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Sky Poker Cup Chat
Just thought I would start a discussion thread for the Sky Poker Cup, as Im sure there will be lots of opinions about this one..
How important is table selection?
What roi do you think is required for a top 16 finish?
Which speed of heads-up would be best?
How many people will take part?
is 50 games too much?? or too little??
Also if people want to post about how they are getting on that would be great too...
So far I am 10/6 which im guessing would be around borderline if i maintain that rate over 50 games.
Comments
slower formats will allow for better win-rates.
however there may be a trade off: if total HU newbies are deciding to eshew reg speeds and are jumping into turbos and hypers then it might be worth following them. even people who are boss at cash and MTTs will have glaring HUSNG leaks in especially in shortstacked situations so follow the newbies into turbos and speed formats imo. i would avoid hypers, but with the promo only being 50 games it shouldnt matter too much. we are prolly going to have to heater and you can go on some incredible runs over 50 games in hypers. [19 on the spin is my record].
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game selection will increase edge. but there are two types of bad players in these. for the purpose of this promo i'd much rather play a passive fish than a super aggro one .
taking an extreme example: say you have someone who is shove happy and you both have 30bbs. you call an open shove with A8 and come up against JT. god bless the maniac innit. but you have just guarenteed yourself a win rate of 55%. not going to be good enough to win this promo unless you go on a tear-up against this player type.
i'd much rather play a player that i can chip down. say you have him down to 1000 chips in a speed format with blinds 50/100. even playing a crude shove/fold strat from here on in he will have to win 1 flip to reverse chipstacks and a further one to win.
say he is 50/50 to win each flip
he is .5 x .5 to win the next two flips
all other things being equal we will win 75% of the games we get to this stage with this player.
very simplified but it illustrates a point with regard to different edges. our hourly will be lower, but we dont mind for the promo.
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we could further adopt a low variance playing style v bad passives. normally i bang the drum of taking the line that yields the most ev. against good players i want to be as unexploitable as possible. but for this promo i'd be looking to lower variance when facing my prey.
non specialists will be bad in the end game, and will have terrible shove / calling ranges.
however even a pretty boss shove range like nash will only yield low edges.
also, although we know that K4s is a guarenteed +ev shove for 14bb even against a PERFECT calling range [ie if we told our opponent what we have] it is high variance and we can do just as well minraising or even limping the hand v players that play face up without the hassle of variance.
adopt exploitative low variance lines, passive players will allow us to do this.
think about minraising instead of shoving and limping instead of minraising.
remember that you can minraise fold even at 10bbs.
against passive players these plays are bread and butter.
when the ev of lines are similar, against a bad player take the line that offers lower variance. and dont be to proud to limp.
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i'd also ramp up exploitative plays when we are strong:
flop A62 with AK. i'd check
hit an AK8 flop with KK in a 3bet pot?, check
our limping range v an agrro 8bb deep? TT-AA
super-exploitable and highly exploitative plays that turn our hand face up when playing a series of games. treat each game as a one-off game in a vacuum and dont worry at all about balance AT ALL when the right situation arises.
even if we become easy to play against long-term, we are only interested winning as many one-off games in a 50 game sample as we can
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one further aspect to game selection that might be interesting. you are just outside the leaderboard and see a good player who is just clinging onto the learderboard sitting in the lobby. do you sit him?
good luck all.
So far I've played 11 and won 9, but 50 games is sooo long, one bad streak and it's gg promo.
P.S. Great post Teddy as always
Played 30, won 20 for 66%
Still a long way to go yet
.. note to self don't play late Friday night poker ... hic ...
my guess is that 16th place will be over 70%
IF you keep up that winrate you stand a VERY good chance and would be a probable LOCK for a seat. a flying start, go for it!
ivan, i cant play as i am currently playing on another site under a staking agreement and my coach wants me to concentrate on my staked games which is fair enough.
you see that a HU specialist / sick player is touch or go with 62% after 45 games and opensitting in the lobby
would it be bad form to sit him and block his lobby? and adopt a strategy of 'continue to sit him unless i lose one'?
you are in no danger of losing a seat but can potentially put a very good player out of the tournament.
is anyone open sitting for this promo?