FOXSports.com: But why would people want to risk their tourney on a flip in the first place or take a chance of being crippled?
Eric Haber: If you do know it's a coin flip for sure - if he showed you his hand and there is money in the pot, then take it if the odds are right. But the problem is you don't know it's a flip. I encourage people to run some of these simulations through PokerStove.com or some of those card calculators to see how a pair of 2's or 3's does against any legitimate range of hands. It's horrible.
Calculate 33 against even a random hand, any two cards, you are only getting 53%. That's including AA. If you increase that to any legitimate range of hands that are going to put you all-in you are just crushed. You have to factor in the possibilty that they have those overpairs.
FOXSports.com: What are some of the leaks in most peoples SNG play?
Eric Haber: No. 1 - Playing Ace-rag Under the Gun, Ace-rag in the middle and Ace-rag late. Basically playing Ace-rag.
No. 2 - A bigger leak still is calling with too many hands on the bubble. What players do is say 'Ok I'm on the bubble, we're four handed, and someone is pushing all in. I'm getting a certain amount of pot odds to make this call, so I'm going to make it.' In a bubble situation where the prize structure is so violent against the fourth place person, you can't afford to think that way. If you call and lose an all-in that puts you out in fourth, where there is a real short stack left … it is horrible. You have to be calling with way fewer hands than you would think.
People get very heroic and say I'm not going to let this guy push me around just because we are on the bubble. That's kind of the right people have when they are first to act. It's a paradox I talk about quite a bit. If one guy knows that he can go all-in with any two cards and the guy who has to call knows that the guy can go all-in with any two cards, and he knows that his hand is going to be better than that range, he still can't call. The risk of going out is way too great. So it's just one of those weird paradoxes where the one guy who knows he's behind can just push all-in and the guy who knows he's ahead just has to fold. It's very unique to a SNG type payout structure where the bubble is that steep.
FOXSports.com: Is this not a hyper version of the gap concept?
Eric Haber: It is. David Sklansky talked about this in his book. Basically in any tournament situation that the range of hands you can raise with is much wider than the range of hands you can call with. He originally may not have been considering all-ins when he discussed this. Yet when you extend that to SNG play, where it becomes an all-in or fold decision, the bubble is where that gap in poker is the greatest. The amount of hands you can raise with on the bubble is as wide as it gets, and the amounts of hands you can call with on the bubble is as small as they get.
FOXSports.com: You also stated in your videos at PokerXFactor that SNG's are not a game of post-flop play?
Eric Haber: Well, let me put it another way. There is pre-flop play and post-flop play in every SNG. But knowing your pre-flop action, especially as you get late, it's just 90% more important than knowing your post-flop action if you happen to get called early in a SNG. As I said before, you want to stay out of trouble early anyway. There will be SNG's where I see no flops. I mean the whole time. Of course except those flops I see when they run all the cards off after I get called.
You hear some criticisms of some sites that the structures are too fast and it takes some of the skill out of the game. I take exception to that because while being able to play 67 on a 6 10 J flop requires skill, it also requires skill to know all those bubble strategies. And also when to go all-in and knowing when to call, knowing all your pre-flop actions… that is a skill in and of itself. In these short stack tournaments it really rewards players who know that stuff. So it's not as if it requires less skill, all it does is kind of shorten the game and reward the players with the best knowledge of all their pre-flop decisions.
FOXSports.com: Players love to go all-in with AK anytime, anywhere. Please share you AK strategy for SNG's.
Eric Haber: This has been gone over many times before. As, again, in Sklansky's work he discusses how Ace-King is never 100% a bad thing to be all-in with, as long as you are not risking way too much relative to the pot size, because AK is not a made hand. A good part of your equity from playing AK is the ability to make people fold, and also from the times you catch an Ace or a King on the turn and river. If you just flat call with a hand like AK you lose a lot of that equity. Many times you miss the flop and have to fold to any reasonable sized bet. This means you are not going to get a chance to see those last two cards. So if you have a drawing hand, which is what AK really is, you want to see all five cards.
One of the ways to do that is by pushing all-in, especially if there is enough in the pot where it's worth picking it up if the players fold. On the other hand, you have a hand like 88 in the bb and somebody raises you, it's a made hand already. You want at that point to probably reduce the action to those three cards. You are not playing a pair of 8's for any great portion of your chips expecting to flop a set. If you put a good portion of your chips in with 8's you are looking to shut everybody out of those final two cards.
FOXSports.com: How does the style of play adjust from $5 and $10 SNG's and then jumping up the $500 - $1000 SNG's? What should people adjust to?
Eric Haber: I started in SNG's because they were a 10-person tournament on Party Poker and they were really quick. The reason why I began them is I had actually read Sklansky's Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. I was fascinated with the all-in or fold system he created for a complete beginner he backed in the WSOP that year. I was just curious how it would play in a structure that had rapidly accelerating blinds.
The first thing I did was four table (playing four tables at once) the SNG's for about two full months using that system in the $5 tournaments and all the way up. It was actually pretty profitable. Then what I would do is kind of tweak the all-in or fold system to include raising limpers and some re-steals and that kind of stuff. What I would find, as you might imagine, at the lower levels you did a lot better doing this. At the higher levels players would know what you were doing pretty quickly and would sniff you out. It goes back to my earlier point that SNG's are a pre-flop game.
The thing is when you get up to the $500 level and also some of the better $200 games; you can't just get away with all-in or fold play. You are going to have to read other peoples interpretation of the table, get to know the players a little bit, and you have to be able to make re-raises and play position, that type of thing. So from the $5 level up to the $100 level you could play all-in or fold poker, knowing your math backwards and forwards and be profitable. Once you get above that you really have to start thinking deeper. You must begin to say to yourself - well this guy is probably a pretty good player, if he's making a play like this, at this level of blinds, given where everybody else's stack is, what range of hands do I put him on to do that, and how is he going to perceive my reaction to that, etc. With any other type of poker or any type of skill, the more money that is on the line the harder it is going to be.
Here is my problem with all these system type of things. How are your opponents going to react or behave when they know what you are doing? If you are playing a MTT and are up against expert players, they are going to figure out really quickly what you are up to. I am just curious that those types of strategies are easily exploitable.
FOXSports.com: What about the new fad of mini-raising —raising only double what the preceding raise was?
Eric Haber: Right now I'm in the camp where I'm just not buying it. At this stage it looks like people are doing a lot of mini-raising just to try to act strong. But what happens is they are making a mistake when they mini-raise and leave themselves too many chips behind. It makes it pretty obvious that they can fold if you push against them. Normally this type of raise is a pretty weak play.
FOXSports.com: Explain some advanced techniques with SNG's like ICM (Independent Chip Models)?
Eric Haber: Using ICM to figure out your money equity in a tournament is not an advanced technique per se, it's really just math. It's just a change in the way you should think about things.
All ICM and models like that do is tell you what your money value is going to be given a particular distribution of chip stacks and prize money. Not so much how many chips you are going to have, but what those chips translate to in real money terms. And that is really what you have to analyze to figure out whether decisions are folds or calls. Because as you get closer to that bubble, the chips do not have a linear value — they have a much different value then what they were at the start of the tournament. Sometimes +EV from a chip perspective is not the end of the story in your calls, raises or folds.
FOXSports.com: Tell us more about your new business venture — PokerXfactor.com.
Eric Haber: Because of my background in life, going back to when I used to teach the bar exam, I've always been good at making complicated things seem easy. Once Cliff Josephy and I saw these other teaching sites launching, we thought we had a lot of insight to offer. We both are very good communicators so we probably should get into this type of business. We knew from the outset that the quality of what we were going to be offering would be great. The only issue that delayed us was is it going to worth it to give all of our insights away? Is sharing all of our information, all of our analysis to everyone else, going to cannibalize our own playing?
It took me a lot of prodding to convince Cliff to do this project. One of the reasons it works for us is that the very act of teaching and analyzing actually improves our own games. We consistently had many players coming to us asking for private lessons and coaching. We finally decided that the best way to do that was to launch this site and put our best analysis out there. This allows everybody who wants to see how sheets or JohnnyBax plays, a strong insight into our strategies and thought processes. We're not going to be holding back anything. We will be going into detail about ICM, pot odds, perhaps how to use PokerStove.com and how to calculate using a spreadsheet. We have a custom hand re-player to set up certain hand scenarios. This lets me analyze hands right there on the spot. We want to give the best content there is. If there is some aspect we are not particularly strong in we are going to invite guest pros to do lectures from time to time. Some of the topics our guests may elaborate on are the skills of Heads Up play or even bankroll management. We will put up there whatever our members want to learn about.
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