ITH Poker Forum

[Syfted]

Something to consider, due to high blinds and the large stack to pot ratios that are often seen in the late stages of MTTs and turbo SNGs, I feel all SPRs need to be adjusted down in tournaments. If this has been discussed elsewhere let me know.

On to things.

Blinds 20/40, 1100 effective. If we go to the flop with 1000 behind in a 200 pot, a line of 2/3pot-2/3pot-1/2pot would put us all in.

135+320+550=~1k

If you flop TP in a tourny do you really want to see that line? Probably not.

Note also that we cross the threshold just by calling the flop bet. A little cbet you make to pull the pot sets us up to play for stacks.

How can we apply SPR theory to tournaments effectively? What kind of SPRs are we shooting for with different types of hands?

[jeffnc]

You can still apply SPRs, but the question is how much risk do you want - how much variance? If you really want to win money in tournaments, increasing your variance in a tourney is probably a good thing vs cash games. Basically this means you can drop your SPR standards in tournaments, but of course you don't want to play hands in a way I call "backwards", which means putting little money in up front when you're ahead, then getting stuck for a ton when you're behind. For example you wouldn't be betting those lame 1/3 pot bets you mentioned just so you can play 5 streets. Read Arnold Snyder's second book for more on this. Some pros are known to even take slightly -EV risks to increase their variance. Also, they know the worst possible way to play tournaments is to get deep then fail. This kills their hourly rate. They could have busted out earlier and then made money in the cash games.

[pccarballo]

jeff are you talking about making -EV moves so you can take advantage of a big stack and make more EV plays with that stack?. Because making -EV plays to increase variance has no sense..

[nsidestrate]

It can make sense if you have alternate ways to make money. For instance, at the WSOP I believe I can comfortably earn $120 an hour playing $30/$60 cash games. Therefore, if I have an opportunity to build a huge stack early on Day One that might result in busting out or quadrupling, I may be better off to take the variance even if it is slightly -EV. The reason is that I make up for the lost EV by being able to play cash games instead.

This is an obscure point, however. In general I think you should be making +EV plays. However, there are points in a MTT where accumulating chips (say, just before the bubble) might be worth a lot more chips because you judge you could then abuse the table and make more chips. For instance, let's say you estimate that there is an hour left before the bubble bursts in the ME and there is one other player who is raising a lot pre-flop to your right. You might be willing to take a flip with him in order to bust him even if you are a small dog because you believe that if you eliminate him you will be able to accumulate many more chips over the next hour than you can with him at the table.

[pccarballo]

It can make sense if you have alternate ways to make money. For instance, at the WSOP I believe I can comfortably earn $120 an hour playing $30/$60 cash games. Therefore, if I have an opportunity to build a huge stack early on Day One that might result in busting out or quadrupling, I may be better off to take the variance even if it is slightly -EV. The reason is that I make up for the lost EV by being able to play cash games instead.

This is an obscure point, however. In general I think you should be making +EV plays. However, there are points in a MTT where accumulating chips (say, just before the bubble) might be worth a lot more chips because you judge you could then abuse the table and make more chips. For instance, let's say you estimate that there is an hour left before the bubble bursts in the ME and there is one other player who is raising a lot pre-flop to your right. You might be willing to take a flip with him in order to bust him even if you are a small dog because you believe that if you eliminate him you will be able to accumulate many more chips over the next hour than you can with him at the table.

That are good points. But its really difficult to estimate how valuable are those chips you win and how valuable is surviving and waiting for hands. And I think that WSOP is not the best tourney example, there are a lot of amateurs who will make big mistakes and the big hands are much more valuable than online, so theres less need to make a gamble with 55