Doubling Up in Multi-Table Tournaments

I've read a few people write about the importance of doubling up in MTTs (and quadrupling up in re-buys). This had got me thinking about how you go about doing that and still properly observing GCI (Game Critical Intersects).

I once saw Antonia Esfandiari get knocked out of a tournament early with JJ going all-in after two raises in front of him. he was interviewed after saying that you have double up early or get out. That was a cop-out to a seriously bad rookie error. There is no way Daniel or Chris Ferguson would do that. Even the wild guys like Gus prefer to play it small ball, than letting it ride for a double-up. It’s completely reckless in my opinion, even online, unless you have KK or AA.

Let’s assume that you stay in the yellow or green mzone through this whole process (and ignore triple ups for the time being). Every single time you "double-up", you must be getting all your chips in the middle against another equally or bigger stacked opponent.....and win! If you are only "allowed" to do that when you have "the nuts or close to it" how is it possible to be aiming at double ups without breaching GCI?

I don't think I get the nuts 9 times in a single tournament. Statistically if you are going to be doubling up, then you also need to have the nuts or close to it when an opponent also has a very strong hand....so you should need the nuts a lot more than 9 times. We all know this really just does not happen.

It’s when you get to the Orange MZone that you could, and should start looking to double up. Under an orange mzone condition, a good number of your opponents are going to have you substantially out-stacked. If you are using tournament indicator as your poker calculator, it will show you what mzone you are in throughout the whole tournament. Now that also means your Q, or stack average, is probably relatively low as well.

For example, a tournament I was playing. I was 41 of 64 remaining. I have been in all mzones so far. In Orange and Red I was aiming to double up and have done. In Green and Yellow I have been aiming to control the pot size to avoid getting all my chips in the middle (unless I have the nuts or close to it). But here my Q is getting low, and after a quick glance at the payout structure it’s really time now to look for a situation where I can participate in huge pot with live cards, or get heads up against a maniac with a slight edge. A hand like A5os or KQs might do the trick here.

Just keep in mind the GCI rule of thumb and as you experience in tournaments grows as a result of being so conscious about it, I am kind of thinking, that for those who subscribe to GCI as a governing factor in play choice, then GCI leads to small ball poker in green and yellow and long ball in orange and red. This will ease the stress of making big decision that would otherwise be rather risky.

Full Tilt with Poker Calculator Asisstance

This tournament went pretty well, I sucked out once, but lost two big hands which nearly crippled me, both suck outs for my opponents. I stuck with it, used Tournament Indicator to battle back while picking my spots and turned $2 buck into a $104 tournament win.

More Bankrolling

Using your poker calculator to learn the game is just as important as managing your bankroll to the extent that you simply want it it last as long as it can while getting in as many playable hours as you can. This is critical, while not paying too much attention to your overall profit, but more your overall education pf the game. I think Tournament Indicator and Holdem Indicator really go a long way to helping you pick up the nuances of correct timing and overall strategy.

When you have learned enough of poker, and moved up a few levels and are firmly using OPM, (other players' money) essentially playing free poker - then you can surely adapt an hourly rate strategy into your game, but until then your hourly rate should focus on what you learn, not what you earn.

Loose aggressive profiling with poker calculator

Had this one dude playing with me on 9 man sng at Poker Stars. He donked around enough to basically clear the table for me, then I cleared his dumb asz off the table to take first. But sometimes its not easy to fold in the early stages when you have a a marginal situation against wankers like this. Ceck his stats in the poker calculator while you watch this video.

Poker Spy 2 Review

Poker-Spy2

Poker-Spy has been around for longer than most other poker calculators and quietly ushered in the classification of empirical poker calculators. That being the type that offered you not only poker odds and drawing information while extracting the pertinent data from your poker screen, but also keeping track of you and your opponent’s profiles.

In fact, with Poker-Spy, profiling becomes the main thrust of this software along with hand history data to use during and after your game. While playing, Poker-Spy devised a readable hand history grid that progresses until all action for the most recent 17 hands are displayed with the winner and amount of the pot, while reminding you of your hole cards and those of any opponents that were revealed during play.

Within this grid, you can click on any of those hands (they are numbered for easy reference) that occurred for more detailed betting, position, and pot information. The cross grid panel illuminates by way of background color extra information too, offering up data showing which players were not in the hand, pre-flopped raised, or simply saw the flop. Now all of these grid sections and squares can be a little confusing at first, but I think Poker-Spy does a nice job here of making this data quite clear and understandable. In cash and ring games, it also classifies your opponent into the classic poker player profile grid first described by Dr. Alan Schoonmaker, in his book the Psychology of Poker – as in Loose-Passive and Tight-Aggressive etc.

While hand play is in progress at your table, Poker-Spy created the patent pending Alert System that with tiny, numbered and colored circles adjacent to the players name within the Poker-Spy tracking grid, you can quickly view what Poker-Spy has deemed “questionable” play from your opponents. These visual aids help you quickly discern plays such as blind plays, out-of-position moves, or re-raises perhaps. The extent that such plays are made numerous times is represented within those circles by a corresponding digit clearly visible.

The data itself is further transformed into a database of hand history analysis that you may find yourself poring over to find out things like, what hand you play that has won you the most money, or lost you’re the most money. What position at the table is most or least profitable for you? Your pre-flop and post-flop play is also measured statistically for your own benefit as well. These reports of you and opponents you have played against are managed in the hand summary report, the hand analysis report, and the player report.

In a substantial way, Poker-Spy`s value lays within these reports which have done well by this program in the growing days of online poker. I personally recommended this software nearly two years ago now, but let`s fast forward to Poker-Spy 2.0 which was recently updated with a few new features, albeit hard to find as they were.

I was rather enthused about the update when Poker-Spy contacted me for another review, but when playing with the software, I had to look really closely to actually find the improvements. One of the improvements is a new set of alert indicators that include possible river bluffs made by your opponents. This is a feature that could be useful to new players, although it doesn’t offer any clue as to what your opponent has, the make-up of the board and the tendency of your opponent contribute to this marker.

The other new feature in Poker-Spy is an addition to the extensive reports that includes pre-flop play in many different categories including position, raises and re-raises, and hole card strength.

Although Poker-Spy paved the way for some in-depth analysis of a poker player`s weaknesses, other programs have certainly tripled up on what seems to be a slow, but methodical progression to Poker-Spy. Truly I expected far more for a major update in terms of its poker calculator functions and its potential to work with other software simultaneously. In fact, I now fear that Poker-Spy is suffering from over-programming without sufficient poker-player input.

The designers at Poker-Spy have never really been aggressive marketers of the software and I think this inhibits some of the feedback that they might otherwise be getting from a field of affiliates more attuned to the game and the what the players are interested in - in terms of poker calculators. You can even get a sense for this lack of ambition in the presentation of the Poker-Spy website which really, in its present day mock-up, could be a grand relic of the waybackmachine.

With all that said, Poker-Spy2 has actually dropped to 2 of 4 aces in the Poker Calculator Report value ranking. Not because Poker-Spy2 isn`t better than the original Poker-Spy, but because it`s features and operating program are now clearly behind several other empirical poker calculator products and self analysis software programs.

Practice puttin your opponent on a hand.

Putting your opponent on a hand. This is really something that you absolutely must try to do whether you are in a hand or not. For new players this is critical in skill building. When you eventually get to the point where can put your opponent on a range of hands the majority of times, you will start to see the benefits of this through because you can make more plays back at your opponents. Now it does takes practice. Lots of practice, but with the help of an empirical poker calculator you will be surprised how are able to narrow down an opponent`s hole cards.

You may just feel like jumping for joy when when he turns over the AJos you put him on!

Getting a feel for your tournament opponents.

It hasn’t been for not trying, because several software products can handle tournament statistics but users of such poker assist software can be easily misled by those results. The reason for this is because betting and activity statistics cannot accurately include other dominant factors in tournaments that demand further analysis.

Let’s take for example you have an opponent you have tracked for 23 hands with a VPIP of 43% and aggression factor of 3.5. Well if these stats were collected during a single table cash game with 9 players, then you have likely run into a maniacal player more commonly identified in ring games as a loose-aggressive (LAG). Now granted 23 hands isn’t a clear indicator, but you at least know he isn’t a mouse.

Now how about if those same statistics were collected during a multi-table tournament? On the face of it, your first impression may be exactly the same – the dude is wild. However if you are looking at these stats in a poker assist software program like Poker Tracker, Poker Prospector or Poker Sharpener, what you may not realize is that none of those programs can tell you the tournament dynamics at the time you collected those statistics.

What difference does that make? Well there are overwhelming factors in tournaments which can turn a mouse into a jackal, and elephant into a mouse, and an eagle into a monkey. Furthermore, changing your overall game plan as a result of these factors can very well be the correct play given the circumstances.

Empirical Poker Calculators "Profiling"

A lot of players don't realize the importance of profiling, and I must stress that doing so is a virtual necessity when starting out in online poker. Fortunately there are several excellent, legal, and fair pieces of software that will help you do it.

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If you have an empirical poker calculator, then you likely have a distinct advantage over your competition. Read “likely” because the software can’t do everything for you, it just presents valid information for you to surmise and act upon.

There a lot of players who actually do use a poker calculator with profiling features but yet still have trouble acting on the information in a consistently profitable way. That’s pretty much the same as not having a poker calculator to begin with but either way, not profiling is a costly venture in online poker.

There are several reasons for this, but it all comes down to making the right decisions, for the right odds, at the right time, and against the right opponent(s).

With odds decisions, sometimes that also involves what your opponent is likely to have, and without some profiling data on him, it’s very difficult to narrow his hand down to the range where you can apply effective odds to his hand, his next likely action, and the eventual outcome at the river.

Timing is very critical in poker tournaments, and having your opponent profiled with pertinent data then your decision making may be a lot more clear and concise if you know how this player has acted up to a given point in the tournament. Tournament Indicator, an empirical poker calculator designed for tournaments also profiles opponents as to how they “behave” under different MZone conditions! This would give you a very strong indication if your opponent is making a “move” with a moderate strength hand, given his weak predicament in the tournament.

Picking an opponent to steal a pot from, or make your own move can sometimes keep you in a game, advance you in a tournament, force a smaller stack out of the pot, or even recoup some cash game losses. But picking that opponent to make that move on, is all based on what he is likely to do after you make your play.

We all have some instinct in poker and that is always useful of course. There are some players who just don’t need or want any help. To me, it’s fair to say those players are in the extreme minority, because volume poker these days is battled via monitors and multi-tabling. Multiple distractions, online and off are inherent in playing online poker, so a profiling tool is the least of which you should consider and make the most of when playing, because the competition is getting tougher and tougher all the time.