Posted by Johnnymac 11:07 AM
More on endgames

As I mention in my post below, when I get to the final four of an online tournament I usuaully feel pretty confident because it is inevitable that two of the top three have no idea what they are doing and will either begin to attack one another (with predictable results) or are stupid enough to gamble their position away and give me, the short stack, an opportunity to double up.

See point #10 of yesterday's farcical post for my opinion of why this is - these guys either know nothing but balls to the wall gambling or they seem to think that players who are tight at the beginning can always be bluffed at the end. The latter isn't necessarily wrong - putting pressure on the small stacks is almost always the right thing to do - but the hands that bigger stacks routinely call down the small stack with - even in the $20 tournaments - are crazy. Certainly smaller stacks are going to be forced to gamble with crappy cards, but they'll usually have something better than 92o when they finally decide to take a stand. I can't tell you how many times I have been safely ensconsed in 3rd place only to finish out of the money because some fool was dumb enough to give a foot-in-the-grave small stack the chance to double up. I routinely shout at my computer screen because someone will inevitably limp and let the small stack see the flop for free. They don't seem to comprehend that pressure is not necessarily the same thing as action, especially preflop.

And it's not just $5 and $10 online tournaments that I am talking about. See the very end of this post, too. Although it didn't quite work out for me that day, the sentiment is the same - with those cards he should have just let me steal his blind instead of offering me a chance to double through him. This was the guy who was the chip leader of a 60+ entrant Las Vegas tournament. Why did he feel compelled to knock me out of the tournament with those cards when the size of my stack wouldn't have made much of a difference to his? The upside to him, especially with nothing better than 92o was small but the downside, especially for other players at the table, was enormous.

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