Brand-New, So Humor Me

[Pov]

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My last question, say i'm heads-up against a player in this type of tournament, yet i have a huge advantage (let's say 3-1 chips), what is the right way to play this safely? I realize this might take a while, i'm not asking anyone to, but just in a sentence or two, what is the right mindset/strategy? (I have been in this situation twice already and simply lucked out)

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When you have a significant lead like this it becomes much more appropriate to make plays where you might be behind (particularly if you are the aggressor) because if you end up all-in and win the hand you win the tournament and if you lose the hand now you're tied in the tournament. Basically you can afford to lose a big hand while your opponent cannot. You should therefore put pressure on your opponents just as SheridanCat has pointed out because their whole tournament is on the line each time you play a big pot while yours is not. Your opponent will probably be aware of this and will be much more likely to fold marginal hands while they wait for that great hand to make their move with. When do they have to make their move?

The blinds determine nearly everything. To make it really easy to see, let's say we each have $1000 and the blinds are 10 cents and 20 cents. Now clearly even if I go all-in on every single hand without even looking at my cards you wouldn't call until you had AA. Why would you? It only costs you 15 cents per hand on average to just fold every time. You can fold for 1000 straight hands and you'll still have $850.

Clearly you won't be in this sort of situation where you have 5000 big blinds, but hopefully it illustrates the point. On the opposite end of the spectrum when you only have 3 BB's you basically raise all-in with virtually any two cards because the cost of folding is higher than the cost of playing. Even 32o wins 32% of the time against a random hand so if we were in the situation above where I'm going all-in blind every hand and you're in the big blind you've got two choices: fold and there is a 100% chance you're down to 2 BB's. Call and there is a 2/3 chance you lose everything and a 1/3 chance you're up to 6 BB's. 1/3 chance of 6 BB's is 2 BB's. The plays are practically even in expectation.

You'll spend virtually the entire tournament between these two extremes and the correct basic strategy will gradually move from one end of the spectrum to the other as the blinds increase relative to the size of your stack.

Just to make this post even longer [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] - Of course we realize I wouldn't be playing my cards without looking at them so there is additional information upon which you should be acting. Once I have shown strength and as you learn about how I play you can put me on a range of types of hands I might play this way. Then you compare that range to the hand you hold and how you think you'd fare against it to make your play. Sometimes early in a tournament it can be correct to make plays that differ very substantially from normal basic strategy in order to take advantage of very bad players because their range of hands is so large.

If a player is too tight, you can steal a lot from them so you should raise a lot of hands, but when they call or re-raise you'll know your hand is likely behind. If you're sitting on a 3-1 chip advantage but your opponent still has 20 BB's (so he can afford to wait for a bit still) just try raising to 3x-5x the BB with your marginal hands (still fold the bad ones). If he won't fold for that, he probably won't fold for an all-in either but you've risked a lot less of your stack and you reduce the chance he'll double up against you. If he calls then you'll see a flop and go from there knowing more about his hand than he knows about yours. If he raises over the top you can decide where you're at and let go if you think you're too far behind.

[AKQJ10]

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And what does TPTK mean?

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Top Pair Top Kicker


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Now added to the FAQ at PokerWiki (poker.wikicities.com). And thanks to the community-editing format, you too can go add any abbreviations you think are missing, Dear Reader.