Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Sit-n-Go Strategy update

I have been using the sit-n-go strategy I stole from the 2+2 post and so far it has been pretty effective. It's hard playing that tight in the early going but I guess the positive is that it's rare that I lose a hand in the first 3 rounds. Partly because of the good cards I start with and also because some of the players notice that I haven't played a hand in a full rotation.

Last night I played 2 $20 one table sit-n-gos. The first one included a lot of good cards and I don't think I lost a hand until I got heads up at the end. I took a bad beat and ended up taking second. My opponet was on the button and doubled the blind. I reraised all in with my pocket Queens. He turned over A-9 and called. I would have had a 7-1 chip advantage if I won, but he caught his Ace on the river. Instead I was severely short stacked and eventually he out drew me.

The second tournament seemed to be a rock garden. I really didn't see any incredibly bad plays like you normally do. Maybe the $20 tournaments have a better skill level? I managed to make it to the last 3 and in the money. Part of this new strategy is to gamble for 1st place and settle for 3rd. I started to go all in a lot and steal a lot of blinds. Unfortunately a couple of times I had small pairs and I ran into bigger pairs. The last one I had 77's and called an all in raise. The raiser had JJ and I was out in 3rd.

Still 2 cashes helps recover the losses from the 2 poor showings last night on the 3 table tournaments I played in.

I also recorded the 1998 World Series of Poker. It was won by Scotty Nguyen. The broadcast quality was horrible as they still had not invented the hole card cams yet and they didn't even bother to go back and put in the hole cards for the hands they did turn up. It was funny to hear Vince Van Patten doing the commentary for ESPN. I also chuckled because this was the year that Matt Damon and Ed Norton were given free entries into the tournament because Rounders was coming out. They were projecting what a popular movies this was going to be and how impressed they were that there were 350 entries in the main event. 2004 had over 3,500. I think poker has had quite a boom, eh?

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