Counting the stacks
Marcus Bateman
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Marcus Bateman /
20 January 2009 /
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Players will often go to great lengths to deceive you about how many chips they have.
With so many Betfair qualifiers in the Aussie Millions, I thought it appropriate to look at one of the key mistakes I see online players make when they start playing live - that of not counting the chips around them.
When playing online, counting chips is easy, you just look down at the figures next to a players stack, perhaps consider the number of blinds that this represents, and act accordingly. Live this is much more difficult.
Not only is constantly asking for counts annoying to those around you, it is also largely impractical, as it slow the game down to such an extent that you may as well not bother playing. As a result, your only real viable option for the most part when playing live is just to closely observe what chips a player has in front of him. This also has its drawbacks though, as poker players are not the most honest bunch, and people regularly use a whole manner of techniques to misrepresent their stack.
From changing their whole stack into ante chips to make their small stack look big, all the way to hiding their big denomination chips to fool you into making the wrong play, players will often go to great lengths to deceive you about how many chips they have.
Many of the key choices you make in tournament poker are nearly 100% to do with the stack sizes of the relevant parties. Doing your utmost to keep track of players chips, think carefully about the stack sizes of people who will act behind you or are in the blinds, and make your plays accordingly. If you are used to playing online this observation hardly seems worth doing when you first sit down at a live table, until you make your first big error and realise that you should never have been raising the blind of a player with a certain stack size.
If in any doubt about a players stack ask them for a rough count. Often you do not need to know the exact number of chips they have, more just roughly how many blinds they have. Making a big mistake at the poker table is never nice - especially one which can be avoided with a little observation and a few questions. If you are making the transition from online to live remember to keep an eye on everyones stack sizes - it may just save you from making a horrible mistake.
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