Get Back To Where You Once Belonged

I'm taking a break from the sit and goes for a while, as I mentioned before. Besides the obvious frustration I've been having with these lately, I also have an appropriate 200BB bankroll for the .50/1 ring games.

Felicia Lee was gracious enough to point me in the direction of an article about how to deal with Sit and Goes. Thank you very much Felicia!

Basically, the article points out the idea that you really should just click the "I'm not here, post my blinds and fold stuff thanks bye" button until the blinds get to 50/100, then shift into "The System" mode. The more I think about it, even though it flies in the face of "strong" play, it's a work of art. Consider, early in the tournament you'll have the nutjobs who will shove all-in with A4o, get called by some guy with AKs and miracle off a straight. This will both serve to thin the field, and keep these gawdaweful players in the game. Come around the 50/100 blinds, and these guys suddenly shift into self-preservation mode. You're going to be pretty close to being the short stack, if not so, so your only real weapon is to push all-in and isolate when you think you have the best of it. You gotta figure that, you're either going to bleed to death slowly or get killed instantly as the small stack, so you might as well make a run for it. Add to this the idea that 6th and 4th pay exactly the same amount, and you have yourself a viable system. It takes balls of solid brass to push your stack in pre-flop, but again, it takes even bigger rocks to call it down, unless you're chip dominant by a goodly amount. If you're at T600 in chips, you're basically looking at a "double or die" situation anyway. One would also hope that, to this point, the rest of the table has noticed that you're a folding machine and hopefully they'll assume you're a tightwad, thus when you shove all-in, they'll be more inclined to assume you have the nuts.

In the next few days, I'll log into a $5 or $10 sit and go and give this a spin. The only hole I see in this plan is, and it's happened to me before, you sit there obediently mucking everything except AA until the 4th round. You've tossed KK into the muck. You've tossed AQs into the muck. Now it's crunch time and all of the sudden you're collecting rags. A couple of orbits of this and your T600 stack is now a T300 stack, and you've got as much pull on the table as Al Gore has over the Internet. Doubling up a T300 stack ain't gonna cut it when all of the sudden the blinds are 100/200 or worse, and by this time the bigger stacks take on a vulture like stance, stealing your blinds and waiting for you to die. What the article doesn't address is when you're getting pinched, what would be a decent play. If I'm down to T500 and facing down another round of T200 blinds, is it good to play, say, A6o? K7o? With T500, I can expect AT LEAST one caller. Total crapshoot at that point, not that I'd have much choice.

Oh well, enough of the theory and speculation. You either get cards or lose, basically, but that's the way it is in the S&G tourneys anyway. I'll get back to the letter of that system and see what comes of it, but bottom line is, the sit and goes did the job of taking my "variance intolerant" bankroll and brought it to a level where I can comfortably play in the ring games.

Speaking of ring games, today was pretty good. I found a really juicy table of calling stations and went to work. Was up and down a little bit for a while when I hit two real nice hands. The last one was beautiful. I'm in early position and get AKs. I raise and get 4 callers, including the big blind. The flop comes down 3s, 7h, Ts. UTG checks and I bet out. Cutoff raises and the BB folds out. I re-raise and it's ram and jam time, baby! 3 calls to the reraise, so we're still 4 seeing the turn, which comes a 6h. Hmmm... I check it down and it's checked to the CO, who bets. I call it along with 2 others. One folds. The river comes down a beautiful 5s. Payday. I bet out and am raised by middle position, who to this point has been calling away, putting him all-in. No doubt he's either filled his gutshot straight or flushed out. CO calls the two bets, and I figure him for either top pair top kicker (he's done this before) or two pairs. I raise it to three bets. Unfortunately MP was all-in, or I'm sure it would have been capped. CO calls the three bets and I rake in a monster. You'll never guess what these two guys had.

Middle position held 9c9h for a pair of 9's.
Cutoff position held AdTd for a pair of 10's with top kicker.

I love Party Poker. MP was dead as soon as the flop hit, yet he kept calling down. The only guy who had any business being in that pot was CO, and when that river card hit and I went raise crazy, I'm sure he knew what was coming, but by this time the pot was huge and he was almost obligated to call it down. I gotta wonder what he'd have done with a capped river, though. Poor guy. I almost feel sorry for him.

Almost.

Take for the day: +$22.25