small ball at 5-10$ sngs???? - Page 2

mortimo · #11 09-01-2007, 07:31 AM

I have mixed it up and tried smallball-poker alot in lowbuyin-mtts, with good results..I maintain a big stack in the beginning, but later I lose because the players are more aggressive and talented..The same thing can we say about SNGs, but here it`s important to have a tight image, so we can pawn thr bubble..Often if I see a mediumstack mini-raise me as a bluff and I have him covered, I will come over the top of him and push him off when we are 4-5 players left and he got 20bbs or less

PhilBeans · #12 09-01-2007, 07:50 AM

I find that I end up risking all the chips by becoming pot committed in a situation where I'm about 60% to win far too often with larger pot size bets. I end up commiting everything with AK preflop and running into QJ. This is a favorable situation, but you wont win too many in a row. By betting smaller I'm only having to commit myself with very strong hands. I'm also stealing lots more pots, so I can have enough chips to survive if my queens do run up against AK, or AK to QJ...Since most people are too stupid to push in situations where they should at low buy-ins, its easy to exploit them because they fold so much when the blinds are big. A min raise or a 3x raise preflop when the blinds have gotten big accomplishes the same task, with less risk. When the flop comes king high you can then destroy the guy who woulda played K-8 for 2 or 3x the bb regardless with your AK. He will pay you off just the same. I think it gives me more of an opportunity to outplay people post flop since and i think I can do that almost always at my level.

purpledragon · #13 09-01-2007, 04:40 PM

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I find that I end up risking all the chips by becoming pot committed in a situation where I'm about 60% to win far too often with larger pot size bets. I end up commiting everything with AK preflop and running into QJ. This is a favorable situation, but you wont win too many in a row. By betting smaller I'm only having to commit myself with very strong hands. I'm also stealing lots more pots, so I can have enough chips to survive if my queens do run up against AK, or AK to QJ...Since most people are too stupid to push in situations where they should at low buy-ins, its easy to exploit them because they fold so much when the blinds are big. A min raise or a 3x raise preflop when the blinds have gotten big accomplishes the same task, with less risk. When the flop comes king high you can then destroy the guy who woulda played K-8 for 2 or 3x the bb regardless with your AK. He will pay you off just the same. I think it gives me more of an opportunity to outplay people post flop since and i think I can do that almost always at my level.

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What i understand from this is you are saying that you bet 3*bb and when someone shoves over the top you will fold? I do wonder sometimes about pushing into whats likely a 60 40 situation in my favour because in downswings it seems you lose all your 60 40's. However late in sng's you dont get alot of postflop play i therefore believe pushing is more +ev than a small raise this late because you lose all FE at the same time with the 3bb raise.

Guthrie · #14 09-01-2007, 06:34 PM

Anything works once.

PhilBeans · #15 09-02-2007, 08:17 AM

Yeah I've been getting massively sucked out on all night. Still cashing but if I had even average luck I'd be up 3 times more. Havent altered my style drastically, just throwing in some smaller bets here and there for value. Seems I keep shoving with +EV but 99 is no good against A-7. EVER. I'm running so bad I cant believe it but still winning so.....?

ymu · #16 09-02-2007, 08:28 AM

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Yeah I've been getting massively sucked out on all night. Still cashing but if I had even average luck I'd be up 3 times more. Havent altered my style drastically, just throwing in some smaller bets here and there for value. Seems I keep shoving with +EV but 99 is no good against A-7. EVER. I'm running so bad I cant believe it but still winning so.....?

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If you keep giving good odds to outdraw you, you will get outdrawn a lot, without making enough to make up for it the times you win. If you want to c-bet really small, you are pretty much forced to value bet really small - unless your opponents are complete morons.

Frequent 2.5x raises followed up by a half pot c-bet is small-ball. You can't play this way with shallow stacks. Trying to make it work by minraising and minbetting is just fishy and asking for trouble, IMO.

RPatterson67 · #17 09-02-2007, 03:24 PM

BigJoe doesn't smallball when the blinds are high. He is more active during the early stages of sng's but that is because he plays better post-flop than me or PhilBeans or anyone on this thread. And I still don't see him making donk min-raises and underbets. Blindly post-oak bluffing vs. weak players isn't smallball.

chuckpalms04 · #18 09-02-2007, 06:13 PM

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if I had even average luck I'd be up 3 times more.

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i didn't know phil helmuth posted here.. also in the long run smallball generally isn't an optimal strategy because it's too easily expoitable, especially given the information you've shared with us.

RPatterson67 · #19 09-02-2007, 06:57 PM

If you are winning you are not running bad enough to whine about. You probably do not have enough experience/good enough to be able to tell what is going on.

drzen · #20 09-02-2007, 08:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah I've been getting massively sucked out on all night. Still cashing but if I had even average luck I'd be up 3 times more. Havent altered my style drastically, just throwing in some smaller bets here and there for value. Seems I keep shoving with +EV but 99 is no good against A-7. EVER. I'm running so bad I cant believe it but still winning so.....?

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If 99 isn't EVER good against A7, you are not winning.