Once you’re in the money, things and people change. It’s important that you take note of just what these changes are. If your opponents are playing too tight, steal their blinds. If they’re playing too loose, you play a little bit tighter.

When you’re in the money, you should still be waiting for some really high-quality hands before you get too involved in any pot. Remember that the limits are high, and you should be thinking about playing very tight, because at high limits losing one big pot can be devastating. If you can get away with stealing some blinds, do it; but with the limits way up there, every hand will cause a major swing in your chip count. So it’s better just to sit back and watch the action and continue to survive. And when you do pick up a top ten hand, you’ll be taking your shot at the pot with some power. casino online

Sometimes I just wait for a big hand in a limit Hold’em tourney and let the cards decide how long I’ll be around for that day. If I catch good cards and win, then I might win the whole enchilada. If I catch good cards and lose, then at least I’m happy that I went out with some top ten hands. If I don’t catch anything decent and ante myself out of the tourney, that’s OK too. But if I start playing hands that I’m not supposed to play, that’s the worst of all, because I shoot myself in the foot!

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When you start to reach the money-cutoff stage (when, say, there are 19 players left, and the tournament pays only 18 spots), make sure that you have your priorities straight. As the other players begin to play even tighter, in order to last until the final
27 or 18 players, you need to understand that making the money isn't your objective at this point. You are here to finish in the top three and make the big money.

One phenomenon you will observe is that when there are 28 players left in an event paying 27 places, the players will all play even tighter, in order to be sure they "make the money." This is the time to be sure you're stealing every blind you can steal! If no one is going to put up a fight, then make sure you grab all this "free money"! So what if you are eliminated in the "stink hole" (often called the "bubble")? In other words, so what if you finish twenty-eighth when the event is paying only 27 spots! Does twenty-seventh place change your life at all? If it does, then just do what everyone does and play supertight. Just be warned that I will be there picking up your blinds every round.

This strategy—"steal while they're in survival mode"—has helped me (and many other players) accumulate chips that become important when I'm later trying to advance into the final rounds and win the tournament. But you have to be a little careful with it. Enough players have learned about the strategy to defend the blinds with aggression of their own. Not everyone will go into a shell. You have to know your players and pick your spots.

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• Poker – Survive And Thrive (0)

At some point after the first five or six hours, it's time to start stealing the blinds from the supertight players who are still alive in the tournament. But be wary of stealing the blinds from the looser players or the champion players, because they will probably defend with skill. Stay aware also of the person who keeps stealing your blinds, because at some point you will have to make a stand against that player.

If you take a close look around your table about six hours into the event, every time you enter one of these events, after a while you will develop the ability to see into the future a little bit. For example, there will probably be someone at your table who is playing way too loose but nonetheless is still alive. You may worry that this player may continue to be lucky, but chances are that he will bust himself out sooner rather than later, because of his reckless play. There will also be a player at your table whom you will recognize as being very tight, and you can figure that he or she will probably be around very late in the tournament, although probably low on chips.

You may even be able to see that the loose player is the one who may be your ticket to lasting another few hours yourself. Six or so hours into the event, with your blind-stealing working well, you need to make sure that you're still in a very tight mode of play. Surviving at this point in the tournament is the name of the game. But make sure that you're stealing blinds from the super-tight players. (Don't worry; you will know who they are.)

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Tight play is also an important factor in success at tournaments. The really tight players tend to be around en masse fairly late in limit Hold'em events. These players tend to play almost as tight as the "top ten only" strategy (which I discuss in Chapter 3).

Notice that I said these players were around, and not that they were winning the events. Although there are usually a ton of supertight players left late in a limit Hold'em event, they usually don't win the event or even make the final table. I believe that supertight play helps you last in limit Hold'em events, but you need to be able to change speeds at the right time if you're going to win some of them.

The right strategy against a group of supertight players differs from the right strategy against a group of average players. In fact, Jack Keller's three-betting preflop with every hand that he plays is more successful against a supertight player who will fold his hand right away if he misses it. Which tight player is going to win the pot when Jack three-bets his 5-5 into his 7-7? For example, when the flop comes A-J-2, then Jack can win pretty easily with a bet on the flop. Although supertight play will help you last, you will need to change your tactics at some point in order to win.

Therefore, I recommend playing the "top ten only" strategy for the first five or six hours of any Hold'em event while the weaker players are weeded out. After the first few hours of playing this strategy, it is time to switch tactics a bit.

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All champion poker players have to start somewhere, though. Learning to win limit Hold'em poker tournaments was very difficult for me. Even though I was already a world champion of poker and had won many big no-limit Hold'em events by the time I was 26 years old, I still hadn't even made my first final table (which is usually the final nine players) in a limit Hold'em tournament.

If you were a pro and I told you this, you would think it was really odd. How could I win so many no-limit Hold'em events but consistently have trouble making the final nine in limit Hold'em events? After a while, I began to realize that the way I was playing my hands was holding me back, so I did what I had never done before in poker: I studied a couple of other players to see what they were doing differently from me. Remember this the next time you start to blame your lack of success on bad luck: even a world champion was willing to admit he had things left to learn.

With no-limit, I could see what everyone else was doing wrong in the late 1980s. For some reason, the right way to play no-limit just seemed obvious and easy to me. Of course, I also did my fair share of playing no-limit Hold'em badly, but at least I knew when I was playing badly. (Moreover, that had to do with emotional issues, which I discuss elsewhere in the book.)

In this chapter you will learn:
- Aggressive play is right in limit Hold'em tournaments.
- Tight play is right in limit Hold'em tournaments.
- Stealing blinds helps you survive late in limit Hold'em events.
- To win, steal more blinds at the money-cutoff line.
- Survive and thrive.
- Bring your big guns to a war!
- How to trap in limit Hold'em tourneys.
- Playing satellites improves your game.

Aggressive Play Helps in Limit Hold'em Events
One day after I was eliminated from a limit Hold'em event, I sought out Jack Keller, who at the time was really hot in limit Hold'em tournaments, and watched him play for a couple of hours. It was obvious to me that Jack was doing a number of things I hadn't been doing. He simply tried to win every pot that he played. Jack never just called someone else's raise before the flop: he always either threw his hand away or three-bet it.

This was quite different from my old strategy. I used to just call when I had a small pair, hoping that others would call as well, and that I would win a big pot when I finally hit my set. Jack, however, always three-bet before the flop, even with only a small pair, and continued to play his hand aggressively from that point on in the hand. The percentage of pots that he won was much higher than the percentage of pots that I had won, for three reasons.

First, Jack's constant three-betting before the flop helped him win more pots by eliminating more opponents preflop. When you start with fewer opponents before the flop, you'll win more pots.

Second, Jack would play his hand pretty hard on the flop and win a lot of pots if his opponents had, say, king-high when an ace hit the board.
Third, Jack would just plain try to bluff you out if he thought he could.

This aggressive play of Hold'em hands is something I've already preached to you in earlier chapters of this book. Once I began using this system, I couldn't believe the results I achieved. I made five final tables in a row playing limit Hold'em this way, and eventually, in the 1990s, I won two world championships in limit Hold'em.

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I still love poker tournaments, even after playing in more than 900 of them in the 1990s alone; I enjoy every one that I play in. The event that really fires me up, though, is the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The WSOP is where legends and champions are made; it is the poker world's world championship. (Appendix 2 talks about playing in a WSOP tournament.)
In golf there are four major tournaments, but in poker the series of events constituting the WSOP carries so much prestige that it is in effect the U.S. Open, the Masters, the British Open, and the PGA all rolled into one!

With 643 players putting up $10,000 each for the WSOP championship event of 2002, creating a prize pool of $6.43 million, the money alone almost matches the prestige of winning the event. The investment banker Robert Varkonyi took home the first prize of $2 million; the second-place finisher, Julian Gardener, had to settle for only $1 million! For a lot of players, this is life-changing money, and so it isn't surprising that a lot of poker players covet the money more than the title. I'm not one of them: I love the title more than the money! The title brings with it a lifetime of recognition and prestige. The winner is forever called a world champion of poker, and his or her picture will go up on the Wall of Champions forever (at both of the Horseshoe Casinos in Las Vegas and Tunica, Mississippi). You can see the Wall of Champions at PokerPages.com.

In 1970 Las Vegas Benny Binion started the WSOP, at his Horseshoe Casino, and called it poker's world championships. It has been poker's world championship ever since, and it has grown in stature and popularity each year.

When you win the WSOP, you are no longer just a poker player but rather a world champion. This distinction is nice, as my wife found out when she searched for residency programs back in the early 1990s. When asked about her husband's occupation, she would say, "He's a world champion of poker." I'm sure that this sounded more interesting and prestigious than, "He's a professional poker player" or "He plays poker for a living!"

Every year in late April, the best poker players in the world (and a lot of wannabes) gather at the Horseshoe Casino in Las Vegas for roughly 25 to 33 WSOP events (the precise number changes from year to year), culminating in the "big one." The "big one" is the $10,000 buy-in Championship Event that ESPN, the Discovery Channel, the Travel Channel, and other television networks show up to cover every year. The lowest buy-in event at the WSOP currently is set at $1,500. If you plan to attend the WSOP and play every event, make sure that you bring $100,000 with you! These 30 days (the "big one" alone is five days long) are undoubtedly the most exciting in poker, every year, and by far the most lucrative. For more about the WSOP and other prestigious poker events, go to Appendix 3.

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