March Article of the Month

[ciaran]

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!

[Bazclef]

Turbo SNG Tips (part 2)
by Bazclef

Endgame (200/400+)
When we get to this stage play is driven by stack sizes, so I’ll split this section down into 2 sections:

If you’ve got a short/medium stack you should only have one of 2 moves… push or fold. Remember if a raise costs 35%+ of your stack you should be pushing all of your chips in the middle rather than raising. Put pressure on the players that are afraid to bubble out (or are looking to move up the payout-ladder), and try to stay away from the big stacks.

Never let your stack size drop too low (below 3-4 big blinds minimum), make sure you’re pushing the best opportunity to steal before BB hits you. It’s important to find the best opportunity when you’ve got enough fold equity to do the blinds some damage. If you’re shoving into a LAG BB that has 7-8x your stack then he’s way more likely to call than a player with 1-2x your stack that you can do damage to. He may not be willing to call with marginal-good hands even if he knows you’re stealing, as it jeopardizes his position in the tourney.

Although you have to be aggressive as a sort/medium stack, you also need to tighten up a lot when it comes to calling all-in bets at the bubble. In an MTT payouts are very top heavy so you’d normally play harder at the bubble to take advantage of those fearing bubbling. However, in a 1-2 table SNG the difference between scraping into the money and winning isn’t nearly as big, this means just cashing is a significant result. This means you need a much stronger hand than normal to call all-in with at the bubble. Most players don’t understand this and will call way too loose. Remember, you should be pushing pretty loose, but calling tight!

If you’re the big stack then you want to put as much pressure on your opponents as possible, while risking as little of your chips as possible. Often in these tourneys when a player develops a big enough stack the other players resign themselves to battling it out for 2nd place. This is of huge benefit to you, and you need to take advantage of it and close the tourney out.

Say the blinds are 300/600 with 50antes, you’ve got 14,000 and 2 opponents each with 3,000, I like to be ultra aggressive here. I’ll push all-in with 60% of hands when it’s folded to me or I’m first to act pre-flop, as the amount of times I take down the blinds uncontested easily makes up for the times when I’m called with a weaker hand than my opponent. Having this super aggressive image also has other advantages, such as getting paid off big when you pick up a big hand and get called, also the other players will often fold to you when you’re on the BB. Don’t sit back and wait for the other players to bust each other out, push them hard as they’ll be playing tight to try to pick up 2nd place.

Be aware of the presence of a tiny stack on the table, particularly at the bubble. Lets say the tiny stack has less than the BB left in chips, and the BB is going to hit him within the next couple of hands forcing him all-in. The other opponents (particularly medium sized stacks) at the table will a lot more inclined to fold hands and let the mini stack bust out, It’s a great opportunity to steal blinds, or a pot.

Being the big stack in the late stages of an SNG gives you huge advantages. If you find that you don’t usually have enough chips when entering the late stages it’s likely that you’re playing too tight early on. Loosen up a bit early on to give yourself a better chance of getting chipped up.

Remember if you’re playing a multi table SNG to re-adjust your game when going from a shorthanded table back to a full table. Moving from 5-handed to 9-handed requires you to tighten up considerably.

Heads Up
The biggest mistake people make in heads up at the end of a Turbo is trying to delicately outplay your opponent. These heads up battles are messy, crapshooty and generally only last around 10-15 hands. The blinds will be so high that you just won’t have enough chips to try to put plays on your opponent post-flop.

Where do you get your edge then? Feel and aggression. By now you should have a good feel for your opponent. Does he limp when he has a weak hand? If so, raise/shove whenever he does. Does he check-call quickly when he’s on a draw? All of these reads are magnified massively when you get heads up.

90% of heads up battles I’ve played on Turbos have been against opponents who tighten up way too much. The blinds in the pot are big enough to want to take down preflop, if you’ve entered heads up even stacked with your opponent then a few pushes early on can often give you the advantage to take a chance at busting him. Raise the top 50% hands: Q7+, K5+, 76s/87s/98s/T9s/JTs, any pair, and any ace.

Limp more instead of folding. When you limp you’re getting better than 3/1 on your money, these odds are good enough to limp in with any 2 cards. However, if your opponent regularly raises it up when you limp you’ll want to tighten this up a bit. Unless your opponent is really aggressive then you should be limping in with 80%+ of hands.

To feel comfortable playing ultra-aggressively heads up you need to stop fearing getting it all in with the worst hand. You need to take these gambles to boss your opponent, and you’re usually not as big a dog as you might think. Lets look at some examples:
• Two under-cards (67 vs. KT), middle card and low card (J7 vs. KT) or over/under cards to opponents pair (A5 vs. JJ) are all around 35/65 shots.
• Even if you’re dominated then you’re around a 25/75 shot.
• The only hand an opponent could have that would really have you in trouble is an over-pair 20/80. The chance of this is pretty slim, though. If a heads up match only lasts 10-15 hands and the chance of being dealt a pair in hold’em is 16/1 then it’s unlikely your opponent will be holding an over-pair at any point during the heads up battle.

So… if your opponent calls and you have the worst of it you’re probably not as big a dog as you think. More importantly the pots you pick up uncontested preflop easily outweigh the times where you get it in as a slight underdog.

Conclusion
The key to Turbos is to constantly re-evaluate yours and your opponents stack sizes, in relation to the blinds. When you’ve got good implied odds (early on) play some speculative hands, but when the blinds raise you need to look for middle/high pairs and big cards. When the blinds get really high in the late stages make sure you turn up the aggression and pick on the weak, you can’t rely on getting cards to stay alive.

GL guys

I appreciate any feedback!

[Bazclef]

[Willem]

[ciaran]

Moved ezplayer's article to the current thread.