If you've been fortunate enough to win a seat into the World Series of Poker Main Event, you'll be playing in a structure that very few tournaments offer. You'll start with 30,000 in chips and the blinds at 50/100. That's 300 big blinds. A typical online tournament might start with 1,500 in chips and blinds at 15/30, or 50 big blinds. On top of that, the Main Event has an amazing two-hour blind structure. The slow pace of blind escalation coupled with the larger stack size creates an entirely different type of play and many poker players have problems adjusting. Don’t be one of them!
Those who most often get into trouble are aggressive online players used to making lots of re-raises and all-in moves preflop. Such players will quickly find that this strategy does not work in a deep-stack tournament. In the early stages the only time your all-in will get called is if you are beaten. Re-raises also lose their effect because the stack sizes are so much deeper. In a typical online tournament with the blinds at 15/30 and a standard opening raise of 90, a re-raise to 300 has significant meaning because it is 20% of your starting stack. In a deep-stack tournament like the WSOP, however, a typical opening raise to 300 with a re-raise to 1,000 is only 5% of your starting stack. Players are much more likely to give you unwanted action and many players have difficulty making this adjustment.
Keeping your focus
The failure to adapt usually leads to a player’s stack shrinking and the player becoming frustrated and moving away from their best game. While it is important to be aggressive and constantly look to accumulate chips when the situations arise, it is perhaps more important to maintain discipline and be patient. The WSOP isn't won in one or even ten hands. It's a long grind of a tournament that will see you suffer numerous bad beats. Your goal will be to have enough chips to withstand the bad luck.
That said, it's important to play the style of poker that got you there in the first place. Another common problem is that players get intimidated by the big buy-in and the glittery professionals, not to mention the overwhelming atmosphere of the WSOP Main Event. Loose fish become rocks and rocks become calling stations. You still want to be patient and disciplined, but do so within the framework of your game and not someone else’s.
Chip accumulation
Okay, so your goal is to reach the final table, but how are you going to achieve that? Leaving the endgame to one side for now, your first goal should be to accumulate a lot of chips. There are numerous approaches to chip accumulation and the style you employ will depend on your personal playing traits and how your table is playing. Let's look at three common chip accumulation approaches…
With this approach your objective is to limp and see as many cheap flops as you possibly can, including calling small raises with a wide range of hands to take advantage of your opponent's post-flop mistakes. Let's say you limp in for 100 on the button with 6-5 offsuit and two other limpers before you. The big blind, who has pocket Aces, makes it 400 to go, both limpers call and you do as well. The flop comes K-6-5. The pocket Aces guy bets 1,200 into the 1,600 pot. The other two players fold. You make it 3,500 to go and your opponent snap-shoves without thinking through the hand. You call and win his stack.
In order to pull this off, you need to be a very disciplined post-flop player. Make sure you don’t just weakly call off your chips.
This is the approach commonly used by many pros. It’s similar to the limping strategy, with the exception that the small-baller will take control of the action with small preflop raises and post-flop bets. The goal is to force post-flop mistakes by raising and betting, while also giving you space to bluff. In the first example you're relying on actually hitting flops. The small ball approach, however, keeps your opponents continuously guessing as you are constantly applying small stabbing pressure.
If you're not quite so comfortable with post-flop play, this is the approach you should consider. A player using this approach will only play big hands or play hands in position. The idea is to get as much money in the pot preflop so that post-flop decisions are relatively simple. Say you have pocket Kings and someone opens to 300. Rather than just making a standard raise to 1,000, you makes it 1,800 to go. You’re looking to get all your money in preflop if possible, and if you’re just called you know that most likely the rest of the money, or a good chunk of it, is going in on the flop. Believe it or not there is actually some merit to this approach because of the hyper-aggressive nature of today's players. A surprising number of players would have no problem calling a raise that is over 10% of their stack because, after all, they have ‘implied odds’.
Rookie mistakes
A lot of Main Event newcomers suddenly turn into calling stations when they get to the WSOP. It's as if they stepped off the plane and morphed into an ugly little butterfly that only knows the words ‘I call.’ The pressure of the money and the heat of WSOP fever certainly lend a hand, but more significant is the fact that most players are simply not accustomed to playing with such a large stack.
Say you have A-K offsuit and open the action for 300 with the blinds at 50/100. You get two callers and there is 950 in the pot. The flop comes K-8-6 rainbow. This is a great flop giving you top pair, top kicker. You bet 600 and are raised to 1,800. The other player folds and you call. There is now 4,550 in the pot. The turn is an innocent looking deuce. You check-call 3,000, putting 10,550 in the pot. The river is a harmless three and you check-call a final 5,000 bet from your opponent who shows a flopped set of sixes. You’ve lost half of your stack in one hand, when the best course of action would have been to put in a third raise on the flop to define your opponent's strength. Making a raise to, say, 4,500 on the flop then folding when your opponent raises again would save you nearly 5,000 chips. Or you could even lean on the side of caution and fold to the initial 1,800 raise. Regardless, calling in this spot only leads you to the rail.
The pain of calling
You cannot get information about your opponent's hand by calling. Yes, there are times you will want to call when it is likely you have the best hand and want to keep the pot small, but generally it is best to be aggressive with bets and raises.
Your opponent's reaction will typically tell you what you need to know.If they fold, they had nothing and you had the best hand. If they flat-call, then most of the time (but not always) they are on a draw or have a hand they feel might be the best but are unsure of. If you have a strong hand, you should continue firing. If you're bluffing, you should proceed cautiously, though firing another bet is probably not out of line. If your opponent raises, unless they are a maniac, it usually means they really like their hand and you should only carry on if you feel there is a chance they are making this bet with a hand that is worse than yours.