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sick of being on the bubble or near the bubble

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  1. lentes130 lentes130 is offline

    Frackville, PA
    United States

    Posts: 884
    Joined: Feb 06

    Jan 14th, 2007 (1/14/2007 11:05pm)

    What strategy works best? I am trying everything and nothing seems to work. Playing tight and get put all in when i have big pocket pair against ak or aq and always seem to lose. Should i just fold here to make it into the money? But that goes against the play to win idea. Should i be calling reraises when i have like aj against another stack of similiar size after i have raised it?
  2. annodv annodv is offline

    Plymouth
    United Kingdom

    Posts: 2,192
    Joined: Mar 05

    Jan 14th, 2007 (1/14/2007 11:13pm) in reply to lentes130

    be the big stack!!
     
  3. Admiral Admiral is offline

    Boulder, CO
    United States

    Posts: 8,253
    Joined: Feb 06

    Jan 14th, 2007 (1/14/2007 11:19pm) in reply to lentes130

    experiement in smaller buy in tournaments only working on playing a controlled aggressive where your only goal is accumulating chips.
  4. lind0 lind0 is offline

    Vancouver
    Canada

    Posts: 672
    Joined: Jan 06

    Jan 15th, 2007 (1/15/2007 12:11am) in reply to Admiral

    The bubble is all about the fear of elimination. Most players just want to make it to the money. They've played for a couple of hours or more, they're scared to be so close and not get anything for it, and it's easier and less stressful to just keep folding than it is to get involved in a pot. Most players react to the stress of the bubble by playing extremely tight, folding all but the best hands to raises, only raising with the strongest hands, and only continuing after the flop with close to the nuts.

    Since most of the time nobody ever has anything in holdem, it's a great time to exploit this force by raising your weak opponents regularly. You don't need to have good cards during this phase of the tournament to make money. You just have to have some balls and some judgement. First you need to identify who to attack. You want to go after the tightest players. You need to figure out who just wants to cash, and who will avoid being all in at all cost. These are the people you want to go after. Remember, they'll fold almost anything to you at this point. Sometimes you'll get unlucky and they'll have a hand and you'll blow your stack in spectacular fashion. But other times you won't even believe how many pots you win and how big your stack gets.

    I'm not saying you should go totally insane, but you should be looking for spots to exploit the force of the bubble. Ideally you'd like to have a larger stack than the person you're raising, that way they face the threat of elimination. You want to pick on the medium stacks, the one's who are just trying to preserve their chips. You could attack a big stack, but only if he's trying to preserve his chips. You could also attack the small stacks, but keep in mind they might be desperate and be willing to call with weaker holdings. Medium stack, tight player, looking to preserve chips and guarantee cashing, that's the type of player you're looking for. Once you find him, hammer on him until the bubble bursts.

    Anyway, I could go on and on about it, but I hope this helps get you thinking along the right lines. Find the inner beast and unleash it on your defenseless opponents. In the words of Amir Vahedi, "in order to survive, you must not be afraid to die." Good luck.
  5. OneOutItHits OneOutItHits is offline

    Washington, DC
    United States

    Posts: 157
    Joined: May 06

    Jan 15th, 2007 (1/15/2007 12:49am) in reply to lind0

    ^ good post, this is gonna help me out to.

    also, are there any books that discuss good bubble play?
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