Tight, tight table at a turbo. How do you play it?

[NineLions]

I've been playing a lot of STTs lately, both regular and turbo.


How do you play at a tight/weak turbo STT? My normal strategy is to stay out of trouble early by folding/folding/folding, but this last one was unusual in that there were very few raises, and very tight play. The result was that by the time the blinds were at 100 we handn't lost a player yet, and I took the first one out with a short stack shove in CO with A7s and caught the flush against the BB who called. By doubling up my 9BB stack I became the chip leader by a slim margin.

By the time we were at the bubble we all had even stacks, and the blinds were 1000. At one point no one had more than 5 BBs.

Earlier 5 handed I got QJ 3 times in a row from UTG. The first two I raised and took the blinds, the third I figured it's too much risk that someone's noticed this and just folded it.

Normally as the blinds rise I get aggressive and start raising a lot, but because the table was so tight I was afraid to raise as often as I normally would because any call would mean I was behind, and because it had played so tight for so long the blinds were a large portion of everyone's stack.


Once we got ITM I went back to normal, shoving any combination of cards combined with position. HU the guy still wanted to play tight/weak and was completing from the SB with the blinds at 1200/2400 when we hand stacks of 6000. Not much room to manouver, and I ended with my 88 losing to overcards that made a pair.


But what do you do, especially in a turbo, when the table plays so tight? Go ahead and raise anyway, as long as you don't get pot committed with your raise? In a turbo if you're going to do that, you have to make that shift fairly early. Maybe the time to do that was when I got to be marginal chip leader and the blinds were at 100, but I sat back fully expecting some shoving and some players to get knocked out, which never happened. Wierd experience.

 

[ChuckTs]

Try the 2.5BB steals. You save chips when you get called/raised in spots that you're probably a dog, and disguise your big hands for when they decide to resteal.

It can get to the point where you don't want to raise because it looks out of the ordinary or because you get afraid of being called or reraised, but if they're bad tight players they'll just back down to your aggression. In the early stages I'm probably loosening up, but still playing tight enough to maintain a tight image so that they don't completely lose respect for me by the time 50/100 comes along.

 

[DaFrench1]

Also, play more hands from the button and CO so you can take some more easy steals when its checked to you.

 

[dj11]

I think this sort of goes to a table control issue.

In many situations where I'm not liking how the table is playing, maybe because it's not to my style of game, I will take the counter position. So in this case if you start being the aggressive one, perhaps the whole table will loosen up after an orbit or 2.

I know that in loose games, with too much aggression, limping can 'calm' down the table. Not to promote limping, but a few limpfests generally does the job.

Actually, with some recent successes with limping, maybe I am promoting limping.

 

[NineLions]

Thanks guys.

I guess I should pay more attention; then I might have taken notice before the blinds started rising that the table was unusual.

There was one guy who seemed pretty aggressive post flop, but even he seemed to taper off; maybe responding to the table in general like dj mentions. He ended up being the one who won.