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Common
psychological errors made in tournament play.
Many poker
players perform well below their technical ability when playing in a
tournament. More money and more prestige are at stake in a large
tournament than in all but the biggest money games. This leads to
more pressure.
Speaking for myself, I have played a tournament pot with a
seven-figure amount in it, and a great many in six figures.
But in money games, only perhaps a dozen pots I've played have been
as much as five figures. I am sure that most of you also have
greatly disparate sums in these two departments.
Let's discuss some of the common psychological errors in tournament
play that occur in the bigger tournaments. (It is hard for me to
conceive of a $10 buy-in Internet tournament as being pressure to
anyone; think of the event I am talking about here to be a live
tournament with a buy-in of $500 or more.)
1. Forming a preconceived
game plan: What would be your opinion of a general
who had an elaborate battle plan that he intended to follow, come
hell or high water, but he did not know on what front he would be
fighting, the number of enemy soldiers, their weaponry, or the
topography of the battlefield? I am sure we all would be quite
critical of such a commander, believing him to be too mentally rigid
to get the optimum result. In many ways, a poker player is like a
general. He needs to see who is at his table, how experienced they
are, and what will be the normal way to play for that particular
table before he can go too far with forming his own plans. If you
decide ahead of time to be very careful or to be superaggressive for
an event, you are no better than that general with the overly rigid
mind.
2. Having a fear of
failure: Lots of players would not be bothered by
lasting for a while, yet finishing out of the money. The main thing
they do not want to do is bust out early and look like a patsy. They
want to see lots of players exiting before they do. To this type of
thinking, outlasting people who bust out early means you played
better than they did. (Often, the converse is true, since an
extremely tight tournament player has little chance to win.) Many
professionals feel as I do; it's better to go out of an event early
and get into a juicy cash game than burn up a day and still go home
empty-handed. I am not saying you should start right out splashing
about with weak hands, hoping to get lucky, but you do need to run
risks to play tournament poker in a manner that gives yourself the
best chance to win.
3. Not staying flexible:
The best tournament poker advice I ever received was from Dewey
Tomko, who told me the following: "You have to be alert to any
changes at your table and their influence on play. Every time the
blinds go up, someone new comes to the table, someone gets knocked
out, or a big pot is won or lost, the atmosphere changes. Stay tuned
in to what has happened to the game and play accordingly." I might
add that the change from blinds only to the addition of an ante
causes a rapid and sizable switch in the game conditions. Few
players are as tuned in to changes as they ought to be. Stay alert
so that you can go with the flow - or take advantage of it.
4. Feeling obliged to make
something happen: Hold'em has long dry spells. A
player going through a drought of decent hands gets frustrated, and
often decides to "take matters into his own hands" and start
splashing about. The result is more likely to be an early exit
instead of a bigger stack. To be sure, once you get very low on
chips, it is necessary to make a stand before you get anted down to
the cloth. This is not the type of situation I am talking about, in
which pushing the panic button is justified. I am referring to
falling "below the curve," where you still have a sufficient
quantity of chips to fight at the current level of blinds/antes, but
most of the other players have more. Note that this situation will
occur only in a tournament that starts you off with a goodly amount
of chips and does not raise the blinds to the moon in a hurry to get
the event over.
5. Taking things
personally: Nearly every table these days has one or
more bullies, players with big stacks who are frequently fighting
you instead of folding. Do not take it personally when you
constantly get bet into or raised. I believe that a bully should not
be able to trick you into playing weak hands by doing so himself. On
the contrary, you need to tighten up preflop so that you build hands
that can take some heat. His game plan is to bet heavily to try to
run you out of the pot. Your best counter is to have a bigger hand
than he anticipates. You also have to be willing to reraise when the
situation calls for it, such as when you have a good but not great
hand that is out of position, since your opponent probably does not
have a quality hand on a given occasion.
6. Failing to recover from
a reverse: You will play lots of pots during the
length of an entire tournament. It is unrealistic to think you are
going to run wire to wire without any setbacks, even if you are
lucky enough to win the event. When things are going good, you are
in a positive frame of mind, and maybe even suffering from the
delusion of near invincibility. At some point, you are going to get
a jolt, as if one of your competitors has dumped a bucket of ice
water over your head. You need to keep your equilibrium after such a
shock. The worst thing you can do is go on a wild bluffing spree to
try to get back to where you were before you lost that big pot. The
other players are going to be more willing to pay you off after you
have suffered a big loss, so hope to pick up a good hand and show it
to them when they call.
7. Fading in the stretch:
You made it to the final table. In most big brick-and-mortar casino
events these days, the final table is played on a second day, after
you have rested and recovered your energy. However, some events
still play straight through to a winner. Famous Tournament Director
Jack McClelland told me he has seen a huge number of players, even
world-class pros, make silly mistakes when they are tired. The
psychology of the situation is, "OK, let's put the money in and see
who gets lucky." Unsurprisingly, the better hand is usually the one
that "gets lucky." You have stayed patient for half a day or more,
so don't crack now.
8. Thinking about how much
you would like to win, so that you can attain a certain goal:
You are playing with chips and trying to do your best. If you start
spending the money before you make it, you are liable to perform
less than optimally. As soon as those chips get mentally converted
to cash, you are going to lose a lot of your gamble. It should be
simply tournament chips you wager, not enough money to buy a Lexus
or pay off the mortgage. You can be sure a tough competitor like
Tiger Woods does not dwell on what is at stake when he lines up a
key putt to win a major championship. He's all business. When you
put extra pressure on yourself, it often has a reverse effect, so
just execute during the contest, and think about how you will spend
the money only as you are walking to the cashier's window.
I like to quote the great German chess player of a century ago,
Sigbert Tarrasch, who once said, "It is not enough to be a good
player; you must also play well." Often, when someone does not play
his best in a poker tournament, it is from encountering one or more
of the psychological problems listed above.
Bob
Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker
(available at CardPlayer.com), Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve
Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker. Ciaffone is available for poker
lessons: e-mail
thecoach@chartermi.net. His website is
http://www.pokercoach.us/,
where you can get his rulebook, Robert's Rules of Poker, for free.
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