Any poker players in our midst? No? Good!
I'm regretfully an addict. So much so that I wrote this little something and posted it in the poker school online forum. I'm a poker school drop-out.
THE LONG GAME - INSIDE THE HEAD OF A DONK
QUOTE=HoaryGill;411015]
I am donkey
hear me suck
on my river
you will muck
caught you stealin
with no truck
left you cryin
bout your luck
I must be a donkey. I've been called that enough times, maybe it's starting to sink in. But I have to laugh. Anyone ever notice how it's just the hand losers that call the hand winners donkeys? "What? Because you thought I should fold to your weenie bet? 'Ha', I say!"
No gutz, no gory!
But I'm not here to talk about the bingo tournament aspects of play money equivalent low-stakes MTTs
nah, it's more about avoiding the prevalent madness of the early stages of such tournaments.
Ya gotta love this game though, eh? : everyone is a freakin' genius! Of course you can usually rely on their genius finishing them off as they let their egoes and contempt (emotion) for what they believe are lesser intellects, influence their play. I have no fears or worries of making occasional donk plays because the way I see it is if you've got them thinking you're a donkey then you have an edge on them. You want them to think you're a donk. Get 'em eating outa your hand - then, when the moment is right, pounce!
So sure, I go with luck when it's running well. Why shouldn't I? There's great sport in seeing self-smug geniuses blow a gasket or two. Oh, they love to make themselves look smart by spouting off numbers, odds, outs and percentages, but I gotta tell ya something, pal, all the knowledge of your exact odds will not affect one iota what the next card in the deck is. That was all predetermined in the shuffle and the deal, and when that one in a million shot comes down, how about you just take it like a man and spare everyone your hard-luck bad-beat drivel? Royal flushes happen. Quads happen. Big boats get sunk by bigger boats. Here's a tissue. Suck it up and move on.
The game is 90% luck (variance? Don't make me laugh! A rose by any other name...) and luck, if you haven't figured it out, tends to run in waves. And sure, you can do a lot to influence your luck in the way you bet, but the only real skill in this game is in knowing how to ride that wave of luck, and in having a keen developed sense of when to jump off that wave before you get caught up in its deadly undertow. That's called cutting your losses. So you don't get dragged out to sea where you end up in that fool's game of trying to play catch-up.
The best way, in my opinion, of limiting your bad luck is by limiting the number of hands you get involved in. Want to know about odds? I'll tell you about odds: odds are you lose! STAY OUT OF HANDS! This should be a key strategy in lasting in any kind of tournament and making it to the money or final table. Don't be upset when you see a hand go down that you would have won. The important thing about those hands is someone lost, so it's all good. Don't sweat it. It's not your hand. And as I like to put it, you have to fold a lot of best hands to make it to the money.
Large multi-table tournaments are jam-packed full of all manner of cut-throats, desperados, donkeys, and assorted egoes and geniuses, along with multitudes of Albanians, Romanians, and the like, who have virtually nothing to live for, and will happily eliminate each other to their hearts' content until a mere 15 or 20 minutes later, anywhere from a third to a half of the field is gone, in the 2-cent 990, for example, or the 10-cent 360. Just sit back and enjoy the fireworks. The winners are just temporarily holding those chips for you - or so you hope. lol
;?)
So I'd like to share a strategy/system I thought of, to help or hinder your long game, that I simply call see-3 (c-3). It can be used effectively in single table tournaments too, but I have to say that in spite of its simplicity, it can be extremely difficult to adhere to if you're as undisciplined as I am. It's always a b*tch when you can't even stick to your own rules! But invariably I can say to myself every time I fail to make it to the money, "you'd still be in the game if you'd stuck to playing see-3, idiot!"
Well you know how it is. You just have to play those premium cards when you get 'em. No discipline. You can't help yourself. But in low-stakes virtual play-money free-roll bingo tournaments, you're going to lose with those high pocket pairs more than win with them.
So the whole premise to see-3 is you don't play any hands until you've seen 3 shown-down hands that you would have won had you played them. Indeed, you avoid playing everything but the blinds and button, and even then you don't play raised pots except tentatively under favorable circumstances. Instinct and experience can guide you, but for the most part you just play scared.
Of course as chance would have it, seeing 3 shown hands you'd have won can happen very quickly or as more often is the case (which is why you should stay out of hands) can seemingly take forever! So there are the necessary adaptations for both cases: following c-3 with see-1/play-1 in the former and an assessed point plan for the latter. This can be arbitrary (come up with your own formula) but I like to count 10 points per 'see', as in see 10 hands not shown-down that you think you might have won and count them as one 'see'. It's basically a timing system anyway which you can tweak as you see fit depending on the size of tournament or how quickly those 'points' come.
One benefit of this method of timing your play is that in the meantime while you're waiting for your arbitrary criteria to be met, is you get to see and gauge the play of everyone else while they have not clue one as to how you play, which gives you a tight image and a marginal advantage over them when you finally do play.
Another rather interesting and somewhat amusing aspect is that being an avid poker player as you are, you really do want to play, and so you're actually hoping to see those sets, straights, flushes, boats and quads you would have won with just so you can count one 'see'. lol ...because usually, you know, you don't want to see that you would have won when you've folded!
It's literally poker heresy and maybe that's why I like it. But I'll be damned if I could actually stick to the plan. It is hard to do. Bet ya can't!
So naturally I've become quite adept at playing short stacked, and as I put it, riding that cusp of elimination all the way to the money. Can't tell you how many times I've been short stack at final table - a scenario I'm only all-too-familiar with.
I'm regretfully an addict. So much so that I wrote this little something and posted it in the poker school online forum. I'm a poker school drop-out.
THE LONG GAME - INSIDE THE HEAD OF A DONK
QUOTE=HoaryGill;411015]
I am donkey
hear me suck
on my river
you will muck
caught you stealin
with no truck
left you cryin
bout your luck
I must be a donkey. I've been called that enough times, maybe it's starting to sink in. But I have to laugh. Anyone ever notice how it's just the hand losers that call the hand winners donkeys? "What? Because you thought I should fold to your weenie bet? 'Ha', I say!"
No gutz, no gory!
But I'm not here to talk about the bingo tournament aspects of play money equivalent low-stakes MTTs
nah, it's more about avoiding the prevalent madness of the early stages of such tournaments.
Ya gotta love this game though, eh? : everyone is a freakin' genius! Of course you can usually rely on their genius finishing them off as they let their egoes and contempt (emotion) for what they believe are lesser intellects, influence their play. I have no fears or worries of making occasional donk plays because the way I see it is if you've got them thinking you're a donkey then you have an edge on them. You want them to think you're a donk. Get 'em eating outa your hand - then, when the moment is right, pounce!
So sure, I go with luck when it's running well. Why shouldn't I? There's great sport in seeing self-smug geniuses blow a gasket or two. Oh, they love to make themselves look smart by spouting off numbers, odds, outs and percentages, but I gotta tell ya something, pal, all the knowledge of your exact odds will not affect one iota what the next card in the deck is. That was all predetermined in the shuffle and the deal, and when that one in a million shot comes down, how about you just take it like a man and spare everyone your hard-luck bad-beat drivel? Royal flushes happen. Quads happen. Big boats get sunk by bigger boats. Here's a tissue. Suck it up and move on.
The game is 90% luck (variance? Don't make me laugh! A rose by any other name...) and luck, if you haven't figured it out, tends to run in waves. And sure, you can do a lot to influence your luck in the way you bet, but the only real skill in this game is in knowing how to ride that wave of luck, and in having a keen developed sense of when to jump off that wave before you get caught up in its deadly undertow. That's called cutting your losses. So you don't get dragged out to sea where you end up in that fool's game of trying to play catch-up.
The best way, in my opinion, of limiting your bad luck is by limiting the number of hands you get involved in. Want to know about odds? I'll tell you about odds: odds are you lose! STAY OUT OF HANDS! This should be a key strategy in lasting in any kind of tournament and making it to the money or final table. Don't be upset when you see a hand go down that you would have won. The important thing about those hands is someone lost, so it's all good. Don't sweat it. It's not your hand. And as I like to put it, you have to fold a lot of best hands to make it to the money.
Large multi-table tournaments are jam-packed full of all manner of cut-throats, desperados, donkeys, and assorted egoes and geniuses, along with multitudes of Albanians, Romanians, and the like, who have virtually nothing to live for, and will happily eliminate each other to their hearts' content until a mere 15 or 20 minutes later, anywhere from a third to a half of the field is gone, in the 2-cent 990, for example, or the 10-cent 360. Just sit back and enjoy the fireworks. The winners are just temporarily holding those chips for you - or so you hope. lol
;?)
So I'd like to share a strategy/system I thought of, to help or hinder your long game, that I simply call see-3 (c-3). It can be used effectively in single table tournaments too, but I have to say that in spite of its simplicity, it can be extremely difficult to adhere to if you're as undisciplined as I am. It's always a b*tch when you can't even stick to your own rules! But invariably I can say to myself every time I fail to make it to the money, "you'd still be in the game if you'd stuck to playing see-3, idiot!"
Well you know how it is. You just have to play those premium cards when you get 'em. No discipline. You can't help yourself. But in low-stakes virtual play-money free-roll bingo tournaments, you're going to lose with those high pocket pairs more than win with them.
So the whole premise to see-3 is you don't play any hands until you've seen 3 shown-down hands that you would have won had you played them. Indeed, you avoid playing everything but the blinds and button, and even then you don't play raised pots except tentatively under favorable circumstances. Instinct and experience can guide you, but for the most part you just play scared.
Of course as chance would have it, seeing 3 shown hands you'd have won can happen very quickly or as more often is the case (which is why you should stay out of hands) can seemingly take forever! So there are the necessary adaptations for both cases: following c-3 with see-1/play-1 in the former and an assessed point plan for the latter. This can be arbitrary (come up with your own formula) but I like to count 10 points per 'see', as in see 10 hands not shown-down that you think you might have won and count them as one 'see'. It's basically a timing system anyway which you can tweak as you see fit depending on the size of tournament or how quickly those 'points' come.
One benefit of this method of timing your play is that in the meantime while you're waiting for your arbitrary criteria to be met, is you get to see and gauge the play of everyone else while they have not clue one as to how you play, which gives you a tight image and a marginal advantage over them when you finally do play.
Another rather interesting and somewhat amusing aspect is that being an avid poker player as you are, you really do want to play, and so you're actually hoping to see those sets, straights, flushes, boats and quads you would have won with just so you can count one 'see'. lol ...because usually, you know, you don't want to see that you would have won when you've folded!
It's literally poker heresy and maybe that's why I like it. But I'll be damned if I could actually stick to the plan. It is hard to do. Bet ya can't!
So naturally I've become quite adept at playing short stacked, and as I put it, riding that cusp of elimination all the way to the money. Can't tell you how many times I've been short stack at final table - a scenario I'm only all-too-familiar with.
