OK, let's talk about wmajik's article

[Irieguy]

First off, brilliant article. Very nicely presented. Others have mentioned that it ignores +chip EV/- $EV considerations (which it does)... but you need to be able to digest the information in the proper context. MJ alludes to the fact that he is only alluding to the facts. His point was not to present a formula for shorthanded play.

When I first read it I thought "yeah, I know all that... but nicely presented." But then I noticed something when I played my first session tonight. I started to notice that as the field and my stack got smaller, there were several opportunities to push where I otherwise would not have considered it. I did not expect this, because I have recently begun to feel that I'm playing a little overaggressively in bubblish situations with small-medium stacks. But these situations kept occuring, so I started making some notes. Here's what I found (initial thougths only, so take with a grain):

I was playing 4 tables at once, and made it down to 6 players in all 4 with less than 600 in chips (PP, $33 SNG). This is when I noticed that my thinking had changed a little bit as a result of reading MJ's article. I counted 16 situations where pushing would be advocated in the article when I would have otherwise folded. Sixteen! That doesn't count all the times I was pushing anyways. I was playing like a complete maniac. It was insane.

I never beat a better hand heads-up, not once. I stole the blinds at least 70% of the time. I got 3 firsts and a third. Interestingly, my third occured when I woke up with Kings on the button 3 handed and pushed. Both blinds called me with Q-9, and Q-6! They were sick of getting pushed around and decided to gamble. Q-9 made a flush, and I was the short stack, so I got 3rd... but I was poised to win all 4, which is something I haven't been fortunate enough to do yet in close to a thousand SNGs 4-tabling at multiple levels.

But my results are irrelevant. The point is that the applied concepts in the article influenced a very aggressive player to become even more aggressive. Here are my thoughts:

1. If applied indiscriminately, these concepts will probably not help your game, and will introduce so much variance that it may take months of regular play before you even know what's going on.

2. If applied discriminately, these concepts will improve your ROI without a doubt... but it will take several months of regular play to realize it.

3. If any significant portion of the SNG players apply any significant portion of these concepts to their game, SNGs will become very difficult to beat.

This should spark an interesting discussion.

Irieguy

PS- I would suggest that nobody provide the link or clarify what I'm talking about if somebody doesn't already know. In the spirit of MJ's article... you have to work at it to figure this one out. No spoon feeding.