Cash Game Festival: New Leaderboard, Next Venue…

A new Cash Game Festival Leaderboard started over the weekend, and now you have a new event to win a €1,500 VIP package for in the shape of Tallinn (21-25 November), the Cash Game Festival’s home.

Now firmly established as one of the international poker scene’s most buzzing series, this is the perfect target for online players who simply prefer cash games to tournaments and have thus far not had any natural events to aim for that are tailored exclusively for them.

Cash Game Festivals continue to break records at venues around the globe for the number of cash tables running simultaneously. The norm nowadays is non-stop action, with a variety of games and buy-in levels, from start to finish.

Winning one of the two €1,500 VIP packages via our ongoing Cash Game Festival Leaderboard (we also give away €1,000 in cash prizes) gives you hotel, money for travel/expenses, €500 in stake money and a VIP Hospitality package. This means that, as part of Team32Red, you get the full poker holiday experience on and off the tables.

And because we embarked on a partnership with Cash Game Festival to reward our loyal cash game fans, qualifying is a simple matter of having the usual fun at our cash tables. Automatically collect Redbacks (and, of course, enjoying our 30% Instant Rakeback deal while you play) and secure a top 40 spot on the Leaderboard. This earns you a place in one of our 8 or 32-player Freerolls, each with a package and €500 in cash.

Have fun, good luck, and we’ll see you in Estonia!

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Cash Game Festival – What’s the big deal?

The best cash games in town!

32Red is proud to be partners with the exciting Cash Game Festival and, given the success story that has seen these cash game events become so popular, here’s a brief explanation of what the buzz is all about.

Whereas you expect to see poker tournaments in casinos around the globe, a festival that focuses exclusively on Cash Games might at first seem less likely but, as soon as you think about it for a moment or two, the idea is perfectly natural! 32Red Poker has countless cash games running, after all, so why wouldn’t there be demand for those players who favour cash over tournaments to be able to enjoy playing cash games in a festival of their own?

And that’s where Cash Game Festival – the brainchild of Martin ‘Franke’ von Zweigbergk – comes in, having identified this gaping hole in the international poker scene and subsequently devising and honing a player-friendly set-up that not only provides plenty of action across multiple formats and stakes, but also an exciting and even feverish atmosphere to go along with it.

This is why we run an ongoing fortnightly Cash Game Festival Leaderboard – based, simply, on racking up Redbacks (poker loyalty points) while you play cash and qualifying for one of two Freerolls, each with a €1,500 VIP package and €500 in prizes!

The idea is to build up a Team32Red presence at these events, with a package giving qualifiers Accommodation, Travel/Expenses, a VIP Hospitality Package and a cool €500 in stake money. Additionally, our players get to play on the Live TV Table, while the venue-related VIP Hospitality Package is tailored to give qualifiers an all-round holiday experience in popular destinations such as London, Bratislava, Tallinn…

So there you have it – if you like to play cash games, now you have the chance to experience the thrills and spills of a Cash Game Festival holiday courtesy of 32Red. Have fun, good luck, and we’ll see you at the next Festival – Bratislava (19-23 September)!

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Mission Freeroll: €50K to be won!

There’s another one of those no-brainer promotions happening at 32Red (9-25 March) that you’d be a fool to miss. Mission Freeroll puts a very tasty €50,000 worth of prizes on the line for you to take full advantage of.

Easy Money

Two €1,000 Mission Freerolls will be held every day during the promotion, at 5pm and 7pm GMT, and to get your hands on tickets all you need to do is play in any of the qualifying games – namely €10 Max and higher Cash games, Sit & Gos with minimum buy-ins of €2 and Scheduled Tournaments with a minimum buy-in of €5 – and complete simple daily tasks (e.g. winning a NLH pot at showdown with less than a pair).

Bonus Bonuses

In addition to the daily €2,000 in prizes we’ll be awarding the winner of each Freeroll an Immediate Bonus that can be anything from €250 to €1,000!

And to make your playing time as flexible as possible, the tickets will remain valid for up to 7 days, so you can choose when to jump into the action.

And that’s it. So, have fun at the tables, pick up free tickets and good luck in the Mission Freerolls!

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Route 32: Flip Flop to Tallinn

It’s a feather in the cap of any poker venue to be so successful that players want to return, yet Tallinn, Estonia’s picturesque, characterful capital, has gone even further by being selected to play host to the MPN Poker Tour for a third time!

Team32Red is now very well represented at MPNPT festivals around the globe, thanks to 32Red offering an assortment of qualifying bankroll-friendly routes to these excellent events.

Our latest promotion, which runs throughout August, is so bankroll-friendly, in fact, that it’s totally free to take part. Route 32: Flip Flop to Tallinn has over €3000 in MPNPT tickets to win, including a €1,500 MPNPT package for the €150,000 event for the winner and a €550 Main Event seat for the runner-up.

The package includes the €550 buy-in for the €150,000 Main Event, entry to the €110 Side Event, four nights (for two, including breakfast) at the Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel, €300 towards travel/expenses and an invite to the ever-popular Players Welcome Party!

And the whole promo is based around Flip tournaments, where everyone is automatically all-in every hand, so no actual playing is even necessary until the Final (1 September). The top 8 survivors in the nightly (10pm UK) Flips win starting chips for The Final (a standard NLH tournament), and to register for each Flip qualifier you need only make the corresponding number of raked hands for that day (e.g. 5 raked hands for Route 5, 15 for Route 15 and so on).

That’s it – just hit the cash tables as usual, rack up a few raked hands each day to register, and build your starting stack by accumulating chips as the month progresses. Good luck, and have fun!

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€50,000 Cash Drop (May 4-31)

Sometimes something good just falls right into your lap, and this is what happens during our €50,000 Cash Drop promo – every five minutes we’ll be ‘dropping’ €5 into a player’s account, at random, for the rest of the month!

Numbers-wise, this will mean giving away €40,000 in total by the 31st, and to be eligible to receive a cash drop the criteria isn’t rocket science: simply play at our cash tables. All our promotions are fun and interesting, but this particular one is fantastic in its simplicity because our players benefit by virtue of the fact that they’re just enjoying themselves playing cash poker.

It’s also important to note that this is very player-friendly in that poker fans who play a single table are equally likely to be the recipient of a cash drop as those who multi-table!

Meanwhile, if you’re wondering what the other €10,000 of the promotion is for, there’s another element in the form of a €10K Cash Drop Leaderboard. With each cash drop received you’ll earn one point towards the Leaderboard table, and at the end of the month those who have accumulated the most points will win a share of the booty – the more cash drops you get, the bigger your ultimate prize. And that’s not all – to spice proceedings up a bit we’ve added two special additional prizes: a €1500 MPNPT Package and a €550 MPNPT Seat will be awarded to the winner and runner-up respectively.

So, if you’re already a cash games player, then carry on doing what you do best and, if you’re new or inexperienced as far as cash games go, remember that we have bankroll-friendly limits as low as €2 max tables.
Have fun, good luck and see how many cash drops you can collect between now and the end of May…

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Vienna 9: €32K Cash Game Adventure

Vienna 9 – be there or be square. It’s a LIVE cash game, in Vienna, with a massive €30,000 at stake, and you could be part of it simply by doing no more than you usually do at 32Red: namely having a great time playing poker!

We like promotions to be fun, but this one has an ongoing incentive as well as the top prize because it’s based around our popular ‘cash drop’ theme. Here’s how it works: we’ll be making random Cash Drops of €2 at cash games, literally every five minutes, every hour, every day from December 16th until January 6th in our special Virtual Cash Drop promo.

As well as qualifying as one of the Vienna 9 for this big money cash game – which will take place 25th January 2017 and be streamed online on Twitch from the Montesino Casino – you can also win a €1,500 MPN Poker Tour package and a €550 MPNPT seat. The idea is that there will be three free entry qualification tournaments for which you earn the right to play in simply by collecting these (random) virtual cash drops. With each drop your starting stack for a freeroll increases by 1,000 chips, so that a couple of cash drops earn you 2,000 chips, six drops make a starting stack of 6,000 etc. It couldn’t be easier, and all the while at the tables there’s a chance, every five minutes, that money will be added to your account (to be used immediately).

Here’s the freeroll tournament schedule:

To win an all-expenses paid trip to the Vienna 9 Live €30,000 cash game you need to finish in the top three places in a qualifying tournament, with the eventual buy-ins awarded according to final placings as follows:

And there you have it. Win a place at Vienna 9 by playing cash games, seeing money drop into your virtual lap and then qualifying via one of three freeroll tournaments.

Good luck, and have fun!

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Sit & Go Strategy: Changing Gears – Be the Bully

While even one-table Sit & Go tournaments have a multi-table flavour, a key difference is that we’re effectively being fast-forwarded straight into final table mode as soon as we sit down. Thanks to the more rapidly increasing blind levels than we experience during the much, much longer course of a MTT, much of the strategy specific to S&G poker is related to both the blinds and the limited number of prizes. Read more

No Limit Heads Up Cash: Introduction

No Limit Heads Up Cash: Introduction

If you’ve not yet tried out the Heads Up tables at 32Red, here’s a brief strategy guide that should help. Not surprisingly the key factors in HU are position (even more so than usual) and aggression, and often we need to make the most of both. In this game the Dealer is the small blind and acts first pre-flop, but then has position for the rest of the hand. Therefore we should be looking to exploit position when on the button with aggression. The point is that once the flop appears our opponent is out of position, in the dark, and has most likely failed to make a hand strong enough to withstand pressure, while we – having assumed the initiative, and in position – are free to represent the best hand. Unless the opponent has something (or thinks we’re bluffing), then what usually happens is that we get to take the pot right there. Most people avoid complications when out of position because the very next hand it’s their turn to be the aggressor, and it is this mentality that we must be seeking to exploit regardless of what cards we have as the accumulation of all those small pots where both players have missed makes all the difference.

When out of position we are at a considerable disadvantage but all is not lost. There’s nothing to stop us being aggressive here, too, as long as we don’t overdo it and leave ourselves vulnerable to traps against the more observant opponents. However, because it is only pre-flop where we act second it makes sense that it is during this betting stage that we must show aggression with all but monster hands. And of course bets should be big enough to induce a fold, rather than modest raises which simply leave us out of position post-flop. The aim is to both pick up ‘extra’ pots and put our opponent off correctly assuming the initiative when he is in position. This way, by reducing the opposition’s button raising frequency, we get to see more flops with potentially good hands.

While this forms the basis of a solid HU strategy, we also need to take into account how our opponent reacts in certain situations, as well as how our own play is perceived. Some bet the river only with a very strong hand for fear of being raised off the pot, others are non-believers and will call with an underpair. Over time, if we become too predictable, we might notice that the flow of the game seems to be against us, that this or that way of playing a hand no longer has the positive outcome we enjoyed earlier in the session. One action is to simply leave and find an opponent less able to adjust; another is to adjust ourselves and – at least in the short-term (which could be all we need if we manage to win a big pot) – use our ‘predictable’ play to set up a trap by changing tactics.

Throwing in the occasional check-raise is another good way to disrupt our opponent, especially as this introduces an element of uncertainty to future checks (and raises).

Remember, too, that because there is just one player to beat it is not necessary to have a big hand to win, so we should have more faith in – and be aggressive with – lesser made hands than is the case against multiple opponents.

Finally, be prepared for being on the wrong side of all-in pots, so play at an affordable level, especially while getting to grips with this intriguing form of poker.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD)
32Red Poker Ambassador

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No Limit Cash Games: Loose Tables II

No Limit Cash Games:  Loose Tables II

Following on from the Loose Tables introduction, here we feature how different types of loose players make for quite different tables, each requiring very different strategies. These are Loose Passive and Loose Aggressive.

A Loose Passive table has a number of players who have a tendency to limp/call pre-flop with all kinds of hands. This results in a much higher frequency of smallish multi-way pots than is usual.

Significantly, loose passive players, as the name suggests, are unlikely to re-raise us pre-flop, meaning we will get more opportunities on this type of table to get to the flop with hands that offer very good implied odds (such as suited connectors and small pairs) under the radar by joining the limp-fest. These holdings are perfect for multi-way pots. If we miss the flop we’ve had a good value punt, while the trick when hitting big with this or any strong hand is to avoid betting too big post-flop in order to derive maximum value from the passive callers who have caught some kind of (lesser) hand. The ideal scenario is to gradually build the pot and subsequently induce calls at each stage. Remember that with draw-heavy boards we need to bet sufficiently big with our made hands – passive players shouldn’t be given cheap draws any more than other players! If we have a drawing hand ourselves we should take the free card (which we’ll be able to do often) rather than run into potential trouble with a bet.

Playing strong hands pre-flop on a loose passive table, on the other hand, means having to put in hefty raises. Even a conventionally acceptable pre-flop raise of 3xBB might still not prevent loose passive opponents from anyway lining up to see the flop with a collectively wide range of hands, which is very bad news for pocket aces, for example. Instead we need to adopt a betting strategy specific to this situation in order to minimise potential banana skins, namely raising at least 5xBB to properly thin out the opposition.

Loose Aggressive tables are a different animal entirely. Here we have players keen on raising and re-raising pre-flop, the result being larger pots that don’t have as many contenders as a loose passive table. Consequently we won’t be able to liberally enter pots with speculative hands due to the large amount of (re-)raising going on. It’s fine to call a raise with such a hand in late position when it is unlikely another raise is coming to price us out, but a big mistake is to immediately call the opener’s raise with a small pocket pair, for instance, when the table has been routinely seeing re-raises.

As for premium hands like big pairs, then here, too, we can bet strongly. As well as thinning down the field – preferably down to a lone opponent – our big raises are no different to the table style and thus serve to well disguise our hand, and the loose aggressive table character also brings with it the not unlikely possibility that someone will dive in with a re-raise or even an all-in. On a loose passive table we worry a little that we might not be able to get the most out of our big pairs, but against loose aggressive players the action can drag us along to paradise.

Obviously we need to have a decent appreciation of the table dynamics and the players but this is not difficult to get to grips with. Good observation will also help us for the post-flop phase, and we know that on a loose aggressive table we can expect players to pay through the nose with draws, for example. Consequently we should bet very big – we can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, and while we will lose some big pots against flushes and straights, if we succeed in helping the opposition remain true to their loose aggressive tendencies we will profit in the long-term. Being too tricky by checking monsters can often backfire on loose aggressive tables because these players can be quite wary of sudden checks and, importantly, by turning down an opportunity to build the pot we sacrifice making increasingly bigger bets as the hand develops.

Conclusion

On loose passive tables we need to bet extra big with premium hands pre-flop (to thin down the field), not too big with made hands post-flop (to keep the passive caller calling), and take free cards rather than bet.

On loose aggressive tables we should also not be afraid to bet big pre-flop, but should maintain the aggression (when in Rome…) with made hands post-flop.

Good luck at the tables,

Angus Dunnington (AngusD)
32Red Poker Ambassador

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No Limit Cash Games: Loose Tables

No Limit Cash Games: Loose Tables

For the sake of simplicity, cash games can be described as loose, tight or somewhere in between, and players tend to have a preference for the kind of table at which they feel the most comfortable. Of course as people come and go during a session, the nature of the play can change, sometimes quite drastically from one extreme to another. With this in mind it’s worth acquainting ourselves with these morphing table characteristics in order to be able to adjust and alter our strategy accordingly.

Not surprisingly, those tables with the most potential for significant gains/losses due to the higher variance are populated mainly by loose players. A loose player is someone who is quite willing to play (and in doing so pay for) far more hands than normal. The wider the range (for some so wide it can incorporate just about anything) the looser the player, and when a few sit together the result is a table where there is considerable multi-way action, often post-flop and even at showdown.

A good guide when searching for loose tables can be found in the Lobby by looking at the number of players who stay in for the flop – the P/F column – and (to a lesser extent) the average size of each pot – Av.Pot (see image below). In the modern game, due to today’s strategies featuring more aggression, it is quite normal for the majority of tables to have a P/F average percentage in the forties. While this seems more loose than not, a reliable rule is that anything over 45% can be considered loose, while there will usually be a few tables at all levels with a P/F of over 55%, and even higher (albeit rarely will a table consistently have more than 70% of players per flop over a prolonged period). At the other end of the scale, anything less than 40% could be considered ‘tight’ in today’s game. Note that for 6-max tables, for example, we should be looking only at those with at least five players – preferably six – for a decent indication of how loose the play is.

Aggressive loose tables obviously produce bigger pots than passive tables, so keep an eye out for high figures in both these columns. However, this is where we need to make a distinction between two quite different types of loose table, namely Loose Aggressive and Loose Passive. The former is populated mainly by players who like to raise and re-raise before the flop, with larger pots and not quite so high P/F. Loose Passive tables see more players limp/call pre-flop with a wide range of hands, generating smaller pots that have more players.

Clearly, despite both being considered ‘loose’ it is necessary to adopt quite different strategies, which we’ll investigate in future articles. In the meantime, if you want to get a feel of different kinds of table, I suggest dropping down a level or two to better concentrate on focusing on playing styles and so on rather than the usual concerns of profit.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD)
32Red Poker Ambassador

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