Playing an online MTT I find myself in familiar territory, 15 players left and 12 spots get paid, Its bubble time. I think bubble play has been talked to death and everybody knows the fundamentals, identify the players who appear to be more interested in making the money than winning the competition and attack them as they are more likely to fold marginal hands. Don’t attack big stack because they have more wiggle room to make close calls and avoid raising small stacks to steal because of the exact opposite, they have to make a move and a broader range than usual will do. So the only people left to attack are the mid stacks, easy peasy.

But what happens when the other players refuse to comply? Some quick examples, I found myself above average in a MTT, around about 35K. With blinds at 750-1500 and a 250 running ante at a nine handed table this put over 4K in the middle. I find A 9 of clubs from the button and bump it to 8K, 5 times the big blind. The slight over raise is designed to force a fold from the big blind. Now he is sitting on a smallish stack of 18K but has plenty of play left so he should be able to fold all but the best of hands. I have notes on this particular player so know he is a tight and solid player and has plenty of MTT experience.

The big blind shoves which can only mean trouble, he knows I will call his shove in this situation the vast majority of times because the pot is offering me very attractive odds (4 + 8 + 18 = 30 / 11K about 2.7-1) In this case the big blind shoves and I do the maths umm and arr then make a call I was always going to have to make. He tables A 4 and to say im shocked is an understatement, I haven’t been this pleasantly surprised since the last time West Ham won a game(early 1980’s I think). I was stunned to be honest and win a big pot when we both miss and my Ace high with a nine kicker is good enough.

Now this was on a small site, so as I mentioned I know this guys play and he is a very tight solid player whose game I respect. Some players think the point of poker is to get in too as many coin flip situations as possible, this player is definitely not one of them so what to make of his move? Maybe he was not concentrating and miscalculated his fold equity? Well no, he was chatting to an acquaintance at the table and this person mentioned the call, to which he replied ‘I thought he was making a bubble move’. Well of course with A 9 I was, but putting it all in with A 4 is not a move I expected in this gents arsenal. He made this move expecting the call and was expecting he was ahead if only slightly.

So this hand got me thinking I needed to take a closer look at general bubble play and how players where changing there styles. The next time I approached the bubble I made a similar move with KQ against a similar sized stack. This time I had not previously played with this individual before but through 3 levels of play I had observed him playing what seemed a tight solid game. This time I open shoved from the cut-off and he instantly called, this time showing KJ. Another unexpectedly nice spot but unfortunately for me this time a Jack flopped and I was left crippled. My opponent types in the chat box ‘sorry, I thought you were making a move!’

Some more close observations of similar situations led me to a rather generic conclusion; something is happening to the way the majority of players approach the bubble. I know this is obviously a mass generalisation but we make a lot of these in poker because of a lack of hard facts so please grant me a little lee way in this respect. A seed change in certain facets of the game is nothing new, there was a time when a minimum re-raise always meant aces and late position over raising nearly always meant nothing but a steal attempt. Very good players see these situations and begin to replicate them against other players to simulate situation’s they know they would have experienced before.

Generally adopted stratagems change all the time, and to me at least it appears one might be occurring in bubble play. After all once a certain style of play is written about enough and a large number of players absorb and begin to utilise what’s been written then it becomes an accepted standard of play and a derivation needs be found. As a result I have adapted my bubble play because of the general aggression of those around me.

I am now playing a lot tighter and observing my opponents a lot more to gather information to attack those who I believe are trying to make maximum use of the bubble. Take an average table, you will find say 3 small stacks and 3 large stacks and 4 roughly average stacks. Most of the big stacks are going to be making moves against the middle stacks and playing genuine hands against the other big stacks and small stacks. Because they are limited to who they can make moves against, this should give you an awful lot of information about how they are playing genuine hands and when they are applying pressure with marginal hands or rubbish.

The poker related media has expanded to a huge extent in the last two years. We now have many more poker magazines, poker TV stations, tactical training books and aids and the web is littered with poker related sites. It’s fair to say that any new tactical thinking will reach a much larger number of players in a much quicker time scale that at any point previously. Our job as players is to adapt to these much broader and faster changing styles as quickly as possible to maximise profit.
Kevin Stevens is Article Editor for UKpokerinfo and content writer for UKpokernews