I finished reading Gus Hansen's new book, "Every Hand Revealed" in practically one sitting. It described his winning the Full Tilt "Aussie Millions" tournament in incredible detail, analyzing each hand, including his chip count, blind amounts, position, opponent(s), thought process, and results. I honestly do not understand how he accomplished this. I know that he carries a tape recorder and frequently can be seen talking into it, but this was amazing. What I found fascinating was his frequent successful raising with what I would consider trash hands. He seldom if ever limped in (a very good lesson), and nearly always raised from the button or one of the blinds if anyone limped. He also defended nearly every raise while in the blind with any two cards. What amazed me was his reading ability of the raisers and his ability to steal pots. He highly recommends stealing late in the tournament, or really any time. One good lesson I picked up from him was the "M" theory on stack size versus blinds. I have seen this before, but really did not think it through. It involves figuring how many revolutions of the blinds you have until you are in serious short stack trouble. The lowest figure is 3, meaning that if the blinds are say 200-400, it will take you 600 to get through the blinds, so 3 times 600 is 1800, meaning you must probably go all-in on your next playable hand if you have 1800 or less. You do not want to fall below this number as escalating blinds plus lack of chips make more hands callable by your opponents when you do push.
I really liked his concept of always being the aggressor, so I decided to try it in a couple of sit n go's on line rather than my more patient and tight approach. I will have to say that I will need more practice with this as I quickly busted out of the tournaments (once was pretty forgivable when I raised preflop with 10's, was called by pocket 3's, then pushed hard when the flop was an unconnected queen/something/3 flop. Ooops! I forgot the part when I analyzed his possible holdings and included a small pocket pair, not to mention the fact that queen beat me. I am not giving up on the more aggressive strategy as I think it is what you need to win the really big tournaments, but in the smaller one I will continue to play a little tight, but leave myself open for creative calls in the blinds and more stealing in late position.
1 comment:
That sounds like a good book with tons of information. I've always liked watching Gus Hansen play in tournaments. I don't know about the "M" rule. It makes sense. I personally like to try to have 20 times the big blind, so if blinds are 200-400, I like to have 8,000 or so in chips, as opposed to only 1,800 according to Gus's logic. Of course, he's a much better and more experienced player, so he can probably get away with it. Good luck trying out the new aggressiveness!!
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