How To Win Texas Hold'Em Poker Tournaments - Don't Be a Loser

There's an old lottery lovers' expression that says, "You can't win if you don't play." The same is not necessarily true in No Limit Texas Hold'em tournaments. There is a much better philosophy to follow if you want to win a big tournament in your lifetime: You can't lose if you don't play.
The fact is, you have more of a chance of winning a big jackpot by purchasing a ticket to every lottery than you do of winning a big tournament by playing every hand. Of course I don't mean to say that you should never play a hand. What I mean is you don't win tournaments by playing more hands than the other guy. You win by losing fewer hands.
A couple days ago I entered a No Limit Texas Hold'em tournament. I had only four playable hands the entire time I was seated. I suffered through rag after rag after rag. It was almost comical. Eventually I got a pair of jacks in middle position. Although I had been folding for the past hour and a half, with one single hand played I was back to an average stack size and doing better than half the players in the room (and far better than some of the maniacs at my table).
Most of the players at my first table were playing nearly 50% of the hands dealt to them. They were up, they were down. They were up, they were down. By mid tournament most of them had been eliminated.
For me, the rags continued and I remained patient. On my final hand, being the short stack at the table, I drew ace-king suited. This time I pushed all in since I knew I would be pot committed. I got one caller who flipped over ace-ten offsuit. I was dominating my opponent with approximately an 80/20 advantage. The flop brought a ten and I was done. Had I not been extremely unlucky on that hand I would have been right back to an average chip stack, just one double-up away from being a front runner while having played only 4 hands in three hours. I outlasted more than half the pack, many of whom had played scores of hands. As far as I'm concerned I played a flawless game considering I was getting the worst cards I've ever seen in my life. (I'm not exaggerating.)
This might seem like a whimpy style of poker, but there have been numerous times when I've showed up at a final table with the small stack having taken down literally only a few hands all night and gone on to win all the marbles.
There are some really good, highly aggressive players who play just about any two cards hoping to trap other player with an unexpected monster. Often times they get a big head and end up stumbling into their own trap. I can quite often take them down later in the tournament by slow playing a premium hand and just calling their bets. Using this method I often double up multiple times late in the game.
Much of the mechanics of Far Eastern martial arts are based on letting an opponent move in on you and using their momentum against them. This is an excellent analogy for being a tight-aggressive player.
There is a Chinese term, "wu wei," which loosely means "action without action" or "effortless doing." It's about accomplishing an objective without forcing it to happen. Just as any action has a reaction, non-action also gets powerful results.
A Zen master practices selective aggression. He will win by not playing until the right moment. He will let the other players battle it out and expend their chips until the over-players become either losers or over-confident lucky stiffs.
A Zen master's stack will dwindle slowly for a while then he will step in and double, triple or even quadruple his stack. He'll invest all those chips that he saved by not protecting his blinds and by not chasing the flush because he was practicing wu we.
The Zen master would much rather be at the final table standing head to head facing the over-confident lottery winner who's holding the big chip stack and who is going to play into his made hands than to find himself up against another Zen master with half his chip stack who will not stumble.
Try to resist the temptation to go out there and take a lot of hands by force. Relax. Let good circumstances come to you. Be still, stay centered, be patient. Wait until they throw the punch at a moment when you've got the nuts and then hit them with all you've got.
Resist the desire to make a wild bid on a questionable hand at the wrong moment. Feel the rhythm of the game and feel when to steal a pot, when to stay tight, when to loosen up. I'm not saying you should never gamble, but I am saying you should never wonder if now is a good time to gamble. And don't ever bluff unless you know by instinct that you have the perfect circumstances for a bluff.
The lottery player is afraid that if he doesn't play today he might miss a big win. The Zen master understands that he wins poker tournaments by letting everyone else lose. Don't be a loser.