Notebook of a Gamer: "Turtling"

[Python49]

i concur

zerg rush T_T kekekeke [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Alex/Mugaaz]

I'm almost positive the term turtling comes from 2d fighting games and not any of the games mentioned.

great read, but i disagree entirely. with your entire analysis, both for poker and otherwise =P

Turtling is a legitimate strategy for most games, if used correctly its generally used to wear down the opponent and basically play a longer game that is more likely to be won by the turtler. (although its true that most newbies do revert to this style when they arent sure what they are doing.)

i dont really play strategy games, but i know that the initial concept for these games were set up on an RPS type system.

basically there was three strategies a player can employ:
FAST - MEDIUM - SLOW

Whenever any FAST-FAST matchup or similar occured the better player would win, however, an advantage would otherwise be given to the player who used the strategy that best counteracted his opponents strategy.

FAST beats SLOW
MEDIUM beats FAST
SLOW beats MEDIUM

Fast entails an early rush, with all money spent on small guys, so against a slow teching type player the rusher is able to bring down their base quickly before they can set up enough defense; meanwhile the fast player continues the attack while gaining more resources and armies around the map.

Medium is a balance of fast and slow, some defence yet also a fair bit of money on tech and resource development. when against a fast rushing player they are able to have just enough defensive troops to hold out the initial attacks, whilst in the mid-late game their advanced tech will be able to overpower the rusher who has used up their resources on now dead troops which are now wasted, the only option for the fast player is to switch to a medium style, but will now be significantly behind.

Slow is as said the player that sits back, and techs, gradually building the best troops and defences. However, a medium player doesn’t invest enough in initial attacks and as such cant take advantage of the slow players vulnerability. By the time the 2 armies really go to war the slow player’s armies and resources will have the same one-up on the medium player that the medium player had on the fast player in the mid-late game.

Of course new strategy games Im sure are way more complicated than this and so the concept is outdated, but that’s how it was originally supposed to be.

Fighting games are based on this RPS idea as well, the initial basics where, when getting up from an attack:
ATTACK beats THROW
THROW beats BLOCK
BLOCK beats ATTACK (because the blocker is able to counteract easily)

The ‘blocker’ idea here is where the ‘turtler’ gains the advantage. They are able to sit back and allow the attacker to open themselves up while doing minimal (chip) damage, then blast them away once the attacker finishes their attack. In fact in many fighting games today, the turtler is generally considered the superior strategy:

Marvel vs Capcom 2 = Sentinel, Storm, Spiral (all effective turtlers)
Tekken 5 = Marduk
SF series = Zangief, Ryu, Ken, Sakura


This is similar to how a turtling tactic works in MTTs for poker.

The turtler is able to sit back and fold out of pots earlier, manipulating their metagame image to a point where they are seen as weak/tight by the early loose aggressive players.

They then have the patience to wait for a really good hand to sit back and are able to just check/call, check/call and sandbag their way to huge pots that sacrificing small pots early has given them the power to gain. Eventually the players that were trying to push the turtler around become more and more wary of their checks and sandbagging until they get as much respect as any TAG on the table.

Of course in modern poker, similar to how the Fast strategy game player must switch their game in the mid-late stages, the turtler must also adopt a LAG or at least TAG strategy as the blinds get bigger and the players get more desperate and fewer in number in order to have any chance to win.

However if they do know how to make this switch and have an expert (I would argue it’s a harder style to play effectively than solid TAGGing) understanding of the game, the turtling strategy is one that already has good application, and as more and more players get more and more ridiculously LAGGy in the earlier stages of MTTs (it’s a trend) the turtling strategy has the potential to eventually become the rock to the Loose aggressive players scissors.

Depending on how large the blinds are and how many people are at your table, the poker game changes accordingly.