Game Selection (2)

After one trip to the WSOP in which I didn't play any main events at all and cleared about $400, I am surely in a position to tell everyone how to win there :-). Or not, but I'm going to anyway. To my mind it doesn't make so much difference what game you're in (main event, super, single table, cash) as who you're playing against. OK if you're in the top 10% of the entire poker population inside Binions at any given moment, then you want to be in the game with the "best" structure and the most play. If, however, you're around half-way or even below then the most important thing is to find the games where the players are worse than you, and play them. These happened to be the single table satellites. Almost everyone I asked said, yeah, I've done really well in the single tables, I should have played more of them.

But why ? The first answer that springs to mind is “they just were”. When you find a money-making opportunity, don’t waste time analyzing it to death, get in there and fill your boots. In hindsight though, there were several reasons. Many of the top players get put in the big tournaments one way or another, and don't need to play the satellites. They don't like the fast structure (rightly or wrongly, I'm not sure). And, as Jesse May points out, when the fish are knocked out of the big comps they don't go into the cash games on tilt any more - they go into the single tables instead. Many of the "new generation" of players aren't interested in cash, and I don't blame them, nor am I. Cash games are for Nazis. So while the single tables could be quite tricky of an evening, depending on who happened to sit down, in the mornings they were absolutely marshmallow soft. I cleared $3000, at least $200 an hour, and most of that was in $100 satellites. I should have played more of them :-)

Footnote : After writing this last week, it appears that there is a televised tournament currently running at the Plaza. $10K entry - no satellites, no online qualifiers, no logos. In other words no riff-raff. Just us, the proper players. Yeah right. Just you the ego-maniacs more like. John Juanda apparently told them where to shove it if he couldn't wear a logo, and has consequently shot up in my estimation. Well done that man. I'll probably have more to say about this when I've given it more thought - in the mean time have a look at the list of entries and work out which "faces" aren't playing. They'll be the ones with more sense than ego.