With the World Series of Poker Main Event drawing to a close right now, and that crazy AA vs KK 7-bet all-in bubble bursting hand, I’m reminded of a great strategy I give my students for studying online poker tournament bubbles.
Good bubble decisions are critical to making money in tournament poker. However, most players don’t know how to study the bubbles that they encounter. One of the reasons for this is that if you’re not recording game tape of your play (so you can’t go back and watch/review the bubble hands), poker tracking software like PokerTracker 4 can’t track online poker tournament bubbles.
This is something you need to do for yourself.
Now, I’m not going to give you bubble strategies here. There are plenty of tournament coaches out there with their videos, podcasts and articles that will teach you how to make it through the bubble more often to increase your profits and ROI.
Instead, I’m going to teach you how to track the bubble using PokerTracker 4 for yourself, so you can review every hand to catch mistakes and improve your strategies.
If you make it past the bubble bursting, you’ll be a happy player
Tracking Online Poker Tournament Bubbles
This is a simple 4-step process with PT4 (I’m sure other poker tracking software can do something similar).
Step 1: Create “BubbleStart” and “BubbleEnd” Hand Tags
In PT4, open the “Configure” menu and select “Tags”. Select “Add”, name each tag and select icons. Here are mine:
My “BubbleStart” and “BubbleEnd” tags
Step 2: Tag the First Hand of the Bubble
I’m not going to give you a set number of players left or a percentage of the field where every bubble begins. Instead, I know that you’re paying attention to the number of players in the field and where payouts begin. So, when you begin to feel bubble pressure, that’s the first hand that you tag with “BubbleStart”.
In a huge tournament with thousands of players, you can feel bubble pressure with hundreds of players still to bust before the money. In smaller tournaments, like a full ring sit and go, you might feel bubble pressure at 4, 5 or even 6 players left before the bubble bursts at 3 players.
This 92o hand is where I started to feel bubble pressure, so I tagged it with “BubbleStart”.
This pressure point is where your decisions are going to be impacted by your desire to make it into the money, how your opponents play the bubble, and how you adjust your poker strategies to these two factors.
Step 3: Tag the Bubble-Ending Hand
As soon as you make it into the money, tag the very next hand. The hands that are now between these two tags are all of the bubble hands that you’re going to study, one by one, to see if you’re making good decisions and strategically profitable bubble plays.
Between these two tags are all the bubble hands. Now let’s replay the hands and study!
Step 4: Review All of the Hands
Now that you know where the bubble started and stopped, you can review the hands and the strategies you used.
Sort the hands by time so you can replay them in order from start to finish (click the “Date” column in the image above). Highlight all the hands from tag to tag, right-click the highlighted area and select “Replay Hands” (also pictured above).
Review these hands one-by-one in order, and look for any mistakes that you made as well as strategically solid plays. Ask yourself questions to gauge your use of strategies such as:
- “Was this a good starting hand?”
- “How many short stacks, mid-stacks and big stacks are still to act?”
- “Did I miss any great 3-bet bluffs to chip up?”
- “Who’s scared of the bubble?”
- “Who’s taking advantage of the bubble to chip up?”
- “What if I had 30bb instead of 12bb? Would I play this differently?”
It’s great to learn from your own mistakes, but it’s also key to learn from the mistakes of others. So, pay attention to the way your opponents play the bubble with their stack sizes, their hole cards and their actions.
You probably folded the 92o from the EP with a 15bb stack in the first hand of the bubble (I sure did), but don’t just skip to the next hand after your fold. Play the rest of the hand out and see if you can spot the bubble mistakes others make.
Spotting their mistakes reinforces the profitable bubble strategies you’re trying to learn.
Good luck in your next tournament and enjoy bubble studies.
