How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

You're heads up at the final table of an online $1K tournament, even chip stacks, and for whatever reason, you know that your opponent can see your cards. Having no other choice, you decide to play it out before complaining, hoping to win anyway. What is your optimal strategy?

For example, being very aggressive with draws seems to go way up in value, but suited connectors go down in value preflop. River play changes a lot because you have to determine if he just thinks you can be bluffed out, or just knows he is good. Betting the river is always -EV except if done for some other +EV strategy (i.e. you think he will bluff-raise a scare card and you have the stones to call and win even more chips). Do you just find flops where you know that in all likelihood you have at least 8 outs if he does have a good hand and shove, or do you just play very passively with marginal hands, or what the heck do you do? There are clearly bad things to do and good adjustments to make, it's just hard to figure out what. Lots of connections to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

guess trying to get it all in as 60/40 preflop is prolly as well as u r gonna do eh?

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

does he know that we know it?
how many big blinds do we have?

My first guess is to push preflop or fold. He always plays perfect and now he plays only one street perfect. Not 4.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

He doesn't know that we know, but he'll of course react to the way we change our play.

We have plenty of BBs. Let's say 40 each. Enough so that it's not a push-fold fest but not so much that pushing on the flop of a reraised pot is absurd. The idea is that there's still a lot of play left and we're trying to maximize our chances with it.

Making it a preflop game doesn't sound like the worst strategy, but it doesn't seem like the best, either. If you're aggressive enough so that you're not bleeding chips playing this way, you'll find yourself in a 75/25 or worse pretty quickly.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I think you need to push/fold preflop. Preflop equities tend to be close to 50%. Once a flop comes these equities move away from the middle, towards the edges. Since he can see your cards this is very bad news for you.

The vast majority of his equity will be on the interval (33, 67) preflop. On the flop his equities will expand to the interval (5, 95). (I'm just estimating here.) Getting it in preflop limits his edge.

You should take a similar approach if you are outclassed.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

If you push/fold preflop heads-up with a decent amount of BBs, you need to be pushing at least as much as you're folding, otherwise superuser just wins by blinding you off. If you push enough, then superuser will call when he dominates you and you will win about 25% of the time as a best case scenario (I'm assuming the superuser is smart and wouldn't call as a slight favorite). Fine, 1 in 4, not bad.

But can we do better? Yes, you get no value from your great hands, he does get value from his, and the more streets there are, the more chance you'll get your money in terrible. Still, there is a lot of strategy here. Most of the hands POTRIPPER won were with the worst hand. You can still win pots when your hand is exposed. And, you have the advantage of knowing that your opp needs to be a huge favorite to want to get it in the middle (and if he doesn't, then it's guaranteed that you'll do better than you would pushing/folding preflop).

So what do you do? How do you play the flop/turn/river? Or if these strategies aren't good enough and keeping it preflop is really best, why?

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

25% is too low of an estimate for your equity when you get all-in. 35% is more reasonable. I say this because dominated hands have roughly 1/3 equity. Winning 35% of the time when the other guy can see your cards is pretty good. You won't do any better than that playing him postflop. The only way you can get him all-in postflop when you have the best of it is if you pick off a bluff. And he won't bluff when you have a strong hand. So if you were lucky enough to get all-in with the best of it you'd frquently be outdrawn.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

Shoving the top 55% of hands would probably be your best bet that deep. You're probably going to be dominated when he does call, but I don't imagine you're going to do much better with deep stacks anyway.

What I'd probably be inclined to do is take a flop cheap, and try to induce a bluff when I have a weak pair or A high or something he'd ordinarily try to push me off of and then look him up. This is assuming he's not aware I know he sees my cards.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

All in every hand pre flop. He will fold until he is a big favorite then you hope your 25% chance hits. You cannot possibly play good poker here.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I think the OP is wrong about draws increasing in value, if the opponent can see your cards.

They'll only call when it's +ve TEV to do so, given their huge edge on us. We have no equity due to incorrect plays with 2nd best draws. Nor can we semi-bluff with a str8 draw and get called by a flush draw, until the river when it misses.

Nor do we have fold equity against top & over pair hands, where we might in other circumstances.

As Pushing In every hand without looking at our cards, might interfere with the opponents super-power, it'll at least be the least bad strategy in the circumstance for the reasons previously explained. There's some work been done showing that the maximum edge (unless deep stacked) would be 60-40% against us.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I would give up

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

Tell him that you know he knows your cards.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

It does matter if he knows that you know or not. Certainly if he knows that you know you can't do any better than just pushbotting preflop. If he doesn't know that you know then (a) telling him is a mistake in terms of EV (b) you *might* be able to do slightly better by playing some postflop & by calling down with bottom pair hands sometimes

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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Tell him that you know he knows your cards.

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FAIL

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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I think you need to push/fold preflop. Preflop equities tend to be close to 50%. Once a flop comes these equities move away from the middle, towards the edges. Since he can see your cards this is very bad news for you.

The vast majority of his equity will be on the interval (33, 67) preflop. On the flop his equities will expand to the interval (5, 95). (I'm just estimating here.) Getting it in preflop limits his edge.

You should take a similar approach if you are outclassed.

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I agree with this.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I think out strategy should be to make a mediocre hand after the flop, and checkcall with it for our whole stack. Something like bottom pair. Maybe set up a pattern where we CC bottom pair on flop, and fold on turn, and then reverse that on him when he shoves again.

Ironically, we should be checkfolding all our good made hands, even bottom set.

betting is retarded unless we have big hands and wanna just take it down or BIG draws in which case he don't mind much getting our shoves called.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I'd push every hand and try and get lucky. He would't call something that he is behind so you have to come from behind to win.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

obvious answer has been overlooked.

kill the clock each and every hand to increase blinds. while you're deepish. ideally, you stick it out until you're 4-5bb deep where autoshoving is nearly correct.


until you get there, play only with big pairs, raise enough so that it's almost incorrect for him to call with anything. always fold to an all in preflop with kings/queens, because he will never expect you to fold a big pair and can only be value shoving. if he does call though, bet 2/3rds of the pot and fold to big raises if the board is safe, call if the board is very scary.

as the blinds get bigger, you should start shoving with some quality hands that are unlikely to be dominated. not expecting to be called - but rather, expecting that he is unable to call you - and therefor playing to pick up the blinds. when you are 10-15bb deep, add in AQ and AK to your shove range. play big pairs similarly to how you did earlier.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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until you get there, play only with big pairs, raise enough so that it's almost incorrect for him to call with anything.

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Strange, I only get dealt big pairs about 2.5% of hands, so I'd expect to have blinded away using this strategy. Especially as when you raise, you'll not get incorrect calls, and big pairs are bad hands to suck out on someone with.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I still like the 'calling down light with a hand he doesn't think I'll call with' strategy. Bluffing big is where this guy actually goofs

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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I still like the 'calling down light with a hand he doesn't think I'll call with' strategy. Bluffing big is where this guy actually goofs

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I think it is important to do this with a weak made hand, as opposed to an equally strong hand with a larger drawing component. When you are drawing, a large bet might be for protection, but potripper only seemed to make large bets against weak made hands (below top pair) as a bluff.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

In the videos I've seen POTRIPPER raise people holding mid-small PPs pre-flop to build the pot and then steal on the flop when overcards hit. It worked every time. So if you're holding a PP and POTRIPPER raises you, shove. You can't be much of a dog unless you're against a bigger PP which he's more likely to slow-play.

As others have said, your best option is to get everything in the middle pre-flop. It doesn't make sense to see a flop.

If the blinds are very low compared to the stacks it may be correct to play very tight and fold all hands but the monsters and wait for the blinds to go up. My reasoning is that while you can't win chips by folding, you're going to lose more taking flops and trying to outwit an opponent who can read your very soul. Does this make any sense?

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

push fold every hand thats the only way to beat it obv

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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I still like the 'calling down light with a hand he doesn't think I'll call with' strategy. Bluffing big is where this guy actually goofs

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Yeah. The obvious thing from the Potripper video was what he could do to 33 44 55 66 with a HUGE bluff bet when any high card hit the board. Knowing the other guy has a small pocket pair and not one of the biggies means you know that you can get them to fold. But if I know that you know, and I refuse to fold (basically hoping he didn't actually hit) is your best equity. Still not good, as ur basically a calling station.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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Strange, I only get dealt big pairs about 2.5% of hands, so I'd expect to have blinded away using this strategy. Especially as when you raise, you'll not get incorrect calls, and big pairs are bad hands to suck out on someone with.

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When you stall, you wont be forced to play many hands. That's the main thing. You are just trying to bide your time for when the stack:blind ratio is very low.



For the big pairs, the most important concept is that you arent playing because you want him to stack off with a worse hand. You do it precisely because you know he wont.

You do it because he will just call 100% of the time preflop, assuming that he will be able to value shove when he flops a big hand and get you to fold when the board is too intimidating. With that knowledge alone, you can play extremely effectively.

if he peels on a safe flop, as long as the turn is not intimidating, you should either bet small and fold to a raise, or check/fold.


the problem with medium pairs or less is that too many flops will have overcards, where it is very difficult to determine whether he is value betting you or bluffing you. when you have a big overpair, you dont have that problem.



i would not bank on my ability to decipher his post flop play with weak made hands. you WILL pick up a lot of bluffs by check/calling super lite, but you will also always be paying off even marginally better ones. the kind of hands that you need to check/call with are going to be so awful that even a random hand has a good chance of beating you. unless you knew before hand that he leads weak when he knows you're too weak to call a big bet and bets big when he has a worse hand and wants you to fold, you cannot use the information to your advantage.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

Make him fire a third bullet every time!

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

Fold every hand until he busts out everyone else. Get 2nd with a 10:1 chip disadvantage. Start shoving anything.

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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Fold every hand until he busts out everyone else. Get 2nd with a 10:1 chip disadvantage. Start shoving anything.

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Guess you didn't read the OP

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

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I still like the 'calling down light with a hand he doesn't think I'll call with' strategy. Bluffing big is where this guy actually goofs

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I like that strategy, but it assumes that you are playing against Potripper, but it could be that the superuser has a totally different style...

Re: How would you play at the final table against a known superuser?
 

I would just report him.