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In our early days of working on THE STRATEGY GUIDE, my conversations with Chris Ferguson were wandering and unfocused. Chris had the answers, but I had not yet progressed to the point where I could figure out the correct questions. Consequently, I started by asking him about a number of situations and opinions, most of which had little to do with each other. Because I later became much more organized and methodical, most of that early information didn’t make it into the book.

When I look at some of that material now, I am astounded at the quality of some of the discussion. (The “some of the discussion” that astounds me is, of course, Ferguson’s.) There is some great information in these early, unfocused sessions and I will speak with Chris sometime about how we can make that information more available.)

Essentially, we had one discussion in which I asked Chris about Hellmuth’s laydown philosophy (though it wasn’t fully articulated to me until I interviewed Phil a year and a half after I had this discussion with Chris) and one in which I asked him about Sklansky’s position on avoiding gambles early in a tournament.

This was Chris’s general philosophy about gambling early in a tournament: “Normally in a tournament, say you start with nine tables and they pay only one table. You have to get nine times your chips, on average, to make the final table. Early on, you shouldn’t be risk adverse. You should be looking only at the expectation. So if you have a 51-49 coin flip, I say, go for it. If you’re a favorite, go for it.”

When I asked him about Hellmuth’s strategy of avoiding gambles on small edges, Chris recognized the common thread between Hellmuth and Sklansky, but pointed out an additional element. “There’s something to be said for, if you’re better than the average player, why take a coin-flip to double up? Well, I’m above average and I think having twice as many chips gives me almost twice as much value for those chips . . . If I go broke, I go broke. If I take a coin flip and win, they have beat me twice to knock me out . . . I feel if I have twice as many chips, I’m twice as strong as someone that didn’t take that risk at all.”

Regarding Sklansky’s coin flip hypothetical, Ferguson agreed that “mathematically, that example makes sense . . . but in the real world, he is using the wrong model.” Chris believes that with the stakes constantly increasing, “tournaments get harder as time as time goes on.” Therefore, there is a benefit in accumulating chips early even in the situations where your edge is relatively small. Naturally, Ferguson qualified this based on the circumstances at your table. If you see opponents are just going to give you their chips in the immediate future, there is no need to gamble with those players.

But he didn’t think it was reasonable to assume that you will find MORE juicy situations as tournaments go on. (In fact, in the next part of this discussion, in which I describe several hands from the Final Table of the 2009 Main Event, it was almost always the case that the smart, skillful player who made the big laydown later had to make a stand with a lower quality hand or put himself in a position where a bad beat could bust him.)

Chris’s comment that “they have to beat me twice” makes a lot of sense to me. You can do a lot more with a big stack than a small stack. You have more chances to win chips with little risk, and you can more easily handle losing close hands or taking bad beats. I could imagine Sklansky’s hypothetical making MORE sense if you take and succeed with your early gambles. The chance for more favorable situations later in a tournament seems greater when you have a large stack. Conversely, if you turn down chances to double-or-bust early and never build a big stack, the real juicy situations may never arise and you may be forced to bet all your chips in a risky situation. There needs to be some element in your preservation strategy, even late in a tournament, of your stack size.

The bigger your stack, the more risk-averse you should be. A lot of high-level preservation strategy decisions, however, intuitively push you in the direction of being more risk-adverse with a small stack and more willing to take risks with a large stack. First, it is natural to focus more on preservation when your stack is shorter and you are more at risk of being eliminated. Second, making laydowns costs you chips. Third, it’s hard to win really huge pots late in a tournament without taking risks.

Some of the big hands from the Final Table of the 2009 Main Event illustrate this. The shorter stacks, despite being held by skillful players, made several laydowns that kept them short, deprived them of (sometimes risky) opportunities to double up, and forced them into situations where they still had to make marginal decisions and/or were too short to survive bad beats.

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3 Responses to “#935 – Tournament Preservation Strategy, Part IV – Chris Ferguson”

1. Brad Says:
   December 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm

   Good stuff, case in point, I’m usually loosest, late in a tournament with a big stack. Of course its great to knock people out, but why am I gambling now with marginal coin flips, I already have my stack.

2. hoodwinkpoker Says:
   December 23rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm

   Yeah good read michael, just wondering if you could illustrate or let me know where I can see the hands you mentioned above? Would be good to see them for myself as I have been getting to quite a few late stages in some big tourneys recently but never seem to be able to push on to the final table.

3. hassers Says:
   December 24th, 2009 at 10:43 am

   first, i just want to say what a relief on my eyes…writing *does* matter. and second, makes sense to risk more earlier so that you can have (hopefully) a more discerning eye and more leeway later.

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