I am by no means an expert. I don’t have a huge sample, and I play at the lower limits. I think I’ve learned a few things though, although not enough to be confident that I’m any good. Still, I don’t think I’m clueless and I’m willing to put some ideas out there and suffer the blows from better players, if any can be bothered wading through it.

My idea was to give advice that should be helpful for newbies in each area of the game, but I rambled so much that I only managed a handful of ideas for the early blinds. I’m willing to do another on the later game, because there are very few posts for beginners on how they can approach higher blinds, but I have already banged on for too long.

This forum is the best resource for STTs because it has the best posters. Unfortunately, some of them don’t post anything like enough for my liking, but when they do, I learn a lot. I’m going to drop a few names, but if I don’t name you, it doesn’t mean you don’t make great contributions. It just means that I can’t name everybody! I owe a ton though to AMT (my idea of the model poster), SlimPickens (who makes me think in ways that make my head hurt), Scotty, Cheesemoney, Towellie, guitarizt, vers, Pudge (a beraducation from Pudge is worth $$$$), DevinLake, SlackaMcFly, and in a more general and mostly past way, Gigabet, curtains and eastbay. It’s also great to learn alongside guys like Rodolphe, mattiesmat, eurythemech and sence, who I think are all about where I’m at, maybe a bit ahead, and whose enthusiasm and desire, and those of the other guys like them who are striving to get better, are great examples for beginners.

So here are a few thoughts on how you could play, for beginners and newbs. I answer a few of the questions that are often asked here. I don't say they are the right answers. They are just the ones I work with. They are basically how I play the first three levels on Stars/PokerRoom, and I guess I'd play the same in the earlier levels on Tilt.


Early preflop:

Tight is right

Play very tightly preflop in the early levels. Most winning players at the low limits have stats that are something like 10/7 until the blinds are significant. This doesn’t mean they are playing the top 10% though, because most will play a lot of pairs but not hands such as KTs.

I play very tightly in early positions. I raise AA-JJ, AK, AQs and sometimes AQ. I limp TT-22 if the table is passive, folding the smaller pairs if it isn’t. I’ll sometimes limp AJ from MP too. In late position, I might add in KQ, suited or otherwise, and maybe KJs on the button, and I’ll start raising TT-99. After limpers, I’ll limp some suited connectors on the button too.

I don’t call raises with them though. Pairs yes, JTs no. I suppose I call raises up to 100 chips with a small pair, but it depends on position. If I’m UTG+1 and UTG raises to 100 at t20, I’ll fold 44. The reasons are that low-level players like to make squeeze plays when a couple of early players are in much more than they do when UTG raises and, say, the CO calls; my hand has little showdown value; and it’s never going to be an overpair. I’d be more willing to call with TT. Even so, at a table that has been anything like aggro, I will not call raises with pairs because it’s just burning money.

How much to raise

Different people have different ideas on this, and will supply you with all sorts of formulas. I think Sngicons’ advice is something like 3x at the low blinds (t20, t30, t50 on Stars), and 2.5x from t100 on, and that seems pretty decent to me. Some people like to put in more at lower blinds, and you’ll see plenty of posts here advocating raises to 4x or even 5x. For me, it’s table dependent. If there seem to be plenty of callbots, I’ll bet a bit more. You mostly want to get your hands heads up for one simple reason: you are rarely folding when you’ve raised and you stand to win more often vs one hand than you do against two. Yes, you gain more chips with more callers, but you will be busted more often. I haven’t done a mathematical analysis of how it all weighs up, but it seems to me that I very rarely triple up with AA! But of course, if they’re calling, you want them to call more anyway. You do not mind big pots with your big pairs too much. You mind them a bit more with AK, so you probably hope to thin the field a bit when you have that.

After limpers it becomes a bit more tricky. You might raise 3x plus 1BB a limper, or you might put a bit more in. If there’s one limper at t20, I will usually pop it up to t100, because it’s a nice round figure and I’m lazy. If there are six limpers and I’m raising, I’ll raise big. I don’t want too many callers. If they all fold, oh well.

Once you get up to t50, significant numbers of limpers start to build pots that are worth winning straight away. Again, some have a formula for this (some say if the pot is 15% of your stack, it’s worth taking down right away). I don’t but I’ll tend to push for less if I’m going to be OOP, and raise it up when I’m in position. The thing to remember though is that if you are on the button and four people have limped at t50, any raise that’s worth making is going to hurt a lot to lose. Say you raise 3x plus 1BB a limper. That’s 350 chips. If your stack is 1350, you are putting a significant chunk of it in. I’m not making that raise with AK or any other hand that will need to improve for me to feel good about it on the flop, and I’m not likely to make it with hands such as QQ/JJ, where overcards can make your hand look very sickly. I think it doesn’t hurt to remind yourself that you don’t always win a big pot with a big pair, so taking down 275 chips right now is not such a bad result. I don’t like to make raises that will take me below 1000 chips in any event, because if I then cbet and don’t win the pot, which does happen fairly often, I’m left shortstacked at t100 and desperate at a time when others will call pushes quite light.

After a raiser, I like to put in a decent reraise with my big hands. Some people advocate something like 3x the original raise. It’s probably a bit more player dependent than that. If you’ve never seen X fold to a reraise, pushing is often as good as reraising. If you are planning to fold to a push, obviously you don’t want to make your reraise too big. But if you are planning to fold to a push at the low blinds, it’s probably better not to reraise in the first place. Very few players have solid enough ranges to make this betting pattern a good idea. I often flatcall raises with hands that are strong but I’d need to see a flop before I was sure that I wanted to get it in with. These are hands like AK/JJ. Again, this is player dependent.

If there has been a caller, I’m more often shoving than reraising. I prefer to take it down than to worry over much about value. With more vulnerable hands, you’re never really sure who you’re creating the bigger pot for.

The key thing is, don’t bet too little. Do not minraise. Even with AA, if they’ll call the minraise, they’ll call more. It’s a key skill in poker to get money in when you are ahead (and avoid putting it in when you’re behind). If you have a big hand, you are currently winning. So bet hard. It’s usually better to put too much in than too little at the lower levels.

Postflop early:

Cbets

Heads up, I nearly always cbet. I don’t bet a fixed amount but it’s almost never half the pot. It tends to depend whether I’m in position or not. OOP, I’ll tend to bet out a bit more than half; IP, a bit less. This is obviously because of the information gap between the two spots. If I know the other player, or have stats, I’ll adjust my play of course. If the guy is Fishy McFish, I’ll often check behind. If he’s a regular, I cbet every single time, because he’ll fold nearly everything.

Against more than one player, I rarely cbet OOP. I'll just check and fold rather than throw money away. In position, I'll cbet dry flops that look like they probably missed everyone. This is an area where you have to go by feel. I don't think there are rules. If you never cbet OOP multiway, you are giving up a bit too much probably, but if you always do, you are giving up too much definitely. Against tighter players, you could cbet a lot more.

Should you twobarrel? Yes, sometimes you should. It's very player dependent though. Twobarrelling a guy who's playing 34/2 is suicidal. Twobarrelling someone who you've seen float a flop and fold the turn, or when there is a draw on the flop that doesn't come in on the turn can be good. There are no easy rules though.

Bet more

Bet your good hands hard. If you have AA on a safe flop, you might only bet half the pot, but on a wetter one, on which villains can have many draws, bet near pot. I know it sucks when you bet a hand hard and everyone folds, but look on the bright side: no one cracked your aces this time and you weren’t busted. Why might you bet more on a wet flop? I know that most people reading this, even the most novicey, know what pot odds are, but probably don’t have a good grasp of reverse implied odds. Well, with your AA, you’re probably ahead on the flop, and you’re going to be doing the betting. So you are offering odds to everyone who’s in the hand. (This is true whenever you bet, and the concept of reverse implied odds applies preflop too. It’s an important concept in cash particularly.) If the board is dry, your opponents are not likely to draw out on you. Anyone who calls likely has a worse pair. But if it’s wet, the chances that you will be beaten are greater. If you do not bet enough, your opponents will take “implied odds” (will call your bet even though it doesn’t offer them the right price now, because they think they can get more of your money later). Now, with AA, you are definitely likely to stack off against players who hit their draws, so you cannot help offering implied odds (and you should be likely to stack off: you do not want to fold AA to bluffs or worse hands too often). So you are offering reverse implied odds. But if you bet more on the flop, callers are getting worse implied odds, making their calls less often correct even if you do stack off.

Now, wait, Dr Zen, the more perceptive are saying. I will stack off much more often when there’s no draw on the flop because I will never believe I’m beaten. Right? Right. But the guy who hit his kicker on the river had only five outs to beat you. The guy who had an OESD had eight. The reason I wrote “might bet half the pot” is that I generally will bet a bit more, because even on dry flops I prefer to have everyone fold and lose value than to offer implied odds that are too tasty because I am basically not folding AA or anything else that I think should mostly win.

All in or cheap

I don’t know whether my ideas on value are correct, but this principle works for me. On the flop, I tend to evaluate my hands like this: I’m either willing to get it in with them or I want a cheap showdown. I’ll then play accordingly. Nearly all my postflop play follows from that principle. I can make tight folds if I think it’s too expensive to call, even though I think my chances are fairly decent of having the best hand. (But I don’t fold all that tightly, I have to say.) What I’m trying to avoid doing is this sort of thing: I have QJ in the BB at t50 and I have 1400 chips and a couple of guys have limped. The flop comes J73r. Some guy bets 150, I call. Turn is a blank, he bets 200, I call. River is another blank, he bets another 200. Now the pot is offering me at least 4 to 1, so I can’t fold, right? Yeah, but I’m very often beaten and I’ve just put in 550 chips to find that out. Now it’s great to have 1950 chips, but it sucks to have 950 at t50.

Sometimes, of course, you just have to call down. If the guy puts in 50, 100, 100, you’re a better man than me if you fold at any point.

Chasing draws is poison

I will, I admit, chase a draw if you make it really cheap. But if you chase all your draws, you’re going busto. Your opponents will call potsized bets with draws and sometimes make them, but your opponents are losing players. Just because they didn’t lose a particular pot versus you doesn’t mean they will win the next or the next.

Checkraise a lot less often than you think

There are lots of times you should checkraise, and I won’t go into them here, but when the choice seems close between betting and checkraising or you’re not really sure, just bet. Don’t rely on others to do your betting for you. You’ll be surprised how much they love to call with hands they didn’t feel were worth betting. And if they like their hands a lot, they’ll get it in with you if you show willing.

Slowplaying sucks. Sometimes it’s the road to getting value, but much more often, it just leaves chips in your opponent’s stack. If they have nothing, you might get a few chips from them if they hit later in the hand, but if they have something, you’re letting them get away with not paying you for having something better. Also, worst of all, you will sometimes be letting them draw out on you for free. If in doubt, just bet. If they fold, never mind. They weren’t going to let themselves get stacked and not every big hand gets paid off.

They are not often bluffing

Turn checkraises are usually meaningful. Don’t be thinking that they’re bluffing a great deal when you face one. You aren’t. For many players, this is the most powerful tool in their arsenal. They flop a set, call you on the flop, then checkraise you on the turn. Don’t be afraid to fold a moderate hand when the guy who has never bet, never raised in the whole tourney suddenly puts in a CR. He has you beat.

If you generally treated bets as meaning what you say, you wouldn’t go far wrong. With experience, you learn to snap off bluffs, but you won’t lose much if you tend to play fairly weakly. Don't assume that every bet is a retarded bluff just because it looks like one. Some are, but not enough to make it profitable to assume they all are.


Of course, when a guy makes a huge overpush on a monotone flop, he doesn’t always have the flush. Sometimes bets can mean a range of things. Well, who said poker was easy?

It’s okay to be passive

You don’t have to outballs everyone. You don’t have to show them who’s boss. You can fold your blind to a minraise. You can fold when you think you are being bluffed but don’t want to lose the chips. You can check and fold top pair with a ****ty kicker when you’re in the big blind. No one is giving you marks for aggression. Your reward comes in dollars.

What you lose is worth more than what you win

This is the reason for every suggestion I’ve made. If you don’t understand the ICM or tournament equity, don’t worry. The underlying idea is pretty simple. Say you’re playing a $10 tourney on PokerRoom. At the start of the tourney, you have 1500 chips and your share of the prize pool is $10. (The $1 you paid in rake is gone and plays no part in considerations of equity, although you need to consider it when you calculate your ROI.) The best you can do is to win. You will then have all 1500 chips but you will not have $100. You will have $50. If it helps, imagine a graph. If the tourney were winner take all, the line plotting chips against their dollar value would be straight, at 45 degrees to the origin (although it would begin at $10, not zero). In that case, you can model tourney equity fairly simply. If you have 10,000 chips you have 2/3 of the equity: $66.66. But in a standard STT, with 50/30/20 payouts, you don’t have a straight line. It curves. And if you have 10,000 chips, you don’t have anything like 2/3 of the equity (you couldn’t conceivably, because the most you can have is half!). You can easily visualise that each doubling of chips does not double their value, and practically speaking, chips lost are worth more in equity than chips you win. This is why you need to be more sure you are ahead when you commit your chips than you would be in a cash game.

In fact, if you grasp this principle and make it your touchstone in STTs, you will be on the path to learning how to win at them. Everything boils down to it. In the later game, it's more or less everything. ICM is just a formalised way of saying it.

Nice, solid post with good info for someone getting started with SNGs.

This is terrible nittiness (perfectly suitable for STTs ), but the bolded part is incorrect. 45 degrees.. well.. having 1500 chips wouldn't give you $1500 equity in a $10 10-man winner takes all. It's 45 degrees if you measure in t150 -chips and dollars. Also, it would begin at 0 chips and $0 equity.. clearly if you lose half your chips you still have $5 equity in a $10 winner takes all tournament. Or maybe we are describing a different graph.

If only I had read such a great post when I started playing SNG's, I'm sure I would not be grinding the 2.25's to take back what I've lost in the 6.5's, and it was not only because of variance ! (Variance was the thing that made me think I was a good player when I actually was not good at all)

This is a very solid post for all beginners, and I particularly like your way to describe your post-flop play. Knowing on the flop what you want to do with your hand is probably a key-concept I should keep in mind. I guess I don't think enough of reverse implied odds when I play as well, even if tend to bet too much rather than too few generally.

Thank you for a post dedicated to beginners, I can't wait to see what you think of larger blinds...that's a weaker part of my game.

Good read, thanks.

A+++++ would read again.

thanks for the shout-out, congrats on 5k and gl in the future.

Good read. Just wanted to have some discussion. I play much much tighter in the early levels. I basically raise AK and JJ-AA, I limp all other pairs and don't play any other hands. Is this too nitty?

I'm pleasantly surprised to find a very great and helpful post. I didn't doubt it would be good, but this is a great guide for new players which is probably needed around these parts, these days.

Early play especially is a major problem for new players because they can't use an ICM calculator to help them learn how to play. I like that you mentioned folding 44 to a raise of 100, which is probably -EV in early levels, but a lot of regs out there habitually call & will do it at 120 in L2 as well.

Great post. We have had some terrific convos in MIRC (where I actually talk strategy), about bet sizing, pot odds and out percentages. Always fun and always something to learn there and on this forum.

Some of that is pretty basic, but you have articulated them really well here.

Lots of players can benefit from your post, thanks for taking the time.

Slacka

Nice post. If only there were more like this

I'm pleased that after three weeks of learning to play SnGs I actually understand where you are coming from on all of this. A lot of what you say seems obvious now but to a complete beginner it isn't at all. I will be re-reading this everytime I think I just got FPS again; everytime I try and bluff a rando; everytime I get stacked by the turn CRAI from super-nit-2008.

Thank you

You're way too modest zen. You've been a huge help to me in the time I've been here. Great post.

Nice job Zen!

Thanks for taking the time to write this up...

also zen do u have msn? I like never sign onto aim b/c I don't like miranda's software (it doesn't automatically show when I have new emails in hotmail).

Wow awesome post. Looking forward to a late game write up too. Hope you decide to do one of those also!

Thanks,
Amerzel