Why I Love Playing Seniors Tournaments

The schedule for the 2018 WSOP was released this week and among the less noticed changes was the reduction in the Super Seniors age minimum from 65 to 60. I have mixed feelings about the change. While it qualifies me one year earlier (I will be 64 in June (uggh)) it also means that I miss playing in it for the four years ages 60-63 had it originally been played with the 60 minimum. But, really, is 60 "Super Senior"? What does that make 75 year old poker players? "Last Chance Seniors?"

There are more and more opportunities for mature players to play in seniors only events. Around the time of the WSOP there are additional seniors events at the Wynn, Nugget, Aria, Venetian and undoubtedly a few others that I've missed. There is now a seniors circuit if you want to travel thousands of miles to play $500 buy in events. (Now that I have joined the RV community, this gets more enticing.) So what's the thrill of playing with the guys who can never go two one-hour levels without running to the bathroom?

June 25, 2007, Nick Baxter cashed 72nd in the WSOP Seniors event. Hardly a watershed moment in the history of the WSOP, but a big deal for me. Nick and another friend had traveled to Las Vegas, just to play the seniors event. Nick had just turned 50. (He actually got carded when he registered.) I was invited to go, but I had just started a new job and couldn't take the time. (Read this as jobs always get in the way of poker.) Nick didn't play much poker other than the games we had on airplanes traveling to see baseball on Boys Boondoggle weekends. I was incredibly jealous. The next year, I read a bunch of poker books and started playing tournaments at Lucky Chances in Colma, CA. Colma is most famous, not for its card room, but for the fact that its dead residents far outnumber the living. In June 2008, I played only the seniors tournament at the WSOP, but I had the bug and have returned every year, for more and more events. (I cashed in the Seniors for the first time in 2015, the year the starting stack increased from 3000 to 5000 chips. I attribute my first cash to having more chips and thus, making the tournament more skill-dependent. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. Cashed again in 2016. For the record, when rebuy was added in 2017, I busted twice in the first two hours. Hard to get them off top pair. See below.)

So why should the mid-40's poker player look forward to playing seniors events which are almost universally low buy in and pretty fast structures?

Its Social
Senior players didn't learn the game multi-tabling on PokerStars. They learned the game playing in their friend's garage in seventh grade. They played more for fun than for money. They played baseball, follow the queen and guts. If you won $20 in a night, it was huge. But it was social, getting together with buddies. So when you play with seniors, you talk, you joke. They're never on their iPad, with headphones, playing Hearthstone. OK, Dave Stamm does have headphones on, but Dave is a strange guy.

No Tanking
Seniors value their remaining time. So no tanking for 90 seconds before folding 74 UTG ("under the gun" or first to act). Even a 4 bet shove decision only takes a few seconds. AA and KK are a call. Fold everything else. Simple game.

Ranges? We don't need no stinking ranges.
(For those who miss the reference, see "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" or "Blazing Saddles".) Mostly you either got it or you don't got it. Sometimes, when you don't got it, you have to act like you do got it, but mostly not. Balanced ranges are for wimps.

No one gets cranky (usually).
Partly because its social and mostly for fun, seniors rarely get pissy when luck goes south. After 50+ years of life, losing to that 2-outer is a pretty minor setback on a relative basis. They've seen much worse, often.

SGTO
This was planned as an article on its own. I promised it to Jack Sears a year ago. But it fits here as SGTO is one of the things that makes seniors tournaments so great.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, GTO is Game Theory Optimal. The idea is to play a perfectly balanced and thus, non-exploitable, strategy in poker. If I play perfect GTO poker, there is nothing anyone can do to take advantage of tendencies in my game. GTO strategy is incredibly complicated, but pretty much solved for heads up play, which is why, especially online, heads-up play is so brutally tough. Too many people playing near optimally. But once you add a third player, GTO becomes far more complex and dramatically more complex as you add players. Nonetheless, before I am Super-Super Senior eligible, I expect that multi-way GTO will be pretty much solved as well. (And this will impact online poker the same way that chess computers affect online chess.) SGTO is Seniors Game Theory Optimal, an adjustment to GTO applicable to the typical seniors tournament.

I don't remember the exact play that prompted my SGTO conversation with Jack. But it was probably something like a guy shoving 3x pot on a dry flop with top set (and, of course, then showing his hand when everyone folded to prove he wasn't bluffing). However, here are 100% true stories from about a half dozen seniors tournaments.

A player 3-bet shoves a 733 flop thinking he has 34. He does not. He actually has 45 (2 spades). He thought it was 34 spades, which was pretty unlikely as the 3 of spades was the sole spade on the flop. May be cause to recheck hole cards, but no.
Side note: I call with 2 overs and flush draw so he has 7 outs and I have redraws on all of them. I lose to 4 on turn and blank river.

A guy who has been limping into 75% of the pots, never raising, finally decides to min-raise my Big Blind with Q3 off suit from middle position.
Side note: I call with A8 to see AA8 flop (2 spades) and after checking behind on flop, he bets Q spades on turn. I check for third time on river, expecting him to bet flush or air, but can't get one more out of him, and we do go to showdown, which is how I know he had Q3 off.

A guy who has been VERY tight limps in early position. I raise on the button expecting to steal. Both blinds come and original limper comes as well. Flop is 10-4-4. All three check to me. I bet about 1/2 pot, blinds fold, and he folds JJ face up. Really.

Day two of the WSOP Seniors, UTG player raises from 2K to 7K. I have about 52K, next to act and raise to 17K with QQ. It folds back to him, and he 4 bets to 37K. While I think much of his range is now KK and AA, I decide the hand is too good to fold and with no fold equity, I just get it all in. He thinks and talks for about three minutes, never checks my stack to see that it will cost him 15K to call my shove in a pot that has ballooned to about 95K. So even if he is bluffing a hand like 89 or 22, he is getting the correct pot odds to call. In fact, he should call with any two cards here. He folds. Says he folded QQ, which is obviously unlikely, but possible.

First hand of WSOP Seniors a few years ago, when starting stack was 3000 chips and starting blinds 25-25. There is a raise to 75 and four callers to me. I have rags (Q8o as I recall) but such a nice spot, and I love these spots to easily increase my stack by more than 10%. I raise to 500. Only the last caller comes along. I don't remember the board other than it was raggedy and I totally whiffed. But I bet flop and turn and shoved river. River shove was for less than 1/2 pot, but obviously for his full stack as it was the first hand of the tournament. He folds AA face up. Correct. He did not 3 bet the original raiser, nor did he 4 bet after I raised, nor did he ever raise on the dry board. Just call-call-call-fold. Hate to get knocked out first hand after coming for just this tournament.

Based on these kinds of scenarios and many hours of observing seniors play, and remembering about 3.5% of it, here are the SGTO adjustments to GTO play.

He is always unbalanced. When the guy who folded JJ face up shoves 2x pot on a K22 board (with 2 spades) his range is exactly AA, KK and AK with the A of spades. Period. Nothing else. He correctly, but for the wrong reason, folded 22 pre-flop. He never, ever has QQ or a flush draw.
When the pre-flop raiser bets 1k on the Axx flop and 2k on the turn and then 10K on the river, he is never exploiting. He is always bluffing.

Don't assume he knows what he has. Seniors are notorious for misreading their hands or the board or the bet amounts. When someone raises with a 500 and a 100 chip and he tosses in a 5000 and a 100, he is not angle shooting. He just screwed up.

Top pair is tops. An over pair is the nuts. OK, we all have a hard time laying down over pairs to a fairly dry board. But seniors are more stubborn than most. They do not like to be bluffed. So it may be wise to use caution when balancing your river value bets with bluffs. Exception to this rule is when calling risks full stack very early in a no-rebuy tournament. Second exception is when the over-pair is JJ as no one ever wins with JJ.

We love to see flops. We pay to see seven cards, don't we? When they limp pre-flop, do not expect a fold to any reasonably sized raise. Once some chips are in the pot, others will follow. When there are five limps for 400 and you raise to 2500, expect to play a very large pot multi-way.

Playing seniors tournaments may not increase your skill level as much as playing the super tough high buy in daily online tournaments, but it will be a lot more fun. I have been suggesting to the WSOP powers to add a high-roller seniors event. Not a $50K high roller, more like a $3K high roller. The WSOP Seniors has historically had the most entries of any single starting flight tournament, usually in the range of 4000-5000 entries for the $1,000 buy in. (This leads to massive lines at the mens restrooms for the first 3-4 breaks.) As seniors tend to be more secure financially than younger players and many travel to Las Vegas primarily to play seniors events, it makes sense to offer a tournament with a better structure through a bigger starting stack.

In any case, see you in Las Vegas in June.