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Poker Tournament Strategy - How Is Your Opponent Feeling?
By ultimate-bet.mysportsbookonline.info

There has been a lot of tools introduced for the poker market that allows players to get a good look into the betting patterns and overall style of their opponents. This type of information can be quite useful for strategizing in ring and no limit games but software designers have had difficulty in using the same type of data for tournament analysis.

It hasn't been for not trying, because several software products can handle tournament statistics but users of such software can be easily misled by those results. The reason for this is because betting and activity statistics cannot accurately include other dominant factors in tournaments that demand further analysis.

Let's take for example you have an opponent you have tracked for 23 hands with a VPIP of 43% and aggression factor of 3.5. Well if these stats were collected during a single table cash game with 9 players, then you have likely run into a maniacal player more commonly identified in ring games as a loose-aggressive (LAG). Now granted 23 hands isn't a clear indicator, but you at least know he isn't a mouse.

Now how about if those same statistics were collected during a multi-table tournament? On the face of it, your first impression may be exactly the same - the dude is wild. However if you are looking at these stats in a poker assist software program like Poker Tracker, Poker Prospector or Poker Sharpener, what you may not realize is that none of those programs can tell you the tournament dynamics at the time you collected those statistics.

What difference does that make? Well there are overwhelming factors in tournaments which can turn a mouse into a jackal, and elephant into a mouse, and an eagle into a monkey. Furthermore, changing your overall game plan as a result of these factors can very well

be the correct play given the circumstances.

Let's take our player again but also note that the tournament was in the middle stages where he was orange mzoned, still a ways to go before any money and he had some tight players to his left that gave up the blinds and/or even worse continually folded to his flop bet no matter what they had. Right there, if you are NOT aggressive NTM and in the orange mzone, then you likely aren't playing optimally.

The way your opponent is feeling at a given moment in a tournament is largely difficult to ascertain when reviewing indicators like VPIP and AF after the fact, but that is also one of the strongest indicators you can have during the game.

This is one of the reasons that the only poker calculator on the market specifically designed for tournaments actually tracks and displays the truly valuable indicators you can really use in a tournament to make decisions. The VPIP and AF are only a small part of the story because in poker tournaments you also need the current M, the tournament stage, the payout structure, how much your opponents' stacks have changed recently, how many hands has he gone without a win, and many more nuances that when combined with a little experience you won't need to do any research other than what is put right in front of you by Tournament Indicator.

Marty Smith reviews all the online poker calculator software using free videos so you can actually see the product being used before you decide to invest in one. He also has a low limit hold'em tournament strategy video series that you can sign to for free as well.

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