Jackal Pack

from the Author

Definition I found of a Jackal: Omnivorous predator as well as scavenger that preys on the weak and vulnerable

Once I read that I knew I had a name for this profile because that is exactly what it does… Prey on the weak and vulnerable. One of the most important aspects of tournament poker is sustaining or increasing your chip stack even when you go card dead. Most profiles just play “ABC” poker, meaning they just waits for good cards and if they don’t get any they just get blinded out. This profile is designed to get into pots that look like they will be safe to steal later on. I have put a lot of time into fine tuning its decision making on when to get into a pot with the intention of stealing it and the results have been great.

So now that you know how it will play when you are card dead, what about when it is actually catching some cards? Well I can tell you this… it’s not just going to bet the pot whenever you have a decent hand. This profile will slow play when it’s safe and profitable, jam the pot when it needs to, change its play based on stack size, and avoid dangerous situations. Anyone who has played on Full Tilt knows how they like to set you up with cooler hands: AJ vs AK, pair vs bigger pair, etc. I took a lot of time to go back and look through all the hands and situations that were getting us in trouble and changed the way it plays them to avoid those FT setup hands.

The thing that really separates this profile from the others is its push code. Too many times I have seen profiles push all in with a hand regardless of the actions before it and that is an extremely costly mistake in tournament poker. This profile’s push code does an amazing job in taking your opponents actions into account before shoving. It is great at finding the right situation that gives it the best chances to double up.

Now you know how it plays, but does it work? Well I am a believer in “Actions speak louder than words,” so check out the graphs below for a quick idea of what this thing can do. It has killed the sngmtts over a sample of about 1,000 games, crushed the miniFTOPS events, and grinds out the low buy in mtts. For a more in depth look at what this profile has done for me check out my Rags to Riches challenge. I started off that challenge using other profiles but switched to this once I saw it’s potential. I would say I used this profile for about 80% of the challenge and built it up to where it is now

Royal’s results from his Target Practice journal. Buy ins from $1-$30.

ROI: 40.8%
ITM: 19.6%