Bubble Play In Poker Tournaments

Girls night out was a ball, all four of us decided to meet in a small Cantonese restaurant down the street from my apartment, which we do every alternate week at the least when I am in Hong Kong. The food there is outrageously delicious and the service is to die for. The tables are well spaced out with an elegant look, and the service is unreal, your glasses are filled to the brim without you even ordering or noticing, just the way I like it – these are manic Friday nights :D !!

After the food was consumed, and fortified with a few large glasses of wine, we decided that we would call for a cab to take us to the nearest poker room. The girls were ready for some competition, as being all poker players we decided to make a last longer bet between each other. For those who do not know what that is, it is a single bet between each of us in who would get knocked out first in a tournament and so on.

The tournament was a small buy-in tournament but had a good structure where you started with a good amount of chips and the blinds went up quite slowly. I thought I would have an advantage at this point :) I could wait around for the right time before making a move and time was money to us as we had these small side bets.

After a few hours of play there were three of us left in the tournament, so I already made one side bet from the player knocked out (Mai Ling). It was getting close to the bubble (one spot away from the money) and then I changed my strategy. As the first money places start approaching, players tend to tighten up their play considerably; desperate to get some return for the numerous hours they have already invested in a tournament. Although this feels the right strategy at the time, the fact that so much of the prize pool is given to the top five places means that this is the time you should actually be playing a much looser game, desperately trying to accumulate chips to enable you to make the final five.

My strategy was completely different than one of the other girls (Jane) with the same amount of chips stack as me; the bubble play is a general psychological one. Although usually the bubble makes players tighten up, this is not always the case. Her table did not notice the bubble was there and their play did not change. It is critical that you try and identify not only the psychological state of the players around you, but also the general mood of the table.

The third girl (Roxanne), had a very short stack, she basically had three bullets left (3 times the BB amount). Her strategy was totally different than Jane or mine. She wanted to get in to the cash by waiting for a good hand in position to do so. She posted her BB and found she had a Q-3 off suite and the pot was double raised so she folded, With this play she gained time to live another day (or round) and with doing this, she made the money also.

At the end of the day, three out of four of us made money one-way or the other. All of us had different situations to deal with and we made adjustments as play went on. THIS is good play on a wild Friday night out with the girls.