The unique structure of the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), with its three tiers of buy-in levels, creates a dynamic not seen in similar tournament series. Even in PokerStars' own WCOOP, the composition of a $1,000 or $1,500 buy-in tournament tends to be very different than the SCOOP High buy-in events with low-four-figure price tags. In the WCOOP, the $1,500 buy-in is the event (or the no-limit hold 'em event, anyway) for the day. All of the satellites feed into it, and anyone who wants to play the day's big event is going to play it.
The SCOOP, however, has less expensive Low and Medium buy-in events that siphon off many of the shot-takers, satellite winners, and recreational players. Moreso than in comparable events, the SCOOP High tournaments have relatively small fields composed mostly of smart, skilled, and experienced opponents.
Consequently, I approach these events the way I would approach a higher stakes cash game rather than a large field multitable tournament like the Sunday Million. Your edge can't come from moves like stealing the blinds, re-raising light, isolating limpers, and set-mining that are the bread and butter of a professional tournament player in a field full of amateurs. Instead, you have to play creatively, think deeply, and keep your opponents guessing by putting them in spots that they haven't seen ten thousand times before.
The $2,100 six-handed no limit hold 'em event, held on the last day of the 2012 SCOOP, provided an opportunity for me to flex my more creative tournament muscles. This article will discuss a few of the most interesting hands, two in which I was the one getting tricky and one in which I got tricked.
Multi-Street Bluff
Blinds were 250/500/60, and I began the hand with 42K. The first player to act, whose stack was about twice the size of mine, opened to 1K. Virtually every pot played at our table began with someone raising the minimum, so there was nothing too shocking about that. I knew this player would try to steal aggressively, and the player in the big blind had only about 9,000 chips, making him a good target for a blind steal. I knew my KspadeQheart was ahead of the opener's raising range, so it was a question of how, not whether, I wanted to play it.
These days, many tournament players seem to re-raise virtually any hand they are going to play, but I don't think that's the best play here. Although I feel good about how KQo stacks up against his opening range, I don't want to get four-bet. My hand is too easily dominated to feel good about playing a big pot with it, even if I flop top pair, but I also know that this player is very capable of four-bet bluffing with weak hands. Perhaps most importantly, he isn't likely to call a three-bet out of position with hands like KT or QJ that I dominate. So, I called, and everyone else folded.
The 4club 9heart Tclub flop was not exactly ideal for me, but with two overcards and a gutshot, my hand was far from hopeless. My opponent bet 1,440, less than half of the 3,110 that was already in the pot. Getting such a good price, it would be a mistake to fold even this relatively weak draw.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment