Aballinamion
Sleeping with the Dark Lady of the Sith
Loyaler
Hi there CCers how's everyone? I have a hard doubt here and I need the community kindness and help.
I've been playing CC's freerolls for a couple of weeks and I am having serious problems to overcome some situations. (I know for sure that I am a weak player).
I am a cash student and I study the basics of MTT's and SNG's. I am not a good tournament player and I wish to improve my game. (I am not a good cash player too, lol)
Before further duo, let's jump into the difficulties that I've found playing CardsChat's freeroll.
This is not a critics to the Freerolls, for God's sake! I love the environment, it is very hard to play and fun, I am just trying to understand why some part of the population plays so loose and how do we defend against that. Respect always.
A) Many players are extremely loose aggresive, even in the first level of blinds. Which strategy you think is good against decent LAG's? How much should we be "leveling" against other leveling players?
B) Many players love to exploit using huge sizings: I see very often players opening 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, decreasing frequency, but still a great number of players tend to make a 3.5x raise IP, either short stacks or big stacks. They elect to open 3x, 4x in the Late Stages of the tournament. Why is that? How to deal with that?
C) A lot of players also exploit huge sizings postflop: we see players betting 100% pot in a 3bet pot, we see players that open 6x get two callers and go 80%, 120% in spots where it simply cannot be logic, so I wonder if these extremely polarized bet sizings, both preflop and postflop contains more bluffs than values. Should we be shoving or calling down lighter versus this kind of exploitation?
Summarizing, I think a real hard time to call down from the BB a 3x raise, I fold almost everything to this size. IMO, tournaments it's all about surviving. But we need to survive with dignity if we intend to get to the FT. By the same token, we cannot be very loose, because most of times in a tournament we will be short stacked (10-30 blinds) and, in some Late Stages of tournaments we can consider a stack of 18 blinds a huge ammount, that allow us to play at least one hand postflop and even to make cheap bluffs. If I am mistaken, please let me know.
Having just a couple of blinds turns the postflop game almost impossible because of the SPR: If we open 2x having 12 blinds of effective stack and get called we are already commited with almost everything we have. We must go because if we fold we would have only 10 blinds behind.
We cannot bluff postflop, because we opened 2x and now if we make a 2 blinds bet in the pot we have only 8 blinds behind and we give excellent odds for Villain either call flop to bluff turn/river or either check-raise/shove the flop itself.
If we bet 2x in the flop and our hand does not improve at all, and if we check the turn it is very strange, because now we have only 8 blinds behind and if we c-bet again it will be impossible to fold any river. So the natural move should be shoving preflop (because we have just a couple of blinds that not allows us a good playability postflop) when we are 12-15 BB short?
It seems to me that the style of playing of many opponents is based in one logic (and obvious) observation: we are neither paying for the entry, nor the rake. So everything we do is correct, because once in a while, we will reach the final table in position to fight for the position where the money really is: 1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place.
I respect that, although I see the times we will get to the final table will be minimum (because I see players shoving preflop in the 1st level of blinds KJo, A2o, QTo, 22, you name it).
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
I've been playing CC's freerolls for a couple of weeks and I am having serious problems to overcome some situations. (I know for sure that I am a weak player).
I am a cash student and I study the basics of MTT's and SNG's. I am not a good tournament player and I wish to improve my game. (I am not a good cash player too, lol)
Before further duo, let's jump into the difficulties that I've found playing CardsChat's freeroll.
This is not a critics to the Freerolls, for God's sake! I love the environment, it is very hard to play and fun, I am just trying to understand why some part of the population plays so loose and how do we defend against that. Respect always.
A) Many players are extremely loose aggresive, even in the first level of blinds. Which strategy you think is good against decent LAG's? How much should we be "leveling" against other leveling players?
B) Many players love to exploit using huge sizings: I see very often players opening 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, decreasing frequency, but still a great number of players tend to make a 3.5x raise IP, either short stacks or big stacks. They elect to open 3x, 4x in the Late Stages of the tournament. Why is that? How to deal with that?
C) A lot of players also exploit huge sizings postflop: we see players betting 100% pot in a 3bet pot, we see players that open 6x get two callers and go 80%, 120% in spots where it simply cannot be logic, so I wonder if these extremely polarized bet sizings, both preflop and postflop contains more bluffs than values. Should we be shoving or calling down lighter versus this kind of exploitation?
Summarizing, I think a real hard time to call down from the BB a 3x raise, I fold almost everything to this size. IMO, tournaments it's all about surviving. But we need to survive with dignity if we intend to get to the FT. By the same token, we cannot be very loose, because most of times in a tournament we will be short stacked (10-30 blinds) and, in some Late Stages of tournaments we can consider a stack of 18 blinds a huge ammount, that allow us to play at least one hand postflop and even to make cheap bluffs. If I am mistaken, please let me know.
Having just a couple of blinds turns the postflop game almost impossible because of the SPR: If we open 2x having 12 blinds of effective stack and get called we are already commited with almost everything we have. We must go because if we fold we would have only 10 blinds behind.
We cannot bluff postflop, because we opened 2x and now if we make a 2 blinds bet in the pot we have only 8 blinds behind and we give excellent odds for Villain either call flop to bluff turn/river or either check-raise/shove the flop itself.
If we bet 2x in the flop and our hand does not improve at all, and if we check the turn it is very strange, because now we have only 8 blinds behind and if we c-bet again it will be impossible to fold any river. So the natural move should be shoving preflop (because we have just a couple of blinds that not allows us a good playability postflop) when we are 12-15 BB short?
It seems to me that the style of playing of many opponents is based in one logic (and obvious) observation: we are neither paying for the entry, nor the rake. So everything we do is correct, because once in a while, we will reach the final table in position to fight for the position where the money really is: 1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place.
I respect that, although I see the times we will get to the final table will be minimum (because I see players shoving preflop in the 1st level of blinds KJo, A2o, QTo, 22, you name it).
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
