« Winning Pots Is Not The Object Of Poker | Home | Will The Last Player Out Please Shoot Out The Lights »
02.15.07
The Traffic Theory, Part I: Point A
posted by Absinthe | 4:25 PM
Point A is where you begin. Point B is where you end. At Point A, you have a tiny pile of chips, the same size as everyone else’s. At Point B you have a mountain of chips and nobody else has any at all. Your job is to get from Point A to Point B.
It is, of course, more complicated than that. Except that it’s not. It’s a journey fraught with peril, calamity, catastrophe, but ultimately you get to the end of a tournament in, metaphorically speaking, the same way you go to work in the morning: you get in your car and drive there.
The traffic is a bitch.
It’s a race, to be sure, but not everyone at your table is the equivalent of a Formula 1 pro. There’s a lot of dead money out there, Sunday drivers who are only going to make it to Point B by accident. Fortunately for them, the crowded field makes for a lot of happy accidents.
At Point A, everyone’s momentum is equal. It’s zero. Winning pots early on gives you a tiny edge on the rest of the field but there’s a lot of road between you and Point B and nearly infinite possibilities along the way. How best to break away from the pack in the early going is an open question. Whether you should bother is another.
You can only go as fast as the traffic will allow. It’s not something that can normally be bent to your will. At Point A, you’re not really concerned about the finish line. You’re only concerned with the cars right next to you, hemming you in, in turn hemmed in by the cars next to them, and so on. Early in a tournament your speed and momentum aren’t really dictated by anything you can control. Your job is to point the car in the direction of Point B and start driving.
Up next: All Driving Is Defensive Driving.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Topics: Poker | No Comments »