[benkahuna]

I don't really. I feel like you guys are misunderstanding the points in the book, even misremembering them.

I see M as a bit of a throttle factor and also a means to guide strategy.

If you read the book, Harrington is pretty clear that you have to change your strategy so that you don't even play drawing hands like small PPs, and suited connectors from early position. He says you need to fast play a bit more with marginal, dominated holdings such as ATo.

Once you get down to an M of 5, you have only one option, all in. Picking up that initial pot has significant benefits to your chipstack.

In the orange zone with an M of 6-10, you can start playing small pocket pairs in early position, but the play with them is all in.

The idea of being able to play flops and waiting for KK or QQ and somehow not getting all your money in before the flop with an M like 6 seems completely off base. You're not looking to play flops with Ms less than 20 at all. You want to take stabs at the pot to win quickly or get out and at the very lowest, be all in preflop every time with an M of 5.


I see M as an arbitrary means to throttle aggression based on desperation of going broke. You shift over from a chip accumulation mentality to a survival mentality as your focus. You also lose strategic options as your M gets lower. You don't have to use Dan's numbers, but I think not making the strategic adjustments he suggests is a big mistake.

I find using a rote M-based strategy is more useful against better competition. It gets me a little in trouble in daily tournaments online for 50 bucks, but was super helpful in a 300 buy in WSOP Circuit event late in the tourney near the bubble.