February Article of the Month Submissions - Deadline 1/20/07

[mchilger]

ITH is sponsoring an Article of the Month contest. Each month Members can submit articles to the Forum. The Forum will vote on their favorite article and the winner’s will be published on the home page and newsletter. The winner receives $100 (cash or stake). The process will work as follows:

- We will start a Sticky each month in The Poker Tutor and Articles Forum titled January Article of the Month contest, February…etc.
- Members have until the 20th of each month to submit an article in that thread.
- On the 20th, we will post a poll for Members to vote on their favorite article.
- Whichever article has the most votes by the 1st will win.
- Please focus on poker strategy. Lessons learned and hand examples are always great topics. Feel free to turn one of your posts into an article.

If you want to make a submission, please simply reply to this thread with your article.

Thanks and good luck! Matthew

[Bazclef]

Turbo SNG Tips (part 1)
by Bazclef

Turbos have taken off lately as a quick and exciting way to play tournament poker, in this 2 part article I’ll explain how to adapt your game as you move through the blind levels of a Turbo SNG. This first part will explore early & middle play, and the 2nd part (to be posted next month) will focus on bubble & heads up play. My SNG of choice is the Stars NL 2-Table Turbo, so the blind levels illustrated below directly correspond to it.

Early (10/20 & 15/30 & 25/50)
Play early on is driven by the cards you pick up. You should be betting for value, not bluffing, as the table will play pretty loose. I’m not a fan of playing super-tight in the first few levels, a lot of the loose players will throw their chips away and you want to be getting your share.

Here your implied odds are at their highest so play speculative hands in position or even out of position if there table is loose/passive pre-flop. You should be looking to hit the flop cheaply and try to double through with a big hand. This isn’t an excuse to play A4s and K9o from early position! Try and get in to see some cheap flops with low pocket pairs and suited connectors, the more limpers the better. You’ll find a lot of players getting too attached to top pair hands early on, make sure you’re not putting too much of your stack at risk with just a pair.

Although I like to loosen up early on, it’s important to be patient. If the situations aren’t favourable be sure to keep your cool and fold, fold, fold. If you fritter away too much then you won’t get maximum value when you do double through!

Since play is so loose early on it’s best to play big hands fast. Don’t be afraid of scaring off action, if your opponents are loose then make your raises bigger than the standard 3xBB raise to gain the extra value available.

Early-Middle (50/100 & 75/150)
The maniacs are dying off and your implied odds are getting lower. Cut down on speculative hands unless the situation is really favourable, look for middle/high pairs and big cards and play them more aggressively.

You don’t have as much space for manoeuvring post-flop now, continuation bets (bluffing on the flop after raising pre-flop) are more likely to take down pots. Be careful when continuation betting, don’t c-bet into 3 or more players unless you’re certain they’re weak.

Middle (100/200 & 100/200+antes)
The stacks at the table are now much lower in relation to the blinds. Stealing becomes a big part of your game, with a lot of the pots being taken down before the flop. At Stars antes provide a lot of extra money in the pot, when the antes kick in it’s time to get aggressive.

It’s important at this stage to make sure you’ve categorized each of the players at your table (loose/tight, aggressive/passive). Pick on the tight medium-stacked players, they’ll generally tighten up even more as the blinds increase as they’ll be worried about busting out. Try to stay away from the bigger stacks as they have the ability to eliminate you from the tournament. You should be aiming to steal the blinds at least once per orbit.

When you steal it’s very important to be first into the pot, but also look out for weak players that limp-in then fold to raises. When you raise over the top of a limper other players will give more respect than usual, and you'll pick up extra chips from the weak limper.

It’s important to be wary of pot committing yourself in the wrong situation. You want to push people around, but you don’t want to pot commit yourself with a marginal hands. Here’s an example:

You’re 8 handed and the blinds are 100/200. The BB has 1700, you’re in the SB with 2000. It’s folded around to you with Q9o. You raise to 600…

Your raise was a fine play if you’re deep-stacked, but when short-stacked you need to be very careful not to pot commit yourself in a situation where you don’t need to and could come off pretty badly.

… the BB pushes all of his chips in. Now it’s costing you 1100 to call into a 2300 pot and see the hand out to the end. You’re now in a very bad spot having to commit almost your entire stack in a hand that you’re likely behind in.

There’s a simple rule you should have followed here: when a raise will pot commit you (when you’re raising over 35% of your or your opponents stack), you should be shoving all of your chips in the middle. This not only gives you better fold equity (chance of making your opponent fold), but it takes away the chance of you making a weak fold when your opponent re-raises. Either shove your chips in, or don’t pot commit yourself, make a smaller bet that you can still get away from if your opponent plays back.

Here we can see that Q9o really isn’t strong enough to risk over half of your stack with when you’re still in pretty good shape, so you should limp instead. You’re better off taking a stab at the pot on the flop or turn, when a bet won’t commit you with a weak hand.


Next month: bubble & heads up play!

[loyo1]

deleted

[maf66]

Here's my entry. Whether my entry is successful or not, I'd appreciate any feedback on writing articles from any of the regular contributors. Please PM me if you get a chance.

OK, so it's not Poker strategy, but I thought the topic was interesting:

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Life? Sorry, I’m busy playing Poker
by Mark Flynn (maf66)

You come back from work, have some dinner, then fire up the computer and launch your favourite Poker site. Meanwhile, that bathroom door that you’ve been meaning to fix still squeaks, you have a backlog of recorded episodes of ‘24’ to watch, and the girlfriend is nagging you because she’s hardly seen you for days. The cat is also looking a little thin these days. Sound familiar?

We all love Poker, but the trouble is that is doesn’t half take up a lot of your time. Whether you’re playing ring games or tournaments, you can easily use up 3 or 4 hours without realising it. If you’re really good, it could take you even longer if you final table a large Multi Table tournament (sometimes I’m glad I’m not that good). A typical $20 multi table tournament with around 800 entrants could take 5-6 hours to win. The Stars Million last Sunday took the eventual winner over 10 hours to finish.

So how do we find time to do those mundane jobs around the house, socialise with friends, participate in other hobbies, watch the big soccer game on TV? Well, sometimes we don’t find the time. We put them off. “I’ll fix that leaky toilet another day”, “I can see my friends any time”, “I’ve gone off tennis”, or “I’ll tape the highlights tonight”. If we are not careful, we could find that Poker is taking over our lives. We are putting off other things for one more tournament, to make up our loss from the previous evening, or see if you can find that fish from the other night.

OK, some people might say it’s more profitable than watching the ball-game, or mowing the lawn, but there are other adverse effects from missing out on other things. The fridge is empty. You’ve run out of clean socks. You find that when you meet your friends, you no longer have anything to talk to them about (they don’t want to hear about how you spiked your 2-outer on the bubble the other day). I don’t need to explain the obvious downsides to lack of exercise.

Then we get onto relationships. Whilst you’re playing Poker, you’re not giving your partner the quality time they sometimes want. This leads to arguments and you find your partner no longer supports your hobby (if they ever did in the first place). Worse case scenario is that it could lead to a break-up of the relationship/marriage.

As you may have gathered by now, I’m basing this article on amateur players like myself who work by day, and play Poker in our spare time. I’m sure full-time professionals also struggle to fit things in at times, especially if they are constantly travelling from one live tournament to another.

So how can we make things better for us? I suppose different people will have different priorities, and different outlooks on life. I’ve drawn up a list of tips that I think will help some people at least:

· Don’t play every day. Use your days off to catch up on outstanding jobs, socialise with friends, or participate in any other hobbies or commitments you may have.

· Keep a regular schedule. Same as above really, but as an example, plan to have, say, every Monday off. Plan how many hours you intend to play every day, and during which times. Maybe start a bit later some days so you don’t jump on the PC as soon as you get home from work.

· Don’t overdo the hours. How many times have you thought “Just another 15 minutes to get even”. This 15 minutes turns into an hour, which turns into 3 hours. You end up going to bed at 3am when you need to get an early start for that important meeting with your boss at 8am. Stick to your planned end time and don’t exceed it. You can try again another day.

· Play Turbos. Turbos are becoming increasingly popular these days. They are great if you don’t have much time on your hands. A typical 1 table SNG will last around 1½ hours, whereas the same tournament in a Turbo format may only last 45 minutes. If you multi-table, then you’ll fit even more games in. You do the math!

· Get out more! If you’re eating, breathing and sleeping Poker, this can have a detrimental effect, especially when you’re having a bad time at the tables. It will eat into you as you have nothing else to take your mind off things. Catch up with friends, go to the gym, take up another hobby, take evening classes, learn a language, whatever. Just do something else non-poker related to break the monotony.

· Remember your loved ones. As I’ve mentioned. Don’t ignore your loved ones. Remember to set aside quality time so they know they’re not forgotten.

I’m not trying to put people off Poker, far from it. I’m simply saying don’t let Poker take over your life. You can still play a lot of Poker and enjoy it. It may be that you already have a balanced life/Poker ratio, in which case you can ignore what I’ve just said. But others may not be aware of it. Just take a step back and see whether any of the problems I’ve mentioned relate to you.

Life? Yes, I remember what that is now.

[ciaran]

The submission deadline has now passed. Please vote in the poll for this month's Article of the Month.

[janeg]

Tough choice guys, they are both well thought out, interesting and well written. Kudos to you both

[mchilger]

Congrats Bazclef. I have the totals 18 to 15 as of 2/1. Voting is now closed. Maf, great entry also. Thanks both for participating.

Thanks! Matthew

[maf66]

Well that was exciting. It was pretty much neck and neck all the way.

Congratulations to Bazclef on an excellent article.

Thanks to everyone who voted (not just for me, but for the both of us). Hopefully this will spark more interest for future articles.

[Bazclef]

Thanks Matthew, for giving us the opportunity to get some exposure on these articles. It was great fun and I'm looking forward to submitting the 2nd part when the March topic is up.

GG maf. I really liked your article, it sums up why I play the Turbos. It was really close all the way, when I checked yesterday afternoon you were leading.

Cheers to everyone who read, voted, and posted opinions in the other thead. Much appreciated!

[the_hawk]

Baz, welcome to the exclusive club of AoTM winners!

nh maf also.