No Simple Solutions

A student of mine recently complained that he must be doing something wrong, that there must be a fundamental problem in his game, because he was getting too many bubble finishes and min-cashes. Another came to me with the hope that I could fix whatever was wrong with his game and teach him how to accumulate chips in the early and middle portions of a tournament. Both players noted that they only seem to final table a tournament when they are running good and winning tons of pots.
Neither of them got the solution they were looking for, though I gave them both the tools to improve and keep working on accumulating more chips and going on more deep runs. I couldn’t give them the solution they were looking for, because there is no simple solution to accumulating more chips and having more deep runs. If I had been in a wiseass mood, I would have answered their question with the only simple solution there is — play better!
We are all looking for simple solutions, systems, answers to the riddles that poker poses every session. But there aren’t any. If their problems could be solved in a single lesson, there would be tens of thousands of truly great poker players fighting with the few fish who hadn’t read the pamphlet yet.

How to Start Winning More Right Away!
By Chris “Fox” Wallace, the world’s greatest poker coach and the first coach to reveal both of the poker world’s great secrets. Results guaranteed!*
By the end of this one hour course, you will know —

• How to accumulate more chips in tournaments
• How to avoid pitfalls that cause you to bust out early
• When to play more hands and steal more pots
• How to win more and min-cash less
• Bubble avoidance
• Correct final table strategy
• Correct strategy before the final table
• Which hands to play in every situation and how to play them
• And the two powerful moves that the pros have kept secret until now!

After Fox’s course you will see your win rate skyrocket and your opponents will cringe in fear every time you sit down. Have you ever wondered why some players seem to win tournaments with big fields with remarkable consistency? Fox teaches you how to make your way through the minefields of bad players and win more often with information that has never been revealed before.
Are you having trouble with things like —

• Frequent bubble finishes
• More min-cashes than final tables
• Lack of consistency
• Long streaks without a major win
• Mistakes that end your tournament
• Bad beats

Fox’s simple course will solve all of these problems for you. Don’t be like the fish, struggling for years to learn the game the hard way, studying, reading books, and taking lessons. Cancel those annoying poker training site memberships, tell that poker coach to stop calling you, and delete those annoying spreadsheets from your computer desktop! This is a new way to learn poker that skips the small stuff and gets right to the big picture, revealing the powerful moves and hidden knowledge that have made great players millions of dollars.
Start clearing out your den, it’s about to become a trophy room!
*Void where prohibited. Past results are not a predictor of future winnings. Not educational material, provided for entertainment purposes only. Results guaranteed are not always positive. Not applicable in Massachusetts, Virginia, or wherever you live. We promise nothing, don’t sue us. You will always suck at poker. Screw you.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was really a course like that? If I could, I would enroll myself. Sadly, there isn’t. The answer to almost every problem listed in the pamphlet is simply to study hard, pay attention at the tables, play your best game, and keep improving. If you don’t do those things, you will never be good at poker. Never.
If you learn more about any facet of the game, it will help you to accumulate more chips in the middle levels of a tournament. Learning to read hands, read tells, calculate pot odds, make moves according to stack sizes, correctly estimate fold equity, spot weakness, make big folds, and a hundred other skills are all important and could come in useful any time.
In my last tournament, I played for almost eight hours. In that time, I spotted tells on opponents, noticed betting patterns, made a big fold, read my opponents’ hand ranges, shoved all in when I knew I had fold equity, attacked weakness, made different moves because of different stack sizes, set up plays ahead of time, changed gears, raised and three-bet light, played very tight at times, avoided strong players, and used a countless list of other important poker skills too long to list here.
I actually played a hand where I spotted a possible tell on an opponent, knew that he was very aggressive, set him up with a small bet on the flop to get him to raise me, and then shoved all in with nothing but overcards because I knew I would have the right stack size to make him fold his entire range based on my read of his hand and the preflop action. Then I mucked my hand and convinced him that he made a good fold. That is what you need to do to finish at the final table more often, bubble less often, get more wins, and accumulate more chips throughout the tournament.
One big fold could be the difference between having 100,000 and 400,000 when you get close to the bubble. That same difference could come from knowing when and how to apply bubble pressure, or stealing a big pot early in the tournament based on a strong read. Chips that you win or lose early can be drastically magnified as you go through multiple double-ups over the course of the day. Any small mistake can be magnified, and so can a brilliant play that earns you a big pot.
A small fold that saves you a few thousand chips can be the difference between a 5K stack and an 8K stack. If you then lose 2,000, it’s the difference between 3K and 6K. And what if you triple up and then double up in the next hour? Now we’re talking about the difference between 18K and 36K. And if you double up a short stack when you lose a race and have to ship 10K across the table? Now your stack is either 8K or 26K. The 2,000 you saved has turned into 18!
Let’s double it up from there to 16K and 52K. And then let’s get all in against a stack of 20K. The shorter stack is busted if you lose the hand against the 20K stack, while the bigger stack still has 32K and is one double up away from having a real stack that can do some damage.
Which skill do you need to make sure you don’t lose that 2,000 that was so important in the scenario above? All of them. Because you don’t know which skill will come in handy and help you save that money, but they will all help you save that money or win a few extra thousand at some point in your poker career.
I hate to be a drag, but there’s no easy solution. There is a simple one — keep improving — but it’s not easy. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Because it’s hard, almost no one does it. And that makes it that much better for those of us who work hard. I’m glad that it’s tough, because if all my opponents played well, I would have to get a job. I really don’t want a job. I don’t even like to think about it. Yuck.


SOURCE : BLUFF