Secrets of the Amateurs

Simon G posted an excellent tip on the Mob Forum today - placing pearls before swine, as it were ! The essence of it is that when you are chip leader four-handed, it' s in your interest to keep a very small stack in (rather than knock him out) so that you can keep robbing the medium stacks. It's something I have done on occasion - I remember one MTT on Stars around the bubble when I was chipped up, and I passed a rag hand to a small stack's all in for this very reason. For the next 10 minutes, the rest of the table talked about how stupid I was, while I stole another 4000 chips.

It doesn't come up very often in my Sit and Goes because I prefer to come from behind (so to speak). Of course I would rather have 3000 chips than 1000 when the crunch time comes, but it's not 3 times as good, no way. I'd rather make sure I'm there at the business end than chase too many chips in the early and middle stages.

Nonetheless the post demonstrates how you should think ahead. I don't like being in the kind of situation where the chips are say 4000-3000-1500-1500, and you're one of the 1500s. The big stacks have a big edge here. If I can foresee this situation developing a level earlier, maybe when 5-handed, I will gamble a lot more knowing that if I gamble and lose, I'm not losing as much as I might do normally (because waiting will lead to this bad situation). Of course I'm gambling as the first one to enter the pot, but gambling all the same. Think ahead and think out of the box when playing on-line Sit and Goes.