So, in my prior post on this subject I promised a discussion about using this strategy when you’re an underdog to your opponents. What I mean here is that there are situations where you recognize right away that you are playing against people whose skills are superior to your own.

What? You’ve never been that situation? You’re always the best player at the table? Every time? Really?

Oh. Guess it’s just me then. Anyway…

Most poker players I know refuse to admit they are in a game where they aren’t the best person at the table. It’s an ego thing, and it can be deadly for your bankroll. We never want to believe we’re the fish in the game, but the fact is all “fishiness” is relative. Sometimes, you’re the shark; other times you’re the guppy. Just depends on who you’re up against.

You can control your game selection in live games because you actually have to go someplace, usually with people you know, sometimes with some intelligence about the skill level of your opponents. But online, especially in the tournament and SNG world, you’re flying blind.

Is donkalicious99 a high-buy-in, solid player on a bad run and stepping down to $10 SNGs? Is HotMary69 a newbie?

There are some tools out there that can give you a little insight into your opponents – Sharkscope, PokerDB, etc -but they’re limited because they can’t track players using different screen names on different sites. They also typically cost a few bucks to subscribe to, so you’re limited in how many searches you can do.

So, long story short, you get in a game and find 2 players are listed in Sharkscope as “Sharks”, and 420Bong420 sitting on your left is chatting away but hasn’t played a hand since Jesus Christ was pitching pennies against the temple wall.

Hmmm.

As you suspected, you survive the $10 SNG down to the bubble in, oh, 30 minutes, because the rest of the field is that bad. Now, it’s you and 3 solid folks, and you’ve seen a couple of advanced moves from each already. You know you’re the fish among those who are left.

How does that feel? (I don’t know, I’m never the fish… )

I keed, I keed.

You’re intimidated. You’ve already put up the buy-in, so it’s not like you can cash out and leave. You know you’ll be outplayed in the long run.

And therein lies the answer: Don’t let there be a long run.

Reduce the number of decisions to be made. Force the other players to make big decisions as early as possible with the BARE MINIMUM of information.

DO NOT PLAY THEIR GAME!

This is NO-LIMIT poker – don’t fall into their traps of “oh, let’s just see a flop,” and “why so big a raise so early?” You MUST set the tone and control the table. You don’t want to be mindless about it – if you’re a middle-stack and there’s a short-stack you want to be very selective about the hands you play. But, you can’t give up either, or you’ll be broomcorned out of the game. Every other player needs to be aware that if you’re in a pot, you’re playing for all of your chips, and all, or most, of theirs. This will make THEM be more selective about getting into pots with you. Change gears, be unpredictable, and watch who seems to be content to fold into the money and push on that person with any reasonable hand.

Solid players understand the Gap Concept very well. This is what you’re exploiting. The hand they’ll call off all of their chips with is going to be a lot better than the hand they’ll bet all of their chips on, and those hands don’t come around often enough. When this is the only decision they get to make in the hand, you’re playing the game that gives YOU the best opportunity to beat the better player.

 Comments or discussion? Shoot them to me at Big Slick Nuts Poker Blog.

So here’s the endgame strategy I employ, which is a little silly unless you think along my same lines – that my job is essentially done the second I’ve cleared a profit. Third is great! First is better, but third is greater than fourth by a larger margin that first is greater than third. Read that five times drunk.

WARNING – This won’t work if the people you’re playing are any good. But if you’re trolling around the low-level SNGs ($5 – $10), this is actually ridiculously effective.

1) If you’re 3rd, you’ve done your job. You have now made the money, the hard part is over. Your job is not to bludgeon everyone with your incredible skill, your job is to turn a profit. Mission accomplished.

2) Everything else is gravy. And fatboy luuuuvs gravy. So now milk these fools for everything they’ve got.

3) Ever read Super/System? The old one? Hit it. Power poker has limited place in today’s more sophisticated game, because most of us have read the book, but this is 100% the place for it.

In other words, start throwing raises and re-raises like Pauly throws dollars at strippers. Fling chips around like it’s Bobby’s junk. Even if you’re the short stack, jam as many pots as possible. Your opponents, unless one of them has a monster stack, have likely been super-tight waiting for the bubble boy to fall on his sword, and it’s going to take them a few minutes to adjust. Don’t wait – JAM. Worst case is, you finish third, fire up another one. But at these levels, your opponents cannot handle a super-aggressive player flinging chips like candy, so be that guy. But don’t be afraid to drop anything in the face of somebody playing back at you. As I was reminded time and again last night, even lemurs get dealt Aces.

So once you’ve made the money, shift into hyper-aggro mode to throw folks off balance and steal, steal, steal. I’ve found it to be more effective than I expected, and remember, my job is done when I’ve made a profit, now it’s time to take the gravy.

These are the levels, though, when you begin to switch gears and steal a few blinds. Button steals are strong moves here, as are strong raises out of either blind, as long as you stay away from challenging the big stacks. Also stay away from challenging stacks that are short, but still big enough to cripple you if you double them up. Yes, you should take any opportunity to knock someone out, but pay attention to whether or not a short stack is going to feel pot-committed if you re-raise them with A10 preflop. You don’t need to play a lot of hands. Actually, the fewer you play, the better. I typically play no more than 20% of my hands (including blinds) until I’m in the money. Don’t call raises and re-raises unless you’re holding the nuts, because someone WILL go all-in.

Note that I’m never even thinking about what my opponent has at these levels. While this is not a typically good strategy, half the time in these low-limit SNGs, my opponents barely are operating at Level 0 thinking, which makes my Level 1 thinking just good enough to win. And why think harder than I need to? Laziness is the mother of efficiency, after all.

When you get down to four players, if you’ve played solid poker up to this point, you should be 2nd or 3rd in chips, with one really big stack (about 50% of the chips in play) and one really short stack (about 5-8% of the chips in play). You should be able to time things right to pick off this short stack and then make the money. Once you hit four players, the short stack is wearing a target on their chest, so make sure if it’s you, the target is Kevlar. Don’t get cute. That’s my mantra on the bubble. Don’t overplay suited connectors, they’re not even worth calling a raise when you know the big stack is pushing with an Ace-small. It’s not worth being busted. So let it ride, and be ready to flip the switch when the fourth player is busted.

I play these all the time. Right now my schedule is: work, rehearse, get home about 10-10:30, play one or two $5 SNGs, sleep. These little tourneys are perfect for my schedule right now, since I don’t have a ton of time in the evenings to play.

For those unfamiliar with the structure, a sit n’ go tournament is typically a single-table (although all the major sites now offer multi-table SNGs) tournament with an unscheduled start time. Once all seats are filled, the tourney starts. I play mostly at Pokerstars, which has a 9-person SNG format. Party Poker has 10-person tables, but the tourney fee at Stars is only $.50 rather than $1, so even with the extra $5 in the prize pool at Party, the fee is higher, so you have to win a greater frequency to make profit. At these levels, it really does matter.

Payout in a single-table SNG (and that’s all I’m talking about, so I won’t refer to them as single-table anymore) is top 3. #1 = $22.50, #2 = $13.50, #3 = 9. There is no difference between 4th and 9th, except to bust out 4th you’ve wasted a lot more time to get your big bag of nothing.

Here’s how I play them. This strategy doesn’t necessarily work at higher limits, but I don’t know, because I’m still building my online bankroll to be able to play the higher limits. It DOESN’T work on Friday or Saturday nights after 11PM, as that’s when the drunks are out, and they will draw out on you every time, because God protects drunks and fools. I’ve kinda laid this out by blind levels/# of players.

Level 1-3 (7-9 players) – Usually in the first level of blinds you’ll lose at least one player. If you have found a particularly lovely table, you’ll lose 2-3 folks in the first level of blinds. If you do, mark these people on a buddy list and chase them down, because they will either be (a) good players that got a bad beat or, usually (b) people that play the early stages too aggressively and you desperately want to play against them more often.

The key to these first levels is DON’T BE A DUMBASS. Don’t overvalue anything. Be willing to dump any hand. Limp never, unless you’re the button or a blind. Raise with AA,KK,QQ,AK and that’s IT. Dump anything else. Don’t play bad aces, even if they’re soooted. Especially if they’re soooted. Frankly, just apply that line to your game throughout. But anyway. Accumulating chips in these early stages makes you feared, yes, but it also makes you a target, and you don’t want to be a target. You want to be the quiet guy, watching everybody else play, watch their stacks flow up and down, then watch them fade away. Remember that #4-#9 get paid the exact same thing – NOTHING. So stay out of the way unless you have a great hand and a chance to send someone packing. Your goal here is survival.

BadBlood primarily specializes in $100 NL and $200 NL and regularly posts instructive hands from both online and live cash games, largely to illustrate broad, strategic NL concepts.

He also posts frequently about the struggle for balance that so many poker players wrestle with, attempting to juggle job/career/family with the desire to improve and grow as a poker player.

It’s late in a NLHE MTT and you’re getting short stacked with 3K in chips and blinds of 200/400. You’re UTG and you’re dealt 7d7c. You limp for 200, hoping to see a cheap flop. It folds around to the button, who raises to 1,000. It folds back to you, and you call 800 more.

The flop is 2c 4h 6d. You shove your last 2,000 chips into the pot, the button calls with QcQd, and you lose.

Should you have pushed on the flop? Yes, you should have. That decision is absolutely correct, given the circumstances and the texture of the flop. The problem, though, is that you made a mistake pre-flop, and never should have put yourself in this position to begin with.

The pre-flop decision to try to limp with 77 isn’t a horrible one, but you have to fold when it’s raised. You simply can’t call off 800 more chips, nearly a third of your stack, praying to flop a set. If you don’t flop a set, you’ll be forced to check/fold flops with overcards, as you’re out of position with just a pair of 7s, or you’ll be in the spot outlined above, shoving and praying that the button doesn’t have the overpair that he or she is strongly representing.

Don’t let the fact that pushing on the flop was the correct play for you to make confuse matters. That decision was indeed correct, but you never should have been in that position, as you should have folded to the pre-flop raise. When analyzing your NL hands, don’t just focus on the final decision as it’s often earlier decisions that play a much more critical role in determining whether you’re a winner or loser.