From the time i started playing holdem, (about 5 months, now), i’ve debated with myself about buying cheap flops
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shout out to warlock for some links he posted about SnG strategy. i picked up a lot of tips, and concepts that helped with some problems with my game, such as ‘how to play pocket jacks’. still not sure why AQ is so problematic (i read that daniel n. named the hand after all the money he’s lost with it) , or why KT is a sucker’s hand. must be a pro thing.
the guide, and it’s links, seemed to contradict itself in the area of seeing flops for cheap. in one place it says to see as many flops as feisable, while the blinds are low. elsewhere, the guide advises avoiding comfortation in he early stages, and using your tightest range for each posistion. get closer to the money.
i can see the wisdom in the former, even beyond being a newbie, watching folded hands becoming pot winners. you can’t win if you don’t play. for some reason, lots of players will let you build hands that beats them, for almost nothing.
however, the more i play, the more i tend to lean toward the latter. i have more success when i split the game up into 3 parts.
- (7-9 seats)…play premium hands, carefully. use fold time to watch the strong/lucky players knock out the weak/unlucky players. try to steadly build your stack for stage 2. create a tight table image.
- (4-6 seats)…hopfully, you’re top stack, or close to it, and you can start to act on some of the info you have picked up, be it waiting in the tall grass for someone who’s semi-bluffing his draw hands, stealing/restealing blinds, or knocking short stacks off their draw hands, or pulling them all-in with a draw that misses most of the time. this requires a tight image, and a stack that you can regroup with, when they call and get lucky.
- (top 3)…if you’ve avoided enough dumb mistakes (by you, i mean me), and bad beats, even luck netural cards should have given you the chips to rev it up, and get the other two seats thinking about the difference in pay-outs between 2nd and 3rd.
sure, everyone wants the dominat stack at the end. it opens avenues of play and lets you take risks without crippling you stack. at the level my game is now, the stack is the key, and i think this is the best way to get it. all my recent wins have followed this path. 
(3 yesterday. my first back to back)
of course, this is the dream senario, and the really good players will see through me and exploit my battle plan, but it does work now and then. however, there are reasons not found in the guide, that sway my decision to open fewer hands, even during small blinds.
there are too many ‘old dog/new tricks’ concerns to conquer for me to make money at poker, so i play for entertainment and competition.
i’m getting sick of trying to climb the leaderboards and compete with others playing SnG tables i like/can afford, then finishing 9th, trying to win hands i shouldn’t be in to begin with.
the other reason is the number of times the flop gives me middle pair. I HATE playing middle pair. it wins me pots, now and then, and sometimes turns 2 pair, (often losers themselves), but usually are very boring to play. where’s the entertainment in playing uninteresting hands that you have little confidence in.
there you have it. am i on the right track? anyone who wants to point out flaws in my thinking, or give hints for success, are most welcome. probably poker 101 to most, but i really am trying to get good enough to play with you guys.
disclamer: any advice or knowledge given, may be used against you, should we find ourselves at the same table in the future. author reserves the right to totally disreguard all previous statements and play with reckless abandom.