The Poker Copilot Blog

Tracking the development of Poker Copilot, Mac OS X software for poker analysis and statistics.

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

Playing Tournaments by Not Playing

I just conducted an experiment. I played in a 45-player tournament on Full Tilt Poker. Buy-in was $1 (+ 25c for the house). The prize pool was split amongst the final six players. I came seventh.

So what, you ask? I sat out in the first hand, ate some dinner, and read for a while. I did not play a single hand. Which means I had to cough up the blinds when it was my turn, and that was all. And I only just missed the cut to win money. There were many players trying hard to win, and I beat all but six of them by doing absolutely nothing.

It seems to me that in the lowest stakes tournaments, being ultra-tight is a winning strategy. Play the strongest hands well when you have position, and fold on everything else. Don't take risks. Exercise patience, patience, patience.

2 comments:

Bryce said...: I agree somewhat.. Winning micro stakes requires two things to crush them: playing tight and outplaying on any given flop when you have a normal stack, but playing loose-aggressive with a deep stack - you can get them very easily post flop here.; 24 December 2008 10:58 AM
Anonymous said...: I agree. I played a $3 + $.50 super turbo and finished 2nd without even playing one hand. I was actually thinking about doing five of these and seeing what the take would be.

1st $15
2nd $9
3rd $6

I think you would come out ahead.; 25 February 2009 4:22 PM