Okay, I'm curious to know why you think a selective
all-in strategy against you is does poorly. Not that
I disagree with you, I just want to see how you have
thought this one through.
Bill
Bill,
OK, here are my thoughts, FWIW.
The main kind of no-limit I'm playing nowadays is in online sit-and-go
tourneys. Currently I appear to have a modest edge of 1.13 (for every 1
buyin, I get 1.13 back). Occassionally, I run into somebody there whom I
think is playing a Sklansky-based strategy. I haven't run into the strategy
in live no-limit holdem tourneys. So maybe I should just have said that I
like encountering the strategy in the sit-and-go environment.
By a Slansky-based strategy, I mean a strategy of automatically
open-raising all-in before the flop with A-x and all pairs, and perhaps with
other hands as well. I'm not talking about somebody who re-raises
allin,who goes allin after the flop, or who mixes allins with more modest
raises.
The reason I like it is --
1. They often start it earlier than they should, which means they are
throwing 1000 at a 15 blind, which I like because I think that my chance of
getting a big hand that lets me take all their money clearly outweighs what
I lose by relinquishing my equity in the blind in all the other hands.
2. Other players pick up on their conduct and the all-in preflop
confrontations tend to centralize wealth. That is a good thing when 3
players out of 10 get paid and the payoff is fairly level. I'd rather have
1000 with five players, one of whom has 5000, than have 1000 with nine
opponents who have 1000 each.
3. Even when the blinds get bigger, I think it's a winning strategy just to
call them with the hands that Ed lists. Sometimes I lose and then I just
sign up for the next sit and go. I get into enough situations where I have
big pair over smaller pair or a dominating ace-high hand that it works out
pretty well.
I'm not thinking like Phil Hellmuth does on the first day of the World
Series. If I get beat, then I didn't lose much time and in 5 minutes I will
be playing in another tourney. Of course, it takes some of the fun out of
it not to be able to play post-flop.
Admittedly, I haven't kept the records or run the simulations what would be
necessary to support the idea that I have a better than 1.13 edge by
relinquishing many hands to these guys and then calling with Ed-level hands,
but that's my impression. And they probably boost my hourly rate because
they make my tourneys shorter.