[I know this forum is used mostly for hand discussions, but I don’t see a board for theory or general poker advice. Please feel free to move this if there is a better place.]

A friend who plays mostly bar poker has won a seat into the Millionaire Maker (1500 buy-in) and asked me for advice. As I am ill-suited to give advice on this, having never played an event with a buy-in that high, I would like to solicit advice from those of you who are better qualified.

Here’s what I told him. Please correct what needs correcting and add whatever you think is missing. He has 16 days to get ready, so he is not going to develop a whole new strategy but perhaps we can help him with what to expect.

Frank, WSOP advice. Given that I am not the best person to answer this question, but I do think I know two things you should try to prepare for.

First, deeper stacks. You are accustomed to playing in tournaments where you are deep stacked for 40 minutes, maybe an hour, then medium or short stacked for the remainder of the tournament. This WSOP tournament will be different. If you play well and don’t get coolered you could be deep stacked for an entire day, and deep stacks definitely play differently. Drawing hands go up in value, big pairs go down in value.

The other thing I think you will find is WAY more 3-betting and 4-betting. (This is partly related to being deeper stacked, but also it is just a different level of looking at the game.) For example, you raise with 99 on the button. Big blind re-raises you. In bar poker that usually means QQ+, or AK. Not so in higher-level poker. Here’s how they will look at their hand in BB when you raise your button: they will think, first, you are on the button so you have a weaker range. If they have, say, A9, they may re-raise you because it is hard to play post flop against you out of position, but they know their A9 may be ahead of your button range. Other hands like middle pairs, they would just call and see a flop bc it is easy to play out of position. Either they hit or they don’t.

 

Also, they would look at the A9 hand and they say they have an “ace blocker,” meaning that it is harder for you to have an ace so higher chance you might fold to a 3-bet preflop.

 

You’ll also see more semi-bluffs (betting draws.) It is hard to know when an opponent has a draw vs a big hand if they play them the same way.

Expect to have more of your river bluffs getting picked off. Better players are really good at seeing that you aren’t telling a story that makes sense. So in general, bluff less and just try to get paid for your value hands.

That’s off the top of my head, some things to try to learn about in the next few weeks. : )