You can't win tournaments without winning races

[PantsOnFire]

I heard a get sound bite from Doyle Brunson the other day. Somebody asked him about the WSOP and all the online qualifiers and other so-called amateur entrants. He was asked if any of these guys could get "lucky" and win the main event.

Doyle said everybody who has put down a buy-in essentially has a lottery ticket. But then he said: "I just happen to have more tickets." What a wonderfully humorous way of saying everybody needs luck but skill gives you a better chance of winning.

As for "races", I think most players who have more than one lottery ticket will tell you that they avoid them early along with the common refrain "You can't win the tournament on the first day." Then, in lots of poker books I have read, they go on to say that the first day chip leader has never won the main event WSOP. Think about that for a second. They are implying that the chip leader likely got there by being lucky and winning a few races for all his chips. Then on the second or third day, the guy keeps playing the same way and one or two wrong flips of the coin and it's tournament over.

My tournament success has improved greatly because I have paid attention to coin flip situations that could knock me out. I avoid them early, and later on, I only really take them if I am a huge stack against a small stack or vice versa. As a medium stack, I might recognize a coin flip situation but if I am first in, at least I have fold equity.

In the end, it all comes down to relative stack sizes and the blinds.

Oh yeah, your original statment: Re: You can't win tournaments without winning races. If you ask the winner of every large tournament, I would say that there are several key hands where the guy sucked out or his hand held up in a coin flip or three. Check out the final hand of the WSOP with Chris Ferguson against TJ Clouthier.

[Vex]

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If you are one of the better players in the tournament, you want to avoid races because you want to use your skill to have a greater advantage when you get all your chips in. Likewise, if you are one of the worst players in the tournament, you will want to "gamble" a lot.

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Exactly. Good tournament players bust out taking bad beats a lot more than they bust out flipping, and usually if they're flipping it's because they got crippled by a bad beat.

[UATrewqaz]

You must be lucky to win a big tournament, but you must also be good.

Everyone is going to have those coinflips, however how many chips you have before and after the coinflip and even MAKING it deep in the tournament to that key coin flip are very skill dependent.

[silkyslim]

all poker has a luck factor. its psychologically magnified in tournaments because when u get unlucky, U R BUSTO. if you treat tournaments as just a cash game with whole tournaments instead of hands, skill will prevail in the long run.

[Dire]

I think luck is the overriding factor in final tabling, but skill is the overriding factor in getting to point where you have a chance to final table. Bad players will bust early playing for their stacks with mediocre holdings or stupid bluffs. Good players will not.

But as the blinds go up, skill becomes somewhat less important, in relation to luck. In online tournaments which generally have small stacks and fast blind levels, you will be in push mode very quickly. At this point it's just a matter of getting cards and hoping to avoid ever ending up a 4:1 dog.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

There's value in not being over-aggressive pre-flop. You don't have to jam or even raise with QQ and JJ every single time. There's no value in consistently running away from race situations. You shouldn't be folding QQ or JJ to a reraise all-in every single time, although it might be correct to cut and run, depending on your opponent and chip stacks.

Good players don't seek out races, but neither do they play scared and fold too much.

[reecelights]

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Skill helps in picking up the small pots and adding to your chip total. And if you're going to race, race against a smaller stack, which shouldn't be a problem if you've picked up enough small pots.

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This is why so many MTTers prefer building stacks early. Then you can take coin flips ON YOUR TERMS...against smaller stacks where if you lose you are not crippled. If the only coinflips you are ever taking are for your entire stack, there is a problem there. Try thinking about coinflips as a way to BUILD your stack, not as a way to survive or double up.

Yes, eventually you get to that point, but don't wait until you are so short that YOU become the target for the big stacks.

You know how you always hear people say "That's Poker?" Add it to your vocabulary. It is a psychological thing to do. It helps keep you from tilting. It reminds you that stuff happens you can't control.

Go back and review your hand histories from big pots you WON as well...I bet you find as many bad beats that you dished out as you have taken. Remember the wins, not the losses.

[RobTheDuck]

Here's an article that fits in very well with this discussion.