Poker Tournaments and What Would Dan Harrington Do?

I have played in many poker tournaments online and live at Full Tilt Poker.com and as a normal course of events for all players, often find myself in tough decision making, game critical situations. One of the best advances I have made in my game came from none other than Dan Harrington, author of three great tournament poker books titled Harrington on Hold’em, Volumes I, II, and most recently III - which is a complete workbook/exam like analysis of what you have picked up from this first rate trilogy.

Dan Harrington is a tournament poker pro having won The Main Event at the WSOP in ‘95 and making 2 consecutive final tables in the same event in 2003 and 2004. He is also a champion backgammon player which seems to be a good background for many successful tournament players, Gus Hansen, Andy Bloch, and Chris Ferguson among them. As well as a successful businessman, Harrington has proven himself a top poker writer and educator.

Anyway, these books are mandatory reads for tournament players because they explain in detail virtually every kind of situation you could find yourself in during a tournament. Fair to say the big hands are easy to play, but most of the hands in this book are contentious and challenge your thinking of game theory. In fact, there are sections in this book that could open your mind to concepts you probably have never heard of.

What I like best about the books is that each and every concept introduced has actual game situations applied and analyzed by testing your understanding of the subject at hand. The “problems” also include a variety of tournament situations including online play and make adjustments for the looser game style you normally find there.

When I first started playing on FullTiltPoker, top pair was a worthy hand to go all in with. So I didn’t really have to think much then, and hence, rarely got to the payouts. Slowly I learned there were more strategies involved in No Limit play, including identifying what some raises from other players actually meant. However, one of the most important things you can learn from these books is the ability to judge when to get the heck out of a hand – probably one of the biggest weaknesses of most amateur players.

Now when I am in a contentious situation, before I press that all in button, (or any other one) I always stop and think for as long as I need. The first thing I ask myself is, “What would Dan Harrington do in this situation?”

Monitoring Your Q and M in Poker Tournaments.

There are numerous details to monitor in online No Limit Holdem Tournaments. Some of them may be as unique and challenging as the chat you try to decipher coming from your opponents. When playing online though, you do have tools and indicators available which can help you make a solid decision, at least mathematically based on calculable conditions at any given time.

Two of those conditions are often used by professional players at live tournaments and are critical to success online as well. The indicators are M and Q.

M stands for M ratio which is basically a stack comparison between yourself and the size of the current minimum pot. A minimum pot is made up of a combination of blinds and antes which constantly escalate as a tournament progresses. As your stack (or M) gets lower, other players with better M’s will start to steal your blinds and risk losing a pot in order to eliminate you from competition.

Q is a comparison of your stack to other player’s stacks by determining the average of stack size of all players left in the tournament and affixing a representative comparison value of one to your stack. So if your stack is half the size of the average stack, then you would have a Q of .5. If on the other hand you had 3 times the average stack, your Q would be 3.

You should know both of these numbers at all times in the tournament, and depending on the structure and/or dynamics of play, either the Q or the M may be more important as an indicator at any given time.

M is usually more relevant than Q within normally structured tournament and should always be known as well as its corresponding color zone. Green is for an M of 20 or more, yellow will be from 15 to 20, while orange is from 10 to 15. The lower mzones are red which is from 1 to 5 and the all but out grey mzone which means your M ratio is actually below 1. However, M isn’t always the main indicator to consider. You may indeed be more compelled to act a certain way in a tournament based on your Q.

The reason why Q may be more relevant than the M is because of stack parity at a game critical intersect. In other words, if most of the players at your table have similar (low) M ratios that put them in Orange or red Mzones, then the Mzone really don’t matter much at all. You need to know what that strength of your hole cards are and use position to take down as many pots preflop as possible.

Knowing the difference between M and Q in tournaments can be critical to your success in moving up the money and playing mathematically correct at game critical intersects.

Mzone Report: Adjusting Your Online Poker Tournament Strategy

There are five color zones in the mzone that will factor in determining your overall strategy at any given time in a Poker Star.net poker tournament. An overwhelming number of your competitors will never pay attention to their mzone, and this offers up a clear advantage for those who know what the different mzones really mean. When you find yourself in any of these mzones, you may need to drastically change your strategy, but just the same you have to be aware of what zones your competitors are in as well.

Green MZone. Everybody starts out the tournament in this zone. In this mzone you can literally play any style you want, and not be threatened out of the tournament unless you choose to be put in that predicament. Here you have the widest scale to get away from a hand or use your stack to try and get somebody else off a hand. If you are the only one at the table in this zone, then you are the big stack and can afford to see more hands than others. You also have flexibility here in being passive or aggressive, but need to choose your opponents carefully in all situations.

Yellow Mzone. In this zone you are relatively comfortable and have some flexibility for stack power against middle stack opponents. Although you are not in danger, your efforts here should be to get back into the green mzone with steals against middle stacks and all in, opportunity hands against short stacks. In some tournaments where the blinds escalate quickly and starting stacks aren’t huge, you may find a cluster of players in this mzone at the same time. Usually just before the middle of the tournament just before the blinds turn dramatically higher.

Orange Mzone. In most tournaments, usually at the midway point, the real cluster of stacks will be here in the orange mzone. In many ways this mzone is where a fundamental shift in strategy needs to be employed, because as a middle size stack you are most vulnerable to pressure from the big and small stacks. Mzone analysis is critical here in that a shift in mzones either up to yellow, or down to red represents a different set of variables with the yellow mzone being much more desirable.

Red Mzone. In this mzone you are next door neighbors to desperation. You may have enough here that when you go all in, a middle size stack may likely fold, but really, to advance in a tournament you want to get heads up here, all in against one player, to try and double up and get back in the tournament, or at least, the orange mzone. Your whole mission in a tournament is to basically avoid the red mzone as your choices, opportunity, and luck really run dry here.

Grey Mzone. This is pretty much dead in the water. You only get to this mzone in rare situations. You may have lost a huge pot recently and had your opponent out stacked marginally, or you just had to fold a hand to some reraising ahead of you and you were in the red mzone. The grey mzone is where you look for two live cards or anything in position, and just roll with it. You probably won’t find a hand here, so you need a couple of hole cards that have a glimmer of hope.

You may have heard that professional poker players always strive to eliminate as many errors as possible from their tournament game. Your skills in that regard too will see a surge when you start using the mzone as your guiding strategy in poker tournaments.

Poker Book Review: Kill Phil, The Fast Track to Success in No Limit Hold’em Tournaments

As a full time online tournament poker player, I am always open to new concepts, strategies and opinions. Hence, when I picked up this book, written by Lee Nelson and Blair Rodman, I was immediately convinced of some fresh new material here. Now whether or not you agree with the strategies presented in this poker book, it’s a necessity to be aware of your competitor’s knowledge and recognize their strategies as well. Some of which clearly will be derived from books like this in the years to come.

Nelson and Rodman are PartyPoker.net pros at this game and each has an excellent record of success. In this book, they bring to the novice player a straightforward strategy to implement in No Limit Hold’em Tournaments. Having used these strategies themselves, well, they know of what they write. The premise of the Kill Phil strategy is twofold. 1- Take full advantage of betting your whole stack (it is No Limit after all) consistently, thus masking the true strength of your hand, and 2- negate post-flop play which is generally the domain of stronger players.

The reasoning here is, that each time you are all in, and a presumed favorite, your potential to build a huge stack is very realistic. In addition, even if you go all-in with the prescribed hands and find yourself behind, you won’t be that much of an underdog. The book shows in detail how certain hands which you wouldn’t think to go all in with, stand good odds to take down a huge pot.

The Kill Phil Strategy is essentially a by-product of how tournament formats are traditionally structured. This strategy was first introduced in David Sklanksy’s Tournament Poker for Advanced Players, but Nelson and Rodman break it down and make adjustments for stack sizes and position, while also introducing some advanced concepts, which the novice tournament player can introduce into his game with experience.

The writers do an excellent job of explaining this poker tournament strategy, giving confidence to any new poker tournament player. As a seasoned individual I did find some flaws that do not take away from the writing and the generous amount of background tournament information included here. Personally I could not use this formula, because a large part of my game is post flop aggression. As well, if you employ theses tactics in a low entry fee online tournament, well let’s say you’ll get laughed out of Dodge. I have seen such characters and they NEVER win online. Players like myself line up drooling for just the right moment to take these chumps down.

But as I mentioned earlier, being keen to new concepts is part of growing and improving as player. The writers introduce an excellent short stack strategy that can be incorporated into most players’ games, and that I am fond of using. Hey, whenever you get two players this good, clunking heads, odds, and strategies together, give them the 25 bucks and read their book. And if poker isn't for you, then why not give Online Blackjack a shot?