SunPoker Coaching

Coaching by Sven Lucha

The Gambling–Institute represented by Stephan Kalhamer and myself, Sven Lucha, was invited by SunPoker.com, to coach their players. SunPoker.com participated with 8 online qualifiers and 8 invited players at the CAPT Seefeld this year.

The important question for us:

How can we help technically strong players in such an event?

Especially the invited players were experienced and successful players, but mainly Cash gamer and not so used to the Tourney Poker. Therefore the main point in our presentation, the day before the tournament was the tournament structure.

· What to do at what point in the tournament?

· Do I have to look for a spot or can I wait until the game finds me?

· When do I have to play?

· How do I avoid pressure?

The structure of the CAPT comprises 10'000 $ starting chips with Blinds of 25/50 and 60 min per level. That means the players are very deep in the beginning. There is no reason to play in the beginning except an extremely good hand or the situation is likely to force you into a hand. You should not get involved in any pots with a middle class hand – you never know, where it ends. We always wanted to have a plan, so we could ask the questions. This was the plan for the first levels of the tournament. For example, if a player would sleep late and miss the first 3 blind levels, he would only loose about 10% of his stack. . A lot of players – but only a few SunPoker players – would have been happy the next day, if they would have slept late. By the way, you should not sleep in this time, but collect information on the other players, which can help you further down in the tournament

Then we focused on not getting under pressure. Our main concern was to find the spots in time. With that we wanted to avoid having to win in the showdown without any fold equity.

In the training program, we tried to arrange situations of pressure, show spots for re-steals (very efficient in tournaments) and to fix hand ranges for pushes and calls, depending on the stack. This is where you can use the information you collected in the first levels of the tournament.

Which player raise often and therefore with a wider hand range, often with a hand, that can not call a re-push? That could be a easy victim for a re-steal. .

Which player acts fearful? Here we can steal the BB easier with a push, as he would not call with many hands.

On the other hand we should always ask ourselves, which players are most likely to call us, because of their loose-passive way of playing.

The next important point was the player’s attitude towards the live poker adventure. Online it is enough to play a technically good poker. By live poker the table image, your own and that of the other players are important too. To understand, how the other player would see oneself is important as well. As a young online player- if the others see you as this – it is easier to re-steal online than live. On the other side it will be easier to get good hands paid for such here we put our emphasis in our live coaching during the tournament. We wanted to help the players to read the current table situation right, due to blinds, their own stack and the stack of the other players and the table image – their own and the adversaries. It was our goal to use our own stack actively against the folding players. We tried as well to mention possible„tells“of our players.

One player was sitting looking board at the table, waiting on his monster. If this player now sits up and take his cards, every attentive opponent would know, he has a very good hand now.

Especially in the later part of the tournament, our help consisted in foreseeing pressure and finding spots to increase the stack without any showdown.

Which player has difficulty to call, due to the stack size, should only play with a real monster?

Which player would call easier, because of his big stack, - has to be attack with a better hand?

The game design was getting important in this later phase of the tournament. I was asked by one player with 17BBs, who he should play hands like AK or TT with his stack. He rarely could raise, and folded after a re-raise, and out of position with theses cards would give him only very few good Flop scenarios. So there was alternatively the Limp-re-raise-Pre-flop. Than he asked the question on fold equity, he could take the pot without a show down, or he had all chips in the middle of the table at a point in time, he believed in his hand.

Another source of errors, we wanted to avoid, was the non-consideration of the opponents stack. Some players commit themselves, without even knowing. They don’t see the opponents stack, the effective stack and can be found in an unfavorable All-in situation if they have to call a push, which followed their own raise.

Before day 2 we handed out the new seating order for the last 4 tables to our remaining players together with an analysis of the best spots for stealing with showdown.

The SunPoker players were doing well with these tips. 2 reached in the money, for the big win, we were missing this little bit of luck...

Rounding up the experience, it was positive. Even technically very good players appreciated our help. Not even the successful player should sit back, because in poker too, :“ who don’t move, move backwards“..