The “Sir William Wallace” Technique

            After playing online for over 10 years, and seeing literally tens of thousands of hands, I have picked up a few pointers I thought would be helpful to newcomers and some experienced players as well. 

Once I was able to establish my playing style, and get a really good feel for how online poker is played, as compared to a sit down game, I found that although my techniques were successful, I was not able to finish off a lot of tournaments that I had built a significant chip stack in. I found myself being the big stack quite often, have momentum on my side, and would have projected a very strong table image as we entered the 1st or 2nd break.  Now this is where things often went south for several reasons, these of which I would like to pass along in hopes you don’t make the same errors, and miss out on opportunities to increase your bank roll.

            If you can even imagine this, I began to see even more erratic play during the middle to late part of these online tournaments, and more times than not, my once mighty chip stack would be dwindled down or eliminated completely by the next break.  With the influx of more and more poker players playing online than ever before, both the quality of the players decreased and the amount of these donkeys playing, increased quite significantly.  What I have found is that as you are entering the middle phase of the tournament, the volatility of the players goes off the charts. What was once a fun and stress free tournament had somehow transformed right before my eyes into a donkey fest, filled with opportunities to cough up my hard earned chip stack. I think the biggest key to being successful in tournaments is to change your playing styles often, and don’t get stuck on one methodology so much, but let a general set of poker guidelines assist you in making decisions relating to starting hands. However much you may think you have control of the situation during this part of the tournament, you don’t! Money is flying out of people hands so fast its making your head spin, and your suited middle to high connectors and low pairs are getting mowed down half the time, and you are folding like a lawn chair the other half of the time. Patience! Even if you have the best starting hand going into a race with even just one player, you’re not going to win every showdown, regardless of your starting advantage. The key here is to hold, hold, and hold some more, because this is a great opportunity to double up several times during this phase, continuing to the cashing phase of the tourney instead of taking it to the showers. If you can make yourself call as little as possible and wait for starting hands you are confident you have the advantage with, you will find you are much more successful in making it to the final part of more tournaments. You will find during these times, your aggressive image and monster maid hands will both be questioned often and you will have to sit through quite a few gut-wrenching moments if you don’t slow down your playing style are consciously try to avoid the players sitting there waiting on their one last move.  Remember it only takes 1 or 2 hands to tear down everything you have worked so hard for over the last few hours, and you won’t be able to just shake it off so easy when it happens time and time again. These type of situations you definitely want to avoid as it can lead you to believe you are playing the wrong style of cards, when actually there is a whole different reason behind your misfortunes. I hope these tips help you make it farther in some tournaments, and save you some grief that I went through many many times. Use this phase of the tournament to both exercise patience, observe some players actions more actively, and wait for the perfect opportunity to snatch up some of the money people are just giving away if you put your hands out!

Thanks, Dave – “Viscerater2”

Comments (1)

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What exactly do you mean?
written by Steven Lackey, April 28, 2010

You spent most of this article telling of the pitfalls that come.. good. You dont give reference to what exactly the change should be. Like .. what change.. waiting for top hands and limp calling the donks? What hands your folding in what positions, and whatever else you do. Explain.
the1steve

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