Well it's almost time to head
over to the Rio for my day 1.
As always these last few hours
before are pretty nerve-wracking. You wait for this event all year, the
structure of the event (how quickly the blinds and antes go up relative to the
initial 30,000 chip stack) is so favorable such that you should able to make it
well into day 3 or deeper and enjoy the experience - but it only takes one bad
turn of luck or a moment's loss of concentration at any time and the experience
can be cut short.
My biggest fear is having a table with a few young
kids gambling it up because that's the style that prevails on internet poker
tournaments. At some point if the table goes this way you have no choice but to
gamble along with them or you are at a big disadvantage. That's not my game and
in the Main Event the slow structure can favor careful play - not to say that
careful play doesn't include stealing some pots under the right situations like
a fox (see 2005 writeup) and my skills over the years have improved in that way
- but that's way different than playing "uber-aggressively".
So what does that mean? Well
the basic idea of the uber-aggressive gambling style is constantly making big
raises gambling on the idea that the player you are raising is not willing to
take the gamble along with you. Here's an example - lets say I raise preflop
with a beautiful pair of Kings and get two callers. The flop comes say with a
Jack, seven and a four with two spades. I make a nice size bet and one of these
22 year olds reraises me all in. Now he could have made three sevens lets say
but more likely he has two spades (needing a fifth spade for a flush) or a five
and six (needing a four or eight for a straight) or maybe just a single pair or
MAYBE JUST NOTHING!. He's gambling that I'll fold. Now put yourself in my
position - even if I knew (e.g. I saw his cards) he doesn't have three of a kind
and is pulling for a flush - he'll only complete the flush 1 time out of 3. So
I'm a 2 out of 3 shot to double up with a lot of chips. But am I willing to put
my tournament on the line with a 1 out of 3 shot of going bust right away? Would
you be? They're gambling that you won't and if you don't they keep building up
their stack which allows them to withstand losing some of these confrontations.
If they don't build up a big enough stack then they're likely out when they
inevitably lose some of these confrontations. They'd rather build up a stack
quickly so they can use their bigger stack size to increase their intimidation
tactics or go bust quickly. The last thing they want to do is grind away slowly
and be on the other side of these decisions. In their mind that's just part of
the game and they're on to another tournament online tonight. On the other hand
if you have some of these gamblers at the table and you choose to "wait for a
better spot" rather than risk your tournament life right away they can steal
your chips all day long. So at some point you may be forced to gamble! I hate
that.
Many players go deep with both styles. Because some
gamblers get there it can look like the style inevitably works but really its an
illusion - you're just seeing the small percentage that were able to build up
the big stack while the rest went bust. No doubt the non gamblers that get there
had to withstand some of these confrontations along the way but weren't
necessarily looking for them constantly (I think). You do wonder. It's almost
like why a lot of people got caught up in the housing bubble - at some point you
wonder if you're a sucker for not jumping in when you watch others build up
wealth by constantly flipping houses (i.e. winning these smaller pots when the
other guy backs down) even though you know it could be playing with fire. And if
the tournament "ends before 2007 rolls around" then that style looks correct.
You want to believe that slow and steady will get you there but could it be that
you have to play with fire more than you're comfortable with to go deep in one
of these things?
Anyway those are the thoughts I'm tortured with right
now. I'm hoping I'm not faced with such a table and I can stick to my game
waiting for the right hands, conserving chips and stealing pots without cards
when the situation is right and my opponent inadvertently give away weakness.
I'm confident in my ability to read other players to take advantage of these
situations and I generally have finished in the top 15% to 20%. But they only
pay the top 10% and I've only gone really deep (top 3%) once - so was I only a
few more good hands away from getting deeper with a few less obvious mistakes or
is it inevitable that the only way to get really deep is to jump in like a lunatic
and gamble it up on occasion - oops there I go again! Torture! And I can tell
you it's a lot more tortuous when you're in the 11th hour of play for the day
and you're tired and you REALLY, REALLY want more chips and you think maybe its
time to MAKE something happen and not just wait for the right circumstances.
So what's my plan for today?
Well unless there are too many gamblers at my table I can easily play my game
all day today because the blinds and antes won't get too high today. My goal is
to play "perfect poker" - to make every decision correctly (you can't always be
right because you can't exactly know what the other guy has but you can make the
best statistical decision based on the probabilities of what he has) to feel
minimum emotion, to concentrate at picking up information about how each of the
other players play (and hopefully tells) so that I can make informed decisions
when I get involved in a pot with them and to have the discipline to not give
any information away (no talking about my hands, acting slowly and deliberately
and no outward reaction to any situations). If I can do that then I can feel
empowered no matter what today's outcome. I have never been able to play perfect
poker in this way (virtually no one can) but I do want to believe that if I can
get closer to perfection than I have in previous years that perhaps that's the
ticket to a deeper without having to seriously think about the higher risk style
that is tantamount to buying a lottery ticket.
I'll work hard to keep you
posted!
Mike