Chip Counts

I'm still tilting about Saturday's tournament.

I'm not pissed that I got my aces cracked. That happens. I'm pissed that I went out first, and that I knew almost without a doubt what he had and called anyway. The one time I'm able to make an accurate read, and I go against it.

My other complaint is the starting chip counts. I don't know what to about this one though. I was going over the hand with someone today, and he commented that he was doing the math trying to put us on hands at the time, and that he knew I was making about half pot sized bets.

We were in the third level of blinds by making a half pot sized bet on the flop and turn,and had practically commit ed all my chips. I wasn't a short stack at the time.
We start with only 600 chips and that isn't enough to be able to make appropriately sized bets early on and still be able to get out a hand without being crippled. After years of tuning our tournament structure, we have everything just about how I like it, except for the starting chip counts. I'd like to double it. The only problem with that is our tourneys take about 3-4 hours to complete, so doubling the amount of chips we have make each game take too long and we wouldn't get two in. To counter that we could raise the blinds faster, or start higher, but then we have the same problem, just at higher stakes.

So I guess I need to stop messing around in the early goings and go back to my proven tourney strategy. Play super tight early on. If I get a decent hand that so much the better, but stop gambling trying to pick up small pots with garbage. Once the blinds start getting up there, steal them with some all-in moves, preferably with hands that have a reasonably good shot at winning if called. Chip up by stealing blinds or winning all-ins. Be content to let other players eliminate themselves. If I have a top two or three chip stack, attack the remaining player aggressively until they successfully defend. That may not be the most exciting way to play, but it has had better monetary results for me over the past few years than trying to play a lot of hands and getting involved in more pots. Hopefully I'll remember that plan in four months when we have our next monthly game.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com