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

[mersenneary]

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.

[DJSHAD0W]

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

[br.bm]

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.

[mersenneary]

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.

[DrVanNostrin]

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.

[mersenneary]

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?

[DrVanNostrin]

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.

[Gonso]

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.

[Rek]

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.

[RobNottsUk]

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.