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#877 – A Letter from a Poker Friend, Part I – How Loose (or Tight) Should I Play?
I’m currently drowning in Las Vegas and unable to post, either about Phil Ivey, the Main Event final table, or what’s pulling me under the surface. I will explain in detail upon my return and will faithfully post my “Looking For Ivey” series on Sunday, October 25, November 1, and November 8.
Before I found myself in this current jam, I received an email from a fan of the blog that raised some interesting issues. Because I had written a detailed response, I’m posting that in two parts, while I make sense of the tangled mess I’ve made of my life here in Vegas. Please keep in mind that when I wrote the material that follows, I was in a sane, stable environment and frame of mind.
A little while back, I mentioned that a friend of the blog, Greg, emailed me with some questions that he had after he and his wife watched me play poker online for a few days. In particular, he brought up a great and under-reported benefit of Full Tilt Poker: How you can learn by watching professionals play online poker.
I haven’t been idle with this subject since the original blog appeared. I have posted a series of blogs about hands from my win in a private tournament with thepotkings.com. See Blogs # 861, 869, 870, 871. I’m also watching some red pros play in tournaments and taking notes; I’ll try and report some of the things I’ve learned.
Greg hasn’t been idle either. He had some questions from the days he watched me in those tournaments. His questions raise some of the points I like to emphasize in describing my online poker style. I will reproduce Greg’s letter here and respond.
Please keep in mind that the explanations that follow aren’t automatically correct. I have learned from some great players but I am certain they wouldn’t agree with everything I do, or even all my recitations of their advice.
Michael,
Thanks for your reply which explained the showing/not showing of hands.
We have noticed that you play looser than most other pros we have watched.
Yet you seem to outlast them as well.
I have read the FullTilt tournament book and others as well, watched all the Academy lessons, including yours on Turbo’s. I have tried playing by those guidelines and if I play that tight, I hardly ever get to play in a hand. Also, everyone knows that I am playing that tight and it is almost impossible to get anyone to call my bets.
I have a couple of questions and feel free to say you prefer not to answer them if you wish.
1. What basic criteria do you use pre-flop?
We have noticed that most the time you play according to the book.
However, sometimes you play KXo or small connectors off suit as well.
2. How tight/loose should one play, (this may be answered by question 1).
3. In your video you said you started with the $11 Turbo tournaments.
What tournaments would you suggest I should start at to get above the Crazy players?
I make $135K at my day job, so I can afford to play at most any table, but I want to start low and build up my skills. I don’t want to just throw away money either as I am 62 years young. I am willing to take as long as is necessary to improve.
Basically, I am asking that if you were to give advice to a semi-beginner, where would you have them start and what would determine that it was time for them to take the next step and what step would that be?
I know that poker is a risk and I am not asking for any type of “fool proof” method.
We like your style of play, which seems to have more fun and less “technical” “by the book” strategy.
The first issue that Greg raises, and one that comes up throughout, is how loose or tight tod play before the flop. There’s no overall answer; rather, it should depend on a combination of mathematical and situational factors. I use Any Bloch’s pre-flop tables and percentages as my initial guide. (Those appear in the pre-flop chapter in THE FULL TILT POKER STRATEGY GUIDE – TOURNAMENT EDITION.) Andy developed these charts as a result of some computer programs he wrote about a hypothetical poker game. In that game, two players played heads-up. The big blind could only jam or fold and the small blind could only call or fold. What Bloch figured out (as well as Chris Ferguson who independently did the same programming at the same time) was the size stack necessary or required for each move with each hand in each position. This gave him a ranking of all hands for raising and for calling. As for which percentage of hands to play in each position, he used some kind of smart-guy voodoo that made sense to me but I am nowhere near smart enough to explain. But very generally, that chart is the result of that programming.
I will often play more hands than Andy’s chart recommends. This generally happens online, early in tournaments, and when Andy Bloch is not around. The more comfortable you feel playing after the flop and the better you understand the play of your opponents, the more hands you can play. In contrast, if you are relatively inexperienced or feel you are playing against extremely skilled opponents, you will want to play fewer hands but play them more aggressively. Early in the hand, there are fewer factors to consider. If you are unsure of your own abilities or have a very high estimation of your opponents’ abilities, you should force the action into relatively few hands and make the key decision point take place early in the hand.
I have heard world-class players say this in many circumstances and have adopted it myself to great benefit. When Chris Ferguson won the world championship in 2000, the only time he would play a pot without betting before the flop was when he would check the big blind. If he was the first player in the pot, he would raise or fold. If there were other players in the pot, he would raise (or re-raise) or fold – never just calling after a limper or raiser. This forced his opponents, many of whom probably considered themselves more game-hardened than Chris, to make their most important decisions before the flop. With Ferguson’s mathematical approach to pre-flop play, he knew he was better than even the most experienced pros pre-flop. Now, with another decade of world-class experience under his belt, he has loosened up a little. He still refuses to be the first limper in a pot but he may just call a prior bet rather than raising. This requires him to make more post-flop decisions, but he is clearly up to the task. He recommends that less experienced players play the way he played back in 2000.
As I explained in my blog during the 2008 Million Pound Challenge, Allen Cunningham provided similar advice to Adam Noone as he prepared to play Chris Ferguson heads-up. “Chris is one of the best heads-up players in the world, especially in this kind of format. Against Chris you should try and take the skill out. Put a lot of chips in pre-flop if you can. Re-raise a lot on his button. Make it come down to one hand where there’s more luck involved.”
I credit this kind of thinking with my second-place finish in Razz at the 2009 World Series of Poker. As I explained in this blog, Jeffrey Lisandro was the dominant player at the final table. Contrary to most of my opponents, whose calling-along forced them into tough decisions late in the hand, I generally decided to avoid playing hands with Lisandro or playing against him so aggressively that the decision whether to commit to the hand was made early. I had no problem conceding that Jeffery Lisandro was more experienced at making difficult sixth- and seventh-street decisions.
You should also consider the stage of the tournament when deciding how loose or tight to play. It has generally been my experience that most players tighten up as the tournament progresses. If I think that is true at my table, I definitely want to play more hands as the blinds and antes go up. In addition, I will sometimes flat-call in position without an especially strong hand. If my opponent is conservative, he may give up the pot if he doesn’t hit and I could take it by betting (regardless of my hand). I could also accidently hit a big hand this way and bust somebody. I think of it as “getting lucky by design.”
In Part II of my response, I will consider Greg’s questions about “where to start.”
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