Fighting My Way Up the Tournament Ladder

I played a tournament last night that had a lot of ups and downs.  Early in the tournament I was in first place, but there were a lot of big hands where I went way up or way down.  I wound up fighting just to get a cashing spot, as seems to happen in a lot of my tournaments.

Very often I will be just out of a cashing spot and having to fight my way up.  In this tournament, 12 players got in the money and I spent most of the tournament's third hour fighting to get up to one of the top 12 spots.  I would be 15th of 21, then 14th of 17, then make it up to 12th place only to get knocked into a lower place after the next hand.

For about half an hour I watched other players get knocked out, which was good, but  I wasn't moving up, which was bad.  Near the end of the third hour I was 12th of 14 and I managed to hang on to that spot while two more players were knocked out.

Once I was in the money at 12th place it got really interesting.  Playing "in the money" requires a different kind of skill then trying to get there, as does then getting to the final table, as does finally getting the win.  They are all different animals with different mathematical and tactical considerations.  I seem to have very different strengths and weaknesses at different stages of a tournament.  My strongest area is playing the final table and I'm definitely not playing "by the book."

I wound up taking second place out of 66 players for a very nice cash.  I do what works for me and I keep getting good cashes.  If I at least break even for the next nine days, November will be my most profitable month so far.  I play a lot more hands and in general I am a much "looser" player than I was just a few months ago.  Still, there are spots where I'm going way off the reservation.

When poker players talk about slowly but surely grinding their way up to once of the biggest stacks at the final table, it's called "laddering up."  I would rather it be called "climbing the ladder," because I don't like turning nouns (like ladder) into verbs, but I'm not in charge of naming poker situations.

The conventional, widely accepted and probably mathematically correct wisdom is that you should follow the math and take big risks to make big money.  From a math standpoint it's much better to take a lot or risks to get just a few big cashes, rather than trying to cash often.

That said, there are times when it's correct to put risk-taking on hold.  For example, if I am in 10th place, nine players cash and two very small stacks are going to have put all of their chips in the pot in the next two minutes, it makes sense to play a little more carefully and see if anyone gets knocked out.

The dilemma is that I'm not careful just in such obvious situations.  I'm very good at "laddering up" but I play much tighter much more often that the math says that I should.  Once I make it to the final table, I just keep going.  Very often I will have the smallest stack at the final table but I move up several spots while waiting for other players to get knocked out.

When I was around 15th place last night I would sometimes fold two or three orbits while I waited to be dealt a top 5% hand.  If I won the hand (which I did most of the time.) I would wait for another big hand and keep moving up.  I kept doing that until we were down to fifth place and I was the big stack.  Then I opened up and started pushing the smaller stacks around.  I was in first place for quite a while but I couldn't hang on. The final hand I had 12 outs, I called villain's all-in, I didn't hit and I took second place.

As I have said many times before, I should be getting bigger cashes, not more cashes.  This month I have done both.  In November so far I have cashed in 12 of 41 tournaments (29%.) That percentage seems way too high, but enough of my cashes have been deep runs that it's been a good month so far.

If I asked Jonathan Little or any of the other top players about this, it would be as if  I was in the 2+2 poker forums as a beginner all over again, with everyone answering with a favorite 2+2 saying: "You're doing it wrong."

There are different ways to think about this:

1. Even if my play is nonstandard, I should do what works.
2. What I'm doing against weak competition (mostly $1 and $2 tournaments) won't work when I move up.
3, Both 1 and 2 are correct.

The bottom line is that what I'm doing is working.  I never planned or expected to make a lot of money this year.  I didn't have a number in mind. The goal was to simply to grind some bankrolls that are big enough to put me in a good position in 2018.  I haven't yet done that with Americas Cardroom, but when I take take my first cashout from Juicy Stakes poker I'll move some of that money over to get a second bankroll going.  Then I will be in great shape.

Keep in mind that what I accomplished on Juicy Stakes Poker didn't cost me anything.  I worked with what I had online. I have no doubt that I can accomplish a lot when I have some actual money to put into my business.  More about that in a future post.