stud/8 strategy: ring v tourney

[Nick_Foxx]

so me and a pal have decided to take the plunge and play in the $1000 buy in stud/8 event at the wsop this year (june 15)... for practice i've been playing some of the stud/8 mtt's on pstars ($10 and $20 buy in events with fields of a couple hundred), but my results have not been good, to put it mildly... strategies that seem to work well in ring games just don't appear to translate to a tournament setting

in the interest of not flushing a grand down the drain (i'd at least like to get some play for my money), i'd like to ask those of you with experience in both stud/8 tourneys and ring games to characterize some of the differences in strategy between the two

(btw i have the max stern book and in addition to it being factually wrong, it sucks)

mike

[bigredlemon]

Have you read 7 card stud for advanced players by sklansky?

[DeadMoneyOC]

The structure to this tournament is pretty bad. Someone posted a week or two ago that you start with 1000 in chips with a 5 chips ante and 30/60 limits. I would imagine one hour levels but I am not sure.

I would suggest that you play very solid starting hands. If the table is playing tight the value of big pairs(isolate people who complete with low hands) goes way up and the value of hands like 764 goes down. You need make sure that unless you have a pretty big hand by 4th you get away from it! I think staying away from marginal hands is really going to be key since you are already starting short stacked. As the levels increase stealing the antes obviously becomes more important. I have played in quite a few Stud8 tournaments on PS and I believe there is more luck involved in Stud8 tournaments compared to others. I have tried to hash a good stradegy but I realized that you need to play strong hands early and steal as much as you can when the levels increase and people start to play very tight. Like all poker tournaments, you need to get lucky when you have all your chips in the middle. I would suggest playing as many of the PS tournaments as you can. They have 20s running almost daily. A 50 on tuesday night, 200 on sat nights with a better structure, and a 100 on sunday afternoons. I think pratice will be far more helpful than any advice you are getting here. This topic has been covered before and everyones advice was kinda shaky(like mine is here) GL

[Prelude008]

Good luck at the tourney. I played a satellite for it last year but didn't get in and didn't want to pay 1K to play.

Now I'm no tourney expert. I used to play a lot of live B&M games along with some tourneys. From early to mid-late rounds I tend to play pretty straight ABC, go for low and try to scoop. I can say there comes a time to adjust this strategy. I never seem to know when or the right adjustments to make as the limits increase and usually end up anteing up and being stolen from or pushed off hands by the late stage aggressors. I think this is along the lines of what Dead was saying, that there is a point where hi hands and aggressiveness go up in value. I would suggest getting a tournement book that discusses play by various tournament stages. I can't reccommend one since I've only read the books for live play. Good luck.
I'm bummed that Hi/Lo is on a week day. Isn't it a Wednesday?

[SuitedBaby]

The high variance in stud 8 causes tournaments to be something of a crapshot. Even with near perfect play you will frequently not cash.

Some differences: You can play your medium quality low starts passively only perhaps in the first round. After that you must wait on hands that you can play strongly. Basically you need hands that a single card on 4th for you, and/or bricks for them, will let you drive hard, meaningfully. Big pairs work well here once play has become reasonably tight. Quality low starts basically must have an ace. 2h,3h,6h and somesuch will often get you in trouble and be prepared to perhaps bail early if their board is scary where in a ring game you can take one off on 4th after you brick. Where you know it will be heads-up, the bigger low pairs go up in value. With a hand like 77 6 you can push hard deep against a stubborn weaky on a low draw.

Interesting what you say about Stern's book. I recently read it for the second time after reading everybody else again and I couldn't agree with you more. There are many problems in that book. Not the least of which is the typical, and whimsical, McEvoy et al approach to poker facts versus what seems to be basically luck. I actually like to read McEvoy, Cloutier, etc. along with the more, err, "scientific texts" because I usually get something useful and very real from their work. A different approach or something well-said that sticks. The only thing I got out of Stern's book was perhaps an emphasis on keeping track of the fives. A Cloutier special, no doubt.