Sometimes it can be fun to completely blow up a poker game. Team player Will Lin is an expert at this strategy, and it was fun to watch him play in Vegas this week.
Now, to set the stage: Will is a big game cash player with a few nice tournament results as well, so he has a bankroll to support this high variance strategy…but sometimes he wants to blow off a little steam by doing something similiar to the following:
Imagine you normally play 25/50NL (or higher), where a standard open raise is $200. If you drop down to the 1/2 NL game, where the normal buyin is $200-300, and the standard open is $10 you can create some interesting dynamics and truly be the ‘table captain’ by continuing to play above the game. What does that mean exactly?
Well sit down at the table, if someone raises, you reraise big. Do it quickly, sloppily, and the players won’t have any idea what to think of you. They fold. Next hand, raise again. Raise whatever amount of random chips you have in your hand, $52, $64, whatever. Next hand, someone raises, you reraise them allin with your 5/2 off suit, they finally can’t take it any more and call with a/6. You turn a st8 and stack them.
After just a few hands of this, the table will generally lock up and be afraid to play with you, but some players will start stacking off really lightly (i.e. holding marginal cards that figure to be best but not dominating anything preflop). Now that you know most players aren’t going to make a play against unless you have a big hand, and you’ve identified the players that will stack off lightly… it is much easier to read situations. After all, you did call someone’s allin with 5 high, so why should the table be giving you any credit!
A few things to note about this strategy: You must be willing to rebuy for the max buyin SEVERAL times (if there is not a max, you must be willing to sit in with an amount of money that has the table covered). For example, Will bought into the 1/3NL game at the wynn for approx $20k, where the next highest stack was maybe $1k.
This is a fun way to play, it’s nice to splash around, and you can put yourself in really interesting positions. You are creating massive pots, and generally will be getting ‘the right price’ to call with any two against someone’s reraise allin attempt.
While we don’t recommend playing like this all the time, give yourself a break once in awhile from your 1/2 grind online, go play .10/.25 and blow up a game, laugh a little a long the way. It’s just poker.
The key is to play random, fearless poker, where overbets are common. You want to intimidate the game, and remain as unpredictable as possible. When you over bet $400 into a $30 pot with 5 high, the next time you put someone allin when you have the nuts they may just call you with that top pair. Weeeeeeeeeee.
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