Played a $5 SnG at lunch today. I made the money, but just barely. At one point, I was up to T6500 chips on the bubble, with everyone else tied for second down around T2000 or so. Instead of sitting back and letting them go to war with each other, I had to get cute with ATs, reraising what looked like a blind steal from the button when I was in the BB. The opp pushed on my reraise, and stupid me called. His KQ hit two pair on the turn to take a chunk out of my stack. Suddenly I was in second place and, with the blinds getting huge, I found myself fighting for my tournament life.
The guru once told a story of a live tournament he played in up in Phoenix. He had made the final table and had a moderate chip advantage over the rest of the table. He says he mucked pocket kings at one point against a big raise and call because "You have to keep your eye on the ball. What is the point of going to war with KK against what might have been AA or some drawing hand that could have sucked out on me and brought me back down to an average chip stack?" At the time I thought this was crazy, but now I think I understand what he was saying. The exponential payout structure meant that just outlasting one more additional player would more than double his expected cash payout. In other words, pick your battles... and, just as importantly, sometimes avoid all battles and let the others at the table go to war with each other.
In the end, I monied in third place in my lunchtime SnG, but, damn, I had a legitimate shot at winning the thing outright if I'd just sat back and maintained my big stack going into the money. In hindsight, it's obvious what I did wrong, but in the heat of the battle I blew it. Just wish I could somehow stop my aggressive tendencies when they can do more harm than good.
Okay, that's the bad news. The good news is I (sort of) employed a new, "selective aggressive" tactic modeled on Annette Obrestad's play to build my original big chip stack during the middle portion of the game. Of course I played good cards in position throughout the game (and tight in the beginning of the tourney, too), but as the blinds started to creep up, I began to play some real crazy cards from out of position occasionally into players that I thought were weak, tight, and/or passive. More often than not, I got them to lay down the better hand to my reraises and re-steals. My buddy Bret has dubbed this technique "Annette Roulette," which seems to describe it perfectly. It's kinda like Russian Roulette; it works really well... until it doesn't. In other words, it's a very powerful technique, but the key to making it works seems to be being able to Get Off A Losing Hand when they play back at you. It's also important to be selective with the technique; i.e., it is not the all-in-all-the-time madness that Obrestad sometimes appears to be playing. It's definitely more targeted (and subtle) than that. I'll continue to experiment with it and see if I can fine tune the method...
24-Hour Bankroll Change: -0.2%
All-in for now...
-Bug
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