New Theory

As I mentioned yesterday Aaron came home to take a break from the Mirage tournament because he was just taking some tough beats both in the cash games and the tournaments. His style is one of hyper aggressiveness and splashing around in a lot of pots. He plays better than almost anyone I have ever played with after the flop which makes his style work for him. He usually wins, and wins big, because he gets people to put their money in when they can't read him with the nuts. Then he takes down others with well timed bluffs, as he reads pretty well. The problem is that this style entices action, which can be a good thing, but sometimes you just don't want that much action. He gets under peoples skin(he can be rather irritating when he gets talking), makes them think he is gambling, and then people are just out to get him. When you are playing in these huge no-limit or pot-limit cash games, much like a tournament, it only takes one really big beat to knock you out. In the cash game if you are super deep you can take a few stupid beats and stay in action. He has the cash but is not super deep for the games he is in. That is aonther problem, I think he should stay out of the super huge games as he just is not deep enough to survive a bad run of cards, but that is another debate.

I theorized that this style of hyper aggressiveness and creating action results in getting called a higher percentage of the time(duh?). Now you are supposed to win your percentage of them when you are a favorite, but you still lose sometimes, even when you are a huge favorite and someone hits a one outer on you. If you are in a situation where one beat puts you out of action, like a tournament, you don't want to get called every single time even if you are a Huge favorite to win. I think you want to create an image that gets people to lay down their hands sometimes, but not be so tight that people only put you on big cards. I don't want people to call every single time. You don't want them to not believe you every time they have a draw or a small piece of the flop. If you lose you are out. Bad Beats still happen, otherwise we would have nothing to talk about at the table. The variance goes up the more pots you see to the river, that is just a fact. If you can only fade one bad beat, you don't want to be in that situation lots of times. The 2% still gets there 2% of the time. You want it sometimes not all the time.

Then I thought about how this might apply to some of the bigger tournaments that a woman has never won. Why has there not been a winner of a WPT final or WSOP main event yet? This theory might explain partially why. Most men just hate to lose to a woman. I know they do not make up that much of a percentage of a field, but still by now you would have thought we would have had a winner of a main event. I know from first hand play that I think they are as talented as any of the men in the field. If you sit with a Jennifer Harmon, Annie Duke, Mimi Tran, Cindy Violette, etc. they are good. They can beat the shit out of you in a cash game. They are net winners in the cash games they play in. In a tournament situation you can only afford one beat and you are out, bad or not. Women most likely get more action, wanted or not, because men can't stand to lose to a women. Men may call in a marginal situation with a woman that they would lay down to a man, just because of that factor. They may actually gamble against them more because of that same fact with stupid hands. Do Women entice action just by the fact that they are Women in this game? Then the randomness of the cards takes them out. Like I said even when you are an 8 to 1 favorite you sometimes lose. It only takes one bad beat and you are out. Are women in more of these situations in a tournament than men, thus get taken out by the randomness of the cards more? Who knows, just a thought. Aaron's beats this week made me think of why getting action sometimes is not the best thing in the world, even when you are a huge favorite, sometimes winning lots of small pots is a lot better than winning and losing the huge pots.

I am interested in anyone's thoughts on this. I may just be smoking dope, and this in no way was meant to offend anyone. There are some killer women players just as there are men. There may be a completely different reason, but I think this is a big part of it, as Aaron has shown me that you can be one of the best players in the world and still get unlucky on a consistent basis when that one hand takes you out of a situation. Talk to you later. SJ