(Distributed Aug. 22, 2006)
BE SELECTIVELY AGGRESSIVE WITH A BIG CHIP LEAD
A reader in Davenport wonders if having a big chip lead late in a tournament means you can just sail to victory.
(SET ITAL) Hey LuckyDog: You said in your World Series blog that Jamie Gold played his huge chip stack almost perfectly on his way to the championship. Seems to me he had it locked up all the way. Right? — Mike R., Davenport, Iowa. (END ITAL)
Well, Mike, playing with a big chip lead surely is better than the reverse, but it isn’t easier. In fact, it’s tougher. Here’s why.
When you’re really short on chips in a no-limit hold’em tournament, you basically have one option — pick a hand and take a stand, pushing in all of your chips. Do it before the blinds eat your stack.
If you’re the monster chip leader, like Gold was two weeks ago, you have choices. Remember, no chip lead is safe in no-limit poker. The last thing you want to do is risk your chip advantage by playing recklessly.
One style is to lay back, wait for premium hands and let opponents knock each other out. The problem is, you lose momentum and, worse, you don’t use your chip advantage to put pressure on the short stacks.
A better approach is to be selectively aggressive. Gold won pot after pot by making well-timed raises when in position on other players — acting behind them in the betting rounds. Short-stacked players often will raise pre-flop, hoping no one calls. Gold would fire back and bully them off their hand, probably at times with inferior cards.
Gold knew his opponents would call or re-raise only if they had a real hand. So, when they played back at him, he’d usually just fold. His giant chip stack suffered minor dents when that happened, but no major damage.
The first final-table hand set the tone. With blinds at $80,000-$160,000, the aggressive Doug Kim made a standard raise to $480,000 chips from late position, hoping to steal the blinds. Gold, next to act, took some time to think about what to do.
He decided to send this message to the table: If you want to play a pot against me, you’d better be prepared to risk all of your chips. Gold re-raised Kim $1 million, and Kim folded. It’s unlikely either player had a strong hand. The difference: another million meant little to Gold, but would have been about 20 percent of Kim’s chips.
If you play a marginal hand cheaply from early position with a tall stack, the key is to discard those rags when someone makes a stiff raise. Gold did that often, but several times he somehow sniffed out a bluff. He’d re-raise and force the player out.
Sometimes with a tall stack you’ll want to trap a player when you have a strong hand. Gold did this to perfection several times, the most spectacular being against Richard Lee, a solid player who had moved into second chip position.
Gold held Q-Q in late position, but instead of raising pre-flop he just called. Lee, from the small blind, raised to $1.2 million with J-J. Gold, who had been raising lots of pots, re-raised to $4 million. He hoped Lee would see this as a bully move and push all-in.
Lee, surely thinking he had Gold beat, did exactly that. He thought he had trapped Gold, but it was the other way around. The monster pot sent Gold’s stack soaring to more than $51 million chips. His closest competitor had $14 million.
After dinner, Gold’s huge chip lead allowed him to gamble with hands such as K-J (twice), 3-4 (he made a straight), and Q-9 to eliminate the remaining four players and claim the title.
Sure, he was lucky to win all four of those decisive pots, but he had built such a huge lead that losing one or two of them probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Be aggressive when you’re tall-stacked, Mike, but don’t go crazy.
E-mail your poker questions and comments to russ@luckydogpoker.com for use in future columns. To find out more about Russ Scott and read previous LuckyDog Poker columns, visit www.creators.com or www.luckydogpoker.com.
COPYRIGHT 2006 RUSS SCOTT
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