Hi Guys,

I'm from Germany so my english isnt the best but I hope you understand anyway

My question is: Is there a strategy for turbo tournaments you use? I've been to such a tournament last week. I got $700 in Chips and the blinds were 20/40 and were raised every 8 minutes (50/100, 80/160, 100/200...). So every players was extremly short stacked in just a few minutes. So, my second hand I picked up was AA and raiserd about three times the big blind because I wanted to double up in order to survive. Four players called. The Flop came K62 and I was afraid of another King, so I wanted to win the pot right now and bet $300. One player on my right called. The turn card came and it was a King. He went all-in, I folded AA and he showed me K7. So after that I was practically out of the tournament with only $200 left. I went all-in with JTs and won with Jack high (!!!!), after that I went all-in again with JTs and lost.

So the point is: The AA and the JTs was the only hand I got which was playable. I didnt hit the flop for ONE TIME. I didnt even got one single pair after the flop so it was nearly impossible to win a hand (problem was, that the chipleader was able to triple up with the first hand and was calling everything, so a bluff wouldnt go well).

What can I do in such tournaments? What do you do?

I don't know if the question is too general or not, but the only thing you could have done is raise more. You would probably still get action, but maybe not from K7. If you rate to have the best hand in any situation preflop, get your money in as quickly as possible. You have to play alot of coinflips in turbos, and there is not quite as much skill involved.

OP, don't post results.

I played a bunch of very similarly structured tournaments in December and January (they differ from online turbos in that there is never any point where the stacks are deep). I had been warned by people here (that was what I came here originally to ask about in fact) that the structure stinks; but I plunged in anyway. At first I did well, but in retrospect a lot of that was luck as they became very frustrating after I played a few more of them. If you don't have the cards go your way in the first couple levels, things get desperate fast (as you've observed). The only thing you can really do is to follow the advice in HoH v2 for the Yellow Zone (where you start) and of course the Orange and Red Zones (where you end up in fairly short order unless you double up early). These are defined by your M, which is your chip stack divided by the starting pot (the blinds and antes) multiplied by the ratio of the number of players at the table divided by ten. Yellow is 10-20; Orange is 5-10; Red is <5.

To quote Harrington on the Yellow Zone: you "push high card hands harder" but don't limp or play suited connectors or small pairs. You also "get in and try to win the pot, but get out if you encounter resistance".

In the Orange Zone, you play tight preflop and then usually go all in preflop when you do play a hand. At this point you can once again play small pairs when you go all in preflop.

In the Red Zone, you absolutely cannot do anything but either fold or go all in ("push") preflop; and at this point you can't be so tight about your card selection any more. You still push with any pocket pair, but also with any two cards ten or higher (or maybe even nine or eight depending on how desperate things are getting), maybe some suited aces with weak kickers, and even with suited connectors like 7-6.

Oh, and in all these zones, but especially the Orange and Red, you generally only want to play when no one has raised the pot in front of you, unless you have a super strong starting hand of course. When the blinds (and antes if any) are this big relative to your stack, you don't mind just picking up the pot without a fight.

When your M gets super low (even if everyone else's is low too), and especially when the number of players at the table becomes small, you have to start pushing a wide variety of hands, even a little uglier than those described above, when you're on the button and it's down to just you and the blinds. Usually they'll fold and you'll pick up some much-needed chips; and even when they do play you'll be an underdog but still have a half-decent chance of doubling up (and if you did enough stealing of blinds before this, you can survive if you lose the hand).

Good luck!

Wow,

thank you, that's nearly what I thougt. I should buy HoH, too Well, it's a pitty but I think in these turbo tournaments you have to be very lucky in order to survive.

in any tournament, you have to be very lucky to get far.

my question though since you mentioned HoH, because we understand stack management: inflection points, M & Q, zones and such, would that advantage be able to hold over in a turbo enough to make a crappy structure +ev to play in?

I would think that at least over the long run, it would have to be--if there were no vig. In the tourneys I was playing at Canterbury, the vig was sizeable, and then there was the expected dealer tip if you won. All in all, it meant about 25% of my money was going to the house one way or another.

It was interesting, though: it was kind of the opposite of a deeper stack tournament in a way. If things went badly in even a single hand early, it was very tough to overcome. But on those occasions where things did bounce my way early, the knowledge of all that HoH stuff then became very powerful. When it got shorthanded and everyone's M was in "Danger! Danger!" territory, the other players only looked at things in terms of Q (the "weak force", or ratio of your stack to the average stack, for those newbies not familiar). So if they had an average or above average stack, they'd be doing things like making raises of 3xBB even when that was half their stack, then folding after the flop, or limping even if the limp cost a sixth of their stack, etc. And they would fold their (huge) blinds to my pushes, even with strong suited aces or relatively high pairs (like nines or tens), when they really should have been calling. Still, that wasn't their biggest mistake (since you get no FE or FIV by calling); their biggest mistake was that they themselves didn't push when they had the chance.

So if I could kind of get past that early low-Yellow Zone stress, it was fairly fun to play. But I just had too many tourneys where I'd get a hand like AQ, raise 3xBB, whiff the flop, and then agonise over whether to c-bet (a 3xBB raise plus a half pot c-bet costs about 40% of your starting stack even if you haven't paid the blinds yet). Usually I would go ahead and go for it, but all too often it didn't work and I'd be crippled. But what are you going to do, not play AQ in an unopened pot? The starting stacks were just so borderline, it almost would have been better for them to be a little smaller since then it would make more sense to just go ahead and push a hand like AQ right from the starting gate.

I would play that the same way. Its just very difficult to play when you simply never get a good hand. In 40 minutes of this tournament the best hands I got were AA (folded after their were 2 Kings on the board; my opponent showed me the king so I was beaten) and two times JTs. I think this kinda tournaments do NOT represent a players skill. I think i will concentrate on tournaments which are meant to last a couple of days or even hours. (please excuse my bad english )

All I have to say is play SC (Suited Connectors) One Gappers, and obviously the premium hands. Just don't sit and wait for those premium hands. You have to be aggressive, so you don't get blinded out, and if you take a big hit like you did with the AA's well thats just how it goes. But be aggressive, be willing to gamble etc... If your not the aggressive type then the Turbo's I don't think are for you, and stick with MTT's or SNG's. Just my .02 GL

Your English looks excellent from where I sit; and I think you have a good plan--your experience sounds very familiar. I like online six-man turbos myself; but those start deep stacked, so there is much more opportunity for skill to come into play, and then when the blinds go up the low-M strategies can be used.