From my perspective, I see a lot more loose play and loose calls. I try to pick my spots and be ready to play some big pots from time to time. Just make sure your holdings are strong enough to play, or be extremely patient and wait until after the first or second break to make moves.
In KO everyone’s more aggressive and more lose than usual therefore tight is right. You can often get ITM playing mostly top hands. However, if more people play tight at the table then play more hands with implied odds against them when over 50bb effective stack. Most KO are turbo, otherwise you can be looser until 30-ish.
Also you have much less fold equity regardless how you play until deep in the run. This is why the best place to be a short stack is a KO tournament. You often get to triple up or more and then become the table leader in no time.
As strategy, I try to swing only up mostly from a short stack. I play tightly with no fear (what an unusual association) and conservative. The only times I don’t get ITM is when I don’t fold in marginal spots which still happens way too often, unfortunately.
Also you have much less fold equity regardless how you play until deep in the run. This is why the best place to be a short stack is a KO tournament. You often get to triple up or more and then become the table leader in no time.
As strategy, I try to swing only up mostly from a short stack. I play tightly with no fear (what an unusual association) and conservative. The only times I don’t get ITM is when I don’t fold in marginal spots which still happens way too often, unfortunately.
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alfadog85 said:
This doesn't make sense to me. In KO, you barely win your buyin back when you just get ITM, unlike most other tournaments. Very often you win even less. I often consider to play for the min-cash, when I want to reduce the variance, but I never considered the KO tournaments to be suitable for this strategy. What am l missing here?teebahnoo said:
The smaller your stack gets, the harder it's in KO to avoid multi-way pots. The value of the top starting hands decreases significantly against several other players. It's hard for me to associate a tight, short-stacked playstyle with the KO tournaments at all, but you even say that KO is the best place to be short-stacked, while admitting that most of them are turbo too. I am not going to claim you are wrong. I hope this works for you. I am just a little confused :hmmmm:.
The fact that almost everyone in this thread recommends lose aggro style should be telling enough. Remember, "do the opposite of your opponents"?skaniol said:
Also, it seems you exclude winning any bounty before money if you play tight. You will usually enter the pot with better hands than lose aggro people, you have better chances.
I can give you this example for yesterday Saturday eliminator on poker stars. I won 1 bounty before the money with a low straight (playing a hand with good implied odds from late position). So, I got $6.2 plus $23.78 vs the buy-in of $27 and a stack of 17bb. This is close to what you say. Next, one of the lose aggro guys with $30-ish bounty loses his stack playing too lose and goes all-in on tilt. Yours truly of course KO him with AQ.
That's how you make money playing tight in KO. The bounties are bigger the deeper you get and you need but one strike to get ahead with the money. Most of the time, your odds will be better than your opponents' so in average you'll get there.
I think the mistake nearly every player makes when playing KO tourneys is "going after" the KOs. I find that it's better to just sit and wait for a big hand, because you can easily double up through others who are playing with weaker holdings. If you can survive until the bigger bounties are available, then you can aggressively go after those bounties.
