Low-stakes rebuys: Playing the middle period well.

[JammyDodga]

Hi, I've been playing a few of the lo stakes re-buy tournaments on stars recently, from the 3r up to the 10r.

I've gotton pretty good at getting a stack in the first hour, and useually finish the first hour on around 20k.

However, I never seem to be able to do anything for the next 2 hours or so, and often wind up with the same stack when the blind are to 500/1000.

1. How do people play these couple of hours? Are they tight and just value betting, or attempting to mix it up in position a bit with stacks so deep.

2. Has anyone noticed any trends in most other players play, are there many common exploitable mistakes?

[Soulman]

1. Definitely don't be tight. Stacks are usually very deep in hour 2-3, and guess what? Lots of donkamenters suuuuuuuuuck at deep stack play. So play speculative hands, just like you would early in an MTT.

2. Common exploitable mistakes: uh well, whatever bad players do deep: overvalue pairs, call OOP in a bloated pot, call with hands that have reverse implied odds etc.

[JammyDodga]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Definitely don't be tight. Stacks are usually very deep in hour 2-3, and guess what? Lots of donkamenters suuuuuuuuuck at deep stack play. So play speculative hands, just like you would early in an MTT.

2. Common exploitable mistakes: uh well, whatever bad players do deep: overvalue pairs, call OOP in a bloated pot, call with hands that have reverse implied odds etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sucking at deepstack. Thats me I think. I've been playing a bit of cash recently to try and imporve my deepstack game though.

I think you are right about the speculative hands. I think I'm sub-conciously pretecting my big stack, instead of using it.

I'm normally alright with a big stack, but thats when you can use it the bully people, which is kind of hard early in a rebuy where people seem willing to felt pretty light.

[Sherman]

FWIW,

My method for not sucking with deepstacks is really straightfoward and borrowed from PNLHE:

"Out of position, out of the action."

Meaning play hands as the aggressor PF when you have position. Cards don't matter much when you are deep (they actually don't matter much when you are shallow either; mostly in the middle). That means come in for a raise in the CO or the Button if it is un-raised to you. And don't Cold-call too much PF. That is a big mistake I see deep-stack players make. They think they can outplay everyone and CC with everything on the button.

When you don't have position, play real tight. That means don't defend your BB without a very strong hand. Don't open-limp unless you have a good implied odds hand that doesn't mind getting raised.

Anyhow, it sounds like a pretty weak/tight strategy, but if you open up your game in position, you will actually look like a complete lagtard rather than weak/tight. Mostly however, by playing all your big pots in position, you will stay out of trouble and if you get lucky you will stack many donks.

Sherman

[MJBuddy]

I was going to make a detailed post in the sense of Sherman's here, but there it goes.

Fact is, when you're playing deepstack, you can extract so much more value in position than you can any other way. If I'm raising/calling anywhere on the table other than LP, I'm probably strong/getting great implied odds.

That said, I tend to rip apart with a bigger stack, especially when the rest of my table is deep stacked as well; so results seem really good for it.

[umistboy]

I like what Sherman says here. When you are so deep stacked you can pick your spots more selectively. Why play pots where you are at a disadvantage/OOP.

Nice hand, sir.

[Rocco]

3. People suck at re-evaluating reads after re-buy period. Assuming you take many chances during the first hour, they just don't realize you have tightened up. Even 2½ hours into the game, they are more than willing to put a 100BB stack on the line with TPTK.

[tinty]

[ QUOTE ]
3. People suck at re-evaluating reads after re-buy period. Assuming you take many chances during the first hour, they just don't realize you have tightened up. Even 2½ hours into the game, they are more than willing to put a 100BB stack on the line with TPTK.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very good point. Just out of curiosity do you reset you PT hud(if you use one) or anything here? I haven't tried it, I just tend to go on memory and hope the stats even out, but obv this is not as accurate as it could be.

[Rocco]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
3. People suck at re-evaluating reads after re-buy period. Assuming you take many chances during the first hour, they just don't realize you have tightened up. Even 2½ hours into the game, they are more than willing to put a 100BB stack on the line with TPTK.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a very good point. Just out of curiosity do you reset you PT hud(if you use one) or anything here? I haven't tried it, I just tend to go on memory and hope the stats even out, but obv this is not as accurate as it could be.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I don't use PT stats while playing tournaments. I think it hampers my development in reading players so I try to make mental notes instead. When playing many tournaments simultaneously, I can really only get accurate reads on the most extreme players. In ring games, I use PT though...

[BrandiFan]

Eric lindgren wrote a pretty good article on building a stack/playing lots of pots. He recommends dropping a level or 2 in your cash play and play as many pots as you can. This is good for getting experience in marginal situations and the microdonks will play pretty closely to the 3-10r players.

fwiw, I played a couple sessions of .5/1 with a vpip of around 65 and it was pretty fun too. I am normally not THAT aggressive in tournaments, but every once in a while I'll get a table that will let me get away with opening every other pot.

Edit: Idon't use a HUD either