My results in MTTs lately have been very erratic, so I went back and examined some big spots to see what was going on.
Now ultimately, my decisions are my responsibility. And we’re all playing under the same conditions, so it’s no more or less fair to anyone.
That said, I reached the conclusion that a lot of my bad plays come down to not having a time bank. Someone makes a polarizing bet and I have a matter of seconds to try to review the action, think about Villain’s range, and make a decision for all my chips.
A couple days ago I played a hand against a high-ranked player, light4uall, that has stuck in my mind ever since. I had flopped a pair of aces with a marginal kicker and no draw; I bet and Villain called. There was a flush and straight draw on the board by the turn; Villain shoved OOP, I folded, and he showed me a semi-bluff that had maybe 20% equity against my hand going to the river.
In the moment, my first instinct was “this bet doesn’t make sense.” I WANTED to call. But I wasn’t able to put together all the combos Villain could have in time to calculate whether I was far enough ahead of his range, as it was an overbet size that required Villain to have [x number of] bluffs for my call to be profitable. So, I defaulted to a fold, not wanting to risk my entire stack without knowing where I was at.
By not providing a time bank, Replay creates an environment that does not encourage high-level play. I never really thought about it before, but perhaps a reason so many of the top ranked players are kinda nits (other than being older players which also generally trends nitty) is that it’s just very hard to maximize EV with a strategy that embraces more variables in a setting where you get at most 20 seconds (and often far less) to make a decision.
When I just play ABC tight, I do better. Not because this is the optimal strategy—it definitely isn’t—but because this largely eliminates the need to parse fine details and make marginal decisions, which is hard to do correctly (consistently, anyway) without the ability to occasionally take more time. To be sure, some of my personal shortcomings lately have boiled down to simply “trying to do too much.” But I stand by my position that in general, it is very hard to play an incisive, uncompromising, find-the-edge-in-the-margins style profitably when every decision is rushed. And of course, it’s widely acknowledged at this point in poker history/progress that this style is the optimal way to play.
As there is no money at stake here, my participation on Replay is largely based on my desire to play optimally and pursue near-perfect play. Not having a time bank is practically a non-starter for that goal. Even the very best tournament players in the world sometimes need to tank for a minute or two in big spots. It’s just not realistic to expect a human to parse all the relevant data and reach a sound decision in less than 30 seconds every time.
Please, please, please give us a time bank, at least for the high buy-in tournaments. Much of Replay’s UI has been modeled after “real money” sites; I’ve heard this directly from Replay representatives/volunteers. So, why not this super fundamental and crucial feature that ALL real money tournaments (except those which are expressly based on fast play) have?
