Flush
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 356
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Another good tip, exterior to the cards in general is paying attention to who IS looking at their cards in mid to late position frequently, if not every hand. Focus more of your attention on these players when the cards come out, because you'll usually have time to pick up a tell or two on these players before UTG acts. Then revert to watching the developing action. If you notice the same player(s) betraying the strength of their hand, and you see someone in earlyish position about to open-raise, start looking at the weaker players who've already looked at their cards, see how they react to the raise. A lot of times this is the key deciding factor in whether or not you want to flatcall with a marginal strong hand like KJs or KQo, or possibly reraise if you think the opponents to act after you are light.
In general, based on my limited experience in live tournies the following advice seems pretty standard:
1) Stick to Group A for at least the first two blind levels, you can try to see cheap flops with low-mid PPs, but ideally you're setting 'em or forgetting 'em on the flop.
2) Around blind levels 3 and 4 start open raising with Group B, and C hands in late position. I'd also be calling mid-position openers at this stage with Group C hands.
3) By blind levels 5 and 6, most of the big fish are out of the pond, which means other than the 1 or 2 TAGs you're likely to have a bunch of TWP's, identify who the TAGs are in the first 2-3 levels, you want to raise a TON of pots in position if you've got nits behind you. Most people that play live poker, in my experience, have a smaller knowledge base than most regular internet players and as a result play very TWP in later blind levels. If you find yourself in a situation like this, and the blinds are between 5 and 10% of your stack you should probably be stealing at least once or twice an orbit when you get the chance. This will also increase your call equity when you actually have a monster. Lots of amateurs don't understand that your stealing range is around 25-30% of your starting hands, whereas it's likely to be closer to 88+ KJs+, AJs+ KQo, AQo+ when you're open raising from early position. They'll assume you're trying to make a standard steal raise and will call light.
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