Winning the Party Super Monday (LONG, oh so long)

[DblDownTrent]

congrats and thanks for posting all these hands. very informative.

[doggin]

Punker, congrats on the win guy!
When I first started reading this, I thought "My God,
some of this raising is insane", but after reading your
follow up posts to many replys, It is very clear that you
are a very deep thinking player. I'm sure this won't be your
last big win.
Do you mind telling any of your MTT stats?
Thanks for sharing.

[Potowame]

Great post, I watched you play for awhile that night. Thanks for the HH, I dont know if this will work real well in the 2,3, & 5 Stars trnys though. I guess it will only cost me a couple bucks to try it out, lol.

[Punker]

I don't track my stats very closely as most of my play is done at ring games. Tourneys are kind of a fun diversion for me when I have lots of time to play.

[doggin]

Great read, I was thinking I've seen your Party name at
the top (top 3 maybe) in another big MTT or two.
Thanks

[doggin]

Quote: "In the old days, I would consider a good "situation" just like anyone else: late position and a half decent hand and folded to me. The problem is that everyone knows you're in a good steal position there and you get played back at way more often."
This was expressed well in a post by Gigabet. He said the same thing you're thinking here, UTG + 1 or 2 and CO-1 are
far better positions to try to steal, these positions are just not nearly as obvious as the classics.

[Jason Strasser]

Congrats on the super win. I have some unfinished business in this tournament (2nd place)... Maybe one day I'll get revenge.

Anyhow, your play in general strikes me as odd. Obviously you have a strategy that will allow you, on any given day, to win any tournament given the right turn of events. Sure, i suppose in theory everyone could have that perfect day, but your style allows you to accumulate chips rapidly when things are going your way.

Anyhow, let me offer a critique to your style.

1) Your raise amounts are way too small. You opt for lots of little baby raises and limp raises and 'punishing limpers' or whatever. Basically, you play a style of poker that is very loose and not very strong, if that makes any sense. You are aggressive, but very often there will be a limper and you will raise to something like 2.5xBB with crap. I think you should pick your spots more selectively.

2) You spew too many chips. The fact is, you are in so many marginal situations, and for you to be successful you need to come out ahead a lot. You were able to make some nice laydowns (I did not read the whole thing). The good thing about your style is that especially early in the tournament you were often pure bluffing with crap, which makes it very easy to fold. The bad thing is, you were fortunate to not run into too many big hands.

3) The party field consists of many unobservant players. An observent player would play back at you much more. Just keep that in mind.

I subscribe to a much more tight approach. This often results in me having to rely on some large all-in confrontations to do well in tournaments... Which is not always a good thing.

Anyhow, I wouldn't change your style... Its yours and it works... I would however analyze your play here quite a bit... especially your raise amounts.

-Jason

[JaBlue]

I don't like the way you played at all. Like Jason said I think you just had your perfect day. I had a friend that didn't even know the rules of PLO (he didn't know that you must use two of your hole cards...) and he placed 2nd and 3rd consecutively in his first tournaments. Anyway, my point is that I don't think you have a very good chance of succeeding like this against players that realize that you don't have jack. Also, why do you play so aggressively with the blinds so small (the first hand)? When you have a speculative hand like A5s why don't you just see the flop? I basically have the same issues as Strassa except that I think that if you're going to keep this style you definitely have to change it. I myself am a LAG, but there's a fine line between LAG and Maniac and I think you're much more on the maniac side - except that your raises aren't big enough (which is wierd) for this to work... OK rambling... good job on the win.

[Punker]

"This often results in me having to rely on some large all-in confrontations to do well in tournaments"

This is the problem I had in party multis for the longest time as well; I found this style of play would often get me to the money (or close), but rarely in a position to do much from there, barring a perfect day. Your points regarding the smaller than normal raises are absolutely correct; however, I explained my rationale (right or wrong) in some of the other posts (basically, keeping the pot size such that there is some postflop play during the quickly accelerating stages of the event). I guess the question is simply how well they worked; in my experience on party, they do ok. You will probably also note that once stacks became relatively larger compared to the blinds, most of my raises moved up to a more standard 3x big blind.

The style I use does definitely revolve around the cluelessness of party players and their lack of observation (many times they just see "raise" and don't really consider the amount); there are a lot of level 1 players on party and I rely heavily on taking advantage of their level 1 thinking (What do I have? Nothing? Fold.).

Dealing with observant players does require some touch and difficult decisions (as you saw when I called the reraise all in with A7o); however, the sad truth is that there's no really easy way to beat observant players; I like my style better than waiting for big hands to deal with them, since my style forces them to gamble more and take chances, whereas waiting for a big hand leaves observant players with nothing to worry about from you (since they either have a monster and play, or a marginal type hand and fold, observing you to be tight).

[Punker]

Comments are appreciated...I would say that winning any tournament of this kind of size does pretty much require at least an element of "perfect day"-ness, and no doubt I had my share of good luck.

As for playing aggressively early, I tend to assume most players at the start of events such as this who limp in to be weak, and I am not shy about trying to punish them for it. 100 chips may not be much, but at the start of the tourney, its still 10% of your stack. I'm not going to put my stack on the line with no hand chasing those 100 chips, but I'm not going to hesitate in fighting for them. Its those 100 chips that allow you to survive that bad beat at the start and still have a few hundred left, or that have you covering other people, making them less likely to play against you.