Many people have a misconception that the early stages of the No Limit Hold'em tournament are not important at all. Their reasoning is that the blinds at this stage are too small to be worth stealing, and that any of your pot wins or losses are too small to have any impact on the amount of chips. After all, in the first blind level, a medium-sized pot is nothing more than a big blind, and after a few levels, there are only two or three big blinds...
This may be true for a particular type of tournament expert, who is only good at stealing the pool and anti-stealing before the flop, but not at all good at the post-flop play. But the truth is that a skilled tournament player has the greatest potential advantage when the chips are at their deepest. That's because he has a lot of room to maneuver and more opportunities for his opponents to make extremely expensive mistakes.
This article will introduce you to some of the tools that good players use to accumulate chips in the early stages of tournaments, and help you avoid some common misconceptions that can lead to big mistakes when playing deep chips.
Location, location, or location
This is the first level of the $10,000 main event, and each person starts with about 300bb of chips. There were a few very good pros on the table, and although there were a few players who looked slightly weaker, everyone didn't look like someone who would make a big mistake.
At such a table, instead of getting AA at UTG, I would rather get a flush JT at BTN. Admittedly, with AA, I can be sure to steal a blind or maintain an advantage of at least one street when throwing money into the pot. However, we all know that pre-flop bets are almost always minimal, and I'm likely to have to play against multiple opponents in unfavorable positions after a flop. This means that on the next three streets, when the stakes are larger, they usually make better decisions than I do.
That's not to say that the Flush JT is a better card than AA when it comes to playing deep chips. After all, I would definitely prefer to get AA at BTN anyway. This will not change no matter how deep the chips are (logically speaking, the Big Flush will be able to complete more nut straights and straights than AA, which is absolutely very important in the case of excessive chips). The point I want to make is this: I prefer to have the best cards and the best positions rather than the best cards and very bad positions.
This may change when the amount of chips is less than 100bb. At this point I'd rather get AA in the front position because the action before the flop becomes more important. Opponents with positions have less room to beat me technically after a flop, so my pre-flop advantage will be more valuable at this point.
Potential odds are more important than instant odds
Again, at the table above, if I get the K8 in the big blind, I will fold my cards against the smallest raise from a good player on BTN – even if I know he will open the pool with any two cards, even if I know that I have a 56% win rate against the range and can get a 2.5:1 pot odds, I will still do it.
At this point the pot has 250 chips and I have 3,000 chips, so I need to be more concerned about protecting the latter than the former. You know, your hand has a small chance of playing cards, even if you win, it is just a pair with a bad match, and you don't have a position, and the opponent is still a good player, all of which will cause you to make difficult decisions after the flop. I don't want to put thousands of chips at risk for such a small pot of 250.
These chips are dangerous because K8 is basically impossible to complete strong cards. The best way I can play any card is to cross the cards, guess how often your opponent is bluffing, and then choose to call or fold. A good player can bet well with a better card value than me, and even if my K-high card or third-largest pair is the lead, he can still bluff me.
And when faced with weak players who are less likely to take advantage of their position, I call. Against this kind of player, my post-flop decisions won't be so difficult. I can make it easier to play a showdown when my cards are good and get away cheaply when my cards are bad.
Similarly, if the chips were shorter, assuming only 30-40bb, I would be more inclined to defend the blind against good players. On the street where bets are smaller, the potential risk of difficult decisions is less, so I will give a higher priority to defending the win rate in the current small pot.
Fight for a hand that can win the big pot
In the no-limit Texas Hold'em game, all your chips are at risk at all times. Cunning opponents will test you with bets and raises that threaten your chips. If you keep getting a hand that can't stand this kind of ordeal, you're facing unimaginable decisions.
This is especially true when you don't have a position, and you have less control over the pot size. When you have a position advantage, you can take the edge card after the flop and get lucky, because you can get more information, so you can determine whether you can call, value bet or showdown, etc. When you're at a disadvantage against a dodgy opponent, you'll want to avoid vague situations, so it's best not to start by playing hands that rarely get you to complete your wish to play the big pot before flop.
Depending on the structure of known decks, straights, flushes, and gourds are usually the cards you want to get when you invest 200 or 300bb into the bottom pool. Of course, these cards are not easy to complete, but they are the cards you want to fight for. Even a card like high and top is more of a consolation prize for you. Although non-flush KJs can get the same result, their flush cards will appear in most river cards. But when you have deep chips, the flush card will be better, because two cards are more likely to complete the flush. Even nut listening cards or cards close to nuts will be more satisfying than edge pairs that have no hope of improving.
This is only part of the reason for the folding of the BTN with K8, but it should affect most of your pre-flop decisions, especially if you may end up without a place. At a hard-to-play 9-player table full of deep-chip players, AJ Non-Flush is to fold in the UTT bit, but JT Flush is to be raised. When you're at a disadvantage against more than one player who won't easily fold, it's better to hit both ends of the flop than only the top pair that can't listen anymore. If you take a JT and really hit the top pair, it won't be worth much less than the AJ hitting the top pair.
Bluffing
If your strategy in the early stages of the tournament is to be conservative and wait for good cards or blinds worth stealing, then you are easy to deal with. You'll never let your opponent make tough decisions. When you show a very rare interest in a pot, this strategy works well against players who don't know how to get out of the way, but when facing good players, you can only take away their chips by upsetting or huge coolers.
You can make yourself a tough opponent just by aggressively playing the best listening card, and not just if your opponent doesn't have any cards, but when he's clearly holding a marginal form card. If he's just playing cards when he's out of place,you can keep firing big bets with good top pairs and listening cards with 8 or 9 make-up cards. This will trap him in unimaginably difficult situations that I have been teaching you to avoid.
Of course, in order to get a half-deceitful hand with 8 or 9 fill cards, you have to raise the cards before the flop with the hands that can create those listening cards, such as flush and Ax with flush. This point goes back to the hand we talked about fighting to win the big pot. With 30bb of chips, your goal is to complete a nice pair and then take advantage of it. At 300bb, if you don't finish the nut card, it's best to get the nut listen card. And you need to adjust your pre-flop strategy accordingly.
epilogue
Of course, this article is just a little bit of a fur, and when the chips are very deep, the best players can successfully complete a lot of playing styles. However, these basic concepts can help you quickly understand the essential difference between 30bb poker and 300bb poker, so as to avoid the most difficult situations.