The river is a killer when the fish catches it!!
I lose the most chips on those hands in MTTs when there are only two players left and I am all in preflop or on the flop.
In general in MTTs the most chips will be lost when the stacks are largest and the blinds highest, as any attempt to go for a straight or flush is all or nothing.
The biggest winners also come from similar hands. For example, I have taken a few beatings early in a tournament and get all in on an open ended draw or flush draw to double up and get back into the game. I am more willing to take this risk, because the alternative is to fall out of contention.
Here is a hand where I took an incredible risk for that reason, hoping to steal the blinds, but got lucky when another player called, probably for the same reason. From this position I went on to win the tournament last night.
Later on, I had a bit of luck when a bluff was called and was able to suck an opponent in.
I find in these tournaments, I will often get down to 1000 chips or less, yet still recover and get back a large stack, and I see other players do this too. I think the reason for this is that many players play very poorly against small stacks and will give them the opportunity to double, treble, or even quadruple up from a hopeless position by calling with speculative drawing hands rather than calling with hands that have t least some kind of showdown value.
In the early part of the tournament, it is better to yield the blinds to a shove from a small stack than to put your own tournament at risk by calling with a drawing hand.
I think a lot of people need to rethink how they play AK or AQ early on in MTTs. Since so many players on this site will call with almost any hand, even with a decent size raise from early position, you will likely end up with three or four callers, in which case your hand is no longer the favorite versus a coalition of other hands unless the flop hits you hard.
Part of the reason why AK is regarded as such a powerful hand is that it has great showdown value, should both players miss. However, that is less often a factor in MTTs on RP as even the smallest pocket pairs will call a preflop raise, and also any suited ace, meaning that any flop with two cards of the same suit is a potential pitfall.
I think it is better to play these hands more circumspectly early in tournaments, that later on, they can become killers.
Here with a limped AK when there were 5 players left, all in the money, I was able to eliminate one opponent and win a huge pot.
Playing AK or AQ in a ring game is a whole different ball game.
2 Likes
what takes a lot of my chips is sometimes waiting to long to bet and lose on the turn or river…for example I have a pair of kings in the hole ad the flop is j q k,instead of betting large I wait and someone will fill a better hand…this tells me that I should quit doing that…better to win a little than lose a lot
1 Like
Yes, with a set on a straight board, you could already be behind (to AT, but also 9T), and any Ace may call any bet and hope to fill the draw, particularly if they also have a pair (AK, AQ, AJ). If the board pairs you make a boat or quads, and come back way ahead of any straight. It’s tough not to call with top set, and tough to get many draws to fold here. You may build a pot and then have to dump it on the river or risk paying someone off big.
1 Like
Forced to pick one of the four. I’d say number four. Getting beat by a better hand, BUT I’ve lost a lot of hands being stubborn and even allowing myself to risk losing to prove someone at the table is bluffing their ^^^ off. Sometimes it is worth it. I like forcing someone to show their 7, 9 off suit when they are playing like they have the third ace. All in fun…it is a pretend game…not real money after all. Thanks replay.
Hey pugg, If you included lack of patients as one of your choices then i think that would take home the prize. Having lack of patience can cost you losing many hands from all of those options in my opinion. If players wanna learn patience in poker than i recommend playing a lot of sit n gos then a lot of MTTs before you hit the big rings.
1 Like
You’re probably right. I do feel like I lose most when I feel like I have to win a hand soon. It’s also a factor that aggression and patience can be at odds with each other.
Overestimating your opponents’ ability to fold is a big one. Most players here couldn’t fold a pair of socks.
2 Likes
Yes pugg in many cases true but the answer to that is to play patiently aggressive.
Of course, but that’s also an unhelpful bit of advice that could mean anything.
That means fold a lot and be patient for good hands, but when you don’t fold, don’t just sit around and check, since you have to be aggressive. bet for value or bluff with big sizings
That’s what I do, and sometimes it works, other times I just see the most ridiculous stuff happen as my “nice” cards miss board after board or hit the board for a mirage that goes to someone else.
I can handle losing a hand. I do tend to go on tilt when I can’t win once in 10 with my premium hands, in a row, because every time I get KK, someone has two pair on the flop. But this really isn’t supposed to be a thread about what puts me on tilt, it’s supposed to be a thread about noticing patterns, observing where our holes are, and considering what we can do about fixing them.
the damn river loses me most chips than any thing else always have better hand until the river shows
If I do this:
- No one calls, I get 1.5BB + limpers. Tiny pot, poor value, doesn’t help me win the tournament.
- Someone else has AA, and crushes me.
- Someone else hits a set with a smaller pair, I get crushed.
- Someone joke calls with two rags and hits two pair or a straight.
- I win and KO someone, but then don’t win another hand for 40 minutes, the whole table stays fit for that time, and I finally get some hand I think I can play, KJ, AJ, AQ, raise into someone else’s monster, get cut in half, and finish 5th or worse .
It’s not like I’ve never done it before.
It’s hands like this that happen to me ALL THE TIME. They do not have to wait on a monster to call me. They just have to call. They hit the monster EVERY TIME. The only thing anyone has to do to beat me in any hand is to call. Does a suited A4 call if I jam all-in preflop here? If it’s against me, probably!
This sortof makes up for it though, even though it was a semi-suicidal play, given the board texture.
I win and I lose, but I have ridiculous losing streaks. I never have ridiculous win streaks. I can win 2-3 games in a row, ITM, not outright wins. I can lose 10, 20 games in a row. At times, I do it to myself, deliberately throwing chips away out of disgust at the way the game is treating me. But I don’t start off that way, I get that way by the way the game is treating me. I took KK all-in 5 times in a row and got beat every single time. Have I won with KK? Sure, plenty. But after you lose with it 5x in a row, you just give up, because you know nothing about poker. The things they say about poker work for other people, but not you. You can play any two cards and always get beat by someone else at the table. You can only win if you can bet in a way that gets the winning hand to fold. Sometimes you can, but on these slides, you just can’t. I’ve shoved a good size stack and been called by 45 and watch them crack Aces hitting a straight when I’m on a slide. When I’m running good, it’s a different story. But lately, I’m running good far less than I’m running bad.
But again, I am telling you this thread is not about that. If you want to lecture me on the finer points of how to play poker, take it over to the Today’s Ridiculous Hands thread, which is where I post my hands to prove that I never win any hands. THIS thread is about observing where the holes are in your game, and figuring out what to do about them. I guess my biggest hole is my mouth, but second to that is the fact that I can weave through a board with any two cards better than Han Solo can navigate an asteroid field, and when I drain down to the point where I have to shove to play any hand, I wait for the best hand I’m likely to get and it’s always when someone else has KK or AA.
Tonight I’ve touched 3rd twice, once on a game I was trying very hard to lose, once on a game I was trying very hard to win. The game I tried to win, I had the big stack going 3-up and still finished 3rd, creamed twice by AK, once when I put the small stack all-in with AT, we both missed broadway by one card, and he won with a pair of Aces. Then I got it another time when I flopped top pair, Queens, and a pot size bet wasn’t enough to fold my opponent, who had a draw and filled Broadway with AK, and I stupidly gave him a call on the river because he checked the Turn, which made me think bluff, plus I can’t play poker to save my life. This ended up settling down to 3 pretty even stacks, but I eventually turned into the small stack, shoved 88 into TT, and that was that. Now when I shove big cards into little cards, the little cards hit a set about 50-60% of the time.
Can I not say “every time”. Sure, but what I mean by “every time” is “every time it’s an important hand”, “every time it’s a giant pot”, and “at least twice as often as probability dictates it should happen.”
But this is STILL not that thread.
1 Like
I didn’t call a shove with 45o. People do that to me, and they can, and it works. What I did was suicide shoved 45o, and happened to get lucky. It happens. I had it happen when I shoved 62 and hit two pair on the flop to beat someone who had called with actual nice cards, AQs another hand tonight. Didn’t do too well in either game, though. I think I caught 3rd twice? My best finishes of the evening, everything else has been awful.
I get a cavalier attitude when it comes to playing well when I try to and all that happens is the board twists around my hole cards and leaves me with nothing every time I open, or the flop is an obvious disaster waiting to happen for me – paired board in my opponent’s range, or wrong-suited – or they flop a well hidden straight or set, or, well you know how it goes. I’m sure everyone’s been there. I do seem to go through it an awful lot though, stretches where all the conventional strategy and logic just fails, like it’s bizarro world. Why play a sound strategy when it’s just not working? Because eventually logic dictates that the odds will make it pay off? When? After 3 weeks? I seem to have 1-in-3 good weeks anyway.
I actually did try a limp-heavy strategy like you talked about, several months ago, when I first moved up to playing 100K SNG, and did pretty well with it for a long while. It’s not bad advice, despite everyone in the world screaming that Rule 1 of poker is don’t limp. If you’re just having a terrible run, putting in the minimum allows you to see more hand, get away from them cheaply when you miss, and sleep monsters that other people will bet into. You don’t have to bluff or c-bet a whole lot, or at all, and can win some good pots this way. Maybe instead of getting enraged I should go back to trying that. Thing is, it only seems to work on tables where there’s a lot of players who are all willing to allow the table to limp.
2 Likes