Plugging your Leaks in Tournament Play

Insight from Trips111 - August 2006

Good players think back about the hands they play and wonder if they did anything wrong or whether they made the right choice.  They wonder if they should have called that all-in on the river with two pair, or if they overplayed their top pair.  Great players do the same but in a much more subtle way.  Great players evaluate the small bets they lost in the middle of the game that leads them to more desperate play.  Great players look for, and plug, leaks.Leaks exist in every player’s game but look different depending on your basic style of play and sensibility.  Below are some leaks I’ve found in my own play.  First, I should offer a quick analysis of my style.  I consider myself a conservative but aggressive player.  When I enter a hand I tend to do so with a good hand relative to my position at the table, and I tend to bet enough to thin the field.  I like action, but prefer it against one or two players.  Finally, I prefer to use bets as tools for information gathering.   Very rarely will I use betting to bully players off the table.  Rather I generally bet to define the hand in play.

Also, it should be noted that leaks in a tournament might be different then in a cash game where loss of your stack does not represent elimination from the game.  If you decide to call down a known bluffer with a straight draw in a cash game, you may cost yourself some money, but you can always put more chips on the table.  If you do the same in a tournament, you greatly reduce the value of your next double-up – which can cost you the game.

I should also say that while theoretically I realize each of these leaks are bad, I still struggle to remove them from my game.  It’s just so tempting to limp in the small blind with 46 suited.  But I’ve found looking back at my winning sessions, the games where I did the best were the ones where I made the fewest mistakes.  And at their core, these leaks represent mistakes – either strategically, or mathematically.

Calling Pre Flop with Premium Hands
Easily the weakest move in a game is the Call.  As a balanced approach to your game, you should occasionally flat call an initial raiser with a premium hand.  However, I have found that with a good hand it is almost always better to raise. 

One leak then is just calling in late position with a premium hand (AA, AK, KK).  Why is this a leak?  Often you are missing a little action.  Let’s say you have AA, and the second position comes in for a 3Xs raise.  If you just call and the board comes blank, blank, blank they will likely check.  Your bet may be seen as a steal, or you could slow play (a mistake in my opinion as well, but we’ll get to that later).  So, you will only get action with a nice bet of ½ the pot on the flop if your opponent hits the flop.  Most of the time, you will be in the lead and get only muted action.  Now, reconsider this case if you were to re-raise before the flop.  With a marginal hand, your opponent will likely fold – but you weren’t going to get much action anyway.  However, if your opponent has something, you will likely at least be called, and some times even get re-raised (heaven by the way).  In short, when you have a good hand it is almost always best to raise.

PLUGGING THIS LEAK
Raise your premium hands.

Calling in the Blinds with Weak Hands
“Hey, it’s only ½ more to see a flop and I could hit a monster.”  This mentality is OK in moderation, but especially in a tournament where the real goal is to have as many chips as possible so when you double up you can be secure for many more rounds, these little blind and big blind calls can be a serious leak.  Over the course of a tournament you will end up calling off a serious proportion of your stack with little if any expected value in the hands you are playing and the position in which you need to play them. 

PLUGGING THIS LEAK
Fold weak hands in the blinds, even if the pot odds argue against it.  It is much more effective to stick in a big raise (with weak cards) as a balanced approach and stealing opportunity, then to call and hope.  These occasional big raises also keep people from coming after your blinds.

Calling a Suspected Bluff
We’ve all been there.  The pre-flop action and post-flop continuation bet from Mr. Aggressive over there just doesn’t smell right.  So, you put them on a steal.  But the pot is getting kind of large and you only have middle pair – or perhaps are drawing to a straight – so you just call thinking you will steal on the Turn or River.  This is a leak and you should get out of the habit.  If you suspect someone is weak, you need to put them to the test with a raise.  If your opponent calls or comes over the top, you can stop testing and if need be, release the hand.  Also, the call-bet pattern (calling the raise on the flop, then betting the turn) is the sign of a really weak steal attempt.  Most experienced players can quickly deduce if the turn helped you or not.  If they believe you are trying to shake them down, you will often face a bet here that is impossible to call.

PLUGGING THIS LEAK
When you suspect someone of a bluff you have two choices, challenge them with a raise or fold – calling a bluff without a made hand is a mistake.

Slow Playing
Slow playing a big hand by betting a small amount or checking after the flop is a good trap from time to time.  However, so many players enamored with their own cleverness make this play way too much.  The reason this play is a leak is that you are allowing your opponents to see free cards that may beat you.  So a made hand on the flop becomes an expensive call on the river.  More importantly, you are missing an opportunity to force your opponent to make a mistake by calling a bet when they are behind in the hand.  A key element of the game is to get money in the middle when you have the best of it.  Slow playing does the exact opposite, it keeps money out of the middle when you have the best of it.

PLUGGING THIS LEAK 
However clever you may feel you are acting, slow playing can be a costly habit that keeps you from realizing full value for your strong hands.

Bluff-Raising a Super Aggressive Player
With the rise in popularity of players like Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey coupled with the anonymity of on-line play, the Super Aggressive playing style is showing up more and more.  This can be a very difficult style to handle – especially against a tight /aggressive style.  You know the hyper-aggressive player is firing at a lot of pots with middle pairs, draws, and high cards.  For a more conservative approach, you can find that a lot of your strong hands (AQ) are being tossed into the muck when the flop misses simply due to the betting pressure.  So, after seeing the same player in the middle in six consecutive pots, you decide to make a stand.  After making a healthy raise, the maniac calls you.  The flop misses.  True to form, Mr. Maniac fires at the pot.  You’ve missed, but you won’t be bullied, so you raise back.  This scenario isn’t a bad move occasionally.  You cannot let yourself be run over.  However, one thing people often misjudge is a maniac’s ability to play the game.  “How could they possibly make a hand every time?” we ask ourselves as justification for the large bluff.  A truly talented Maniac however uses the following credo:  loose before the flop, solid after.  So, while 3-7 off has a low value expectation to you and I, a maniac sees a perfect opportunity to wipe out a tight pushing their big slick when the flop comes 3-7-K.

This is a leak because while you may believe you can knock a maniac off a hand with big scary bets, you have to remember that they are getting their hands dirty in so many pots that there is no telling how strong they are.  Bluffing them is often a mistake because even if they missed their hands on the flop, they often have odd straight draws that are likely to crush you if you should be so unlucky as to catch your top pair on the turn or river.

PLUGGING THIS LEAK
I like making big raises or re-raises into hyper-aggressive players, but I will do it with something – even if it’s just middle pair or a draw.  This move, by the way, plugs another leak – folding to hyper-aggressive bluffing too much. 

Calling Small-stack All-Ins Before the Flop
Getting rid of players in a tournament is a good investment.  Depending on the circumstances, I’m willing to risk a fair amount of my chips (30% or so) to get rid of a player.  However, you must carefully consider the circumstances of these calls before making them.  Far too often, I have found myself calling a smaller stack later in a tournament when I’m holding A-10 and regretting it when they flop their set of 2s. 

Unless you are a prohibitive chip leader, you should also avoid making these calls from early position.  AJ suited is a nice hand to call an all-in short stack, but not if 7 other people get to consider whether to play as well.  Let’s say you do make the call, then the guy on the button sticks in a big re-raise.  What’s the right play now?  You have no idea where you stand in the hand, you have to put the button on a strong hand (or a very nice squeeze play) and should now be considering tossing in your hand.

PLUGGING THIS LEAK
You should prefer to fold to a short stack all in from early position or with weak aces (A 10 and lower) or middle pairs when the call will represent 25% or more of your stack.  If the call represents 10% or less if your stack, you should re-raise to protect your hand and get the all-in bettor heads up.  In either case, if you are re-raised, you will have to think very seriously about folding.  Never let the allure of taking someone out cost you your own chances in the tournament