|
Beating the $3 - 90 mans on FTP |
In this post, I'm using hands from a 90 man turbo MTT on Full Tilt Poker. These 90 mans have double starting stack and knockout bonusses, which add some different dymanics to the hands.
Especially the double starting stacks (3000) makes a HUGE difference how you should optimally play these in the early levels. They are turbos though, so eventually you'll find yourself with a regular 10 to 30 big blind stack most of the time. Having the bigger starting stack basically increases the value of hands like small pairs and suited connectors, because of the implied odds of these hands. Especially at the $3 level, people will stack of very, VERY light, so if you flop big with your hand .... you're often going to get paid off.
Here are 2 example hands taken from a Sunday session. It seems on Sunday people are willing to stack off even lighter than usual :
http://www.gutshot.com/replayer.php?id=2455
This is the very first hand of the tournament, I'm not involved in the hand, but it illustrates several important points : People tend to limp a lot, or make pointless min-raises. On the other end of the spectrum, people will shove all in for 100 big blinds pre flop for no apparant reason. And finally, a lot of players will call you down very light if you make these kinds of shoves. The shoving player shows AQ here, but often they will show up with even weaker hands like AT or 66. You can easily call these weird shoves with 99+ and AQ+ and find yourself ahead enough of the time to make it profitable.
http://www.gutshot.com/replayer.php?id=2456
I'm showing this hand because I make a play here that is 100% tweaked to the level of play here. I limp with hands like 99 and TT when I'm in early position like this and if it gets raised and gets back to me I evaluate whether I want to see the flop before I get it in. I'm really looking to get it all in, even 100 big blinds deep this early in the tournament. If it would have gone, raise - reraise, then I just muck the 99 because a reraise like that is either AK or a big pair, which means im far behind. But my thought process during this hand was as follows :
I limp in and see what happens behind me..
Some players limp behind and suddenly a huge raise from Perroud ... The raise size here tells me it is NOT likely to be a big pair like AA, KK or QQ but much more likely to be a middle pair type of hand where he is just trying to take it down right here.
Now when the other player flat calls the bet, he is also most likely holding a pair, but definitely not a pair higher than mine as he would reraise 100% of the time (he is the player that got all in on the first hand with AQ). This is the most important point in the hand, if I can put this player on a smaller pair my equity in the hand increases greatly ! I'm pretty confident he would reraise any bigger pair and also AQ and AK he would probably reraise.
So my hand is up against what is likely 1 smaller pair (The player on the big blind) and either another pair or maybe 2 overcards.
If I shove here, its possible that one of them will fold (not often though) putting some extra money into the pot. This means if I get into a coinflip, it will still be a good flip because of the extra money.
If they both call, the equity my hand has against their 2 hands is high enough to make it profitable. To show this, I will put the possible ranges in pokerstove and show you my equity here :
equity win tie
Hand 0: 47.123% 45.65% 01.48% { 99 }
Hand 1: 16.631% 15.87% 00.76% { 99-22 }
Hand 2: 36.247% 35.34% 00.91% { JJ-55, AKs, AKo }
I have 47% equity in the pot and I'm putting in less than 33% of the chips. And in this pokerstove example I have actually given them some better hands than what I was really expecting them to show up with. My actual equity is probably somewhere between 40% and 65% (!!).
So these hands should give you a good idea of the level of play at the $3 level. It's my first strategy post like this, they will probably get better and more easily readable as I do more of these. Coming next, tonight, live reporting from the WBCOOP !!
|
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 25 January 2010 )
|
