[CarlosChadha]

Hi 7n7,

First off, I have not read any of David Grey's writing, so I can't comment directly on that. However, I have recently been preparing for the WSOP stud tournaments and have learned a couple things. After rereading the orginal 2+2 book on tournements (not Harrington), I realized that most of these nuggests can be interpolated from his general advice.

If the players are playing loose, you really should not make any adjustments to your normal ring play.

If the other players are playing generally tight, or they are aware of the "Gap Concept" (from the 2+2 book), you can make some adjustments. Generally, they are most useful near the bubble, or when you are already in the money:

In general everything below is just part of following the Gap Concept.

-If you are high on board, steal %90 of the time, regardless of position, unless your door card is duplicated. If you have the 2nd highest unduplicated card on the board open raise with any hand that you would normally limp with (this includes hands that you might not even consider limping with in a ring game, like somewhat dead 3 flushes/str8s.

- If you are in late position (1, 2, or 3 seats to the left of the bring-in) with the 2nd highest remaining unduplicated doorcard steal 50-75% (depending how tight or aggressive the players behind you are) of the time. This basically means that you can ignore the high card behind you, and steal with the same range of hands that you would normally steal with, in a ring game, from a late position when you have the high card.

-Even though the Gap Concept would seem to imply that you never open limp with a playable hand, this only applies to limit holdem. In stud you need to have somewhat high doorcard to steal, so if you have something like AhTh4h with the 4 as the door card, you would just limp. If one of the two high cards was your door you would probably raise.

If you play well (ie. can easily fold a marginal hand if you sense you are in trouble) atleast limp (but usually raise if your doorcard is not a small card) with any pair. When people are playing tight trying to conserve chip they are less likely to raise behind you without a pair higher than your doorcard, and thus your hand becomes much easier to play than it would in a ring game where people will raise/reraise with big str8/flush draws and little pairs with big kickers.

-Lastly, but extremely importantly, you MUST adjust your play on the later streets after you raise third and get called because opponents who are aware of the gap concept will have a MUCH tighter range of hands when they call than they would in a ring game. When you get called by a decent player on 3rd, you can usually assume that he has either a medium/large pair, a flush/str8 draw with atleast 1 or 2 overcards to you door, or possibly a small pair with an Ace or King. You can rule out most weaker hands that a strong player might normally call with in a ring game (wired pairs lower than you doorcard with a weak kicker, live flush/str8 draws w/ no overcard, 3 overcards, etc.). Since your opponents range is so much stronger you will not be able to value bet marginal or even good hands as much as you would in a ring game. Also, you should give up on you semi-bluffs immediatly on 4th street if you don't improve, EVEN is your opponent appears to have ragged or you caught a scare card (if your opponent ragged AND you caught a scare card then you can try bluffing one more time, but give up unimproved on 5th unless you catch yet another scare card)

Well, those are pretty much all the stud specific tournement adjustments you need to make. Anything else (inflection points, dealmaking, payout considerations) can be found in either the Harrington or Sklansky tournament books.

Regards,
Carlos