beating a low stakes tourney

[zoobird]

There's one move that I've found works VERY well - even in freerolls. Most bad players aren't thinking about what your hand is...they're thinking about what their hand is. So if there's a flop that's unlikely to have hit anyone a decent sized bet (say 2/3 of the pot) on the flop will often win it. Ideal situation is something like 1 or 2 other people in the pot. Everybody limped, or players you know are very loose raised preflop. The flop has no aces and only one card T or higher (or ideally no high cards). Your opponents will typically fold to a bet often enough to be very +EV. It doesn't matter if its implausible that the flop hit your hand...bad players just aren't thinking about that.

I steal on rare occasions and make resteals even less frequently. I have had good success thusfar playing only quality hands out of position and speculating with the right hands when in position and the situation is right. I would definitely benefit from incorporating some more steals and resteals into my game, but this is something that I think should be done slowly and gradually. I'm beginning to get a feel for the right times to use these moves and have had recent success with them. I've also had major catastrophes with them. That's the thing wih making moves - it takes some failed attempts to be able to figure out what you are doing wrong ... and what you are doing right. I'm just now starting to get a feel for it and still have a lot to learn in this area.

I'd suggest playing solid poker early on and slowly incorporating these moves in the later stages when blinds and antes are a significant portion of most players stacks. Don't try to get too creative at the start and remember that even the guy that appears to play way too many hands is allowed to get cards once in a while.

Harrington actually suggests incorporating these moves a little more just before the bubble when everyone else tightens up and is trying to squeak into the money. Take advantage of the people that actually care about the 280th payout spot as we all know the big payout is in the top three and it takes lots of chips to get there. I think he addresses this in more detail in Vol. 2 when he deals with inflection points of a tournament.