Re: Confessions of a maniac
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is just plain silly, especially in the context of online tournaments. How do you try to take down every pot, and build a big stack, without getting all your chips into the middle several times along the way, and being called, and winning? Once you get a big stack, how do you use it to your full advantage without putting significant portions of it at risk? This is not to say that you should care about bad beats or not push when a push is right. I just think the idea of expecting to consistently have such a huge stack, and such enormous fold equity, that you won't be at risk of elimination after a couple of bad beats, is a pipe dream.
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I wouldn't say that it's silly to think that you don't have to risk all your chips alot. I'm not sayin the ol' you get aces preflop, and someone shoves all in and you have to call kinda thing. My main point is that if you build your stack up through straight up agression if the table is passive enough to allow you to do it, you are not going to find your chips are risk a lot of the time.
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Along the road to your big stack, you have to risk much or all of your stack a number of times. What I think you're really advocating is taking risks early to minimize the need or opportunity for significant risk later. When you have a big stack, bullying weak opponents is not much of a "risk" because they won't call often enough to outweigh the gain from blind steals. I have no argument with this. I just think that the idea that you can somehow shield yourself from bad beats, or that you would even want to do this, is silly.
Frankly, I don't have much argument with a lot of what you're saying. I think you're overemphasizing the idea that conservative play is the accepted style for most thinking players. Your professed maniac style sounds a lot closer to the play of the stronger 2+2ers than the style that tells people to open fold A9o on the button. I'll bet dollar to doughnuts that most of your opponents at B&M tourneys and in Stars $3.00 MTTs aren't avid readers of Harrington and 2+2. They're not playing tight late in a tournament because they have considered the advice of many fine poker experts. They're playing tight because they're bad at poker.
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