citanul
06-02-2004, 12:05 PM
I've been playing a lot of the Party 10+1s lately, and this play has made up the majority of my NL play ever.
My ITM% and ROI% instantly moved to the normal numbers when I had the "epiphany" last week while talking about these things with a friend that the idea of these tournaments is not to try to get into the money every time. Prior to that, I had a miserable record, but now that I understand enough to take the occasional coin flip, things are going much more smoothly.
Anyway, on to the question part of this post:
I've been trying to get better at the concept of "you don't have to bet all in if you can bet the minimum that will will make your opponent fold, in cases where he is going to fold." Now, this is another of those "duh" things, but for me, I've found that since it's much harder to call the all in than to make it yourself, you open yourself up to the all in raise when you raise smallish.
Lately, when short stacked, if the blinds are 20/40 or so and there's a couple limpers and I have a hand I want to play, I just go all in. I figure that if they fold, I've got another 20-25% on my stack, and if someone calls, I'm unlikely to be much worse than 60/40 dog, and often a favorite.
I find if I am short to average stack in the 50/100 level or even the 30/60 level sometimes, I'll raise all in from the cutoff or button up to about 800 chips to steal the blinds, again figuring that this is about right.
It's really only when I've found myself with a decent stack that I ever really worry about what raises to make other than all in, because that's the only time when I feel like I have the flexibility to do so. But I'm entirely not comfortable to do it. I don't understand how to play the big stack at all, and often give up on the flop when called in a few spots and miss, or bluff badly at the flop. I also release what I feel is too often to reraises.
I think my problem is that I've been making these small raises with too few hands, and that if I add a few lower quality hands, the extra folds will more than make up for the few hands I throw away.
This problem winds up with me not getting as many 1sts as I think I should be, which is the real reason I'm looking into it.
So, basically, I'm wondering what hands you start to raise with with the big stack that were not really playable previously, probably as a function of %age of chips in play are in your stack. Maybe it should be a function of that and number of opponents left. And also, is my approach to playing small/medium stack reasonable?
Thanks,
citanul
My ITM% and ROI% instantly moved to the normal numbers when I had the "epiphany" last week while talking about these things with a friend that the idea of these tournaments is not to try to get into the money every time. Prior to that, I had a miserable record, but now that I understand enough to take the occasional coin flip, things are going much more smoothly.
Anyway, on to the question part of this post:
I've been trying to get better at the concept of "you don't have to bet all in if you can bet the minimum that will will make your opponent fold, in cases where he is going to fold." Now, this is another of those "duh" things, but for me, I've found that since it's much harder to call the all in than to make it yourself, you open yourself up to the all in raise when you raise smallish.
Lately, when short stacked, if the blinds are 20/40 or so and there's a couple limpers and I have a hand I want to play, I just go all in. I figure that if they fold, I've got another 20-25% on my stack, and if someone calls, I'm unlikely to be much worse than 60/40 dog, and often a favorite.
I find if I am short to average stack in the 50/100 level or even the 30/60 level sometimes, I'll raise all in from the cutoff or button up to about 800 chips to steal the blinds, again figuring that this is about right.
It's really only when I've found myself with a decent stack that I ever really worry about what raises to make other than all in, because that's the only time when I feel like I have the flexibility to do so. But I'm entirely not comfortable to do it. I don't understand how to play the big stack at all, and often give up on the flop when called in a few spots and miss, or bluff badly at the flop. I also release what I feel is too often to reraises.
I think my problem is that I've been making these small raises with too few hands, and that if I add a few lower quality hands, the extra folds will more than make up for the few hands I throw away.
This problem winds up with me not getting as many 1sts as I think I should be, which is the real reason I'm looking into it.
So, basically, I'm wondering what hands you start to raise with with the big stack that were not really playable previously, probably as a function of %age of chips in play are in your stack. Maybe it should be a function of that and number of opponents left. And also, is my approach to playing small/medium stack reasonable?
Thanks,
citanul