Liv Boeree isn’t just a Team PokerStars Pro. She’s also a past EPT and WSOP champion with more than $3.8 million in lifetime live tournament earnings. In other words, she’s exactly the type of person whose brain a new tournament player would want to pick before playing live for the first time.
Read on for some thorough advice from Boeree that will help you make the most of your first live event, courtesy of PokerStars School — plus some useful advice from Pete “Carroters” Clarke on some of the few situations where making a decision to call ahead of time can actually be profitable.
• Liv Boeree’s live tournament tips
• Folding now or never
Liv Boeree’s tips for playing your first live poker tournament
Two weeks back we brought you tips for players new to live tournaments from Team PokerStars pros Chris Moneymaker and Fatima Moreira de Melo. Last week we followed that with a masterclass from Maria Konnikova. This week we keep the theme going with Liv Boeree.
Boeree who won her first live poker tournament back in 2008. Since then she’s collected not just money and titles but a wealth of experience to draw on when she finds herself at the table with other top players. Her advice for live tournaments is thorough and hard-won — exactly the kind that will help you get ahead.
One of the best places to start is to copy what successful players before you have done.
Liv Boeree after winning the 2010 EPT San Remo Main Event
“Find a few players with good results in a similar tournament to the one you’re playing and then try to emulate their thought process,” Boeree writes.
“You can find players on Twitch or YouTube. Watch how they play, check out any interviews they have, and try to really dig into how they think throughout a hand and tournament. Doing this will allow you to understand what the ideal benchmark is, allowing you to take advantage of more amateur players, and therefore moving you out of the amateur category.”
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Boeree covers a wealth of topics including whether to register late in a deep-stacked tournament, what to do when you’re card-dead, how to get comfortable with opponents staring at you, and what to do when there’s a tough player on your left, among others.
Read Liv Boeree’s tips for playing live poker tournaments and you’ll be ready for a deep run when you sit down to play your first live event.
Folding Now or Never
In game theory, each poker player neutralizes the other’s exploitative chances by maintaining a balanced approach at the table.
Deciding ahead of time whether to call multiple streets can be a profitable strategy against certain types of opponents
Thankfully, as Pete Clarke writes, in reality, things are often very different. This week he looks into two common situations where an aggressive opponent’s tendencies mean that you can simplify your potential actions down to two choices right away: either call down multiple bets to showdown, or fold immediately and invest no more chips on this hand.
You can save yourself from needlessly throwing away chips by deciding ahead of time when to stack off and when to fold and wait for a better spot. This is especially true when you’re facing a pot-size donk bet or playing a pot with a shallow Stack-to-Pot Ratio (SPR), two situations Clarke looks at in detail this week. Check out his advice right now and begin learning how to navigate these tricky situations with ease.
Other PokerStars School content you might enjoy
• Promotion: Path to the Sunday Million
• Question of the Week: What would be your Sunday Million mental preparation advice?
• Video: Showtime Hold’em tournament tips & strategy
• Video: Practical Pot Odds Calculation
• Video: Ramon Colillas PSPC Analysis, Part 4
• Trip Report: My WSOP Event 32 Three Day Run, Part 1
WSOP photography by pokerphotoarchive.com
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