Eric Lynch Reviews the Bluff Online Poker Challenge

In last month’s column, I discussed strategies for the Bluff Poker Challenge. As of the end of March, anyone who wants to win has to go for broke and just play all of the biggest MTTs they can afford, hoping for a couple of sizable scores. Before I dig into my strategy, I want to discuss some of the things I had working for and against me when I started the Challenge that factored into my overall decision-making process.

Working against me was time. Obviously, all of the players in the Challenge are incredible and that alone makes it tough enough, but I probably wouldn’t have the time that my opponents did. For a majority of my opponents, poker is their life. I do not mean this in a bad way or anything, but as far as I know, I’m the only one in the Challenge who has kids. While the competition is very cool and I was glad to be selected and have an opportunity to play, family is very important to me. I wasn’t going to give up significant time with my kids so I could put in 16 hour days or anything. When considering my strategy, I had to factor in that I probably wasn’t going to have as much time on my hands as my opponents did.

The other significant drawback was that I play more cash games than tournaments and the mindsets can be very different. I’m able to switch between the two fairly well, but my game isn’t quite as sharp as the days when I used to get in 300 to 400 tournaments a month. There really isn’t a way to factor that in, though.

Working for me was the fact that I do a lot of instructional work both privately and through PokerXFactor.com. I work with students who play lower buy-ins, which gave me a significant early advantage when we were all forced to grind out the low-stakes MTTs and sit and gos. The play at the lower limits is vastly different than the play at the higher limits. You have to take a bit more of a basic approach until you get up to levels where players are advanced enough to be thinking about ranges and capable of laying down hands. For a lot of my opponents, adjusting to players who will call you down with any pair or make bluffs that make absolutely no sense could be a problem, at least initially.

Obviously, as some of the players got out of the lower levels and into the higher ones, there would be no such problem, but I really felt like at least some of the players might not get out of those lower levels at all. If you never play at low-stakes, the adjustments can be really tough at first, especially if you’re playing multiple tournaments at the same time at different levels. It’s no coincidence that some of the players who did the best early on were other players who either teach or coach. Another player who performed well at the onset was Duralast, who won his seat through a contest on Lock Poker. He was a typical grinder (not in a bad way), which was almost perfect for the early stages of the contest.

With that in mind, I formulated a strategy. The first step was to guesstimate how much money would be needed by the end of the month in order to win the Challenge. My guess was around $15,000. Obviously, since someone has already passed that, my guess was a bit off, but it was a good starting point for a strategy because it allowed me to envision various ways I might get to that number and give myself a chance to win.

I contacted Chris “Fox” Wallace, a fellow instructor at PokerXFactor.com and well-known expert on bankroll management principles. I felt he would be able to offer some insight on how the structure of the Challenge might impact bankroll management principles. We both agreed that sit and gos were a good place to start. Playing $3 to $10 tournaments on a $200 bankroll would probably just result in a massive churn of small cashes and bankroll increases unless I managed to finish in the top three in one of them. Those tournaments are minefields and, while it’s possible to do, I was much better off grinding my bankroll a bit higher so I could play in some of the bigger buy-in tournaments with a chance at a score that might put me in position to win.

Sit and gos alone weren’t going to be able to do it, though. With my time limitations, grinding sit and gos alone all month might get me as high as $5,000 if I ran good, but probably not much higher. It made a lot more sense to grind the $200 up to $1,500 to $2,000 during the first few weeks of the Challenge and then use that money to be able to go for broke during the last seven to ten days.

However, the plan hasn’t worked out as I had hoped so far. I wasn’t able to get in the table time I really needed to get my bankroll up to the $2,000 level where I felt I could start taking some shots. Several other players started doing very well, so I took a few $30-$50 tournament shots on my $600 bankroll that didn’t pan out. I’m still going to “go for broke” during the last week or so, but since I’m still stuck in the $500 range, that will probably mean getting to play six or so high buy-in tournaments and hoping I run really deep in one. Stranger things have happened and it’s not over yet, but I didn’t completely stick with my original plan, which I think was a mistake.

I want to thank Bluff Magazine and Lock Poker for putting together the Challenge. It has been a lot of fun and I’m honored they selected me as a participant.

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Useful poker information:

FACE CARD - A jack, queen or king (a card with a face on it, not joker).
TRIPS - Three of a kind. In Hold'em the term SET is used when two of the three cards are hole cards.
RAINBOW - In flop games, a flop in which no two cards are of the same suit. "The flop was A 9 7 rainbow."
ONE-EYED - The jack of hearts, jack of spades or king of diamonds. So named because the characters are drawn in profile, thus showing only one eye.
MIDDLE POSITION - Betting positions approximately halfway around the table from the first player to act.
KICKER TROUBLE - Not having as high a kicker as an opponent.

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