The problem with most angle shooting is that any response to it in the moment *immediately* gives away the strength of your hand. It's why I speak up for other players.
An example: a few years back I'm in a 2/5 game, short handed. Hit a fh in a 3b pot, end up with something like 44 on 4226J or something to that extent vs an obvious overpair. Otr I shovr for a PSB. I'm in seat 6, villain is in 4, the seat between us is empty. Our tables have a betting line, but it's not a black/white enforced line and they just try to enforce forward motion. After a minute of tanking, villain pushes his entire ~$800 stack sideways to where that stack is almost touching mine. He does not verbalized anything, then takes another ~30 seconds before eventually saying "call," tabling KK and losing.

Now this is an obvious angle, but getting mad in the moment, or even after the hand will likely cost you money. You have to just ask to speak to the floor away from the table, and try to have a good reputation with them if you are a regular.

I've found a lot of info can be concealed if you ask the dealer with a straight face "what's the action?" after a good 30 seconds of the dealer doing nothing. If you start addressing what the player did directly, in your example "you need to put your money in the middle for a call", you unfortunately signal to the angler the information they were hoping for.

Some anglers / cheaters can be very pushy and try to push the dealer to agree with them, this is what I was getting at about standing your ground. As an example I have a recreational player friend who was effectively cheated out of a $500 pot. When I asked him why he didn't challenge it and call the floor his response was "I didn't want to upset the table". That's the attitude the less social types need to get out of their system ASAP as it will cost $. As for needling or whatever as werebeer put so well if they're giving their $ away let them say whatever they want to keep them at the table.

If unsure what's happening, you can just ask the dealer "what's the action?"

edit

^ slowponied

Cool I’ll have to work in some donkament studying and watch some tournament content as well.

Good read rr and fair enough. Pokerbros structures seem to be different than? Cash % is around 20% for the large mtts I believe, on average- as you can see in the above example. Once you cash, the pay jumps are small for a while so that’s when I start getting super aggro and push FE.

Seems to be a big difference from structures where only half that amount cash (10%). Would you still have a similar mindset?

Thanks everyone for the perspective on interacting with people at a poker tables

I’ll just bumhunt SimpleRick at Commerce

Most of my time spent playing live poker has been in card clubs (casinos aren’t a thing in TX), and it’s a way different and more welcoming environment than your average casino.

So it’s good to be aware of those things.

this so much, it's always the same people too

i always speak up the minute i see it and have gotten flak for it with stuff like "the hand doesn't involve you" never understood that mentality, it's an obvious special situation and you're not influencing play so much as preventing play from getting unlawfully influenced

it's usually the same guys over and over again and when a new player sat down I'd say "hi my name is rickroll and that's steve, steve often will pretend to have wanted to raise or call a small amount but accidentally put a massive chip out there with the other small ones and that one chip is worth an entire buyin, he will then pretend to be upset and want to take it back but the floor will rule it stands and then you end up calling for a bet 10x the size of the pot and he then casually flips over the nuts"

the steves at my table never liked me much, but if i ever saw someone pull the same angle twice they'd get that introduction whenever someone new sat down - was always worried they could use it as a reverse angle though...

^^

You are doing God's work sir

yeah it's situational, obviously depends on how much the min cash is and what percentage of the prize pool goes to the final table, in something like a 9 handed sng where top 2 or top 3 cash and with super flat payout structures i'm taking the nit approach and just trying to cash with upside

it's hard so say for any specific tournament, but once you get over a few dozen players it's nearly always only worthwhile to view anything beneath final table as suboptimal, you'll even notice if you look at play history of the top online mtt players that they have surprisingly high early bustouts, way more than the average rec, that article i shared even pointed out that Shaun Deeb paradoxically cashes at a lower frequency than the average player during a time when he was quite arguably the best mtt player in the world

simply put, you'll realize a lot more equity with that mentality playing cash games instead - this is 100% why most pros, and the best ones play cash games because the mtt game is a high variance path that only rewards those who regularly visit the final table

a good exercise for you would be to build a simulator, i imagine you have some coding skills, but if not, it's super easily done with some google searches and excel - i do this with DFS to determine whether or not it's reasonable to play (sometimes in dfs you can get tens of thousands of people in a contest and first literally gets 40% of prize pool)

so you can take that prize structure of the regular mtt you are thinking of playing, use a random number generator =RANDBETWEEN(1,500), even assign yourself an edge over the field (ie if there are 500 people playing you only have the number generation range from 1-401 instead etc) and then run it for however many lines to simulate however many entries and use vlookup to have each finishing position correspond to a prize, subtract your total buyins and voila, you just simulated 100 entries of that tournament giving yourself a significant edge over the field

now, take a look at the times you simulated 100 and profited vs the times you simulate 100 and lost money - if you can find situations where you made money instead of lost it without final table appearance then that'll answer your question - but my guess is no, at least for DFS, I've found in most tournaments I need to finish top 3 at least 50% more often than expected using random chance in order to have any hope of being profitable in the long run, this is a major reason why i have mostly abandoned large field tournaments and stuck to smaller contests and cash games - it's just too much of a lotto ticket because difference between a 250x payout for first vs a 20x payout for 10th is usually a single reception - i've won or lost tens of thousands of sklansky bucks based on garbage time receptions or a guy throwing the basketball up in the air to end the game and the official scorer gave him a turnover, a few times someone was in line to win a million dollars and ended up winning a few hundred because when his qb kneeled to end the game he lost 2 yards rushing

/endDFSrant, thankfully poker not nearly so top heavy in prize pools, but it's still the same concept and frankly why there is so much overlap between the two because because its a lot of the same concepts involved

There's a guy at the Commerce that likes to go all-in preflop saying he hasn't looked but somehow only ever has aces when he does this. Pretty big coincidence. His name is Kevin.

And also verbal all-in technically cannot be enforced at Commerce either. I've never seen this personally but I've heard enough about it to believe it. If someone declares all-in but doesn't push any chips forward, technically that's still his money. He can rack up and cash out and the casino can't force him to pay the bet. I think they would permaban you but still you can walk to the cage cash out and be gone. So make sure the other guy puts a chip in the middle in a big pot.

And feel free to bumhunt me all day buddy. It's gonna be fun!

And yeah in bigger field MTTs you really wanna try to make the top 5 or better. Final table is still kind of crap because 9th place is still only slightly better than a min cash usually. But if you can make it to the final table, I've found that it's reasonably easy to ladder up a bit and make some good money. You have to get to the final table before you can get down to the end of the tournament. But don't be afraid to take risks early in a tournament either. If you think someone is weak then bluff him or if someone is a station go for thin value. Ideally you want to build up a big stack before the money bubble so you can earn more chips there. But if you try to force it too much it can backfire. Maybe play some smaller or micro MTTs to practice and mess around a bit with different strategies.

1. c4 is best move #Englishgang

nice thread, glgl subbed

Gotcha. Coding newb but strong excel skills. Didn't know you did DFS. That's pretty cool man. Yeah, I prefer cash games and am not too attracted to the glory, high upside of tournaments. I just think it's +EV and enjoy the competition. Rankings are cool too (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 15th etc.).

It's also a nice break from the cash game grind and keeps my volume up. I have similar thoughts wrt HU. Both have helped me improve as a player so far as well which is good.

I'll keep the tournament tips in mind!

Welcome! You know it

Plz also include more HU content ITT. HUNL is best format!

That seems like an odd anomaly; a basic rule of poker is different at a top 3 american poker room and I hear it for the first time in 2020.

Yeah. You play at the Commerce a lot? I have. I could be wrong of course but I'd bet I'm not. I think it has something to do with California law and it's all California card rooms not just Commerce but I could be wrong about that too. You gotta know the rules wherever you play. Some casinos like the Venetian if you say Check-call that's binding. Meaning you check and whatever someone bets up to and including all-in you have to call.

Early level spots for anyone who plays freezeouts (no add on or rebuy):

How are you reacting these ridiculous sizings, when seeing them for the first time? I’m going off of memory but these are all spots that I’ve been facing.

H1: Blinds 10/20 20,000 eff.

EP 2,000.

You have KQo or 88s in MP.

H2: Blinds 100/200 $20,000 eff.

MP shoves over a few limps. You have AJo or 10s.

These sizings tend to get action from really wide ranges from people who want to gambool more often than not. Considering it’s no rebuy, is that a good strat with a perceived skill edge or is 5-8x or developing a l/rr range with 200/400 blinds etc. better when trying to thin the field?

Assume favorable, less top heavy structures in comparison to lots of tourneys. (20%~ avg cash let’s say)

Ez folds.

If you wouldnt shove with it. Why call off with hands so easily dominated.

And if you are seeing people do this light, wait to bait them with better holdings.

10/20 blinds and he raises to 2000? Or am I reading that wrong?

oh good sir, you truly haven't lived until you've played some low dollar donkaments

Have been folding these spots, thx for confirming Lurshy.

You read that right SpinMe- this happens quite often actually on pb, especially in the rebuys.

This is referring to the nightly $40 freezeouts. I personally consider it low risk, +EV, and a fun time as one of four tables but since there are $5-35 buyin tourneys spread effectively all day, every day, there are some solid players I think. Still a low buyin for sure.

S&P over 3,250 and DJIA approaching 27,000.

As I have poasted in the chat thread recently, I’ve found it interesting that the market has bounced back so well. Theories on the volatility over the next 12 months in the overall market? Similarly to a few months ago, I'm thinking that all of the stimulus and cutting of interest rates have naturally led to a temporary upswing but consumer spending, employment, and GDP all trending downward is a bad sign.

Also, the heavy drop in interest rates for high-interest savings accounts has probably incentivized a shift in capital to the market for many in order to not lose purchasing power to inflation.

what?

I've never seen a 100bb raise though lol. Risking 2000 to win 30 chips. Almost as bad as Paisting.

Well it's a clear fold with those hands when he opens to 100bb (lol) and there are several players left to act behind you.

It's probably some gobbledegook with AA. I think his raise sizing with AA is just 10% of his stack to make things easy. Paging GG.