Mastering Tournament Poker Strategy

Alec Torelli: What's up YouTube,. I got a lot of you guys asking me about the content inside the. conscious poker pro membership program. And so I decided to do, something unique today and I'm going to share with you guys a, video from our pro membership program. This is some of our, better strategy content, it's a little bit more in depth for, those people that are looking for the next level in their poker game. If you want access to a group of like minded people, all working together to improve their poker game that are part, of a private forum, monitored by a conscious Poker Coach and myself. So you get feedback on questions you have and hands that you need reviewed or questions you have about poker, bankroll management, poker lifestyle, whatever it may be,. this is a great place to join. It's also some of our better in. depth strategy videos that are more advanced, as well as. monthly group coaching, and a chance to get your questions answered by me on a group coaching call every month, as, well as priority access to getting your hands submitted and reviewed by myself and a conscious Poker Coach. So that's, the essence of our pro membership program. If you want, more information or would like to join, you could click the link below. And today's video is really a teaser about a video from our pro membership program to show you the style of video,, you're going to see a little bit longer a little bit more. advanced. And I hope you enjoy this stuff. And if you have, questions about the program, leave them here in the comments. below. And I'm happy to answer them as well. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you guys on the inside. Day. Let's jump into this hand.. First off, let me set the stage, we're playing an E PT Sochi, so a huge e PT event in the money. And we have 30 big blinds. So. this might be a unique hand because ranges generally change, when we're playing. In high stakes tournaments, the range of. hands that your opponent's gonna have in the money deepen an E PT. is generally and again, this is generally going to be narrower. than the range of hands, they're going to have in level one of a, $200 Buy in tournament at your local casino. The reason being. is that these players are infested, they've been playing, for three or four days to get to this point. And they're also in a very high stakes tournament, likely the biggest one of their, career in the money in an event and they're not just going to be. blowing their money away. So the ranges are going to be narrower.. So for this hand, we're going to do a little bit more, exploitative style of play, given the live read and, situation that we have. And if you're ever in this spot deep in. a major tournament, you're going to find that this is generally. how the play is. Now this, this doesn't always apply. If you're, playing against a very good high stakes rag who plays tons of, tournaments, and they're always finding themselves deep in an. event, they're going to have a balanced range, they're going to, put you to tough decisions with marginal hands, their range may, be wider. If you're playing against a complete maniac, or someone that's just going bonkers or a massive fish with a. huge chip lead, his range might be wider as well. In this hand,. what is unique is we don't really know exactly who our, opponent is. One thing we do know, though, is that his stack. is way way bigger than ours. When you have stack leverage in, a tournament, people generally play looser, meaning they play a little bit more aggressively because they can bust to you, but you can't bust them. So we're gonna have to use a. balance of the fact that we're deep in a tournament, meaning. people are going to play tighter in the fact that we're up against the chip leader, which means he's liable to be a little, bit more aggressive and play looser. So with that said, when. I do the analysis on this hand, I'm going to do it based on an. overall strategy that's pretty balanced and reasonable. And you could adjust from there based on your opponent, the specific, game, the tournament you're playing, and all the variables. you know about the situation. Without further ado, let's jump in to the hand of the day, we find ourselves in this hand under the gun, we get dealt King Queen suited, which is a great. hand. Now let's pretend we don't know what our villain has,, because we realistically aren't gonna be able to see his cards., We make it 12,000 Which is a very standard 2.2 2.5x open calls on the button villain calls in the small blind. And we go three ways to the flop, flop. comes down King eight, three rainbow create three with a flush draw small blind checks, we bet 17k which is a third of, the pot. And now he opts to check raise to 42,000. So here. we have a tough decision. Generally in this spot, we're. going to have one of the best hands that we can have. This is definitely the top of our range. Of course we could have three. kings pocket eights, ace, king, or ACEs. But most of our range. in this spot is going to be bluffs. We're going to have hands like 10 Nine suited Jack 10, ace five suited and maybe. some bluffs that we raised preflop with like seven six. suited, and again, most of those aren't going to be clubs, we're only going to have clubs one out of four times. So we have a way, too strong of a hand to fold here and also because if you, think about it, we bet such a small amount on the flop that we, gave incentive to the villain to check Raise, how do we bet something like 35,000, and he went all in his range is going to be a lot, stronger, because he's basically risking more, to win less, he's, committing all his money to the pot, he has to have something,. we're still going to be getting a good price, and we're probably. going to still have to call it off. But there aren't any.

complete stone bluffs in his range, he's not going to have something like ace queen of diamonds with we bet the flop, and he just champs, he's probably just going to fold that, hand on the flop if we bet the size of the pot. But when we bet, a third of the pot, he could basically risk one pot size bet, or less, and put us to a decision for all of our chips. Remember, he has what's called stack leverage here, meaning he, could risk a third of our stack, and we have to either commit all. into the pot or fault. So he's in a great position to apply. leverage in this spot, even if he's bluffing, we realistically, can't continue on this flop without a king or a flush drop, which means a lot of our betting range on the flop is going to, have to fold. So he's going to get us to fold a lot of our, bluffs. And because we bet a third of the pot, we're going to keep all of our bluffs in our range, we're going to be. bluffing this flop 100% of the time, given our bet size, if we, have a bluff, all this is to say it's a good spot for the villain, to raise with some sort of bluff type hand, not all of his bluffs. are going to raise, he's not going to just have any two cards. any percent of the time, but a bluff that has some backdoor, equity, if we call or some part of his range that is going to, bluff to be balanced. Something like queen jack of diamonds could be. a bluff that he can have that condenses his range well enough that he's not bluffing too often, he's also going to have maybe worse kings for value, maybe something like King Jack King 10 suited. And he also might have flush drawers, any, flush draw here is definitely going to be raising, he's not risking his entire stack. So if he does have something like 10,. nine suited, he's definitely liable to get it in on this. board just because he can afford to gamble. And we really can't. All this is to say our hand is definitely too strong to fold., And the question is, what do we want to do? Here's where I'd like you to think about one more variable other than just your direct equity. In a cash game, you're definitely wanting to. call here, you're gonna want to call to have a balanced range,. you're probably going to allow your opponent to keep his range. wider, keep his bluffs in the pot, and then just call it off, on the turn no matter what comes. This is a good strategy. in a cash game, because you're not really worried about getting, all the money in so long as you're a favorite. In a, tournament though the situation is different. And the reason is, if your opponent has something like queen jack and diamonds,. you don't really necessarily want a nine of diamonds to roll off on the turn and have him shove. Now he's in a spot where he has 12 outs with one to go and sure you're a favorite. But you're. putting in a third, you're putting in half the pot on the, turn, and he has 25% equity, he's not losing that much money. by putting you all in. And you really don't want to gamble, you, don't want to be in a spot where he has something like Ace Queen of Diamonds, turns a lot of equity or turns an ace or turns. of free equity and puts you all in. And now you're gambling for, your whole stack. So what I much rather see here than a flat, call, which is what we ended up doing is just a jam, jam and all, in and if he has you beat, you're going to lose all your, money anyway, it's not important with you as you beat because you're going to call it all in on the turn pretty much. regardless. And so the times your beat your beat, it's no big, deal. But the times he has no equity, you're not letting him, gamble with you on the turn. You also have to consider if you, call this flop, it's not like he's going to shove with a stone, bluff on the turn. If he has something like 910 of diamonds. and the turn is a deuce, he's not going to shove, you have. less than a half size pot that half pot size bet left, he's, just going to check full. So you're not winning any more. money from him unless he turns a massive draw, at which point, you're putting yourself in considerable risk for busting when you can bust the tournament and he can't. Now if the. situation was reversed, and you had five axes chip stack, sure. you can afford to gamble a little bit and call the flop,. hoping that he picks up some draw and jams in and on the turn are hoping he goes wild with a bluff because you can afford to, lose that money in this spot in this tournament deep in the. event when ICM is at play, and when we're in the money, I'm. just going to jam it all in here protect my hand. And if he, hasn't worst King, he's going to call it as a flush draw. He's, probably going to call it off. But at least I'm protecting myself. Now the one case for calling that I didn't mention. that you might want to consider is if you do just call in the, turn comes a club and he jams you could probably fold, profitably. Other than that, I don't really see a reason for. calling which is what we ended up doing. We call the turn. We. call the flop we go heads up to the turn. So the turn comes here Have a jack of hearts. And now he jams. And we have to think about what to do. Now the first thing I want you to think about here right away is what price do. I need to justify calling the pots 125k. He jams basically. effectively 100 cake, so the pots to 25, and we're calling 90, or 100 to one to 25, we're getting 2.25 to one, which means. we need to be right one out of three, one out of three and a. half times. So we need one out of three is 25%. One out of four. is 20%. So we need somewhere in between that amount of equity.. Let's say we need 22% equity to justify calling here. Now. remember, this is if we're playing a cash game, and the, only thing to consider is our equity. But in the tournament, we're going to want to make sure that we have significantly more,

equity than the pot odds were getting, because of the fact, that if we bust this hand, our chip stack goes to zero. But if. we double up, our chip value doesn't double. So we always need to be more conservative in a tournament and make sure. there's an overlay between the price we're getting and the. equity that we have. So if we need 22% Here, hypothetically,, to justify calling, I would like to make sure that in this spot,. we have at least 35 40% equity to justify calling here. Let's. jump into poker cruncher and take a look what the math says.. Before we go any further, I want to say I got the math wrong. In the last segment, I don't know what I was thinking pots to 25,, we need to call 90. So we need roughly one out of three and one and three and a half, we need to have 25 30% equity. So I wasn't, on the wrong side of the equation anyway, I apologize, we need to have roughly 25 or 30% equity, which means we need to be more than that we need to have more than that. So that equity we need is still about the same. It's about 14% To make this a profitable call. But I. got the equation wrong. And I apologize. Anyway, let's go to this situation and see exactly what types of hands our opponent could have. Now this is a really tough spot. Again, what types of, hands he can have specifically is a subject for endless debate.. I ultimately don't know anything about this opponent, I do know, that it's deep in a major tournament. So his range is going to be wider. But I also know that he's the chip leader,, and he has stacked leverage, which means his range might be a little bit wider. So using that combination of both, I'm just, going to give him a standard range of hands, not really knowing too much about how he plays preflop. Ultimately, how he plays preflop will be a big determining factor into the. types of hands he can have on the turn. Because does he call preflop with seven six of clubs, I don't know. But if he does,, his range is a lot wider than a player who doesn't call preflop.. With that, my inclination is to think he's deep, he's in the. small blind, he's getting a good price, there's another color, his range is liable to be a little bit wider than the, average player because of his preflop situation. So here I, gave my opponent a range. You can see the hands that I highlighted in green, and yellow are the types of hands he can, have. He can have pocket threes, pocket eights, king, queen, king. jack suited. And those are the hands that beat us. That's. basically it. So we're beat by those hands. But then the hands. that don't beat us like all the ace high flush drawers, and some queen high flush drawers, Jack high flush drawers, 10, high flush drawers, those hands have a lot of equity. So when you enter that into the calculator, you're going to see that he has. something like 40 We have 47% equity. Now this is being very, conservative. I didn't give him hands that he can very well have like Queen nine of clubs, or 10, nine of diamonds, maybe he has. something like that maybe as ace queen of diamonds, I gave him no, crazy bluffs. This was the bare minimum strongest range that he, can have. So this is something that's going to apply versus, every opponent you play against or better. In other words, if. your opponent can have wider ranges of hands on the flop or, preflop, something like seven six of clubs, or esquina diamonds on the flop, then your equity is going to be higher, meaning it's even more of a profitable call. Even with this. very narrow equity. You can see here that we have 47% equity., Now if you compare that to the equity we needed, which is 28%., I just don't think we can fold here. I'm all about giving up, equity in a tournament to wait for a better spot, especially. when ICM is at play and we're deep in the tournament. That is, basic tournament strategy. But giving up literally a double in, the amount of equity that you need is just too much to do, especially when folding would leave us with less than 20 big. blinds under the gun about to play the blinds and pay the, blinds again, I just don't see that we can fold here and get, away from our hand. It's just too tough. As played, we ended up calling the spot he had a set of aids like you saw, we're drawing dead we busted the tournament. That's life. What I, want you to be focused on though is not the results but the, process. How do we make good decisions in spite of the, evidence with the evidence in spite of what our opponent ends up having? The results aren't important. What's important is. the process. Go through this process and you will improve. I hope you enjoyed this hand if you have hands you'd like to, send to me please send them to ALEC at conscious poker.com Um, or simply let me know you're, a pro member as well. So I give you guys priority access to reviewing your hands or simply submit them on Slack and I'll. pick the best ones and review them here in future videos. Thank you guys so much for being pro members and I'll see you. guys more on the Slack channels. If you guys are interested in, joining click the link below if you have questions, leave them. here on the YouTube. I will do my best to get back to you guys and answer them. I'm really looking forward to see you guys. on the inside. This is definitely what I believe is the, best place to learn poker on the internet the best value for what, you're spending, you get access to me, coaching monthly group. coaching a conscious Poker Coach to answer your questions. I. think it's really awesome stuff ton of people in there that are. really benefiting from the program. Looking forward to see you guys on the inside and I'll see you there. Thanks for watching. Cheers.