[fivebyfive]

Some thoughts and questions from my perspective. First, is this a freezeout or can you rebuy? That would change my approach for sure. If a freezeout, you can throw my maniac statement out the window. If you can rebuy, it still may not make much sense. It matters more in huge MTT fields, where we need to build stacks to progress to meaningful parts of tournaments with say 1000-person fields. In a 27 player field, we can play more solid poker, still aggressive, but likely no need to push every edge or take every gamble/flip.

I still haven’t played all the much live since Covid, and I worry that I may struggle adjusting back to the live game now that I’m used to HUDs etc. But I always focus first on stacks and pot size. If we can’t account for that, we can’t make good decisions. I then focus on the action. Rather than knowing something like “this player 3 bet 8% of hands,” I just try to classify players in terms of opening (RFI) and 3 betting as either tight, standard, or loose. This helps me then adjust my approach to their play. If I can track on those things along with the kinds of sizing and action tells postflop, that is more than enough to keep me busy.

GL, keep us posted on how it goes!

[maxchaos]

Thanks, Chris.

There are rebuys through I think like 5 levels. And almost everybody seems to rebuy.

I cashed the first one I played taking 4th on a single bullet. This last time around I ran into a cooler with 94o in the BB on a flop of 99x where the villain turned over A9 scooping a big chunk of my stack. I recognized it as a cooler, yet also realized I was so heavy in the hand when I flopped the set and trying to think through everything that I never considered a potential boat with 2 other players still involved. Not sure I would have bet as big as I did on the river considering the same. That’s when I knew I need to figure out the information overload part.

I went ahead with another bullet, although at that point the BB ante was picking up speed. It chewed through my stack pretty fast. Exercised some short stack play and doubled up to stay alive, yet ultimately washed out pretty early. Considering the cooler and the large % of my stack lost, I knew it to be ‘just poker’.

After the fact I’m rethinking if rebuys will be profitable over the long term considering factors above. Specifically the BB ante. If I’m not hitting cards, the prevalence of multi-way pots and passive post-flop calling makes fold equity less effective. When it comes time to rebuy my chances of cashing are substantially less unless I get hit with the deck or have some key short-stack double ups.

I’m now thinking solid, TAGish poker on a single bullet is the way to go. Maybe some floating in the early stages to try and complete some draws.

The other key is player profiling. I’ve already picked up a few tendencies from some players (e.g., one older gentleman who will chase EVERY draw to the river) along with some overbetters likely trying to bully bluff pots, etc.

I’m going to build a doc in my phone so I can make notes on these players during the breaks and farm the exploits over time.

And I am looking forward to playing with some of these tougher, more well-rounded players and learning from their approach / action.

It is good to be back in a live environment and the same will definitely help to prepare for my twice-yearly Vegas trip now that travel is an option.

[rabman50]

League play is interesting because the cast of characters is the same each time. I like to open a One Note page and take notes on tendencies that I observe. I can then take these notes home and expand on them to come up with the best way to approach each of the players. Here is an example of the notes I took for a league I was in a few years ago. BTW I went on to win the whole thing and a WSOP Main Event seat. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (although none of these players were very innocent….lol).

Players at my table going left

Player one – Competent

Player two – Standard

Play three – Straight Forward

Player Four – Standard

Player Five – Tight Aggressive – If he open raises pre he has top 5% of hands. Maybe 2% and willing to go all the way. Does not open very wide.

Player six – Newbie. Proven to be more competent than originally thought.

The other table

Player seven – Little older than the rest. Had a big stack at final table. Came in second. Quit the league

Player eight – The Administrator

Player nine – Older guy like me. The tightest player I have ever seen. In his 70’s

Player ten – known

Player eleven – not as loose here as the BPPL

Player twelve – very aggressive and thinking player. He is able to read opponent hands very well. Opens wide so have to be careful when it looks like he missed the flop. He will give anyone in this league a lot of credit when you 3bet against his open. Example: He opened and I 3bet with AK. He called. Checked to me on an Ace high flop and folded queens face up. Opportunity in the future to use this against him.

Player thirteen – Thinks he is the best player in the league. Makes comments like “Keep playing that crap”.

[maxchaos]

Congrats on winning the whole sh’bang, Rob.

As I’ve thought more about it, that’s exactly the approach I’m going to take. Build a Google sheet w/ each player or doc, capture game night notes separately, and then build a database on each person when I have time to assimilate everything that happened. I like the extended tendencies and possible exploits you captured as well.

As you said, it’s the same people every week, which makes it ripe for such record keeping. And I’m betting not many are doing the same.

The other thing is no more rebuys. The 4th place finish I took I won 4 1/2 buy-ins. So the one rebuy and one entry fee in my second game cut my overall profit in 1/2 and didn’t really move me that much closer to a cash that night. The one exception would be a cooler very early where the rebuy happens ahead of the BB ante being significant.

If I can’t make it work with one bullet, wait for next time. Focus on overall profitability, improving my comfort in ‘live’ situations, and having fun.

[danw]

Hi Max, I played in an online league like this during the pandemic and did very well. Here was a couple things I picked up, that I would be curious to hear other’s thoughts on as some of this might apply to small field tournaments. It also might be totally wrong, but worked for me.

– Allow others to make the mistakes. If you find 10-15 or so people are going out on obvious misplays each week, let them. Try to catch some of the punts if you can, but also you don’t really need to be taking a bunch of 50/50 spots to chip up if you can get super far by just folding and letting others screw up. You might only need one or two good hands to be in a good position. The notes on player tendencies will be super helpful for this. If you are a couple away from the money and see some known punters (that certainly won’t understand ICM) at the FT. Let them screw up even if it means passing up some proper GTO jamming spots. You can afford to wait even if you get super short.

– Understand what they don’t understand: Something like position is only valuable if the other player plays their advantage with that position. If people behind you are going to play face up betting if they have something and checking if they don’t it takes away their positional advantage. If you can play the HJ like the button if the people behind you are not going to run a 3 street bluff based on the board texture, it allows you to play more speculative hands from earlier position. You can lose a bunch of small multi-way pots, but you need the discipline to keep the pot small and not get too fancy. This is something I struggle with. Back to my first point, I try to get too fancy and play more hands pre-flop, but then try to get fancy post-flop with calling stations. I could get down to 1/2 stack losing small pots cause I was a much better 20bb player than most of the player pool and could come back from the dead a lot. Like Chris said in a 1000 player tournament this is not a good strategy as you now need to double way more times to be in contention, but in a small field with players you have a clear post-flop edge on? You want to open up with those speculative drawing hands as you may not have many opportunities.

– What works as a 3-bet, what doesn’t: I think the other thing to think about is why 3-bet. My understanding (and this might be wrong), is that 3-bets are good for isolating players so you play against fewer cards and making sure no one behind you can squeeze. I think a good question is, will anyone behind me squeeze with anything other than premiums? If they don’t this allows you to overcall with some speculative hands and see a flop with hands that can make the nuts in a multi-way pot. I often found myself making disciplined folds pre-flop and watching a big pot develop that I would have won because others are calling with a ton of garbage. For example, if you can lose small pots with small pocket pairs but crush it if you hit a set, folding smaller pocket pairs to an UTG raise and a call might be “correct” but if you know you won’t get squeezed from behind and the EP players aren’t clearly telegraphing pairs that dominate you, see what happens. What hands you do want to 3-bet/squeeze are hands that can get dominated by a bunch of callers. If people are overcalling with KQ or AQ or even AK sometimes, then you want to 3-bet your hands (KJ,AJ,A10 etc.) where you are thinking I could get exactly the flop I want here and still lose because someone is passively playing a stronger hand.

-Sizing: The other thing is sizing. Nothing is worse than 3-betting a speculative hand or squeezing with AJs and then 4 players call. You hit your A and lose all your chips to a random two pair (108s) or AQ. I have found I need to go big to get folds from trash. Like when people are saying, “Woah too expensive for my taste”, that is the sweet spot. Then you can be like, “Oh darn no action with KK” while you quietly put Q8s in the muck. The 3-bet huge and small c-bet to see if you get raised if you do get called is pretty effective.

Let me know what you think. I think this can create a lot of bad habits for stronger games, but I found it to be an effective strategy.

[maxchaos]

Very good stuff, Dan. Thanks for passing it along.

Definitely tuned into the comment about betting big enough to get some folds, at least on occasion. I have noticed in the two games that I have played that folks are VERY passive and there are tons of multi-way pots. What I now need to do is pay attention to the opening raise sizes that are getting the 2 – 3 callers and any that aren’t and experiment with some larger opens that doesn’t have everybody coming along for the ride.

That was definitely an area I was struggling with last game. Open something from early position that should be considered for strength and watching 3 people behind me call.

I did use it to my advantage with when I flopped a boat and knowledge that the older gentleman mentioned in my previous entry would call and he did. Flop and turn. I made a sizeable river bet thinking he would call that too and he showed me that he was (true to form) chasing his draw and didn’t get there. But the look on his face said, ‘I don’t want to fold even missing my draw, but that river bet is big enough I guess I have to’. Missed value.

Also like the emphasis on small ball overall and recognizing it’s going to be a fair number of multi-way pots, so play hands that have a chance to get there on the turn, etc., somewhat disguised.

Lots of good ideas in your post I’ll be putting to use! Thanks for weighing in!