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Sorry to jump in late here, but I want to backtrack the thread a little. I'm not sold on the "little games with bad players is better than the bigger games with better players" philosophy. I read an article in a poker magazine recently, but I'm not sure which one. It didn't address this issue directly, but it does make you think about it.
The author argued that you should not think of bad players as "fish" or "donkeys". The guy who limps UTG then calls a 3-bet all-in preflop with A7s and cracks your KK is a "Zombie".
Think about any zombie movie you've ever seen. Zombies are slow, dumb, predictable, and easily out maneuvered. A quick shot to the head will take them out effortlessly.
But, then what happens? Eventually, the hero, or one of his friends, will inadvertently step into a room, or back into a corner and suddenly be faced with 50 zombies. He doesn't have enough bullets, or enough places to run, and eventually, the lumbering mass of brain-thirsty zombies overruns the hero.
Yeah, you want to play bad players because you'll be in so many +EV situations. But you will lose some of the time. Even if you get your chips in as a 2 to 1 favorite or better, EVERY time, you're still going to get stacked 1/3 of the time. So the more zombies there are in the game, the more you have to dodge and get lucky on your way to a win.
In MTT's, my strategy is to try and build a stack early. I mostly play live, at a card room in a rural town. So I'm playing the same zombies over and over again, so I have good reads that allows me to play super-agressive and build chips early. This allows me to take the 2 to 1 gamble and stay alive even if I lose.
In SNG's where the optimal strategy is to play tight early, you don't necessarily accumulate chips early, and have to rely on those big +EV situations in the middle and late stages to try and double up. So, in that situation, your skill and +EV are negated because you WILL lose some of those races, even when you're a big favorite.
In conclusion, I want fewer zombies in the game. I would rather get my chips in two or three times when I'm a 5 to 4 favorite, as opposed to getting my chips in five or six times when I'm a 2 to 1 favorite.
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