Tournament strategy - parlaying the best hand in to a loss

I was digging around the netherworld of the online poker world the other day, and found this gem from none other than the Crew's Dutch Boyd:

Best thing I can tell you is to pick your spots and be aggressive. The idea behind NL tournaments is not to show your hand unless you're sure it's good. Think about this... let's say you are short-stacked. If you get pocket aces against, say pocket Jacks, you're 4.5:1 to win... or about 82%. So you get your money in and go all-in, get called, and are hoping to double up. You do. Very next hand, you get aces again. You push all-in and get called by QQs... again, 82%. You win and double up again. But you're still just an average stack. Next hand you get them AGAIN! You push all-in and get called by a big stack with pocket 22s. Still 82%, but this time you lose. Ouch. Bad-beat, righ? Sure, sure...

But the funny thing is, it's not a bad beat at all. You see, you are basically betting a parlay. You must win the first + second + third. Figuring out the chances of winning all of them is done by multiplying all of the percentages together (82% x 82% x 82%)... it comes up to roughly 55%. So you are only a slight favorite to still be in the tournament after being all-in three times with the best hand in the game.

from rakefree.com

I hadn't ever though of it this way, but its spot on.  This bit of mathmatical realization has helped me deal with "bad beats" much better now - especially in tournament situations where i've been all-in three or four times with the best hand.  Understanding that I've parlayed these bets to "must wins" and that my odds of hitting a 4-1 favorite five or six times in a row certainly isn't always going to come through has really allowed me to see the bigger picture.  

Its also helped me to focus on winning tournament pots without being all-in, or at least winning pots while trying to avoid going to the showdown despite likely having the best hand - its a matter of not offering people valid opportunities to draw out on you in tournament situations. I'm finding thats the real key to constent tournament play: tempered agression while staying away from marginal all-in situations - especially if you are calling someone all-in for a significant portion of your stack late in the tournament with what you feel is a marginal advantage at best. I think its one of the main intricacies of No Limit, thats only starting to come to me with a good deal of experience - raising the exact amount to put the absolute amount of pressure on my opponnet.

A great example of this would be overbetting the pot odds (especially if that puts my opponent all-in) against someone with a probable flush draw - if I'm convinced I've got the best hand and they are on a flush draw, I'm going to put maximum pressure on them, instead of making a pot-sized bet on the flop which most certainly gives a fourflush the implied odds to call (if not the actual odds to call) if they've got chips left.  I'm still extremely tight/agressive in tournament play, and I feel I play the big stack very very well.  But more than anything, this way of looking at things helps me keep it all in perspective...

Cross-posted to KCpoker.org. If you're a KC Poker player and you haven't joined KCpoker.org, you really should head over there and join the forums.

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Also, a quick note of thanks to PokerGrub for the recent linkup. You'll note that his site has hopped near the top of my own blogroll, a dubious honor which is reserved for those who reciprocally link to me...