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Poker 101: First Lesson, The Importance Of Understanding Time In Tournaments
By Johnathan Francois
The phenomenon of poker continues to baffle media experts who continue to expect poker play in general to be a passing fad. For those millions of people worldwide who have played poker or discovered poker within the last decade, it comes as no surprise that this game continues to build explosive and long term stable growth. The reasons are actually quite simple. The game of poker is fun, exciting, challenging and the basic concepts are easy for anyone to learn. These fundamental concepts build the basis for growth, but it's the extremely lucrative aspect of tournament poker that continues to fuel poker's explosive growth. With online poker sites offering tournaments ranging in size from $100 to One Million Dollar Guarantees, anyone anywhere can earn a life changing amount of money from a strong finish in only a single tournament. A first place finish in some of the largest online tournaments today can pay upwards of Six Hundred Thousand Dollars or more. While people who place in tenth, twentieth, or thirtieth place, for example can still earn $5,000 to $50,000 for their success. Buy ins for these tournaments can start from as little as $2 for some satellites. It's the access to this income, and the knowledge that anyone can master this game, that draws millions of people worldwide to online poker. For more information on the Full Tilt Poker One Million Dollar Guaranteed Tournament, or $600 Free Full Tilt Poker Bonus Cash, visit FullTiltGlobal.com.

In order to have the greatest success in terms of wins, and winnings, players need to commit to learning the concepts of tournament play. Reading poker articles like these can improve your poker skills over time, as you master and utilize one concept at a time.

Lesson One: Understanding Time During Tournament Play & Acting Accordingly

Online poker tournaments transpire very similarly to life in general. When we are born, it is very important to protect a newborn child to it's surroundings. Many times babies are kept at the hospital for several days before being allowed to go home with their families. Over the first few years of life, the routine is quite simple. Focus on the basics. Proper nutrition, sleeping, and protection. After a few years of protection, the newborn has grown into a child who must begin to learn routines. Parents begin to give up control and protection, allowing the child to go to school, camps, church - generally the child begins to participate in activities designed to build equity in the child - helping it to grow. Parents still preach protection - "Don't talk to strangers," "Look both ways before you cross the street". The idea is to allow the child to begin to take small risks, as inevitably life is full of risks. But parents continue to protect, and preach use of good judgement. By the time several more years pass, the child has grown into an adult capable of making decisions, and taking larger risks in life. Those larger decisions could be when to get married, what career to follow, and others. Eventually as adulthood years continue, income increases, and ideally, an adult creates equity in themselves, building a substancial and healthy life for their retiring age. During the earning years it is important to take intelligent risks, where income is the result. Whether through education, investing, or through business startups, it is the sum of these risk taking decisions that determine our financial health in life. Additionally, timing of these decisions can be the key to everything. Once a sufficient sum can be counted on for retirement, it is safe to move this sum to less risky investments long term. Taking risks are avoided early in life, and late in life, while encouraged and necessary, in the middle.

In tournament poker, time transpires the same way. When you sit down at the poker table, you are given a small modest stack of chips 1000 to 1500 in size. In these early minutes, or first hours, it is important to protect your chips, just as you would a child.

One reason, is that the return doesn't equal the risk. If you have the best cards pre flop in Texas Holdem poker - lets say pocket aces. It's very hard to extract chips from other players early. If you bet your entire stack of 1500 chips, it's going to be hard to get callers. If you bet a small amount with pocket aces, your hand loses value after the flop, because the players who have called have opportunities to reach a set, straight, or flush with hands like pocket 10's or suited cards that were weaker than you to begin with. That's why pocket aces have so many bad beat stories. Timing of play matters with aces. The most chips you can get with them early is usually 1000 to 1500, where the same hand in middle or late tournament can pay you 10,000 to 50,000 chips, or more.

Because the return rarely equals the risk early, many strong online poker players just simply avoid action early folding almost all hands until the betting structure gets a little larger. When tournaments start, the blinds are 10-20 meaning there are forced bets equal to 30 chips when the hand begins. Waiting to act until the blind structure increases to 50-100 or 100-200, means the minimum return on your risk increases. If you move all in with pocket aces preflop early, and everyone folds, your return (the blinds) is 30 chips. If you act under the same situation later, you may return 150 or 300 in chips for taking the same action. Obviously it's a better risk as time goes on.

Also, if you take unnecessary risks at a young age it can cripple you for life. For example young people

who experiment with drugs in their teens have difficulty getting on track later in life. Some can overcome it, but it usually takes a miracle, constant effort and a lot of luck.

Risking 1000 chips early, when its all that you have is totally different than risking 1000 chips later when you have built a stack.

The other benefit of being protective early, and folding a lot of hands, as boring as that may be is that you can watch others and take notes of their play, just as people are observing you. When you finally choose to take action, people will respect your play, knowing you have been selective, and making good decisions. It can help you win pots without being challenged, and can also help you win hands that you need to bluff at to win, as your selective image will give people reason to believe you. This helps you to grow your chips in the early to mid stages of the poker tournament without an abundance of confrontation.

As your chip stack grows, the risks you can take increase. It's only common sense that it is safer to risk $1000 if you have $10,000 in the bank, than if it represents your entire savings. It's even riskier if the $1000 is already committed to living expenses lets say.

If you had advice from a friend that a penny stock was increasing, would you invest $500 in it if it was all the money you had and was supposed to go to paying rent or a mortgage? That's taking a risk. Possibly an unnecessary and untimely risk. People take the same level of risks in poker tournaments at times.

It never makes sense to risk everything early. Instead it makes sense to be protective, and focus on small increases early just like you do in life. When you get 1 hour in on a four hour tournament, you should be thinking, "These are my earning years. It's time to begin taking intelligent risks." Two or 3 hours into the tournament, as your chip stack grows into a dominant position over other people, it may be that you have amassed a chip stack large enough to allow you to finish in the money. In those late hours or minutes of a tournament, you want to be thinking these are my retirement years. The last thing you want is for one of these 2 situations to apply to you.

First Situation: you spent your whole life (tournament) avoiding risks, and not amassing wealth (your stack). In your retirement years you'll be forced to take unnecessary risks just to get by.

Second Situation: you have taken appropriate risks, and have been rewarded with wealth (chips), and have a nest egg built (chip stack), and are retired (still alive late in the tournament), why would you take unnecessary risks?

Say you worked for Microsoft, and became a millionaire, and retired at fourty three. Why would you take or assume high risks? Would you put your entire wealth on black at the roulette table? Would you invest your entire wealth in a stock or business venture?

The way you play the game of poker changes depending on who you are and where you are in the game. Many poker players get addicted to the thrill of assuming risk. Many are good players. The success of winning hands validates their egos. They build 1000 chips into 300,000 in a poker tournament, and right prior to finishing "In The Money", which is every poker players top priority, they do something like this.

An online poker tournament pays 50 positions deep, and with 55 people remaining, poker player A has 26,000 chips and is dealt pocket kings. Thrilled by the implied strength of his hand, he forgets that there are still 5 players to be eliminated before his money finish. The blinds on the table are 6,000 including antes so the player bets 5500, in an attempt to take them down. Everyone folds except a player who goes all in over the top of his bet for that person's entire stack of 24,000 chips. Now given the need to make a decision, the player A feels "who are you to challenge me, and my Kings", and calls the bet leaving only 2,000 chips remaining of his original stack. The player across from him had only pocket nines, but on the final river card, his opponent hits a set (three of a kind), when another nine appears. During the next few hands, the player attempts to hold on, but the blinds force his remaining chips in play on bad hands and he is eliminated in 52nd place - 2 spots out of the money.

Why? Because of his addiction to confrontation. In the hundreds of hands that led up to that action, player A had responded appropriately time and time again, and even caught luck a few times. Gaining a feeling of invincibility, player A forgot a simple life lesson. You can lose it all at once. When you've accomplished great things in life, it's important to start reducing risks and protecting your wealth late, and in poker it is the same. The only difference being, once you get into the money phase of a tournament, you can then begin assessing risks as you climb up the tournament pay scale.

So timing is everything. Protect early. Protect late, and be willing to take intelligent and calculated risks at every opportunity in the middle. If you can master this first poker technique, you will see great gains in your life play and poker play.

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