Five Common Tournament Leaks And How to Fix Them

We’re in the middle of the World Series of Poker. Thousands of poker hopefuls flock to Vegas, dreaming of winning the coveted bracelet, making the final table, or even just making the money in a WSOP event.

In any given tournament, the vast majority of them will end up being disappointed.

The long run in tournaments is… long. Due to the nature of MTTs, no other poker format has so many of its players convinced that they are pathologically unlucky. While luck obviously plays a big role in any given poker tournament, it also makes for an easy excuse.

Today, I’ll share five issues that may be stopping you from making that deep run, and what you can do about each.

Leak #1: Lack of Aggression

This is you if: You usually end up in the top 50% of the field, but rarely make final tables

One of the archetypes of not-quite-great tournament players is those who say they can usually survive a long time in tournaments, but always lose that crucial flip before they can make the final table. These players usually don’t sport a huge stack, or if they do, it mysteriously dwindles when the blinds and antes rise.

If this is you, I’d invite you to consider that you may be playing too tight. Or, more specifically, you’re not taking enough risks in the late stages of the tournament.

Poker is a very different game when played at 15 big blinds than at 100 big blinds. You can't wait for the same stranglehold on a hand to put your money in.

It’s natural to be afraid of going all-in when the bubble is looming and you really want to cash. It’s natural to convince yourself that you can’t risk it. After all, even if you’re ahead of someone’s range, you still might lose 40% of the time.

So much of short-stack play is about aggression and putting all of your chips in. You usually want to be the one going all-in rather than calling an all-in, but you also need to call shoves with some less-than-stellar hands sometimes.

All of those things you're feeling in tournaments – other people are feeling them, too.

Everybody's human. And this humanity – our emotions – can lead to some big leaks. This is where a lot of the money is won in poker tournaments.

The way to capitalize on those emotions – most often, fear – is to be the one putting people in uncomfortable spots.

Be the one attacking blinds. Be the one 3-bet jamming against somebody who's opening too wide.

When you have 10 big blinds, stealing the 2.5 big blinds lying out there is a 25% increase to your stack. You're always going to have equity when they call – and with that 2.5 big blind overlay, getting it in as a small underdog still means you’re making money in the long run (ICM considerations aside).

What to do:

If this resonated with you, I’d recommend looking at charts for 8-20BB play.

It often surprises people how light they should be sticking their money in at these stack depths. And once you’ve seen the charts, push yourself to play that aggressively.

Actually, to conquer your fears (and potentially see how well it works), push yourself to play even more aggressively. This is an exercise best performed at stakes lower than your usual buy-ins.

Leak #2: Energy Management

This is you if: You often find yourself confused and in a lot of tough spots late in the day

If you’re convinced your short-stack game is aggressive enough, but you’re still not making those deep runs, another underlying issue could be energy management.

Tournaments, especially live tournaments, are grueling. You play for 12-14 hours, sleep for six hours, and then play another 12-14 hours (rinse and repeat during big events like the WSOP).

You're not going to be at your best for 12 hours (neither are your opponents!), so I don’t want you to have that likely unattainable goal. I just want you to learn how to manage your energy levels and your expectations.

The early levels of any tournament are the least significant ones due to the small size of the blinds and antes, yet that’s when unseasoned players tend to hit their peak. It’s understandable: after traveling for a tournament, expectations and enthusiasm tend to build up before the cards are in the air, and the adrenaline and caffeine lead to being very alert right out of the gate.

The problem is, if you’re alert at 12:00 PM when the tournament starts, you’re not going to be as alert at 12:00 AM, when the blinds are 15 times the size.

What to do:

Save your focus for when it really counts, and avoid too much caffeine early on. If you’re tired, sleeping in and registering late is a better option than forcing an early start only to crash later.

For day two and day three, prioritizing sleep is crucial. There's no substitute for sleep and what it does for you.

When you're playing all day, your mind is racing – adrenaline is pumping during each big pot. After the day is over, you'll likely be amped up. I often continue to have hands replaying in my head for hours afterward.

Going right to sleep is challenging without a relaxation process in between. Anything you can do to wind down quickly after a long day of tournament poker is immensely valuable.

Personally, I use Elliott Roe’s Primed Mind for post-session meditation, but anything that helps you unwind should be beneficial.

Leak #3: Structure Unawareness

This is for you if: You don’t understand what ante structures mean for your strategy

In today’s age of big blind antes, which leads to more standardized blind-to-ante ratios, the art of navigating different levels based on their antes is less relevant than it used to be. Still, it can be valuable from time to time.

Some levels in tournaments will have larger antes relative to the blinds, and vice versa. Bigger antes incentivize looser, more aggressive play, while smaller antes call for a tighter approach.

What to do:

Take a look at the structure sheet and see if the blind-to-ante ratio fluctuates throughout the tournament. Then, adjust your play accordingly.

I like to take things a step further: When the antes are a smaller portion of the big blind, I’ll play even tighter than normal to build an image for the upcoming level where antes will be bigger, allowing me to get steals through at a slightly higher rate when it matters more.

Leak #4: Failing to Adapt

This is for you if: You’ve ever found yourself going from chip leader to short stack to out before you knew what was going on

Let’s say you're the big stack deep in a tournament. You're running people over, and then you lose a big pot. Suddenly, you're an average stack at the table.

Been there, done that. It sucks.

How to proceed from here isn’t as simple as avoiding tilt and not punting it off. You need to mentally reset and adapt to your new circumstances – fast.

You likely can’t afford to continue playing the same number of hands as before.

What to do:

Make an effort to habitually pause, consider how your current stack compares to others, the makeup of your table, and what your strategy should look like with your new stack.

In tournaments, you’ll often need to adjust your strategy based on a single hand — and it may not even be a hand you played!

If your stack remains the same, but due to your opponent’s double-up, you suddenly find yourself covered by a loose-aggressive player to your left, it’s time to re-evaluate.

Similarly, when a player loses half of their stack and drops to the 15BB zone, you need to account for how that shorter stack impacts your strategy.

Interestingly, both of the above scenarios often call for tighter play!

Tournaments are dynamic, and that’s exactly what makes them so fun. You need to be just as dynamic to take full advantage.

Leak #5: Lack of Short-Handed Experience

This is for you if: You only play multi-table tournaments

In a tournament with hundreds or even thousands of players, it’s hard to make the final table. And when you finally make one, you may be happy just to have made it that far.

This is precisely why a leak that only applies to final tables is so hard to spot: There’s no “problem” that stands out.

If you only play full-ring tournaments, you won’t gain enough experience for those rare times when it really matters: when you are under the bright lights of the final table.

A massive percentage of all prize money is handed out to the top five or so players, and if you get run over during this stage, you have an extremely costly leak.

Let’s use the ​most recent WSOP Event​ (at the time of writing), a $1,500 NL Hold’em event, as an example.

2,317 players bought in, forming a total prize pool of $3,095,865. Of that money, a whopping 37.1% was handed out to the top five players.

If you don’t have the right skill set for short-handed play, you’re lighting money on fire.

This effect gets accelerated even more when you get heads-up. In the above example, the difference between first and second place was over 91 buy-ins. It’s going to take a long time to recoup that with min-cashes!

The common objection to spending time and energy studying final table play is, “Why would I spend time learning these skills when I’ll need them so infrequently (and if I make the final table, I’ll be rich anyway)?”

What many fail to realize is that improving your short-handed play actually improves your full-ring play as well.

It enhances the way you play from the cutoff, from the button against the cutoff, from the small blind against the big blind, and so on – in other words, situations that occur orbit after orbit during all levels of tournament poker.

What to do:

The best way to learn short-handed and heads-up poker? Practice, practice, practice.

Sit-and-gos are a bit of a lost art form, but if you have access to them, they are great for simulating a final table. If you don’t have them available, just practicing in short-handed or heads-up cash games can be really valuable.

Get stronger short-handed, and you’ll not only get stronger across the board – you’ll also be prepared for when it matters most.

Go Get ‘Em!

Hopefully, you found this helpful! If one or more of these resonated with you, please let me know with the survey below! I love to make sure I’m hitting the right notes for you.

Good luck out there.

And to those in town for the series: Get some sleep!