September 19th, 2009
marty smith
Of all the decisions made in poker tournaments, a good number of them are rather easy to make. The truth is, even though numbers and common sense often indicate you should play a hand a certain way , there is much more to our personal make-up that complicates these strategies. In fact, we are programmed to reason using every fiber of our being. The skill then, is to manage the all of the data AND feelings you have about any particular hand and use poker tournament strategy.
Now even though I have often advised to leave your feelings and emotions out of the decision making process, that really isn’t quite right, or plausible. Without contradicting myself too much, there will always be part of your decision process fueled by intuition and emotion - and you know what? There is nothing wrong with that! The thing is, you must always fall back on the 10 second rule when making game critical decisions in poker tournaments. When you are faced with a big decision, just start counting to yourself, don’t ruch for the mouse button.
Important online poker tips might seem obvious, but if you thrust into action or respond without thinking, you will often circumvent deeper wisdom and better solutions. This is also where your intuition and instincts can better serve your objective because it gives you an opportunity to tune into what may be unique about this hand or this opponent. Yes, the 10 seconds can be used to determine your best possible odds and payout strategy, but it can also illuminate an obvious bad situation for you. When you start doing this regularly, you are going to have some key moments that you look back on and say, “Wow I made a great play there”. I recently did this at a final table in an SnG MTT on Full Tilt where I went on to win the tournament. Had I not dropped the hand, I would have finished out of the money as only 6 players got paid.
In those 10 seconds use these online poker tips and start asking yourself things like:
What do my true instincts say?
What are the real odds of me having the best hand here?
Can I fold and still have enough left to out-play my opponents?
If I was watching this hand on TV, what would I recommend?
Is this positive EV?
Leave some of these questions on sticky-notes on your monitor when playing in tournaments. If you read even 2 or 3 of them in every tough situation I guarantee that you will start winning money in online poker tournaments. The best poker professionals use these online poker tips and combine all of the information - including intuition and instinct to make profitable decisions.
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July 2nd, 2009
Raising middle pairs over limpers in the early stages (regardless of buy-in) is somewhat risky. You are likely to get better long term value from set mining cheaply. In the early stages, loads of players are correctly playing for implied odds. A five times raise is not a big hit to their stack and you mostly just don’t narrow the field enough. You end up most times trying to decide whether to continuation bet into an overly large pot with over cards on the board and it all gets a bit too much like hard decisions for me. Why not open raise, but once there are limpers, avoid attacking them when its deep stacked and when the blinds are very small.
You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. So if the pot is now one.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You now decide to raise to three big blinds, making the pot five.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. So he is getting nearly 3:1 on his call.
You have to consider the fact that you’re likely to never be worse than a three to one under dog pre-flop. However there is a problem. Maybe even more than one problem.
Firstly your problem is bet-ability of a marginal hand. This could mean rags facing off against ace king. The flop comes down 5 J Q. You are in front by quite a long way, but can you put much money into this pot? What about the continuation bet? But what if you just bet into the pot? What happens when he calls? Do you fire again on the turn? How deep a hole are you going to dig for yourself with your bottom pair hoping that it is good?
What about if you have 33 pre flop? With three big cards flopping, you can theoretically assume your opponent miss the flop, but you are stuck with how much to bet since it missed you as well?
So yes, you had correct odds pre flop, if you could get to showdown for something approximating that pre flop investment. But in deep stack situations you can’t. You still have 3 betting rounds before you get to fifth street.
But that leads to the second problem. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. What this also means is that when you do actually hit the flop, the pots will be smaller. You will also lose more chips, because your opponent can bet you off a better hand because he has position.
If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. I am only ever looking at implied odds.. i.e. what is the size of my chip stack and my opponents chip stack. My calling range is rather wide if this bet represents 5% of my stack or less. If they have a big pair and I have little connectors, I am okay with that. If they have AA, and I want to be playing my little cards. When it gets higher, like ten percent, I am more likely to fold. But in all of that the only thing I am thinking about is the size of the bet I have to call compared to the effective stack.
I might have 56s and be up against AK. But unless I make and OESD, Flush draw or 2 pair or better, I will be surrendering pretty much every pot on the flop especially if I am OOP. This may be an opportunity to play passively checking and calling if you haven’t had a low pair.
If you notice in Every Hand Revealed, Gus Hansen frequently berates himself for calling early position raisers with trash when he is in the BB. Understandably, these regrets come about as soon as you see the flop which invariably are difficult to play. Gus can look at his opponent for tells, and after all his is The Great Dane. We don’t have physical tells and we are not Gus. Importantly also, our opponents are not Gus’ opponents. It’s also important to know if your opponent can get away from a top pair, or are more willing to let it ride.
So for what its worth, I’d recommend not falling too much in love with pre flop pot odds in deep stack situations. Hey, you may play the hand anyway, but look at it from an implied stand point, not just pot odds. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.
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