[lorinda]

1. Winning a tourney at all costs is incredibly important.

Winning SNGs is great, it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and returns 5 buyins (Nearly [img]/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img] ). There is a lot to be said for winning a SNG, it's fantastic.

On this forum, especially at the lower limits, people seem inclined to make ridiculous plays and justify them with "Play to win, settle for third".

Let's do some hand-waving arguments.

If you're in a bubble type position where everyone has 2000 chips and want to gamble it up to try to win, what exactly must you do

People seem to think that this justifies aiming your chips in at random, on the assumption that they either lose the next pot or win the tourney.

So, let's have one of these tourneys where we have two players "Playing for first" and two players "Limping for third". We'll assume all four players are equally skilled.

So, the two "Play for first" players throw their chips into the middle. One probably raised UTG with 78s and one probably called with A9o, something like that. One of them won the pot. Both justified their play by saying there is no point in settling for third.
So, how are our two types of player going?

Well, team "Playing for first" have a guaranteed $0 plus a very good shot at $50 (Assuming a $11 tourney).
Team "Settling for third" have $20 and $30 guaranteed, and a shot at more.

Notice that team "settling for third" already have the $50 that team "Play for first" have as their theoretical maximum.

This post is not to say you shouldn't try to win tourneys, but it is to point out that many of you, MANY OF YOU have flawed logic when making ludicrous plays and are justifying them with "I was playing for first"

Lori

(I'm aware there are more mathematical ways to make this argument, but I believe those who use "I was playing for first" the most are the less mathematical ones.)