Saturday, October 4, 2008

Of Mice and Men

Tonight was my first venture back to live tournament play via a local pub tournament. Returning after a lay off for quite some time, I'd set out a plan to reveal the new Tournament Gump MkII.

Inspired by Gus' amazing book, the plan was basically as follows:
- open raise with any ace
- open raise any unraised pot in late position with almost any two
- bet if i hit any part of a flop
- try to play every pot in position and always be the player betting
- attack any weakness
- build an image where my raises were not given any respect
- build enough of a stack I can take some hits
- get my chips in bad and inflict some beats etc etc

If you've seen Gus play or read the book, you get the idea.

And the verdict?

After the first few levels, I was the chip leader in the 60 player tournament. I'd quickly built a stack of over ~14K with the blinds still at 100/200. I hit some cards but won some pots from behind when priced in. In one pot I raised yet another pot this time with A rag suited. Another player pushed out of frustration and I was getting 2 to 1. Now for the fun part...

I have chips and I can afford to gamble and lose. I'm getting the right price against a pair. I might be in front if the push was out of frustration. Even if dominated, I'm almost getting the right price.

"I call"

He flips 88. I hit my ace and everyone looks at me like I'm an ace-any donk. Excellent! :)

As the tournament progressed I built my chip stack from a starting stack 1500 to almost 20K. I was well aware though that to win these things, I need to get cards at the business end. I wish I could say there was a happy ending but it wasn't to be. I got card dead as the blinds escalated and found myself quickly dropping back to the pack. Then came the one-two punch:

The Jab: I'm in the SB, blinds are 1K/2K and it's folded around. I look down at 88 and I push my ~12K into the middle. The BB was super tight but aware of my image and I had pushed her off better hands in the past. She called with K5 and hit runner runner straight with the 5.

The Knockout punch: Next hand it's folded to me on the button. I have 7K left and look down to KTo. I'm not sure of the math with 2 players to act, but to me its a easy push. The BB calls with an ace and I'm gone with about 12 players left.

That's tournament poker folks.




FG

3 comments:

Dave Jenkins said...

Sounds like this would be a good tactic for online turbos?

Get a chip stack quickly and bully the rest of the table! Haven't read
his book but I might just cut and
paste the above and give it a go
on Party Poker :o)

bastinptc said...

Your Pub Tourney group seems to be considerably different than mine. If I played that aggressively, I would be out by the third level. A raise means nothing to these people, not to mention position. I'd be up against 3 callers every hand.

Therefore, early on I take a different tact, betting hard with the top five or six hands, limp and set mine, or limp looking for two pair with coordinated hole cards from late position. By the time the blinds are 1K/2K, whether I have 10M or better, or I'm sitting back, nursing a small stack while waiting for a big hand, I'm folding almost everything until the final table where I will be able to see more hands for free.

Why so passive? because I'm still going to get 2 or 3 callers.

Forrest Gump said...

Bastin, would you be out be the 3rd level....or a monster chip leader?

If it's a freeroll, maybe just try it once. If anything, you'll catch them off guard and it'll put some doubt in their mind for future tournaments.




FG

 
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