I recently played the monthly £330 no-limit hold’em deep-stack event at Nottingham poker club; Dusk Till Dawn. The field was a mix of satellite qualifiers, young online whiz kids who were too young to play in Vegas, well-known pros (my starting table featured Julian Thew), and a load of live players who have really bad fundamental poker skills. It’s these players who should make or break your tournament and it’s these players you want to get involved with.
It might not be immediately clear who at the table falls into this category, but believe me it doesn’t take long to find out. With only one table to play and 30 hands an hour to concentrate on, information such as table talk, bet sizing, and hands shown down should all give you a pretty clear picture of who’s who.
Level one
When playing live against these non-thinking players I definitely think you can get away with a lot of stuff that just wouldn’t wash online. You can call more in position, especially early on, as you want to get their chips before someone else does. Live players almost never run multi-street bluffs so if they bet multiple streets you should call a bit tighter. Likewise, the check-raise on a dry board is almost never a bluff.
You should definitely get into the habit of isolating limpers a lot, too. There was a guy in the DTD tournament that I played with for about eight hours. He would limp almost every time he entered a pot and a few players who saw this took full advantage. He would also fold and show hands such as A-T and 4-4, so if he ever stuck in a reraise it was easy to turbo-muck, confident in the knowledge he had the goods.
Another thing to consider is that live players value tournament life a lot more. Once you’re out you’re left stood in a casino with nowhere to go, whereas online once you’re out you can quickly register for another. With that in mind it’s often necessary to make really obvious value bets (that they’ll call) rather than put someone all-in. Also, as odd as it sounds, bad players will raise/fold good hands when they have stacks of 15 big blinds and you put them to a decision for all their chips. Sometimes they’ll even call putting in over half their stack on the flop and then fold the turn! It’s mind-boggling.
As long as you pay attention and adjust to the strange surroundings and strange play in the live arena, a good winning online player’s fundamentals should take you far.
*Nick cashed in 33rd after losing a monster pot when getting it in with A-K to K-J preflop. Ouch!