Strategy from the pros: Nick Abou Risk

Think about the stars of the PokerStars.com UK and Ireland Poker Tour and one player springs to mind: Nick Abou Risk. In three short years, the plucky Canadian has netted two UKIPT titles, notched up three final tables and cashed for well over £100,000.

So with season three of the UKIPT underway, who better to show you the ropes? Here he teaches you everything from cultivating the right image to picking on the weak. Quiet please, the UKIPT master is talking.

Dress to impress

• I always go into the early stages of any MTT with the game plan of playing tight at the start, observing everyone, picking up reads and making sure they don’t get any free information.
• I’ll categorise people based on how old they are, how they handle their chips and what they’re wearing. It’s probably a good spot for someone who’s really nitty to just dress like an internet kid. You’ll get a lot more action.
• Pay attention to bet sizing, timing and most importantly what players showdown with when they miss value bets. Sometimes I’m lazy and just read Twitter or listen to music, but in an ideal world you should be paying attention to everything around you, especially when you’re not in a hand.

Common people

• A common mistake among amateur players is over valuing hands. They’re used to playing turbos online when it’s wrong to fold top pair, but I accumulate a lot of chips from players who can’t fold top pair when they’re clearly beat.
• Amateurs also don’t play enough hands and that can make them a lot easier to play against as on many boards they’ll have nowhere near the nuts and more likely an overpair or a set. When your table is too tight you can open your range in position and try to make big hands.
• The best way to take advantage of amateurs is to find out if they’re too ‘cally’ or too ‘foldy’. If they’re a calling station, punish them for value. If they fold too much, bluff more often. You can make these assumptions after watching players for the first few levels.

Ante up

• When the antes come in, loosen up. Now instead of there being 1.5BBs in the pot, there’s 2.5BBs and there’s a lot more incentive to steal and re-steal, particularly from the blinds.
• I probably defend my blind more than most, but I feel a lot of players don’t defend their big blind enough. A lot of amateurs can get stacked this way, but through experience you learn  when not to overplay your hand. I can understand why a lot of people fold their big blind, and it’s not fun to play out of position, but my background in limit hold’em has helped me to defend with a wide range.
• Against good players, I’ll generally try and stay out of their way. In the past, poker was kind of an ego battle for me, but I’ve realised it doesn’t make sense to try and outplay everyone. That strategy is so high variance, and I’ve learnt that I can pick up a lot of chips by choosing my battles. I’ll play straightforwardly against the good players on my table, especially when I’m out of position.

Lag > tag

• I’m as laggy as a table will let me be. If I’ve got good players who are exploiting my style, then I’ll tighten up, but I’ll pick on the weaker players to my right by three-betting frequently.
• I actually don’t run very big bluffs that often. People think I do and that helps me accumulate a lot of chips, but I like to play very low variance and small ball at the start of a tournament. Occasionally I’ll make a multi-street bluff, but it’s not worth doing it unless I’ve got a really good read.
• Generally I tend to bluff more preflop, with four-bets and five-bets. It feels lower variance than firing multiple barrels. I’ll still continuation bet as a bluff, but I don’t triple barrel too often. Some players can push that to an extreme, and once they’re the prefl op aggressor they hate checking. That’s a big mistake among beginners.

Size is key

• Bet sizing should always be player dependent. If your opponent is a good hand reader who pays attention to bet sizing, you should keep your bet sizing consistent. But if I think they only concentrate on the strength of their own hand, I will pick bet sizes based on the situation. You might be able to semi-bluff for cheap, or make a big overbet because you know they’re never folding.
• When I get down to 10-12BBs, I’ll play jam or fold poker. In terms of reshoving, as a ball park figure I want my stack to be ten times their opening raise. So if they open to 2x, I want 20BBs. If they open to 3x, then I want 30BBs. As long as I think that they’re stealing often enough I’ll get it in.

Final countdown

• In the late stages of UKIPTs, players often three-bet without a plan. Are you three-betting to induce, to five-bet jam or are you three-bet folding? I’ll consider all this and more every time I get dealt a hand late on. Do it ten times a day and it soon becomes second nature.
• I think I still make mistakes when it comes to push-fold strategy late on in tournaments, but it’s one of my game’s strengths. I used to study Sit-N-Go Power Tools [ICM software] and there’s a lot of software out there that can help. Study preflop charts for jamming and folding.

Heads you win

• If you want to improve your heads-up game, play turbo sit-and-gos to get a feel for when you have 25BBs and it’s all or nothing. You can play 100 of these a day, and once you get to a UKIPT final table, sit-and-gos can replicate some of that final table pressure.
• Some players like to min-raise every hand on the button heads-up, but your strategy should depend massively on your stack size. If you’ve got 30BBs, you should look to min-raise every hand you open. But if your opponent is aggressive, then you might find limping can be useful.
• Study how your opponents play preflop and postflop from the blinds. As you play more and more heads-up matches you learn how to develop a strategy on the fly. A lot of heads-up is about playing the man more than the cards. In the end though, there’s a lot of luck involved. Just try and run better than your opponent.