[sweetjazz]

Alan,

First let me say that it is quite fun to watch you play in NL tournaments. I am a limit cash game player, so I don't have the expertise to evaluate your play. While your style is unorthodox, I do think there are some nice features to your approach. For one, your style seems to prevent information leakage early in the hand. Your choice of a small raise preflop, for example, seems to give up some value on big hands with the intention of protecting your ability to see a lot of flops. Additionally, it is harder for opponents to find the optimal strategy to counter your approach, because it is so unique. It likely does not make sense for an opponent to devote hours of their time analyzing your play when it is unlikely that this study will be crucial to their success in a big tournament. (Most likely, he will not sit at the same table with you for very long, if at all.)

I do think, however, that judging your play on the results you have obtained so far is rather ridiculous. The variance in tournament poker is so large that it is very difficult to say anything meaningful about your play based on the results of 50 tournaments. That said, I have no reason to doubt that you have a winning style. I don't make any claim to what long-term results you should expect. The reality is that you will never know, as you will by your own choice end your lifetime having played far too few tournaments to establish an accurate confidence interval for your winrate. But that's okay -- who cares, as long as you are having fun?

Anyway, I appreciate that you take the time to post in the threads about your play.