Why do super-loose ATC players always have the biggest stacks?

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bdc100

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I've noticed this in freerolls, micro-stakes, and low buy-in MTTs.

These players generally limp preflop with ATC and consistently hit monster hands. They're passive postflop and only aggressive if they hit their monster. And they rarely bluff.

Strangely, the tight players usually have smallest stacks.

I know you're supposed to raise really big like 8-12 BB to knock out all the limpers but how can this be correct if you hold a mediocre hand like J8s? I think often no one at the table has a hand good enough to justify a 8-12 BB raise, so is this just a pure bluff?

I'm confused because these super-loose passive players are playing the opposite of most advice I've read in poker literature & forums.
 
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Usually they are the luckiest of the large bunch that have been playing that way:)
 
Gabinho12345

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Most of those types of players are out in early stages of tournaments but if they get lucky they have huge chip stacks.
 
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Dan Lucas

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I agree with gabinho. These players go all-in early and get lucky. It would be a different answer if it was always the same players, but it is always someone different. they just decide to make big moves early and if they don't pan out, they can always go to another tournament. I believe it is just the nature of these stakes, and you just have to stick with your own strategy to find out what works for you.
 
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bnasp2

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I don't agree. There is no single winning strategy. They just have strategy which is good enough for freerolls and you are one of the players mad with such strategy and feeding them chips.
You cannot expect to punish their "bad" strategy in couple of hands. That's exacty how they build their stacks. Other people get mad, try to punish them asap, at best in next 3 hands and boom, push whole stack with good pair.

All you need to do is play good game. Be in position, raise reasonably (not all-in) with nice hands with good postflop game. Control the pot. If you loose couple of pots, so what? You just need to win other couple of pots, and bigger pots.

So for me, biggest mistake is a try to punish those guys by going all-in on flop where you hit a bit. As you said, they will only call with monster.
 
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bdc100

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Dan Lucas said:
I agree with gabinho. These players go all-in early and get lucky. It would be a different answer if it was always the same players, but it is always someone different. they just decide to make big moves early and if they don't pan out, they can always go to another tournament. I believe it is just the nature of these stakes, and you just have to stick with your own strategy to find out what works for you.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree with both of you ..I've already noticed these players rarely (never) repeat their great performance, so it was one-time pure luck.

But it's annoying (tilt-inducing) to observe these weak players building a big stack.
 
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bdc100

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bnasp2 said:
I don't agree. There is no single winning strategy. They just have strategy which is good enough for freerolls and you are one of the players mad with such strategy and feeding them chips.
You cannot expect to punish their "bad" strategy in couple of hands. That's exacty how they build their stacks. Other people get mad, try to punish them asap, at best in next 3 hands and boom, push whole stack with good pair.

All you need to do is play good game. Be in position, raise reasonably (not all-in) with nice hands with good postflop game. Control the pot. If you loose couple of pots, so what? You just need to win other couple of pots, and bigger pots.

So for me, biggest mistake is a try to punish those guys by going all-in on flop where you hit a bit. As you said, they will only call with monster.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I agree with you too ..just ignore their stupid play & luck and not get angry and try to punish them (which I do).

I must just play my own game (which is actually fairly good). I do much better when I buy-in to a game instead of playing a freeroll.

By far my biggest leak is a poor mental attitude. I guess I'll get Tendler's book "The Mental Game of Poker" ..I think that will help me a lot, because my actual game play is pretty decent.
 
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UrsinusMaximus

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If there was only a few players using the ATC strategy, I would be very surprised to see any of them with large stacks, as it is -EV shoving anything less than QQ when you are very deep.
The reality is that there are many such players in freerolls etc, and therefore when with in the first 5 hands three such ATC players decide to go all in with KT against 98s against A2, one of them is bound to triple up and end up with a massive chip stack for that stage of the tourney.
This is usually temporary though as anyone who plays consistently like this is likely to lose those extra chips.
 
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