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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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