Limping ITM in Mystery Bounty tournaments = good??
I play tournaments sporadically, I've played cash a lot for >10 years and used to put in a lot of volume in HU SNGs.
This year I've played a couple tournament series and cashed in Mystery Bounty events, and played a lot of them online.
I've started employing a strategy that utilizes a lot of limping once I reach the ITM phase. My rationale is that the marginal value from stealing the blinds is worth a lot less than having opportunities to stack players, and when we get stacks in PF it's mostly cooler situations as the player that RFI.
I do a mix of limp/raise and limp/call and I've picked up a lot of bounties in situations where I limped in, saw a short stack shove, then reshoved with a hand like AA/AKs etc.
Has anyone done any work on these tournaments, and using a strategy that incorporates a lot of limps? Is this something you employ in these formats?
7 Replies
In the Mystery Bounty format to me, it seems, once you’re in the money there is so much more value in even being 1bb ahead of most stacks than there is in adding 2.5bb to your stack when you are already 1st-3rd on your table since a huge chunk of the prize pool is in the bounties. IMO this favors a limp heavy strategy, raise/folding 2bb or 2.5bb etc seems much worse than limp/folding.
It’s much easier to win more than 1st place cash in this format with bounties than it is in a standard or progressive bounty tournament. My current strategy is to try to build up a large stack with aggressive play before the bubble bursts, then when ITM I don’t really play ICM or chip EV at all and just try to maximize the spots where I can get it in with more chips and a better hand. How do players that play a lot of MTT volume adjust to these events?
Generally speaking open-limping is more appropriate in PKOs than in regular tourneys, so I would guess this is magnified even further in a mystery bounty where the potential value of knockouts can be huge.
Hey yhp I also like to use limping in Misterys whet there are a lot of short stacks at the table. Just have to be cautious not to limp to weak hand and remember that when you limp usualy it's to limp call some players of the players at the table.
how wide should we be deviating from standard ranges when calling off an all in when we have a healthy stack vs a short stack? 50bb in the bb vs a 10bb button shove, when the #1 and a mix of good bounties are left should we just be like no thought calling off 76s here?
how wide should we be deviating from standard ranges when calling off an all in when we have a healthy stack vs a short stack? 50bb in the bb vs a 10bb button shove, when the #1 and a mix of good bounties are left should we just be like no thought calling off 76s here? right now i kind of think i'm overfolding the BB, but im not sure. I think there is a lot of value in preserving stack size and preventing doubling up opponents when we know we're behind, but we're also in a race against the field to stack the short stacks usually.
how wide should we be deviating from standard ranges when calling off an all in when we have a healthy stack vs a short stack? 50bb in the bb vs a 10bb button shove, when the #1 and a mix of good bounties are left should we just be like no thought calling off 76s here?
You should be calling crazy wide to go after Mystery Bounties, esp when the big ones are still available. I honestly think in your scenario you should be calling any 2.
Its going to depend on what the bounty EV is at that time, but the value of the bounty is going to be worth much more than the value of the chips you lose here, esp if you still have a lot of people covered after losing.
how wide should we be deviating from standard ranges when calling off an all in when we have a healthy stack vs a short stack? 50bb in the bb vs a 10bb button shove, when the #1 and a mix of good bounties are left should we just be like no thought calling off 76s here? right now i kind of think i'm overfolding the BB, but im not sure. I think there is a lot of value in preserving stack size and preventing doubling up opponents when we know we're behind, but we're also in a race against the fi
I'm not an expert in the format, but I'll tell you how I think about it. I start by converting the average mystery bounty to an equivalent number of chips.
You can do this by solving for a ratio:
Starting stack size / Dollar value of initial buy in that goes towards prize pool = X / Mean average dollar value of a mystery bounty
Then solve for X with X being equivalent to the average value of a mystery bounty in chips.
From there when you are facing an all in you just add in the chip value of the mystery bounty as if it was dead money in the pot, then figure out an appropriate calling range similarly to how you would in a normal tournament. You just alter the effective pot odds by considering the equivalent chip value of the dead money (bounty) in the pot.
Hope that makes sense. You only need to solve for the average chip value of a mystery bounty once at the start of the bounty period. Then just pay attention if all the biggest mystery bounties start getting hit then the average value of a mystery bounty will go down. Or if all the low bounties are getting hit and all the big prizes are still available then the average value of a mystery bounty will go up.
You can either re-solve the original equation with the new average mystery bounty amount. Or more commonly in play you just make a best guess given the info you have available at the time. Like if the average chip value of a mystery bounty was 100,000 chips at the start of the bounty period but you know a couple of the bigger bounties hit right at the start, you can assume the chip value will be somewhat lower than the initial 100,000 average.
Good luck at the tables!
