ft super turbo

hi all
just been railing a few high stakes super turbo's
on ft
is there any skill involved in these ?
seems to me its just shove and pray
i see quite a few pro's playing these
do they have an edge ?
if so how ?
why would a good player play these ?
seems to me good players would play in longer tourney's
so they have a good advantage
just curious
any thoughts

I've always looked at them as coinflip matches too. I couldn't grasp how it could be anything but, when you start at 10bb and go down from there. But some of our regular players here corrected me on that in another thread. Apparently there is some strategy to it, but you're right that most top players prefer a deeper and slower format which always favors a higher skillset. Not sure why pros are playing in them other than just promoting them -- the sites often require their sponsored pros to "slum it" with us common folk in all the different games.

I think many of the pros play them for the same reason that regular players play them. They are quick and can be fun. Yes good players want to play longer, but they don't always want to grind out 6 or 7 hour tourneys.

There's so much action early on that the chip stacks can add up quickly and then it becomes more like a regular tourney after the first few rounds.

Main thing is though that they are just quick.

Poker is Poker. A Good Player is a Good Player.

They play because they think they can win.



There is pretty much no post flop action until later in the game. Its still about getting your money in good.

I've played up the 5$ and 10$ level six max super turbos, very weak play at 5, and not much better at 10. The thing is, you can just get a bad run of games and completely destroy your BR.

My strategy...

Early: Wait, watch. People get out fast. Stay as tight as possible... you start with 300, try and stay above 200, fold equity is very important.

Bubble: It gets here quite fast with the blinds. By now you should have a rough sketch of your opponents tendencies... steal as much as you can, bully the player(s) with medium stacks. Be prepared for some really terrible play.

ITM, heads up: Only two people cash, try your best to win, but honestly its a crapshoot heads up, either you have similar stacks or you're an underdog. Very rarely are you the bigstack. Bigstack is the easiest to play, underdog is hardest...

Ive just got one problem with this... If reading it correctly this is only reffering to the times you are heads up and typically it should be about a 50/50 underdog to bigstack ratio if we're talking just about the times you get to the heads up. Even if you do play it close to the chest you've got to expect that sometimes you're going to take out another bigstack at the table before the heads up. Then you also got to account for the times when the stacks are about even, but what I am trying to say is strickly about being underdog vs. bigstack because there are only two peeps left.

played a couple of those, not really my thing. what i would do is wait for AT+ or pocket pairs and move all in.

Basically whenever I play I get one double up and steal to maintain it... so I usually end up with 500-700 chips heads up, and I let the other guy do the actual knock outs giving him them remaining 1200 or so chips. If I'm knocking two people out, I'll have about 900 and so will he... there are no calling/weak raise pots when I play, its raise all in or fold, and every raise basically putting yourself or your opponent all in because there is no other raise you can make that's worth it, its literally shove or fold. So I'm either an underdog with half the other guy's chips or about even. To be bigstack I would have to have knocked out 3 or more people, I play too tight to do that.