Ok, here's a hand from memory showing a pretty LAG style. The blinds are 25-50 and you start 1500. I'm up to about 1900.


I'm on the button with and call after three people. The blinds complete.

The flop comes down .

SB and BB both check. First limper raises to around 150. It gets called around so I obviously call. SB then minimum raises. BB thinks and goes all in and has my covered (I put him on two pair like J7). First limper fold. Next limper calls all in (lower stack than mine), and the next limper calls too (Real short-stack, probably on a pair, hoping to get lucky). I decide that if I hit this heart, I'm set for the money. And, I have an overcard the might somehow be good, but probably not. Also, I'm pretty sure the SB is calling as he check-raised the minimum earlier.

Many people would fold here assuming they're up against a set so they're an underdog, as anything that pairs board here will lose it for them. I think that with this many callers, their cards have to be damn close to dried up. So I call. Heart comes down and I was up against KK, Q7, JT, and 77. I scoop the pot and this puts me at something like 9k I think. Out of 150 starting players, now something like 110, the next closest stack is 3.5k. I go on to win the tournament, by stealing blinds, and only getting involved in two or three big pots until the final table.

The other big hand I was in, a stack nearly equal to mine was tiliting, and pushed all in UTG. Got called by two way shorter stacks, and I look down at AA. I win it and am around 30k. If I had not played the first hand, and somehow survived til I got those aces, I would have only moved up to about 8k or so, as my stack would have been way shorter.

I like the play. Even though you're only like 2:1 to get your heart, the chips you win if you do get a heart are worth exponentially more, as you were then the biggest stack in the tourney, and could pick up many more chips by stealing the blinds.

Ok, I do "like" that one--although I'm not entirely sure I'd do it. But, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're getting correct odds here. I may have been putting you into the wrong category, Flop, on which I do have some thoughts I'll post.

I will say that for a good big stack player (which also means the capabilty of playing limited and selected aggression, as I think we agree) that's a very good bet.

The more I've thought about it, the more I was really questioning your "2 pair" remark in one of our earlier discussions. My conclusion after my own internal thinking on this is simply that you do need to bet correctly early (i.e., +EV), and that these absurd river all-ins without extremely strong hands (my general criterion is a set under normal circumstances for betting the river) don't make sense in cash games nor do they in tourneys, which early on are imo pretty much just cash games.

But I have another post with to which I hope you'll respond on my own "tourney philosophy."