A new strategy to beat the online world..... |
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Posted Fri May 25, 2007 8:48 am GMT by Ciso_B
Feign weakness to beat your opponents
I have been thinking lately, that poker tournaments are becoming less and less about preservation of chips, survival and prudence and more agressive with no regard to staying alive in a tournament. I am not saying this is a good or bad thing, but its hard to counter playng against players that will willingly call your reraise or re raise you liberally because they only care about winning. The edge I felt I used to have when I used to play was that with the fields I was playing people were not so easy to move all in or call allins for that matter,so stealing blinds and making moves post flop were rewarded. Maybe , these are the same players that have simply improved or are different players playing higher buy ins but it's frustrating and hard to beat. I wouldn't say I feel inferior them , they're agressive tournament players who understand rightfully that the money we're playing for is in those top 3-5 spots, and they will fight tooth and nail to get it .
Anyway the point I am getting on to, is that I feel I have a strategy of beating this style of opponent. I've been on tables in $150 Freezeouts before where everyone is playing LAG and all ins are prevalent and I have foolishly not adapted and tried fighting fire with fire - this was obviously a mistake and it cost me potential Final Tables. But now I think the best way to beat the players, is to feign weakness and let them kill each other. These guy's will have no fear striking again and again if they see a player showing weakness, I know I used to be the player firing 3 shells! lol.
I am not saying wait just for monsters, I am saying do moves like this - limp in mid, then maybe after another limper comes in the Sb/Bb will raise it up sensing tentativeness ( I see this happen alot!) so re riase it, obviously move is best served if you are not totally committed but if you are hey move in if you have fold equity , its true you are playing on an element of guesswork but if executed right its dead money alot of the time in my opinion. So thats 1 ,limp/re raise.These players are agressive but I also know they are aware of strong moves, limp re raise is a set being trap most of the time and it is convincing.
Another is to check/raise. Alot of the time when lp raises I might flat call with a hand like A-10 in the blinds then miss and lead and get re raised, I will frustratingly pass and probably been outplayed through position, I used to think, man I didn't hit but at least I tried. But check raising (regardless if you hit or not) is also more convincing and better way to go, if you call then lead out into an agressive player ...You look weak! So check raise is definitely a good one.
Flat call a flop bet then lead very strong on the turn, this is a tricky one (esp if you don't hit )but one i like, you get the opponent to bet the flop, lets say for arguments sake you miss (makes the hand much easier to release) then you lead the turn hard, like 2/3 pot, this guy has to have a very strong hand to continue, and it works a high % of time I have found.
Another one that they dread is when you re raise an amount that commits you but doesn't put you all in, these guys always think you got Aces/Kings when this play is executed so instead of re raising the lp allin with your trash, (does look like a re steal, moving all in against a lp raiser) then re raise to commit, you take away the fact he has position cos he knows your first to bet and it's all going in on the flop. Now his 8-8 doesnt look so good , and you take the chips.
Then , you can always hope to hit, if you hit , check/call flop and turn bets then value bet river in hope or if you think he ll fire again, check again. Again, the worry is the element of guesswork, but no way of winning is easy is it? If I have A-Q call raise , flop A-2-7- I will gladly check call, alot of the time the opponent will put me on a hand like A-5 and think his bluff will get through if he continues to fire.
It's important to adapt obviously, if my table is weak I will play agressive poker again, but while times are how they are in the online mtt world this way of plaiyng might be the way to go. Player's prey on weakness , so they don't need hands right ? Well act weak then, you want them to fire at you. The beauty of this is, when you are sitting at the final table of a big mtt, people will still pin you for a rock when in reality you've stollen your way to get there. Hope this helps.
Ciso
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Posted Fri May 25, 2007 10:59 am GMT by kompis
Yeah i pretty much agree with alot of what is said here ciso. I remember u whining etc for a couple of months and i was telling u the online mtt game had changed. Glad to see u have put that poker mind to work and adapted. A warning to begginers though; these moves that ciso has recommended are good moves on the right player... In these $100 buy in + mtts every young punk thinks they can put the hurt on you, so it is good to adapt. But you may come across a table where ... beleive it or not.... nearly all the players are tight and all the guys to your left are certainly tight. If this is the case then you must adapt once more....
Its posts like these that are making the online game much harder to keep up with; a good player makes some suggestions then all the shoals of fish do the moves religiously and to the death.. then u have to change up your game again to counter-act these moves which every1 seems to be doing. I remember about a year ago squeeze plays were v rare and no1 would know what u were up to, and it would nearly always succeed.... now u can witness them getting rightly called down by hands as weak as A10 and the squeezer embarrisingly turning over sumthing like 8 4. The moves listed by ciso and probably others elsewhere on the internet counter-act the laggy tendancies of the higher buy in mtts right now. To realise these were the right plays to do would have taken time, trial and error , much effort - along with the buy ins to numuerous mtts in which to experiment these things... While i beleive the game naturaly changes as different moves become popular and more people start doing them... i cant help feeling annoyed when i read posts like this....
What is the point of this post? Players including myself have (like you) spent alot of money, time and heartache reaching good conclusions on ways to counteract certain patterns taht arise in the game over weeks and months... then some1 decides to educate every1 and in all teh big forums u see it...... posts their winning techniques. And you can really pick out when people have implemented these things into their games when u make it late on in mtts. You see sum1 doing an exact move that has just been described in a forum u are this very minute browsing. Much like someone would cut and paste something they liked from an essay into their own coursework - it looks good and works v well so why not? Does the fellow who does this deserve the benefits? i don't know. We are standing on the shoulders of giants though, if not for the poker greats who wrote such works as supersystem, theory of poker, harrington on holdem .. the list goes on.. then i dont think i would be playing this game for serious cash. So while these educators can seem to be annoying... i guess they are good in the long run, as its the players who can adapt that will keep winning. And these players who post suggestions and their winning techniques are in a strange way furthuring their own game - as people begin to emulate and realise the strategies of the former... he can be v aware that he will have to think up some new things soon.
To conclude I think its a good post, well thought out and well intentioned. The moves listed are the same as i would employ and have done if the circumstances are correct. Circumstances are everything in poker.
Keep up the good work Baldo
Posted Fri May 25, 2007 1:26 pm GMT by MrDarling
The good players are the one who adapt to the game AS IT PLAYED.
sure loads of fish will read advice like this and abuse it. But a good player will easily and quickly adapt to that as well.
you can almost never educate the fish.
Loads of player who read Super System for the first time go and lose lots more money simply because they do not understand how to take that information and use it in their game. And every time you read such a book, you understand how little you understood it the first time.
Great post Ciso.
Posted Fri May 25, 2007 8:30 pm GMT by MilkyPirate
Great post. A+++++++
I love this game of poker where it's a constant struggle to outmind-f*ck your opponent. It can be frustrating at times, but if you can do it, you'll reek the benefits.
Good job Ciso in consistently trying to outmind-f*ck everyone!
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