A flawed tactic

Many moons ago, when I was in college, there was a video game I liked to play called "Star Castle". You controlled a space ship which could fire ammunition out the front, similar to the one in "Asteroids", but the object of the game was different. In "Star Castle", your mission was to shoot a target which was surrounded by several concentric layers of protection; each layer was in a circular shape made up of multiple line segments. Each layer rotated in the opposite direction from its neighboring layers. To be able to shoot the target, you first needed to destroy line segments from the spinning walls of protection in order to get a clear path. If you flew your space ship into a wall, neither the wall nor your space ship was destroyed, but the orientation of your space ship was flipped 180 degrees, so that if you flew straight into a wall, you'd bounce off it and be flying straight away from it after the contact. As soon as you had a clear shot at the target, however, it also had a clear shot at you. I got quite good at the easy, early levels of the game, when the target wasn't so diligent about trying to shoot you. I learned a very easy tactic for winning the early levels - simply fly straight at the target all the time, continually shooting, and rely on the fact that the game automatically flipped your ship when you hit a wall to start your assault on the other side. You'd fly in from the left, blasting away, bounce off a wall, then fly back towards the left side of the screen, still firing; the software made your spaceship immediately reappear on the right side of the screen as soon as it disappeared off the left side (and vice versa). So you'd alternate breaking down the defenses on each side of the target, first the left side, then the right. I perfected this tactic, but it was a flawed one; it made your spaceship a sitting duck at the higher levels of the game. It was essentially a kamikaze tactic. A friend of mine perfected his ability to fly and shoot to such a degree that he essentially conquered the game; he could play as long as he wanted. What he was able to do was fly in a continuous diagonal pattern; he'd fly from the middle left side of the screen to the middle bottom of the screen, disappear to reappear at the top middle, fly to the right middle of the screen, then disappear and reappear at the left middle to start a new flight cycle. He would rotate the ship to fire, then rotate it back to the diagonal before hitting the thrusters again. He would only hit the thrusters when his ship was in the diagonal pattern, and only fire when his ship was pointing at the target. To any onlooker, it was clear that he was a virtuoso; no concert pianist could have better control of his playing than my friend had control of his flying and shooting.

How does this relate to poker? Simply in the fact that there are flawed tactics in all games, including the game of poker. Last night, one of my opponents employed such a tactic. Like my "Star Castle" tactic, it had some early success, but was doomed to failure. His tactic was to raise by $3,000 or so preflop whenever he felt that he had a good hand, hoping everyone would fold; in that case, he'd pick up a small pot of anywhere from $700 to $1,800. This worked for him multiple times, until a hand when he was dealt a pair of fives and I was dealt a pair of kings. This time around, he raised by $3,600; I reraised him another $3,600. He went all in, as I'd suspected he might, and I called. My two pair of kings and tens bet his two pair of tens and fives, and I raked in a pot worth $93,402. Funnily enough, both he and I were done for the night at that point :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 62 hands and saw flop:
 - 3 out of 7 times while in big blind (42%)
 - 3 out of 7 times while in small blind (42%)
 - 25 out of 48 times in other positions (52%)
 - a total of 31 out of 62 (50%)
 Pots won at showdown - 3 of 7 (42%)
 Pots won without showdown - 4

delta: $56,057
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,976,395
balance: $7,425,803