Play for the set but call the all in. Genius!

So you're in the big blind with any two and it's limped 5 ways, you reraise all in (assume stack size/blinds proportionate) only to get called by a UTG Limper (who you have covered), his 44 holds up vs your JTs. We've all had this happen in low-mid limit, retard infested MTT's, just don't come crying to me about it.

Recently, someone who asked for some MTT help was annoyed about the above scenario. Or that I was advocating not open completing from the SB, or other standard stuff that even below average players would never do. In fact, it spawned an entire discussion.

Apparently, the aforementioned person had been having more success playing wild wacky, let's all take a flop and see who has the best hand poker. That's actually a good way to play if you're being hit in the face with the deck but for the 99.5% of the time when that won't happen, you're f c u k e d.

But daddy daddy, raising only puts me to tougher decisions. No, genius. Raising makes your decisions far more easier. It enables you to gain valuable information, nullifies difficult flops due to chip commitment, and applies pressure on the other guy.

But I saw Phil Ivey open limp/open complete/some other wacky scenario on TV. Yeah? Me too. Phil Ivey also puts the fourth raise in with Q high on flops that miss him by six miles...and it's good. When you can read players and play flops like Ivey, you can do whatever you'd like, but for now, it's probably a good idea to avoid tough decisions. If you can't play 8's on the flop heads up in a raised pot oop, how are you going to play them in a multiway pot where anyone can have any 2? Not to mention you're also defining the strength of your hand unless you're willing to (and I know you're not) limp aces and kings some of the time. Playing solely for the set is a losing move. Not only do you need to read boards to pick off hands worse than yours, you must also get better hands to laydown by repping the set when you miss it some of the time.

Doyle says: going broke in a limped pot is for retards. Threeup and I agree.

(An interesting sidenote: I had this discussion with Barry Greenstien once and he basically seemed to concur with what I've written above though appeared more lenient to the open limp but against weak opposition whereas I'd consider it more effective against stronger opponents where keeping them off balance is key. Nevertheless, rumor is that he's broke now, so going with Doyle's advice is probably the better option.)

But Jay, look at this person. He does this and that and keeps winning. Look, if you take a room full of retards, sit them all at a table, give them a deck of cards and force them to play an MTT, one of them is bound to win it, right? You put these people in front of me and I will bust them all, eventually. It's not because I am so good at poker, that's far from it, and if you've followed this blog you know I am not good at all. It's simply because they are so ridiculously bad, that Threeup can train a malnutritioned chimp to play at a far higher level than they could ever hope to achieve.

It's easily possible to make $200K/yr playing 200NL fulltime but some "winning" players only make a third of that. Why? Because they're awful.

You can suck and still be a winning player. Trust me, I know first hand.