How important is balancing for amateur tourney players?

Jacki Burkhart

Jacki Burkhart

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It seems that talk of "balancing ranges" and balancing moves is all the rage nowadays and in a general sense I completely agree with the notion and understand the need to be unpredictable.

But on the other hand, as an amateur tourney player who rarely encounters the same players again....how useful is this really?

Obviously, it will be more useful in a deep stacked tourney with good observant players where you're likely to sit at the same table all day...and it's less useful in a turbo or at a table with bad players.

So...in light of all this I'm feeling in a general sense tourney players can simply favor the most +EV exploitive moves and not worry a ton about balancing.

More obvious and/or recurring things should still at least attempt balance for example early position opening ranges and 3bet ranges and Cbet percentages but beyond the basics I'm not sure I see a lot of merit to amateur tourney poker players balancing their cold 4bet range, or their 2x pot river bet range.

It seems more like an academic exercise than a practical money making strategy.

Thoughts?
 
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WiZZiM

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yep spot on. its useless in alot of cases. you should ONLY balance ranges if you are facing someone who you know for sure they know what you are doing with particular parts of your range. OR if you play in games in which you face many of the same decision, so you need to refine ranges in order to be able to play good quality poker on many tables at once like cash or SNG in higher levels.

obviously there are no absolutes, but for the most part in lower level games, you should be looking to exploit as much as possible, even if that means sometimes being exploited without you knowing it.
 
Dorugremon

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It seems that talk of "balancing ranges" and balancing moves is all the rage nowadays and in a general sense I completely agree with the notion and understand the need to be unpredictable.

It's a fad, and like all fads, not necessarily a good thing. I've been playing 10NL on one site since April, 2015, and in that time, I've seen -- maybe -- three players for whom it would make a difference, and I'm still not sure about that third guy. Even then, they are definitely Level 2 thinkers, and haven't yet figured out that I'm playing them at Level 3, and have run successful triple barrel bluffs against them. We're discussing the best of the best here, and they aren't as good as me.

It makes no sense to balance ranges when they aren't paying the least bit of attention to your ranges in the first place. There's one player who started out as a massive fish who's improved to the point where he's a small winner. However, I've stacked him three times now, and in the same way. He has a massive bet sizing tell, and 3! huge with pocket QQ+ He can not let those big pairs go, and hasn't yet caught on that I'm not 4! jamming if I don't have those bullets. (To his credit, he did realize his mistake with opening 5x with Big Slick after I nailed him a couple of times with very small pairs on flops he obviously whiffed. That bet sizing tell has gone away, and he opens 3x with everything he plays for a raise. Still open limps too much.)

But on the other hand, as an amateur tourney player who rarely encounters the same players again....how useful is this really?
For some Sit 'n' Go that lasts -- at most -- an hour, then who the hell cares? Your A Number One priority is stack preservation. If you don't have a stack, you won't make any money. Maybe you get exploited once or twice, but so what? Unless you're playing the same line-up, then it doesn't matter. It probably doesn't matter even then because they're not gonna remember what you did the last time.
 
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WiZZiM

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It's a fad, and like all fads, not necessarily a good thing. I've been playing 10NL on one site since April, 2015, and in that time, I've seen -- maybe -- three players for whom it would make a difference, and I'm still not sure about that third guy. Even then, they are definitely Level 2 thinkers, and haven't yet figured out that I'm playing them at Level 3, and have run successful triple barrel bluffs against them. We're discussing the best of the best here, and they aren't as good as me.

It makes no sense to balance ranges when they aren't paying the least bit of attention to your ranges in the first place. There's one player who started out as a massive fish who's improved to the point where he's a small winner. However, I've stacked him three times now, and in the same way. He has a massive bet sizing tell, and 3! huge with pocket QQ+ He can not let those big pairs go, and hasn't yet caught on that I'm not 4! jamming if I don't have those bullets. (To his credit, he did realize his mistake with opening 5x with Big Slick after I nailed him a couple of times with very small pairs on flops he obviously whiffed. That bet sizing tell has gone away, and he opens 3x with everything he plays for a raise. Still open limps too much.)

For some Sit 'n' Go that lasts -- at most -- an hour, then who the hell cares? Your A Number One priority is stack preservation. If you don't have a stack, you won't make any money. Maybe you get exploited once or twice, but so what? Unless you're playing the same line-up, then it doesn't matter. It probably doesn't matter even then because they're not gonna remember what you did the last time.
I like you.... :)
 
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I couldn't disagree more. First of all, it's not Level 2 thinking, but nice try. Second, there are VERY FEW spots in any venue where you shouldn't be balancing your range. I could make a case where a game I haven't been legally allowed to play since 2011, ZOOM. Back then, for most opponents it wouldn't matter. Nowadays since all you idiots have every piece of software and App imaginable basically TELLING you what to do it still makes sense. Because when faced with a tough decision (which is what you aim for always) the opponent with the HUD will notice your stats and tendencies and NOT KNOW whether you have it or not. He is less inclined to call unless he has top pair good kicker or better.

Now that's a game I can't play, but I know enough about it. Every other variant available to me on WPN the ONLY time you should NOT be balancing your range is early stages of a freeroll, and, perhaps, for the same reasons, some low limit stuff too. This is because it's been proven that you're more likely to TID more often if you shove aipf atc (with some breaks) in a 10k or BUST bingo mode. Purists don't like to hear that kind of talk, but too bad, that's the reality. But then especially say once you're down to final 5 tables and you're expecting to have the same customers for a while, you should ALWAYS be balancing your range. No offense, but if you don't, you're a nit. If you have balls enough to bet decent 1/3rd - 2/3rd pot with your draw, are you really that naive to think your opponents aren't going to pick up on the fact that you only bet the river when you connect? They can float the turn and have you snap folding a winner when you miss. You're taking a very important part of the reportoire out of your game based on assumptions about your opponents. (In fact, you're basically calling them either unobservant, clueless or fish) But the reality is that YOU become what you think THEY are when you limit your game options.

That being said, I'm not a moron. I'm not advocating shipping 80% of your stack into the middle vs one opponent (or more) who has you easily covered and has shown an ability to make tough calls. I'm only talking about profitable spots.
 
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WiZZiM

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pretty sure we have differing ideas of what balancing means. but this isn't a cash game thread or anything to do with cash, it's tourney/sng.

balancing ranges in SNG makes very little sense in a lot of cases. balancing in cash has way more merit even at 10nl. i'm not saying never balance ranges, but actively trying to play GTO or equlibrium in sng is throwing money away when there are way more profitable ways to play the hand.
 
Jacki Burkhart

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I couldn't disagree more. First of all, it's not Level 2 thinking, but nice try. Second, there are VERY FEW spots in any venue where you shouldn't be balancing your range. I could make a case where a game I haven't been legally allowed to play since 2011, ZOOM. Back then, for most opponents it wouldn't matter. Nowadays since all you idiots have every piece of software and app imaginable basically TELLING you what to do it still makes sense. Because when faced with a tough decision (which is what you aim for always) the opponent with the HUD will notice your stats and tendencies and NOT KNOW whether you have it or not. He is less inclined to call unless he has top pair good kicker or better.

Now that's a game I can't play, but I know enough about it. Every other variant available to me on WPN the ONLY time you should NOT be balancing your range is early stages of a freeroll, and, perhaps, for the same reasons, some low limit stuff too. This is because it's been proven that you're more likely to TID more often if you shove aipf atc (with some breaks) in a 10k or BUST bingo mode. Purists don't like to hear that kind of talk, but too bad, that's the reality. But then especially say once you're down to final 5 tables and you're expecting to have the same customers for a while, you should ALWAYS be balancing your range. No offense, but if you don't, you're a nit. If you have balls enough to bet decent 1/3rd - 2/3rd pot with your draw, are you really that naive to think your opponents aren't going to pick up on the fact that you only bet the river when you connect? They can float the turn and have you snap folding a winner when you miss. You're taking a very important part of the reportoire out of your game based on assumptions about your opponents. (In fact, you're basically calling them either unobservant, clueless or fish) But the reality is that YOU become what you think THEY are when you limit your game options.

That being said, I'm not a moron. I'm not advocating shipping 80% of your stack into the middle vs one opponent (or more) who has you easily covered and has shown an ability to make tough calls. I'm only talking about profitable spots.

I posted this because I wanted my opinions challenged, so thank you for replying.

I do still advocate (and practice) balancing common situations such as Cbets and early position opening ranges and 3bet ranges.

But you're talking about being deep in a MTT with observant players with HUDs who will notice that I only fire the river when I hit my draw. OK, but my position on this is that situation is likely to only come up once or twice during this tourney and then I'm unlikely to see ANY of these players ever again. How many good, observant players using HUDs are going to let a sample size of "1 or 2" strongly influence their actions?

the HUD point is a good one though,because players don't have to "remember" they can just look it up. I play mostly live tourney poker where I think this is even more of a non-issue.
 
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I posted this because I wanted my opinions challenged, so thank you for replying.

I do still advocate (and practice) balancing common situations such as Cbets and early position opening ranges and 3bet ranges.

But you're talking about being deep in a MTT with observant players with HUDs who will notice that I only fire the river when I hit my draw. OK, but my position on this is that situation is likely to only come up once or twice during this tourney and then I'm unlikely to see ANY of these players ever again. How many good, observant players using HUDs are going to let a sample size of "1 or 2" strongly influence their actions?

the HUD point is a good one though,because players don't have to "remember" they can just look it up. I play mostly live tourney poker where I think this is even more of a non-issue.

It depends on who you are playing against live. Live I played with mostly those in the area that didn't have much recognition of previous play despite basically playing every day.

But if you're in Vegas against the pros, some of them have incredible recall. They showed me when they played me online back in the day (although they could have had notes, etc.). But I've also seen people like Negreanu sit down and guy #2 says "you might not remember me but..." and before he can finish his sentence Daniel does for him like "but you beat me with a runner runner draw against my flopped set. Yeah, I remember."
 
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I should be clear that some people incorrectly think that balancing your range means always betting the river or even 3 barrels to "keep them on their toes."

That isn't it. It also means opting to check/fold in certain spots with no equity to SHOW that you lay down when you think you are beat. This is another important factor that even widely successful pros like Rast seem to lose touch with.
 
Jacki Burkhart

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I should be clear that some people incorrectly think that balancing your range means always betting the river or even 3 barrels to "keep them on their toes."

That isn't it. It also means opting to check/fold in certain spots with no equity to SHOW that you lay down when you think you are beat. This is another important factor that even widely successful pros like Rast seem to lose touch with.

I get what you mean. One time I really do make an effort to "balance my range" for the meta-game is BvB. if I'm gonna sit with DudeX on my left all day I might give him several walks early in the day with marginally playable hands and show/fold hands like 75o and say "I just can't play this crap". but the whole point is to raise him with worse crap later when the blinds and antes are bigger.

And I'll limp my medium strong hands like K9 from the SB a couple times so he can see that I fold middle cards and limp biggish cards. that way when I raise he's putting me solidly on a range of Ax or 2 broadways. and that range will be wrong.
 
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I get what you mean. One time I really do make an effort to "balance my range" for the meta-game is BvB. if I'm gonna sit with DudeX on my left all day I might give him several walks early in the day with marginally playable hands and show/fold hands like 75o and say "I just can't play this crap". but the whole point is to raise him with worse crap later when the blinds and antes are bigger.

And I'll limp my medium strong hands like K9 from the SB a couple times so he can see that I fold middle cards and limp biggish cards. that way when I raise he's putting me solidly on a range of Ax or 2 broadways. and that range will be wrong.

On facevalue, I can't really fault the logic. It just doesn't seem like a high equity play. I play a high variance strategy and always look to play big pots. your strategy is more about getting marginal value out of a single player who has position on you. If you do it correctly, it should "work" but I doubt you ever get to stack him in these spots, for example.
 
Jacki Burkhart

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On facevalue, I can't really fault the logic. It just doesn't seem like a high equity play. I play a high variance strategy and always look to play big pots. your strategy is more about getting marginal value out of a single player who has position on you. If you do it correctly, it should "work" but I doubt you ever get to stack him in these spots, for example.

I get the feeling from the points you emphasize that you are primarily a cash player. For instance "stacking your opponent" is a big focus in cash games but not really the main focus in tourneys. In tourneys the main focus is about stack maintenance and survival with an emphasis on winning the blinds and antes more than your fair share.
 
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I get the feeling from the points you emphasize that you are primarily a cash player. For instance "stacking your opponent" is a big focus in cash games but not really the main focus in tourneys. In tourneys the main focus is about stack maintenance and survival with an emphasis on winning the blinds and antes more than your fair share.

Yeah, it is probably true that I've been more of a cash game player than tourneys, generally speaking, because after Black Friday until this past November that's ALL I played and before that I tended to split my time between what I considered "juicy" to enter and just regular cash fishing expeditions. BUT, you see/play a LOT more hands online, and so the % played of one vs the other is probably not as skewed as you would think.

That being said, I tend to talk about the game regardless of the avenue, with a few exceptions. Clearly, the ability to "risk your stack" in marginal spots is MORE of a cash game thing than tourneys EXCEPT when you factor in rebuy opportunities. So yeah, I stick to my words because (especially for KOs but that's not the point here) when I enter a pot in any avenue, my goal is to get as many of his/her chips as i possibly can. If there is an opportunity to get them all, you bet your ass I'm going to try and STACK.
 
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WiZZiM

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im pretty sure we're all saying roughly the same thing here, obviously if you have played a ton with profressional players balancing ranges becomes extremely important. if you're like me and have played mainly with fish or bad regular players then balancing doesn't really have that much of a role to play. It's still technically balancing ranges, but your ranges will be skewed towards making profit from their weak areas if that makes sense...
 
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im pretty sure we're all saying roughly the same thing here, obviously if you have played a ton with profressional players balancing ranges becomes extremely important. if you're like me and have played mainly with fish or bad regular players then balancing doesn't really have that much of a role to play. It's still technically balancing ranges, but your ranges will be skewed towards making profit from their weak areas if that makes sense...

I think we're in agreement, generally, but I'm more in favor of this tactic in more spots than you guys area
 
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