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Article #1
Survive:
The
Prime
Directive
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Thoughts
on No-Limit
Holdem
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by
Walt Nelson
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Survive: the
Prime Directive
(Page 1 of 3)
In which we discuss the most important concept
in No-Limit Holdem.
If you are a Star Trek fan, you already
know that the Prime Directive of the starship Enterprise was
"Non-interference with alien cultures."
If I were to ask you what is the Prime Directive for a
no-limit poker player
in a tournament, you might say, "To win!" Well, not quite. Winning
is the goal (the mission), but it is not the Prime Directive.
To understand the difference between the Mission and the Prime
Directive, let's use the Star Trek analogy. The goal of the starship
Enterprise was exploration: "To boldly go where no man has gone
before." However, while exploring the Universe, the Enterprise
was ordered to always keep in mind the Prime Directive: "Do not
interfere with the alien cultures that you encounter while
exploring." So we might say that the Mission is the goal, and the
Prime Directive is the basic rule of conduct when you are pursuing the goal.
Following that line of thought, you and I can probably agree that
the mission when we enter a no-limit tournament is to win: to take
first place, to make the final table, or at least to finish in the
money. So far so good; but the point at which we might disagree is
when we start thinking about the prime directive: "what is the
basic rule of conduct when we are pursuing our goal of winning a
no-limit holdem tournament?"
Most poker players believe that the basic rule of conduct is to
constantly look for ways to accumulate chips - and you will probably agree. But
before you get too committed to the idea that "accumulate chips" is
the prime directive, let me ask you some questions.
Let's assume that you enter a poker
tournament along with 999 other entrants; let's also assume that every
player begins with 1,000 chips; and let's further assume that there
are no re-buys.
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Given those assumptions, what is the
minimum number of chips that you must accumulate in order to:
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Finish in first place in the
tournament?
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Finish in second place in the
tournament?
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Make it to the final table?
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Finish in the money (the top 100)?
Answering the first question is easy
- to finish in first place, you must win all the chips: 1,000 chips
times 1,000 entrants = 1,000,000 chips.
But can you tell me how many chips it will take to finish in second
place? tenth? one-hundredth? No, you can't. Why? Because first Place is the only
position that requires that you accumulate a set number of chips
(all of them). But for the remaining places, all you have to do is
outlast the other players. You could be down to one chip, but if you
are the last person eliminated, you will finish in second place. If
first place is $10,000, you would win approximately $5,000 because
of that one chip that you still had after the 3rd place finisher was
eliminated!
Have you ever thought about it that way? I first became aware of
this phenomenon several years ago when I signed up for an online
No-limit Holdem tournament on PartyPoker.com, and then I lay down to
take a nap. I was very tired, so I didn't hear the alarm. When I
woke up, the tournament was halfway through the second hour, and the
blinds had eaten up half of my chips. I had only 510 chips remaining
of the original 1,000. Before I won a pot, the 510 chips had
dwindled down to 400. Winning that pot brought it back up to 910,
but most of the stacks at my table were in the 3,000 to 10,000 range
- so I was severely short-stacked.
I didn't give up; I kept trying to
build up a stack - and every time it looked like I would be
eliminated by the blinds, I would catch a good hand and win a pot.
Also, several times, I was able to steal the blinds when two tight
players were in the small blind and big blind and I went all-in.
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