How bad would it be to fold every hand on levels 1-3 in a 10+1?

[lacky]

if it is profitable at the lowest level ( I can't imagine it working more than 5 games at $109's before everyone adjusted) you just described the easiest poker bot program ever. Since the $11's aren't flooded with non talking players use that stratagy it probably doesn't work. I'm sure somebody has pluged sklanski's system into a program and tried it by now.

Steve

[Ezcheeze]

For anyone who is beating the game for a significant amount it would be absolutely horrible to fold all hands for the first 3 levels. Level 3 is a 50 big blind thats pretty large to be folding everytime. The players at a 10+1 sng make so many many mistakes during the entire tournament its just ludicrous to not allow yourself to take full advantage of them during every level.

-Ezcheeze

[Mammux]

Only slightly related story:

I played in an mtt today where one of the players would always push preflop with AA, KK, QQ. Even when he wasn't called, he would show the cards every time. I asked him in chat if he would push JJ, and he said no. Anyway, this is a great image to have into the late mid- and endgame. He loosened up slightly, but his pushes still got lots of respect. In the end he came third or fourth, I knocked him out on a hand where I hit my set and he went all-in on the flop with his TPTK.

-Magnus

[Ozzzz]

I laugh at all of you who only play premium "trash" hands in the first 3 rounds. I will call your all-in raise with AA when I hold 72o and laugh mightily when the board ends up being AQ222, knocking you out and putting you on tilt for at least a year.

[PE101]

I agree! The number of 10+1s that lose a few players in the 1st couple of hands amazes me. I play very, very tight (but fairly aggressive) in the first couple of rounds, but I like to have ~1000 or so at the end of round 2. (I often have <500 though).

[Scuba Chuck]

So I played 4 $55s yesterday where in rounds 1-3 I folded everything except the top 4 hands: AA, KK, QQ, AK. And later followed some general Aleo principles. Here were my results:

2nd
8th
2nd
1st

[ilya]

[ QUOTE ]
if it is profitable at the lowest level ( I can't imagine it working more than 5 games at $109's before everyone adjusted) you just described the easiest poker bot program ever. Since the $11's aren't flooded with non talking players use that stratagy it probably doesn't work. I'm sure somebody has pluged sklanski's system into a program and tried it by now.

Steve

[/ QUOTE ]

According to some guys I know at MIT, Party bot detection is annoyingly good.

[KingOtter]

I wonder how different it would be in limit.

I played one this morning in which I played 2 hands before level 3. A KK and an AK. Won them both to get up to around 1K before level 3, and played tight for a while. Ended up being 5th after an all-in hit 2 pair against my TP made me short-stacked.

In limit it is pretty rare for someone to get out before level 3. Probably not as rare in NL.

KO

[Iceman]

[ QUOTE ]
Can one be a winner with a strictly push/fold SNG game.

[/ QUOTE ]

In 10+1 and 20+2, against bad opponents, you would probably win money, but not nearly as much as you could win from a strategy involving some pushes and some actual playing of hands. From the 50/100 level onward you can basically play a push/fold game except when you have a deep stack, but there are times when you would gain value by deviating from it. High pairs preflop and sets on the flop aren't common on the first three levels, but when they do occur you gain a huge amount of value from them. There are times when you get no cards for the first 30 hands or so and it is correct to just fold everything, but to have a general policy of folding all hands on the first three levels would be a major mistake for anyone other than a terrible player (who would be better off folding everything until the 50/100 level and then playing push or fold).

[ QUOTE ]
I realize that this sounds a little like the sklansky system, though I would point out that I do not think the as-is Sklansky system has any hope of making money in a typical SNG. I am describing something more attuned to the environment of a typical SNG.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Sklansky System is not an ideal push/fold system for SNGs. The hands in the System are selected because they don't do that badly against premium hands (that will call you in a real deep money B&M tournament when you massively overbet a small pot), not because they do well against the much broader range of hands that will call you in an SNG. The set of hands you would choose to not get totally destroyed against the best 2% of hands is a lot different than what you would choose when it's likely that you will face the best 20% when called. In Sklansky's System, you keep racking up blinds while people are scared of your massive raises. In a Party SNG, you are much more likely to get called even in the early levels than Sklansky's System assumes.

[lacky]

unfortunatly any bot detection can be gotten around very simply. You can hire labor in India etc. for about $1 a day. All u need is two seperate systems with a human interface that pushes the button the program tells them to push. Fortunately Poker is complex enough that a simple system doesn't work, and if it did work players would adapt and take advantage of the simple play.