Over the past year or two I have managed to accumulate quite a few books about all of the insand- outs about no-limit Hold'em, especially tournament strategy. I'd love to tell you a favorite story of mine...it's about the last tournament I played in where I was slinging around my starting stack of 10,000 chips with blind levels twice as long my daily lunch break...well, I'd love to tell you that story, but I can't. You see, the thing is, I live approximately 2,756 miles from Las Vegas. And, to be honest, I don't have ten grand just sitting around waiting to be spent on one poker tournament.
But what I do have plenty of locally are small buy-in tournaments ranging anywhere from $25-$150, most of which are run by non-profit organizations for charity. And as I've noticed when I've visited family in different parts of the country, you probably have them too.
Occasionally, I am able to make it down to Foxwoods for their daily NLHE tourney, which is a very affordable $60.
After an early exit in my first attempt at one of these charity tournaments, I was able to outlast 159 other entrants for the top prize in a $100 buy-in event. Not bad for my second at-bat. Through a mixture of beginner's luck and an occasional smart move, I was able to win three out of my first five small buyin tournaments of fields averaging just over 100 (my sixth tournament was a third place in a 250 person event at Foxwoods).
Then I purchased and read "Championship No- Limit Holdem" by T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy. Shortly after learning the importance of properly folding AQ to a raise, my results in these tournaments went through...well, they actually fell through the floor. My early delusions of grandeur were met by hours and hours of slowly being blinded out of tournaments while I watched people raising with trash hands like AJ in early position winning these things....
While 1500 chips seems like a lot when you first sit down and the blinds are 25-50, the majority of small buy-in tournaments feature 20 minute levels. Even if you have doubled up in the first hour, each round of play still represents one tenth of your stack (blinds 100-200). In just the fourth level of the daily Foxwoods tournament, each round costs 700 chips.
There's no question that chance plays a greater role in these tournaments. At times I wondered if it was even worth the investment to play. Then, after an agonizing two months of slowly readjusting my strategy, I began finding success again in these tournaments. And I started noticing some of the same faces when we would get down to the final table. At any given final table at one of the charity tournaments in our state, you will find at least a handful of players who were there the week before. And the week before that.
When I began noticing this, I did what any crazed poker fanatic would do. I started taking notes. In this wacky corner of the poker world of small buy-in and charity tournaments, there are some concrete things you can do to find success, even when the luck factor seems to increase faster than the blinds.
It's not too difficult to say that there is nothing I can share with you that is original with me. In fact, the overwhelming majority of what I will write about can be directly credited either to learning from the players around me or just dumb luck when I stumbled onto a move or two by accident.
I am sure that one day I will find myself in a deepstack tournament with two hour blind levels...(is it bad that I daydream about longer blind levels?) But, in the meantime, you can probably find me in the bingo center just down the road milking my 1500 chips for all they are worth...hopefully we'll see each other at the final table soon.
In the next article, I will discuss the various stages of low buy-in tournaments and the key concept of practicing selective aggression.
