In my very short live poker career .....

....... luck seems to be the deciding factor in doing well in tournament poker.

At only 5 live tourny's, yes my sample size is quite small.

But for 5 weeks I have:

1) looked down at a endless stream of completely lackluster cards *or* on rare occasions a big pair that I get sees my big bets called down only to have someone hit a river.

2) watched as one or two players get uncanny lucky and continue to flop flushes, straights and sets.

Man, it gets frustrating to watch someone get every card he needs while you sit there and try to be patient. (and then you fold your J2 being patient and the flop comes JJ2).

At some point you think, man, I have to get something going as the blinds are eating your stack. Try something with those suited connectors, and look at a flop that 'fits' like a square peg in a round hole.

Bluff? In live poker you will get called. Count on that.


Ok, enough of that.

What would you have done here?

I look at a A8c in co-1. Two limp before me and I limp.

CO limps, BB checks. All others fold.

Flop AA2.

Checked to me, I bet the pot. Button calls, all others fold.

Turn is blank. I bet the pot again. CO calls. I'm getting worried.

River is again blank. What do I do? He has the ace. He's not following me without it.

Maybe I should have checked here, I don't know.

I bet the pot, he calls.

After the hand, I thought maybe I should have checked on the river and folded to a bet.

There really was no way I wasn't beat. A crapload of bigger A's, or an A and paired another card on the board.

He had A 10 and my stack was decimated early. Could not recover and drove home mumbling to myself, as I have every Sunday afternoon for the last 5 weeks.

Luck is a huge factor in tourneys in general, but since you see less hands it's an even bigger factor in live tourneys (that are not WSOP-style blind levels). That said for your hand I would consider raising preflop and the river it's close. If you assume he has an A, but assume that many bigger aces raise preflop, it's pretty close. A2/A-blank (you said turn/river were blanks) as well as A9+ have you beat. But if we assume AJ+ raise preflop, you should definitely bet.

Even if you had checked the river, I can't see you folding trip As. You were just unlucky, you both played as I would have.

I couldn't see it either, but at the same time it's early in the tourny and with the information I have, there appears to be a decent chance I am beat. If I did check the river and he either shoved or made a good size bet, is it a place for a tough fold? I don't know.

He has the A. I think his call on the turn confirms this.

That means I'm beat with a 9,10,J,Q,K and the board cards of (I think) 2, 6 and seven. That's 8 out of 12 cards he can have will win.

I suppose the best I could have hoped for if I checked it off on the river instead of betting, would be for him to check as well. He would have had to fear the same things I did, so maybe that's not an unlikely scenario.

In this scenario, I would have saved my river bet, which was substantial.

In tournaments I try to keep the pots as small as possible, and slowly build my chip stack. I don't like getting involved with many big pots, as it conflicts with my style. Now a days in tournaments everyone is always pre flop pre flop, it's ridiculous.

Can I ask why you are betting the pot? I notice a lot of players bet the pot a lot in tournaments, just to bet it. I guess it's easier to click bet pot than to actually take the time to punch a few #'s in. If there was no flush draw I'm probably checking the turn to see his action on the river. There's a lot of ways to avoid losing as many chips as you did there. The way you played it I would've checked on the river, but I probably would've played the hand completely different, checking the turn to see what he bets on the river.

Not true at all... luck is only probability taken personally anyways

Well Said.

If it was all luck then no way would certain people rise above the rest on a constant basis. OP, ya better get used to folding junk hands that hit and not consider chasing them or you'll be on a one way ride to the bottom.

I agree with everything you said. except at high stakes luck is by far the overriding factor. Avoiding big mistakes will cut your losses but you will NOT win unless you are lucky. I playrd over 800,000 hands online over 3 years and see bad play rewarded night after night.

I tried to type a response to this 4 times, and I think I just don't understand what you are saying.

Are you saying that I'm checking this flop and folding to a bet?

i'm sure u know this but i'm going to say it anyway.
the smaller the blinds play a little looser to acumalte chips so u have time later to wait for those monsters.
i would rather go out ealry then wasting time feeling pressure of been on the short stack later.
cause , if i do i'll go jump in cash game to play the remaining time of the torney. make profit there for varience/and cost of my trny fees .
there is were play tight will git great value.

I agree with XSCREAMMANX, get all you can get early cause it sux being deep in a game and realizing you dont have enough chips to stay in it

I think what most of the others are trying to say is that you played a weak Ace. So it hit a set on the flop, but STILL a weak ace. You say the turn and river were 'blanks'. Maybe to you, but maybe not to villain. Maybe his was an Ax and the 'x' being matched to a 'blank'.

Sure, some online players figure ANY A,x is worthy of an all-in pf. But many online players won't play anything less than A,10 or A,9 for just this reason. An A,8 is beat by any Ace,9,10,J,Q,K.

Once you got yourself into this situation, yes, a check fold might be smart unless you enjoy chasing the elusive 8. Maybe you're just one of those who cannot bear to fold any Ace....?? Nothing really 'wrong' with that, it just gets very costly.

No, no. Trust me that's not the case at all.


It's when that A turns into three that it gets a little tougher to toss into the muck.


ETA: And I'll ask that question again. Is the general consensus here that I check this flop and fold to a bet? Or is my betting itself the problem?

playing more,you will find luck will come sooner or later,then you will think playing skill is the deciding foctor in long run.

lol raise or fold preflop then bet bet bet unless villain is really weak tightand ignore almost everybody in this thread.

You really got to stop worrying about stupid scenarios like this. It doesn't really matter what you do here - this isn't a spot that comes up that much and it is so marginal in any case. There are 10 million other common spots where you will leak far more money (i can only say this so many times) and it is these you should be worried about.

And yes tournaments are giant luck fests in the short term so i wouldn't bother playing them unless you are happy with them being glorified slots (commence flaming) or willing to play ALOT of them.

Why would we flame you for stating the obvious ?

I'm still laughing at how some of you can say tournaments are luck fests. They require skill just like any form of poker, and if you can master than skill you can be profitable in em. Some of you are laughable. I understand you like whatever game you play, but saying that all poker tournament are luck fests is a complete joke. Why do pros bother playing in them if they were luck fests and required no skill? Just stupid talk on here sometimes. It's ok to have an opinion, but don't just have a 1 sentence response. Add some substance. When someone says tournaments are luckfests all I hear is I suck at MTT's.

it's virtually impossible to reach the long run in MTTs. And in the short run, poker is all about luck.

There is skill involved, but the biggest reason poker is considered a skill game is that you see the same situations again and again and again. It doesn't matter if you get set over setted a few times in a session, because over the long run you will have the same amount the other way.

This is the reason in cash games BRM is so important. If you play mostly 25nl and then decide to take your entire bankroll up to play in a 1knl game, it's mostly luck. Sure if you have an edge you have a better chance to win than lose, but in a short session say you have 60% chance of winning, that's still 40% of the time you lose your bankroll. So even though it is still skill, that player is relying mostly on luck, whereas if he would wait until he was rolled to take shots at it, he could at least come closer to the long run.

Big MTTs with thousands of people that only run once a year (I'm talking live here) are like those shots. Most people won't make the final table very often in their lives. And because of the steep payout structure of most MTTs, 1st place probably makes over 10 times that of 9th place. So at the final table you could get into a coin flip that costs you the difference of say 15 million dollars and 2 million. That's a difference that you will most likely never make up in the long run.

Now if you're an online guy who plays most of the big MTTs that run you will reach the long run a lot faster, and even the MTT live pros who tour around and play all the big events will also reach the long run faster. But most people who play live tourneys will never come even close to the long run because he won't have enough spots for luck to even out. A player playing for a consistent 100 BBs can get into the spot of set over set and set under set thousands of times in his career. How many tourney pros see enough set over sets and set under sets at the final table in their career for that to even out?

No one (at least no one who knows what they're talking about) is saying that tourneys are all luck. There is just a much bigger luck aspect than in other forms. The good players will still all have a better chance of winning than the casual and bad players. But it was Harrington, a live tourney pro himself I believe, that said tourneys like the WSOP ME were like lotteries, where players like himself got more tickets. The more tickets is the skill aspect, but when you don't play enough tourneys in your life to reach the long run, there is a significant amount of luck involved. No doubt Jamie Gold won far far more than his expectation no matter what he plays the rest of his life. He's not going to get in the situation of not flopping the nuts every hand he plays that deep in the WSOP ME to make up for the one tourney in which he did flop the nuts every hand (yes I'm exaggerating, but you get the point).

As belgo pointed out, in the extreme short run poker is mostly luck. There is still plenty of variance in a 30k hand stretch of cash poker; however, that is probably more long term compared to say even 500 MTTs.

Sure there is alot of skill involved in an MTT, although it is alot easier to "solve" the game than in cash (although more difficult than SnGs) because so much of it involves preflop range decisions and you only tend to be able to put action in on say 2 streets postflop unless you happen to be quite deep.

But back to the "luckfest". You have to go super deep to really make an MTT worthwhile and unless it is a big tourn that means final table. Due to the short stack nature of MTTs, you are forced to take alot more flips and marginal all in situations than in cash, which greatly increases variance (which can loosely be interpretted as luck in this context). There is also the aspect of the huge disparity between the chip value and monetary value of key hands in MTTs. If you lose a flip when you have 3000 chips it is still the same amount of luck as losing a 5000000 chip pot in % terms, however, clearly there is a huge disparity in chip value, and also a huge disparity in monetary value, as had you won your equity in the prizepool would have been significantly improved. All this increases variance, and therefore the illusion (or actuality) of luck being a major player.

None of this is present in cash. Sure you could lose a pot while 200bb+ deep compared to when 100bb deep, however the money value and chip value stays extremely close for all "flips" or all in EV or whatever.

In order to go deep in an MTT you have to run very good the entire time, as it can only take one or two hands to cripple you. You have to get good cards, you have to get good setups, etc. Therefore, in order to reach the long term in MTTs, you need a huge sample size, because the role luck plays in an individual game (although sure it will equal out over a huge sample of similarily stake games) is quite significant. The difference in coming 12th instead of 2nd in a 1000 person MTT isn't that much at all - it might simply have been one lost flip. The player might have done all they could and it was just one or two hands that didn't go there way that resulted in the HUGE disparity in payout between coming 12th and 2nd. It takes a long time for things like this to even out.

All poker is largely luck over the short term and the nature of MTTs mean that the long term takes alot longer to reach.

Im guessing you are playing shoot outs at a local casino. These should be played much like a sng. Very tight early and stealing the blinds one the blinds hit 100/200. Ya and you will have to win a race to win the tourny, but playing A rag bad.

a short career seems like a 10 year career... Geez and I always thought bluffs never got called Live...

DonkeySmash