Railbirding – How to Effectively Learn
from Watching Online Poker Tournament Pros
Watching The Expert Online Tournament Players In Action Can Do Wonders For Your Game.
Find Out How Here.
Online Poker Tournament Success attainable only to those who never stop learning. Joining the next WPT Bootcamp or one of the many excellent online poker training video websites would be great… but many players bankrolls do not stretch this far.
Railing – or watching Online Tournament Professionals play in real time can be a valuable source of information for any aspiring MTT player. However this needs to be approached in a structured way. This article will look at the basics of getting the most from railing the tournament pros, looking at the questions of who to rail and how to best decipher the wealth of information available.
Who Are The Right Poker Tournament Professionals to Rail?
The ‘household name’ players – made famous from TV and the World Series – may not be the best people to watch. Think of it this way, Jamie Gold might have won the 2006 World Series but does his playing style online merit your attention? Quite probably no, there are better targets playing mid-level online MTTs with great success – these players are beating the game you are learning to play and should be your primary railing candidates. So how do you identify likely MTT Professionals to rail? Our suggestion here is to check out the Pocket Fives.
Tournament Leaderboards
These leaderboards track online tournament professionals by recent results and give you a handy list of winners on a monthly and yearly basis. Sure it is possible for someone to have a ‘lucky run’ of a few tournaments and jump up the rankings – however over the course of a year luck will even out and those at the top of the leaderboard will be the players with a winning online poker strategy.
A few suggestions:
- Annette_15 – Prodigy from Norway and consistent mid to high level MTT winner.
- Belowabove – Loose and Aggressive style and winner of 100’s of online tournaments.
- Imperium – A constant feature at the top of the pocket fives leaderboards
- Sheets – Excellent Online Pro, plays high stakes SNGs as well as MTTS
How To Get the most from Time Spent Railing?
So you have chosen your railing target and are watching them in real time in an online Multi table tournament. What should you look out for that will help you improve your own online poker play?
We will start with individual hands and then look at general situations. The first thing to mention is that showdowns are your ideal scenario here. These will allow you to see the cards of the players in the hand and then to work backwards through the betting to give you insight into the thought process involved.
It is the ability to work backwards in a logical manner that will give you the most information from any one hand. The best starting point is not the first betting in the hand but the stack sizes and table position of the players involved – as well as those not involved.
You should be constantly asking questions. Why did Annette_15 raise to 2000 with a stack of 15000 given the action ahead, table position and stack sizes of both those in the hand and those yet to act? After the flop and opponent bet of 3000 chips what range of hands did She put her opponent on and why did She think flat calling was the best play?
By critically asking questions of each hand you will start to understand the thought processes behind them. When similar situations arise in your own games you will then be armed with some of the key factors to think about when making your own decisions.
Since poker decisions are dependant on so many situational and opponent specific factors it is the approach or thinking process you are looking for – rather than seeing railing as a way to answer specific questions, try see it as a way of improving your logical thinking processes!
Of course not every hand will result in a showdown. However the astute railer can still learn from their chosen online tournament pro without this. The keys here are to look for ‘gear changes’ in online tournament play.
There will always be points, due to rising blinds, dangerous stack sizes or the approach of the bubble where a change in strategy is required. If you see a player raising every hand, or conversely going from loose to tight, you can analyze the situation and stack sizes and ask yourself why this is now the correct play. The insights gained from situational factors can be just as beneficial to learning as the hands shown down!
Which is the best place to rail the pros??
Not all poker sites are equal when it comes to railing. While Pokerstars has the biggest selection of online poker tournaments and pro players the hand history does not allow you to see all shown-down cards unless you are participating in the tournament yourself.
Full Tilt Poker on the other hand does let you see this information. As the second largest internationally available poker room the number of MTTs and Pro players to rail is very large. If you are not already a Full Tilt player check them out today – in addition to improving your game there is a huge 100% up to $600 sign-up bonus with bonus / referral code SNGPLANET.
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