How Good are You Guys/Gals?

I think there are tons of things you can take out of these games, you are most likely to get called when you are not vested in a game, but you also learn how to lose & rethink why or how to play things. Real tables are much tighter, but they also have fish in the pond, and unless you are at a fairly high stake buy-in, you can learn how to catch them. And Vikkey ( who you lost your kings to), is a gambler, and often does the push with good hands to get you to fold or hope to get lucky.
As for me, I often use lower buy-in games to try out different styles, betting’s, ranges, idea’s, and plays, to see how they work on loose players before taking to my main stakes.

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Another thing I would add about the general standard of play is that there are numerous players who will call a pot-sized bet with second pair. While you actually want your opponents to play this way, the problem is that 1) the structure of these tournaments means that you may often have a considerable percentage of your stack at risk on any one hand, and 2) there are so many of these players that you may get past two or three, but still fall foul of the fourth.

I would expect that in real-money tournaments, you might see far fewer second pair callers who call large bets without having the right odds.In fact I think a defining feature of RP tournaments is that few players care about pot odds, or most likely, few players care about pot odds.

Again one should like playing against opponents who do not understand pot odds, but in short stacked tournaments, it can be difficult to formulate the best strategy.

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WINNING!

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Yea I remember that tiny stake tournament. I started and then realized I didn’t want to play a full tourney so I kinda just punted.

I also appreciate your analysis on a RP poker player vs. real, especially the comments about 2nd pair. I doubt many people would be happy calling a pot sized bet consistently with no extra equity. However, in RP its a more of the “what the heck lets see the turn” and happens relatively often.

As far as your hand is concerned, I would be calling that shove with Kings 100% of the time. It is a +EV move and people have a tendency to try to steal pots closer to the bubble. I would assume this particular phenomenon happens at both RP and in real tournaments, as most people tighten their play style close to the money. Seemingly if you have the cajones to shove with more marginal hands it could be profitable. In this case though, you got it all in while you were significantly ahead. That’s good poker!

Of course, that’s just my opinion though!

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Thanks for the comments.

Here is another hand of interest in which I played incredibly badly and was eliminated.

I was in the BB with about 12 big blinds and I had A 4o. It was a limped pot with 4 players including 2 from early position and a very large stack, who I think was the tournament leader.

The flop comes Ace high, and I check the flop and it is checked around to the big stack who is in position. He puts in a small bet of about 1/6th of the pot. I interpreted this as meaning that he didn’t mind taking the pot if no one else was interested, but didn’t want to put many of his chips at risk, or possibly that he had second or third pair, or some kind of pair/draw combo. So I shoved, being fairly confident that he would have to fold his hand. However he called and turned over A9, so had me outkicked, and ran out the winner.

So was I just fooled by a very clever player, or did he just decide to call my shove based on his stack being greater than mine (5 to 1), and expecting to lose to my range, which could be infinite considering that I limped in from the big blind position? Or did he suss out that I was shoving with an inferior ace that was not good enough to raise preflop-which would have been a good read? I just don’t know, and will welcome any comments on this hand. I would agree that I did not play it well. I suppose I could have just called the flop bet and the hand may have been checked down to the river, or I could have raised the flop bet to 900 to see what the villain thought of his hand and then folded on any further bets or a reraise from him.

Certainly his line of play seems very strange to me.

PS. After writing this I did a bit more research and found that the opponent who knocked me out finished in 17th place, 2 out of the money in spite of his huge lead at this time, and that he is ranked almost 44,000 on RP and has less than 100.000 chips, so I think I have probably answered my own question.

Here is another example of how many people play on RP at all levels of tournaments. You are sitting in the BB and four players limp to you. You look down at QQ or AKs and raise to 10BB. Three of the four players call the raise!

So none of these players has a hand good enough for an opening raise, yet they are good enough to call a huge raise. The reason this happens is that these players want to see a flop. The would like to see the flop cheaply, but if they have to call off their whole stack to see a flop, then so be it.

In reality, none of them have the correct odds to call at the time that they made the call, and yet playing as a team they are favorites to beat you, even though you have the third best opening hand.

If you are playing against a single player who calls with a hand that is probably dominated, you are very happy, but if you are called by three, your chances rapidly diminish. For example:

Add a 4th player with a pair of 3s and you go down to less than 33% chance of winning the hand over the full five cards.

From this you can at least take consolation that even if you do not win the hand, two of your three opponents are going down with you!

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It is important to note here that the “small bet of about 1/6th of the pot” is actually a minimum bet. I have noticed in tournaments here that players might call a raise preflop, but will often fold to a minimum bet on the flop, if it misses them. Since everyone checked to the button, it only makes sense to try to take down the pot with a minimum bet, especially since he actually had picked up top pair. Firing off a minimum bet here also lets him know if anyone is slow playing the hand. If you had called, rather than raised, you might still have ended up HU with him (with both an Ace and a King on the board, any small pocket pairs are liable to get out of your way, even to a minimum bet). I’m not sure why he called when you shoved, but he had the chips to spare and I think of him as an aggressive, loose player. Honestly, I wouldn’t have shoved with your hand or called with his, lol.

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To be honest, I was pretty sure that I was ahead, (wrongly, as it turned out) and did not mind if he called with second pair, because I needed a strategic double up from somewhere as with 12 BB I was around the point where I could not make preflop raises and would have to start shoving preflop.

In a lot of ways it was just a mundane hand with bad play all round, but I don’t remember ever being knocked out of a tournament with a hand quite like this before.

In his position there is no way that I would have called, because my experience is that if you get a big lead early in a tournament, you don’t want to fritter away thousands of chips in marginal hands, and can probably nick enough blinds from late position or from blind on blind action to stay ahead of the game while others eliminate each other. Of course if I get monsters, I will try to take out smaller stacks or put them in the position where they must shove or fold.

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Here’s my humble opinion:

I think looking at this hand from both perspectives is key.

So from your perspective you have almost no information. The pot is unopened. So with no pre-flop raisers everyone’s range is relatively wide. Placing a raise here is an option, albeit probably not a great one, since you might just bloat the pot with a weak ace and force yourself to commit. However, when the flop comes 6-A-K rainbow there is a good chance you have the best hand, since no-one raised pre. A-10+ is most likely not in play, nor are any larger pocket pairs (no set of kings for you worry about).

You could open here and make a small bet of 300-500. Betting into 4 other players certainly makes your hand look stronger than it really is as well. That being said you are out of position so making a donk bet has its own risks. If you get called, then someone else connected on the flop. If you get raised, 1) someone is trying to steal the pot 2) they have you crushed.

The other option, which might be better is to just check-call and re-evaluate on the turn. If the villain fires again you can certainly narrow his range. Likewise, if he checks behind, then yay off to the river with solid showdown value.

Heck, you could even raise if you didn’t believe him. Just pop it to 800-900 instead of the whole stack. You’ll end up with the same information without having to commit all your chips. Plus you will be the aggressor so he should check to you on the turn allowing you to dictate pace.

From his perspective, with no pre-flop aggression and the best middle Ace he can profitably make that call. Plus, he is not playing for his tournament life and he knows small stacks will be making moves to secure their chance to money. To me it makes sense that he called the shove.

You kind of played it in the “If correct-win min, if wrong-lose all” mentality. I’ve made that mistake so many times, that’t what it strikes me as.

The times you win the hand you’re winning a much bigger pot as well!

wouldn’t put too much stock into this, more important to see how long one has been playing to get there.

It’s important to remember once you’ve removed something from your range on one street it can’t magically appear on a later street. I would not in his position consider your range to be “infinite”. For you to be beating A9 on this 6hAsKc rainbow flop is very unlikely. Hands that beat A9, sets AA KK 66 are probably all shoves or opens off 12 bb’s from the sb, 2 pair combos are AK (shove or raise pre) A6 (should probably be shoving pre at least some of the time) K6, and your 1 pair hands AT+ should all be shoves pre. This really only leaves you with 2 pair A6 and K6 and it’s hard to flop 2 pair. V with A9 has a mandatory call here. You’re thinking too much with all that other stuff.

He should be opening this over limpers playing off sub 12 bb stacks, but that’s about all he could have done wrong here.

mandatory as outlined above.

He should either check or shove, making a standard open over 5 other players in the pot off 12 bb’s is terrible and not really an option (not a good one anyway). Max out fold equity and shove and get some value from villains who will call with KQ KJ KT QJ QT JT.

Since this pot is unopened it would not be a donk bet, he would just be leading and if he did lead for say 1/2 pot he should never be folding. If it were me as played I would probably x/r all in as did @MekonKing.

THIS… +100 this is a super easy call for V to make.

@MekonKing this is just kind of a poopy spot that you really can’t get away from without some super specific reads on this villain. You just really aren’t left with any great options. You can check pre from the bb or shove, I prefer shoving to max fold equity and you’re just not going to hit flops well enough to be profitable. After you check though and then flop top pair I just don’t think you can ever profitably fold off of 11 bb’s with that many chips in the pot. I think it’s okay to just rip it in there on the flop as a lead but the check/shove line is okay too, especially when it checks to the late position player and he min bets. Try not to be too results oriented when looking at your HH’s. Sometimes it’s just your time to lose but we always want to be making the most +Ev decisions throughout the game (tournament or cash).

Cheers bro, you’ve been kicking in some pretty nice results, keep crushing em!

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Yea, not sure why I called it a donk bet. In that scenario it’s a small bet and coming out of position, but since there was no action pre it’s me who is the donk, not the bet :smile:

Thanks for the correction!

Also, @dayman do you have an opinion on the original topic?

How good am I? Well, you be the judge. But this is the week that I just had.

20 games in the Astral Pegasus league. No time to play more. #2 in the First 20 leaderboard, and #10 (just out of the chips) on the Best 20. But look at how many games the rest of the Top 9 had to play to get more tournament points than me. I’m only 44k behind #1, and have played fewer than half as many games.

That’s 5 1st place wins, 5 2nd place wins, and 1 3rd place win, for 50% ITM and 67% profit on the week.

Yeah I think a few can beat LLSNL for a small profit or breakeven. It’s very hard to beat the rake combined with variance though, so it does require some run good. Not necessarily by making hands all the time but just not running into the tops of opponents ranges.

Some good discussion on this thread, which had a similar question posed: The Difference between Free and "Real" poker

I have done something similar earlier this year, if I may be allowed to brag a bit… I won a first 7 while playing only 6 games.

Lots of rungood, heavy usage of @bahia7’s Carrion Technique and everyone playing spammy for the other LB contributed to my win. I’d say 20% at most was my actual skill and 80% was exploiting the environment I was in. But alas, this is how the LBs go sometimes…

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Donk-betting — leading into the Pre-flop aggressor — used to be one of the greatest sins a poker player could commit.

If you Donk-bet with a bunch of strong hands, you risk leaving your checking range vulnerable to over-bets.

Example: 100NL. 100BB Effective Stacks

Folds to Hero (HJ) who raises 2.25BB. 3 folds. BB calls

Flop (5BB) QD 8H 5S
BB checks, Hero?

SO…, —Should You Ever Donk-Bet On The Flop in No-Limit Hold’em Poker?

If you assume the big blind does not have a Donk-bet range, a reasonable strategy would be to bet all three streets on blank run outs for 75% of the pot with the following value range (35 combinations):

*QQ+,88,55,AQs,Q8s,AQo

Given your bet size, you decide to employ a bluff-to-value ratio on the flop of roughly 2.5:1 in order to stay balanced. You can choose the following bluffs (87 combinations):
*A5s,KJs-K9s,K7s-K6s,JTs,97s,75s+,64s+,54s,Jd9d,Jh9h,Js9s,Td9d,Th9h,Ts9s,KJo-KTo,JhTd,JhTs,JhTc,JsTd,JsTh,JsTc,JcTd,JcTh,JcTs

That equals 122 combinations of c-bets out of your 307 combo’s, giving you a 39% chance.

Now, consider the same spot against a big blind who does have a flop Donk-leading range.

Let’s say that you have a decent sample of hands on “Villain” in the big blind, and you think he/she will usually Donk-bet KQ+ for value (alongside some bluffs). That means that the strongest hand the big blind will check to you is QJ.

You can counter the big blind’s strategy by betting more often when he/she checks to you, and you can also do this in a balanced way so he/she will not be able to exploit you by under- or over- folding.

Let’s build our range VS. this opponent using the same plan of betting three streets for 75% of the pot. Since you know that the big blind is capped at QJ, you can confidently bet with QJ+ for value (59 combinations):
*QQ+,88,55,AQs,KQs,QJs,Q8s,AQo,KQo,QJo

With roughly 2.5:1 flop bluff-to-value ratio, you can choose the following 146 combinations of bluffs:
*44-22,A9s,A7s-A2s,KJs-K9s,K7s-K6s,J9s+,T9s,97s,75s+,64s+,54s,ATo,KJo-KTo,JTo

That’s 205 combos of hands you can c-bet from your initial range of 307 combos, which comes out to a c-bet frequency of 66.%.

Despite identical bet sizing, you are able to c-bet much more often against a player with a Donk-bet range, winning the pot much more often.

An astute reader will notice that since Villain is capped, you don’t have to worry about facing check-raises when you bet the flop, which allows you to use over bets to extract maximum value out of Villain’s relatively weak range.

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:100: a player who has a donk betting range would have to be extremely sophisticated to be balanced and you just don’t see those players very often. Plus what’s the point, even if you’re balanced then you should be indifferent to how V reacts thus giving up some percentage chance of exploiting them and kind of removing the opportunity for them to make mistakes. Great post @JuiceeLoot!
Cheers!

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hundreds of millions here and more than gas money at live tourneys

That’s exactly why I prefer limping with most of the hands I play (even monsters like QQ+). Most of the people on this site are uber calling stations and will call just about any sized raise with any two cards just to see a flop so if you raise big pre-flop with a monster and three people call you down you aren’t even going to win half the time and you’re pot committed now.

So I limp a lot of speculative hands (and even pre-flop monsters like I said above) and when I hit I’ll bust them post-flop when I get a monster (set or better) because they’re such calling stations - if I miss I just fold and if I flop something like top pair I usually try to control the size of the pot rather than bloat it. The only time I raise pre-flop is when I’m at a table where most of the people can actually find the fold button which is rare…

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