Chip Accumulation and Chip Preservation Aren’t Mutually Exclusive

By Tony Guerrera

In my Poker Helper article, When to Risk All Your Chips Early in a Tournament, I showed that very good tournament players effectively traverse tournaments via a series of double-ups in which their probability of winning each double up is generally around 60% (the precise probability of doubling up is a function of a tournament’s payout structure). This suggests that chip accumulation is much more important than has been preached by conventional poker literature; players sitting around and waiting for the absolute nuts in tournaments will be crushed.

Think about the typical edges you expect to have when playing no-limit hold’em. For preflop all-in match-ups, situations exist in which you’ll be 75% or greater to win, but most often, you’ll be in situations where your edge is on the order of 55%-65%…especially when considering that you’ll be making decisions based on your opponents’ distributions rather than their precise hole cards. On the flop, if you were to go all-in against an opponent with 6 outs (say you have a pair versus two overcards), you would win about 76% of the time. Against 8 outs (like a pair versus an outside straight draw), you’ll win about 68% of the time. Against 9 outs (the dreaded flush draw), you win 65% of the time. Very rarely will you be in situations where you’re a lock.

And let’s suppose you do land in a situation where you’re something like 85%-90% to win the hand (something like top pair versus an opponent with top pair and a worse kicker). How often will all the chips go in? Perhaps a few years ago, playing conditions were such that you could wait around for very good cards and have your opponents put in huge quantities of chips with the worst of it. Unfortunately for us rounders, playing conditions are quite different today. You can’t expect to double up simply because you have a good hand.

Today’s top tournament players know the importance of forsaking marginal edges so that they have the opportunity to take advantage of bigger edges that will arise in the future. But simultaneously, they relentlessly accumulate chips and take calculated risks, knowing that there’s a limit to the type of edge you can enjoy in a no-limit hold’em hand. And they take this approach in a way that rarely puts their tournament lives on the line. Excellent tournament players are masters of pot-size control. They play big pots when they have big edges, and they play small pots when they have marginal edges. And instead of mindlessly pushing all their chips early in a hand, they embrace the often-tricky decisions that arise on the turn and the river.

By controlling the pot size so you don’t have to go all-in on the flop or the turn, you’re able to give yourself another betting round in which to evaluate where you are in the hand. And you give yourself the opportunity to safely escape from the hand. At the same time, by keeping pots small, you can safely take stabs at flops you’ve missed without putting large chunks of your stacks in jeopardy. When you have sufficient fold equity preflop, consider raising to take pots down uncontested, but when you know you’ll get called by one or more opponents, and you don’t have monster hole cards, there’s no need to create an inflated pot.

Example Scenarios

Blinds are T200-T400, and action folds to a middle position player who opens by limping. Two more players limp, and now it’s your turn to act on the button. Your opponents all have about T7,000 in their stacks, and you have about T10,000 in front of you. You hold KT. Raising isn’t necessarily a bad play, but it will require you to commit about T2,500 preflop, meaning that if you see a flop, the pot will contain something on the order of T6,000 - possibly more - and you’ll only have T7,500 in front of you. Meanwhile, by calling, you’ll see a flop where the pot will be something like T2,400, and you’ll have T9,600 in front of you. You’ll have multiple betting rounds in position during which you can gain important information. By limping preflop instead of raising, you put yourself in a position to accumulate chips while simultaneously giving yourself an escape route that leaves you plenty of chips should things not go well.

Let’s take another scenario. You have A8 in the big blind, and two players have limped. You have 10BB. You’re ahead of your opponents’ distributions; however, the upside to pushing doesn’t compare favorably to the downside. If you’re called, you’ll probably be facing a pocket pair or something like AT or AJ (remember, not all players raise with AJ). Just check and see the flop, and if you hit an ace on the flop, check one time to see what your opponents do. Based on their actions and your past observations, you can determine what kind of shape you’re in.

You Can Accumulate and Preserve Simultaneously!

In short, you’re looking to accumulate chips throughout a tournament, but you’re also looking for ways to get as much information as possible during a hand. Say you have AKs, and there’s been a raise and a few callers. In this situation, pushing to 15BB will probably be correct, even if you know you’ll be called by a pocket pair against which you’re only about 45% to win. This is because you’ll be heads-up with a lot of dead chips in the pot. However, don’t take this to mean that accumulating chips is synonymous with shoving your chips in the middle. Accumulating chips is really about taking lots of intelligent stabs and getting involved in big confrontations where you have a substantial edge…an edge that will usually involve a combination of showdown value and fold equity.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers and co-author of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus)

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