[StellarWind]

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NLHE tournaments develop terrible money making skills and don't really associate going bust with anything too, too terrible.

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There is this widespread belief that hold'em poker tournaments are usually either limit hold'em or no-limit hold'em.

This is both true and wrong. I busted out of a limit sit-n-go last night because I made a very serious error. I tried to steal the blinds from the button with a somewhat marginal but legitimate hand. This is a standard play for me and would have been correct in a ring game. It was only afterward that I reflected that I was too shortstacked to do this. I didn't have enough chips left to bet every street. Without this threat to inflict additional losses it became much too easy to call my preflop and flop bets. My hand lacked showdown value and consequently I didn't really have a very good chance to win.

The point? When someone in a HU situation has less than about 3 big bets left, as so often happens in a tournament, NL-type considerations start to strongly intrude into so-called limit hold'em tournament play. The blind is approximately right to view my steal as he would an all-in raise at NL. Once he calls the pot odds will automatically suck the rest of my money in anyway, so what's the difference?

The reverse is also true. NL tournament play begins to resemble limit play when you or your opponent's whole stack is only a few big blinds. The de facto betting limit is that you just don't have much money. A flush draw is great at limit but not much use in NL after your opponent makes a pot-size bet. But often in a NL tournament the flush draw is golden after all because either you can't make a pot-size bet or he can't call the whole thing.

My point is that tournament play does not fully prepare you for NL ring play because the underlying form of poker only looks the same.