The World according to Negraneau

[voiceofjoe]

As my 'Prize Winning' rant against Negraneau's views on the WSOP Main Event proves I'm not the greatest 'Kid Poker' fan - But whether I agree with all his opinions or not, I must admit he's an excellent Poker Player. Reading through his Blog the other day a couple of quotes stuck in my mind, which made me re-assess the optimium way of playing. Quote 1

I only min-raise before the flop and I NEVER re-raise before the flop. That kind of play is for donks who are accustomed to playing in tournaments with 20-30 big blinds, but that’s not the kind of tournaments I play in and that strategy is totally unnecessary in the big buy in events. I don’t care if I have AA, KK, or AK, I’m going to see a flop and wait until after the flop before I make a bigger investment. I up the raise when the antes are introduced, but only slightly. For example, at the 500-1000 level with a 100 ante my standard raise was to 2200. I will make it 2400 at a slightly tougher table, but would never go past 2500 unless I was actually going all in on a short stack.

Quote 2

We must have played 7 handed for 4 hours, no joke. I've been deep in almost every tournament I've played since early September and I've noticed a major trend. While its still very easy to get deep into tournaments by using a basic small ball strategy, by the time you get past the money, the majority of the remaining players are small ballers- and they are good. Back in 2004 few people had any clue at all how to play the deep stacked events. The re-raisers and blow up artists were many, but today, those players just don't get very far

Going along with the Daniels theme of ignoring over agressive pre flop play I then found this simple but nifty spreadsheet that helps determine 'The Patience Factor' in tournaments (hopefully the link takes you strait to it) http://www.blackjackforumonline.com/content/Patience_Factor_Calculator.xls

[happyhornet]

Re: The World according to Negraneau A lot of this is detailed in his book 'Power Holdem Strategy' (or something like that). The book itself has too many sections on either too basic a strategy or high stakes cash games (cos we all play those!!), but the 150 pages on SmallBall are fantastic and worth the price alone.:ok