Doyle Brunson making mistakes here?

[chessforlife]

I just caught a bit of an invite tournament held a couple years ago. Doyle was heads up at the end with at least five times the chips of his opponent. He commenced going all in every hand, I assume believing that sooner or later the odds would make him the winner. He lost four or five or six all ins in a row, and lost the tournament. Does anyone recall what I'm talking about?

My question is, Isn't this a donkey strategy? I respect Doyle brunson, but wouldn't it be better to not let someone back in the game? He was pushing all in preflop with rags, and then once he had something like Q-5, and his opponent pushed all in with his small stack, and Brunson called again. I assume Brunson is relying on a type of odds theory that states over 5 hands, odds are he will win one, and with it tournament, but this doesn't seem like good play to me.

[Drontier]

i dont know what tournament this was, but i doubt it was a mistake. the blinds were probably so high that this was the only option. listing the size of blinds would be helpful. if you are HU and the bb is around 1/11th of the shortest stack, going all in every hand is good.

[AceofSpades]

If your opponent has little enough that pushing every hand would be close to +EV and you would have pot odds with almost any two. Then it is probably better for you to push than call his push hoping he makes a mistake and folds.

[MikeLowry]

It was WPT's "Poker By The Book" and it was against David Sklansky heads up. Looked like he just gave up after losing the first all in which was the first hand heads up. I don't think the blinds were high enough for the all in all the time, maybe DS can tell you.

[AaronBrown]

My recollection is that Doyle lost four all-in's in a row, with good hands each time. Sklansky had, I think, AQo, A5o, AQs for the first three. That's quite a run of luck in the circumstances. The last all-in call, when things were about even, was on T9o to Brunson's K2o, but Sklansky pulled out this 45% shot.

In general, I agree with you. Going all-in every time only makes sense when the antes and blinds get huge. It's true that you'll rarely lose this way if you have a big chip lead, but you'll lose even less rarely if you pick your calls. The other reason someone might do this is to get the tournament over quickly.

[Phil123]

I remember one WSOP main event Brunson called all in with K9 and I don't think he was that short stacked. I remember been very suprised when I saw him do this. Not suprisingly he got knocked out.

[tom10167]

My friends dealt in that. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Anyways, the first time(he had 9-3o) I think it made sense, there really was no other play, I think, David had like two or three big blinds and he was dealt a real premium hand, AQ or the like. I'm making that exact same play.

I think he had KJ the next hand and yeah, snowball effect.

[Mr. Orange]

If this is indeed "poker by the book" your talking about here's a few things your missing:

1) 4 hands in a row on TV is not nessarily 4 hands in a row in real life.
2) This was a WPT invite only event. While these may be exciting to watch, there not a important as winning a WPT Title. These events in essense, are 6 player satelites for the WPT championship. This event was filmed in Dec., Brunson had already won a seat to WPT championship by winning the Legends of poker, 2 months earlier so he really was playing for no reason than to play. He probably wanted to go home at this point.

[Quicksilvre]

My guess that a lot of it could be explained through editing (not showing every HU hand) and the fact that Doyle probably had so little to win that he just wanted to go home.