Secrets of the Amateurs

At the risk of getting it loudly, it's been another good month. Even better than August, in fact. After a fair amount of moving round the houses in terms of game selection I am settling back down to my first love - MTTs. What I have finally figured out is that the best game for me is one where I'm playing to win all the chips, but the majority of the field isn't. In a super or a Sit-and-Go, I can't play to win all the chips. In a single table winner take all (like the WCOOP double shootouts I have been dabbling in), sure I can play to win all the chips, the problem is, so is everyone else (who isn't a complete idiot).

It's the MTTs where throwing survival to the wind doesn't cost me very much (if anything at all), while a good proportion of the field are trying to survive, providing me with a lot of vital fold equity. I have also stepped up a level, which has helped. This is partially because of something Bushy said to me in Vegas. He said that I should have been playing higher [than $225 single tables] because as you move up, the players just aren't that much better. I now have little doubt that this applies to online tournaments too. Some of the players on Party and Pokerroom, in the $100 tournaments, I just don't know who is giving these people $100 to play poker with. Because they surely can't be winning it. It's incredible.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh, because there are so many people around who are completely oblivious to two key tournament concepts. 1) Putting your opponent on a range of hands instead of just pulling one out of the air and 2) manipulating the betting (especially pre-flop) so that you have the fold equity and not your opponent. Anyway, I can mention my biggest ever win on Pokerstars, in 7 years, because it's a bit pathetic - $4000 in a $30 rebuy. Hooray ! Hopefully I can improve that soon, because the play in the $50 and even $100 rebuy comps is very soft.

In other news, I was reading a tournament report the other day which featured a super-satellite situation around the bubble where player A moves in and player B (the hero) goes into a dwell-up with Aces. B tells A he has Aces, and A responds that he has Aces too (in fact he had Queens). I'm thinking, can they do that ? Surely they can't talk about their hands to inhibit action, especially not in a super ! But on further consideration I thought "who gives a flying toss". You can do what you like in live supers because it's never going to affect me. If you ever see me playing a live super again you have my full permission, no, instruction, to apply a double-handed chop to the back of my neck and shout "BOOOOM Headshot !" (as is the vogue online) because I never ever want to play one again.