I always hope that I do not wind up at a break table when I enter a tournament. There are clear "home-court" advantages to staying at the same table. As tournament players began to drop like flies, it was inevitable that my entire section would be broken. It was sometime in the middle of level 6 that I moved clear cross the pavilion to a new table.
Sitting at a new table is a little anxiety provoking, especially when you have 2 others who have larger stacks than your own. Typically I will tighten up when I get moved for 1 to 2 orbits so I can profile my opponents a bit better. The good news is I was just as much a mystery to them as they were to me. I imagine I am going to be largely judged by my stack size. Unless my opponents have premium cards my larger stack likely offers me more fold equity.
It was a struggle to find out how many entrants there were any how many players were eliminated. Having played a fair share of tournaments at the Venetian I have to say that the WSOP was well below that standard. It was bothersome to not have even a ball park figure of entrants and players left. I use this information to calculate the average stack size and where I am in relation to others. I guess it shouldn't have bothered so much. Dan Harrington feels that your play is not dictated by the average stack size, but is dictated by your M (annoyingly the author of "Kill Them All" decides to give M a new name, CSI, as if it were a novel concept).
M is defined as the number of orbits you can survive doing nothing but folding.
M = Your Stack/(Blinds + Antes)
At my new table I have an M of >30 when I arrive ({21,000}/(450+{25x9})).
He divides M into zones; where anything greater than 20 is considered the "Green" Zone. In the Green zone all of your creative play is available to you, as your zones shift from yellow (M=10-20) to orange (M=6-10) to red (M=1-5), your arsenal of plays become more limited.
I took advantage of my M during levels 6/7 and was fairly effective at pushing more than usual with sub-optimal hands and semi-bluffs. During this time frame I moved from playing the usual10% of my cards to 25%.When I did this I was careful to target medium size stacks, as shorter stacks are more volatile to push and larger stacks might be more prone to play back as their M could handle a hit. The only ones who have a lot to lose are medium size stacks.
At the completion of level 6 was the 90 minute dinner break. My brain was starting to poop on me. I took the time to eat some of my health bars and had a couple of cups of coffee.
Level 7 Blinds 150-300 Antes 25
I returned to level 7 a bit fresher, began playing old school Metallica music, which really amped up my aggressive play. At the end of level 7 I had close to 27,000 chips. You can tell by my green chips ($25 antes) that I was busy stealing with sub-optimal hands. It's worth looking at others who have a large number of small chips, as it might suggest they are stealing as well.
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