The Importance Of Seat And Table Draws
One thing I’ve noticed the last couple of years versus the first few years I played at the World Series of Poker (2006-2007) is that the importance of table and seat draws seems to have gone way up. A few years back, with the poker boom still on its last legs and the economy in good shape there were so many poor players entering events that every table you sat at was bound to have four or five soft spots, so just about every table was soft. As long as you didn’t manage to draw a seat to the right of a good, aggressive player you were typically at least in okay, if not great, shape.
These last two years though I’ve found that a big part of my success on Day 1 comes from my table draw. Most of the time this is because I draw a soft table and am able to consistently chip up at the table, but occasionally it is due to drawing a very aggressive table where chips are just flying around very fast and happening to pick up some good spots to catch a lot of them as they moved around the table. Conversely, if I bust out early it is normally because of a poor table draw with very aggressive players where I knew I was going to be involved in big pots often and just had to pick a spot where I thought I had an edge and go with it and things didn’t work out.
So that’s all well and good, but I usually try and incorporate some strategy into my columns, and unlike cash games, your table and seat are completely out of your control. So how do table and seat draws factor into your overall tournament strategy? There are several ways really. The first one is perhaps the most straightforward and simple. Unlike online tournaments, in live tournaments your break order should always be predetermined and you should always be aware of it. Are you among the first tables to break or the last? If it’s among the first and your table draw is poor, you can often play somewhat conservatively and ride it out hoping your next draw is better. If your table is soft and you break early, you might want to exploit all the edges you can before the table breaks, because your next one might not be so soft.
What if you break late? Well, that’s great news if you’re at a soft table. Take your time fi nding all the right spots to take advantage of your weaker opponents. If the table is tough though you’re going to be stuck there (hopefully) a long time. The tougher players tend to stay and the weaker ones bust making your table slowly and slowly become tougher and tougher. So what do you do? Well, at a tough table I am much more likely to push thin edges and gamble a bit more, especially if I can pick spots that can potentially make my table softer by crippling tougher players or just by moving a lot of chips from my left into my stack. For instance I am much more likely to push a big draw very strongly at a tough table than I am a weaker table, because at the weaker table my edge is much greater, and thus being eliminated is much more costly.
I often factor in table conditions in my overall tournament strategy when deciding how to play, and it’s served me quite well over the years. There have been times where I’ve managed to go deep in a tournament just by recognizing my tough table was going to break soon and not forcing the issue too hard and then finding myself at a much more favorable table. Similarly, there have been times when I’ve known I would be stuck at a tough table for quite some time so I forced the issue early in order to build a big stack and eliminate or cripple a few of the tougher players then was able to use that to go really deep in the tournament. Part of proper tournament strategy is recognizing inflection points where you need to gamble to avoid becoming irrelevant in the tournament, and one key difference I find between live and online tournaments is knowing table break order and factoring that into your decision making process.
