Negreanu's 4s7s hand

[Punker]

When I say pot size manipulation, here's what I mean.

Say you are dealt a hand with which you wish to raise preflop (whether it be AA or 74s in this case). The "standard" wisdom is to raise 3x the BB, and if you are called and wish to bet the flop, bet something in the neighbourhood of the pot.

Now, lets say you are playing a party tourney at for example the 15-30 blind level and you have about 1000 chips. You open for 90 chips and are called twice outside of the blinds. Pot size is now 315. The flop comes whatever and you bet 300. At this point, you no longer really have any ability to play after the flop or any serious decisions; you are either completely bluffing and won't put in another chip, or you have enough of a hand and have pot committed yourself.

My impression is that a player like Negreanu in spots like this (if he were to play these kinds of tourneys, I'm not saying he does) is raise, say, to 75 preflop, making the pot 270. The flop comes down whatever, and rather than firing out 275, he will bet something like 150. As a result, he keeps the pot size manageable, and leaves himself enough stack to make a decision on the turn, whether it be to make a big move at the pot, or to make a solid laydown if he's worried.

Pot size manipulation allows you to "play deeper". The flip side is that you get in a lot more situations where you have to make tough decisions post flop. Negreanu is very good at making those decisions, which is why this style works well for him. He gets in a lot of medium sized pots and makes medium sized bets at those pots, allowing him to be aggressive without exposing his stack.

I don't claim to do it as well as him, but my online MTT results have gotten much better since I started this kind of play. It has upsides and downsides, but I like it. You may get outdrawn more often, but at the same time, you also get the chance to fold if you are worried you've been outdrawn without having a crippled stack. I also find in some cases it allows you to milk players a little more and win some chips you might not otherwise as players incorrectly peel one off; a funny side effect comes when you are bluffing, they call, and then fold to your second barrel bluff on the turn, allowing you to both steal from them and milk them at the same time.

[binions]

Good post.

Bottom line, the great players would rather play small ball, because they are better than you post-flop.

If you can't play with them, the only counter to this strategy is to make big bets at them.

[meatwad]

Really good post. Good concepts & well said.

[TStoneMBD]

the most important aspect to playing hands like this in first position is this: stack sizes. these types of hands are much better in a deep stack tournament than hands like AJo. what some of the posters in this thread dont understand is that you dont care if hands like AJo call your preflop raise. the point of playing these types of hands isnt to have a flop come J73 and get married to your pair of 7s. the idea of these types of hands is to have the flop come A47 or As5s6c. when you are in a deep stack tournament, if all your money is going into the middle with a pair of aces-jack kicker, youre going to lose. if youre money goes in with 47s you are probably in good shape.

daniel plays in tournaments that are populated by a majority of ingenius pros. one thing that should be understood is that if the blinds are 1k/2k and the average stack is 200k, whether you put in 6k or 2k has very little difference when considering how fast your stack will fluctuate. these hands are raised for deception, because if daniel only raised it in pf with large pocket pairs, or BIG cards like AJ and KQ, players will take flops with him trying to crack his onepair-bigkicker type hands with any 2 garbage cards. if you know daniel is raising it in with weird hands like 47s, you cant take a flop with him with cards like 83o, in an attempt to flop 2pair, because the point is this; if all the money goes in the middle with a flop of 836, its may not be because you caught daniel with KK, but you got yourself caught against his 86s.

against certain players it is strategically correct to call raises with 83o, because if you know he cant get away from his aces on a ragged flop, your implied odds are enormous.

[drewjustdrew]

sssshhhhhh [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[LethalRose]

This is a good concept. Another thing you can do is raise 2.5BB with any hand after you have showed a monster like KK. If you hit 2 pair you're going to double up again, and show everyone you dont just play the monster hands, which helps you later on in the tourney.