Advice for when you are card dead

[HoJo]

What do you do when you are card dead in a tourney? I played at Phil's last night and could not catch anything. I must have had 94o eight times in an hour. There was a lot of action and not much limping in so it was hard to pick spots to make moves (which BTW is an area I am working on in my game). So what advice can you all give for this situation. I would appreciate all the help I can get - Thanks!

[stackinsideways]

its never fun to go card dead at all...

but its even less fun to be blinded away...

This is where poker instinct has to come into play and you have to start getting aggressive when you think your villian is weak...

smell the fear and push them around...

its really yer only chance...

In the ends its better to be a donk spewing of chips then a nit who never takes a real shot...

[SNutizzle]

I sit there and zone out and basically dream of the day when so-called "variance" kicks in and I will look down at high pocket pairs and AK AQ all night long.

Now granted, I've dreamed that on card dead nights for 4 years now and have yet to see it come true. But I guess not all dreams come true, huh?

[D-Nut]

Of course we have all had this happen a million times, but I wanted to reply to this thread because I just played last night in the Venetian 8PM.....and was as card dead as I have been in a long time.

Roughly 60 players, and I finished 10th. The best starting hand I was dealt was

I was super card dead in the beginning stages......and I will speculate or raise with a large range of hands early on. I rarely found any playable situations, so I never accumulated any chips.

As the night progressed, I still did not find any optimal spots to get chips.....the best situation I was placed in, was in the small blind. It folded to the button who threw a standard raise in....and I shoved in with 14BB. He instacalled with .....and I sucked out. Not that that is a good situation, but I think with 14BB, a resteal with my hand is pretty standard....so I felt good about the play....it just so happened I got it in pretty bad.

But what you are looking for is advice......and I will relate the advice I will give to a hand last night. I had literally been extremely quiet for 5 orbits.....but I simply refused to push the envelope by reraising with the hands I was getting dealt....and not a very intimidating chip stack. I did manage to stay afloat by shoving all-in a number of times with poor holdings from the small blind into the extremely tight big blind to my left.

Anyways.....I may be a flat out nit......but there was a hand I just wanted to shove it in with 11BB....I was in 3rd position, and the UTG player raised to 3.5BB....I look down at and I wanted so bad to shove it in there because it looked so freakin good based on what I had seen all night.....but I thought better of it. I knew I had little to no fold equity and my hand may be clobbered anyways.....so I held off. I think this was the right decision.....and I guess the moral of my story is that I do this all the time.....and that is to overplay marginal hands because they look better than they are based on the other hands you've gotten.

I'm sure lots of better tourney players than me will disagree.....but I say that patience is your best friend sometimes......if you haven't accumulated any chips, you need to carefully pick your spots to stay in the tournament as long as you can......and hopefully you can get lucky in the time you have afforded yourself. Because we all know.....sometimes a monkey can play the cards you are given because everything falls into place.....but other times, you have to manufacture chips and then you STILL need a little luck. Best you can do sometimes is give yourself more outs. (Meaning buying time for more hands to look at by stealing here and there) Dont get caught up in limping into hands trying to speculate late in the game......dont limp with small pocket pairs in early position or suited connectors, etc. With your lacking chip stack, you need to conserve as best as possible and play your ideal situations HARD.

That's the best I can offer!

[Chipless Wonder]

Here's an older thread about being 'card dead' that you might find interesting:

http://www.badbeatspoker.net/forum/p...card-dead.html