When it comes to playing garage poker at home, you usually will find yourself playing with a group of people between 7 and 10 players. This is what I mean by a one-table poker tournament.
Now technically you could have 11 poker players at one table if it is large enough, but 12 is about the limit where you should break it up into a two-table tournament.
For the sake of argument, I will assume that we are starting with 10 players in this tournament. With 10 players, the winnings should be split 60% for first place, 30% for second place and 10% for third place. That means if the buy-in was $25, there would be a total of $250. The winner would get $150, 2nd gets $75 and 3rd place receives their money back. If you are starting with 8 players or less, you should not have a 3rd place payment; either make the prize 70%/30% or 65%/35% depending on your preference.
How to win a single table tournament
Now that we aren’t left with many options for new online poker tournaments. Most online poker players are going to have to go back to playing with their friends or join a small poker league. It is important to know how to play poker against a small group of people who you know. It is much different than playing random people online.
There are many different approaches that I’ve seen players use when trying to win the tournament. You will need a poker tournament strategy going in if you want to win more often. I am going to go through several of these methods and tell you the way I ultimately try to play every time.
The number 1 and 2 rules are: 1) Don’t play too tight! and 2) Don’t play too loose!
Every single time I see someone play too tight, they will eventually get pushed into an all-in situation when they don’t have much of a choice. Every once in a while, you just have to bet even if you get 7-3 offsuit 10 times in a row. As a rule, early on in a 10 person tournament, you should bet on at least 2 hands in the first 10 just to let the other players know you are there.
On the other end, people who play really loose might get lucky and build a big chip stack. However, more often then not I have seen these players lose a lot of money calling loosely on players who obviously have the hand won. Just a couple of these will turn the loose player into a really tight player pretty quickly.
Being Patient
Every time I have won a one-table poker tournament, it has been a combination of luck and patience. Since I play with the same group of guys each time, everyone knows how everyone else plays. This means you have to strike when you get a good hand and chase people out when you think they are going for a straight or flush.
You need the luck in order to win. This may not be true in a large tournament situation when you can bully other players you haven’t played before. But when you play the same players all the time, the odds are that someone is going to call you in situations they wouldn’t when you play online.
Having the patience to wait through a rough spell of starting hands is crucial to your overall performance. This also means that you don’t fall in love with a good/very good starting hand after getting rags 10 hands in a row. Getting an Ace-10 offsuit looks wonderful if you haven’t had a face card in a while; but you still need to be wary if someone aggressively raises the blinds pre-flop.
Outlast the Others
There comes a point in time when people are trying desperately to not go out. In a 10 person tournament, usually 1 to 3 people will be knocked out early. At some point in time, there will be several people who are hanging on and waiting to double up. There is a lot of luck involved in surviving this if you are one of the ones hanging on.
At some point, there will be a time where 3 to 5 players go out in rapid succession. This is usually when the blinds reach the 5th or 6th level. In our tournament, you use 3000 in chips to begin and 25/50 on the 1st level of blinds. By level 6, the blinds are at 200/400 and several players will be less than 4 big blinds away from busting.
If you are the player with a lot of chips at this point, you will want to bully the smaller stacks around. However, be wise when someone goes all-in before you bet. Fold it to them unless you have something good or unless their stack is very small (2 big blinds or less).
Getting in the Money
There will inevitably be someone who is hanging around in 4th place that is trying to sneak into the money. If you are this person, you have to get lucky because when you make your move, you will most likely get called.
People will tend to get cold feet when they aren’t in the money yet. That will usually leave the door open for you to steal blinds in the right situations. This will especially confuse the other players if you weren’t betting aggressively before.
Don’t get greedy, though. You have to be aware that someone else can sucker you in if you bet too aggressively. Be aware of people who just call your aggressive bets.
Winning the Tournament
Finally, you are in the money. This is the part where you need to get your second wind. No matter how late it is, you can’t think about hurrying things up. That is how you lose. When you are one-on-one or have the chip lead with 3 players, you have to be aggressive more often than not.
Raise more often then you normally would. You will steal the much needed blinds when you are at the max betting level (level 10 – 1000/2000). Be opportunistic and never get too attached to any hand. Don’t play your opponents games. If you win a couple of hands in a row where you show your cards, raise them no matter what 2 cards you get. Unless they have something excellent, they will only call.
The best case scenario for heads-up is getting your opponent into a situation where they are going to be blinded out. This will force them to play hands they wouldn’t normally. If your opponent goes all in with 3 big blinds or less, call them unless you have horrible cards. Not only will you get to see what they went all-in with, they will have to think about going all-in the next time.
I have been the winner of some epic marathons. If you are impatient and try to take shortcuts, more often than not you will come in 1st place. Luck plays a small part in the grand scheme. In most cases, to win the tournament, I need to get lucky at least once. What is far more important is being determined, focused and patient and not getting yourself into bad situations.
If you found this post educational, you should also read this prior post about multi-table poker tournaments