When you come to a limit Hold'em tournament, be prepared to sit down and play "top ten hands only" for the first five or six hours. If you're still in action five or six hours later, it's time to make sure that you are taking advantage of the mouse players at your table by stealing their blinds when you're in late position.

At this point in the tournament, you should still be trying to survive. You don't want to play a huge pot with a weak hand; save this sort of fancy playing until you are much farther along the experience curve. Rather, you want to play huge pots with top ten hands only.

If the players at your table are too loose, then play tight and just try to survive. If you happen to pick up a few cards (and to win a limit Hold'em tournament, you are going to have to pick up a few cards), you may win a couple of big pots from the loose players at the table. If the players at your table are too tight, then make sure that you're stealing a few blinds. If you're fortunate enough to make the final table, then draw on the experience you have gained playing all those satellites and focus on working your way into the final three spots, where most of the money is. Good luck to you when you play in a limit Hold'em tournament. Make sure that you learn something, and have a good time!

• Psychological Advantages In Poker Tournaments (0)
• Play Satellites In Order To Improve Your Hold Em Poker Game (0)
• How To Trap With A Big Poker Hand Part2 (0)

Making sure you're consistently friendly to the other players at the table is a wise policy. If players feel that you're a "good guy" or a friend, you increase the chance (at least marginally) that they won't call you in marginal situations where they could really hurt you, situations where they might well call someone they would love to bust.

Be careful with the great players at the table. I'm not saying that you should roll over and play dead; I'm just saying that it's probably not a good idea to steal their blinds, because they'll notice that. Remember that great players usually just want to last, so if you give them respect, they'll probably give you respect. If you start to "mess with them," though, they will mess with you, because they can. Believe me, you really don't want the great players messing with you! Try to be nice to everyone (really, I do try), and make sure that you give the great players respect. Only by giving respect will you get respect.

• Play Satellites In Order To Improve Your Hold Em Poker Game (0)
• Limit Hold Em Poker Tournaments: Summation (0)
• How To Trap With A Big Poker Hand Part2 (0)

If you want to win poker tournaments and not merely be satisfied with appearances at the final table, I strongly suggest that you play in satellites so that you become used to "endgame" poker play, that is, when the table is shorthanded with big stacks and big blinds. Satellites are ten-handed minitournaments where players put up one-tenth of the buy-in to a poker tournament and the last player standing (actually, the last person sitting!) wins a seat in the main event.

For example, to play a satellite for the WSOP's first $2,000 buy-in limit Hold'em event (where several hundred players are expected each year), 10 people put up $220 each, and the winner gets a seat in the $2,000 buy-in event. The seat allows the satellite winner to contend in an event that will pay more than $400,000 for first place! In this two-step process, you can run $220 into over $400,000 in two days!

Playing satellites simulates what it's like at the final table of a poker tournament. In order to win a satellite, you start out playing 10- or nine-handed and continue eliminating players until you're playing two-handed (heads up) for the seat in the tournament.

Playing in multiple satellites also improves your short-handed limit Hold'em nontournament game (in the side games). When you play nontourney Hold'em, you'll often find that the game will either end up shorthanded (five players or less) or become shorthanded for a time while you're waiting for new players to join up. If you have no experience in these short-handed game situations, either you'll have to leave a potentially profitable game (when it fills up again) or you'll probably lose money, because shorthanded play is quite different from nine-handed play. Satellites let you practice and improve your short-handed game, because you skip all the effort of getting to the "final table." You're already there, and as players start getting knocked out, you'll begin gaining experience that will help improve your shorthanded game.

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• Poker – Bring Your Big Guns To A War (0)
• Limit Hold Em Poker Tournaments: Summation (0)

Despite the grim scenario that I've just presented, trapping has its place in tournament poker, lest you become too predictable. But even I can't tell you exactly where that place is. One good time to trap is when you're in late position and no one else has entered the pot yet. This is a good place to just call one bet, to see if anyone else enters the pot behind you. In this scenario, if you make it two bets to go, then you'll probably just win the blinds. But by smooth-calling, you will at a minimum force the big blind to take a free flop. Just remember that in this case you're asking for action when you have a big hand. We all know that you should be very careful what you ask for, because you may get it!

Another time when I may smooth-call with A-A or K-K is when I'm in the big blind and someone else has raised, and it's just myself and one other opponent in the pot. I smooth-call in order to trick my opponent into thinking I'm weak (that is, merely defending my mediocre blind hand), so that he will give me a lot of action the rest of the hand. Just remember that smooth-calling in limit Hold'em with big hands can work out very badly or perfectly, depending on the way the cards fall. When you smooth-call with a big hand, you really are gambling.

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• Play Satellites In Order To Improve Your Hold Em Poker Game (0)
• Limit Hold Em Poker Tournaments: Summation (0)

I've already told two stories in Chapter 6 (John Bonetti is featured trapping Dan Harrington in one story, on page 127) about how one player trapped another with A-A in the hole. In both stories, the player who was doing the trapping came out smelling like a rose. But trapping with pocket aces or pocket kings (especially kings, because they're vulnerable to a lone ace falling on the flop) can be extremely dangerous. By "trapping" with these hands, I mean just calling one or two bets before the flop, rather than raising or reraising with your hand. By just calling preflop and trapping other players into playing their hands when they ordinarily wouldn't have done this, you're creating a bigger pot, which means you're also risking losing a big pot.

For example, suppose that someone in front of you has raised with Q-Q, and then you decide to just call (smooth-call) with your K-K before the flop. Now someone with [V]"[3 decides to call two bets with his hand, and then the board comes
off H-5H3-EH3-
In this case, you would have won a huge pot from the opponent who had Q-Q if you had three-bet with your hand instead of calling two bets before the flop, because the [V]~0 would have folded before the flop and not hung around in hopes of catching a spade draw on the flop and the (for you) dreaded ace on the river. Imagine the number of bets that you would have won from the Q-Q in this scenario.

But because you decided to trap other players into the pot before the flop, you lost a big pot. Because the 0"[9 flopped the nut flush draw, he was forced to play his hand all the way, and then he hit an ace on the end to beat you.

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• Poker – Bring Your Big Guns To A War (0)
• Play Satellites In Order To Improve Your Hold Em Poker Game (0)

When you have a border skirmish with someone, you don't need to bring out the heavy artillery, but when a war breaks out, you'd better bring your big guns! The same thing can be said about playing pots late in a poker tournament. You really don't need to have too much in your hand in order to try to steal the blinds from a mouse (a very cautious player). You probably won't need too much to defend your blinds against a jackal (a wildly aggressive player) either.

But when you decide to play a huge pot, then you'd better have a huge hand. I'm always looking for A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, 10-10, or A-K before I get involved in a big pot. In fact, I never feel too bad after I've been eliminated late in a limit Hold'em event if I know that I lost some big pots with some big hands. Even though I hate losing a big pot late in one of these events with A-A, what more could I have asked than the chance to play a big pot with A-A? Ultimately, I feel pretty good knowing that an opponent had to put a lot of money into the pot with his Q-K or whatever against my A-A.

• Play Satellites In Order To Improve Your Hold Em Poker Game (0)
• Psychological Advantages In Poker Tournaments (0)
• Limit Hold Em Poker Tournaments: Summation (0)