Thanks for asking! Basically, I love Razz for the following reasons:
- It is a limit game, and limit games are super fun because there are so many people that simply don't understand the importance of saving bets or showdown value. They also don't understand the importance of simulated all in situations, but more on that later.
- Razz is a great game for strategy and requires far more thought than playing Hold Em, whether FL or NL. It is therefore, for me, more fun.
- I have a bigger edge in Razz than I do in Hold Em for lots of reasons. The chief of these being that I manage to avoid logic knots in Razz more than I do in Hold Em. This is because the average Hold Em player is, well, average, and the average Razz player is, well, terrible. This means that you can play Razz to a semi-decent standard and still be exceptional value in a game. Translation: there's a lot of dead money in Razz.
I played the $30+$3 mini-FTOPS Razz event because Andy 'KQ4EVA' Blair offered to stake me for it because I'd railed him as he crrrrrrrushed the Full Tilt nightly $2k Guaranteed Razz and repeatedly commented on how bad the players were. Obviously he only managed third because, well, blind squirrels and nuts, but the nice $800 cash from $24 was enough for him to spare me the $33 entry for this.
I haven't played Razz tournaments in years, except as part of the HORSE mix or so, but used to play a decent amount of Razz cash and still do, although the volume is somewhat lower than it used to be.
Anyway, to the tournament!
I set myself up in the office and connected the laptop to the big screen so I could rail a few other mini-FTOPS events whilst also concentrating fully on Razz. The game began at 3am here, so I was helpfully joined by my housemate to keep me company. Joerg is probably the best mixed game player I know, so it was great to have him for a line check from time to time (e.g. do I check-raise here or simply bet and hope to be raised?, etc). I'd also had a skype conversation earlier that day with one of the biggest FL pros in the world and we talked a little about strategy and such so I was feeling really well prepared.
Two hands in and I'd won my first pot (winning 3 more bets than I should have done!) and Joerg commented 'ok, this tournament is as good as shipped!'. Oh man I wish that were true! With over 1200 runners there was a lot to play for. For the first two hours I basically played perfect and built 3k starting chips up to 9.5k and I was really bossing the table. I also had a nice hand where i made the nuts (A-5) and the table idiot (having called with a semi ok draw on two streets made perfect-almost-perfect to end up with A234-6 - the second nuts, so I caught like 7 more bets than I should have done in that hand because we end up capping it on 7th of course.
Where it all goes wrong...
I'd love to show you hand histories and so but for some reason they don't save on my work laptop so I can't. I get massively coolered in a huge pot against a retard (a 5k pot when the average is also 5k at 200/400) when some guy finds his miracle one out deuce on 7th when he was basically drawing dead against my made nut 7. Somehow he manages to find the 65-low on the end though, somewhat improving his 965 made....sigh.
From then on out, I go completely card dead and then lose two more crucial pots as at least a 72% favourite. In my exit hand the guy doens't understand the concept of simulated all in at 300/600 where I have 1800 and get 3 small bets in on third and the rest in on 4th (this is what simulated all in means, I'm never, ever, ever, ever, folding) with 2357 and can't hold against 9357. I had the dude basically completely board locked but he managed to get there of course.
A Word on Limit Tournaments...
In limit tournaments, the midstages are by far the most important. At some point you'll play a pot for stacks because the average will almost never deviate from 8-10 Big Bets and you have to run good to survive in the middle stages. I felt I played pretty perfect (threw away one more bet than I needed to in one spot to be honest which was the only mistake I made) and the fact that i very quickly got to 2x or 3x the average meant that when I got coolered I still had a stack to get back into the game. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be and I busted in 568th spot someway off the bubble.
I did, however, outlast most of the FTP Red Pros, including David Singer which won Pads £100 because he's backed me against anyone in the field and his mate picked Singer. Unlucky, I crush Singer at Razz! :D :D :D At least someone won something from this tournament.
Now What?
I'm going to play more Razz because I'd forgotten two things:
1. How much I love the game and how much fun I have playing it.
2. How much of an edge I have against your average Razztard.
That's all for now folks, thanks for reading and thanks also to GeoKing, SamJ, Google and co for the rail. Sorry i couldn't give you a better sweat.
Gl at the tables,
--Huzz
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