Finding the Structure That is Right For You
Many poker professionals are very discerning about the type of poker structures that they like to play. Like the grand slams of tennis where tennis matches are won over five sets, self respecting poker pros like to have tournaments won over five days. They like long and relaxed blind levels so that they can slowly chip away at the less patient and skilled players. The advantage of long levels is that the weaker players will get bored, start playing bad hands and ultimately be out played. These five day tournaments have typical buy ins that are in the US $10,000 range so what about the amateur player who plays for fun?
When playing online the blinds are actually usually very good but you can go about comparing the blind levels across the different websites and seeing how they increase. Many poker games start off slow but a large jump in a blind level can lead to a sudden shortening of everybody’s stack and leading to a bingo style shoot out when everybody starts pushing all in. This dramatically decreases the quality of the game since all the hard work to accumulate chips early on in the tournament all goes to waste.
Look for tournaments with longer blinds and look for how many levels there are between the 500/1000 level to the 1000/2000 level. Some sites or tournaments will only have a 800/1600 level where as some sites have a 600/1200 level and a 800/1600 level. An increased blind level gives you more time to work your stack before it becomes too short. Even if you are the big stack, you are then forced to contend with all the short stacks going all in or nothing and not actually given any chance to look for streets of value with the board.
Look for good blind levels to improve your game.
