Final Table - All-in Every Hand

**silencee** · 05-28-2005

I just finished second in a MTT where my opponent went all in with every hand. I came in with second size stack and doubled up early when the CL (all-in guy) went in with 5-2 against my aces.

He cooled off (only went in every three hands) and made it to the round of three with second sized stack. He took out the SS with A-4 over his A-J, and proceeded to take out me after I folded a few times and then called his all-in with 3-3, to lose to his 8-9 when he caught a straight.

I'm just wondering if this is actually a viable strategy, or if he got severly lucky. I'm not much of a MTT player and have only made 3 or 4 final tables, but I've never seen this before and was appalled when it worked. Any thoughts?

**Marm** · 05-28-2005

It worked didnt it?

To do it, you jsut need a big enough stack to take the hits when they come. Corkin used this style to near perfection vs Hellmuth and Mohammed in the WPT event.

**KiD[ReD]** · 05-28-2005

You're leaving out the most important details - how many people were left, blinds, and chip stacks. If there were 3-4 people left and the blinds were huge relative to his stack size, it's certainly not a bad strategy. He's just gambling it up to get back into the game instead of waiting for a hand. Once the blind-stack ratio is in safe territory though, he's just asking for it when somebody has a hand of course...

Head's up in a tourney or SnG, if the blinds are super high, and I'm either a much larger stack, or much smaller stack, I'll push every hand. Especially when you're the smaller stack. When you're the large stack and pushing, every time he folds, he's narrowing his chances to come back by a lot, as now he's gonna be pushed into waiting for a hand, and head's up is somewhat close to a coinflip. So.. I look at it like a curve, it only gets worse for him each time. And worse comes to worse, he doubles up and you guys are equal stacks...

This is of course when the blinds are really high..

**mxp2004** · 05-28-2005

Once, I was in the middle of a SNG, when I got a phone call from a friend inviting me over me to play in a poker game. I accepted, and then I needed to extricate myself from the SNG. To do this, I just started going all-in every hand.

At first, I caught a few lucky cards, sucking out on a couple of people. I apologized, and then confessed to the table that I had to leave the game. I told them in advance that I was going all-in on every hand until I busted out.

For a few more hands, people were calling me with marginally good hands... like KT or 89s. But for whatever reason, no matter what cards I was up against, I won the hand.

Then, something remarkable happened. People stopped playing cards. No one would enter a pot until I bet. You could tell that they were thinking, "Is my hand strong enough to call an all-in?" If the answer was no, they just folded.

Eventually, I had so many chips, that I just had to play out the game. I just slowed down and started to lean on the small stacks, playing the strategy that you normally would if you had a big chip advantage at a table. I wound up winning the SNG easily.

After it was over, I thought about the strategy. I concluded that I had largely been lucky because of the cards that I had caught in the early going. Having said, it was a great lesson about the power of sheer aggression and the impact that it can have on your opponents' play. It was also a lesson to some extent about odds: there are not too many hands where you are so much of an underdog against one opponent that you cannot catch up.

**KiD[ReD]** · 05-28-2005

Nice post mxp2004 - this is kind of what I was alluding to: when you're shorthanded in a final table in a tournament, AND THE BLINDS ARE LARGE RELATIVE TO YOUR STACK, if I'm the first person in, or somebody else just limps in, I'll push everytime...

I also use the all-in strategy a lot in turbo tourneys/sng's (I shouldn't be in them in the first place, I know), on any half-decent hand.

**silencee** · 05-28-2005

When he first started doing it, his stack was about 90000 to a 1000-2000 blind, me and the other guy who made the final three came into it with about 75000 each and everyone else was about 10000-20000. Nine people at the final table.

**Marm** · 05-28-2005

Originally Posted by 'KiD[ReD

' AND THE BLINDS ARE LARGE RELATIVE TO YOUR STACK,

Blind size is actually irrellevant here, especially in regards to your stack. It matters to their stacks as well. You're talking desperation endgame allin'ing. We're talking just clobber them to death allin'ing. In fact you want them to have stack about 1/5 or less of yours, and the blinds creeping up on them. That way you eat away at their stack until a point where they are inneffective for combat. It actually works best if you have a monstrous stack in bb's (100-200bb's) since if you do get your wings clipped a couple times, you can revert to a grinding, slow rebuilding strategy. End game as, you are describing, you lose 2 hands and you're pretty much out of the event.

**the alex** · 05-28-2005

Being the CL means nothing at the final table unless you have:

A.) a large stack in relation to the blinds (40+)
B.) you and at least twice as much as 3rd
and
C.) 3 or more people have less than 10BB's

That's when your stack power is effective and has the power that you're exuding. I like your play, but I dance around and vary a bit more. This requires making some good laydowns, though. If you get too married to hands because of your stack and that's an issue for you, I like this mode of play.

**KiD[ReD]** · 05-28-2005

Originally Posted by Marm

Blind size is actually irrellevant here, especially in regards to your stack. It matters to their stacks as well. You're talking desperation endgame allin'ing. We're talking just clobber them to death allin'ing. In fact you want them to have stack about 1/5 or less of yours, and the blinds creeping up on them. That way you eat away at their stack until a point where they are inneffective for combat. It actually works best if you have a monstrous stack in bb's (100-200bb's) since if you do get your wings clipped a couple times, you can revert to a grinding, slow rebuilding strategy. End game as, you are describing, you lose 2 hands and you're pretty much out of the event.

If you don't, you will lose if you don't catch a monster hand in the next 3-4 hands anyhow.

**the alex** · 05-28-2005

The main point is that you have to pick your battles, meaning that you wanna keep position and the sizes of the stacks behind you in mind.

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