I throw myself at the mercy of the MTT forum. Help an old pooh-bah

[whiskeytown]

regarding the circumstance - it was an example - not gospel -

if I'm in mid with no people at all and a less then average stack it's a raise sometimes - if I'm short stacked it's an all-in - I tend not to do it with limpers, esp. EP limpers

RB

There was a period of time not so long ago when I was going through a horrible cold spell. It started with an extreme run of bad luck, big favorites getting drawn out on repeatedly. Invariably, this had an effect on my game, as I suddenly became much more passive. Instead of forcing them to make bad plays without the odds, I was letting them off cheap, and then paying them off.

One of the things I did to correct this was to find a perverse sense of joy in bluffing a hand. For my personality, this wasn't a very difficult thing to force myself to do - I think I'm smarter than everyone else, and nothing beats profiting on the misfortune of others - but I really focused on it. Of course, I had to make sure I kept myself in check, and did not let this get out of control.

I think for any player, there is a way you can safely force yourself to become more aggressive at the table. You just have to find that one out on your own.

Yeah, sorry for the cliche there at the end.

Oh, and locutus' advice is also very good.

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
As long as you can steal the blinds once every round, you can play forever no matter your stack size. If I have 6-10x BB I am perfectly content with that and I feel as if I can stay at 6-10x BB throughout the tourney.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well yes that's quite a tautology, but obviously you can't always steal the blinds once around because sooner or later, you are going to get called. You will win sometimes of course, but if you are pushing often enough to win the blinds once a round, you are usually going to be an underdog when called. Also, if you are just surviving with 6-10x the BB, the blinds are going to go up and suddenly you're going to have 3-7x the BB or whatever.

You are correct of course that it's easy to take the aggression thing too far, but it's also certainly true that you do need to adjust your aggression upwards as your stack slips to 15-20x the BB.