KK early in Super Monday

[jwvdcw]

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i think you need to raise more preflop (t80-100).

why? dont I *want* action here?

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Because you don't want to give small pocket pairs good implied odds on hitting their set and busting you. I realize that it sucks to raise big in EP and get no callers with big hands, but you have to do it. The only alternative in EP is to limp, hope you get raised preflop, and if not then be able to lay it down postflop if someone else is aggressive.

I would raise to about 150 with KK. And yes, you do want action with this hand if you play it like this.

You don't want action if you play it like you did because then you can't really put your opponent on any hand...he could have suited connectors, a pocket pair, anything really.

Theres plenty of bad players in these tourneys. Hopefully you'll run into someone overplaying an average hand when you have KK. Or hopefully you'll get lucky and run into QQ or AK.

[sublime]

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i think you need to raise more preflop (t80-100).

why? dont I *want* action here?

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Because you don't want to give small pocket pairs good implied odds on hitting their set and busting you. I realize that it sucks to raise big in EP and get no callers with big hands, but you have to do it. The only alternative in EP is to limp, hope you get raised preflop, and if not then be able to lay it down postflop if someone else is aggressive.

I would raise to about 150 with KK. And yes, you do want action with this hand if you play it like this.

You don't want action if you play it like you did because then you can't really put your opponent on any hand...he could have suited connectors, a pocket pair, anything really.

Theres plenty of bad players in these tourneys. Hopefully you'll run into someone overplaying an average hand when you have KK. Or hopefully you'll get lucky and run into QQ or AK.

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so what types of raises am i making with JJ/TT and AQs in this spot?

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i think you need to raise more preflop (t80-100).

why? dont I *want* action here?

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Because you don't want to give small pocket pairs good implied odds on hitting their set and busting you. I realize that it sucks to raise big in EP and get no callers with big hands, but you have to do it. The only alternative in EP is to limp, hope you get raised preflop, and if not then be able to lay it down postflop if someone else is aggressive.

I would raise to about 150 with KK. And yes, you do want action with this hand if you play it like this.

You don't want action if you play it like you did because then you can't really put your opponent on any hand...he could have suited connectors, a pocket pair, anything really.

Theres plenty of bad players in these tourneys. Hopefully you'll run into someone overplaying an average hand when you have KK. Or hopefully you'll get lucky and run into QQ or AK.

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so what types of raises am i making with JJ/TT and AQs in this spot?

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You may not always want to raise with those. I'll limp one of every five times or so. I'd say when you do raise, until you've gotten a little more experience, have a standard amount in relation to blinds + # of limpers. As you get more confidence in your post-flop play, you can get creative and find your preferred strategy for varying the sizes of your raises.

[jwvdcw]

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i think you need to raise more preflop (t80-100).

why? dont I *want* action here?

[/ QUOTE ]
Because you don't want to give small pocket pairs good implied odds on hitting their set and busting you. I realize that it sucks to raise big in EP and get no callers with big hands, but you have to do it. The only alternative in EP is to limp, hope you get raised preflop, and if not then be able to lay it down postflop if someone else is aggressive.

I would raise to about 150 with KK. And yes, you do want action with this hand if you play it like this.

You don't want action if you play it like you did because then you can't really put your opponent on any hand...he could have suited connectors, a pocket pair, anything really.

Theres plenty of bad players in these tourneys. Hopefully you'll run into someone overplaying an average hand when you have KK. Or hopefully you'll get lucky and run into QQ or AK.

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so what types of raises am i making with JJ/TT and AQs in this spot?

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I make small raises(3x BB) with hands like these because I am very capable of getting away from them postflop, which can't always be said for KK. In EP, I'll even just limp with pocket 10s a lot of the time and play them as if they were small pocket pairs(hope to hit a set, if not then maybe throw out a bet on the flop to try to take it then but otherwise fold to any aggression).

[Jason Strasser]

This is how to exploit a certain type of bad player (opening to 150), but it is by far not the right choice here game theory wise. You are saying if you are in the WSOP ME level 1 and u get AA, you gotta open the pot to deny everyone odds to flop a set including implied odds? Yeah, ok.

-Jason

[jwvdcw]

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This is how to exploit a certain type of bad player (opening to 150), but it is by far not the right choice here game theory wise. You are saying if you are in the WSOP ME level 1 and u get AA, you gotta open the pot to deny everyone odds to flop a set including implied odds? Yeah, ok.

-Jason

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I've never played in the WSOP so I can't comment on the skill level of players nor the blind structure. However, at a tournament such as Party's Super Monday, I would definitely play it like this.

My goal is to double up and avoid losing my entire stack. Putting in a small raise with a monster early on does the exact opposite of this- it makes it so that others can get away from the hand postflop, and it invites calls from hands that can and will cripple me.

[Jason Strasser]

Your way of playing is easy. You raise to 150, if some fish calls and flops a set, well then he's a fish and you can write one that off because you made the correct play preflop and he made a clear mistake.

However, your way is not the best. You should be concerned with things like raising to a standard opening to protect the value of your hands. You want worse hands to call like lower pairs, middle pairs, and AJ AQ KT blah blah etc. So, occasionally some fish makes a preflop mistake and you bone him from behind and take his stack. But most of the time you are playing so that players around you, even the most retarded ones in the world, can play correctly.

Sure, I allow smaller pairs to correctly call and play the flop, and if I had my choice I'd want hands that have lots of implied odds like a low pair, I'd choose for them to fold.

But the idea is that if I raise enough with all sorts of hands, people are going to be playing very poorly if they call with lower pairs trying to stack me off with a set, because most of the time I'll have a hand that can't double them up. This, in turn, allows me to get paid off more when people realize that I am active, and when I standard raise with KK or whatever I'll get more action from hands that can double me up.

Also, JJ is saying he is getting away when people flop sets often. Well, I'm not. But again, all the action I get from having a disguised hand against second best hands more than makes up for the times someone flops a set on a 279 board with 2 hearts and I double them up because I didn't raise to 10bb preflop.

-Jason

[jwvdcw]

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Your way of playing is easy. You raise to 150, if some fish calls and flops a set, well then he's a fish and you can write one that off because you made the correct play preflop and he made a clear mistake.

However, your way is not the best. You should be concerned with things like raising to a standard opening to protect the value of your hands. You want worse hands to call like lower pairs, middle pairs, and AJ AQ KT blah blah etc. So, occasionally some fish makes a preflop mistake and you bone him from behind and take his stack. But most of the time you are playing so that players around you, even the most retarded ones in the world, can play correctly.

Sure, I allow smaller pairs to correctly call and play the flop, and if I had my choice I'd want hands that have lots of implied odds like a low pair, I'd choose for them to fold.

But the idea is that if I raise enough with all sorts of hands, people are going to be playing very poorly if they call with lower pairs trying to stack me off with a set, because most of the time I'll have a hand that can't double them up. This, in turn, allows me to get paid off more when people realize that I am active, and when I standard raise with KK or whatever I'll get more action from hands that can double me up.

Also, JJ is saying he is getting away when people flop sets often. Well, I'm not. But again, all the action I get from having a disguised hand against second best hands more than makes up for the times someone flops a set on a 279 board with 2 hearts and I double them up because I didn't raise to 10bb preflop.

-Jason

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I think you underestimate the amount of action you can get early on with a bigger preflop raise. The beginning of the tourney, naturally, is the time in which the field is the weakest. You still will get calls with lower to medium pocket pairs on a bigger preflop bet, only this time you are not giving them the proper implied odds to draw to crippling you.

Moreover, a guy with a hand like 10-10 or JJ is much more likely to go bust on a ragged flop when he has called a bigger preflop raise. And thats really what it is all about early in a tourney- winning big pots and cutting your losses to small pots.

[jwvdcw]

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Your way of playing is easy. You raise to 150, if some fish calls and flops a set, well then he's a fish and you can write one that off because you made the correct play preflop and he made a clear mistake.

However, your way is not the best. You should be concerned with things like raising to a standard opening to protect the value of your hands. You want worse hands to call like lower pairs, middle pairs, and AJ AQ KT blah blah etc. So, occasionally some fish makes a preflop mistake and you bone him from behind and take his stack. But most of the time you are playing so that players around you, even the most retarded ones in the world, can play correctly.

Sure, I allow smaller pairs to correctly call and play the flop, and if I had my choice I'd want hands that have lots of implied odds like a low pair, I'd choose for them to fold.

But the idea is that if I raise enough with all sorts of hands, people are going to be playing very poorly if they call with lower pairs trying to stack me off with a set, because most of the time I'll have a hand that can't double them up. This, in turn, allows me to get paid off more when people realize that I am active, and when I standard raise with KK or whatever I'll get more action from hands that can double me up.

Also, JJ is saying he is getting away when people flop sets often. Well, I'm not. But again, all the action I get from having a disguised hand against second best hands more than makes up for the times someone flops a set on a 279 board with 2 hearts and I double them up because I didn't raise to 10bb preflop.

-Jason

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So you would agree that your style allows small pocket pairs to correctly play their hands by calling. And you're saying that my style allows hands like A-Q to correctly fold.

I agree completely(although as I said in my last post, I think you're underestimating just how many bad players will call 150 preflop with hands like A-Q or even worse early in a tourney). However, your mistake is one in which you'll lose the tournament. My mistake is one which would cost me winning an extra 45 chips(assuming you raise to 60, then he missed the flop, you bet, he folds- the most likely scenario here). That imo is the big difference. A tournament is about survival imho.

Particularly when you say something like "This, in turn, allows me to get paid off more when people realize that I am active" I think you are overestimating the skill level of your opponents early on in a tourney. Sure if you're raising every hand, then they are going to take note. But I don't think one or two more raises per every 50 hands like you're advocating is really going to cause the average player to pay you off more. Moreover, you're assuming that I'd never raise big with another hand.

As I was saying to someone else earlier, I think chip accumulation is vastly overrated, especially early in a tourney.

Not to toot my own horn too much, but go take a look at a few of the threads about the big tourneys I've won or gotten very far in....in almost all of them, I never had a huge stack at any time. Yes, having chips does afford you certain luxuries. However, it is not necessary at all to advance deep into a tournament.

[Jason Strasser]

We can get into a cockwaving contest, but jigga PLEASE:

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Not to toot my own horn too much, but go take a look at a few of the threads about the big tourneys I've won or gotten very far in....in almost all of them, I never had a huge stack at any time. Yes, having chips does afford you certain luxuries. However, it is not necessary at all to advance deep into a tournament.

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This is ludicrious lol. I'm so happy you can get far in tournaments! I'd like to also mention that some of the worst poker players in the world do well in online tournaments. But throwing some results at me is not going to convince me you know what you are talking about, because your posts here clearly demonstrate a lack of understanding of how EV works. Great, the donk goes broke when you raise to 150 in level 1 with KK, what the heck do you think he does when you make it 60? The same type of donk is often going broke here as well.

In general, I firmly disagree with you.
-Jason