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 Identifying the aggression level at your table in Online No limit Holdem Poker Tournaments.
When you are playing in an online poker tournament you will usually see the table go thru different stages of aggression. Sometimes the table will be tight and other times the table will become super aggressive. One of the key factors in using a move successfully is to identify what mode the table is in so you can adapt to take advantage of the current mood. You will see good poker players constantly adjusting to the attitude of the table. Generally in any poker tournament you are going to see the table go from aggressive to tight to aggressive to somewhere in between. This also depend on the players at the table. If you have a bunch of maniacs at the table that are raising 500 preflop on 20 blinds what should you do? You will see this in online poker tournaments more then in live poker tournaments. At first stay out of the battle unless you have a strong hand AA, KK, QQ, JJ and maybe 1010 if you are aggressive. What I like to do is to see if the player will make this move frequently. If he does it once I will give him credit for having a good hand. Probably not one worth that kind of bet but still good. The other thing that tells me is that this player over bets his god hands, which will come in handy later. If he keeps making these kind of raises I will stay out of it unless I have a solid pair. This is a tight approach to this kind of player. I usually wont mess with this unless I have QQ or better. Mainly this is because if you start of with 1500 in chips spending 500 that early in the tournament only makes sense if I can double up on this guy and I need a solid hand to reduce the risk of loosing a good chip stack this early in the tournament. You will find most good online poker tournament players will play fairly tight early on and then transition in to a more aggressive playing style later on in the online poker tournament. If you watch most No limit Holdem Poker Tournaments will become real aggressive later in the tournaments, as blinds go up just stealing the blinds can be a sizeable pot. So later in tournaments you will see more all ins and more people fighting just over blinds and antes in order to survive. However in micro limit Holdem tournaments. Tournaments with 1 to 10 dollar buy ins you will see a lot more all ins in the very beginning of the tournament and with marginal hands. I have seen a guy raise the blinds to 10 times the blinds then get reraised by another guy to 25 times the blinds now the first guy goes allin. The reraiser had KK so that makes since the original raiser that decided to reraise all in has Q3 suited. This occurred the first hand in a 10 dollar sit and go. This is just one that sticks out in my mind but you will see this kind of stuff. If you have a guy like this at a table and you are holding Kings or Aces you are going to double up right there. These are extreme cases but I see them all the time. OK so how do we take advantage of watching the table to our advantage. One thing to do is to watch the players early on and don’t get involved in hands unless you have premium hands. Watch the players and identify their playing styles when you can.
Now if the table is aggressive early on just fold, fold , fold, unless you have a strong starting hand. If you do play it and try to double up.
If the table is tight try and steal some pots with marginal hands if you have position and a tight image yourself. Don’t overdo it or you will loose credibility.
Basically the idea is to do the opposite of the table. If the table becomes aggressive tighten up and only play premium hands. This is because the players are generally playing marginal hands aggressively. If you only play premium hands you will be ahead. This will make you profits over time. If the table is tight you want to be aggressive. Since a tight table will only play premium hands there will be less people in the hands you can push with marginal hands in position and try to make a few steals. If you meet resistance get out because you are likely beat.
So basically the most profitable play is usually to do the opposite of what the other players are doing, If they tighten up be aggressive and play a bit looser. If they are loose and aggressive tighten up.
In online poker tournaments the table will generally go thru these stages. At first tight with a few fish that will get knocked out in the first few round. In a bout the middle of the tournament as blinds will catch up to peoples stacks the smaller stack will become aggressive to stay in the game. This is usually where the caller stacks will battle it out and bigger stack will just stay out of it unless they have a hand or you just have a chip bully on the table. Then as you get close to the pay off people will tighten up again trying to coast in to the money. This is usually what the online poker tournament tables go thru to a more or lesser extent. Poker is like a living breathing entity and its never the same. The above mentioned transition are what generally happens. As always we would love to hear form you in our poker forum if you have made some different observations or you just want to add some more insight in to online poker tournament play.
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