Some timely thoughts on playalongs (LC)

[bozlax]

Ok, we've had a couple of less-than-awesomely-successful playalongs recently. fwiw I didn't participate in Frito's playalong because he (wisely) showed it to me beforehand (whether posting it after my comments was also wise is up in the air). Now that it's over, I'm giving it a B-; the content is decent, the value of his hand changes street-by-street, and each street is a reasonably interesting decision.

For everyone's edification, I quote here Wookie's Rules Of Playalongs:

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1. It should be a hand you think you played expertly. Play alongs are typically the poster teaching something to the forum rather than the poster getting input. If you are just unsure about your play, there's nothing wrong with a regular hand post.
2. The hand should feature at a bare minimum TWO very marginal situations that will generate good discussion. If there are 3 or 4, all the better. If you have a great hand to post with just one decision that will generate good discussion, a regular hand post will work best for it. Otherwise, discussion of the important street will get buried by "raise preflop."
3. Speaking of which, if preflop play is obvious, there's no shame in starting at the flop.
4. As always, reads are great.
5. If you have to abandon your post for a little while, abandon it at an interesting decision, not at an easy one. If you have to abandon your post for a couple days, post your play along some other day.

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(I amended Rule 1a at a later date, i.e. "1a. It doesn't hurt if the OP [censored] the dog on one decision, as an expression of their own mortality." The keys to this are that you're able to identify where and how you boofed, you should be able to quantify the mistake, and it should really only be in one place.)

(Another good guideline: if the hand becomes HU anywhere before your final river action, it's probably not a great playalong. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out why this might be.)

Here's where Frito's fell apart: Rule One, it's a hand you played expertly. That means that every marginal decision the vets are going to say, "yup," and the nOObs are going to say, "wow." At the very least you should have iron-clad reasoning behind any departure from "correct" play (e.g. "this retard would bet down with atc, and the other one would call a single bet on any street with atc, so there was no point in raising anywhere"). The point of playalongs is to teach the forum something, it's not just a different way of making a hand post. "Well," I hear you cry, "I'm a nOOb/soph! I think I played this great, but during my playalong everybody told me I played it like ass. How'm I supposed to know?" The answer: ask before you post it. IM me, Wookie, some other vet that you're familiar with and say that you're thinking about posting a playalong and you want a little feedback; if the answer is, it's an interesting hand, but you screwed the pooch here, here and here, then you probably don't need to post it as a playalong.

As Wookie said when posting the "Rules", there's no harm in posting a bad playalong, except it takes some energy to do it so you want it to be good. Don't make me break out this guy: