Hot Seat Strategy

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
41

Playing your cards well… from good to bad cards is key, beating yourself for whatever reason… is always worse, than most bad beats ever will be…

Every once & awhile, play med-low to med suited connecters or maybe not even suited, play that 3-6 just like like you have a good hand. You don’t have to fire 2nd/3rd barrel , now if you miss but you can rep what flops kewl go with it, if your crap hits woohoo because usually you will be facing high cards that miss’d and can’t continue.

:thinking: Hot-Seat, does it exsist ? Adjustments ? … well, if usually when it rains on a monday or friday, it also rains the day after… then yes you plan accordingly… thats a “trend” , and trends are generalities … I can say from my 3+ years here, I do see trends in cards, and I do make adjustments accordingly. Its poker so nothing is a sure thing.

It doesn’t matter if 1-2 seats are “hot” or whether or not 1 particular card type ( like Qs ) seems right now to be the card to be holding… Adaptation is required. Failing to do so, is just like playing AA the same way, no matter what the flop, turn, or river is. You certainly can’t play AA if 2748 all hearts is out, and you have no hearts… or thats a harsh semi-bluff, if you aren’t the 1st one betting and have to call or re-raise.

Yes, I see trends in cards, I also think players can/do run in streaks, so I agree with Warlock, SPG, & Whittaker. Failing to adjust, is a mistake. :confused:

Sassy

42

It’s not just seats, sometimes it’s a specific card that gets hot.

The other day it was kings. In 10 hands, there was a king on the flop 8 times, and 3 of these were 2 king flops. Within those 10 hands, i saw pocket kings 2 times, and most times, at least 1 king was out in someone’s hand.

Knowing that it was a fluke, and that I could in no way rely on it, I played K6, which I would normally fold. Sure enough, it was one of the 2 king flops, and I lost a nice pot to a guy with the other king and an actual kicker.

Since you can’t say when hot seats or hot cards will end, there’s not a whole lot you can do usually. I will avoid people that are just on fire, at least for an orbit or 2. I’ve seen top pros do the same more than a few times.

If it’s early in a tournament and I’m over the average chip count, sure, I’ll limp in with a hot card if i’m in late position. Why not? I’m looking to play some marginal hands early anyway.

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As has been said before, but is worth repeating, the human mind looks for patterns. Sometimes it will create one where none exists, like when we look for recognizable shapes in clouds or thought we saw a face out of the corner of our eye in the dark that turned out to be a leaf. Other times it works so that when unusual patterns emerge, we remember them for future reference. These are usually events that have either significantly benefitted us or significantly harmed us, like winning or losing a strong of hands that statistically should have gone the other way. This is hardwired into us. This is how the human race evolved and survived.

Anyone who has played games of chance or has studied statistics even casually should understand that unusual strings of events are the norm in the short term. If random events actually happened in a smooth random way, this would be extremely unusual. In fact, this would be a sign that the mechanism wasn’t truly random at all. It is only over the very long term that all these unusual clumps of events smooth themselves out to reveal their overall randomness.

Even the logical person can fall victim to this fallacy though. A long time ago when I was in Australia, waiting for my seat, I placed a single-number wager on the closest roulette wheel to me. One bet, one number and it hit. I walked to the next wheel and placed a wager on the same number, and it hit. I knew this was a fluke thing and one event had nothing to do with the other but that didn’t stop me from going to the third (and final) wheel and doing it again. Yup, it hit. Each bet had a chance of winning 1/36th of the time (European wheel with only one 0). The odds of this string of wagers all winning were about 0.002%. That’s an extremely unlikely event for any 1 person to experience. However, if you look at it from the point of view of the roulette wheels, over the course of a single year it probably happened often enough as to be unremarkable.

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That is a very important point that advanced holdem players understand and use to capitalize on hands.

A common example is the ace bet.

I am holding a small pair but I throw out an ace bet (double the BB bet pre-flop).

There is an ace on the flop but nothing to help my pair but I bet as if I hit that ace because I want to see the turn and river to improve my hand.

The opponents seen my ace bet and my bet on the flop creates the illusion pattern that I must have hit the ace so they fold thinking their hand is too weak to beat aces.

They are reacting to a pattern of betting and advanced players can take advantage of those common betting patterns in many ways to either get a fold or play a fish along for a bigger pot or for a bluff.

You also want to recognize when you may be falling for a pattern bet and folding when you should have stayed.

For example is the flush pattern bet. You hit a small pair in the flop but there is a 2 card flush possible with it and you don’t have that suit. You bet as if you are looking for that suit for a flush.

The suit comes up on the turn and you bet as if you hit that flush so you can get another look at the river for card to help your pair. Your opponent sees your flop and turn bet as a pattern and you must have hit the flush so they fold their bigger pair.

If we could see each players hand after a hand is ended you would probably see many of the hands were won not because the person had the better cards but because they played the bet in a way that got the better cards to fold and it is mostly due to people misreading patterns.

If you aware of that you can use it to your advantage to get players to believe they see a pattern and fold or build up the pot and you should also question the patterns you think you are seeing that may not be accurate.

The hot seat or streak is also a pattern that can deceive people into folding when if you could look at all the hands after the river you would probably see many times there was a better hand or more than one hand that could have won had they stayed in and bet that hand in a way to get a fold.

Holdem is one of the few games where you can win big without actually having the best hand!

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In simple terms it is just advanced chasing. No need for all the details that are already known.

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Mr. Streak and Mr. Random decide to flip a coin a million times and bet on the outcome.

Mr. Random should, on average, win 500k times and lose 500k times, breaking even.

Mr. Streak will only be betting streaks. Whenever he sees the same result, heads or tails, 2 times in a row, he will identify this as a possible streak and bet on the same result the 3rd time.

His odds on the next toss are 50/50, which is the same as Mr. Random. Both players should expect to lose as much as they win.

However, streaks do happen, and Mr’s Streak will show a profit every time a streak goes over 4 heads (or tails) in a row. This should happen 62,500 times for heads and 62,500 times for tails over 1 million tosses.

Let’s look at a streak of 6 as an example…

Mr. Random will win 3 and lose 3. He breaks even.

Mr streak doesn’t bet on the first 2 throws, but wins all 4 of the rest. He ends up 4 units ahead.

50% of the times Mr. Streak enters a series, he will show a profit of 1, but 25% of the time, he will see a profit of 2 and 12.5% of the time, he will see a profit of 3, and so on. It’s this potential for additional profit that’s the difference.

The only real difference is that Mr. Streak believes in streaks, and so will profit from them. Mr. Random doesn’t believe, so doesn’t profit from them.

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Well the flip of a coin leaves out skill too unlike poker which if played right can win many hands of the player on a so called streak. u have to believe in your play to profit just like the coins but even more so in poker especially to take profits on the streak player, mix up your game and betting style and u will find yourself winning many of his streak hands or he will at least fold more.

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Streaks do happen, there’s no doubt about it.

We can detect the beginning of a streak and alter our betting patterns.

Unfortunately, since we can’t know when the streak will end, there’s no way to profit from these 2 bits of information.

So ok, you see it come up heads 2 times in a row and identify it as a streak. You bet heads on the next toss. If you do this 1,000 times, you will win 500 and lose 500.

The fallacy is that these 500 wins carry through as profit, when in fact, they don’t. The 500 wins just cancel out the 500 losses and we break even. There’s nothing to carry forward. This will be the same on every toss… there’s never anything to carry forward as profit, at least not if you look at it from a long term perspective. For every win, there will be a loss.

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Here is my strategy for dealing with a hot seat. I have found that this works exactly as well at both high stakes and low stakes.

When someone wins 3 hands in a row I identify that they are on a hot streak. Then I use the rotate table icons to move myself around into the spot they were in. Now I am in the hot seat and can proceed accordingly.

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I presume you are joking…

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he’s joking

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Maybe :smiley:

Seriously, I think SPG nailed it - streaks happen but it’s just randomness. You can’t tell when they’ll start or end so there’s nothing practical you can do. So you may as well rotate yourself into the hot seat because that is going to work just as well as anything else.

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I don’t like rotating !

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i would like to see that in a live tournament :stuck_out_tongue:

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Instead of rotating your seat which has no effect you could sit out a few hands which does change the cards you would be dealt when you rejoin the game.

Does not necessarily mean they will be better and might be worse and you may end up paying the blinds but if you get a long streak of really bad cards give it a try.

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I’ve found sometimes after a bad streak if I just stand up, jump up and down 7 times (not 6, not 8) while rubbing my tummy and patting my head I start getting great cards. :slightly_smiling_face:

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57

I usually type “Shoot the dealer!” especially when I am holding top cards and the flop is a small straight or flush I don’t have after I just put in a hefty bet.

What we perceive and our expectations plays a big part in how we play a hand so taking a break by sitting out or doing your funny routine or my yelling at the dealer is a way of changing our own perceptions and maybe our strategy so bad cards look good.

Just my opinion.

58

Just an example of how streaks go: Yesterday I couldn’t get anything beyond a poor pair and most of those got beat and I barely broke even after hours of play but it wasn’t only me and everyone on the table was struggling.

Today on first table I pulled a straight flush against a FH for a huge pot and then proceeded to hit 2 FH and at least 6 straights all in close order and got big pots on all of them and when the cards turned I left with 5X my buy in.

I don’t keep playing when the streak runs out so I banked my winnings to cover another slow streak.

So when you get those bad streaks remember a good streak will come along and you just have to capitalize on it and enjoy the ride!

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Has anyone considered the probability of intuition or instincts? As a person who listens to their body I.E. gut, I can tell you, that I make choices that people will say “wow what luck” or “you are so lucky” etc… But in reality I have no more luck than anyone else I just feel “IT” when it is about to happen, it’s no different than the very few wild animals dying in Tsunami’s or Earthquakes over the years. I know some don’t believe in being in touch the way I claim, And of course I make errors or misjudgments especially when I force it or don’t listen to it, but if you sit at a table long enough with me, you will say, 1) Lucky, or 2) this game is rigged or 3) what Juicee wrote in this reply to “Hot Seat Strategy” must have some merit… When My seat catches fire I am very hard to beat… I believe that people get into the zone and things just go right for a period of time. B-Ball, Poker etc… Juicee
Did Animals Sense Tsunami Was Coming?

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Animals sense things like that because they are sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field. A tsunami puts lots of extra water in one place, which deforms the crust and alters the local magnetics. Earthquakes produce strains which do the same thing.

The problem is that there is no control group. If intuition gives you more confidence, maybe that’s all that is happening. Maybe if you just played that way all the time, you would do better, intuition or not. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, and we just can’t know for sure what causes things to happen the way they happen.

I do personally believe in intuition, and it’s saved my butt more than once.