Joined: Jan '10
Location: Argentina
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 38
I am reading Dan Harrington vol 1 on tourneys. At first I thought tournaments was the best way because, in my poor reasoning, i would pay $1 and potentially earn $500 (a rough example). Now I think the money is in cash games and I would love to talk about that in the future with you.
Now, since I've been playing tournaments a lot in previous month, in low buy-ins, I must give this opinion which is a MUST in those:
Lot of begginers which see tv and it seems to give them the feeling that it isn't that difficult to do poker successfully. Many of them have enough money so not to be very guilty in case they lose, what's more, they even may use it as motivational porpouses for learning. The point here is, they are very bad players and emotions come into play much more with them. We know that for a premuim hand we have to wait many many hands, I can get 20 pathetic hands before one can be played and it may be something like J10s which is not a premium. So i don't think agressive and super-agressive styles work in the $1 - $10 buy-in. Being agressive, bluffing and trying to steal pots is very good but not when playing with people who won't care about losing all it's chips hoping to get 2 diamonds, or even praying for his low pair to win. They are very easily broken emtionaly, so with QQ you can safely go all in, and get all its chips, insted of trying to reduce the field but getting money into the pot.
It's alot more difficult to bluff in low stakes tournys. Not always due to lack of caring. Moreso that they once saw Phil Ivey raise with a 9-10 os so therefore it must be right to call your q-q with. In low stakes esp. at the begining of a tourny. Bluffing is near impossible
Joined: Mar '10
Location: Romania
Age: 38 (M)
Posts: 33
I think it is very important to be aggressive at all stakes but only with position. There you are the one who controls the pot, if you want to get all the money in the pot you can or if you want to lay the hand down, you can do that too. So when playing aggressive bad players get crazy and when you'll have a premium hand they will be easy to trick into going all in.
in these types of games you are more likely to get your aces cracked and donked out by a one outta, like you said there not botherd and chase any cards
Joined: May '10
Location: Romania
Age: 34 (M)
Posts: 148
Also...keep the squeezes to a minimum, unless you have a good read on your opponent and it's in the late stages (where the good players are, but you'll also run into A LOT of donks who got there by luck).Just finished 190th in a 5K people 2$ tourney, got KQs on the BTN, UTG + 4 minraises and I shove 13BB on him as he was raising quite a lot since he was moved to my table (26 hands passed)...and he called with A9o I was like wtf. Plus that I didn't made any pushes before, only a CO raise and the blinds folded....The other players where quite good, just my luck to run into the loosiest at the table..as my allin was for 3/4 of his stack.
