Why play full ring?

*Last edited by Renton on Wed, 02 Jan 2008, 9:27pm; edited 1 time in total*

Last year, before the gambling enforcement bill, I played on Party Poker like most of us then. All of the games were very soft and ppl who weren't even very good at poker were pulling insane winrates out. Shorthanded NLHE became really popular and Full Ring NLHE began to dry up.

The adage became "6 max is where its at." This was because of the various benefits of playing six max over full ring at the time:

- higher winrates (example, off the top of my head i think ilikeaces86 was winning 6ptbb/100 lifetime at midstakes six max and 3.5ptbb/100 lifetime at full ring, and was a stellar player at both)

- more hands per hour, people could endlessly multitable six max back in these days and play over 1000 hands per hour. Six max on party was just over 100 hands/hour and full ring was about 60.

- better game selection, there were probably 3 times as many 2/4 and 3/6 shorthanded games running as full ring on party. There were also a lot more fish at six max, because the game played bigger and faster than full ring, making more attuned to a degenerate gambler type.

At the time really the only con to playing six max over full ring was that the variance was a little worse.

Well, times changed and darkness descended. The bill got passed, Party Poker dropped all americans, and all of a sudden it became much much harder for fish to get money onto the gaming sites. The games got much worse as a result, but some other interesting results emerged.

To understand these interesting results, lets reconsider where the money comes from in Full Ring as opposed to Six Max:

-Full ring is about playing an overall optimal game and beating the field. You isolate fish when you can, and you very often can, but in general you look to make your money from weaktight players, winning a lot of small pots, and relying on the implied odds against these nits to win big pots.

-Six max is more about isolating bad players and taking their money. The structure of the game is optimal for this, as if you sit at a shorthanded table with a huge fish to your right, it becomes very easy to isolate position on him when he limps in, since you are always so close to the button.

So, at a glance, the big reason to play six max was to better isolate fish and play as many pots against them as possible. The winning strategy in full ring is to beat the overall weak tight field and gradual accumulate chips.

So back to the post-bill ramifications. Gradually after the bill was passed, the fish count in all the ponds (six max AND full ring) decreased significantly. The good (relatively) players started to break even and lose to the better players, and as a result they had to study the game and get better. This chain reaction caused EVERYONE but the few fish in the water to get better. Here's the part that most people don't know.

Only the six max regulars got a lot better.

There really has never been much decisive material posted about how to play full ring, whereas SSNL and MSNL on two plus two are constantly churning out content that everyone is reading and taking to heart. CTS makes a blog post about 4bet bluff shoving, all of a sudden the regs are autoshoving Axs to any 3bet for a few weeks. "Range merging" gets mention in a post on MSNL, all of a sudden regs are going for three streets of value with 88 on QJxxx. However, until fairly recently, there hasn't even been a full ring forum anywhere.

So as a summary, the bill:

-lowered the amount of fish
-caused the six max regs to get a lot better, the full ring regs got a little better, but in general were left behind due to lack of published content.

Now lets remember that the fish to reg ratio is was much much higher in six max pre-bill than full ring. This was one of the main reasons of playing it.

So why play full ring now?

Lets begin by debunking all the previous reasons why people played six max pre bill.

- higher winrates - NO ONE is heavily multitabling and beating these games for very high winrates anymore. A datamine from a few months ago of 1/2 six max on stars showed that of all the people that played over 50k hands that month, ONLY ONE was over 3ptbb/100.

- more hands per hour - this goes back to the multitabling issue. The games have become so tough, that one must play a very very exploitive style to win at a good clip. This unfortunately makes it impossible to play more than 4 to 6 tables for all but the elite.

- better game selection - after the bill, the number of fish decreased tremendously, while the number of tough regs, and the toughness of those regs, increased dramatically.

Full ring on the other hand:

- can be beat for a similar rate as six max. There are tons of full ringers who are doing 4+ptbb.

- can be 12 tabled without giving up a whole lot, since the game plays pretty slow and you can play very tight and still be a big winner. (fwiw 12 tabling full ring is roughly equivalent to 8 or 9 tabling six max.

- while there aren't as many fish as six max even still, full ring has almost NO GOOD REGS WHATSOEVER. The winning regs that you will face in full ring, generally speaking, are just really weak and tight, and since they play tightly, they manage to win.

This is the biggest reason to play full ring over six max in my opinion. There are simply very few good exploitive tag regulars. Everyone is just tight, and they win by folding more than everyone else. Obviously this sort of play is very exploitable.

TLDR

Nice post. I'm moving back to full-ring.

I would if I could. But i seem to fail miserably at FR. I don't know why.

Very nice post Renton.

You mentioned alot of the reason I moved from 6m to full ring. One of the main reason I moved was because the regs are better at 6m than full ring. I do think, however, that there's alot of content a full ring player can get out of reading shorthanded forums here and at 2p2, full ring players fail to realize this IMO. The reason I say this is because having played 6m for over a year I think that I'm a much better full ring player because of it.

I found this post VERY interesting. Thanks for writing it.

Nice post. I've been playing a lot more full ring and beating it at about 5ptbb as opposed to 3ptbb at 6-max (100NL). I think the new saying should be "live is where it's at."

some thoughts.
Applies even to low stakes. I've played the last few hands 6-max only. The play seems overall stronger than at fullring. I've also found that the bad players bust faster in 6-max, so more luck about who gets their stack.

still some benefits to 6-max though:
*it seems easier to find a big fish-stack
*some sites have next to zero fullring action
*hands/hr affects Bonus clearing and Rakeback loads

I think 6-max has made me more aggressive and positionally aware in full-ring. Couple this with tighter play pre-flop and I look forward to seeing what happens.

I have always preferred FR and PL preferably.

- lowew variance
- higher winrate
- easier to multitask

T.

Pot limit has been good to me lately for sure.

I play fr because i started at fr minbet, understand it better than other forms of poker, suck at sixmax, don't wanna play hu, and seem to finally be figuring out frnl quite well.

Rentpwn, if you haven't already, don't post this on 2p2. I would like to make some easy money for a while.

Renton, any chance on getting a few tips for the 6m crowd that may be thinking that you make some interesting points. Can or does anyone have any short answers for a nitty 6m player on what changes he should make when first getting back on a FR table. I for one cannot believe the amount of 15/5 players I am seeing, even on Prima. The aggression is sitting very low on most streets though.

playing 13/10 aint hard. ive always always said 100nl FR is easily beatable

im soooooo 12 tabling 1/2 fr on stars at the weekend for 12hours

Ship it!

for renton i think.

What? Why?

Way bad move to not play on US-restricted sites when able.

nice post, cant disagree.

btw, if 16/10 is considered "nitty" at fr, what do we call the crowd of 9/4 regs?

Saw a lot of you last night...DW Duck remembered the handshake Very Happy

DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE RENTON

this post has exciting implications...

i had switched back awhile ago, but didnt realize why. now i think i had it explained to me. thx.

btw, i had to go back to limit for awhile to stop the spewtard in me from 6max...lol.

you want fish that go busto slower than prostate piss, play some limit...if you can handle the boredom of the ubergrind.

rent, great insight. i am glad i have a mind like yours to explain it all to a mind like mine. makes things easier...lol.

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Why play full ring?