USA v Europe - Playing Mentalities
After playing tens of hours of poker in Vegas over the last 2 weeks, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are marked differences in playing styles on either side of the Atlantic (in the live arena in anycase). Some of these differences I plan to use here in Europe over the next couple of months to see if they work, others I hope to use against the Americans next year in Vegas.
1) Pre-Flop Raising
In European no limit games, 3 or 3.5 times the big blind is the standard raise early in tournaments. In Vegas, this tends to be 2.25 or 2.5 instead. The key to the Vegas mentality is that if a person is going to play their hand, it makes little difference whether the raise is 3 or 2.5 times the blind. Interestingly, the real impact of this strategy, is that continuation bets on the flop, turn and river are reduced exponentially due to the caller having to put less in each time also.
Where this strategy is completely inappropriate, in my opinion, is later in tournaments where antes exist. consider a level at 400-800 with a running ante of 100. If you are in the BB having already invested 900 in the pot and somone opens for 2k, you only need to put in 1.2k to have the chance of winning 4.2k. It needs pretty bad hole cards, to make calling in this spot a bad proposition. Many of the american players did not take antes into account when choosing their opening raises.
Ironically, Vegas tournaments have more ante structures than anywhere else, due to their long, deep stacked structure. However, I think the Americans may have something on the raise sizes without antes, so I plan to try out the smaller raise/smaller continuation bets in the live UK arena over the next month or so and see how it goes. If I get too many callers, I’ll re-visit this strategy.
2) Pre-Flop Hand Selection
Live American players seem to love picture cards. Whereas many europeans will play small suited connectors with relish, the US counterparts would prefer QJ, QK, KT etc. Interestingly, the big impact this had on my style, was that KQ no longer played like a trap hand over there. In the UK, when you play KQ you end up playing against AQ and AK. In the US, you are just as likely to be facing KJ and QJ.
3) Pre-Flop Mentality
If the initial raises are smaller in the States, re-raising is more problematic. The tables I played on, re-raised pre-flop as a matter of course. I was re-popped pre-flop by QJ three times during my stay for example. I cannot remember the last time this happened in Europe. Whilst I don’t think this strategy is very good, it can be hard to play against as you never know where you are. A re-raise pre-flop in Europe generally means very strong hole cards, in the States in can just mean paint sometimes.
4) Post Flop Action
I experienced people betting strong “only when they had it” during the tournaments I played (except the deranged Equadorians at the Venetian). I am sure this is not true of top American players or the online crew, but I found the games in the US more straightforward than in Europe post flop. It was also very hard (in fact impossible) to get someone to put top pair or an overpair down. Interestingly I was check-raised far less frequently than in Europe.
5) Short Stack Strategy
Live Vegas players tend to wait till they have something of value before pushing the stack in. In several tournaments I pushed all in with nothing 3/4 times in a row when down to 10 BB and had everyone fold. With antes in play this returned me back to a respectable stack. This resulted in an interesting short stack strategy. If you found a player who raised frequently, you could push over the top of him short stacked with nothing and he would tend to fold, hence increasing your short stack much quicker than just stealing the blinds. Several times I snap called short stack all-ins when I assumed they were stealing, only to be shown AA or QQ.
6) Bubble Play
American players seemed more proficient than us at using the bubble time at tournaments to increase their stacks, if they were deep relative to the rest of the table, often taking huge risks 3 betting pre-flop and getting medium stacks to pass.
In summary, I think for now I will just start off trying the smaller pre-flop raises for a while (I really believe this has some merit in non-ante tournaments) and see how that goes, starting with the LC League night tonight. When I return to Vegas, I’ll change my tactics after further analysis of the above.