[winky51]

I play a lot of multi table tournements. I knew I was a better player than 90% of the field. This didn't say much because they were all terrible. I found myself constantly getting knocked out with the best hand over, and over, and over.

"How the hell do these idiots last so long only to knock me out when I am ahead?"

"How can I win all the races in a tournament when these idiots call me every single time I push?"

Well then I sat down and reanalyzed everything. I started asking players "Why did you call my all in?" I started doing some math on my chances. I started understanding the deviation of chip stacks in relation to the types of players in the tournament. Well I believe I finally found the errors of my ways. I wanted to share this to get your opinion.

I started realizing that to succeed in these tournaments I needs to understand the math and the psychology of my weak opponents in order to beat them.

I discovered that most of the poorer players tend to call all ins because... "I thought you had a small pair" when they have overs or "I thought you had overs" when they have a small pair. They always seem to think an all in player is trying to pull a fast one so I guess inside their heads they get upset or annoyed and think they are busting some big bluffer with their hand. I have seen players call all ins with hands like A8s, K9s, ATo just because they put you on a small pair. Your ahead right?!

Now I looked at the next section. Well how much ahead are you? At best 75%-80% depending on your hand. So I did a little math... how often will you win 4 75% chances to beat your opponent? The answer is 1 in 3 or 31% of the time.

Next I took an analysis of the 90% poor players, in these specific live tournaments. The general notion is that the better players will either rise slowly in chips or lose slowly in chips. Players that gamble will lose a lot or win a lot quickly. Now because the ratio of good to poor players is 9:1, in the tournaments I play, you will still have a bunch of loose players that got lucky and massed a giant chip stack compared to the number of good players in the tournament. So lets say a tournament of 100 player you have 90 poor players and 10 good ones. At the end of 3 rounds lets say 80% of the players are left.

8 good players, 72 bad players.

Lets say 15% of the bad players have big stacks or ~11
Lets say 15% of the bad players have small stacks or ~11
The rest are in between.

Of our good players most will have medium stacks that are healthy and above average.

But looking at this you still have more poor players with larger stacks than good players with good stacks. So the poor players can bust them at anytime. Even a good portion of the poor players have decent stacks that can cripple a good player's stack.

I was getting all my chips with the best hand in 97% of the time preflop or on the flop. But eventually I lost to some nugget that said "what the hell I call". How the hell do I beat this opposition that just keeps calling and outnumber me so much? Even though so many nuggets lose they still outnumber guys like us because of the sheer numbers, its like fighting the Chinese army.

I changed tactics. I played sneaky. Now I altered my raises, modified the amounts at different times. I gave the illusion of trying to lure a sucker into a trap "I see that a mile away he won't get me, I fold". I stole blinds more with sneakier raising standards.

Blinds 50/100 well sometimes I raised 300, 250, 325, 400. I changed it up 1/2 of the time from the standard 3x. I started raising 2x to 2.5x UTG to risk less. I took my time thinking also. I remained still not giving them a tell or an excuse to call. Mike Caro say players LOOK for tells to have a reason to call, they want action. Common players don't want to fold, fold, fold, they want to play. Once in a while I showed a hand when I felt they were losing confidence in my tightness. I showed folded BB crap hands to let them know I am folding crap and when I reraise I mean business. I took my time on the flop and gave credit to nuggets when they pushed after probing them. I protected my stack.

Results were this:
I played more hands in the rear (almost always stealing) and risked little. I won many small pots and an occasional large one. But I won them 100% of the time. Instead of risking my stack 4x in a row on a 75% chance to win all in. I noticed an improvement in how deep I penetrated each tournament. I started cashing BIG.

I found by the altering to smaller preflop raises and having a calm disposition taking my time I made the fish fear me and become preditable. I made them not react out of emotion or carelessness. I made them think they avoided the large trap. I basically let them eliminate themselves. Its not my job to do so.

So I feel its better to win 20 small pots 100% of the time then try and win 4 large pots 75% of the time each.

As for risks? Sure there were times I had to get it all in but now it was far fewer than before. I only had to win once or twice all in which was much more attractive than 4-5 times in a row.

Opinions and thoughts?