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well what i do sometimes is start advertising my hands towards the middle/end of the tournament when blinds are moving up and very profitable to steal and when there are about 5 or so people left. maybe ill show a flush or straight if i hit it and get them to think im betting with legit hands and gain respect for my bets raising. or preflop if i raise with a good hands preflop and its folded around ill show hoping they get the image that im a tight player who raises with good hands. now at this time of the tournament when its short handed, hands like QK, middle pocket pairs, A10, go up in value so if i raise a couple times with hands like these and show so they gain respect for my raise. i like to give them this impression because short handed with blinds increasing is the best time to build your stack by stealing. i have found by doing this some players will give me more respect when im raising and fold around quite often, which is exactly what i want because it is then easy to start raising with any two cards and steal the blinds. if you notice they are giving you respect and you have been stealing blinds many times, you will have a better read on their hand when they do start calling. having this image also helps steal pots after the flop as well. if an ace hits the board and they respect your bets, its easy to take down the pot by representing that ace.
sometimes however you might want to represent the maniac image if you think it will put some of the players on tilt. this worked good for me in an sng tonight. it was down to 6 players left, 75/150 blinds, i was dealth 85 suited under the gun and clicked the raise button immidiately which raised to 300(i only made this raise because i accidently clicked the button when this table popped up over another one) but having a tight image up to this point i decided to go with it and play like i had a strong hand. i was called by the big blind who checked the flop to me when an ace hit. i fired out a 3/4 pot bet and it was folded and i took down the pot right there. i proceeded to show the 85 bluff that had missed the flop entirely. i got a comment like wow, do you even know what you are doing, why would you raise that hand there. i replied with some bs comment along the lines of 85s is a strong hand because it is easy to hit straights and flushes with. sure enough the guy bought my act and thought i was some beginner who didn't know how to play. couple hands later i was in the big blind with AQ, 2 limpers in front of me, one of them being the guy who thinks i dont know what im doing. so i decided to push all-in hoping my maniac image would get me a call. sure enough the guy calls me with A3 thinking his A high is good. unfortunately he rivered his 3 leaving me with a crippled stack instead of being chip leader. but ill take AQ vs A3 any day of the week making it the right play given my image at the time. now being short stacked i went all-in next hand and doubled up off the big blind, then went all-in 2 times in a row after that which stole the blinds and built my stack to about 1200 with blinds now up to 100/200. the next hand im dealt AJs so i decided to push all-in again looking like a maniac. sure enough i get called by the same guy as before with his 89 suited and again he beats me on the river to take me out. now in this case i got unlucky with my maniac image but that will happen. as a result of my image i was able to put myself into a great position to be chip leader which will happen a lot of the time if you use your image to put youself into a position to get called by Ax when you have them dominated.
the next tournament i did, it got down to 3 handed, top 2 advance to next round ( i was doing rounders sng, Prima Poker's version of Party Pokers steps tournaments ). one guy had about 9000 chips, i had about 1500, the other guy had about 4500. needing chips bad i decided i'd start stealing blinds by going all-in because i cant wait for a good hand or ill get blinded out. so i started going all-in quite frequently but not every hand. being short stacked with big blinds, all-in or fold are the only 2 plays to make because you cant make a raise other than all-in and risk getting outdrawn or reraised all-in. after going all-in about every other hand for a few cycles around the table i was beginning to look like a maniac. when i was big blind it was often folded around because they were afriad i'd just raise all-in if they called or raised me. i build my stack up to just under 3000, the 2nd place guy was now slightly above 3500. this 2nd place guy said "is all-in the only play you know how to make?" the next hand is dealt, and im in the small blind with A5s, he is in the big blind and i replied "yes, it is the only play i know how to do" and immidiately raised all-in, he quickly called with Q10 lost the hand and said "damn, i thought i would be the favorite with this hand" i was able to double up here and make a comeback in this tournament just because i had an image of a maniac. the other guy was knocked out a couple hands later giving me the buy-in to the next round.
given all this, there are certain times you want to have a certain image, sometimes a tight image, sometimes a maniac image, depending on the situation you are in (chip stack, blinds, number of players left, playing style of the other players, etc) and there are other times where you image might now make any difference whatsoever. one thing to keep in mind is you always want to know what your own image is and play towards that image. you may think you have a tight image because you are playing solid hands everytime, but if you get monsters 5 times in a row preflop and your raise only steals the blinds every time, your image to the other players would probably be maniac trying to steal blinds. your hole cards are the only thing that matters, if used correctly your image can be an extra weapon for you so whatever image you have at the table use it to your advantage to maximize your profits.
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Originally Posted by Hawklet
