Niveau1
Rock Star
Bronze Level
amonlima
Rock Star
Platinum Level
Definitely not, going all in you won't win every hand, what you have to do is try to extract the maximum from your strongest hands, play with hands with good equity and seek to have more knowledge in the game, to know use the correct bet sizes, open/fold, open/raise, 3bet, squeeze ranges and so on...
G0930
Captain Fathermucker, Satty Aficionado
Loyaler
People tend to go all in with big hands cause the experience shows that simply raising , even strong raises will often get very creative callers...
Plus they are mostly hyper turbo so you don't have that much time acummulating chips by waiting for a big hand .
But that's just one strategy and not my favourite..
riff_raff312
Legend
Loyaler
Well as you know most of these free rolls are hyper turbo and your starting chips are 1000 so time is not on your side and that's why they go all in to build a stack. It's not a good strategy but it dose seem to work at times.
P
puzzlefish
Legend
Loyaler
Do what everyone else does. Go all in, but do it with a good enough hand that you might double or triple up. High pocket pairs, suited connectors.
A
a1232
Rock Star
Bronze Level
The biggest issue with most freerolls is your chances of winning are so low even if you are good that it makes sense to have a wide all-in range towards the start to either double/triple up or go out and not waste your time. That is if it is the money you are playing for, I guess if you are just playing for fun it might make sense to not bet any hand except a very tight range but that will depend on how quickly the blinds go up etc as you might go out just with the blinds before hitting a big hand
PatriceM915
Visionary
Bronze Level
It depends a lot on the blinds, if you start with 10 blinds you are all-in with any card, if you start with 20 blinds or 25 you can select strong cards and pay all ins, but if you start with more than 50 blinds, you enter the flop with up to 4 blinds and over 100 blinds you enter the flop with up to 10 blinds with strong cards and pairs above 77.
Don't write that because I vary the pattern to confuse them.
Don't write that because I vary the pattern to confuse them.
ObbleeXY
Legend
Bronze Level
With freerolls on pokerstars, a good general rule is to fold out anything but AA, KK, AK in the first orbit or two. Sure, it still plays fast and loose after that, but the craziness of the bingo players has mostly run its course by the time a couple orbits have passed.
Thing is, even with AA, KK and AKs, these are losing hands a alot of the time at the beginning of a freeroll. This is because they aren't only always shoving, but there are always a number of players CALLING the shove. So you end up in massive multiway pots where AA is regularly cracked.
If you plan to rebuy, then play those in the first couple orbits and then starting playing closer to normal poker after that.
If you are quite fast and loose yourself, you might consider rebuying right off the bat. This gives you some breathing space to catch a decent starting hand...but there ar eothers who say that you're devaluing your investment...and if you're only gonna do one rebuy, prolly save it for the add-on.
I used to always do the early rebuy and had decent results, but these days, I'm trying to reduce my investment to time only and not blow my bankroll...
So:
- Early orbit folds
- Recognise that you cannot push a call station off a pot. So, instead of the huge three-bets pre-flop, make them only moderate in order to build a pot, rather than to expect to reduce the field size significantly.
- Get the add-on
- Play tight and aggressive...but keep the aggression to when you hit.
- reduce bluffing, especially until after the add-on.
- Post Add-on, you'll have to get a feel for your table, but here is an iopportunity to use position and aggression against the tightest players or those who are trying to hang on to get into the money,
- Identify the fish/call-stations and bet big when you've hit well.
- Identify the super-nits and steal their blinds.
- Keep an eye on stack sizes. You can often call off a small stack shoving a premium hand if the damage to your stack isn't significant. For these, I often will call with 78s, 89s, 9Ts which might be nice speculative hands, but generally are mucked when facing a shove.
- Adapt your play to the mood of the table. If they are super loose, tighten up. If they are super tight, lossen up.
- ID the specific exploitable weaknesses of your opponents, especially those two spots on either side of you. For those with hig CBet frequency, be prepared to 3-bet solidly. ID those who lead with weak aces. Punish them with flop bets when the Ace is a miss.
- now generally, I frown upon limping. When you're weak, its hard to call a big raise, and when you're strong, you've just let some crappy hands into the pot to see a flop. However, if you're playing a game where a raise doesn't thin the field, and you've not got AA or KK or QQ, you might as well see a flop as cheaply as you can and go from there. Oddly, position can be against you in these games. If you're last to act, you are often in a position where you are faced with a big bet to enter the pot. Since the bet sizing doesn't really represent hand-strength -- you inevitably faced shove/fold decisions. At least, if you limped in Q9o, you can get out cheaplly. In later stages of the game, I tend to stop this altogether and make my opening bet sizing higher (3BB) because people are more likely to fold after the add-on than before.
It also means that those who might have strung me along, are now 3bet shoving if they've got a made hand or a AK/AQ preflop, so I get out with only a modest loss, rather than getting incrementally flayed streeet by street,
- Get a HUD...and take loads opf player notes. I've been using Poker Tracker two for nearly three years now...and the database has really filled out. There are always people on my table now who I've got notes on. At a minimum, you can colour code villains (Nit, TAG, LAG, Fish, etc.). I also have a colour which I immediately apply to anyone sitting out. This flags they are not defending/attacking, and also allows me to understand why a loose player might have a low VPIP stat. When you're up against a nit with a low PFR and he's raiing Pre-flop into you, your notes will tell you to get out of there, rather than defending your BB with that measly T7o.
- In your notes, be sure to label those who bluff frequently, and those who always have the hand they claim to have. When you can separate out the honest from those economical with honesty, you have a fold/three-bet list. Similarly, you need to root out the trappy players and exploit that tendency.
- In the end game, 20BB can take you a long way. generally, I'm trying to always stay above 20BB the whole game. I don't care if I'm chip lead or last. But if you've got 20 bigs, you should have time to catch a hand to double up before you're below 6BB. From 6BB and above, you can get shoves through (post add-on) and steal crucial blinds.
- The reputation you have stays for the duration of your time on that table. If you play tight for the first half the game, they will expect you to continue. If they peg you as loose, becoming tight later won't change their view, They'll alreadyt have you labelled. Similarly, if you've worked hard to build up a reputation on a table and the get moved...it doesn't (usually) come with you. Don't rely on your rep for a table with high turn-over either.
anywho...there are more things...but that is good to leave it for now.
Best of luck!
Cheers,
JT
Thing is, even with AA, KK and AKs, these are losing hands a alot of the time at the beginning of a freeroll. This is because they aren't only always shoving, but there are always a number of players CALLING the shove. So you end up in massive multiway pots where AA is regularly cracked.
If you plan to rebuy, then play those in the first couple orbits and then starting playing closer to normal poker after that.
If you are quite fast and loose yourself, you might consider rebuying right off the bat. This gives you some breathing space to catch a decent starting hand...but there ar eothers who say that you're devaluing your investment...and if you're only gonna do one rebuy, prolly save it for the add-on.
I used to always do the early rebuy and had decent results, but these days, I'm trying to reduce my investment to time only and not blow my bankroll...
So:
- Early orbit folds
- Recognise that you cannot push a call station off a pot. So, instead of the huge three-bets pre-flop, make them only moderate in order to build a pot, rather than to expect to reduce the field size significantly.
- Get the add-on
- Play tight and aggressive...but keep the aggression to when you hit.
- reduce bluffing, especially until after the add-on.
- Post Add-on, you'll have to get a feel for your table, but here is an iopportunity to use position and aggression against the tightest players or those who are trying to hang on to get into the money,
- Identify the fish/call-stations and bet big when you've hit well.
- Identify the super-nits and steal their blinds.
- Keep an eye on stack sizes. You can often call off a small stack shoving a premium hand if the damage to your stack isn't significant. For these, I often will call with 78s, 89s, 9Ts which might be nice speculative hands, but generally are mucked when facing a shove.
- Adapt your play to the mood of the table. If they are super loose, tighten up. If they are super tight, lossen up.
- ID the specific exploitable weaknesses of your opponents, especially those two spots on either side of you. For those with hig CBet frequency, be prepared to 3-bet solidly. ID those who lead with weak aces. Punish them with flop bets when the Ace is a miss.
- now generally, I frown upon limping. When you're weak, its hard to call a big raise, and when you're strong, you've just let some crappy hands into the pot to see a flop. However, if you're playing a game where a raise doesn't thin the field, and you've not got AA or KK or QQ, you might as well see a flop as cheaply as you can and go from there. Oddly, position can be against you in these games. If you're last to act, you are often in a position where you are faced with a big bet to enter the pot. Since the bet sizing doesn't really represent hand-strength -- you inevitably faced shove/fold decisions. At least, if you limped in Q9o, you can get out cheaplly. In later stages of the game, I tend to stop this altogether and make my opening bet sizing higher (3BB) because people are more likely to fold after the add-on than before.
It also means that those who might have strung me along, are now 3bet shoving if they've got a made hand or a AK/AQ preflop, so I get out with only a modest loss, rather than getting incrementally flayed streeet by street,
- Get a HUD...and take loads opf player notes. I've been using Poker Tracker two for nearly three years now...and the database has really filled out. There are always people on my table now who I've got notes on. At a minimum, you can colour code villains (Nit, TAG, LAG, Fish, etc.). I also have a colour which I immediately apply to anyone sitting out. This flags they are not defending/attacking, and also allows me to understand why a loose player might have a low VPIP stat. When you're up against a nit with a low PFR and he's raiing Pre-flop into you, your notes will tell you to get out of there, rather than defending your BB with that measly T7o.
- In your notes, be sure to label those who bluff frequently, and those who always have the hand they claim to have. When you can separate out the honest from those economical with honesty, you have a fold/three-bet list. Similarly, you need to root out the trappy players and exploit that tendency.
- In the end game, 20BB can take you a long way. generally, I'm trying to always stay above 20BB the whole game. I don't care if I'm chip lead or last. But if you've got 20 bigs, you should have time to catch a hand to double up before you're below 6BB. From 6BB and above, you can get shoves through (post add-on) and steal crucial blinds.
- The reputation you have stays for the duration of your time on that table. If you play tight for the first half the game, they will expect you to continue. If they peg you as loose, becoming tight later won't change their view, They'll alreadyt have you labelled. Similarly, if you've worked hard to build up a reputation on a table and the get moved...it doesn't (usually) come with you. Don't rely on your rep for a table with high turn-over either.
anywho...there are more things...but that is good to leave it for now.
Best of luck!
Cheers,
JT
