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?
3 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.
