With the World Series in town, I have been doing more NL tournament coaching that usual. Plus, as it says in the news area (or will soon), I am going to be doing some seminars for PokerStars in the Hospitality Suite at the Rio. Some of those will be on NL tournament strategy.

I plan to do a version of common and costly errors on this topic. Here are some of these:

1 – Putting your self all-in. I do not mean going all-in pre-flop with a hand that might not be called. That is the primary way you will gain chips when you are sort but not desperately short stacked. Let’s look at a couple of other circumstances.

First, you have called a bet before the flop and your opponent has bet the flop. You don’t have much left, and you know you are drawing. Most players just go all-in here and get called. Then they either make their draw or go home. Consider what happens when you just call. If you make your hand, fine, get all the chips in. If you miss, perhaps your opponent will check the turn and you can check too. Perhaps your opponent will bet but your draw has gotten worse (for example the board has paired or a flush has got there that is not your draw). Now you can fold and play another hand. And you can always call the turn for the same price you would have pushed on the flop. Yes, your chances are much smaller if you fold and nobody enjoys playing a tiny stack, but it keeps you in the game. It is infinitely better to have a 0.5% chance to cash (or win) than a 0.0% chance.

Second is using the stop-and-go play, which is under-utilized. You are in the big blind and get raised. You decide that you will play, which pretty much commits you to the pot. If you reraise now, your opponent will call you for sure. Then you need to win the pot to survive. But if you call now and bet the rest of your chips on the flop, there is some chance that your opponent will hate the flop and fold. If not, you are just as all-in as you would have been before the flop, and it costs you nothing (OK, it coasts you his call if you flop a monster and he folds, but your objective when nearly all-in is to survive first, thrive second).

For example, you have T5000 in the big blind with T400-800 blinds and T100 antes. A middle position player raises to T2000 and everyone folds to you. He has T8000, and if you push all-in now, he has to call. The pot contains T2100 in blinds and antes, his T2000, your T2000 call and your T3000 raise, so he has to call T3000 to win T9100. He will never fold. But if you call the T2000 and push the T3000 remaining after the flop, you may induce a fold if he holds, say, KQ and the board has A83.

I will try to put a couple of other errors in next week.