Confessions of a maniac

Just to begin, I am not a terrible player. I started playing limit, and read SSHE by ed miller so i know about pot odds. I've also read HOH, and started on HOH2. I have a fair idea of how to play your standard conservative game. I know its a winning style. But why isn't it my style?
You see, I find a lot of players that play MTTs very set on the conservative mind frame. Many, but not all follow the HOH method, and theres nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the saturation of medium level conservative players have made it too easy to just stray into the maniac zone, and outplay the table. Am I crazy, or is it sane to think that the idea of the tournament life is taken completely wrong. When I play, I'm there for the final table, and to do that, you need chips. So from start to finish, I try to out play the player and take out every pot. All this protecting your life thing to me is the cash game grinder talking. All conservative styles boil down to this. Survive while improving, and hopefully you make it to the cash, and then hopefully you'll make it final table, and hopefully you win. Its a standard style, but you're making it extremely difficult to win. I mean, the over glorification of the bad beat is the mediocre player justifying their play. Bad beats are a way of life, but another reason why i find bad beats not as bad as they use to be is that if you are a skilled tournament player, you should seldom find yourself all in, not because you don't put all your chips in the middle, but because you're the high stack. Fundamentally, playing lot pot is a terrible idea. Probability is against you. Logic is against you. But when you find that you are easily table captain, it is just too much chips in the middle to let go. I think that tournament poker, especially the middle stage is the time at which the possibilty to build yourself a very strong stack overwhelms the mathmatical underdogness of the maniac style. I know a lot of people will be furious to go against the probabilities. I understand why its ridiculous to say that, but tournament poker is not about probabilty (or less so than say a full ring limit cash game). In a way, my rant is just to reaffirm my own poor play, but i mean, tournament poker is just such a different animal from cash game poker, and i don't think people realize it enough. Now, i am not encouraging completely braindead moves. What i am saying, is that no limit multitable holdem tournaments involve another dimension of poker(the psychological) that i don't think people really get, and i think that is what holds a lot of players back. Any comments, or am i just completely crazy.

[Morrek]

Nice post. I've never tried maniac style in tournaments so I don't have much experience on the subject. How much experience do you have playing it? Accomplishments?

Oh and, try to make a line-breaker more than once, it helps [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I dabble on the stars 3 dollar mtts. I play mostly in BM charity tournaments. I've probably played this style for as long as i've really played poker. You can check my poker db, its mildly impressive, the cashes aren't that big. Its just that i find a lot of bad beat/did i do the right thing posts, and they're all kind of situations that basically are linear. Either you had a good hand PF, shoved it, and went into the cooler, or its just hands at whcih you were pot commmited, and got called by garbage because you had a low stack. I'm just kinda ranting as well.

[prayformojo]

I would be interested to see some hand posts demonstrating your "maniac" style. It really does sound to me like you're describing aggressive vs. conservative play, not what most here would consider maniacal play. Your "rant" reads as a fairly standard, if undeveloped and perhaps unconsidered, generalization of some of the basic principles applicable to NL tournaments.

This statement, however:
[ QUOTE ]
Bad beats are a way of life, but another reason why i find bad beats not as bad as they use to be is that if you are a skilled tournament player, you should seldom find yourself all in, not because you don't put all your chips in the middle, but because you're the high stack.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

You might want to re-read Harrington. I don't think he's advocating the sort of play you attribute to his work.

[ QUOTE ]
I would be interested to see some hand posts demonstrating your "maniac" style. It really does sound to me like you're describing aggressive vs. conservative play, not what most here would consider maniacal play. Your "rant" reads as a fairly standard, if undeveloped and perhaps unconsidered, generalization of some of the basic principles applicable to NL tournaments.

This statement, however:
[ QUOTE ]
Bad beats are a way of life, but another reason why i find bad beats not as bad as they use to be is that if you are a skilled tournament player, you should seldom find yourself all in, not because you don't put all your chips in the middle, but because you're the high stack.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

You might want to re-read Harrington. I don't think he's advocating the sort of play you attribute to his work.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think a lot of the games i find have a lot of medium skilled weak tight players, which i attribute to the popularity of poker books. How do I try to win every hand? Well, nearly every hand i'll try to play for the most value given the flop texture. I.e, in the beginning, i'll do fairly large continuation bets on nearly every hand i play, or if the flop is good for me, i'll try to just play the standard 2+2 way. Building massive to get fold equity in my opinion is key. A large part of players put hand rankings over position in my opinion. They'll decide to fold the 87s, A9os on the button instead of stealing once the blinds start to creep up. That is how you're able to build the stack that you need to win. Because yo'ure doing something that they're not, and the dead money thats on the table, has gone to you. And the quality of hand you have is not really important once you have position, and you read the table as extremely weak. Theres a very thin line to agressive play, and poor play, with the latter being attributed to not being able to fold when you get caught stealing. I don't know, just my early morning rant.

[ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[prayformojo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.

[ QUOTE ]
They'll decide to fold the 87s, A9os on the button instead of stealing once the blinds start to creep up.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think most good conservative players would pass on the steal attempt here. It's not even a steal with the A9.

[Vuron00]

You say that you are playing against "medium skilled weak tight" players. I'd say that if you're playing in the $3 MTT's with 4k players, than you are giving most of the players way too much credit.

You've said that you're making it deeper into tournaments, but aren't getting significant cashes or returns. It sounds to me that you are playing a bullying style against bad weak tight players early to build up your stack. Once all these bad weak tight players are gone, you're running into decent players and are having a tough time changing from your bullying style which isn't going to work well against better players. If someone sits at a table with you for any length of time and knows what you are doing, they will try to trap you, as that is how you play against a bullying style.

Yes, your bullying style will work at very low limits very well and even early in higher limit tourneys. But, you have to know when to change your style to adapt when you get deeper.

[ansky451]

Wow, please use paragraphs.

I don't "follow the HOH mindset" either, but I don't think that HOH is "conservative."

[ QUOTE ]
especially the middle stage is the time at which the possibilty to build yourself a very strong stack overwhelms the mathmatical underdogness of the maniac style.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't even know what that means.

Do you remember in elementary and junior high school, when you're learning how to write essays? One thing that my dad always told me was "show, don't tell." By that he means, don't just make broad statements with no real content, but instead, use examples and details so somebody actually understands what you are writing. This post has a lot of fluff, but no actual useful content. Yeah, play aggressive... who ever said not to do that?