Hot Seat Strategy

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
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Looks like we are overlapping the hot seat with the instincts discussion.

I will address my thought on instincts on that thread but I would say that the natural instinct of mankind is to be risk averse which may be the exact wrong response if you are playing poker.

Humans have a built in fight or flight response that does come out in any competition like poker. Since we don’t actually have a saber tooth tiger chasing us the risk is only a perceived risk unless you are playing for real money in which case it may be a real risk.

If you run away every time you are faced with a big bet risk you will fold many winning hands and your opponents will read you doing that and use it against you with more bluffs and bet bullying.

If you fight and become over aggressive in your betting you will drive away the money and get smaller pots or you may not fold when you should have and get taken to the cleaners.

Finding that right balance is an advanced player skill and involves knowing your stack risk, observing your opponents play style, controlling your emotions and reading patterns that indicate if your opponent is a real threat or bluffing or over estimating their hand.

The tsunami reference SPG used is probably based on reading patterns in nature and being in tune with your environment. Tsunami’s have signals that indicate they are happening that you could respond to and avoid risk such as pre-tremors, changes in the tide, animals moving away from the coast, rock slides, etc. that our ancestors were probably much more tuned in to than we are today.

To relate this back to the hot seat and streaks theory.

You may be perceiving a streak based on your reading of patterns that may or may not exist and changing your own play style based on those patterns and if you are risk averse and prefer to run you may be folding hands you should have played or fighting and playing hands you should have folded.

Knowing when to do which is key to winning hands and that comes with being in tune to the signals in the environment of the poker table and reading your opponents correctly.

My reaction is usually to fold if the risk is too great and catch them on a better hand but if that opponent is a known bluffer or signaled they were bully betting I will take that risk even if I lose that hand to send them and the table the signal that if they do it again with me they stand a much higher risk of being called.

That is why I love poker- it is a very psychological game.

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62

Those arent bad things to control to improve your game however an even more advanced player wont allow u or give u the opportunity to get a read on them to control.

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Speaking of weird streaks:

Played for a couple hours today and just getting dribble drabble hands here and there and just seeing the flop and folding most hands.

Other players were getting over confident taking my chips and then I hit a solid FH but slow played and let the opponent lead themselves in to an all in.

Next hand trips on the flop and same thing. Slow played and let them lead in to a huge pot.

A few hands later same thing and flopped a straight. Slow played into another all in.

Sometimes when you get a streak you don’t want to hit that bet hard and scare off the money and let your opponent take the lead on the bet.

I have picked up many big pots and felted more opponents doing that than playing aggressive but you have to have a good read on what they are holding.

64

Just an observation; I have found in a tournament, one can almost predict with a high degree of accuracy which player will be among the first to be eliminated: It is that aggressive better that raises almost every preflop, and is prone to frequent preflop all-ins

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65

It could be unfair in certain ways accidentally, for example perhaps there are a limited number of decks, say 1024 that get dealt over and over again, rather than millions of different decks.

In no way do I subscribe to conspiracy theories, but it does sometimes seem oddly normal to me that I will be dealt identical hands in succession hands, or identical flops will arrive on successive hands.

Of course, even when you are shuffling cards by hand, some shuffles are better than others, and one contract bridge deal that has a very abnormal suit or point distribution may be followed by another. In fact it seems to me that if exactly the same method of shuffling is used each time, in theory it would be possible to predict the cards on the next deal (if you had a prodigious memory and an implanted processor chip).

To some extent the limited deck scenario would actually be fairer, as in duplicate bridge, where all the North South pairs in the tournament get to play the same cards as the other North South pairs, and the winner is the pair that plays the cards the best and obtains the highest score.

In a multitable poker tournament, you could start off with each table playing the same deals as all the other tables and after a number of hands the 50% players who play their cards the best would progress to the cut, where half the players would be eliminated, as in a golf tournament. In the next stage another 50% would be eliminated by the same method, and so on.

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Just an observation; I have found in a tournament, one can almost predict with a high degree of accuracy which player will be among the first to be eliminated: It is that aggressive better that raises almost every preflop, and is prone to frequent preflop all-ins

I noticed this in a tournament I was in last night. The aggressive player went all in several times preflop and on the flop, or on the river, then after he had revealed a few non premium hands a few players got wise to him and he was soon eliminated.

A common error on RP is to go all in on the river with a non nut hand when you are only likely to be called by a hand that thinks it can beat you.

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67

I disagree with your last sentence, or at least find it a debatable proposition. I think it’s fine to play two-pair for your entire stack in SnG and it’s very easy to get called by worse in that format. Consider on that board, a top pair/good kicker might’ve call a shove thinking it was a busted diamond draw. And many people will call off a shove with top pair in the early rounds of a SnG. Cash/Ring play it can absolutely be a mistake to play a weak two-pair that strong - but any two-pair is extremely strong in a SnG and almost always it will be good. I think it’s a losing strategy long-term to not play any two-pair for your entire stack - unless you have a specific read or the board is super-scary (4-card flush etc), and that’s really only if you haven’t already committed more than say 33-40% of your stack. I mean, an extremely common strategy among a lot of very profitable SnG grinders is to play top pair/top kicker for their entire stack, let alone anything better. I’m not saying it’s optimal or the best, I’m just saying it’s plenty common and effective to play two-pair exactly as he did super aggressively. You should be trying to double up in a SnG, and you can only have the nuts so often - I don’t think you can afford to play two-pair conservatively.

I think the moral of this hand is mostly don’t play Ax rags OOP at the 2nd blind level, and certainly not as a limp behind. If you want to play aggressive on the flop - the absolute worst Ax you should have in this spot is probably AQo, maybe AJ++, and of course both hands would call for more aggression pre-flop if you want to play them aggressively on the flop. If you want to limp in, you absolutely have to do pot-control. Imagine he instead was holding AQo, bumps it up pre-flop instead, and flops that two-pair with one-caller You should almost always being trying to play your entire stack with that hand. No, it’s not the nuts - your opponent could’ve easily flopped a set - but that hand is so strong in SnGs that you should be planning a double up.

The moral is, I think, if you want to be aggressive your pre-flop game better be sounder.

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Any two pair all in? No. Sometimes, yes. Sometimes one pair too. I try to avoid putting myself at risk, but sometimes you have to.

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The recent activity has drawn my attention back to this thread, which I started back in October.
Two thoughts…

  1. Please try to stay on topic so this thread does not mutate into a debate on the RNG or into poker strategy that doesn’t pertain to “hot seats”.
  2. This thread resulted in some confrontational posts and I regret that. If anyone got caught up in that, let me just say…
    …
    …
    …I forgive you.
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