Bwammo
DragTheBar Coach
Silver Level
Been reading a lot of talk about regs(regulars) and how to deal with them in these forums so I just thought I'd chime in on the matter. Btw, these ideas sprang from the bellies of STTs, but apply to most tournament games.
These days there are regs at every level and every type of game. Typically, for every reg at the table, you will lose a portion of your ROI. This is NOT always the case as there are varying degrees of reg-dom.
Some regs are spewtards who just happen to play enough to catch your eye. Most regs fall into a middle category where they know enough about the game to avoid losing(they’re good at folding), but haven’t sustained any sort of large profit. There are certainly a few(very few) regs who…well lets just say they’re tough. Maybe they’ll 3-bet wide or float in position waiting to bluff. Maybe they’ll limp AA from the SB into your BB and trap your ass.
The key is recognizing who is who. In order to properly do that you need tools at your disposal, like a HUD or sharkscope, and you need to know what the maximum ROI at your level is. If the player is around 20% of the maximum ROI for your level, you can go ahead and assume he’s simply good enough to fold his crappy hands but is liable to play hands too aggressive or make overcalls(essentially play like a noob who just read their first book). If the player is around 50% of the maximum ROI, we can deduce that the player is solid…but either a little too solid or a little too loose. The only ways to find out what type they really are is to either look at some HUD stats or just play a few hands against the dude. Of course, if you scope someone and find out that they are right near the top of the ROI food-chain, you can assume they are experienced and well-rounded players.
Jumping back to my original thought that regs don’t always decrease your ROI…if you know what you’re up against, you can play accordingly.
Lets say we’re on a table on the button and someone pops it 3x from CO-1. Typically we just fold our non-premium hands and move on. But, we’ve got a note on the raiser saying he’s in the 50% of max ROI category. Our HUD tells us this player has been stealing 35% of the time over 300 hands. The last note says…this player sees flops with a little more than he probably should. That being said, there is a decent probability that he is currently raising a hand that he would NOT like to see a showdown with. Couple that with the intense fear everyone w/o the nuts experiences when someone 3-bets all in from position, and you’ve created the optimal circumstances for jamming wide. By making this play(when successful), you are increasing your stack size by at the very least 4.5 BB. That little increase could be the difference between winning and losing…and we CREATED those chips by simply knowing our opponent. If we knew nothing about this reg, we would have just folded assuming there’s a high probability he’s holding a decent hand.
In a sense, we have just increased our ROI by playing against a reg. Awesome ain’t it?
These days there are regs at every level and every type of game. Typically, for every reg at the table, you will lose a portion of your ROI. This is NOT always the case as there are varying degrees of reg-dom.
Some regs are spewtards who just happen to play enough to catch your eye. Most regs fall into a middle category where they know enough about the game to avoid losing(they’re good at folding), but haven’t sustained any sort of large profit. There are certainly a few(very few) regs who…well lets just say they’re tough. Maybe they’ll 3-bet wide or float in position waiting to bluff. Maybe they’ll limp AA from the SB into your BB and trap your ass.
The key is recognizing who is who. In order to properly do that you need tools at your disposal, like a HUD or sharkscope, and you need to know what the maximum ROI at your level is. If the player is around 20% of the maximum ROI for your level, you can go ahead and assume he’s simply good enough to fold his crappy hands but is liable to play hands too aggressive or make overcalls(essentially play like a noob who just read their first book). If the player is around 50% of the maximum ROI, we can deduce that the player is solid…but either a little too solid or a little too loose. The only ways to find out what type they really are is to either look at some HUD stats or just play a few hands against the dude. Of course, if you scope someone and find out that they are right near the top of the ROI food-chain, you can assume they are experienced and well-rounded players.
Jumping back to my original thought that regs don’t always decrease your ROI…if you know what you’re up against, you can play accordingly.
Lets say we’re on a table on the button and someone pops it 3x from CO-1. Typically we just fold our non-premium hands and move on. But, we’ve got a note on the raiser saying he’s in the 50% of max ROI category. Our HUD tells us this player has been stealing 35% of the time over 300 hands. The last note says…this player sees flops with a little more than he probably should. That being said, there is a decent probability that he is currently raising a hand that he would NOT like to see a showdown with. Couple that with the intense fear everyone w/o the nuts experiences when someone 3-bets all in from position, and you’ve created the optimal circumstances for jamming wide. By making this play(when successful), you are increasing your stack size by at the very least 4.5 BB. That little increase could be the difference between winning and losing…and we CREATED those chips by simply knowing our opponent. If we knew nothing about this reg, we would have just folded assuming there’s a high probability he’s holding a decent hand.
In a sense, we have just increased our ROI by playing against a reg. Awesome ain’t it?