Pretty baffled as to why there are no threads on this at all?? There's one in NVG that got locked then re-opened due to the fact they realised that there actually wasn't lots to find on the search function in STT (unless I've missed one, please direct me if there is).

I'm thinking of trying some. But what strategy to use??? If you don't have a decent amount of chips by the time there's 6 players left then it's unlikely you'll get much more than your money back. So surely they are going to be heavily weighted towards the biggest aggressor? Perhaps we should open up early on, try to steal as many pointless tiny blinds/pots as possible. Then on the bubble if we're in the bb facing 10bb shoves from the button it's going to have be worth a gamble is it not?? Quite tough to figure out. Opinions?


MODERATOR EDIT: This thread is for Fifty50 strategy discussion only. Talk of other games, bad beats, vague references to small sample sizes with nothing else contributed, etc... will be deleted immediately, and the user dealt with at moderator discretion.

Prob should have asked for permission before opening this. There arent separate strat threads for DoNs, Super turbos, hypers, etc. Maybe theyll be nice and leave it open for a bit.

From first glance, its gonna be really hard to make ICM calculations for early allins, since I think having a bigger stack near the bubble is gonna be ultra profitable in these. The bubbles are also gonna play pretty weird, maybe like half the bubble factor youd experience in a DON.

Might be more productive to post hhs and get feedback on them.

I'm ok with this going for a bit since it is so new and there is so little out there, like we did at first for DoNs.

Please just stick to strat.

I'm playing my first one now with not much of a clue as to what to do. Just realised that the structure is totally different to the DoN's or normal 9 man turbos. Blinds go up similar to that of a Full Tilt super turbo with the exception of an ante kicking in at 40/80. Would love some feedback from some knowledgable top players but perhaps they're preferring to keep their own ideas to themselves for now.

well i think its pretty obvious you must pwn the bubble and abuse stack in this kind of game, and on DoNs u just use ur big stack to be sure ur gna win. When ur shortstack i guess you must wait for good spots to gain chips.. for me , seems pretty similar to normal sngs on the long run, but i guess u must introduce much more raise/folds even at 10-15bb that u wouldnt on a normal sng... this is highly exploitable if anyone notices this tendency tho, but in a bubble its hard to come over the top of someone abusing his stack.. any ideas ? I wont play these... i was so happy with them being part of 6max since i m a 6max specialist but now im not interested in them at all... they seemed rly fun for 6max , loads of stealing and pwning bubbles =(

Here is a shove I just made. Looks laggy but it's the first time a pot is unopened when it gets to me and there is a whopping t405 out there to take. Surely it's +ev? Wiz didn't mind it in the DoN set up but I'm not sure if that would simulate these games properly?

Poker Stars $20.00+$0.96 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t75/t150 Blinds + t20 - 9 players

MP1: t1635 M = 4.04
Hero (MP2): t1425 M = 3.52
CO: t2350 M = 5.80
BTN: t1159 M = 2.86
SB: t1158 M = 2.86
BB: t1300 M = 3.21
UTG: t2341 M = 5.78
UTG+1: t2397 M = 5.92
UTG+2: t1235 M = 3.05

Pre Flop: (t405) Hero is MP2 with 4 K
4 folds, Hero raises to t1405 all in, 4 folds

Normal strategy. No need to go out of your way to do dumb things to gain chips. Just play your game.

That looks like spew to me penfold unless you have some sick reads.

Not a good reason for a spaz shove.

Realess, I'm prob shoving 15-20%

This was posted by jukofyork and looks pretty good to know for fifty50

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/45...fty50s-974537/

I've played a fair number of DoNs, not my main game but good for VPPs when needed. I was no superman but generally did ok at the low levels.

Today I played a dozen Fifty50s just to see what they are about. Based on that extremely limited sample it seems like regular tight DoN style is good until there are about 7 players left and then you need to open things up to accumulate chips. Basically a blend of DoNs and turbo SnG strat I guess I'd say. Playing for the win but not quite as aggressively as in a 180 for example. There seemed to be a lot of spots on the bubble where you could abuse the shorties who still want to cash, but you also had decent FE against the bigger stacks who didn't want to jeopardize their "big" payouts.

I played my 12, cashed in 8 and won more than I would have cashing in 8/12 DoNs. 4 I won more than a DoN payout with 2 1st and 2 2nd place finishes, and 4 with less than DoNs finishing with 2 3rds and 2 4ths.

They do play quick which can be good. Not sure it I'll put a lot of time into them though.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. LOL sample size etc etc.

i think you should play looser early to get a big stack. Maybe even looser than in a normal Turbo sng. I think in Fifty50 you have the biggest leverage with a bigstack.

I haven't played one yet but I think it's an interesting format to discuss, where too many dynamics are playing to really solve it imo, but I could be totally wrong. But assume this spot in a 5$ fitty fitty



Blinds 300/600/60

UTG 1500
MP 1484
CO 2000
D 1016
SB 6000
BB 3500


Just try to put different ranges for each position, I try to figure something out but I just can't make sense of what each position should do here, the smaller stacks don't gain that much of $ by winning a showdown, so they should be pretty tight, but them being pretty tight in this spots makes them lose money a significant amount of money every hand the game goes on, making cashes not that valuable. Even something simple as "if it gets to SB, he should shove 100%" is imo not really true, if BB folds he has chips worth total 4,90 dollars, but they will devaluate every hand that the games go on. Yet if he calls his chips are suddenly worth 12,67 dollars, and gives him the possibility of raping the bubble. So he doesn't have to call supertight imo...
Blergh

I do think edges are smaller than in DoNs though, but probably no one has a real idea what exactly they are doing at this moment, so if it can be figured out and you do, you will probably make some decent money.

It might help to look at some general ideas?

Figures:

Moneying is worth $4.50. 100 chips are worth 16c (22.5/135).

So take UTG. Let's make his stack 1560 for convenience. If he doubles, he gains 15 x 0.16 = $2.50. Winning the blinds and antes is worth $1.50.

So he is going to need everyone to fold a bit more than half the time if he shoves if he has a 50/50 with anyone who calls. They'd need to be decently tight for that. If you shoved wide, you'd need people to be obscenely tight because you lose so much when busted. Even if he was called by a shorter stack and lost, he would lose a ton of equity, because very short stacks cannot have much equity in this game at high blinds.

As your position gets later, you could shove progressively looser, but you'd still need to be tight because even if villains were very risk averse, you still need them to fold a lot to gain enough equity to make up for the downside of being called.

Say you had AQ. You're a dog against tight calling ranges:

Hand 0: 55.911% 49.36% 06.55% 791107164 104992170.00 { 77+, ATs+, AJo+ }
Hand 1: 44.089% 37.54% 06.55% 601625040 104992170.00 { AQo }

Your chances of being called by this range if you're utg and everyone calls with it are 32%.


50/50 with this kind of calling range:

Hand 0: 49.668% 44.80% 04.86% 1049481876 113953680.00 { 55+, A9s+, KQs, ATo+, KQo }
Hand 1: 50.332% 45.47% 04.86% 1065042636 113953680.00 { AQo }


Your chances for this range are 47%.

AQ isn't a huge favourite against a 15% range. A loose player in the big stack could well call that:

Hand 0: 45.617% 41.82% 03.80% 1426291200 129658092.00 { 33+, A7s+, KJs+, A8o+, KJo+ }
Hand 1: 54.383% 50.58% 03.80% 1725302184 129658092.00 { AQo

This adds 5% to your chance of being called, of course.

I think that if you have a big stack, like SB here, you can call loose. You don't risk your tournament equity because of the stack setup (you are not going to finish out of the money much more often with say 4.5K chips than you would with 6K chips) and you probably don't gain much in tourney equity either. But you risk $2.50 vs UTG to win $4 so you should call appropriately loose vs his range. He should be shoving tight, so obv. "loose" is relative. It's an interesting question whether he should shove over if button shoves, or pass and hope button doubles. If UTG were a bit deeper, I think it would be closer. As it stands, I think he should probably shove over. If he wins, the game ends, but he acquires extra chips. If he loses, the bubble stays alive. There's no guarantee BB wouldn't win if he folded, so it's not the same spot as being in the SB on a 9man bubble with a microshorty in the BB.

I think big stack can and should shove ATC into BB and BB is going to have to fold everything. He can and should also shove ATC into everyone else except button as far as I can see, because button blinds out next time.

I think BB should call stacks other than button tight. 1/ They will be shoving tight and 2/ he can pay his blind comfortably and still coast into the money. If button doesn't blind out, others are also very short, so he's in a good spot as far as that goes. However, he should gamble against button. He damages his tourney equity some by calling, but he's rewarded for it.

Just thoughts off the top of my head. I'd be interested to know how far off I am!

Why is cashing worth $4.50?

**** sorry, I meant $5. I am so used to 9mans, I forgot these have 10 players. So there's $50 in the prizepool, and half goes to the top 5: 25/5 = 5.

And the chips will be worth a little more. Luckily we're only doing a rough exercise in maths

Yeh sorry i thought you were taking out the rake (although it woulda been the wrong rake amount)

BTW, has anyone notice that PT3 is not importing results from these correctly...shows zero even if you won...

I know you can manually enter the results, but that gets hard if you play a lot.

I played 200 of this now and seriously I think the rake is too high and the payout to less. When you get 5th a couple of times u you only get your money back plus a bit. The percentage you need to get payed of in this game is too high. Aggressive on the bubble abusing stack with a high rake might be the best strategy to go. I do not agree playing lose in the beginning though. You want to have enough chips to start pushing blinds. They mostly fold so you can push any 2.

I think it is impossible to make make a longturn profit in this type of game. Cause for any you lose you need to have at least 3 fifth places to break even. You can not calculate how much your earnings are cause the payments are not linear. So? I think Pokerstars will cut itselves and this game is going to be short term. Pro's will not play this. Or maybe just for the sake of getting points going to be supernova.

What a pity but no surprise that a thread about strat should turn into a seeking buddy and whining about not being able to beat it thread.

I am not wining I am just giving you the arguments that this game is impossible to beat. Prove me wrong I am listening. I have no problems admitting I am wrong.

How do you explain the people who have played and won thousands over thousands of games? (like myself)

They are beatable, at the moment, the problem is when the 15th comes around there's gonna be a big influx of new regs compared to the influx of new fish (imo anywa..) and then it will certainly be more difficult to make a profit before rakeback.

Has anyone made a profit in these over a decent sample size?
When they first came out and only offered at the $10 buyin, I played something like 100-200 of these games and recall losing a lot of money, despite having a 60% ITM win rate.

I am really curious if I was playing these poorly or others are struggling to make money in these as well. Sharkscope doesn't track these and I have no idea what win rates the top players are achieving in these.

Guess I'll need to use them to convert my T$ now ( Used to play DoN's )...

Right now I'm thinking...
On the bubble, if you're shortstack, just try to survive ( i.e. play like a DoN ) but if you've got some chips to play, try to steal even more of them?

Reasonning : There's 2 different way to win, finish in the top 5, and have a big stack. If you survive, you get your buyin back... Won't get much with your chip stack tho, but if you're short stack it'll be hard to get a big stack from this point ( You don't have much hands until someone bust out, and you'll need to double up a few times or steal a lot of blinds to get a decent stack ). Doing this is a risk for that first part ( getting your buyin back ) and considering you have a low amount of chips, you're risking that $ for not much ( so far your chips are worth next to nothing, being shortstack )

On the other hand, if you're the chip leader (or at least a big stack) you're pretty much guaranteed your buyin back, so you must work on the other way to make money, i.e. accumulate chips.

So I'd say overall...
Play kind of like a cash game in the first levels ( to accumulate chips ), just a bit tighter... Then, on the bubble, just try to get ITM if you're short, but if you're sitting on a big stack just try to get more, by ( again ) playing like a cash game? As chips are worth $ in equal ratio?

Good? Bad? Horrible?
Not a tournament player by all means, but so far that's how I figure I'd play them.

Let's save statistical analysis for a time where people have developed a sample size worth noting. Until then, let's keep this thread to specified strategy-related aspects of the game. Anyone commenting on 200 game samples for basically any reason at all, without including some wholesome, constructive strategy contribution to consider (be it a question for discussion, a specific spot, hand history, or general thoughts on a given topic of these structures, etc..) is just going to have their posts deleted and banned/infracted accordingly.

I expect all of you, even the n00bs, to carefully consider, and thoroughly understand the difference between 'strategy discussion' and 'complain about my small sample and theory of the games being unbeatable from the get-go'. If it's not specifically strategy related, it should not be in this thread, and possibly not in this forum at all (even if the word 'Fifty50' is in there!) If you're not sure where it goes, ask in the basic questions thread at the top of the forum, or privately contact a moderator.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but OTBle shouldn't small stacks actually have higher bubble factors than they normally would? Since the EV of doubling isn't substantially more than just cashing?