Building a Poker Style

Poker Strategy
24

Winning the blinds is fine. You don’t have that much of an equity advantage against the blinds with the ranges you are opening, and so having the blinds fold out their worst hands is increasing your win rate.

I think you can play min raises with a style like this, but I’ve never once done that when I’ve played it myself. I do suggest making smaller raises, and certainly a min raise fits within that framework, but I personally think you get a little extra mileage by going a little bigger than a min raise.

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25

Yes, I was being a little ironic when I said that you do not want to knock out the blinds.

However for Calling Station strategy players it seems to be all about getting down to the river, so they rarely desire to knock out the blinds preflop.

In tournament play, the value of winning the blinds changes as the blinds escalate. At the beginning winning the blinds is of little value, but once you get to around 50 minutes into the game, the blinds become worth playing for, but riskier, as you may have to raise a significant percentage of your stack to knock out the blinds. Minraises will rarely knock out the BB. On the other hand, if larger raises are called by the BB, this probably indicates hand strength and increases the risk that you are beaten, or will have to fold to a check raise or risk your whole stack, or a significant portion thereof.

I am genuinely mystified by the Calling Station strategy. I cannot play it myself as it seems to run counter to everything that I understand about the game, but I can see that in tournaments where many players are playing the same strategy, it may have some success.

On the other hand I would much rather play against Calling Stations than against super-aggressive players like myself, so there is that. Against Calling Stations, if things go badly from the off, you can often lose half your stack, then wait for a good hand, shove preflop, and get right back to square one before the blinds get too high.

It is often said that schizophrenia is really a bunch of different but similar mental illnesses, and I suspect that what we call Calling Stations employ a wide variety of strategies, some of which are sophisticated, and some of which are naive.

It would be interesting to hear from players who positively identify as Calling Stations, to hear their side of the story.

I tend to believe that most Calling Stations must be naive, because usually I do not see much evidence in tournaments of them adjusting their strategy to blinds sizes, stack sizes, tournament position, closeness to the bubble, style of opponents, and so on.

I was teaching my young daughters to play poker, and they want to get into every pot to see what they can flop, and I suspect that many Calling Stations players are motivate more by the thrill out of seeing the next card, rather than playing a strategy that they think will win tournaments at greater than random frequency.

Well, it is free poker, though pretty much every day I see players playing in the 1-million chips tournaments who have less than 1-million chips in their account after [paying their entry fees, and there are so many of them (who are usually out within the first hour) that I suspect that many of them must be paying a substantial fee (about $50) to obtain a million chips just to enter play money tournaments above their skill level. Perhaps that is the hidden secret of RP?

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26

:slightly_smiling_face: In your sarcasm I think you have been drawing a better, or at least more classic, image of this style than I have though. I’ve been mostly modeling this after a few players in the top 100 that play like this with some frequency, and so I’m aiming for something that can actually be surprisingly effective and frustrating to play against, but in doing that, it is not quite the classic calling station.

That also brings me to a weird side thought: the “balanced call”. This style in the past got me considering the effectiveness of making a few bad calls to all in bets, where the call in isolation is clearly -EV. If you call all in bets (say bets ranging in size from pot to a 2x over-bet of pot) with the right mix of draws and strong made hands, it behaves in many of the same ways as if you were the one making the bet. The big difference is that you lose all fold equity on your speculative hands, but if you have the right mix, it is easy to proof out that you can still come out ahead, and I think when people see you making these calls that clearly lack the right odds, they start making these same bets a bit wider, with more marginal value, which then allows you to start printing money with the stronger part of your range.

In a world where no one makes exploitative adjustments, this is just a -EV play. But stronger players in particular do adjust, and with many of the other players there is the tilt inducing benefits of this play, also.

Edit: note that I’m thinking here in a cash game context. Myself, I wouldn’t want to make this play in a tournament, where ICM makes it even worse than it already would be without that consideration.

27

You make interesting points.

I think there must be a lot more top 100 players among the ring game ranks than on the tournament scene. I am currently ranked #211 and I doubt if I ever see more than half a dozen players with higher rankings in the top level tournaments–even the weekend ‘Widow’s Bite’ tournament, which is 5 million chips to play.

I certainly respect the higher ranked players and tend slightly to avoid unnecessary stack clashes with them, but also note that they tend to have a better ability to fold to check raises and not to chase draws against the odds except against much smaller stacks. Typically they will not call off their whole stack with top pair when there are draws that may have filled and someone is making large bets on the river.

Yes, poker IS a game of contradictions. When you call enough with garbage, it conceals your good hands, and when you raise preflop with many hands and bluff many flops, you are more likely to get a call when you really want to be called and not just knock down the blinds.

Perhaps the biggest error of many errors seen on RP is players making the nuts and then not getting paid off, because they overbet. I did this last night. Having lost half my stack in a poor hand where I was bamboozled by a CS who flopped a pair of aces with A5, checked, then flat called my bet with TT, I thought (wrongly) that he was on a flush draw, but I was wrong–as I found out on the river. Probably I would have taken the pot if I had 3-bet all-in preflop.

A little later I picked up KK and had 2 limpers before me, with 2 calling stations behind me, so I shoved my stack expecting at least one, possibly two callers, and was surprised that no-one called and I ended up with a small pot.

I don’t think anyone has ever written a book on how to win RP MTTs or similar MTTS with many calling stations, but if they did, I suspect that they would advise to form a custom plan for each opponent according to what is known of their play. For example if they will call any preflop raise with any pocket pair, then a strategy has to be devised to determine what bets they will call on the flop with one, two, or three broadway cards on the flop, and to determine what size bets to make on each occasions. A player with a pocket pair only has a 1 in 26 chance of hitting a set on the turn, or one in 13 of hitting a set on either the turn or the river, but if you overbet the flop to force them to fold, and they do flop a set, the results can be devastating to the good health of your stack.

The war between the aggressors and the calling stations will never end, that is sure, at least in the ranks of the amateurs. Among the pros the calling station strategy, if it ever existed is dead in tournament play, but perhaps vestiges remain in heads-up play or with players like Daniel Negreanu and many others who will sometimes call with complete junk and occasionally make unexpected winning hands, but more often will enhance their ability to bluff on other hands, when their opponents know they may be holding almost any two cards.Remember those great hands that Doyle Brunson won with T 2, a hand that no one in their right mind would play except to check it in the big blind.

28

My style is actually to be honest,in that i mean i wait for the right cards and mean while dont got the cards i read how the other plays,then i bluff too,the perfect time is when you have fool the table how good you are,works evry time!! But the kee is be honest at first!!