LordMortis wrote:I'll be curious to hear your hypothesis about the ratio of busted out players at above average hand receivers.
It's nothing more advanced than you've got to hold decent-seeming cards to put a lot of chips at risk (unless you're a incurable bluffer). In hold 'em it's very rare to end up in a 4.5-to-1 or 5-to-1 situation preflop against your opponent — more typical is to be in a 60%-40% situation. Since it's so tough to have your opponent dominated preflop, cards that tend to look good (such as
:Qc:) tend to cause one to put lots of chips in the pot before the flop — and 2/3rds of the time a flop isn't going to help AQo out. But since the pot is already large, and since this is big-bet poker, the post-flop betting is going to be at elevated levels. If you were up against
:Jc: and that person happend to catch an innocent-looking nine on the flop, the AQ is way behind, but may still continue to place or call large bets in post-flop action.
It takes a disciplined player to *not* get into trouble when getting dealt high cards, especially at tables where 50% of the participants regularly see the flop.
This may seem to be a simple observation, but this is especially relevant to local cash games in the casinos. Out here, the highest (legal) cash game allowed is $2-$5 spread limit (which I talked about the mechanics at the top of
this blog entry). Very frequently does >50% of the table see the flop in those games, in my experience. One can win those games by playing tight, BUT ONLY if they also play smart based on the flops that come down. It's pretty hard to win low-limit non-big-bet poker if you've got a bad habit of bluffing. (Of course one still has to bluff an appropriate amount based on one's opponents' tendencies, it's just that this frequency changes radically based on the nature of the game.)
Last time I was in this game, it was exceptionally loose, and despite my playing fewer pots (with better cards) than my opponents, I lost a significant amount of money. The experience here in the MTT gives me some small inkling as to why this may be the case.
Of course spread-limit != big-bet hold 'em, so it's only slightly applicable. But I think it helps point me in the right direction.
~Neal