Jim Reid is a longtime lover of poker, a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, and host of the popular RecPoker podcast.
Dear reader, when recreational players decide to take a shot at a big live tournament, it’s usually something they plan in advance, and I encourage them to develop a more rigorous approach to studying in the months leading up to their trip. This time allows you to analyze your leaks, develop better habits, and improve as a player.
Once it gets down to the wire, though, and you are so close to the event that your bags have been gleefully packed in anticipation and you can already hear the chips being shuffled in your head, it’s important to avoid the temptation to ‘cram’ new concepts into your brain for the competition ahead. At this point, you're going to get more out of drilling down on what you already know than you will trying to absorb new ideas that you won’t yet understand how to apply properly.
That’s me! At the time of this writing, it’s nine days before my flight to Vegas for WSOP 2024. My bag already lies packed on my living room floor, near the doorway, where I can see it every morning as I start my day. Despite years of serious study and profitable play, I still feel there are strategic gaps I need to fill - but now is not the time for me to do it. Neither is it for you.
BUT…there was one little nugget that came up in a RecPoker study group led by Kim ‘PetVet’ Kilroy tonight that I think every recreational player should make sure they understand before marching into battle against the best players in the world. Having other players in the study group share their thoughts really helped me consider how to best approach this spot in my own upcoming poker trip.
Why do players sometimes hold one chip back?
You’ve probably recently observed players that are going ‘almost all-in’ - holding back a chip or two instead of putting their entire stack in the middle. Why and when should YOU start doing this, and how many chips should you hold back?
After all, in every single tournament you play, you will at one point put yourself all-in, often more than once! When you do put your last chip in the middle, wring every ounce of expected value that you possibly can out of those hands, and maximize your profitability in the tournament.
The general reason why you should do this is so that you can fold later in the hand and continue in the tournament with only a few chips. This is only valuable in high-ICM-pressure spots, so you should only do it in situations where you can immediately ladder up.
When you should use this strategy
Here’s a simplified example: You’re at a 9-handed final table with significant pay jumps for each elimination. You’re the short stack with 9 big blinds in middle position. You look down at a hand you would usually shove with. The action folds to you, and you can either jam all-in, or raise to a size that is most of your chips but not all-in, let’s say 7 big blinds.
Now imagine the player to your left shoves over your raise, and another player with a similar stack size behind them calls or reshoves. Assuming you were opening with some hands that aren’t pocket aces, you can now fold your non-premium hands with a good chance of laddering up, as one of those two players will likely be eliminated or at least have their stack decimated. As the short stack, your chances of winning the tournament were lower than any other player, so the value of laddering up matters more to you.
Another example
In another case, imagine the player to your left just flat-calls your raise instead, and so do both the players in the blinds. In this case let's say for the sake of argument you were holding 
. The flop comes 
. Regardless of the action post-flop, in this particular spot would you rather already be all-in for your 9 big blinds or would you rather have 2 big blinds left and be able to fold and hope another player busts?
One thing to note is that you would only choose this play in spots (and with ranges) where you would otherwise be shoving - don’t use it when you would instead be opening to 2 big blinds; the players behind you will call 9 big blinds at a relatively similar frequency to that with which they’ll call 7, unlike how they might respond to a smaller 2 big blind open.
There are other reasons players might take this line; on the river with certain kinds of hands, or as a stall tactic on the bubble to add further streets of action for them to use their time bank on, and other very specific spots. But there’s no reason you can’t pull the trigger on this profitable play yourself when the time comes.
So when it does, how many chips should we be holding back when we want to go ‘almost all-in’?
I explain more in part two, as well as a key difference in tournament formats that could influence your decision, so be sure to check it out here.
Kim Kilroy image courtesy of WPT
