[lacky]

god dammit, i just wrote a really long reply that disapeard. i hate typing, but ill try to summerize anyway.

I always played sng's with a much more open, gambling style early. stealing from the nits and playing big pots with the lagdonkdorks that would pay off light. You weren't around then, but you may have seen reference to my playing weird. I played em pretty much the same as I play mtt's, or looser.

so, my opinions are from playing 1000's of sng's in the way your talking about.

The style works very well (higher than normal roi's) as long as you have lagdonkdorks at the table. Just stealing small pots from the nits isnt enough to make it worth the chips you bleed when the steals dont work out. you also need those double ups. the nits will rarely double you up early, as they wont risk chips when behind. easy to steal small pots from, but no big ones. the laggy poor players are where the double ups come from, and to have a meaningful advantage at the bubble you need lots of chips. In the early bubble if you have a larger than average stack you cant play hands as easily (too many chips to shove profitably, and a normal raise is vulnerable to resteals from smaller stacks) amd you still cant priftably call the short stack shoves, so the stacks tend to equalize some during this stage. a 300 chips advantage at this point is essentailly meaningless, but a 2000 chip advantage isnt.

in the old 10 hand per round regulars (turbo's hadn't been invented yet) the style worked very well up to 55's. after that the really poor players i would take advantage off start disapearing. You cant steal enough chips from a table full of nit's to make the risk worth the chips acuired. at 109's my roi dropped off sharply, at 215's I'm sure ima lifetime loser.

also, playing this way is highly read dependent. you have to know who the nits are, and you have to know who is playing like a dork. alot of the dorks are occational players, so to know they are playing bad early enough to take advantage of it you have to see it.

I could play this style well 8 tabling, but beyond that you really do start to lose the feel for the different players. hud's help, but not enough to play 20 tables at a time. remeber, when we first started all this, 3 tables was all you were allowed to play.

so, yes, playing a looser style does work, as long as there are people willing to payoff when you hit a hand. The style works much better in mtt's though, and even better in deepstack cash games. the main reason I think most people move up and out of sng's is the better at postflop poker you get,the better off you are playing where you can use it best. In high stake sng nitty tables (at least then) it's very hard to play a loose style and accumulate enough extra chips to offset the risk involved.