Replay MTT Strategy

Poker Strategy
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I have noticed most of my posts here are more or less shouting into the void, so I guess this is more for my own reference than for posterity. I’d like to remind myself of how I want to play.

Some of these principles are drawn from general poker theory, and some are specific to the Replay High-Limit MTT player pool. Anyway, as I approach 100k hands played, mostly in MTTs, this is what I have learned (or at least, what I think I have learned) is the best strategy:

  1. Play as many hands as possible in the early stages

I have tried playing tight/GTO ranges, and I have tried limping literally every hand. The best results seem to come somewhere in between, but heavily skewed toward “play pretty much every hand.”

Players on Replay certainly make preflop mistakes, but they make many more (and more serious) mistakes POST flop. If you can make two pair with 3 9 offsuit on a 3A9 flop, for example, there is a very good chance you can win a whole stack from someone with a random ace. It seems highly profitable to simply try to see as many flops as possible early on, when doing so won’t destroy your stack (because everyone is still 100+ bb deep).

  1. Don’t slowplay/downsize unless you have the NUTS

You will be amazed what players stick around with when you bet anything less than pot. If you’re going to slowplay a flopped set or flush, be aware that villains will have much wider ranges than they’re “supposed to” when you bet small and they continue. It is not uncommon for someone holding the Ah to call TWO bets of ⅔ pot because there are three hearts on the board. Charge the draws when you have something good. If everyone folds, they probably just had absolutely nothing. If they have any piece of the board, they’ll call more than you think. Bet big!

  1. When you encounter serious resistance, JUST FOLD

This is the hardest one for me. While Replay players splash around a lot and get into tons of spots that GTO says they should never reach, they remain overwhelmingly PASSIVE when it comes to BIG BETS. It is very rare for a player to reraise all-in as a stone cold bluff. Say you have TT and you raise to 3x preflop from UTG, a player in MP 3bets to 9x, you call. Flop comes low cards, you check, MP goes all-in for more than the size of the pot. What should you do? PROBABLY JUST FOLD. Sometimes this is a donk shove with AK, but mostly it is JJ+. Heck, mostly it is QQ+! It could be cognitive dissonance but I certainly feel I’ve lost more than I’ve won calling with JJ in spots like this on Replay.

Again, the fundamental deviation from GTO on Replay is that PLAYERS DO NOT BLUFF ENOUGH and they are NOT AGGRESSIVE ENOUGH WITH STRONG BUT NON-NUTTED HANDS. I’ve seen people limp QQ preflop and only start putting chips in the middle once they see there is no A or K. I’ve seen LOTS of people limp AA and just check-call all three streets, counting on other players being overly aggressive and hoping to win by sandbagging. These are not good strategies! But people are using them. Be aware, and adjust accordingly.

  1. When no one seems interested, STEAL
    On the other hand, players on Replay are not keen to defend without “having it.” If you call a raise in position and they check to you on a 2 2 7 two-tone flop, just start betting. They may call the flop bet out of sheer disbelief, because who connects with 2 2 7? But as long as the turn isn’t a face card, if you keep betting, they will fold a high % of the time. GTO says to use backdoors and stuff to avoid getting overbluffed when your high cards miss the flop, but almost nobody (certainly few players outside the Top 500 rank) does this often enough. As a bonus, on occasion you will get caught and everyone will laugh, call you a maniac, and berate you for your crazy loose/bluff-heavy play. This will help you get paid when you do “have it.”

  2. Balance your ranges

Make sure you aren’t only raising preflop with pairs and high cards. I have identified several MTT regulars who play like this, and they are just so easy to exploit. You can figure out why/how; I won’t spell it out. The flip side of this is that many players don’t expect these hands to be in YOUR raising range. So when you bet 3x preflop from the hijack with 78s and it comes 9TJ, you have a great chance of getting paid — probably much better than when you do the same with AQ and it comes TJK.

There are more subtleties and exploits but I think these are my top 5 principles. One could do a whole other post on bubble play and FT play. We’ll leave those thoughts for another day =-P

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Listen closely, for the void speaks in echoes of forgotten dreams, in riddles etched on ancient stones,

in the dance of quarks and neutrinos.


I like to think deep into the void there’s someone somewhere baking cookies. lol

I just like to hear your thoughts regarding how important patience is or is this just thrown into the wind

with your, “Play as many hands as possible in the early stages” principle #1.

I’ve seen your name entered in tournaments in the past. So, I enter but it’s not long before you’re out

of the tournament.

Possibly, your principle #1 pendulum needs to sway more towards patience?

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possibly so! it’s a very fine line and I often find myself on the wrong side of it, either way. in a field of 30+ players it’s crucial to build a stack early so you can keep playing poker once the blinds go up. but I definitely chase the dragon too much sometimes in an effort to follow this principle…

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I agree. I think you have to because in MTT’s, the blinds and the rake will eat into your beginning stack. And in MTT’s you have to have an increasing (or a larger) stack to survive until the later stages of a tournament which is different from a ring game where it may always be best to only play good starting hands.

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Interesting what you say about playing as many hands as possible in the early game, in which I somewhat agree. If you can see a flop with just a limp, why not play since any two cards can win.
For me, I’m generally a little tighter, will try to get in if I have at least a decent hand, rarely play garbage which is a good percentage of the cards I get usually. Of course, position will make a difference on my decision, and if there’s been a small or large raise, or a 3bet.

The thing I seem to struggle with often in the early game is how to bet premium hands.
A 3 to 5x raise doesn’t seem to get players to fold much, if I bet a bunch more, everybody folds…least I win, but a small pot.
Say I have KK and make a smaller raise and get like 3/4 callers. Flop comes out without a K, I’m still likely to bet a lot. Seems like most the time someone with like j9o will call down to the river and of course hit their straight on the river, then I go on tilt so I have to go into fold just about everything mode. Sometimes the extreme patience will pay off, like the other day in Frozen Comet where the above is about what happened, I managed to hang in around last place for most of the tourney and happily cashed in 5th (paid 7).

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Sometimes if you shove they will call preflop with hands you dominate. Other times, I will play a big pair for a limp and get someone to overplay a hand like J9 on J82 board.

But I agree, it’s a sticky part of the decision tree!

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Thing is, if you have 3-4 callers, losing most of the time can be ok - you’re going to win an inflated pot the rest of the time. It helps if don’t get stuck on how good your hand was preflop of course, but more callers with KK is better than just winning the blinds. You’ll lose more pots, but win more chips overall in the long run.
The long run in poker can be really, really long though. They should make stickers for it we can put on the back of our cars.

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Returning to this - an important caveat is that if you find you have difficulty realizing your equity postflop on scary boards, you might be better off using a sub-optimal strategy that makes it less likely you’ll get into those spots.

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