duggs
Killing me softly
Silver Level
Figured a synopsis of the major points iv learned would be useful for the (few) keen tournament players out there.
DISCLAIMER: alot of the below is my personal opinion and may be grossly incorrect/outdated/misguided.
Anyway this is just the first post and ill probably post my musings and thoughts in here in future.
HAND RANGING
the easiest way to start learning to do this is to assign a preflop range based on opponents aggressiveness, stats, position, stack size, stage of tournament into account preflop. and on the flop we want to look at the flop texture, bet sizing, tendencies of our opponents, and any relevant history between us.
The biggest step to beginning to do this more accurately is to start preflop and have a range going to the flop as the cards come out, and so on for the turn and river. so that each street we only consider hands that make sense up until that point, ie he cant suddenly have a rivered set in his range if he never calls the turn with 33 on a AK78r board.
The final step is to understand the number of combinations of hands that a player has for each hand, for example with AA on a 247 flop and assuming opponent flats our raise with all pairs up to JJ and raise/gets it in with 88-JJ and sets in on this flop.
then we beat 88, 99, 1010 and JJ, and lose to 22 44 77. which looks slightly ahead of their range. however in actuality we lose to 3 combos of each set (there are 6 ways for a pp to be dealt with 4 cards and only 3 ways with 3 cards) so 9 combos we lose to and 24 combos we beat, so getting it in becomes a much more favourable situation than first thought.
BET SIZING,
its important to understand why we adjust our bet sizing to be smaller as our stack depths grow shallower, it allows us to steal more effectively (as our success rate can be significantly lower with smaller sizing) it allows us more maneuverability post flop as it allows our cbet and turn sizing to be smaller.
the most useful thing I have found with bet sizing is to remember it is exponential and that we can manipulate our bet sizing to create awkward stack sizes or get max value or fold equity.
as a general rule of thumb i start at 3x pre and move closer to eventually minraising as the tournament progresses. in terms of flop cbet sizing i start around 1/2 to 55% pot and towards the end stages of final table may be cbetting as low as 30% to 33% pot.
against opponents who dont really pay attention or notice things, you can adjust your sizing to achieve the desired result of maximizing value or achieving fold equity with minimum expense, however vs more difficult opponents its important to keep our bet sizing consistent.
3BETTING
Generally speaking i dont 3bet much until antes come in, but in later stages i 3bet alot (probably too much), I like to 3bet alot of Ax and Kx blockers and other garbage hands that i dont think play well postflop. the range and times i 3bet is very opponent dependent,
if villians raise a wide range and will flat most of it too a 3bet and fold play fit/fold post flop. then 3betting a wide value range aswell as hands that flop well but arent necessarily ahead of his opening range like 78s 89s works well as the times he doesnt fold flop we see 4 cards to gain some equity or draws.
If villain raises a wide range and only flats IP and only 4bets a small value range, then i 3bet light quite liberally IP with most Ax and Kx blockers and will flat hands like KQs and JJ+ AJ+ that play better v his opening range and sucky v his 4betting range.
I tend to 3bet light a relatively large amount from SB and BB facing mp/lp openers as we cant play very well oop v them and our range looks very strong given positions.
4BETTING
cold 4bets are great v an active opener and someone that you perceive as having both the ability to 3bet light, and the ability to 3bet/fold. for example
you all have 50bb and it is post ante, Button is opening any two and folds to 3bets a huge % of the time, active 3bettor 2.5x it. this is an ideal time to put in a light cold 4bet (assuming you dont give enough credit or history to the button or sb to give you a light range here) since stacks are easily deep enough for both to fold the hand comfortably. also, SB cant just flat your raise as he will be playing the hand out of position against your polarised (or perceived as nutted) range.
putting in 4bets is quite read dependent as some players will only 3bet hands that they have no intention of ever folding, but vs competent opponents 4betting can be a good counter to aggressive 3betting as they will be forced to fold without more information on your ability to do this light.
Finally one of the biggest quotes regarding tournament poker is that if you arent capable of 3/4/5/6 betting light when you think the situation calls for, then you arent cut out for poker.
Anyway thats all for now ill add some more stuff later.
Big thanks to everyone at CC for posting all the interesting stuff (especially the cash guys iv been lurking your threads for a year now)
DISCLAIMER: alot of the below is my personal opinion and may be grossly incorrect/outdated/misguided.
Anyway this is just the first post and ill probably post my musings and thoughts in here in future.
HAND RANGING
the easiest way to start learning to do this is to assign a preflop range based on opponents aggressiveness, stats, position, stack size, stage of tournament into account preflop. and on the flop we want to look at the flop texture, bet sizing, tendencies of our opponents, and any relevant history between us.
The biggest step to beginning to do this more accurately is to start preflop and have a range going to the flop as the cards come out, and so on for the turn and river. so that each street we only consider hands that make sense up until that point, ie he cant suddenly have a rivered set in his range if he never calls the turn with 33 on a AK78r board.
The final step is to understand the number of combinations of hands that a player has for each hand, for example with AA on a 247 flop and assuming opponent flats our raise with all pairs up to JJ and raise/gets it in with 88-JJ and sets in on this flop.
then we beat 88, 99, 1010 and JJ, and lose to 22 44 77. which looks slightly ahead of their range. however in actuality we lose to 3 combos of each set (there are 6 ways for a pp to be dealt with 4 cards and only 3 ways with 3 cards) so 9 combos we lose to and 24 combos we beat, so getting it in becomes a much more favourable situation than first thought.
BET SIZING,
its important to understand why we adjust our bet sizing to be smaller as our stack depths grow shallower, it allows us to steal more effectively (as our success rate can be significantly lower with smaller sizing) it allows us more maneuverability post flop as it allows our cbet and turn sizing to be smaller.
the most useful thing I have found with bet sizing is to remember it is exponential and that we can manipulate our bet sizing to create awkward stack sizes or get max value or fold equity.
as a general rule of thumb i start at 3x pre and move closer to eventually minraising as the tournament progresses. in terms of flop cbet sizing i start around 1/2 to 55% pot and towards the end stages of final table may be cbetting as low as 30% to 33% pot.
against opponents who dont really pay attention or notice things, you can adjust your sizing to achieve the desired result of maximizing value or achieving fold equity with minimum expense, however vs more difficult opponents its important to keep our bet sizing consistent.
3BETTING
Generally speaking i dont 3bet much until antes come in, but in later stages i 3bet alot (probably too much), I like to 3bet alot of Ax and Kx blockers and other garbage hands that i dont think play well postflop. the range and times i 3bet is very opponent dependent,
if villians raise a wide range and will flat most of it too a 3bet and fold play fit/fold post flop. then 3betting a wide value range aswell as hands that flop well but arent necessarily ahead of his opening range like 78s 89s works well as the times he doesnt fold flop we see 4 cards to gain some equity or draws.
If villain raises a wide range and only flats IP and only 4bets a small value range, then i 3bet light quite liberally IP with most Ax and Kx blockers and will flat hands like KQs and JJ+ AJ+ that play better v his opening range and sucky v his 4betting range.
I tend to 3bet light a relatively large amount from SB and BB facing mp/lp openers as we cant play very well oop v them and our range looks very strong given positions.
4BETTING
cold 4bets are great v an active opener and someone that you perceive as having both the ability to 3bet light, and the ability to 3bet/fold. for example
you all have 50bb and it is post ante, Button is opening any two and folds to 3bets a huge % of the time, active 3bettor 2.5x it. this is an ideal time to put in a light cold 4bet (assuming you dont give enough credit or history to the button or sb to give you a light range here) since stacks are easily deep enough for both to fold the hand comfortably. also, SB cant just flat your raise as he will be playing the hand out of position against your polarised (or perceived as nutted) range.
putting in 4bets is quite read dependent as some players will only 3bet hands that they have no intention of ever folding, but vs competent opponents 4betting can be a good counter to aggressive 3betting as they will be forced to fold without more information on your ability to do this light.
Finally one of the biggest quotes regarding tournament poker is that if you arent capable of 3/4/5/6 betting light when you think the situation calls for, then you arent cut out for poker.
Anyway thats all for now ill add some more stuff later.
Big thanks to everyone at CC for posting all the interesting stuff (especially the cash guys iv been lurking your threads for a year now)