Gradually Opening Your Playbook

I always love telling this story (true story, mind you) to illustrate the idea of tight early/aggressive late during a sng session:

I have internet at my house, but sometimes I enjoy taking my laptop to starbucks to play. I like the atmosphere, like the coffee, and I seem to play well there for whatever reason. Anyways, I had already been grinding sng's for a couple of hours. I took a break, and then came back and opened 6 more tables. Only a couple of minutes in, something happened to the wifi. I couldn't connect. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting, tried logging off and on, I tried everything. The other people at starbucks were having trouble as well. I was playing turbos, so I knew that time was of the essence. After wasting 5 minutes trying to get back online at starbucks, I decided to book it for home. Now, I live in the heart of Pittsburgh, so I usually walk to Starbucks, being I only live 8 blocks away or so. I packed my laptop, and BOOKED it home. Once I arrived home, gasping for air, I managed to get back onto pokerstars. So here I was, 6 tables open, I haven't played a single hand, and at most tables I've chipped down to 1150-1300 chips (blind were 75/150 I believe). I remember thinking "shit! I probably missed out on some really good hands!" Anyways...how did these 6 tables end? Well I won 5 of them, and got 3rd in the last! That's a crazy hour of play at any given time, let alone one that I missed the first 15 or 20 minutes of!

Moral of the Story: There is no need to play anything but the most premium hands early on. Chipping down to 1250 or so does not kill your equity at the table. In fact, if you chip down to 1250 and 3 people get eliminated, I believe your equity has increased a good bit (you math wiz's out there can correct me if I'm wrong). If you can double up with JJ+, and AK every once in a while early, great. But I see sooo many people who make me laugh, because they go completely against the grain. Blinds should dictate your play. The bigger the blinds, the more loose and aggressive you should be. This, to me, is obvious. There is more money in the pot; more to fight for. Yet why do I see sooo many players with higher VPIP% during the first couple of levels than the middle and later stages (excluding the very late when the blinds are huge, but they play this stage incorrectly as well because of their ignorance of ICM) I am not complaining by any means--These are the people that allow me to have a nice ROI%. I suppose I just wanted to share a humorous story, possibly as a catalyst for further conversation on this subject....

zackryan28 said:

I packed my laptop, and BOOKED it home.

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"Booked" ?? From the context, I assume this means "hurried" ? I haven`t seen the word used in that sense before.

Egon Towst said:

"Booked" ?? From the context, I assume this means "hurried" ? I haven`t seen the word used in that sense before.

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crazy ass british guy

vanquish said:

crazy ass british guy

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If that`s an answer to my question, Van, it`s a little short on information content. :laugh:

Booked is slang for go away fast.

Thanks. Any idea of why or how the word comes to be used in a way so different from its standard meaning ?

why don't we try to respond to OP's story rather than fling linguistic nitty poop at each other?

i for one do not agree that you should only play premium hands to start. hands with high implied value (such as 76s) can also be very valuable in the early stages of a tournament

Sorry. I thought it was interesting. I will go and sit in the naughty corner.

I have a personal debate about this as well. Early on is a good time to pad your stack and cheaply play some of your more marginal hands. However, you can not play a sing hand and wait until a couple players donk out first before making a move. It's a tough decision.

I like to wait at least a round or two before making a play to see how the table and my opponents act. If it is a rather tight table, I might start to get more aggressive. If it is a bunch of soviet bloc pushers, I wait for the premium hands and play them fast.

I agree that taking some lines with high implied odds hands is good, but the manner of play is different and often poorly executed. Those hands are only effective in those 10/20&15/30. Once you hit 25/50 the average stack (in an STT) is only 30bb and that generally isn't big enough to make playing SC's really profitable. That being said the super tight approach is rather smart because many people lack the discipline/knowledge to properly play those high implied hands.

I do think people get overly stressed if they have <1500 when blinds hit 50/100. In turbo's anything >1k at that point is still fairly reasonable and winnable.

I agree you can play less than premium hands, such as suited connectors, occasionally, but that kind of play does not lend itself very well to the player who is coordinating many tables at once. If you start playing your KJ from EP, your 98s, and all kinds of other hands that have potential, you are increasing variance greatly, when you could yield the same results from just playing it super tight early on. And theres really no reason to play medium hands. The blinds are so low. Why risk a big chunk of your stack playing a medium hand against an idiot who is impossible to put on a hand range? As a good player, you ought to have the mindset that your equity at the table is higher than all of these idiots, and therefore your chip stack should be played more tightly.

I am also speaking more in regards to lower stakes. Every sng I play is less than $20, so there are typically a lot of bad players. All to often, there is a huge storm at the beginning of the sng session where there are guys playing 50% of their hands (or more), foolishly throwing chips around, while I end up playing 0 or 1 hand up until we hit the 75/150 level. And all too often, I double up with my AK against one of these donkeys Ace rag, and I work my way into the $.

Thanks for the comments: I meant to just tell a humorous story, but I'll be glad to keep this conversation going.

P.S. "Booking It" means to run your ass off

vanquish said:

i for one do not agree that you should only play premium hands to start. hands with high implied value (such as 76s) can also be very valuable in the early stages of a tournament

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From what I've been studying in Kill Everyone and at dragthebar.com you really dont ever want to play suited connectors early on unless you're in SB and you only have to complete following several limpers. The stacks simply aren't deep enough to be speculating with a hand like that. If you look at SNG wiz it's -EV to play suited connectors.

straytfrush said:

From what I've been studying in Kill Everyone and at dragthebar.com you really dont ever want to play suited connectors early on unless you're in SB and you only have to complete following several limpers. The stacks simply aren't deep enough to be speculating with a hand like that. If you look at SNG wiz it's -EV to play suited connectors.

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especially in turbos

straytfrush said:

From what I've been studying in Kill Everyone and at dragthebar.com you really dont ever want to play suited connectors early on unless you're in SB and you only have to complete following several limpers. The stacks simply aren't deep enough to be speculating with a hand like that. If you look at SNG wiz it's -EV to play suited connectors.

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some tournaments have a much deeper/better structure than STTs

zackryan28 said:

All to often, there is a huge storm at the beginning of the sng session where there are guys playing 50% of their hands (or more), foolishly throwing chips around, while I end up playing 0 or 1 hand up until we hit the 75/150 level. And all too often, I double up with my AK against one of these donkeys Ace rag, and I work my way into the $.

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Ok. I've just recently started playing again after the horrible year I had in my personal life. Just to blow the cobwebs out and get back into the online speed, I played a few CC freerolls and then move into the below $10 SnG's on FT, namely the ones that the top three all get a ticket into a tourney that I then unreg for.

I was feeling pretty good and was winning 42~46% of them over the first 100 or so I played. In the ones where I lost, I was getting my chips in way ahead yet losing to bad players making bad moves and catching miracle rivers.
In a few I made a dumb play or two as 3rd stack at the bubble, but recognized it, made a note of it, and learned to pay closer attention when multi tabling.

...now back to your post and re the beginning of the sng session.... I thought something like this was happening. I've been rehashing my play and it hasn't changed as far as I can tell.....but the games seem to have changed so I'm really curious as to what you mean by this. :icon_scra

It seems like in my last 30 SnG's or so have been unreal in the level of bad play. I'm watching donks swapping stacks on 2nd pair crud kicker vs. 3rd pair and even worse kicker.

I've even noted some people using this as a strategy. One guy let himself get blinded down to 1K from 1.5k by which time only 5 were left. He then came into the game and played really aggressive and exploiting the bubble.

Like the OP said the equity increases over that time he sat out.

OMG! lol... Apparently, I've lost my ability to read as well.... I read "Season" instead of "session"..... even though I copied it twice

....I thought the OP was talking about the new wave of people who have no clue, but got a buck ot two for Christmas and are now flooding the lower tournies....I was wondering if this happened every year, and if so, for how long does it usually last.... right now it seems as if 6 or more people are in every blessed hand... regardless of what pf raise someone makes.. this number seemed, at least to me, to be far fewer before Christmas

There are several reasons to play super tight early on. Firstly, there are so many idiots at these low stakes sng's playing every other hand that it is impossible to put on a hand. Sometimes they have garbage; other times they have AA or KK. Because they play such a wild game, it's impossible to distinguish. Because of this, I like to avoid confrontation early on, and hopefully 1 or 2 of them will get eliminated in the first 10-15 minutes, and, once the blinds start to get high, I can turn the engines on.

Also, when the sng starts, you start out with 75BB. with that many bets at your disposal, there is very little incentive to play a hand. If you bet 3x the big blind and everybody folds, your only getting a lousy 30 chips (.2% of the chips in play). Now, say you shove with the same hand when the blinds are 200/400 ante 25) and you make 4 opponents fold, you are now stealing 725 chips (5.4% chips in play). To put it succinctly: the blind levels should dictate your hand range.

Tangerine 53 said:

I've even noted some people using this as a strategy. One guy let himself get blinded down to 1K from 1.5k by which time only 5 were left. He then came into the game and played really aggressive and exploiting the bubble.

Like the OP said the equity increases over that time he sat out.

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It's not that you just "sit out" and never play, but you are only getting your chips in with premium hands. During the 10/20 and 15/30 blinds, I play approx. 7% of my hands, which is small, but it's still 1/14 or so. That translates to about 1 hand per table. And I win that hand more often than not, so I don't typically chip down to 1K anyways

straytfrush said:

From what I've been studying in Kill Everyone and at dragthebar.com you really dont ever want to play suited connectors early on unless you're in SB and you only have to complete following several limpers. The stacks simply aren't deep enough to be speculating with a hand like that. If you look at SNG wiz it's -EV to play suited connectors.

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Poker Orifice said:

especially in turbos

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+1

Even regular timed blind levels you rarely have enough odds to play these hands. About the only spots I might try it is from the BTN or SB and usually only JTs. Same goes for set-mining.

so does everyone just wait for like 99+, AQs+, AKo and fold everything else

vanquish said:

so does everyone just wait for like 99+, AQs+, AKo and fold everything else

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That is generally my strategy before I blind out.

i guess when antes hit you just add like 10 more hands to that range?

Unless you have a read otherwise, yeah. Your 'normal' SNGs/MTTs are not deep stacked enough with long enough blind levels to make speculative moves. If your MTT is a T$5k starting stack with 20 minute blinds then great these suited connectors can play in early levels but at T$1500 stack with 10 min blinds, no way.

Now later in the tournament after I feel I might have established an image (and yes I do believe you can have an image in SNGs) one can raise with these suited connectors in LP in some cases.

I think that the CC League games have shown a number of 'action' players how well the TAG style plays.