Rising Blinds – The Demise of the Tight Tournament Player
As any tournament poker player knows, if you don’t accumulate chips in a tournament,
you will eventually lose to the escalating blinds. Being “blinded off, or blinded
down” as this is commonly referred to, is a familiar story for the excessively tight
tournament player.
How do you know if you’re playing too tightly?
In general, the game of texas holdem typically provides you with bad starting cards.
After all, only a handful of the starting hand combinations are considered “premium”,
and even those aren’t invincible. During a stretch of 3 to 4 hours, you typically
only see a small handful of really good starting cards. Waiting around for these
“premium” hands will have you on the short stack most of your tournament life.
You know you’re playing too tightly when your tournaments go something like this:
- You waited for a good hand for over 2 hours. You finally picked up AQ suited, and
made a standard raise. Someone re-raised you all in. Since you were fairly short
stacked at that point, you called and they busted you with KK.
- You picked up a couple of hands early on (AK/AQ), but the flop missed your big cards
every time, so you folded. Eventually you found yourself in the big blind with J5
offsuit, and the small blind has put you all in for your last 100 chips.
If you constantly find yourself in situations such as these, you’re not playing
enough hands. This doesn’t mean you need to be a maniac, but it does mean you need
to loosen up a little bit.
Always have a good reason for being short-stacked
Being on the short stack happens to everyone at some point. But there’s a major
difference between being short-stacked by your own doing, and being short-stacked
by circumstances you cannot control.
Good reasons for being short-stacked:
- You just lost a big hand to a slightly smaller stack. You went all in with the best
hand but got drawn out on. You’ve now found yourself with a tiny stack of remaining
chips.
- It’s the late stages of a tournament. You were on a medium sized stack 30 minutes
ago, and the table has gone wild since then. A series of all-ins by the other players
has had you sidelined for an entire ½ hour. The dust has finally settled and you
find yourself with quite a bit fewer chips.
So how do I avoid becoming the short-stack?
The answer is quite simple. You must find that point where you are just below a
medium sized stack and take some bigger risks. If you lose, you lose… but you must
avoid being blinded down to nothing.
Dan Harrington’s book (Harrington on Holdem, Volume 2), has an entire section on
avoiding short stack syndrome. He breaks down your current chip count into “zones”
based on your stack size in relation to the size of the blinds. He then lays out
guidelines for how to play each zone. It’s an excellent tournament strategy book.
Everyone plays this slightly differently. Speaking for myself, when I’m at about
5-8 times the big blind, I’m looking to push all in with any two respectable cards
into an unraised pot. However, there are no hard and fast rules for this. You should
adjust this number up or down based on the type of table you’re at. In addition,
with loose players behind you, you might want to wait for slightly better cards.
With tighter players behind you, you should loosen this up a bit and move in with
any two cards.
The basic point here is not the actual number at which you should push, nor the
cards you should use to push with. The point is that you should be thinking about
when and where would be a good time to push. Recognize that you’re in danger of
being blinded down soon, and make some moves.
Conclusion
While playing tight can keep you from playing bad cards, it will certainly not save
you from rising blinds. Always pay attention to your stack size, and don’t let yourself
slip into the short-stack zone. Find a good place to push, and have the courage
to act on it.
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