That Mysterious Inflection Point

[MLG]

Crossposted from my home the MTT.

I won the PLO8 KOTZ tournament a few weeks back and it got me to thinking some general tournament thoughts. Now, I'll start off by saying that I really don't know the first thing about PLO8. I was lucky enough to make a couple of big hands early, doubled-up with a big draw against top set and have a pretty big stack as the starting 50 shrank down to 18. With two tables, as the blinds got higher, I looked around my virtual surroundings and realized how nearing the bubble in the tournament cards are truly of very minor importance.

At some point in a tournament the actions you should take become determined by a lot of factors, stack depth, relative stack size, position, who the blinds are, pay-out considerations, and a host of other things. People like to talk about how tournaments are different from cash games, and they are. Everybody gets it wrong in assuming that they are different at the beginning, they aren't. Tournaments and cash games are very similar if not exactly the same at the beginning. The two diverge at the end.

At the beginning of a tournament gambling is a must, there's just no way around it. You need to get lucky and build a stack. Sometimes that luck will come in the form of making the nuts when somebody else makes a slightly lesser monster, sometimes the luck is getting the fish at the tables chips before somebody else does, sometimes that luck comes in the form of winning a coinflip. Make no mistake though, building that stack involves luck and gambling.

However, at some point, and nobody knows quite where, the emphasis changes. It becomes of vital importance not to win big pots, but rather to win a high percentage of the pots you play. Limping becoms rare and stealing and restealing are prominent. People talk about survival in tournaments, but they missapply it. Survival is not important at the beginning, its important later on. This is the time to structure your betting for maximum folding equity, to use the stop n go, to maybe, maybe, maybe pass on a close edge. This is when aggression aggression aggression must be applied. If your stack is getting short you'll need to take a gamble, because quite frankly its easier to win the 40 side of a 40/60 when you have 10BBs then it is to build a 5BB stack up to 20. If your stack is healthy you must both grow your stack while protecting your chips. That means using your leverage to use fewer chips to make other players make decisions for their whole stack. When you have chips, even though you must protect them, you cannot be afraid to wield them. Sitting on your chips is the fastest way to destroy any chance you have at a high finish. Notice how few of these tactics actually involve the cards in front of you.

So, when does it change. When do cash game considerations fall by the wayside. I have no idea, and I'm not sure anybody else does either. To some degree it depends on stack depth. When stacks are shallow obviously these factors are more important. However, a 20BB stack plays a lot differently when the average stack at your table is 60 than when the average stack at your table is 10. To some degree it has to do with the money. When you are on the bubble obviously factors other than the cards become paramount. However, in many tournaments (especially online) the inflection point occurs well before the money. I suppose it might be possible for somebody better at math than I am to figure out an equation having to do with average stack depth (both in the tournament and at a given table) that would begin to answer some of these questions, but I'm not convinced these questions can be answered mathematically. Ultimately to me it means that tournament poker is its own brand of poker separate from any poker type, but played using those other types. Consequently tournament concepts continually get misunderstood through the lense of these other game types.

[shadow29]

I would expand this a bit, add some examples (like the same hand when blinds are 25-25 and when blinds are 300-600, and then submit it to the Internet Magazine.

nh.

[A_PLUS]

Instead, add a little more, and PM it to me. Then we will destroy the evidence. Very good post.

I posted a similar theme on the MTT section. It was about accidentally signing up for a limit rather than NL tournament. I tend to do much better than I expect (I dont play limit much at all). Mostly b/c I am forced to only apply tournament strategy rather than playing my cards. I noticed in the last one that I played, that I knew exactly who I could push off a pot, and exactly how often everyone raised, who understood the gap concept, etc. Whereas I will sometimes lose track in my NL MTT, b/c it is tougher to seperate my cash game play from tournament play.

[asswasp]

I think the answer starts with "When do the blinds become worth stealing?" - that depends on your stack size, although a big stack can always use more. Whether you need cards depends on how you're playing a hand. It's a gradual process, if all goes to plan starting at that point the need for cards will get lower as your folding equity increases with the blinds/your stack size. Short-medium stacks need cards a little more often, so if your stack decreases in size your need for cards will increase (which is to say it will happen more often, not that you'll need better cards).

[JNash]

Agreed--it's all about the size of the stacks compared to the size of the blinds, and what that does to your pot-odds.

In Dan Harrington's new book he goes through the math of why going all-in w QQ UTG is a negative EV play when your stack is 100x, but positive EV when your stack is about 25x (he also quickly points out that with a 25x stack there are probably higher EV ways of playing QQ UTG). At a stack size of 6x, going allin w QQ is actually the best play.

The general point here is that as your stack size decreases relative to the blinds, it becomes mathematically correct to play more hands, and also to play them more aggressively.