Hello all.
I used to play poker tournaments regularly. Online during the week and in the casino over the weekend.
I studied around 14 books on tourneys, tells etc... (Harringtons 3 books, Kill Everyone, Caros tells, Decide to play great poker).
I used to watch tournament poker edge (TPE) videos, used poker stove to study and posted my to the TPE forums.

I used to do Ok. I could turn a €100 investment in to 5- 10k over a year playing 2 to 8 tourneys a day with a 1% of bankroll rule.
I recently put myself €100 in winamax.fr, got lucky early on and won €850. Having 5 months off work just now, it makes sense to give poker another shot.

I've been checking out Holdem Manager, Poker Tracker etc... and I really like the options in Drivehud 2. I also find sharkscope really useful as I have no info on who i'm playing against yet.

I was just curious if anyone had general tips on how the games have changed over the last 10 years. Any free or cheap usefull software or usefull videos? I thought there would be patreon video subscriptions for poker guides, but I can't find them if they do exist.

Anyone on here sell a good HUD setup for drivehud?

I've noticed some coaching videos around, but most seems for high stakes and cost 1k+. I'm nowhere near that level yet.

Thanks all. I'm going to try to spend a bit of time here and have good look around. I'll even try to answer peoples threads, but to be honest I don't know if my outdated experience is use to anyone or not.

Cheers all.

I will try to summarize a few points:
- regulars are making much less mistakes
- the average player is much better
- even a lot of part time/weekend players understand some basic concepts of poker and don't make as many terrible mistakes
- there is still money to be made, especially in MTTs, but the amount of skill you need to crush them is much much higher than in the past

Thanks for responding.

I have noticed that most players are aware of positional play, that you don't get many players blinding themselves out of games anymore, everyone seems to know the stack size for shoving now. You could win micro stakes sngs just knowing when to shove in the past.

I can't understand how most study and use bb instead of M. I still use BB for stack sizes but M seems much more efficient, especially with all the antes from the start of games now. I always thought M would become the standard.

There are so many bounty hunter and ko tourneys now too, I have no idea how to adjust to these yet. All I can think is to make sure I bet enough to put the player all in by the end of the hand if I have a potential winner. I'm sure there is much more I need to adjust for playing these tho.

Hahaha, I just read all that back and I sound old as fook, or like I just got out of jail and am re adjusting to normal life.

I think maybe M isn't granular enough for what people want to use it for. Or maybe it doesn't quite get where the breaks in stack size where you should change ranges / strategy are.

Or, perhaps, it's just that BB is easier to figure on the fly and you don't have to do any calculations. Especially true now that online sites will let you list your stack size in BB. And with live tournaments moving to the big blind ante format, you can always convert in your head as 1M = 2.5BB.

As someone who broke through in 2005 and took two five-year breaks before finally starting to modernize my game two years ago: I would mostly study GTO principles and ICM.

In terms of the former: Preflop ranges are crucial and easiest to nail down, including how they change with stack size and how to have a balanced 3-bet range. Understanding flop textures and optimal bet sizing postflop is key too. Understanding blocker effects as well as which combinations are good for bluffs helps. And hand reading / range reading never goes out of style.

In terms of ICM: Tournament payouts are a lot flatter than they used to be, and consequently laddering at the final table is more important than it used to be. Study to have an understand of when you should avoid big risks and take low-variance lines, and how your ranges change when ICM is a significant factor.

There's probably more that I don't remember, but this is a good start.

Great advice, Thanks nath.

I seem to remember the jump on the bubble being much scarier than now. I don't even see people doubling their money on the bubble most of the time.
I always have it in my head to start raising more on the bubble, but that maybe comes more from when there was a decent jump in cash to scare people off from calling.

ICM training seems like a good place for me to start studying. Icmizer has a discount for the next 12 days, so that's where i'll likely go.

I only really understand GTO as varying your hands so you aren't as predictable. I will be reading more in to this as I heard of quite expensive programs that are based on GTO.

I used to enjoy watching videos to learn from pros, but I tried run it once as a free trial and the videos I clicked on seemed like bad plays to me. I'm a bit worried it might be me that is well out of touch with the game.

Cheers

Yea more people know basic concepts but they still make big mistakes in spots they shouldnt; like cbetting too big when stacks are shallow, preflop raise sizing mistakes- betting more than they should pre in spots where they lose extra chips when 3! and hands cant call a 3bet.

Idk i would say learn preflop opening raises and make sure you are opening wide enought in mtts especially when stacks at 20-60bb as you need to be opening correct aggro ranges if you want to win a tourny.

Also learn 3! fold hands and have a 3bet range that is not just value- you can exploit 3bet or fold based on some players live if you sense a player is way too tight to 3! light or 3! wider against players that are very aggro.

Call me crazy but I think just opening correct ranges and 3 betting enough and correct ranges will put you in a great spot even without taking post flop into consideration. I think postflop can be fairly straightforward especially if you come from a cash background. IDK i consider post decisions fairly easy especially when stacks are on shallow side (think 50bb or less later or mid stages of a tourny).

Call me crazy but low stake live mtts will always be soft- think $100-1k buy in range. the tools are out there to get much better at a cheap cost- i feel most players dont take advantage of the easy low hanging fruit thought (online training sites that cost what $10-30 a month). Typecasting players is so easy. You play a $400 tourny. say the field size is 400 players. There might be 10-20 crushers (maybe not even). Its so easy to tell who is good and who is just a rec. If you can just typecast players after some play and play strat based on them- maybe more gto against good players and exploit against bad players following some loose gto concepts- just going to do well over long run.

Low stakes live MTTs are generally still pretty soft, yeah, based on my experience playing up here the last couple of years. A handful of good players, some more solid ones, a fair number of people who aren't bad at poker per se but don't really understand tournament concepts very well, and then just some real fish who will play too many hands and play them badly.

Online, though, there are a lot more solid players even at smaller stakes.

GTO is also about which hands you use to vary your range, in terms of board coverage and giving yourself a chance to make big hands. And, like I said, flop textures and how to size your bets based on those and with the various hands in your range. The goal of GTO play is to give your opponent no good options, so you need to, say, have the right percentage of bluffs to make opponents indifferent to calling or folding (and you need to choose the hands that are most likely to work as bluffs depending on the board and what your opponent's range likely is from the action).

You can always get something like PioSolver and try running spots in it, but that may be more than you want to spend at this time and the learning curve may be a little steep if you've never encountered solvers before.

There are also some books you can get that are cheaper than buying programs. Modern Poker Theory can be dense but it's a good primer and the ranges included are extremely useful. GTO Poker Simplified will help you with a lot of the basics. If you feel ready for something more detailed and conceptual, the Play Optimal Poker books are a good choice.

(And Endgame Poker Strategy will help you understand ICM much better.)

Heh, I know there are varying opinions on the pro training sites on here, and I guess the videos are only as good as the players making them, but I haven't used Run It Once so I don't know who the pros making their videos are or what the plays in question are.

Not crazy at all. Even after all my time away I can still get in the money, to final tables and win the 5-10€ tourneys. I see plenty of mistakes if I have plenty of sleep and don't play too many games at a time.
To be honest tho I'd have no chance even opening 3 tables at a time at the minute.

I think there will be money to be made playing poker as long as there is always a human on the other side to play against.

I've tried GTO Wizard today and some the moves it tells me to make seem alien to me. It's like the only use I can see for it if for exploiting the players that use it. Just seems far too precise for playing poker.
I posted the 1st answers it gave to me on the Poker Software part of 2+2.

I think training sites with videos might be the way to go for me if anyone has recommendations?

Cheers for the replies, much appreciated.

A lot of times with solvers and GTO training sites, the more important thing is to understand the why of the moves and the concepts behind them, so you can apply those concepts to your own game.

What are some examples of what you're talking about?

This was the 1st test I got from GTO Wizard with their best answers:

6 players, all with 200bb Hero in hijack with A10os.

UTG folds.
Hero raises 2.5bb
3 folds and BB calls

FLOP: K2, Qh, 8d

BB Check, Hero Check

Turn: 3d

BB Check, Hero Check

River: 2h

BB Bet 2bb, Hero Fold

I would always raise here pf, but on this board I'd be betting all streets.

I feel the the bb would in fear of the cbets from the hijack on this board. Surely the cards hit Heros range much more than the player just calling in the BB.

My thoughts based on playing a standard player:

We could fold out under pairs and floats with bets on the flop and turn.
Only Kings, Queens, Straight draws, and backdoor flushes would stay past the flop.
Only diamond FD stays after the turn and any missed draws fold the river.
I would also bet any river that misses the draws.
I think that by the river we would even get some Q and K with bad kicker hands folding.

Maybe I'm completely wrong but at 200bb deep, why even raise A10os hand pf if your just going to give up if it doesn't hit.
Then folding to a tiny river bet just seems very exploitable.

Btw with live game- something I’ve noticed with my own play is this- the more tournies I have played- the easier I find it to relieve spots you take and spots you pass on.

Back in the day say 5-10 years ago, I would make bad calls live early in tournies, continue with somewhat strong hands like tptk or and overpair in a spot where a Rec x raises a dry flop where they have almost no bluffs. Making big folds with hands that have strength say AA on 37J flop or you call a x raise and give up on a turn in a spot where a villian never has bluffs.

Another big spot I find is this: in a tourny a few weeks back I defended from sb or bb to a ep open. Flop was all low and I call with no made hand to a cbet. Turn brings a straight in a spot ep will almost never have it. I lead out fairly large on turn and villian just folded. Probably just two over cards but in the past I would just check and check river for a lost hand. You gotta find spots where you can make semi safe bluffs that aren’t going to crush your stack if you are wrong. Something with mtts I feel- I feel a lot of recs miss spots where they can get chips or have such an advantage where if they make a bluff- it’s a good play long run even if it doesn’t work in one instance. Finding 2-3 good spots in a tourny you normally would have missed when you didn’t have confidence or experience to take a play- stuff like this is what separates the guys that min cash a lot and never go deep Vs those that find deep runs consistently.

Random side note- I think the difference between good to great players vs mediocre to bad players is this. The good players are going to take full advantage of “run good”. The bad players sure will get a lot of chips when they run good but they make so many mistakes that they don’t take full advantage of the limited run good we get once in a while in tournies. In live play- you see some good players consistently go deep or win tournies. They are taking full advantage of the run good and maximizing the chips they can win. Bad players aren’t maximizing their limited run good.

Opening wide late in a tourny is huge also. If you are missing gto approved opens at say the bottom of the range open type stuff- you are leaking chances to win chips and potentially set yourself up to win a tourny. As someone that has won 3 tournies since the start of Covid (I’ve been a fortunate bastard no doubt)- winning a tournament requires insane “run good”. It’s hard to describe but so much has to go right. All I can do as a player is hope I get lucky I’m my “good spots” and take full advantage. Winning a tournament is so difficult and should always be something you don’t expect if you want to have the correct mindset in tournies. My thought is if I can get to a final table with an avg stack and find that late run good- when it gets down to say 3-6 handed, I’m going to own live players that don’t have that experience of playing short handed and opening their ranges along with bluffing more. This is one of the reasons I get irked by people chopping say 3-6 way at the end of a tourny. The variance sure is high when stacks are shallow but if one can exploit folks that don’t have the ability to adjust and adapt to short handed conditions, one is just going to own late if they make some runs over their live mtt career.

K2?

So, I would probably go ahead and c-bet the flop small, but looking at this-- and GTO solvers rarely say to do the same action 100% of the time with a hand, so I'm a little curious about that, to boot-- I would guess the reasoning is: You have a strong enough hand to win the pot at showdown, and you don't want to get raised off it by bluff check-raises like gutshots. And the river bet is so small it's very unlikely to be a bluff-- the GTO programs usually assume your opponent is playing optimally, too.

I would probably just put in a small bet on the flop, though, to try to fold out random hands with six outs.

hi magicbud, how is the comeback going?

That's hood.