Working on my preflop late-game
Posted by Heisenberg
Posted by
Heisenberg
posted in
Low Stakes
Working on my preflop late-game
As a bit of background to my post, I started playing poker in small stakes cash games, and more recently in live cash games too, however MTTs have been my primary online game for the last 18 months or more. I've dabbled in PLO, HUNL and a few other formats with limited success. I have about $7,000 in online winnings over around 1300 MTTs at ABI $10, a sample size which may or may not be relevant to this post or in general.
Coming from a cash background, I'm pretty comfortable hand reading and playing postflop in the deep stacked early portion of the tournament, however I feel that I have big leaks when it comes to the <40bbb stage, specifically in deciding whether to fold/call/3bet/4bet facing a raise or 3bet, and picking spots to 3bet bluff. In a full ring tournament I typically find myself putting raisers on strong ranges at all times and thus folding some pretty strong hands myself in LP, when I get lost and feel my hand is too weak to 3bet but that it's also incorrect to flat call with shortening stacks/OOP. Conversely, when I do attempt to open up my 3betting range, I often find myself getting played back at or running in to hands, wasting some sizeable stacks in the process. My spot-picking is obviously off here, so I revert to a nitty cards-oriented late game, which has served me okay in part but is certainly not optimal even at low stakes. Since this part of a MTT is where the money is made, it's kind of a big fundamental part of my game that I need to improve on.
So what I'm asking for is suggestions on how to work at this. I've tried reviewing my HHs for spots where I could have made a light 3bet, or ones where I've tried getting out of line and failed, but these hands are usually as difficult on review as in game. Training videos are helpful and the explanations make sense at the time but ultimately I can't seem to translate what I see in them into an overall preflop strategy. The same goes for discussing hands on Skype etc.
I realise this is a pretty vague/broad post, I guess what I'm trying to achieve is to break out of the solid, ABC style and start finding spots where I can pick up chips without always having the goods. Which is what seems to separate the really good players in any tournament. Preflop raising wars feel like a bit of a guessing game to me, and usually I tend to end up getting myself on the wrong end of them!
Cheers.
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Hey Heisenberg,
I'm a casual MTT player, but seeing no one has added any comments I'll give it a shot. I've been told to open less marginal hands early mid such as A9o KJ, KT QJ.. and focus more on resteal/shove spots at around the 20bbs level so you gain alot of chips pre without showdown .. of course to make a play you must have a good read on the player . from 20bb to 40bb you have some room to manoeuvre but try to atk the lower stacks and avoid some big confrontations with marginal hands ..
hope it helps
It's a tough question to answer because it's so vague. I will say generally a good rule of thumb is to bluff with hands near the bottom of your calling range that are also in the bottom 1/3rd or so of your opponents opening range. If someone opens UTG it's not a good "spot" to three bet with 95s, every hand he has is better than yours.
OP has a problem I can identify with but can no longer play with, being in the States and away from tourneys as deep as even like 300 players. Sigh. I remember the FTP days, with 1k runners galore in 3.00 no rebuy 9 hour marathons. The 200$ I scored in 37th place of one with (gasp) 3900 almost got me to the WPT in Los Angeles during the best satellite day of my life. But I digress.
He might be playing in fields that are way too large, where early accumulation of chips is absolutely essential and without which the rest of the tourney does indeed boil down to the that middling ~35ish stack that needs to win about three flips over 8 short blind periods to contend on even a minor level.
Yes, amazing hand-to-hand play does come into play more so in these deep stacked tourneys, but so does variance and getting strong hands in key spots*. In a lot of videos I've seen, the pros admit this themselves.
Remember, their success typically comes from playing many, many tournaments at a time over the course of a day, making proper decisions and maximizing their ev when the variance presents itself. The 2 or 3 hands you may choose to re-steal or bluff typically won't define the entire tourney but the chips you make there will aid during the times of previous mention +ev bingo spots like that time you limped the BB with 66 to the chipleader and flopped a set. No fancy play there but of course having a few more chips will help when you get more**.
The long and short of it is basically to try a smaller tourney or MTSNGs(sic) where you can narrow down the variance by lieu of a shorter time span. An important key to playing MTTs is finding the structures you like to play and have an edge in. I mean, you got those guys who play exclusively HU MegaUltra Turbos Sngs, so who knows.
OP might not be one of those players who thrives on steals and resteals with abandon. Not for nothing, and not to simplify it in any way, but those types of players usually present a pretty wild image for most of the time on the table, not ultra-selectively, and that's why it works. If OP is talking about proper mathematically induced shoves and raises, Jono's play in his Bigger 105$ video ( http://www.runitonce.com/pro-training/videos/jono5/ ) illustrates these pretty well, through practice and I believe some theory or theory bred through practice.
Hope that helps.
Cliffs:
-Cut your cloth to suit your needs, my Mom always said.
-If you try to switch to style of play that makes you uncomfortable,
expect to take some losses until you adjust to the new leaks that come
with it, simply put, as well.
*Also of note is one of my sentiments, echoed by Paul Senter, of proper decision-making throughout the tourney. In a longer tourney more of these are required as well, and more of those will require more mental stamina, of course. Duh.
**Jono Crute's mantra of your chips being worth more put into stark reality here considering double-up math, made even more awesome by our flopped set up there.
As I live and breathe. The first 120 seconds of Paul Senter's: http://www.runitonce.com/pro-training/videos/senter40/ should give you one example of a multitude of considerations. His intonation at 1.5 speed is impeccable.
Some people say there is no flatting at final-stages of tournaments, either 3bet or fold. I disagree.. My strategy for late stages are aggressive, putting pressure with blockers, and avoid gap-button steal. sometimes, if folded to me on the button I tend to fold, same as sb vs bb... so when im at hijack or cuttoff, people will give you more credit and not play back light as often. But with hands that have great value but not to the poing of inducing/getting it in, suck as KQs, AJs, KJs, AQ, even AQs sometimes, middle pairs.. in position I tend to flat them to avoid turning those hands into a bluff. It all depends on the player but I like re-stealing from the blinds MP/LP openners with a couple blockers.
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