UltimateBet - 111% bonus up to $1100 for First Deposit
Ultimate-Bet Poker - Poker Tournament Strategy
Match Play for Fun and Profit - Part 3: The Risk/Reward Ratio
by John Vorhaus
The first thing you need to do when you start getting serious about no-limit
heads-up tournaments is forget everything you know about conventional ring
games. The strategies that serve you well among the multitudes - notably your
canny hand selection and your standard attacker-aggressor approach - require not
just a major revision but a general chucking-out-the-window when you start to go
one-on-one on a regular basis. Likewise, you have to rethink what you think you
mean by discipline.
In a ring game, and especially in fixed-limit hold'em, discipline is mostly about deciding not to chase when pot odds don't warrant, or deciding not to enter a hand in the first place. In heads-up no-limit hold'em, discipline is almost always about deciding not to make or not to call a big bet late in the hand when your tournament life is on the line.
Discipline, in other words, is more about thinking ahead and considering the consequences of being right or wrong in a certain situation. This kind of decision-making is all about risk versus reward, and not at all about who's got the best hand.
Let me see if I can illustrate my point.
Before I try, though, I confess that I have become weary of writing no-limit heads-up Texas hold'em tournaments and its various variations. For this reason, I have declared match play to be the official shorthand of choice in describing this sort of clash. Any time you see the words match play on these pages, you will know that I'm referring to single-combat, winner-take-all no-limit hold'em tournaments as played on UltimateBet.com and elsewhere in the real and virtual poker worlds. Okay? Great. Glad we got that out of the way.
In limit ring games (hereinafter referred to as live play because why the hell not?), it's well-known that the price of being wrong is fairly small. Say you're holding a hand like 8♥ - 7♥ and looking at a board like T♥ - 9♠ - 3♥ . The turn is the 2♣. You can count maybe 15 outs off the top of your head (9 hearts and 6 non-heart straight cards), plus, if you're feeling frisky, you might even count 3 sevens and 3 eights as outs as well, and who knows? You might even be right. In any case, any decent-sized pot will be giving you correct odds to call. And if you call and miss, heck, that's just one less bet in your stack.
Now let's look at the same holding and the same board in match play. Let's assume it's the first hand of the match, so that you and your foe have the standard 1000 chips apiece and the blinds are 5 and 10. You raised to 20 preflop and he called, putting a total of 40 in the pot. He checked the flop and you bet 60, hoping to win the hand right there. But he called the 60, bringing the pot total to 160.
On the turn the 2♣ comes down and your opponent goes all-in. There's 1080 in the pot, and it'll cost you another 920 to call. For the sake of argument, let's assume you know your foe's hand: He's holding A♣ - K♣ , and his all-in bet is a bald-faced attempt to drive you off your draw. The question is: should you let him?
All your outs are clean outs, including the eights and sevens, giving you 21 out of 44 cards that'll win you this pot (remember, you know what your foe holds). You have a 48% chance of winning, and with 920 calling 1080, the pot is offering you a 54-46 return on your investment. The odds, however slightly, are in your favor. So you should call, right?
Not so fast. Thinking strategically, we realize that there are three possible outcomes here, two that end the match and one that keeps it going.
- You could call and win, eliminating your foe and ending the match.
- You could call and lose, eliminating yourself and ending the match.
- Or you could fold, maintaining your stack at 920 and keeping the tournament going.
You want to win the tournament, right? But you're patient. You know you don't have to win on this hand. If you're smarter than the other guy (and, remember, we assume that you are) you want to keep the tournament going until your long-term edge in strategy and skills can wear him down and defeat him.
If you call this bet, you're gonna need luck to win the match.
You don't ever want to need luck to win the match. You want the other guy to need luck to win.
So the next time you're confronted with a coin-flip situation, remember your risk/reward ratio.
- The risk is that you could lose the match. That's not a catastrophe, but it's certainly not the outcome you want.
- The reward is that you could win the match, but you're probably gonna do that anyhow!
If you don't call, you keep alive the prospect of winning without ever having to risk losing at all. That's putting the risk/reward ratio in your favor, and that's what you should be thinking about here.
Don't bet a lot of chips with slightly the best of it. Save your chips for when you have much the best of it. In the next article we'll start looking at techniques for acquiring that significant edge.
Get here the best poker strategy tips and techniques to improve your game. The basic strategies outlined below are your first step essentials in your poker education.
| Ultimate-Bet Poker tournament Strategy - Articles | |
|---|---|
| Match Play for Fun and Profit - Part 1: Luck Sucks | by John Vorhaus |
| Match Play for Fun and Profit - Part 2: Patience | by John Vorhaus |
| Match Play for Fun and Profit - Part 3: The Risk/Reward Ratio | by John Vorhaus |
| Match Play for Fun and Profit - Part 4: Three Playing Zones | by John Vorhaus |