Tobias Reinkemeier Poker Strategy

If you're a casual poker fan you might not know Tobias Reinkemeier by name, but if you ever watched more than one major televised tournament you no doubt seen his face before. This brilliant german grinder, also known as PokerNoob999 online, never won a WPT, EPT or WSOP title yet he still managed to win enough money ($11,195,906 to be exact) to earn himself a place in the top 50 of the All-Time Money List surpassing many one-time donkament winners including some WSOP champions.

Reinkemeier is a very successful high roller tournament player, and even though he's still very young, he's also extremely experienced. Tobias Reinkemeier is an amazing grinder who deserves a lot more recognition and in this article, we're going to take a closer look at some great hands that he's been involved in.

Them Blockers

Let's begin with a real treat. A hand that shows exactly how brilliant of a player Tobias Reinkemeier is. PokerNoob999 made a standard open raise with QQ followed by a somewhat unusual though perfectly acceptable call vs. Jonathan Duhamel's preflop 3bet, especially when we take the stacks and the context of a final table into account. The theme of conservative play in a deep stack situation continued on the flop where Tobias just called Duhamel's cbet. On the turn, after WSOP champion decided to slow down, Reinkemeier went for a value bet and got called.

The river brought in an 8c that completed every draw possible on this texture. Jonathan correctly recognized that he should lead-value bet in this spot in order to get a call from hands like the one Tobias was holding. However, the German player managed to get one level above in his thought process largely due to the fact that he was holding two blockers to the nut straight. In those narrow situations where players represent a relatively small amount of combinations the importance of removal effect increases exponentially and Reinkemeier was perfectly aware of that.

Losing Less = Winning

Everyone who plays poker with any degree of seriousness quickly realizes that losing is a big part of the game. Even the most aggressive players are able to win only around 55% of hands in which they saw a flop, losing sessions are a common occurrence even for really good players and on the whole managing one's loses is an important part of the game. Famous poker player and author Tommy Angelo often mention the fact that "losing less is a form of winning" and the hand linked above is a great example of that. Preflop, turn and river were fairly standard and there's not much to say about those streets but the flop is certainly worth our attention.

Many inexperienced players, and even more experienced grinders would fire off a value cbet on this texture and it might even be a right play depending on the environment, but when you're facing off against a player like Jason Mercier you have to adjust your game accordingly. There's not a lot of hand combinations that Reinkemeier could've hoped to get three streets of value from and on a low coordinated board like that betting the flop often leads to a number of tough spots, especially against a skilled opponent.

Relentless Preflop Pressure

You can't be a successful poker player in this day and age without a very solid and aggressive preflop strategy. This is doubly true in a tournament context where dynamic stack sizes make preflop decisions much more complicated than they usually are in a cash game environment. In this hand from Party Premier League, Reinkemeier used his stack as a leverage, putting the maximum amount of pressure on his opponent and capitalizing on his misstep.

Shak was in a very awkward stack size position that didn't allow him to shove particularly wide. PokerNoob999 realized that and used his chip leader status to win some chips via fold equity alone, which in a long run can spell a difference between a great tournament grinder and merely a good one.