If you've ever played in a live hold-'em knockout tournament, you'll know the unbearable tension that grips the room when you reach the point known as the "bubble": the next player knocked out will be the last to get nothing - everyone else receives a cut of the prize pool. For some reason, you never quite get the same frisson on the bubble in low-level online tournaments.
The books I read when starting to play seriously were by the old-school legends who honed their skills in the 1970s Vegas card-rooms. They all said unequivocally that the bubble was the point when you had to be fearless, take risks and exploit other players' caution. For a long time, that was how I played; courting disaster in the hope of gaining a potentially match-winning advantage.
So it was a shock, a couple of years ago, to come across Doyle Brunson - a notoriously fearless old-school player - saying that in online single-table tournaments it's fine to "back into" the money on the bubble; that is, do nothing and pray that somebody else has that fatal rush of blood to the head.
But there's more. One popular online $5 buy-in, 10-player game pays the top three $25/$15/$10. Your profits, then, are $20/$10/$5, minus the site's fee. Coming third as opposed to fourth is a jump of $10 (a gain of $5 against a loss of $5); coming first against coming second is, again, a jump of $10. But second against third is a profit of only $5. In other words, you want more than your share of third and first places in these games - coming second is relatively bad. So, to improve your single-table results, hang in for third place at all costs, then take risks for a shot of coming first. And if you do get knocked out on the bubble online, at least you can swear as loudly as you want.
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