In the last two years, I have played A LOT of live poker, more than I ever wanted to or ever thought I would play (thanks a lot, DOJ), and have recognized consistent patterns in the way the average player thinks and behaves during pivotal moments. Some of the behavior I have observed is obvious and very reasonable (e.g., shortstacks playing tight on the bubble), but other behavior is so counterproductive that it took a while to realize that the patterns existed. I am going to identify some flawed thinking and give some strategies for exploiting illogical play.
Early Stages of a live MTT:
There is one main mistake that I see even good players make in the early stages of a tournament, and I repeatedly hear it in their hand histories. Their bust out hands are peppered with statements like, “I thought he was too tight to call…he hero-called with top pair…he called my huge turn bet and then my river jam…it’s like he didn’t even care if he was drawing dead.” There are a couple reasons why players are more likely to get snapped off earlier in the tournament. For one thing, there are a lot of bad players still around in the first few levels who are just waiting to eliminate themselves with one pair (don’t try to make these guys fold anything ever). Another reason is that it takes a little while to become emotionally invested in a tournament, so the first few hours are not really the best time to put the average player to a big decision for his/her tournament life if you are running a big bluff. Conversely, it IS a really good time to overjam a huge hand because it is more likely to be hero-called off by someone who is not so invested yet. When you get to the later stages of a tournament, you can run that big bluff on someone who exhibits a strong emotional investment in cashing. But even the tightest, most hopeful-about-cashing player knows that his chances are slim at the beginning of the tournament, so put the pressure on later when he is already counting his impending mincash.
Middle Stages:
When the tournament is approaching dinner break, some shortstacks decide that it would be really terrible to have to sit through dinner with only 12bbs. I tend to widen my calling range against them if they have shown some propensity for recklessness. I have seen so many nonsensical shoves, even in bigger buy-in events. On the other hand, post-dinner break food-coma’d players don’t tend to get as crazy. There is much more folding, less 3-betting and more passively played hands. The two levels following dinner is the optimal time to up your aggression and take control of the table. You will meet much less resistance at this stage of the tournament as people tend to take some time to settle back into the groove of playing after an hour break (or 90 minutes in WSOPs).
End of Day 1:
As structures are getting better every day (thanks Allen Kessler), even smaller buy-in tournaments are becoming multi-day events. A consistent psychological flaw that bad players exhibit is failing to view the tournament as one long event. They set little meaningless goals for themselves that actually act as barriers to their success. The desire to bag chips gets in the way because it stunts their ability to aggressively go after pots in the last level of the day. I have bagged a pitiful stack enough in my early live career to discover that you gain nothing by squeaking into a day 2, except for an annoying alarm clock the next morning and having to drag yourself to a casino to put those chips at risk 10 hours later. It makes no sense. Stop placating your emotions by promising yourself a ticket into day 2, and start going after the blinds of the people who are making this mistake. You will be rewarded with a nice end-of-day uptick frequently, but sometimes just with the moral victory of going out in a blaze of glory on the last hand of the night. There are worse things.
Because people tighten up so much in the last level, this is the time in the tournament to back down to ANY resistance you face from amateurs. When you are the first to show aggression, you have to fold out if they fight back. Amateurs are NOT 3betting light at this stage, they are protecting their stacks by only getting very involved with premium hands. Your AQ would be lucky to be up against only JJ. They will let you steal so many small pots (either by giving up the blinds, folding to your 3bet, or check/folding flops) that playing a big pot at this stage with anything short of a monster hand is a terrible strategy. Also, 3betting light at this stage is huge! They will tank/fold AJ and 88, thinking about how badly they want to make day 2.
Beginning of Day 2:
Perhaps as a backlash to their feelings of wussiness for folding to a day 2, the same players who folded every hand the previous night go buck wild in the first half hour the next day. I majored in psychology, but still have absolutely no clue why people do the things they do the first level of day 2s. We don’t have to figure out why, only how to adjust our play to counter it. I open very few pots before the play settles down. I play premium hands, or I play good-enough-hands against stacks that I am comfortable calling off against. There is just so much preflop action that you have to make sure when you open that you are willing to continue in the hand. The exception to the day 2 craziness is when the money bubble is looming, and then you can expect standard bubble play as people have as strong attachment to their chips and their potential real money value. I won’t delve deeper into bubble play because there have already been so many strategy articles devoted entirely to that subject.
Hopefully TPE members will be able to benefit from some of my observations. I’d love to hear some feedback from our members.
JLUDEOBV
Great read. I have played live consistently for almost 6 years and I completely agree with everything you said. Welcome aboard TPE Nation!
JamieAnn
Thanks Jarod! It’s nice to get confirmation from another “live guy” that these patterns really exist. I can proceed to 3 bet every hand the last level of the night now with confidence 🙂
duggs
great article, would love to see some extensive theory vids on live adjustments
P-aire 146
Great article Jamie. As a mostly LIVE player the last 5 yrs, you are spot on. I was one of those bad plys doing everything you said. I’ve learned 😉
kingten102
Spot on. Recognizing game flow is SUPER important. Identifying these spots allow us to pick up tons of dead $. Conversely, it can save us from getting into unnecessary confrontations at times.
acumen53
Great article Jamie. Very great points throughout. Glad you are part of the TPE team. What a great bonus for the members!
marc alioto
Love this article, couldn’t agree more on the early stages. As far as the late stages go, I had to throw out everything I learned about calling ranges from my online experience. I call so much tighter live as i was finding myself way behind in “STD snap call” online spots.
I met Jamie (The Queen of Tpe) at the Rio playing live sit’ngoes. She check raised 2 rivers and i insta texted Derek and said BRING HER TO TPE! Cant wait to watch your vids.
DaNta5tiC
Great Read! Glad you’re hear I was at your table at a WSOPc for a little bit until I got moved, but those 3 hands were fun… I just run bad in life.
EaglesFn1127
Great article Jamie!!.. in the 1st level of day 2 of parx wpt main i got fucked by 1 of these types of guys that probobly nitted it up with like 30 bigs at the end of day 1.. dude open shipped over 30 bigs on the 1st and 4th hands of the day.. then still 600/1200 he makes it 3500 and i 3bet to 8500 with AK and he calls.. flop A25 rainbow and he checks i bet 11,500 and he calls.. turn 3 he checks and i check behind to let him bluff the river.. 4 on the river with no possible flush and he bets 20k and ends up having 62 lol
JamieAnn
Thanks a lot for the comments/confirmation. It’s really great to hear from everyone, and to hear that some good players recognize the same patterns. The next step is countering this behavior, which is so hard to do. I just bubbled the Parx WPT, and really had a hard time overcoming the same psychological hang-ups that I just wrote about. It takes a lot of focus and resolve to keep the pressure on during the end of day 1 when I really just wanted to bag my chips up and feel good about it. I did it, but I honestly recognized all of the feelings that I talked about, and had to consciously decide to not be a wuss and keep up the aggression. Sadly it worked out badly in the end anyway. 🙁 Next time though!
katie75013
Really great article, Jamie!!
Bytie_nl
Superb read!! Finding out what poker players are doing “too much or too little” and counteracting accordingly by adjusting to that particular play, seems the way to go and you pinpointed some great practical lines of play on the road to improvement.
And indeed, the fact that something did not work out result wise at some particular time is meaningless and does not diminish the value of these insights. Respect!
Next to that, the characteristics of the game flow during tournaments, both life and online, need to be investigated much deeper and i am spending many thoughts on that lately. Great to have you here at TPE!
Brentl2
great read – thx
chaz78
Great Read. I think your psychological analysis was spot on and written superbly, especially in relation to weak players thought processes at each level of the MTT. Thanks again!!
loxxii
To summarize this as I play my first live WSOPC series, there is a standard dynamic that happens after bubbles burst: Fish play loose and then tighten up as the next bubble approaches.
This happens…
1. At the start of the tourney until the Day 2 bubble
2. At the start of Day 2 until the ITM bubble
3. At the start of ITM until the FT bubble
The dinner break seems to be a special case where they play loose before and tight afterwards. This is a Reverse Bubble.
To take advantage of them, just do the opposite of what they are doing.
DLostAlRiver
Great advices for mostly online grinders like me, they will help me at my live mtts, thanks