| The Squeeze play strategy in poker tournaments |  |  |  |
So I released a new video for Paddy Power Pokerl today based on the tournament strategy - squeeze play. You can watch the video here to get the gist of it, if you don't actually understand what squeeze play is - but my guess is that most of you already do understand it. So the reason for this blog post is to emphasize how the squeeze play comes into play in low limit online tournaments.
Going over a few my hands recently I've actually discovered that I use this tactic quite often, especially in the later stages. Now this goes back to the Mzone report series where I discussed in the section about opening your risk window. That has mostly to do with the payout structure of a tournament, and when you just get into the money, realizing how much further you have to go to make significantly more money. The reason this becomes important when executing a squeeze play is that you simply have to be more prepared to get bounced out of a tournament when trying it.
You see in the video below that all of Dan Harrington's opponents folded, but you and I both know that at least one of them, probably the guy with the Ace-Queen would've called or re-raised all in - when playing most low limit online poker tournaments. So really, what you have to analyze just as much as executing a squeeze play, is how often you get this deep in a tournament, is it worth making the move at a certain stage because you're just not getting any cards, or measuring the potential of doubling up when you do get called.
I think this also goes to the psychological aspect of getting bad beaten over and over again in online poker, when somebody will make just a weak call against you in these situations, when either they should've clearly folded, or they call behind and suck out on you.
Most of the hands that I was looking at in my own library were in the smaller multitable tournaments, usually the sit and go variety. I have simply just found that it's better to be pushing in these situations and forcing the loose aggressive players to make tough decisions. Whether you get them out of the pot or not is another matter that you have to deal with from a psychological point of view.
One thing I can say is that it definitely helps to play a lot of volume of these multitable sit and go's, which in turn sort of buffers out some of these plays so they just aren't as painful as they might be when you only have one or two tables going. Bottom line with a squeeze play in online poker, the lower limit you play the less likely the play is going to work. So when you do shove, make sure you either have live cards or you're ahead of your opponent.
