You would think this was “crushing” it, but in fact I only finished 2nd.
I agree with MekonKing 100%. This is crazy terribly played poker at 1M buy in. This is a good example of positional play BUT against good players there is no way in Hello Q2o on the button is a profitable play esp in a tourney. Good players will often raise on SB/BB. If your calling almost any raise wi Q2o Vs SB or BB its BINGO. BINGO will send you broke in tournaments. This play is more acceptable & normal in ring games. This was OK play IMO bc MekonKing knew how bad & passive the table was.
As said good example of positional play BUT its more a reflection of how bad & passive the table is. Mid position bigiron1 limps 1010 is bad unless he knows some1 will raise and is slowP to 3Bet, but his rank is low so not surprising. As noted rank can be misguiding but not really. Many high ranks are often passive NITs, & play strong cards & basically bet NUTs. The worst play was ttier1 from the SB: ranked #80 & limps AQo wi 2 limpers. He can easily raise and steal the pot or play Vs 1010. AQo Vs 4 limp players any position is a raise even for a NIT.
1 Like
If (3) ppl go all in with AQ , AK , and AJ … flop comes A48
Usually its a kicker war, noone will blame any of those 3 for playing.
Why are we saying that someone who tries to “trap” is some kind of idiot ??
Sure AQ should’ve raised and 1010 re-raised thus playing against each other.
Both decided to “trap” and limp the flop. Once the 22 is on the board with 4 limpers… ANY random 2 is ahead of both AQ and 1010, should we really blame them for being prudent once the flop came out ? 1010 tried to rep a 2 or Q, thus bluffing and got caught. Don’t we all bluff from time to time ?? (IF) AQ’s read on Mekon was no 2, its reasonable to bet QQ22A thinking you have best kicker.
No matter how well you play, if you get caught by a person who has a hidden monster hand… then you’re prolly gonna lose chips. When you have a good hand and decide to sloplay it, you are taking the risk you get drawn out on.
Next someone will say ppl are idiots for trying to Bluff EVER… get over it, its call’d a bluff and doesn’t always work. Also a 1m buyin MTT to a person with 100m is no different than a person with 100k buyin into a 1k MTT. Just cause its 1m doesn’t mean crap really, but whos playing in it surely does.
Now getting back to topic…
Both 1st to act … and last to act have power. Its a different power, but power all the same. Posistion matters !!! So does alot of things, but it is real.
Sassy
“This is a good example of positional play BUT against good players there is no way in Hello Q2o on the button is a profitable play esp in a tourney.”
I think it depends on your table image. In this hand last night I won a good size pot with Q2o.
I eventually knocked out that opponent with hands like this:
and this: (This hand shows some of the possible disadvantages of calling a preflop raise with K2s out of position.)
and finally this: (LOL!).
Limping Q2o on the BTN isn’t even a close call for EV, even if you were 1st to act and were limping in any 2 cards trying to take the blinds with a c-bet. Limping it behind is massively EV-. We’re talking in excess of -50BB/100. From EP, its an even bigger disaster. Some of this can be mitigated by having terrible opponents but in any circumstance its a substantial leak. Probability does win in the end. “Implied odds” and “great price to see a flop” are the most widely used excuses for making poor decisions. These reasons are more valid when players will pay off like broken slot machines but I think people are wildly overestimating the risk/reward potentials.
I don’t want to comment on most of the hands posted here because they are flatly terrible plays, regardless of the runouts. Its a lot of button-clicking without much discernable rationale, even if we assume we can simply run over our opponents. High-variance, mixed with very weak fields can yield some interesting results. I wouldn’t use some of these examples as instructional tools so much as curiosity pieces (insert picture of breakfast here). The only thing I will add is that there is no positional advantage in all-in situations as all players will fully realize their respective equities.
3 Likes
@Sassy_Sarah - I really wish you’d stop using straw-men constructions to make your points. You create fictitious people and attribute them with statements that no actual person has made or would make. Then you get indignant with the phantoms you yourself developed.
You have a good head for the game - no need for this. Argue what has actually been put forth.
3 Likes
MekonKing,
Personal table image sure, but also Table table image.
We all know each table has its own image, you can get rebalanced to a table where noone is raising preflop, comming from a table where usually preflop raises were common.
This really though doesn’t matter. When more than 1 player is trying to play too cute, usually someone gets burnt. What does matter is how it happened.
Usually when someone comes outta left field its a pocket pair that causes problems, but it could be anything. If you flop top 2 pair and never improve, anyone couldda had trips the whole time and be punk’n you, we all should know that… In this case, there was a pair on the board, so any random card can complete trips.
Ask the question, with 4 limpers preflop what are the odds someone had a 2. Then ask, If I’m behind how many cards will it take to recover the lead and will those cards help anyone who currently is ahead.
AQ needs 2 cards, and produces the overboat, but needs 3 to beat 22.
1010 needs 1 card, and produces the overboat, but needs 2 to beat 22.
Neither overboat in this case helps trips have the nuts.
Usually here, either you rep the trip 2s or you check. The button has the option to steal if everyone checks. If you have a stack, you can thro out a bet to narrow your odds and get a read on the 1 person you hope to isolate. Beware anyone who just flatcalls you if you try that.
The bet of 400 by the BB, pretty much price’d IN the other 3 players to continue.
By the river … neither AQ nor 1010 improved enuff to beat trip 2s. Unless you have a darn good read to think that 2 isn’t out there, you cannot call the bigbet on the river or shove on the turn.
Sassy
1 Like
It’s always nice when people answer their own questions.
Preflop limping lets garbage hands stick around and suck out. That’s why trying to trap by limping with TT or AQ is an idiot move. This hand is a prime example.
3 Likes
say what Warlock?
I agree with 1Warlock that most of these hands aren’t worth commenting on & I watched em all. The OP was about POSITION and the first hand was a good example of position BUT it was a much better example of terrible play & bad players. Limping on the SB with AQ is terrible play especially in this situation. Anyone trying to justify it as trapping, slow play or anything other than terrible play doesn’t have a good understanding of basic good poker strategy.
Table image wasn’t really relevant on many of these hands if any.
The last hand again LOL was just dumb luck and terrible poker. Position was irrelevant in this hand.
2 Likes
Totally agree. If you have a very solid PPPP game you will be very successful simply bc many players have very little understanding of PPPP. Patience is extremely important. Lose your patience for even one hand and it could ruin your tourney. Forgetting about position, not paying attention to pot size, and forgetting or ignoring player tendency can be a costly lesson.
It’s fairly simple to be a decent tourney player :P:P:P:P.
How tough are these million chip buy-in games? Hard to say. Certainly one runs into opponents making the most dreadful errors all the time, but I have nothing to compare it to in terms of real time games or even monied online games.
I guess the standard must be pretty poor, but all the same, it does teach you what it takes to play through all the stages of a tournament and to see the kind of play that is necessary to win. I do find that having won so many tournaments on RP gives a feel for how to win a tournament, whereas when I started the idea of winning a tournament with 30,40 or 70 players was overwhelming.
2 Likes
Exactly right. I’m sure as an average the players are better in the higher stakes tourneys than low stakes BUT drastically less competition. It doesn’t matter how good you are or play in a MTT you still need a decent amount of luck to win. Take “real” poker WSOP main event. Since 2003 Moneymaker the # of entrants has BOOMED. It’s been said we may never see a pro or well known player win again. The odds certainly are stacked against the Pros.
A lot of players high stakes continuously buy chips and play poker purely for fun aKa moderately intelligent gambling. They are happy buy chips n burn it in a night or 2. Its just a thrill. There are all kinds of players and you can learn a lot looking at players profile and observing a small amount of play. I wonder how many players buy chips play to gamble in these higher stakes tourneys. Not a lot I would guess BUT, educated presumptions are often wrong, people/players are often unpredictable and don’t make sense.
My very first MTT, I entered a med stakes game, I think a 15k, finished 4th, and thought I was a natural. In truth I had a lot to learn about the game, but I managed to do very well in spite of myself, mostly by playing extremely tight, folding well, and betting big.
At the time, I had little strategy, I don’t think I raised preflop back then, i wasn’t aware of position, I could be surprised when a straight was possible on the board, and I played suited hands too much. If I hit the flop for top pair, I’d bet pot until the table folded, and if i had a pocket pair JJ+, I’d bet pot preflop or shove it. Mostly that’s all I did, and I didn’t win with that strategy very often, but I would finish in the money enough to feel encouraged to keep playing.
I didn’t really start to play profitably until I figured out how to raise preflop, use position, and size my bets appropriately to the situation to build pots I could win with the strength of my hand, and read the board to assess how beatable my hand was, and read my opponent to get a sense of how likely he could have that hand.
I still don’t play a lot of MTT, as I’ve focused on SNG, and while they are similar, it is a different game that requires a different approach and it’s more challenging to do well consistently with MTT than it is with SNG or Ring play.
Since I joined Badonk’s league 8 months ago, I’ve been appreciating MTT nuances more, and I really enjoy it when I do well in a MTT with a medium-large field of strong players. Playing with the Donks has really hammered home the importance of having position for me, and I have noticed that my best results usually come from having strong hands in late position, and avoiding playing from early position with anything but my best hands. It’s that important.
It’s possible to play from early position, but harder to do well. You’ll lose more hands, and you’ll win smaller pots. There are a few plays you can make from early position that you can use to win bigger pots, such as check-raising and slow playing, but the slow play especially can be dangerous if you allow your opponents to see free cards and possibly catch up with you.
3 Likes
I draw a lot of similarities from my own experience learning to play poker - starting out with 6 player SnGs for years. I was a decent noob player early on after only learning the very basics of poker. Basically hand strength & my natural compulsion to be aggressive meant that I often destroyed many opponents. I learnt a little from friends & later a limited amount online that drastically improved my game. Position was actually one of the last things I learnt playing poker. It was something that I had to work on and concentrate on a lot. I have a lot of respect & interest in poker players that have studied & mastered the game to their own degree. Players like Doyle Brunson, Jungleman & Doug Polk studied and out played opponents in a vaguely similar way that computers/AI have learnt to defeat GM chess players. They actually learnt to outplay opponents almost entirely on their own.
I also remember the confidence of feeling pretty good after doing pretty well against opponents. And also playing suited cards and the frustration of having unrealistic expectations a flush draw %. Its amazing though how learning some basic 101 poker skills/tips drastically improved my NOOB game & perception. From memory i think i was raising pre flop naturally through my own learning with decent cards. I honestly doubt I would ever have learnt to Cbet, position & basic pot odds by simply playing poker on my own. A lot of basic poker 101 Do’s & Don’t are very difficult to accept and seem to go against human intuition.
It seems pretty clear from everyone that position is important and especially from overwhelming number of MTT players.
1 Like
@Sassy_Sarah - its probably a stylistic thing rather than a content thing. When you claim that people are calling us idiots for ever bluffing I look at the thread and see no such claim being made. Again, you have a very good feel for the game and the exploits required to beat the player pool. I don’t think its necessary for you to go outside the box of what has actually been said in order to make your points. In fact, I think your points would be better received without the exaggerated claims.
1 Like
@MekonKing - you are certainly killing the games you are playing and I think that’s great. Whatever you are doing is obviously working and nothing I’ve said should be construed as me intending to diminish those accomplishments. I will say that it has me wondering what exactly is going on in these games because I have seem some very questionable plays that are at odds with the results you’ve posted. If I had to guess, I’d say that you’ve been playing with the same 2-dozen or so people long enough that you have found exploits against them. These exploits are outweighing some of the technical errors by a large enough margin that your results are still positive. There’s probably a bit of rungood happening as well.
My game is pretty technical. I don’t consider myself to be a very good exploitative player at all. In fact, I had to develop a more technically sound game to build my defenses against the better exploitative players I commonly face. If I’ve played with someone long enough to understand their patterns, then I shift to more exploitative lines. I’m just not nearly as quick to develop those reads as some others are. In the absence of reads, much of my winrate comes from making fewer errors than my opponents do. I am constantly studying to improve my understanding of the game.
If I have time, I’ll watch some hand histories to see if I can get a better feel for what’s going on. In the meantime, keep it up and enjoy your successes.
2 Likes
Thank you Warlock. Not I cannot fully explain my winnings, except that I think I am good at interpreting the meanings of bets. Daniel Negreanu once said, regarding his amazing ability to estimate what hands that opponents hold said that it was based on observing their play and how they had played hands before, so perhaps you have correctly identified one factor. A winning streak also involves a luck factor. I had a hand early in a tournament where my pocket tens tripped to river a player with 2 pairs and my neighbor commented that this was another fluky river as per Replay policy. However I replied that players who start with better starting hands tend to win on fluky rivers more often. (In the case in point I did have the top end of an open ended straight draw as well as top pair, so my probability of lucking out on the river may have been higher than he thought. I think the flop was 987 and my opponent had 97, so I was 49.7% to win or tie the hand.
Recent tournament results:
A lot of opponents do play badly (i.e. even worse than me). Take a look at this one:
2 Likes
Warlock,
I re-read my post I think you are referring to, @ that point everyone else was dump’n on the players for terrible play. Dogs had agreed with Mekon and went on to say horrible play. Foz and Dayman compared it to very low rings, which to me is incorrect. You called it what, obscenely bad play …
I respect you too much to go back/forth, I do believe you were a bit off base tho and mis-read something… no biggie… So
There is a case to be made for the preflop play, and even the postflop play, yet in that senario 2 ppl flat out got unlucky. We always talk about playing the long game, and the fact that you lose some along the way. Well, 2 ppl lost 1 here in my book, here’s why.
Most of the time noone has the 2, therefore AQ wins in a str8forward hand.
Then, most of the time noone has the Q, and 1010 wins the same way prolly.
BB took a stab for 400 and had noone had anything, couldda won the blinds.
It was a perfect storm hand, yet 1010 wins that hand alot, even playing it postflop like they did. If 1010 and AQ are in the hand postflop, AQ wins 90% of the time, or should.
I’m sure we ALL agree the only 2 players who should’ve seen the flop was AQ and 1010.
Because AQ was chipleader and 1010 the shortstack, that means it should end up both All-In , prolly preflop, but for sure on the flop itself.
Both because of posistion and the fact that MekonKing was price’d-into the hand, everything went all haywire when both blinds only call’d preflop.
Sassy
I think that if I had AQ in that position, I would have folded to a larger bet from the BB.
The BB could have represented a 2 with a bigger bet, which in many cases would force the other hands to fold. If I had AQ, I would not have called a bet of 600 chips there from out of position in the SB knowing that I might be dead in the water. Of course the player with TT would have most likely still have called and BB would then have known that the bluff had failed, though, depending on what he had, he might still have hit something higher than T on a later street.
So what was the point of BB’s bet? Just to see if he could take a pot very cheaply, I guess. Maybe he had a 6.