Quote:
Originally Posted by hoolzky
Yeah oldsilver, you are right with all this stuff, but be a realistic. Talking about all these things in mid stakes MTT perspective is waste of time. You have to do only 2 things to crush mid stakes MTT 1) Get value from your good hands 2) Realize your draws equity as cheap as possible.
And that's all. Then you can work on your complex balanced strategy and go to high stakes, where it matter.
No I completely disagree for any number of reasons including
(i) i suspect balancing works mathematically whether your opponent knows your ranges or not - although that's going to be an important point for discussion here
(ii) it's not just the players in a hand who are watching you be balanced/not
(iii) mid stakes is not as easy to beat as people think and the standard of play has improved massively in the past five years
(iv) practicing good habits in msmtt is precisely the thing that allows you to move up to higher levels
(v) most midstakes players find themselves playing at higher stakes at some point - especially when they've won a satellite to play a $10K main event or similar
Those last two points are super relevant to me. I spend most of my time playing live locally in Australia at $2-$5 and $5-$5-$10live cash and every local tournament I have the time to play with a $250+ buyin.
I can win at $2-$5 doing exactly what you say, or I can win playing balanced against unknowns/GTOs and unbalanced against confirmed nits and stations. i make more doing the latter, but the initial balanced lines and image help with that. but sometimes I just zone out, drink beer, pretend to be loud and bluffy, make an advertising play then grind value lines. sure, why not? i don't play professionally and poker followed by dinner with mates is hugely fun.
I cannot win at $5-5-10 unless I run an appropriate number of bluffs and value lines, and this thread has helped a huge amount in defining what 'appropriate' is against high level players.
The biggest difference between cash and MTTs however, is that while cash and early stage MTTs are multi-way deep stacked donk fests where value lines are essential, mid-late stage MTTs become steal, resteal and defend-fests where many hands revert to a HU situation
where balanced lines become absolutely essential no matter what stakes you are playing.
And that's probably where I have the greatest disagreement with the OP premise. HU play is hugely dependent on balancing - from the initial steal/resteal to defend strat, to check back ranges and check, lead turn ranges to everything else. it's hugely visible to every player no matter what stakes and balanced and unbalanced lines become so obvious - even to less experienced mid-low stakers.
Last edited by oldsilver; 03-01-2017 at 02:20 AM.