Those of you who have read my blog for a year or so may remember the “Beanie and Annie” blog where I was able to loosen up my tournament game and play deeper into hands because of some advice I got from our very own Beanie and an article that Annie Duke wrote. As it turns out, I didn’t go far enough. In fact, I have discovered a need to basically change up my whole tournament game.The best part of this little revelation is that I now have a much better understanding of why many of the ranked players on pocketfives (and many other highly respected online tournament players) play the way they do. <READMORE>For the last year or so I have had the belief that many of the ranked players really aren’t great players, they simply play a ton of tournaments. Don’t get me wrong here, between playing against them and seeing their results I have always had a ton of respect for guys like JohnnyBax. He’s simply a monster player and deserves all the credit he gets. The same goes for most of the ranked players.
From looking at tournament databases and SNG tracking sites I have seen that some of the ranked players don’t play well in cash games, and many of them don’t play well in sit and goes. This most recent change in my thinking has really explained why that happens so often.
When I first started playing a lot of tournaments I was very tight. I had read Cloutier and McEvoy’s Pot-limit and No-limit Hold Em and I knew that tight was right. In the $30 buy in multi-table tournaments that I was playing, especially back in those days when fish were more plentiful online, that approach was probably a very good one. When I wrote the Beanie and Annie blog it was because I had moved up both in buy-in and in skill, and needed to change my game. The problem was that I didn’t change it nearly enough.
I used to see some of the ranked players doing things that I thought were much too aggressive and loose and gambling like mad, often even when they didn’t have the best of it. I assumed that they were playing so many tournaments and only interested in the top few places so a little extra gamble was just part of getting enough wins to be ranked, get sponsorship and endorsement deals etc. In a rare victory for my brain over my big mouth I kept my mouth shut about it, said good things about ranked players when I was asked, and tried not to be critical of people who clearly knew what they were doing, even if I didn’t agree with it or understand why.
My won ROI in tournaments was excellent, and I have always had confidence in my own abilities, so I just assumed I knew what I was doing and that I had the best approach to the game. Just because other people were doing things differently was no reason for me to question my game. Even if those people were some of the very best in the world. I try so hard to be a student all the time and follow the path of knowledge, and then I realize that my ego has once again gotten in the way.
After extensive work with an ICM and some numbers crunching I have come to realize that I need to gamble A LOT more. In fact the vast majority of online tournament players do. The vast majority of players will tell you that they try to avoid coin flips unless they have some fold equity moving all-in or some other advantage like some extra money in the pot. The vast majority of people also can’t find Iraq on a map.
A few articles have been written on this subject, most of them ignored. My first clue was an article by Zee Justin a while back that proved there are times when you should move all-in with any hand, and even if your opponents knew you were doing it they shouldn’t call you. Sounds like a paradox, but it isn’t. After working with ICM’s quite a bit myself lately and doing some thinking I was referred to this article by Matt Matros. Matt proved some things I had been wondering about, and did so in a very concise way that is very hard to argue with.
I recommend you go read the article, but basically it proves (well I think it does) that taking coin flips is often a smart move, sometimes even when you are behind! I was always one of the guys who thought that my skill level would win me the money without taking too many risks. Wrong again.
I guess the moral of the story is that getting all your chips in the middle is not a bad thing, and that when I see a monster tourney player get his chips in the middle when he’s slightly behind I can say “well done sir, good play” and learn something from it.
Using an ICM to work on SNG concepts has really helped as well, pointing out so many situations where being more aggressive when the blinds get big is clearly the best play, even when I can be called and knocked out at any time. Look out for me in tournaments now, I'll be the guy who is raising you.
I’ll see you at the final table (maybe a little more often),
Fox
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