair his opponent already had, already made straights (I know certain players who have a fondness for 6-9), or even more likely, 10-9, whereby the bettor would have had an open-ender with overcards.
Please feel free to write in and tell me if you disagree, but I think this was one of the worst bets I have ever seen in the later stages of a no-limit tournament. (It's not the worst, because I remember one of my own at the 2002 World Poker Open in Tunica that will haunt me until the day I die, but at least I pushed a raise at Humberto Brenes that could have caused him to lay down a pretty big hand.)
My next opponent flipped over K-Q offsuit. He had called for all of his chips with two overcards into the face of two opponents who had shown a lot of strength. I take the statement I made in the previous paragraph back. I think this play was even worse.
I understand the desire to triple up, but owning $1,800 when the blinds are $100-$200, you're not yet in full panic mode. You're trying to hit one of six outs, and from all the strength the two previous players have shown, it should have seemed very likely that hitting one of his theoretical "outs" wasn't going to help (as indeed it wouldn't have helped against me).
He also could have been up against something like K-8 (making two pair for an opponent). All in all, there was a huge number of ways that "hitting" this hand wouldn't have helped a bit. This is a pretty common error: People often count up how many outs they believe they have without realizing that some of their theoretically good cards are actually neutral or bad.
The river card isn't the point, because when you're trying to improve in poker, you focus on the decisions you make when the money goes in, and not on what does or doesn't land on the river.
The key learning factors from these misplayed hands are, I think:
1. When a raise has virtually no chance of driving out an opponent (as the $1,100 raise did not: the pot already contained $5,300, and worse yet, I'd shown strength by check-raising into not one, but two opponents), it's not really a raise: It's not a semibluff, one of those bets that can win two ways, either by just winning with the bet or by hitting the hand. It's a bet that is going to have to win by showing down the best hand, and that's considerably different than a bet that can win without opposition (if, for example, the reraise had been for something like $2,000 or more).
2. When you are facing two opponents who have shown considerable strength, two completely unconnected overcards are just about worthless. If the fellow had only had something like $200 left in front of him, and it was going to have to go in as the big blind on the next hand, I might excuse putting it in, just for the pot odds, but holding $1,800 when the blinds are $100-$200 and calling for all of your chips with junk into two strong opponents is a sign that you don't have the patience to play a short stack. If you don't have the patience to play a short stack, you have no business playing in tournaments, because you're going to have to play lots of them. Not everyone can be a brilliant short-stack player, but if you just throw your last (and significant) chips into a pot because you can't stand sitting there at half-par, tournaments are not a good investment for you.
3. When you are calculating how many outs you have to a hand, you must remain realistic, and recognize that in many situations, hitting your hand isn't going to help you one bit. Sitting there with K-Q in that spot, I probably would have considered my hand to have the value of one out, rather than six.
So, when I look back and think about these three tournament opponents, and wonder, "What were they thinking?" — I really don't have a good answer, unless you count "they weren't thinking" as an answer. If anyone has some alternative explanations, or theories, I'd welcome them.
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We can't emphasize enough the importance of keeping a poker face while betting, and not giving any clues about how good or bad your hand is. The whole point of the game is to make sure that they have NO clues, other than the bets you make.
