Without doubt I am the least popular player on the Party Poker tournament circuit at the moment!!

What happened?

Well - for a long time I had this theory that the best way to get a placing in a tourney was not to play!!

Last night I got my chance. There was a freeroll for UK players at Party where the top 25 places got a $1300 seat. 600 people entered. My tournament strategy was this:

1] Build stack in early stages to a level that would cover the blinds for the next four hours (calculated by the attrition rate of players over the first hour)

2] On Party you are allowed 40 seconds before you are forced to fold. My game plan was to use these 40 seconds to their maximum before always folding. (unless I got AA,KK).

3] Because it was a MTT I was simply going to survive and let the players kill each other off on other tables. By doing this right, every 19 minutes would cost me about 1.5 times the blinds but I'd also lose 25 or so other players.

Key to this stratgey was that I was not playing any poker - I was letting the other players make mistakes.


To start with I needed a stack. 600 people 'started' but on my table there were only three other active players.The rest were no shows - but the money was there. I confess I did play a bit poker for the first hour. I took out three ppl as they entered the tables and swept up the blinds from dead players to the tune of 5500. After the hour I estimated that this was all I need to get a placing.

AND THEN I STOPPED!.

Every time I was asked to bet I waited for the full 40 seconds.

I was moved to an active table where I was CL It took almost an hour to play 20 hands! I had to turn the chat off .....ppl werre getting very unfriendly.

This had a very funny effect. When I started this ploy there were 501 ppl remaining. The ppl on my table got very frustrated. Their play became erratic as they grew desparate for action. Although I lost CL a lot of ppl on the table were badly damaged and I watched when I moved table after the hour and saw the weakened players on my old table make erratic plays to recover with all-ins -only to be taken out by bigger stacks . By not playing on my table I had weakend all players (bar one) very substantially.

At this stage the blinds were costing me virtually nothing per hour. But ppl were dying off at the an hourly rate of 100/hour. I only had to last 5 hours.

EVERY time the betting came to me I went the full 40 seconds. I even used my time bank.

Next hour saw me in the top 300 with a below average stack.. but I was still on course... as long as the other players died at the same rate. Still playing at a rate of about 20 hands an hour!!

Although my chat was turned off.. I could hear the screams!!!

Again I left the table - the small stacks I left behind died quickly as they tried to recover by all-ins..

I started at 8.00pm GMT it reached around midnight and I was still doing it.. 300 left, then top 200 and then I broke the 100 mark - without playing a single hand!!!

My stack was getting very short at midnight my calculations indicated I was in trouble. The early attrition rate of players was due to 'no shows' my calculations were out.

With only two rounds left and blinds now representing most of my stack I hit KK. I 'all-ined' and every one folded. - I'd just bought three more rounds!!

Time passed, 40 players left- I needed top 25 to win a $1350 seat. I was on my last round. The blinds hit me - I had one preflop raise into me late. I called all-in with ('Steep climb') K2 - and hit the king against his ace. You could hear the table groan in unison

The other four tables showed substantial differences in chips over the table I was gradually killing.

There were 37 ppl left... I had not played a hand of poker in nearly five hours.. and had worked my way up to the top 10% of the field.

However the poker gods were not going to let me have this one... the blinds finally ate me I was forced all-in with 10-4 - I hit the 4 but he hit the 6. If he hadn't I estimate I would have ended up about 30th. As it was I ended up 35th ...

A lot of ppl were happy to see me lose... obviously I was cheating.. A slight miscalculation in the early stages had cost me...

I guess I destroyed a lot of pleasure for a lot of ppl last night and from what ppl were saying in the chat - there are now many who consider my tournament strategy 'unethical' and myself to be a poor player...

Poker was originally called the 'cheaters game'... This time my play didn't pay off... but I had an edge over everyone else and I pushed it......

Good story and if I was at your table I too would be very pissed off, however you are just exploiting a weakness of the game design.


I had a similar therory with playing $5 sit&gos on weekend nights.

I wonder if I buy into 4 $5 sit&gos at a time and just post blind & fold how often I would come in 3rd or 2nd.

These games lose players quickly on weekend nights and I think in general players drop out faster than they blinds would eat you up. I still want to try this one night!!!

Originally Posted by Beavis68

Bunghole.

lol...yes that's what some ppl said and worse.

This is obviously a gray area...I worked to control the table, win and put everyone on tilt and came pretty close to acheiving all these goals...$1300 is quite a lot of money for a few hours work. If you play recreationally as a gambler then fine, you play a lottery you don't expect to win.... BUT recreational gamblers fall victim to good players in a number of ways.. and they rarely see it coming. These guys were getting completely frantic - my chat box filled up...they started to play irrationally and THE thing I didn't do was go all-in more often. Everyone assumed I was only going to bet with AA!!

If there are complaints to Party (I'd be surprised if there weren't!) then it's up to Party to change the house rules. The structure of this tournament lends itself perfectly to this strategy and in all honesty..I'd do it again...but slightly modified.

So, if you were there last night and you're still cursing me... then sorry.. but welcome to poker.....

You're allowed to sit out as long as you've shown up. There's a limit to how long your seat is held, but what's the difference between clicking on sit out and clicking "fold to any bet" at all times. There is none. If everyone else is that bad, it's not your fault.

The nasty side of this is that if you click sit out.. the hand rate goes to the normal 45 hands an hour.. as the play just passes over you. In which case you're eaten alive by the blinds very quickly. Indeed all the no shows were killed off by 2nd or 3rd level.

If you constantly hit the fold button after 45 seconds the hand rate drops to around 20 an hour. Then the effect of the blinds is much reduced - plus you get the bonus of frustrating and weakening your opponents.

It's food for thought. Next time you have doubled up your stack a couple of times early in a MTT and you're way above average stack- look at the prize structure.. you might just see that the +EV is in this 'slow play'.

It works in this tournament because you only have to make the top 25 for an equal share of the prize. It goes without saying that you will never win a tourney using this technique... but I think you can artifically increase your average placing if your are aware of this strategy - and aren't afraid of using it.

Given your mathmatical approach to everything, I'm not surprised to see you try this, once. It is an angle, but its legal.

You probably needed to observe similar events to get a better attrition rate. I assume the size of the field, when graphed, is on a negative slope curve, where the attrition rate slows the longer event continues.

I love the fact that you approached this from an expiremental point of view, and not a recommended strategy. I think you showed that it can be done, and maybe actually cash in a freeroll later, but I would hope you would never play like this in a cash event.

I don't know if its not cheating. I've heard at certain live tournies you can be asessed a time penatly for this.