In a tourney situation, I think it's a bit different since the rake is fixed in advanced. So, in a sense, you don't care whether it takes you 150 hands or 2 hands to win.
To k3nt: A situation like that may be unavoidable. But here's a problem I've had against tight opponents: I'm cruising along winning lots more small pots than they are, get up nicely, then BAM, they catch a hand, mine's alright but not as good as theirs. Then suddenly we're back to even or they're even up a little if I let them make a big pot out of it.
When the game is going like that, I've REALLY been trying to look carefully at my hand before I get in very deep. With a board of AXX against a tight opponent where I have A7 and my CB gets called, I may not even take it past the turn and can definitely fold to a raise there (or try to, anyway).
If a more loose-aggro type has AK vs. my A7 and we both catch top pair, well, then I'm probably going to lose my stack. It's just that against the latter player, I've got to make a stand at some point because HE's taking down all these small pots. Against the tighty, you're taking down all the little pots, so just go ahead and let him have this one before it gets too big.
Basically, against a WT opponent who plays back at you, one's first response (regardless of what you have) should be "fold." But before you click the "fold" button, take another good look just to make sure you aren't holding the nuts.
Anyhow, I don't know if all this applies to your A7 vs. AK situation, but it's something I've noticed in a lot of my matches, so it's a leak for me that I've been working on fixing.
Oh, and one other thing regarding 76 vs. K4. Phil Ivey (and I'm pretty sure a number of others) seem to like playing these connectors to raises or themselves raising with them. Harrington is less of a fan. So, that's obviously just a general question of taste.
I've been playing somewhat more Harrington-esque in that regard but am seriously considering changing that. One thing, anyway, about 76 is that against a lot of raising hands you do have two live cards. And if you're raising yourself, the straight gains enormous deception because you look like a pair of some kind. Moreover, I've seen a lot of aggro opponents pretty consistently attacking my raises on raggedy boards--which just don't look like they could hit a raising hand. If I'm raising a lot of aces (as I do), then I can always have TPTK or something if the board is 7-high, but it's definitely less likely.
Anyhow, it seems to me like against tight opponents the connectors can give you a few extra small pots, and against aggro opponents, you can sometimes surprize them and call when they move in on a board of 854.Statistics: Posted by Aisthesis — Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:40 pm
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