Maybe it's just me

For all the talk on here about the limitations to a good player's edge playing No-Limit tournaments, I'm beginning to wonder whether the bottom line is that I'm not very good at them. I made most of my money in Luton playing Stud. Now I seem to be hitting a brick wall in NL Sit and Goes, while I feel good playing Limit. As some vague sort of practice for any Poker Million qualification attempts, I have been playing some 5-handed NL single tables on Ladbrokes, and hitting the wall in those as well. It's true that I do have a good record in live winner-take-all NL single tables ; possibly because I'm free to play the kind of aggressive semi-bluffing game I want to without having to be overly concerned about elimination.

As usual, it's probably a bit of both. Funny how it goes though. If I was in Vegas right now, and I had a choice of a $500 NL tournament and a $500 Limit HE event, I'd play the limit. Even though it's their "home game" ! It is so much cheaper to represent a big hand in limit, and so much cheaper when someone outdraws or cold-decks you. When you reach the higher levels, you often have 3 chances to knock your opponent out of the pot instead of just the one.

Meanwhile if I do find myself in a live NL tournament, I'm going to play to win all the chips. As it says in the Bible, screw it *. Less EV but more fun **. It's a shame you just can't do this in 50-30-20 S+Gs online ; I think the trick there is to play high enough so that a small % edge translates to a half-decent $ edge, and keep turning the handle. No one said it was going to be glamorous !

* Quote from a recent Simpsons episode. Homer is the greatest.

** Debateably only a little less EV and maybe about the same in a lot of tournaments. Definitely more fun though.