If you play small stakes poker tournaments, then your opponents make massive mistakes. Primarily, they play a preferred, easily exploitable strategy and are slow to adjust when you begin to take advantage of it. You probably already knew that, but there is a good chance you aren’t doing enough about it.
What if you knew their exact strategy? For example, what if you knew they limp called with marginal hands and folded on the river with less than top pair or bluffed post flop whenever the preflop aggressor checked a street? You could easily exploit this player by iso-raising with any two cards and betting three streets on good run outs with your bluffs or checking to induce with your bluff catchers. This would be an easy opponent to beat and sticking to “correct” ranges against him would simply leave a ton of money on the table.
Now what if you knew that such a player was in your game, but you didn’t know which of your opponents played this way? Shouldn’t you go out of your way to identify this player as soon as possible? The traditional way to do this is to pay attention to the hands that go to showdown, but this leaves it up to both chance and the whims of the other players. Plus, most of us have the attention span of a seventh grader and don't pay much attention to the hands after we fold anyway. Wouldn't it be easier to just pay someone else to get this valuable information for us?
That would be great, but of course, it is not allowed. However, there is a close alternative. You cannot pay for this information with money, but you can pay for it with chips. This is done by playing more hands early in tournaments and taking passive lines to force showdowns, even if that means losing some expected value for small amounts of chips. It is my belief that the information gained from these small early losses can more than pay for itself by allowing you to make extreme hero folds and calls against the right kinds of opponents.
How to Get the Information
The players most likely to make the big mistakes that we want to exploit start off by making small mistakes in the early levels. These include things like open limping, calling down too light, or bluffing with very little fold equity. Whenever we see players making these mistakes, we should go out of our way to see as many showdowns from them as possible.
If a target player limps, I will consider iso-raising them with a wide variety of hands and using my position to force a showdown by checking back with marginal value hands or calling down with marginal bluff catchers. This works really well in heads-up pots when I have position. When I am out of position, I tend to use a slightly tighter range consisting of bigger cards that perform better as bluff catchers and check call down.
The information gained from seeing showdowns in hands you played is the most actionable information you can get in poker. It is better than showdown information obtained from hands with other players because there may be some dynamic between the participants that you don't realize. It is better than information from a HUD because aggregated information that doesn't contain hole card detail can be misleading, especially over small sample sizes. A showdown in which I participated will give me information on a player's range, bet sizing, timing, and aggression level. One or two showdowns like this can be more valuable than fifty non-showdown hands in a HUD.
How to Use the Information
Remember, we are talking about small stakes tournaments so we don't expect the average player to be balanced or very likely to change their strategy much. This means once we get the read, we can benefit from it in future hands when the stakes become much higher.
For example, I played a hand with an opponent where I opened from EP with KQs and he called in position. It felt like he had been doing this way more often than he should have, so I was eager to see a showdown from him. Stacks were around 100bbs deep. The flop came A33 rainbow and went check-check. The turn was a Ten. Many players in my shoes would take this as a good spot to bluff villain off of his small pairs or get value from weaker gutters or flush draws, but I decided to just check call so I could see his cards. The villain bet 1bb into a 5bb pot. I called and the river brought an offsuit 9. This time, villain bet 2bbs into a 7bb pot. I called and he showed 43o. My river call was defensible because I had the nut no pair and was getting a great price for a small percentage of my stack, but honestly, I may have called that bet with Jack-high just to solidify my read on this player. Given how he had played up to this point, I wasn't too surprised to see his weak preflop holding, but I was shocked to see just how weak it was and how trappy he played postflop with a very strong hand. My assumption was that he didn't call with a hand that weak for its playability. He planned to bluff when he missed and eek out value or induce bluffs when he hit. Several orbits later, I got a chance to make use of this information.
By this time, blinds were in play and effective stacks were around 50bbs. I opened from EP with ATs and this same villain called in position. The flop came 983 rainbow. I check called a bet with my two overs and backdoor flush and straight draws. The turn was an offsuit 7 and I check another bet. The river was a King and this time villain bet pot. Now given that he did not put in this much action before when he had the effective nuts, I did not expect him to be doing so now with a marginal one pair hand so I called and he showed 54s for a busted gutter draw. This is not a line I would ever dream of taking against the average small stakes player, but the chips I lost in the previous hand turned out to be a small price to pay for a read that more than paid for itself in this one.
Conclusion
I'd be remiss if I did not mention one last time that this approach to poker will do you no good against good GTO style players who balance their ranges or good exploitive players who adjust in an effort to re-exploit you. Fortunately for us small stakes grinders, there are very few players of this caliber in our games. Most of our opponents are recreational players who have developed a style that may work against the average player in the field but leaves them completely open to exploits from players thinking on the next level. Consider spending a few pennies to try and reverse engineer their strategy early so that you may use the information to take their dollars later.
