No playable hands and blinds go up?

    • Rauchg
      Rauchg
      Bronze
      Joined: 18.04.2009 Posts: 23
      • 13.05.2009, 11:13
      • This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Rauchg: 13.05.2009 11:13.
      Hi all,

      Sometimes I find myself in an awkward situation. I wait for playable hands in early stages, according to charts with some flexibility, but often find myself folding to small raises and whatnot, and giving up blinds easily, because the cards don't come.

      To make matters worse, if you look at the charts of the 'middle phase', there're even less hands to play. So I quickly find myself at 13 bbs...

      What should I do to avert this?
  • 4 replies
    • cannell555
      cannell555
      Bronze
      Joined: 06.03.2008 Posts: 2,410
      Hi Rauchg,

      You need to use this to your advantage. Only playing the best hands in the early stages means we wont bust much early on. Which leads us towards the late stages.

      Once you are short stacked you will be playing according to ICM (or atleast you should be). This is where our main edge in the game is. Therefore its good when we get down to a pushable sized stack.

      There is no way around this. In fact we want to get to this stage, because its where a good player will make his stack.

      Take a look at the ICM trainer in the downloads section (if you haven't already).

      Best regards,
      Stiev
    • LuborC
      LuborC
      Bronze
      Joined: 20.04.2008 Posts: 1,243
      Also part of the articles are steal and resteal charts. Although I don't like those all that much to be honest, you can definitely use those as a beginner. If you stick to these charts you will steal blinds and especially resteal very aggressively in the middle stage which should gain you quite a few chips.
    • NickParkes
      NickParkes
      Bronze
      Joined: 07.07.2008 Posts: 1,526
      It does happen from time to time that you run card dead and don't play a hand until push or fold mode... this isn't a problem if you have a good ICM game as the others have pointed out... the biggest thing is to resist the urge to play, first 2 stages are about survival, and remember accroding the ICM a chip lost is more valuable than a chip gained... keep playing profitable poker and the cards will come...
    • viewer88
      viewer88
      Bronze
      Joined: 19.04.2008 Posts: 5,545
      playing tight in the early stages IS the biggest part of your edge on the lowest limits imo. In the <5$ sng's you will often reach 3-4 handed play when the push/fold game begins. Let the noobs kill eachother ^^