Although we all like to believe that we are the best player at the poker table, it simply cannot be true all of the time. We all find ourselves playing in No Limit Hold’em tournaments where there is a superior opponent crushing the table, or even an inferior opponent who is running good and proving to be a menace. Perhaps you are a complete novice and almost every player in the competition is better than you. How can we best approach these situations and increase our chances of winning the tournament?
The best advice for a novice poker player is to keep things simple until you have garnered more experience and confidence. Similar advice applies when facing an opponent who is clearly more talented than you are, as it will not pay to try and outplay this type of player. But how simple is “simple”?
David Sklansky raises a criticism of No Limit Hold’em tournaments in his book “Tournament Poker For Advanced Players”, arguing that the ability to bet all of your chips can negate the edge of a superior poker player, even if that player is a world class professional. He devised a very, very basic strategy for a total beginner to follow in No Limit Hold’em tournaments and he even asserts that if the better players fail to adjust to what he terms “The System”, then poker players following his strategy could even have a slight edge themselves.
Sklansky’s system is incredibly simple. If there is a raise in front of you, move all in with Aces, Kings or Ace-King suited. If nobody has raised in front of you, shove all in with any pair, any suited Ace, any Ace-King combination and any suited connectors, apart from 3-2 or 4-3. In all other situations, muck your cards.
“The System” is only to be used after a few blind levels, when the pots are worth picking up. For the first few levels, only Aces are to be played (again, shoving all in) and everything else should be folded.
The beauty of this simple strategy is that when called, the player is never a big underdog and always has a decent chance to win the pot. When the raises go uncalled, the blinds and antes being picked up will gradually increase the player’s chip stack. But better than that, it eliminates any complicated decisions, pre-flop or post-flop. A superior poker player can’t outplay you if they aren’t forcing you into decisions and by constantly raising all in, it will be the other players making the tricky calls. Do they really want to risk all their chips with a hand like QQ? They might be a massive underdog and even if they are ahead, it will likely be a coin flip. No self respecting poker player enjoys flipping for their tournament life.
So if you are a novice No Limit Hold’em player or simply find yourself at a table where one player is steamrollering the others, you could do worse than follow “The System”, until you are more experienced or until your table situation improves. Good luck!
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