No wasting time on introductions! We’re gonna dive straight into things this week. If you haven’t read the Basic Tournament Theory article out a couple weeks ago, I strongly suggest you do that before continuing as this article will build directly off that without much recap at all. Onwards and upwards!

So let’s give some more practical advice to play poker tournaments.

As discussed previously, the scaling payout structure and chips not having a direct cash value strongly impacts how we should play tournaments/sngs (excepting husngs) as opposed to cash games.

Namely, early game, when stacks are deep, we should be playing extremely tight. This holds true whether we’re playing 6 man sngs or a multiple thousand person 10 handed tournament.

This is mainly for the reason that we can’t win a tournament in the first hand, or even first 10, 20, or 50 hands. In the case of larger online MTTs’, it can take hundreds of hands to make it Heads Up for the victory.

But just one bad decision can end your tournament, even if you’ve been playing incredible poker for hours. The vast majority of the time, there will be someone with a bigger stack who can bust you, or with a relatively similar stack which can severely cripple you.

While later in the game we need to loosen up to account for chipping up for a deep run, the rising blinds, and changing table dynamics (6 handed vs 9 handed play, for example), early in tournaments this is not much of a factor at all, and we shouldn’t risk our tournament life by exposing ourselves to possibility of coolers (in addition to slowly losing chips by playing lots of weaker hands) or in relatively close spots where we’re flipping or slightly ahead of our opponents.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in a cash game we should be taking 52/48 edges allin preflop (vs our opponent’s range) just about all the time.

Early in a tournament, however, we should pass in these spots to preserve our equity. There is significant (although relatively simple) math behind this, which I’ll get into either later this article or in a 3rd (and probably final) tournament theory article if it proves necessary.

I did promise some more practical advice, so I’ll do something I rarely do and provide some example ranges which I believe are quite reasonable.

> UTG – UTG+2: JJ+ AKo AQs+
> UTG+3 – CO: TT+ AQo+ AJs+
> BTN: 77+ ATo+ A9s+ KQo KJs+
> SB: 55+ AX+ KTo+ K8s+

This is approximately from effective stacks ~100bb all the way down to ~25bb, which covers early game play.

As you can see, these ranges are quite tight (and they only apply to unopened pots).

The one thing which could be added are joining in limpedes with suited connector type hands and smaller pocket pairs. Of course, as you become more solid in your postflop decision making you can definitely widen these ranges a little bit, but it really is true that tight is right in these games early and we should just be avoiding marginal spots.

When we do have one of these hands, we want to play it hard.
Stack off with your high pocket pairs preflop, and at lowstakes (probably any NPP free poker online game, and games on Stars through $3s at least) always stack off with AK (just trust me), and it’s also probably reasonable to stack of with AQ all the time as well.

When we hit tp+ postflop on all but the wettest boards, we want to be betting and raising and generally playing for stacks except against other solid players and nits. Anyway, even if you don’t follow these ranges hand-for-hand (and face it, you should be thinking for yourselves and modifying things to fit your games!), they should give you a general sense for just how tight we should be in early game spots.

Click image to check out PartyPokers bonus code offers

Play few hands, but play them fast and hard, and we should be in a generally decent position come mid and endgame, which is what’s important in MTT and SNG play.

So let’s take a short at play from ~12-~20bbs deep, which is an approximation of stacks during the standard middle game of SNGs, and is also relatively common to see in quicker-paced large field tournaments (the slower ones frequently stay deeper wire-to-wire).

Come middle game, our priorities start to shift a little bit.
We still care about survival, because all the money in tournaments comes at the end. But we need to stay on top of the rising blinds or we risk losing the value of our stack by playing too tight.

The goal here isn’t just to survive til endgame, it’s to reach endgame with a playable stack and a chance at victory, although we still do need to attempt to minimize risk. The most sensible way to do this is by widening up in unopened pots from late position.

While we should still be relatively tight from EP, our btn (button) and sb ranges should widen substantially.
A reasonable btn range is something like:

BTN: 22+ A7o+ A5s+ K9o+ K8s+ QJo QTs+

Which is significantly wider than our btn range deep. Our sb range should be substantially widened as well, but I’ll let you guys figure out exactly how to craft your ranges.

Another key difference is our opening size.
While during early game phases opening to 3x+1bb per limper is generally good sizing, in middle game we should probably be opening closer to 2.5x+1bb per limper.

The sizing effectively accomplishes the same thing (at these depths; raising to 2.5x at 100bb deep will get less folds). There’s less incentive to join limpedes here unless there are many limpers in front of you, and you generally shouldn’t be getting involved in opened pots without a relatively strong hand.

When you do, you should not be calling much; be more inclined to jam over to try and utilize the fold equity you have.

This is where I’ll cut this article. I know it’s not nearly as lengthy as some of the previous, but I really want you guys to internalize and really grasp these concepts before getting into the endgame portion, because it’s pretty dense stuff.

As always, leave a message on npp, a comment on the article or on facebook, or email me at duncelanas@hotmail.com with any questions, comments, concerns etc. I don’t bite, you’ll stay anonymous, and I’ll try to help with anything you come to me with (even if it’s a completely different poker problem unrelated to one of my articles).

I haven’t had many messages, but I think the few I have had have definitely helped people understand the content better as well as helping me learn to relay my thoughts better, so definitely feel free to contact me with anything. Until next time, I hope you play solid and run well!

- Gloves

Other articles in the free online poker From The Ground Up series by pro online poker player Gloves.

Part 1 - Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker

Part 2 – Hand Ranges, Playable Pockets, Table Position and Limping

Part 3 - Postflop Play scenarios. Optimal play against different player styles

Part 4 – Poker math – Outs and Odds

Part 5 - Basic poker tournament theory

In this free online poker article Gloves looks at postflop play against the 4 main player types of loose-tight + passive-aggressive in free poker and nano stakes online poker games. Justin, over to you:

For quite some time, I didn’t know exactly what to write about in my third article. Many ideas floated through my head – cover variance perhaps, or start covering tournament strategy and how it’s fundamentally different from cash strategy.

However, while I’ll definitely cover those topics in the future, the title of this series again sprang to mind. “From the Ground Up”. And I realized that in part one some general poker mindset concepts were covered and in part two some general preflop concepts and strategy was covered (and I also introduced hand ranges, which will come into major play in this article – go back and read the hand range section in part 2 if you need a refresher).

So, logically, it makes sense to continue just as if we were progressing in a poker hand. So we get to the flop with a solid hand (remember, no playing trash!)…but, now what?

And postflop play, in my opinion, is really what makes poker such a complex, beautiful game.

Hopefully by the end of this article you readers will both see this as well as know how to play a solid postflop style.

Postflop play is the weakest aspect of most poker players’ games (including mine, no doubt!).

In poker, there are 4 different styles of player (tight/loose) + (passive/aggressive).

In the nanostakes (NPP games and real money games through 5nl (.02/.05 blinds)), each of these player types make a few key mistakes. Hopefully, we’ll look at each player type in depth and discuss how to exploit them.

First, you have the loose-aggressive (LAG) “maniac”

> These are the guys who are betting and/or raising way too often.
> They’ll often cbet (bet flop after raising preflop) almost 100% and will also bet turn and river far too often (keep in mind we hit ~33% of flops long-term).

The trick to playing these guys is to realize that their range in any given spot is extremely wide. What this means is that if you flop second or third pair, calling their bets and raises is often hugely profitable because they’re betting repeatedly with absolutely nothing so often.

They’re somewhat difficult to play against because it takes a lot of guts – calling 3 streets (each a relatively large bet, usually) with third pair weak kicker is not particularly easy, but you have to realize that against some of these guys third pair is basically the same as top pair and so you just shouldn’t fold.

That doesn’t mean to always call down any pair against these players (because there are varying degrees of maniacs; some players will really be betting and raising 100% of the time while others are betting and raising too often but not extremely so).

Another thing to note is that your draws (and as such, suited and connected hands preflop) go way up in value because if you hit your draw you’ll often get paid off bigtime (this is a concept known as implied odds, but I won’t elaborate on this until a later article).

So ultimately against these players pair hands go up in value and draws go up in value. Pay attention at the tables to get a good feel for a player’s range (is he a true spewing maniac, or is he just hyper-aggressive) and try to make these profitable “thin” (not super easy) calldowns against these players.

In general, you should also be waiting for the river to raise these players with your strong hands because they’re going to be betting all 3 streets anyway; you lose lots of value if you raise flop or turn and get them to fold.

A second major player type is the loose-passive (LP) “calling station”

> These guys are often limping or calling hands preflop and not raising very often.
> Postflop they often check-call down while only betting or raising their very strong hands.

These players are very very easy to play against, and you run into tons and tons of them in nanostakes games. Basically, you just want to widen your valuebetting range against these players and never bluff.

So you can often bet down (bet all 3 streets) with hands like weak top pair and even second pair against many of them and just check/fold your bluff hands. When you get raised, you should realize that your second pair and even top pair hands become pretty worthless and you should generally be folding (although again, it depends on the specific opponent).

Draws are also very easy to play against these guys. When we have a draw, we can just check down until we hit and then we can just start betting for value.

Out of position, don’t be afraid to lead on flop and turn if you hit a pair – in nanostakes games you won’t be exploited by these loose-passive players for doing this (against some loose-aggressive and tight-aggressive players you might be) and since they’re unlikely to bet (they’re passive) you will gain value in doing this.

A third major player type is the tight-aggressive (TAG) “ABC Player”.

> In microstakes games, these are generally the most solid opponents you’ll face, but thankfully they’re also pretty rare.

The articles in this series even advocate playing a solid, thinking TAG style.

As you move up in stakes, the real sharks tend to be LAGs, but at micros LAG players make tons of mistakes (generally being overaggressive in bad spots), and it’s also tougher to pull off bluffs (remember, LAG players bluff a lot in order to put constant pressure on their opponents).

> Basically, TAG is how we should be playing at these stakes and we should generally avoid getting into large pots with other TAGs.

> A standard TAG player will be opening reasonable ranges preflop, typically for raises, and they’ll generally be the postflop aggressor as well.

They’ll be cbetting pretty wide but shutting down on later streets a fair amount and they’re very unlikely to spew off their stacks by check-raising or betting down with air.

That said, they also won’t be calling down with their weak pair hands (think second pair and often top pair hands) or draws (without proper odds); they’ll just be generally getting out of the way OOP (Out of position) when they have nothing and playing a solid style IP (In Position) that’s hard to exploit centered around playing solid hand ranges and betting often for value and to get folds out of other tags and tight-passive players.

They don’t get out of line too much. The way to profit out of these guys (when IP) is to cbet flop wide (you’ll get a lot of folds) and to generally slow down if you’re raised.

When you’re OOP, the only real way to exploit these players is to be check/raising flop and turn wide, but you don’t really want to be check/raising with air against thinking players especially at nanos, it’s just super high variance, unnecessary, and will lead to a lot of ugly spots (like when you get flatted after c/ring).

Again, TAG is the style of play we should be emulating as it’s just all-around solid and hard to exploit – don’t get out of line too much (unless you have a read or some other reason to), pick your spots, and get lots of value from other players’ mistakes.

The final major player type is the tight-passive (TP) “rock”

> These players are also pretty common at nanostakes games.
> They often limp in as opposed to raising, and while they call as opposed to 3betting (reraising preflop) they don’t play very many hands as a standard.

They’ll rarely raise you postflop without a true nut hand (think sets or better, usually) and won’t call down without hitting a strong piece of the board (typically top pair).

Thankfully, their tendencies also make them simple to play against.

Their ranges are typically limited to pocket pairs and high card hands (KQ, AJ+ for example), so a ton of middling flops (T84r for example) can be cbet basically 100% as we’ll get folds a ton of the time. We should basically be cbetting flops very wide and shutting down on turn/river if called on flop without a good reason for continuing.

If we have a strong top pair or better, we should continue betting down after the flop. With our draws, we can again check it down until we improve and then bet (although we will rarely get value in those spots).
They’re really straightforward – they only raise with the nuts and are folding too often, so we should raise a lot and bet a lot of flops to profit against them.

Now that we have a solid grasp on the 4 main player types and how to exploit them (but remember, everything is in degrees!

Some TAGs are almost LAG, some TPs are almost LPs, etc…so you have to adjust your play to your individual opponents, these player types are just a tool to help you do that!), I’m going to touch a little bit on a more advanced postflop concept, and it might just blow your minds.

The way we play our hand CHANGES the hand our opponent has.

Think about this for a minute. I haven’t asked you to do an exercise this week, so now would be a good time…grab that notepad and write down why you feel this statement is true or false. Much less work than the last article for sure, where I asked you all to approximate a whole bunch of hand ranges and to provide reasoning for the similarities and differences!

The key to understanding why this concept is true is understanding that poker is not a game of hands, poker is a game of RANGES.

This is another amazing reason why ranges are one of if not THE most important poker concepts to understand.

To illustrate, let’s give an example. Let’s say we’re on the button and it folds around to us.

> We decide we’re going to open (22+, A7o+, A2s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo, QJs, JTs). That’s 23.4% of hands.
> Now let’s say we’re on the button and there was a raise and a 3bet before us.
> We decide we’re only gonna raise (QQ+, AKs) in this spot.
> We’re still on the button preflop, but now we’re only playing 1.7% of hands!

This applies to postflop play as well – if our villain has x range, when we check/raise if he opts to continue his range is DIFFERENT than if we had just called.

Our actions directly affect the range of hands it’s possible for our opponents to have in any given spot. I’m going to let you guys mull over why this is important for a while.

In the future, I’ll definitely delve into it, but for now just think on it and why it might be important to understand, as the true meaning behind this is dense enough to merit its own article.

A few words of conclusion:
I’m aware that thus far things have been more theoretical than practical, and that’s for a number of reasons.

First off, poker is a very fluid, dynamic game, and I find giving specific advice for a general situation is a flawed way of doing things.

In addition, however, this series is about building your game from the ground up. Hopefully we’re establishing a sound theoretical base for a solid poker game with which you guys learn to think about poker (general to specific, as opposed to the other way around).

At that point, you can analyze your game and specific situations yourselves (although poker buddies to talk specific spots with are a great help always, and you can contact me with any comments/suggestions as well as questions (pertaining to the article or just general) by commenting on the articles, on the NPP facebook page, on my blog, or by email at duncelanas@hotmail.com) in addition to getting more into advanced poker concepts (which are really just extensions of these concepts I’m teaching you now, although some are counter-intuitive).

In the coming weeks, however, things will be a little more concrete (at least for some articles), as I have one planned on implied odds and draws already as well as some future thoughts for delving into some basic to intermediate poker math.

Hope you’ve all enjoyed, and the next article should be up in about a week!

-Gloves

Check out Gloves lesson 1 in this series here – Patience on steroids “Common Sense Poker”

Check out Gloves lesson 2 in this series here – Hand Ranges, Playable Pockets, Table Position and Limping

Check out Justins personal blog here (more advanced stuff)

Check out all the pro written NoPayPOKER.com lessons on the free online poker training page

In this free online poker lesson we are looking at one of the areas of poker that most players want to learn about most. Namely pocket cards, what ones to play and from which position on the table.

Fact – To win good money in lower stakes poker you don’t need to be a professional. Free, micro and lower stakes tables have a constant inflow of new players who are very bad at playing poker and lose their cash fast. They lose all their cash to players who know this fact and are there waiting to pounce, these players aren’t pros but they do have good poker skills.

Occasionally one of the bad players wins an all in when playing a terrible hand like 4,7 unsuited but this really is exceptional, to them it proves their theory that poker is luck, you know of course that it’s simply the bad thin end of probability.

Overall, statistics prove that when you play only certain pocket cards from certain table positions you win over the long term.

Pocket cards – Quick definition
The 2 cards you start the game with that only you see.

The Evidence
UCLA (the University of Chicago) mainframe computers played over 2 trillion hands of 10 handed Texas Hold Em poker games assessing all 2,652 possible combinations of two pocket cards (52 x 51 = 2,652). The results statistically defined pocket cards with both Positive Expected Value (+EV) that win in the long haul and Negative Expected Value (-EV) that lose.

That’s great you say, just play +EV cards then, ah, sorry, there is a small complication which relates to your Table Position.

Table Position is critical
Early, Middle, Late are the 3 areas on a poker table. You seat position is fundamentally important to card EV as you will see.

1) Early Positions are Small Blind, Big Blind and Under the Gun (UTG), UTG is the player on the left of the Big Blind.

2) Middle. Count left from the UTG player; Middle 1, Middle 2, Middle 3, and Middle 4.

3) Last, are the Late Table positions: Late 1, Late 2, and the Dealer Button.

For fast reference it is a good idea to code positions by 2 character codes: SB, BB, UG, M1, M2, M3, M4, L1, L2, and DB.

The thing to know is that pockets become playable or not depending on where you are sat.

Early Position. The pockets with Positive EV are:

1. AA
2. KK
3. QQ
4. AK suited
5. AQ suited
6. AK unsuited
7. Low pockets: 22 through to 99

All other pockets in Early are -EV, fold.

Middle: M1-4

Pockets with +EV are:

The same as early, plus:

1. AJ suited
2. AT suited
3. JJ
4. TT
5. AQ unsuited
6. AJ unsuited
7. AT unsuited
8. Any suited picture cards, 10,J,Q,K.

All other combinations are negative, fold them.

Late Position

Pockets with +EV are:

The same as early and middle, plus:

1. A5 suited
2. A4 suited
3. A3 suited
4. A2 suited
5. A9 suited
6. Any unsuited picture cards.

Every other possible pocket in Late position has a Negative EV.

Other considerations
With the exception of AA and KK, only play them if the cost to get to the flop is not over 3x the Big Blind bet. The Low Pockets, 22-99 have some further play rules in this regard but that is another whole article, look for that later.

To remember the playable pockets make a reference card to keep by your PC. Split it into 3 sections. Early Position, middle and late position, with the associated playable pockets.

So create your reference card now and start practicing hard on some free online poker games at NoPayPOKER.com!

This article is a cut down version of the DM Vadnais Building a Bankroll lesson 2, check that one out for expanded details on the points in this article.

We are very exited to announce that free online pokerNoPay resident pro D M Vadnais who is the master of the pen as well as the cards is putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) again to produce a new and exclusive poker lesson series for NoPayPOKER members.

Given the addition of the many relationships established between us here at free online poker NoPayPOKER and ‘real money’ online poker sites such as PartyPoker, Feltstars and Titan we have asked our Resident Professional, D. Michael Vadnais, to develop a series of Articles on ‘How To’ successfully play in the ‘Real Money’ games.

Many players start out on NoPay in order to learn how to play poker in safety, at no risk of loss. After gaining confidence and skill the next step is to play real cash poker on one of the many online poker money sites. There are however some differences between online free poker and the cash game and this series is intended to guide free players though the change so that they can make the transition to cash poker as smoothly and profitably as possible. 

The new series of Articles will be posted exclusively at NoPayPoker. There will be a total of seven (7) Articles, and a new Article will be available to NoPay members each month. All of the Articles will be ‘tutorials’; designed to make you a ‘Real Money’ winner at online poker money sites.

The first Article will be posted in April of 2011, and the last Article will be posted in October of 2011. So, look for the individual Articles at the beginning of April, May, June, July, August, September, and October. And, if you’ve put NoPayPoker winnings into one or more of the Internet Gaming Sites, read — learn — and win big !!!!

The following list, and a brief content summary, identifies each of the 7 Articles:

Article 1: HOPE FOR THE VERY BEST; EXPECT THE WORST

• The ‘rule of 80′; it’s a world of age-grouped players
• Constant change; new players come and go
• Quality of play; stakes and levels often equate
• Farm animals; the pasture dwellers are everywhere

• Patience; 50% of your poker talent resides here
• Collusion; your eyes won’t lie, and players do cheat
• RNG’s; not all random number generators are equal
• Bots; they exist, they win, and they can be identified 

• Your bankroll; the ‘rule of 5′, never more than 5 percent
• Your emotions; no highs, no lows, nothing but a constant
• Your cash; know your risk tolerance, it’s not fake money
• Your mind set; positive for playing, negative for gardening

• Ace/paint; formidable, playable, and usually profitable
• Paint/paint; not early, sometimes middle, and often late
• Pocket pairs; set-mining, JJ problems, and the big three
• Suited ace; seeking the nut flush or the competitive straight

• Know the competition; stay focused, and compile notes
• Between 2 & 17 outs; identify your outs, identify the board’s outs
• Pot odds/implied odds; fast-tracking arithmetic calculations
• Defense wins money; the current ‘nuts’ is worth defending

• Suited connectors; a family pot generates your interest
• Soft 3x and hard 3x; don’t permit a read on your style
• Late position aggression; limpers can fill your wallet
• Slow-playing big hands; getting fed by the farm animals

• Finish the puzzle; the pieces are present, assemble them
• Always an ‘A’ game; earn the money, gifts are fairly rare
• Make the $ yours; maintain a bankroll, pocket the profits
• The B & M journey; if you’re ready, brick & mortar is nearby

Free poker players looking to learn how to play poker like a pro should also read D M Vadnais’s other superb lesson series, they in depth series are intended to take a player from abject beginner to advanced skill level and can be read now on the NoPayPOKER blog.  See all the NoPayPOKER lessons at this table of lesson contents Learn How to Play Poker page