Dan Harrington's Zone System

Has anyone here read Dan Harrington's books and is familiar with the Zone system he describes? In particular, he mentions that once your chip stack gets to a point where M is between 10-20, that you should avoid playing small pairs and suited connectors.

Now is he referring to playing those types of hands from early/middle position or playing them at all? I found it wasn't quite clear in his book. For those that aren't familiar, Dan breaks down your chip stack relative to the SB/BB/Ante. For example, let's say you're sitting with 10,000 in chips and SB is 500, BB 1000, and Ante is 500. Total of SB/BB/Ante is 2,000 so your M = 10,000 / 2,000 = 5.

Under his system he breaks down various styles of play depending on where your M currently is as follows:

M > 20 = Comfort Zone - Normal style of play

M 10-20 = Yellow Zone - Avoid small pairs / sConn's, bet aggresively with high cards.

M 6-10 = Orange Zone - Restrict raises to when you're first into the pot unless holding a premium hand. Pocket pairs and suited connectors now regain their value if you are faced with an All-In scenario

M 1-5 = Red Zone - Only bet should be All-In preferrably with you first to act.

M < Pot = Dead Zone - First into the pot before the blinds, players may not call if you are in early position due to fear of someone coming over the top.


In particular, what I'm most interested in is with respect to the changes in playing suited connectors and small to mid pairs and why that reveral takes place and whether he's suggesting we don't play them at all or only play them in late position.

He means avoid them completely. Small pocket pairs and suited connectors are implied odd hands, ie. hit it or quit it type hands. You don't have enough chips to plays hands in this manner when you have an M of >20. At least that is the point he makes in his book.

They can be used to make steals in late position but that is something different than what he is specifically talking about when he says to stop playing PP's and SC's with an M>20.

You don't have the implied odds for playing these kinds of hands as mentioned above.
If you're choosing to play them you will inevitably be spewing chips and unecessarily be depleting your stack. When you're at this stage, often times you'll be playing hands where it's all going in after the flop (or at least be playing hands preflop where you'll be keeping that in mind).

Yes, He is saying to throw these hands away when you start to drop into the yellow zone with a m less than 20. But also you were mistaken about something, he says that in the red zone, small pairs and suited conn. regain their value and to be aggressive with them, not in the orange zone. These hands are unplayable in the yellow and orange zones because the implied odds don't show a profit often enough to make up for when you don't hit. The reason for being aggressive with SP's and SC's in the red zone is because
1. you will be very short stacked
2. any bet should be all in bet
3. your bet will be called and probabaly by multiple opponents
4. small pairs and suited connectors play well in multiway pots.

luckytokenz said:

Yes, He is saying to throw these hands away when you start to drop into the yellow zone with a m less than 20. But also you were mistaken about something, he says that in the red zone, small pairs and suited conn. regain their value and to be aggressive with them, not in the orange zone. These hands are unplayable in the yellow and orange zones because the implied odds don't show a profit often enough to make up for when you don't hit. The reason for being aggressive with SP's and SC's in the red zone is because
1. you will be very short stacked
2. any bet should be all in bet
3. your bet will be called and probabaly by multiple opponents
4. small pairs and suited connectors play well in multiway pots.

Click to expand...

1) true
2) true
3) true
4) I disagree. When in the RedZone, you're in shove/fold mode (true), SC & low pp are hands that if called will fair pretty well and have showdown value. There's no reference by Harrinton that when you shove in RedZone you're doing so with considerartions of multiple callers.... and that these hands play well in multi-way pots. These hands 'do' play well in multi-way pots but this is in reference to early levels &/or when we're playing deepstacked poker and we're either able to call behind and see a flop for cheap, or we're closing out the action on a raised pot with mult-callers on a deepstack.
I'm perceiving poster above here to have confused the two concepts here.
.... Low pp's, & SC go up in value when you're in the RedZone because a) we're just hoping to take down the blinds, & b) if called we're often in pretty good shape (ie. coinflip or perhaps 1 2to1 dog at worst unless a big pr.)

As for the reference to mutiple callers....He defines it as first in vigorish, so as you stated you would like to take the pot down uncontested. Sorry I was confused about sp's and sc's playing well in early vs. late multiway pots, I guess i was assuming that even though you might have first in vig. you may still be called by multiple opponets, which led me to believe that they play well in the redzone with multiple opponents, but not orange and yellow (even though your main goal is to steal, or isolate)

i got my HEM set up so the names are in either red,orange,yellow, or green pending on the stack size. in yellow zone i agree you just dont got enough chips to play these hands for value. although i will play these hands allin more often. i'm starting to treat the yellow zone more like the red zone. and think its been helping out. about the SC's i'd like to push w/ these as i'm most often live. but i tend to do it in later position so i get fewer callers. but at that point i dont mind more callers better odds.

dumpy620_84 said:

For example, let's say you're sitting with 10,000 in chips and SB is 500, BB 1000, and Ante is 500. Total of SB/BB/Ante is 2,000 so your M = 10,000 / 2,000 = 5.

Click to expand...

As I recall M is calculated as: BB+SB+(# of players at table x Ante) = M

M represents the total cost for you to sit through a cycle around the table and since you pay the ante every hand you have to account for this.

So in your example (assuming a FR table)
M = 1000 + 500 + (9 x 500)
M = 100 + 500 + 4500
M = 6000

So 10,000/6000 = M = 1.67

ColdHardMetal said:

As I recall M is calculated as: BB+SB+(# of players at table x Ante) = M

M represents the total cost for you to sit through a cycle around the table and since you pay the ante every hand you have to account for this.

So in your example (assuming a FR table)
M = 1000 + 500 + (9 x 500)
M = 100 + 500 + 4500
M = 6000

So 10,000/6000 = M = 1.67

Click to expand...

I do believe when he says Ante - 500.. he's referring to the sum of the antes is equal to '500'

Card player, I have HEM and the holdem and tournement indicator and the indicator is what i have been using for a quick refrence to my m, but how do i set up HEM for the color coded stacks. I knew you could modify things like this, but i'm relativly new to the software so any help would be greatly appreciated. And if you know any links that will help break-down on how to analyze the stats and what are key stats to use, I would be most grateful. I have over 30k hands tracked, but the sad thing is, I don't know how to run sessions or reports and I'm not to clear on how to use the program to know what i'm exactly doing wrong and right. Thank you!

luckytokenz

there is a post b icemonkey9 as far as what stats are good and what they mean. the post is "Icemonkey9 plays 10nl " there are video's there. there lots of info here on this site. and if you post a question i'm sure they can answer better than i. but to adjust the colors i did it under hud options/player preferences then you'll see add. name and color's on the right. i did have to adjust my screen res. to get it on the screen. i did the stacks to blind ratio. as for the antees and # of players i don't beleive you can do that.