Anonymous says

Thanks for talking about this subject. You hear about it alot but never enough info on it.

03/06/08

jofo3 says

03/10/08

jofo3 says

Adanthar, I enjoy your postings. What games do you play besides tourneys ?
Do you play more cash games or more tourneys ?
Thx,
jo

03/10/08

Adanthar says

I usually play tourneys but also play midstakes FR NL (5/10 and up), a tiny bit of 2/4-5/10 6 max, and razz.

03/11/08

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In the last few days, I've returned to playing more or less full time (and running terrible - I think I'm ~25% with overpairs since Sunday - but that's generally how Murphy's Law works). Aside from the runbad, life has been pretty good; whenever I'm not distracted by video games, movies, books or some other shiny thing that comes along, I've been occupied by some business idea or other, and a lot of these seem like they're going to pay off within the next year to two years. Of course, given my attention span, there are far too many shiny things in the world to keep that going for long, but hey, I try.

So, right, hey look a bike...umm...yeah, this blog. I feel like I've been writing a lot of shorter entries instead of a few big ones. There's a reason for that; when I started this project, I had half-coherent plans to use some of the strategy entries in a future book or article series. Most of that didn't go anywhere (at least for now), and instead, I've started using this page as a simple way to broadcast my results, thoughts about poker in general, the AP scandal, and other poker-related stuff that came to mind. Given that there'll be way more of that type of thing coming in the near future, I think I'm probably better off with this format than an exclusively poker strat-oriented blog, but I do occasionally wish I had a Bond18-type ability to sit down and write 3 pages on playing AK whenever I felt like it. (In fact, I've done that before - it just isn't something I could repeat for 18 entries and counting. Major props to Tony for making that work for him.) For that matter, I wish I had a Bond18-type ability to sit down and play poker, but then again, if I had that, I'd probably have the ability to sit down and work for a living/never have discovered it in the first place. It all evens out.

At any rate, today, I'm gonna take a page from Bond and write about something that's been a big deal in HSMTT the last couple of days - 3 betting light early in tourneys. If you've read my posts there, you'll know I could honestly go through a thousand tournaments without ever 3 betting a known decent player with anything but JJ+/AK, or, for that matter, without ever 3 betting period, before the antes kick in. Frankly, even vs. tourney regulars who put in a few hundred hands with you per week (or month if you're me), I don't think metagame matters nearly as much as the strength of your hand, simply because most regulars aren't opening that light from EP/MP and tend to play ABC postflop (which gets you in trouble if you're bluffing because getting an ABC player off a real hand is gonna involve putting in a huge chunk of your stack.) Once the antes kick in, it's a different story, but prior to that, the tighter opening ranges should dictate tighter 3 bets, not looser ones, and certainly not cash game-style ranges. The exception to the rule is if you (think you) play way better than everyone else, but everyone I know who plays LAG in the early stages of a tournament tends to spew off stacks on a regular basis.

This is not the case in live tourneys (where your reads are way better and you can pretty much do anything you want against the worse fields), and it's not the case in 6 max tourneys where, much like short handed cash games, you'll just get slaughtered if you give your blinds away. Early in deep stack, full ring tournaments, however, 3 betting light seems to cause more problems than it solves, especially out of position and especially vs. competent, regular players that will adjust to your perceived loose range after they see it once or twice. (Quite simply, you won't get enough big hands against them in particular to make their lighter calldowns a net plus for you, especially if their perception of you persists when the antes kick in and they call your shortstack shoves light, too.)

This brings up the question "how do I get paid off on my big hands if they know what I have when I 3 bet?" One way is simply not to 3 bet early on in HU pots vs. regulars - they aren't going to happen that often, and deception in those pots, where you can have any pair, suited connectors, AQ, etc., has a lot of value. Another is to take unorthodox lines; checking instead of cbetting some flops after you 3 bet (although this has its own problems, such as the ones in the HSMTT thread), calling preflop and then c/c, bet, bet, or just outright betting into the PFR, and the good old PF call/flop checkraise (as long as you do it with a wider range than exactly an overpair) all have merit and will all win you plenty of chips with your big hands.

Bottom line: At the end of the day, like I say in my Cardrunners vids, the important thing is that you somehow get there, and in full ring games, getting there vs. people who don't suck and have tighter opening ranges than they would in cash games isn't that simple. For that reason, I prefer to simply play a TAG game (granted, with lots of little tricks to maximize the chips I get from my monsters) until the ante rounds; it's probably not optimal, but it's also the game that gets you the closest to it with the least amount of detailed reads on your opponents, something that's a big deal in tourneys where you'll never have [insert tourney regular] on your immediate [right/left] in [insert blind level] again for a few months. It also prevents unnecessary spew, a big deal for a lot of people these days.

Of course, poker is cyclical, so a lot of the tendencies described herein and in HSMTT will be totally different a year from now. Nevertheless, unless you're literally one of the top 10 players in a given tournament, you'd probably be okay 3 betting 0% of your hands until 100/200/25.