Stars Double or Nothing Strategy?

Okay so I've been playing these for a couple days now (the $1.10 turbos).. I've won 11 of 16, not stellar but still profitable. A couple of those were just unlucky, a couple were probably bad plays.

Anyway I've been playing around 13/7 (VPIP/PFR). Too tight?

I'd just like a discussion going from those of you have experience with these games. What's your strategy? Play it like a normal SnG (tight early.. start opening up and then get aggressive towards the bubble?)

With that... please discuss!

I actually don't think that's too tight for this type of game. Since it's more like a satellite and about survival rather than chip accumulation, you should be playing tighter than you would in a normal SNG during all stages, unless you have a very large or very small stack near the bubble when blinds are high.

Early on you want to wait for quality hands and good situations to increase your chip count while waiting for your opponents to make bad moves and get knocked out.

If you're short later on when the blinds are high you do need to get aggressive, open up your range, take chances and start stealing, unless other short stacks stand to be blinded out first.

Ideally you want to get a comfortable stack with minimal risk, and then just wait.

There really is no such thing as too tight. When these first opened. I was cashing 75% not even playing! I would just open them up and leave!

lol phenom! (btw, great screen name). Thanks for the responses so far.

Here's a topic for discussion. Average stacked on the bubble... how do you play?

- At this point the blinds+antes are pretty steep for an average stack
- Everyone except big stacks are going to be playing very tight
- We still need to win some chips to keep us ahead of the blinds

Do we play all-in/fold now? Do we make frequent steal attempts? What range of hands do we raise with preflop (do we ever just call? maybe AA?) and in what position. How do we deal with short-stack all-in? What do we do when big stack makes standard raise preflop if we're holding decent cards?

Anyway, I think that is the critical point in these games. Getting down to 6 players is typically pretty easy but the bubble in these is a bit tricky. Anyway.. discussion please?

if you have an average stack with just 6 players left.... i would suggest just to wait for the premium cards and get aggressive with it if you have. you would not want to be blinded out in these cases. consider also the position making sure that no raises are coming from the smaller stacks unless you have the top 5 hand... allin!! steal blinds in position almost always effective at these stage. goodluck!

When you have an average stack on the bubble, there will be players with shorter stacks in much more dire situations, so you'd need to be a huge favorite in order to get all your chips in and risk your tournament equity. There's a CardRunners video that uses an example of even stacks on the bubble, with the need to be an 83% or more favorite in order to make it OK to be all in. That's just enormous!

If the short stacks are playing too tight at this point that's their mistake. They need to be stealing much more than an average stack should. As an average stack, it's usually a mistake to shove or call with anything less than AA or KK. I think a couple of exceptions would be raising on the button with good hands against tight players with smaller (but not micro) stacks who have demonstrated a strong propensity to fold, or stealing in order to avoid giving a short-stacked player a walk in the big blind -- especially if that player is the only stack shorter than you.

On the bubble of this type of SNG, how big the blinds are in relation to your average-sized stack doesn't matter as much as the size of your opponents' stacks and their positions in relation to the blinds.

I have to remind myself of this when playing because it feels really weak to fold a hand like KJ in late position when you have an average stack late in the game and it feels totally natural to steal, but it's a risk you just don't have to take if one or more short-stacked opponents will be forced to gamble soon. Don't help them out by putting your stack on the line before you need to!

I used to play the $5.40 DoN's super tight. Things certainly change with each level. However, if you play super tight and don't leak a chip. You can make a living in the DoN's. Most people don't like them. But, if you are winning, you are winning. I would suggest playing tight and not being the COP at the table. Stay away from big pots. Don't allow your chips to enter the pot without the nuts and then punish your opponents.

Lefty

if you can double or triple your stack early on you can just about check the rest of the game and make the money. i've noticed when it's bubble time if i have enough chips to keep checking, someone else will start getting antsy and before too long a few people start going all-in, then someone gets knocked out and i profit.

Okay I just spent a couple hours 6-tabling the 1.10 turbo DoN's. Here's what I found out, at $1 level anyway.

Almost everybody plays ridiculously tight.. like <10% VP$IP. So.. STEAL STEAL STEAL!

I kept a decent stack at most tables just raising to 3-4x BB from SB,Button,CO. I fold occasionally just to keep people from deciding they're going to play back at me.

I like this move as well. However, after some time of this. The regulars will know what is going on and take advantage. Over time, the best play is tight aggressive and only put it all in when you have the absolute nuts.

Lefty

yeah that's something I'll have to adjust to when I move up limits. there are so many $1-$2 DoN's that the risk of people catching on is pretty slim. In fact I know that lots of people have caught on and they still are so tight that they won't risk anything without AA-QQ and possibly AKs.

I'm guessing the play style will start to change significantly at $5+. I'm still playing pretty tight at the beginning until I get some stats to go off of.. and I definitely pay attention to their VP$IP/PFR before I steal against them. 9/10 though I have super tight players to the left of me and can steal with impunity like 98% of the time.

I've heard that play is actually tighter at higher limits, with more players in survival mode. But "higher limits" referred to $100 vs. $10 rather than $5 vs. $1, so who knows....

Sounds like to me you would be better off putting your money on black at a roulette table if play is this tight for just double your money.

uhmm, seriously? you do know that roulette has about a 5-6% house edge so there is no way to beat it long term? conversely we have a bunch of super-tight super-predictable players and we only need to out-last 1/2 of them to cash and we only need to cash 55% of them to break even. I'm at 63% win-rate right now over 30 games.. and if you look at link at the bottom you'll see that I'm not even approaching the potential win-rate (because of my terrible plays). I have seen several people play these at a 75-80% win rate.

I guess I am just completely lost by your analogy.

http://www.cardschat.com/f57/analyzi...ns-146358-new/

I do like the super tight approach to the earlier levels, opening your range a bit over the course of the SNG. There really is no reason to get involved in large pots unless you have the nuts.

That seems to be the ideal strategy play really tight early and since they are turbos the blinds will start going up pretty quick.. it starts 10/20 by 25/50 I am typically stealing frequently from SB,BTN,CO. Most people have not loosened up at this point so it works very well. It's fun when I do get re-raised by like a 8/2 player and I insta-fold, that kinda ticks them off... they think they're gonna get action with their AA/KK.

This is sound advice I too play them like this and find them to be profitable.
That may have been the case when they first started, but there is no way you can do that now.

Summary: Set mine until the 15/30 level, fold everything else except KK and AA, then play fold or shove when you need chips. When you are low on chips, there are situations you should be shoving any two, and when you are comfortable in chips, there are situations when you should be folding AA. Also, fold equity is king. You should almost never be calling shoves (yes, there are exceptions) but doing a lot of shoving yourself. This is a game where the value of chips to your $$ equity is not even close to linear.

Long winded explanation: I have played about 500+ DoN's at the $1 level, 700+ at the $5 level, and am starting to play the $10 so I have a decent number of these under my belt with a healthy win rate. Everyone says that these games have gotten much tougher but they are still very beatable up until the $10 level at the very least. However, because they last longer now, you do have to make adjustments. Doubling up early is no guarantee to cash even at the $5 level. The major pros to playing these is that they can be mass multi tabled (I am able to profitably 40 table the $1, and 16 table the $5), and variance is low. The major cons are the skills necessary to beat these games is relatively specialized meaning it won't help your poker game much (except bubble play and satellites).

Early on, you should be playing tight because of the aforementioned importance on chip preservation. Early on, as a general rule of thumb, you need an expectation of needing to win 2 chips for every 1 chip you risk. You need a significant preflop edge to do this, or very good implied odds. This means set mine or play KK/AA only in the early few rounds. If you gain some experience, the next move would be to start stealing from regs that you are fairly certain will fold (we're talking folding to steal in the range of 85+%).

The 25/50 level is a sort of grey level where you should expand your range to maybe QQ+, AKs, but not by much. At the 50/100 level is where the shove fest starts. A couple general rules of thumb for playing shove/fold (and a couple bonus points):

1. The most important thing to consider is your relative stack size. When you are short in chips and are in the sb or on the button and it's folded to you, if the remaning players have medium stack sizes that you can hurt but not large enough that they don't care, it is a shove ATC situation (assuming they don't have like 60/10 stats). If you have like 3000 chips and another 3000 chip player shoves, this is a FOLD ATC situation (and yes I mean fold AA).

2. The number of active players remaining in the hand is VERY VERY important (kind of like position except discounted for people who have entered the pot). If there is a limper in the hand, this should discourage you from shoving because in general, you don't want to get called. If you are UTG or UTG+1, you should be shoving much tighter unless the blinds are about to cripple you (you should try to avoid situations like this but they are sometimes unavoidable).

3. The tighter the table, the more you should be shoving. It is obvious that if the players behind you are tighter, then you can shove wider because the odds of getting called are smaller. This applies for the whole table because when people are tighter, the games last longer and you need more chips to avoid getting blinded out.

4. Almost never call shoves unless you have to (this is Sklansky's gap concept to the fullest). The name of the game is stealing blinds and fold equity. You need to be at least relatively short in chips, and have a SIGNIFICANT edge on villain's range to call shoves.

5. The co-op play. In the final stages of a SnG, if you are relatively comfortable in chips, it is often profitable to call a shortstack shove and just check down the hand. The reason is that by calling, you reduce the short stackers equity in the pot (even if you are behind villains range), and the elimination of a player is of more value then your chips (again, assuming you are relatively comfortable in chips).

There is a difference between the turbo and non turbo..

First of all.. Don't make it difficult for yourself, only play the hands you are sure you win, because you only have to double 1 time your stack..

In the turbo versions, most of the times its not enough to double 1 time.. you have to keep winning hands so you dont blind dead too much

WurlyQ that's a great post. I did try chatting to you a few times in some of the PokerStars Double or Nothings, and didn't receive a reply. I have a CardsChat avatar. As I was running up to fifteen of the tables at a time I assumed that you were probably multi-tabling them, too.

I'll keep an eye out for you If you saw me at the $5s, then yeah I 16 table so I probably won't see any messages. I'm only running 6-8 $10s right now so if I'm playing $10, I'll probably see them. I try to play $10, but if the current list is overly reg infested, I'll drop to $5s so I don't waste time.

If you ever want to talk strat or peripherals (best time of day to play, reg exploitation strats, etc) send me a message on CC.

I always played the $1 ones, I actually posted something about it here:

http://www.cardschat.com/f11/moving-...othing-154795/

I read your post. It seems you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals. If you are interested in moving up, read on:

As you move up in stakes, the games will get longer and become more reg infested (better than your average joe). In order to become a solid winner, you are going to have to learn some of the math concepts behind how these work because just shoving premium hands and playing super nitty is not the optimal way to play these.

If you are interested, read up on some ICM theory and go get SnGWiz (free trial for 30 days). They get harder but there is definitely profit to be made. Good luck.