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Another great post in the series. Really good for guys like me who haven't had the benefit of repeated canings on the 2+2 MTT forums. Any chance you could have put this up BEFORE I flamed out in 12th at the CSPC doing some of the things you decry? Whatever. AWESOME post, man.
Tuesday, November 06, 2025
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Anonymous says
Great post. I'm really feelin this series
Tuesday, November 06, 2025
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I like your style. Thanks for the info, Bond
Wednesday, November 07, 2025
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Anonymous says
This is good stuff right here. I hope too many people don't read it :-). One thing I might add is that a lot of live tournament players place too much emphasis on "playing poker". They give people cheap and free cards, they call pre-flop when both shoving and folding are much better. Thus, they back themselves into all sorts of corners and end up staring at you for five minutes "to get a read" (in reality because they don't know what the fuck to do).
Tournaments are a watered-down, neutered version of the game. Please don't take this in the wrong way ; I play MTTs almost exclusively myself. But the simple fact is that the vast majority of meaningful play takes place with an average stack of 30 BBs or less. You don't have enough chips to "play poker", so please, either go and play an uncapped cash game or stop moaning about me moving in, one or the other ! Rant over :-)
Andy W (Bonified on 2+2)
Saturday, November 10, 2025
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Great advice in here! would love it if you could add in more detail. i'm started taking poker more seriously recently and would like to learn more from this site.
Monday, December 31, 2025
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Anonymous says
EXCELLENT SIR
Saturday, May 10, 2025
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Anonymous says
Nice post, man. How do you figure out your percentage against a range?
Monday, July 21, 2025
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Anonymous says
Wow, this article really pertained to me.
Some of this advice much not apply to the lower limits though because I violate almost every single one of the above points, and I'm pretty successful in low limit rebuys.
Monday, August 25, 2025
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Anonymous says
wow amazing stuff... well written..and confirms LOTS of thougth process's I have had... which I like...
still, on the aq... you advocate snap calling (obv removing ultranits) 20bb shoves vs your 3x aq?
the range you assign here looks more like a range for sb/bb vs a bttn or co raise... which yeah is a obv snap...
what about
an ep3x by you vs an mp shove... would be a fold no???
or are you just calling "nonnit" shoves w aq no matter what....
anyone else want to weigh in here?
Saturday, September 20, 2025
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Anonymous says
i've been trying really hard to adhere to the advice of this column.
I simply can't agree with the coinflip advice.
if your edge is very slim over the field, then i think it is correct, but I'm a huge bankroll nit who consistently plays in events that I have a substantial edge over, and taking all these coinflips is increasing my variance and lowering my ROI compared to when I used to pretty consistently fold in these spots to search for bigger edges.
Sunday, October 19, 2025
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| Things it took me a while to learn part 6, Strategy and Mentality Lies |
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I regret to inform you that you’ve been lied to, a whole hell of a lot. Actually, I’m not sure if lie is the right word, but misinformed almost certainly. Here’s the truth; many of the common tournament concepts, strategies, and mentalities written about are fucking awful. This garbage is so permeated in the poker society that those who don’t spend their life online or get a very good mentor will likely remain in ignorance. So allow me here, to dispel some of the biggest lies you’ve been told.
1. “You can find a better spot”: What? What the fuck? Listen, any spot that’s good, by which I mean ANY SPOT THAT IS +EV/+cEV is a spot you should take. Now, are there occasionally spots that are +cEV but you should fold because they're –EV? Yes. An obvious example is folding AA in a satellite where you have a seat guaranteed. Want a better example than something this simple? Okay here’s one:
I recently played a live 3k event in Melbourne with ~440 entrants. The structure was very deep, very slow and had high antes. 40% of the field was freeroll qualifiers and probably less than dozen players in the whole field were actually good tournament players. If I was BB the very first hand with a 20k bank at 50/100 with 22, and it folds to the SB who shoves his whole 20k then flips up AKs, I would fold. However, it really does take an example that extreme to make me consider passing up a +cEV spot. SO STOP DOING IT!
2. “You risked your tournament life with that?” I hear this all the time around live tournaments. I guess that’s because with live you normally only get to play one tournament a day, and in the case of a major main event, people may have waited months or a whole year for it. Still, that’s absolutely no excuse. Your tournament life has no value outside a sentimental one, so unless you intend to bottle that magic tournament life feeling and selling to Hallmark for a fucking Christmas card, stop wasting your time with this mentality.
What really has value in tournaments? Chips. If your opponents in a live tournament don’t occasionally tell you something like “dude, you’re insane!”, you probably aren’t playing right. A good example of how people get nitty with their tournament lives is shoving ranges and re-stealing all in. An example:
About 15-20 players from the money, in a WSOP $1500 event, it was folded to me with J5o on the button with 11 BB’s with antes in play. Both blinds were standard weak tight live players. I jammed because I know how insane tight their calling ranges are, especially moderately close to the bubble. The SB thought for about 8 years before calling with AQo, then the BB folded AQs face up. When I turned my hand over the table let out various insults for putting my stack in with J5o. The real mentality you need to have is a willingness to bust if it means creating +EV spots. Just because you waited a long time to play this tournament doesn’t mean you have an excuse to play bad.
3. “I didn’t want to risk it on a coin flip” This has got to be one of the most common. Here’s the simple truth with most probable coin flip situations: at the point you’re considering folding knowing you’re likely in a coin flip, there’s already probably way too much money in the pot to ever fold. If you raise AQo 3X and a guy shoves 15-20X, and you figure his range is AJ+/66+ (You’re about 43.5% against his pretty tight, never stealing range, and still basically flipping) you ARE NOT folding. There’s nothing wrong with getting it in on a flip as long as it’s a +EV one, which most are, especially once antes kick in.
4. “My opponents are very good, I’m going to avoid trouble.” Look, you need to have confidence in your game. If you really feel you are surrounded by players who are much better than you, you’re likely in the wrong tournament (unless you won a satellite or something like that.) Odds are, your opponents aren’t as good as you give them credit for or their results may suggest. I encourage you to have confidence bordering on delusional hubris. It’s okay to tighten up a little if you do find yourself at a table of superior players, but don’t nit it up to the point where they can run over you and you’re to paralyzed to stop them. Tournament poker can be pretty soul crushing, but showing up to the table feeling defeated just about guarantees it.
5. “Tournament poker is about survival.” No it’s really not. It’s about accumulation to enable the creation of +EV spots. I think this has been covered pretty well in the portions, but this is another common one I believe to be totally false.
Alright, that’s what I have for now. If anyone has any other common ones they’d like to suggest I can go over them. Hope this helps and of course, all questions are welcome.
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