The Donkeys Defense

I can not find the right link.. but CC had a great post defending his play against SLB in the WWDN. Actually what he was defending was getting AA twice in a row! Shame on you CC! It is funny where you find nuggets worth looking at though. I have often thought some of CC's moves in the VERY FEW MTTs I have seen him play were donkish. I have seen him call of large sums with monster hands like KJo (Usually with a nice stack of chips behind him). I by no means think that CC is a donkey so it always surprised me when I saw moves like this.

I read his "Donkeys Defense" post and what I took out of it was kind of interesting. He is right about the top 10 or even top 3 of most MTTs being the only thing worth getting. Who the hell wants to play for six hours for fifteen bucks. I mean it sounds nice that you beat 2000 donks but who the hell cares. Talking with Ick last night I also had to disagree with his reasoning. He was telling me that I play too aggressively near the bubble. Who the hell cares? Oooh my I lost that double up I was going to make. I think I will go home and cry to mommy. I think all of my recent bubbles have been on good hands. I think part of the problem has been letting myself get blinded down slightly. The other part was just bad luck. If you raise AQ with five people at your table, huge blinds, and getting blinded out, you can expect to have the best hand a huge chunk of the time. Pushing JJ into AA after you is going to happen sometimes. You could argue that I could have called $600 off with my 3K stack and then fold to the re-raise after me. I think calling is bad here though since you give the guys behind you odds to limp in with alot of hands. I think raising 4xBB is bad as it leaves me crippled. I think pushing is right.

I am not sure where the "Donkey Defense" comes into play but if I could quantify it I would say the general idea is to keep your stack in the top 10% throughout the game. Add more risk to your game to try and take the huge reward at the end. I think it means taking some risks early with strong starting hands. Pushing some TPTK on flops to try and get that lead. I also think the only way to keep up with the pack is to steal alot more. You will become card dead at some point in a 3hour MTT. Your choices then are either blind down and die or steal a blind or two. Not going overboard but keeping up with the leaders. My normal middle game is waiting with my largish stack until the blinds increase and then hoping I get a hand to push before I am blinded down too far. No way this is going to work. I think I will experiment with ways to chip up huge this week at some of the small buyin MTTs. It may be as simple as pushing some hands harder pre-flop earlier.. or taking some more risky lines.