I have repeatedly addressed the importance of waiting for antes to kick in to start really playing poker, and if you are this far in the website you already know I discuss the theory before the application. So why are antes so important? They add equity to the pot. Depending on the size of the ante, they may add a very substantial amount to the pot. A very small ante is less than 10% of the big blind, a big ante is more than 15% of the big blind. Large antes are more common than small ones. This article’s focus is based around exploiting antes, so the larger the ante, the more the article has to offer.

Adding the antes into the equation makes otherwise marginal steals not only correct, but standard. Raising to 2.5BB-3.5BB is moderately likely to either take down the blinds/antes, or set up a post flop situation where the pot will be easier to steal. Either situation tends to yield +EV, unless players in the blinds begin reacting to your steals with reraises/floats/slow-plays. The better your opponents, the better they will respond to these steals. Blind stealing when there is an ante is so obviously correct that most good players do it to an extent that even the bad players catch on. This will lead us to our first advanced concept on the topic, but first, let me back up a little.

When we start playing a tournament, we have the expectation that it will be played in a certain way. In my first years on the felt, the majority of games were incredibly loose. The average players would put their entire stack in the middle with a very wide range. They didn’t have any real reason behind it, except that they knew that their hand was above average, and that was enough for them to gamble. They didn’t think of advanced plays, pot odds, or techniques that were not readily apparent in that time; they simply had a “good” hand and chose to gamble as opposed to attempting to play poker. In modern tournaments, the average players are now consistently super tight all the way to the final table. Some tournaments, particularly in the higher buy-ins ($5,000+ live or $1,000+ online) players follow a tight strategy early in the event, and follow it with a looser strategy later in the event. Often the play in these tournaments will shift directly after the antes start.

When players bring a certain strategy into a tournament before it starts, there will be a dynamic called a metagame. In recent years, pressuring the bubble has been a very common strategy that players tend to bring into the game before they sit. They will be so sure that they want to be aggressive at this stage of the tournament that they fail to assess the situation properly. Later, we will discuss what situations are worth exploiting near the money, and how to exploit bubble players that don’t fully understand why being aggressive at this stage of the tournament is frequently correct. We will also discuss options for aggression, opposed to just blind stealing. But for now, know that any knowledge you have about the metagame of a tournament will give you a huge advantage over those players that have just decided to play a certain way before it starts.

The reason I introduced the concept of a metagame before talking about antes is that it is very important to still be very tight for a couple of orbits after the antes have started unless you already have an understanding about the shifts that will occur on your table. (Example: You have experience with the players, or can tell that the players are not aware of metagame). The problem: We understand that we need to continue to be active at this stage of the tournament, but the more active our opponents become, the more it just feels like gambling.

When First in becomes a challenge

If your opponents have adjusted to the antes, particularly large antes, then they are likely to have opened up their stealing ranges a lot. Many good players will reduce their positional standards as well, meaning they will raise more frequently from early positions if it is becoming harder to be first in the pot from late positions. They are comfortable raising more liberally, but only when they are first into the pot. Now the game becomes “Who can enter the pot first and still have a reasonable chance to steal the blinds?” This approach is terrible. The more liberally your opponents enter the pot, the more you will have to gamble. However, don’t gamble by entering the pot with weak hands out of position.  The wilder your table, the tighter your standards for opening a pot should be.

• Stop trying to be first in the pot. There are times where you will have the opportunity to be first into the pot with a legitimate hand, and the crazier your table, the more value this will have. But, if we aren’t going to be first into the pot, what approach do we take if we need to gamble to cover the guy on your right, or chip up for the bubble/final table? If your opponents are raising less than 3 times the big blind, due to the frequency of their raises you can assume their standards for raising have substantially diminished, and your best approach is to respect their raises less. You will inevitably have to gamble in a tournament, and simply assuming your opponent always has a garbage hand is a terrible thing to assume; even the loosest opponents catch AA, or flop sets. But it is more reasonable to assume that when they have a wider standard for entering a pot that you will have an advantage by either calling their raises, or re-raising them. Later articles will give you specific times when the stack sizes should almost make these decisions for you.  But for now we are assuming that most of the players in the tournament can afford 20 rounds of blinds, also that you and your aggressive opponents can afford 20 or more rounds of blinds. The simple version is that by taking flops either in position, or in the big blind your opponents with weaker skill will tend to fall into a very predictable post flop strategy. They will almost always bet the flop. The more you have learned about their tendencies the more accurately you can draw conclusions from their bets in relation to a specific board. If you are in the Big Blind, and they have made one of these raises, and you just called before the flop, if they will always bet the flop, then you can always check the flop. Since a player with two unpaired cards before the flop will only pair about 1/3 of the time, you can start with the assumption that they usually have missed the flop and play from there. The more coordinated the flop, the more reasons they will have to continue in the hand against a check-raise, so you should be more picky about re-stealing in these spots from the big blind than you would be from in position.

When The Table Is Abnormally Tight

I can think of 3 tournaments where the majority of the field played super tight for the majority of the play before the money. Since I have played more than 5,000 tournaments, that i can only think of 3 off hand should point out the rarity of such an event. These tournaments had three things in common:
1) At least half of the field won a seat by satellite.
2) The buyins were large for the players involved. (average buyin over $5k) so the players that were in it wanted to last long enough to get an experience out of the event.
3) Players ACTUALLY TALKED ABOUT the fact that they were playing tight, and would reference books or other things that told them how to play tight. (It was like they were trying to give me a manual on how to beat them).

Now sometimes these players wind up on your table with a few loose cannons all sitting together. When those loose players are out of the pot you have an opportunity to play as if your table were abnormally tight.

All tight tables require precision strikes. Pick your spots carefully!

Figure out what kind of tight each player is, then do your best to abuse the situation from there. For example, one kind of tight player is the one that will have a very high standard for making a re-raise, but will also respect your recognition of the fact that they are tight and be able to make folds accordingly. In one of these events it was folded to my button where i looked down to see AKo. I made a standard raise, and the little blind re-raised about 1/5th of his stack (i had him covered). I didn’t put him on AA or KK, and thought he was somewhat likely to fold a big hand that wasn’t a monster so i moved him allin. He showed QQ and folded. Since 1-he knew that 2-I knew that 3- he knew i was tight, 4- then i believed he knew that, 5 i would give his raise a lot of respect, and since i didn’t there, he would most likely assume i had a more powerful hand than AK and fold TT-QQ. Mix this with my read on him during the hand, and the fact that i was holding both an Ace and a King (making AA-KK more unlikely) and it makes the raise easier.

But there are different kinds of tight players, more common than type listed above is the player that will wait for a bigish hand and get stuck to it. They haven’t played but a few hands in the past 2 hours and they aren’t about to fold now that they got one. With position small pocket pairs and suited connected become powerful tools against this type of “donk-tight” player. Often they will mix this kind of play with under-protecting their hand before the flop, giving you a great price on their stack.

Another type of abnormally tight table is scared money. This phenomenon occurs more commonly on the bubble. In this particular scenario, with one of the larger stacks on the table i raised 7 hands in a row to 3x BB. The cards didn’t really matter. I won 5 of the pots without a flop, one on the flop with a re-raise, and one on the flop with a continuation bet. When the money broke i went back to being tight.

The final type of abnormally tight table that i can recall off hand was at the WSOP. Most of my experience at the WSOP is not tight, but this table was very predictable. They would raise appropriate hands before the flop, almost always continuation bet the flop, then give up if they didn’t have a big hand. These types of tables can be abused with floating. I will post more on floating and “semi-floating” in my next articles.

To sum it all up, think about the assumptions your opponents are likely making about the game. Think about the way your opponents are likely to adjust to the game, and then adjust your game accordingly. You always want to be one step ahead of them, and if you can figure out the way they are approaching the game then you may be able to predict when they will adjust their strategies, and stay one step ahead!