Poker Tournament Strategy | MTT Training

How to Play Low Pocket Pairs in MTTs

mosesbet — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:56:03 +0000

How to Play Low Pocket Pairs in MTTs

Pocket deuces to sixes are the type of hands that TAGs like Harrington suggest you should only play from position. But, catching a set with these hands, it is the easiest way to double your chips and trap a deep stack with 100+BBs. The problem with low pocket pairs is that nits don’t release them at the right time. Also, if you miss the flop than playing with overcards on the board is hardly profitably.

A deciding factor when playing low pocket pairs is the size of your stack and the stage of the tournament. The following article outlines how I’ll play 22-66 in MTTs.

The Early Stages

At the start of an MTT, the blinds will be so small that everyone will be a deep stacked e.g. 5/10 starting blinds and 1,500 chip stack. With everyone on over 100BBs there’s massive scope for hitting your set and getting paid off. That’s why I’ll happily set mine in or out of position with 7:1 odds of catching the board. I’ll fold to pre-flop raises or 3bets worth more than 10% of my stack however, as this just doesn’t justify the cost of calling.

When you’re UTG with low pocket pairs at this stage you have a choice. You can either open the pot 4xBBs or you can limp. Both have their advantages, by raising you’re increasing your equity in the pot, increasing the size and also giving yourself opportunities to cbet the flop. But, limping UTG lets you draw more opponents into the pot and increase the implied odds of catching a set. With more opponents, there’s also a greater chance of someone catching a decent hand like top two pair and calling you all-in.

The Middle Dtages

Once the blinds and antes kick in, everything is a different ball game. The average stack will have dropped from 100BBs to just 20BBs, making you shallow and increasing the need to steal pots or fold your marginal hands. You can’t afford to just limp with pocket pairs anymore because any decent player will try isolating you or 3bet steal from the CO.

Out of position, I’m open-folding low pocket pairs. If I’m facing a 3bet then it’s best to fold because there are so many hands that beat me. A rule of thumb is to never open-raise and fold to a 3bet if you started with less than 15BBs. You’re already pot-committed and it’s definitely worthwhile heading into a coin-flip situation against AK or AQ.

From the CO, I’m either raising or shoving low pocket pairs depending on my chip stack. With less than 15BBs, I’m shoving and will happily lay the pot to see all 5 community cards to make my set. With more than 15BBs, I’m open-raising or 3betting from CO in the hope of winning pre-flop or cbetting the flop.

The End Game

The value of low pocket pairs shoots up towards the final table. The average chip stack will be around 10-12BBs which makes pre-flop shoving a necessity with these hands. There’s no room for post-flop play or limping – and taking down the pot pre-flop is very profitable.

I’m always going to shove over the top or call a small stack player’s all-in here. With M < 10, short stack players will be shoving with any Ace rage and you’ll almost always be favourite.

Best Poker Tournament Players

mosesbet — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:30:55 +0000

List of the Best Live Tournament Poker Players

This is a new section where we’ll try to discuss and outline the world’s best tournament poker players. Hopefully we’ll be adding new articles, players and candidates to this section, and can have a forum debate to go with it in the future!

Best Live Tournament Players to Date:

Poker Training Sites

mosesbet — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:06:06 +0000

Poker Training Sites

Poker training sites have helped turn thousands of MTT players into seasonal pros and high stakes grinders.

Poker training sites started to burst onto the online poker scenes in 2007. They provide hundreds of training videos, narrated by online pros, that cover every aspect of the game including MTTs, SNGs, Cash Games, Omaha, H.O.R.S.E and other variants. To join poker training sites, member must pay a small charge of $15 – $30 per month.

A common trend since 2009 has been for training sites to focus on niches. For example, PokerPwnage and PokerVT are MTT related training sites with content focused on MTTs or SNGs. Deuces Cracked on the other hand covers a wider range of topics including NLHE cash games, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, SNGs, MTTs and HORSE.

Top MTT Training Sites

1. PokerVT Review – Negreanu’s training site offers an excellent focus on MTTs.

2. Tournament Poker Edge Review – A fresh site with 5 new MTT videos each week and cheap price.

3. DeucesCracked Review – Has a split focus teaching NL Holdem, Omaha, MTTs and SNGs. There is still alot of MTT videos however plus a FREE week trial.

4. PokerPwnage Review – PokerPwnage is 100% dedicated to MTTs with an excellent roster of online pros.

5. Poker X Factor Review – Very Popular among MTT players with over 400+ MTT videos, quizzes and hand re-players.

Is the Monthly Subscription Cost Worth it?

I beleive so, yes. For regular poker players looking excel up the stakes and start to take down tournament fields regularly, then training sites are unquestionably the way to go. Paying the small monthly charge is nothing compared to how much players get out of the videos. Even one $2k Gtd final table finish can pay for a year’s worth of membership!

All players can take advantage of the 1 week trials some sites offer, which lets you watch hundreds of videos without even paying. They develop your game, teach key concepts and put them into practice such as positional play, and they eliminate major errors from your own game.

Cash Game Strategy

mosesbet — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:43:10 +0000

Cash Game Strategy (NL Holdem)

Playing cash games is one of the purest forms of poker. Cash games let you make much quicker money at a faster rate than tournaments, and they allow you to use your post-flop skills including position to make more money off fish.

Best Cash Games: Full Tilt Poker ($600 Bonus)

I’ve had plenty of experience multi-tabling at Full Tilt Poker and it is my favourite place to play cash games. You won’t find a bigger selection of cash game tables or opponents, with stakes starting from $.01/$.02 up to the rail birding $400/$800 deep stacked action. The software is fantastic and it’s the only site where you can play the very addictive Rush Poker.

Texas Holdem Basics:

Tips for Playing Pocket Pairs

Articles for Advanced Players

Bluffing in NL Holdem

Tournament Indicator Review

mosesbet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:52:04 +0000

Tournament Indicator Review

Price: $89.95. Buy it Now

Download the 48 Hour Free Trial

Tournament Indicator is unlike any other poker calculator, because it is specifically designed for Tournament Play (SNGs + MTTs).

I have to give full marks for this tool because it fills a big gap in market for tournament players. When I played both a PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker MTT, I used tournament indicator and it attached itself to my tables instantly with no problems or bugs. It contains a number of features that helps you battle through to the final table of tournaments.

Tournament Indicator Includes:

Auto M-Zone Calculator
HUD/Mini-view & Customised Setting
Pot Odds Calculator
Matchcard Showdown
Tilt Indicator

M-Zone Calculations

Tournament Indicator makes auto “M-Zone” calculations for you. The M-Zone theory (developed by Paul Magriel) is a formula for calculating how many orbits you can survive relative to your stack. The M-zone is the most important consideration when making decisions in MTTs (nowadays you’ll always see the “M” figure posted in forums when asking for hand advice). By automatically calculating your opponent’s M-zone for you, tournament indicator helps a lot for making push/fold decisions and knowing which hands you should play or even when to call a 3bet. For example, when my M-zone falls below 10 than I know I have to pretty much fold or shove all of my hands pre-flop. On the contrary, if I’m in CO and I see an opponent on the blinds with M < 10 than I know he’ll be folding if I shove.

Tournament HUD/Player Profiling

The second part of Tournament Indicator is its player profiling and HUD (Heads Up Display). This is a tool which provides stats on your opponents’ recent hand history. It basically gives you a massive edge for narrowing down an opponent’s hand ranges on different streets, for example the relative strength of hands they’re 3betting with pre-flop or what percentage of showdowns they win (WSDW%).

It works better than other HUDs because it’s specifically designed for tournament play. Tournament Indicator shows VPIP%, PFR%, showdown wins and more which help you to classify opponents. These are displayed below the M-Zone calculator unit and you can bring up a bigger box with more stats if you need. It gives you a massive edge by being able to categorise the weak players, narrow down opponents hand ranges, view their agression (AG) or how often an opponent bluffs.

A poker calculator shows the probability that you get a specific hand like a set or a flush, and the probability that your opponent had such a hand. The unique “tilt indicator” is something I’m fond of and havn’t ever come across in other tools. If an opponent has lost multiple pots consecutively then the tilt-indicator shows red (meaning he’s probably shoving light).

Above you can the M-Zone, stats and general agressivess of each player. We can see “pipi11″ has lost her last 9 pots and her M-Zone is reducing to less than 5, making her more prone to 3betting light and shoving with any two cards pre-flop.

The best thing about tournament indicator is the ability to customise settings in the backend. You can manually change the VPIP% settings so that if a player is very loose he will display red agressive in the stats, and you can check boxes to keep the mini-view or vertical-view minimised during the games.

Is Tournament Indicator Worth it?

Having used this tool a lot, I think this is by far the best tool for MTTs, and it can also used in SNGs too. It’s great for both beginners and advanced tournaments players and it is very simple to use. You just have to make one quick download and it gets to work straight away attaching itself to your tournaments at PokerStars or where ever you’re playing. I think that for $89.95, this isn’t too bad for a product, it might only be a few MTT buy-ins for some people. Even for micro stakes players, I would definately recommend getting your hands on this product – either by buying it or buy getting it for free through the promotions at the tournament indicator site.

Go to the Tournament Indicator Website for More Videos

Tournament Shark Review

mosesbet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:48:08 +0000

Tournament Shark Review

Price: $69.99 or $7.95 per Month

Try the Tournament Shark Free Trial!

Verdict: 9/10

Tournament Shark is live tracking software specifically developed for tournaments. As well as a HUD, Tournament Shark automatically reviews the quality of opponents at your table including how many MTTs they’ve played, final table finishes, past tournaments, ROI% and ITM%.

Tournament Shark Review

The best thing about Tournament Shark is that automatically profiles all of the players at your table based on their previous tournament experiences. This avoids having to manual search players players for information Poker Player Ranking or PokerDB.com. An information box shows each player’s average MTT profits, win/loss, ROI%, E%, L% and more. To make things incredibly simple, Tournament Shark lets you identify the sharks from the fish using a “2 to A” classification system. High stakes winning players wil be marked with an Ace, where as losing streak players with no major wins will be labeled “2″.

TS comes with a HUD (Heads Up Display) that displays an overlay of information next to each player just like Poker Tracker or Holdem Manager would. This is incredibly helpful for picking out weak players or avoiding the pros towards the later stages of the game.

The types of statistics Tournament Shark displays are extensive. You can customise exactly which you want including VPIP (Flop Percentage), PFR (Pre-Flop Raises), 3Bet%, 4Bet%, Fold to 3bet%, cBet%, Aggression and more… All these are incredibly important. VPIP (voluntary puts in pot) for example, identifies whether a player is LAG or TAG and how loose they enter pots. And, if I know someone has a low 3Bet% then I know they are conservative players who consistently 3bet with high strength hands.

I can think of hundreds of other situations where TS would be incredibly useful. Imagine for instance, that you’re sat on the blinds with 10-10 and someone from the cutoff tries stealing an un-raised pot. With the RFI (Raised First In) figure you can work out his likely range of hands and how often he steals open-raises from similar positions on an un-raised board.

The price is very cheap too. After the free trial expires, at $69.99 it is cheaper than Holdem Manager, Poker Edge and Poker Office ($99) combined or you can pay just $8/month.

Conclusion

This is the best MTT-focused software on the market. It offers the best HUD’s for tournaments, and thousands of other players are already using it and recommending it.

Visit Tournament Shark

Poker Office Review

mosesbet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:45:40 +0000

Poker Office Review

Price: Either $99 per Year or Available for Free

Buy Poker Office Now

My Verdict

My friends and I have concluded that this is the best poker tracking software for MTTs.

Poker Office 5 is the latest release in terms of MTT tools and won online poker tool of the year back in 2009. In my opinion, the Poker Office series has always been the best tool out of Poker Tracker and Holdem Manager; and the conclusion from most poker forums appears to be the same.

The graphics are better, it has better graphs and features (including a re-players and calculator) and Poker Office 5 has the most advanced HUD (Heads Up Display).

Post-Game MTT Tracking

The post-game graphs and data breakdowns are the most important features. As an avid MTT player it lets me record, analyse and replay all of my MTT games which is tremendously useful for going through games to check if I made any mistakes. The graphs are awesome, breaking down MTTs into different periods as well as providing quick stats for ROI and ITM percentages. Poker Office also automatically shows how many final table finishes players have made plus which stakes they were most successful in.

Poker HUD

Poker Office has the best HUD I’ve ever used. It uses advanced 16×16 icons that you can upload to visualize effectively (for example, whether an opponent is tight or aggressive) and it displays up to 5 different stats including the standard setup of VPIP/PFR/AF etc…

Ease of Use

I think it’s fair to say a lot of the advanced poker tools are difficult to understand but Poker Office is really user-friendly. I reckon players can become adept at using it in under an hour given its clean interface, plus there’s a forum and support guide to help first time users.

Poker Office Features:

MTT Tracking
Detailed Reports, Statistics and Graphs
Poker HUD
Hand Replayer
Odds Calculator

Poker Office works at every major poker room including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, UB, Titan Poker, Bodog Party Poker plus more…

Get Poker Office for Free!

Poker Edge Review

mosesbet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:43:05 +0000

Poker Edge Review

>>>Go to Poker-Edge Website

What Makes Poker Edge Stand Out?

There is a big choice when it comes to poker tracking software for players. The problem when new players purchase poker tracking software such as Poker Office or Holdem Manager is that the HUD stats are limited. You need to play for many hours before you can build up hand history on the players at your table to make the HUD stats reliable (e.g. AG, VPIP, PRR).

This is where Poker Edge makes a big difference. Rather than having to store your own collection of stats on your computer (which takes up space also), Poker Edge comes with a remote central database which contains billions of hand history on different players. The benefits of Poker Edge are imminent – you will have instant overlay stats and “reads” on every single opponent at the table. Poker Edge’s central database grows by 10 million+ hands each day giving you a massive advantage of everyone else.

Poker Edge’s Other Features

Poker Edge is more impressive than 99% of software on the market. It boasts a collection of features including Detailed Player Reports, Calculator and Table Finders. The player reports and post-game breakdowns help a lot when you’re trying to improve and find cracks in your game that are holding you back. New users will have no problem getting to terms with its functional menu layout and nav system plus the graphs have excellent graphics and are customisable e.g. players can analyse their aggressiveness at each street.

What I like most about Poker Edge is the Notifications action, which pops up on your computer whenever you are dealt a particular hand or hit a straight. This is especially useful for multi-tabling and can be customised for practically anything.

The HUD Stage technology is another thing out of this world. Poker Edge’s HUD screen lets you choose to display overlay stats for each street for each player at the click of a button. As opposed to having stationary stats, Poker Edge provides the more relevant stats as the hand progresses.

Which Rooms Support Poker Edge?

Poker Edge works for over 30 different poker rooms including Full Tilt Poker, Poker Stars and UB. You can check on the Poker-Edge.com website for exactly which poker rooms are safe to use.

Poker-Edge 5 Day Free Trial

MTT ROI

mosesbet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:37:02 +0000

About MTT ROI (Return on Invesment)

Poker players measure their success in MTTs by ROI (Return on Investment). This is calculated by averaging your net MTT profit divided by your entry fees x 100 to give a percentage. For example, if you’ve played 10x$10 buy-in MTTs and made a total profit of $50, then your total ROI is (50/100)*100 = 50%.

To quickly calulate your or somebody else’s ROI you can use free software such as sharkscope.

What is a Good MTT ROI?

This is debatable because some poker players will be happier with a lower ROI than others.

Poker forums and their communities seem to suggest a 20% ROI is very good, whilst anything above 0% is good for new players.

Your ROI is pretty subjective to how many games you play. Poker tournaments contain lots of variance and you’ll need a big sample of 100+ MTTs to give an accurate figure.

MTT ROI Stats:

<0% Very Bad. You’re losing money in the long run and probably doing everything wrong.
0% Bad. Breaking even but still not getting paid for the effort you put in.
10% OK. This is ok. You’re making more money than 95% of everyone else in MTTs.
20%-30% Great. This is a very good ROI for MTTs. You’re probably in the top 97% of the field.
30 – 80% Pro’s. Professionals will aim for 40%+ ROI in MTTs. For example, Chris Moorman is the UK’s best online tournament player according to PocketFives 2008 rankings and earns around 36% ROI in tournaments.

How to Improve Your MTT ROI Significantly: One of the simplest ways of improving your ROI is by playing in tournaments with softer competition. Most of the scheduled tournaments at Carbon Poker with buy-ins below $30 contain very weak competition and even the most limited players can produce a good amount of ITM finishes. You can sign up to carbon poker with a $600 bonus. Enter deposit code MosesBet1 to get a free coupon to the daily $3k Gtd.

ROI Isn’t an Exact Measure of Profitability:

ROI doesn’t paint a true picture of how much money you’re really making. For example, earning 30% ROI in a $40 MTT is much more profitable then earning 50% ROI in a $5 MTT. It’s important to find a balance between a good ROI and stake that suits your bankroll/ability.

About ITM (In the Money Percentage)

ITM % (“In the Money”) is the amount of times you manage to finish a tournament in the payoff places. This is normally at least twice the buy-in, i.e. 100% ROI.

I find this figure more relevant for measuring success in Sit n Go’s than MTTs.

In large MTTs such as a 1000 person $100 MTT for example, you might get a low payoff of $3 for finishing highly in the event. However this doesn’t cover your buy-in so even a 100% ITM might lead to a long term loss and negative ROI.

In small SNGs, ITM is a very useful tool for judging how competent you are. For example, in a 9 person Sit n Go where the top 3 people get paid you’d naturally expect nothing less than 27% ITM. Anything less than this and you’d be losing money on average.

What is a Good ITM?

Most pros will have an 15 – 20% ITM. Personally I think anything above 10% is not bad going.

A lot of players will often play badly in the later stages of a tournament. Passive players in particular will might be able to make ITM finishes, but their conservative playing style will hinder their chances of reaching the final table.

In conclusion, getting a good ITM is good but there is much more work to do to establish a killer ROI and become a top player.

Our Top Recommended Tournament Site:

Visit Ultimate Bet Now

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Moving up the Stakes in Poker

mosesbet — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:28:19 +0000

Moving up the Stakes in No Limit Holdem

Knowing when you’re ready to move up the stakes in cash games from $0.25/$0.50 to $0.5/$1 or whatever is something everyone faces at some point. Especially at the lower levels, where it’s easier to be at the top earning a higher bb/100 win-rate, you will move up the stakes faster.

Carbon Poker is where I moved from NL25 up to NL100

One thing I will say about moving up the stakes from NL10 or below, is that it is in your interesting to move up the stakes as quickly as possible. When you move up the stakes, the additional profit you make is massive compared to how much additional skill you need. For example, a multi-tabling NL50 player making $15,000 per year will make twice as much as an NL25 player making $7,000, however there isn’t “twice” as much skill needed at that level. You only need to be 20% better at most.

Another reason it’s in your interest to move up the stakes is that as you get older you become more risk averse. It’s better to take risks whilst you’re young and wiry, rather than get to the point where you’re life is dependent on poker and you can’t afford to take the same risks.

Getting to NL100

This is breakthrough for any poker player looking to go pro. You can start playing professionally at this level and make $30,000+ per year easily, and if you learn to multi-table 5 or more games whilst maintaining a decent 12bb/hr win-rate then you might break the $50k mark.

The downside to this it there there is a huge gap in difficulty from NL50 to NL100. Most players below this level are amateur and so you’re effectively crossing a pretty big gap in terms of playing quality. 3betting, floating and OTT bluffing post-flop are extremely hard to get used to and your game needs a big step up. There is also a much smaller proportion of fish at this level (maybe only 10% fish as opposed to 30% at NL50).

How Long Does it Take to Move up the Stakes?

This is a damn good question. To make it simple, I’ll provide a very basic case study. If you play NL25 and earn 3bb/hr across 4 tables, then that’s about 12bb/hr or 96bb/day ($25 per day).

Let’s say you need to double your current bankroll of $250 to $500 to move up to NL50, this is 100x table buy-ins. 500/40 = 20 days. Thus, if you play hard ball you should be able to move up the stakes within a matter of 3 weeks. If you’re only playing a few hours per day however, it may take a month or two to get to the same level.

This isn’t the end of the equation though, because you need to be able to adapt to the higher stakes and be competent enough. (Also, not many amateur players play full time all year round). It’s simply not possible to blast through the stakes like an F1 car because the gap in quality is so different. What you’re doing at one level won’t correlate to the same profits at a higher one, you need to learn to use table position to your advantage and improve your post-flop skills.

What BB/100 should I be achieving Before Moving Up?

To begin with, you should only ever consider moving up the stakes once you become competent where you are now. A good win rate at the micro stakes might be something like 7BB/100 i.e. if you’re playing four tables of NL25 then you’re making more than $5/hr. I think this is the level a lot of young players find themselves at, because once you climb past these the game becomes a bit tougher.

Now, unless you’re churning a decent profit in your current game correlating to 5 or more big blinds per 100 hands than you should stay put. Why move up a level when you’re not even maximising value at the moment?

The right time to move up the stakes is when you’re making good profit. A secret tip is to do this slowly i.e. mix one or two NL50 games in your screen every day. By slowly dipping your toes into the higher stakes games, you allow yourself to adjust and offset any variance by still grinding profit in the NL25 games. Remember my rule about multi-tabling – don’t multi-table with different stakes simultaneously. If you’re playing NL25 here and NL50 there your screen can become confusing and you end up making the wrong size raises.

Don’t Use the 100 buy-in Rule

I know I know, the 100 buy-in rule is “bankroll management” and one of the most important rules in poker.

Well, this is only sort of true. Most pro’s will actually tell you that you can afford to play with 30 buy-ins. It might shock you to hear, but back in the day during my NL50 days I only ever played with a $400 bankroll (8 buy-ins).

The fact is, if you’re happy with your game and you’re making profit then there is no need to abide by the 100 buy-in rule. You just need to be careful however. If I had a day where I lost a few buy-ins then I would move down the stakes. If you’re playing the 30 buy-in rule, then make sure you move down the stakes if you manage to go down 5 buy-ins. This is plenty of insurance and will prevent you going broke.