28
Prepare Yourself
It was just announced that the first prize will be “well over $10 Million.” The dreams of fame and riches are clearly alive and well. But as I walk the floor of the Rio in these early levels, one thing is abundantly clear: a vast number of the hopefuls are woefully unprepared.
Many of the people who won their way in online are, I think, accustomed to playing in tournaments where there’s never a whole lot of post-flop play. In the Main Event, the stacks start pretty deep – 10,000, with blinds of 25 and 50 – so there’s plenty of room to maneuver after the flop. When stacks are deep, certain hands lose a lot of value. Ask any pro, and you’ll hear of a great reluctance to commit a lot of chips early on with something like top-pair top kicker or even an overpair. Yet in the first half hour of play, I saw a number of people go broke with these types of hands when it should have been very clear that a single pair could not take the pot. (Note: on a board of 9h Th-Jc-7h-5c, a pair of Aces is not a very good hand.)
To prepare for the early levels of a high buy-in tournament, you really need deep-stack experience, where you can get used to making decisions on the flop, turn and river. In most places it’s easiest to get that experience in cash games. Even if you prefer tournaments poker, it’s worth dedicating some time to deep-stack games.
Online tournaments will prepare you well for the middle stages of a tournament, where the stacks are shallow and most of the play is pre-flop. But it will be incredibly tough to make it through to that period if you can’t make good decisions early on.
Play the cash games; beat the cash games – then come to the WSOP.
