Playing a large field poker tournament

With the WSOP currently in full swing, I thought it would be fitting to talk about large field poker tournaments. The event I played a few days ago had close to 3,000 players in it and I noticed a common theme at the 2 tables I was at… the willingness to gamble. Why did it seem like most of the players seemed uneasy, and ready to gamble for all their money when given a chance? I think the answer is mindset. I believe a lot of the players who play in these large field tournaments alter their game because the field is so big. They feel like they need to chip up early and take risks in order to navigate the big field. In my opinion this is the wrong approach. To me a poker tournament is a poker tournament, and you should approach all of them the same. Granted some tournaments have better structure than others, and you should be aware of blind structure in all tournaments you play.

Your approach to tournament poker should be the same whether you are playing against 300 or 3,000 players. You may be in a tournament with 3,000 players, but all that should matter to you is what’s going on with the other 9 players at your specific table. Everything outside of this is out of your control. A player at my table on level 1 said something I thought was kind of funny during level 1. He was using the calculator on his phone and said,” seems like a long road from 4500 chips to 13 million chips”. I assumed he was talking about his starting stack vs. how many chips he would have to accumulate to win the tournament. To me this is wasted time, time that could be used watching your opponents at the table.

I’ve heard this saying a million times but it holds true.. “you can’t win a poker tournament in the first level”. This is true, in fact at the WSOP you can’t win poker tournament in the first day. Control only what you can control, and approach every tournament the same no matter the field size. Don’t gamble for your stack in spots that it’s not appropriate to gamble simply because the field size is large. And last, don’t feel uptight because you think you have to beat 3,000 people or accumulate millions of chips, just beat the players at your table and it will all fall in place.

By Debo