Scuttled buttons

Last night, after 30 straight winless tournaments, I finally won one. I employed a technique that may have helped me win; I call it "scuttled buttons". This refers to the practice of folding before the flop when you have the dealer button. Of course, you never do this with a very strong hand; more often than not, however, you won't have such a hand. In the tournament I won, I had the dealer button 17 times, and folded fully 10 of those 17 hands before the flop.

In cash games, you very rarely want to scuttle your button; position is such an advantage in cash games that you should think long and hard about willingly throwing it away. Position is a big advantage in tournaments, too, of course, but several other factors come into play which can make it the right choice to scuttle your button. First and foremost is the need to conserve your stack. You'd like your stack to be as big as or bigger than anyone else's; you want to be able to scare people away from pots with healthy bets and raises, with more chips behind. If you make a healthy bet or raise, but have to go all in to make it, you'll get called a lot more often than you would if you have chips left over to fight back with. Another reason to scuttle your button is to maintain the image of a no-nonsense player who rarely bluffs. If you have this image, you can throw in the occasional bluff and have a better chance of pulling it off. Perhaps the best reason of all to scuttle your button when you don't have a very strong hand is to realize that anyone who pays to see the flop will likely have your hand beat.

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 50000       800           6        13     6        0
 50000       800           6        63     1   195000

delta: $93,400
tournament balance: $945,490
balance: $6,076,221