card classification

I’ve cashed! I came third but I cashed! It probably won’t come as news to people who have been playing a while but “card classification” really seems to work. To be honest I didn’t even really adhere to the actual classifications either (as that seemed like a load of effort) I just used the basic concept.

The classifications are really just common-sense, although there are a few pocket combinations which you would expect to be ranked higher than they are, A9 for instance. I think, when you distil the strategy down, the real difference is not playing mediocre hands in early/mid position. As a beginner I don’t think you can really understand how that helps unless you actually try it, but the most important side-effect is that it stops you playing too many hands. The second, and more subtle effect, is to reduce the possibility of you calling a blind and having someone put in a big raise after you, that you ultimately fold to because your hand isn’t that good. By reducing the occurrence of this you lose a lot less pre-flop chips.

The problem is that the game will never be the same again. You actually become more of a spectator than a player because you’re playing so few hands. It’s funny though because I could see the effect straight away. I didn’t play a hand in the first ten hands and yet I had the 3rd biggest stack! After three people had gone out two chip-leaders emerged and yet I’m still in 3rd place with roughly the same amount of chips I started with. As crazy as it sounds I was already in with a shot at the cash just by folding nearly every hand!

I got caught-out at the end though. I know where I went wrong; I didn’t change my tactics as the number of players reduced. It was stupid really but I just kept playing the same game at the end that I’d been playing all along. The blinds were going up and up, and of course the blinds come round more often as players go out, and I’m still there folding average cards until it was too late.

I realize now that you need to adjust how to classify the cards based on the number of players and, although I don’t know how to do that yet, I’m happy that I’ve finally got some cash back. Even more importantly I’ve now got a strategy to develop…