High Level Tournament Players and LowPPs

The last sunday night I decided to watch a lot of high stakes tournament games to see how they managed everything. I focused a lot on tables that Annette_15 was at and the sunday million and other big ones. The biggest thing I noticed is how much more mature the play is than a $5-$10 game, but that's to be expected. However, the HUGE difference that I saw time and time again is how people (even with very nice stax) would push and make HUGE plays with 33-77. This is a big difference from what I see done at lower level tournaments. Lower level tournaments, and what I do myself, involves high aces and high pocket pairs, and using the LPPs as speculative hands for sets, 1v1s etc.. not huge push / massive squeeze plays etc. with them
Comments... as to why this is probably done more commonly.. ? And has anyone else noticed this or agree with this statement?

I can definitely post HHs if absolutely needed I could dig up a bunch I'm sure.

I'd be interested to see some hands, but I'm guessing the answer lies in the likely range of opponents and stack sizes.

Not being a player at those levels myself I could only speculate, and seeing some hand histories would definitely be interesting.

Speculating, however, I can think of a couple of reasons why this may be the case:

- Set mining only really works at low levels because your oppoents are, typically, unobservant. At lower levels, it will rarely occur to your opponents that you could have a set. Also, lower level opponents are much happier getting all their money in with one pair - TPTK is usually considered a monster. Combined, these two things make set-mining profitable at low levels.

- As players improve though, the standard "limp in with a set and then bet when you hit" line may become less profitable, as your opponents will become suspicious and probably won't want to go broke with just one pair. So raising before the flop disguises your sets a little: if you're raising with 66 the same as you're raising with AK, and the flop comes 6TJ, then maybe you've flopped a set and you're value betting or maybe you've hit nothing and you're c-betting - you might even get someone trying to "resteal" on you. Plus there's the chance you can miss your set but still c-bet and win the pot, because you've represented a strong hand.

Ideally you'd need deeper stacks for this to work, as your set mining becomes a more expensive proposition, but if you've got the means I imagine the above will be one possible motivation.

Perfectly reasonable plan, and I often play small pocket pairs this way myself.

However, it read to me like OP was suggesting he saw all-in moves with weak pairs.

Oops - reads that way to me too, now that I look again!

That being the case I'd be interested to see if these players were making these moves specifically with low-medium pairs, or whether they were making the same plays with connectors and unpaired paint hands.

What'd I'd suspect they're doing is making read and situation-based plays where they don't really want to get called, and the cards they're holding aren't so much expected to win them the hand as just give them some chance in the event that they're called. In theory, they're probably capable of making the same plays with any two cards.

I'm assuming these were bluffs. Then if called (usually premiums), you have decent equity. AK you're flipping with and AA-however low they'll go down to call, you're getting 20%. Much better to make the play with that hand than something like A5 where you're likely dominated. Also, low pocket pairs can be played aggressively early on, ie most likely A5 gets open folded where a low PP can be raised. When they got raised they probably thought they were being 3-bet light and shoved knowing that first off they get folds a lot here and second off if they do have a premium worth calling with they at least have some equity (although 20% isn't great lol).

dang it.. hand histories of foreign tables are only saved temporarily on my computer as it turns out - i thought it kept them. i'll do a repeat sesh and see if i observe similar interesting plays.

interesting comments though. ty