How much EV do you give up in a tournament from only jamming all-in or folding preflop? I know this may seem like a crazy notion, but honestly, I see people playing way too many hands and it makes me wanna just jam or fold preflop with all this action taking place. I think it could really simplify the game without giving up much of an edge. I honestly think you probably could even have an edge with a strategy like this given how badly tournament players play.

If you are deep against decent/good competition playing some postflop is good. If competition is really bad jamming from start with good hands may be an option.

There was a book written about this but I forget who wrote it. Could have been Sklansky.

It was specifically for people who had never played poker before. So they wouldn't have to apply any strategy post flop. And the book was about only jamming AA. But you could also argue that jamming KK/QQ/JJ/AK/AQ would work too. For people who don't know how to play poker.

If you are terrible then absolutely this could be a solution. I don't think you will win much because you will only be called by monsters until your stack is down to under like 15 blinds.

The problem with this strategy when you have a lot of blinds is that you stand to win very little when everyone folds and will lose a ton if somebody wakes up with a monster. The good players at the table will immediately look at what your range could be based on how often you are jamming preflop. Especially how often you are 3 bet jamming. Once they have it more or less figured out they will know if calling with AK or JJ/TT makes sense and the best you will do is have to get lucky.

I think the biggest issue for me about doing this is that you lose the opportunity to win big pots by bluffing. The more people balance their strong hands with bluffs based on bet sizing the more they will win by being the aggressor.

The other thing is, if you are playing in tournaments where the fields are bad at poker then if you are good at poker you should be crushing it overall. Yes you will be knocked out when people make horrible blunders and get lucky but most of the time you will increase your stack significantly. When I was playing in a tournament at Foxwoods about 10 years ago, two players across the table started talking about the WSOP Senior event. One guy said "I'm not going back to play at the WSOP Senior Event because the players are so bad and I keep getting knocked out by their blunders." The other guy said basically the same thing. I then said "I wish I was 60 so I could go play in them" and they both looked at me like I was an idiot. One guy said "you only have to be 50 to play in it" and they both got a good laugh at that. Since then I have played in the WSOP Senior and Super Senior Event every year. I cash about 30% of the time and I have gone deep twice (34th out of ~6,100 and 27th in a Super Senior out of about 3,000). And yes I was knocked out the first two WSOP Senior Events by people who made horrible blunders but ironically both times we were all in preflop (the 1st time I raised UTG with QQ and a guy UTG+1 shoved and I called and he had 99, the 2nd time it went limp limp and I looked down at K8s and I jammed with about 25 blinds, the BB tanked with AJs and folded, the original limper folded, and then the 2nd limper said "I know I'm behind but I have to call" and he had Q9s and 16 blinds. LOL).

Here is another example about why what you are saying won't work. I was playing at River's casino in Schenectady NY (near Albany) and I opened UTG early in the tourney with KK. Folds to the BB who shoves for like 125 blinds. I tank and open fold my KK. He shows me his AA and shrugs. I ask him why he shoved and he said "I didn't want to play them out of position". So, instead of winning a fairly large pot 80 % of the time by 3 betting to like 12 bb's which I would likely just call HU in position and keep calling his large bets unless an A showed up and he bet, he won just 3 bb's.

I vaguely remember something about this as well, but I think it has something to do with Phil Helmuth training some absolute beginner girl. I think the plan was for her to go all in with 77+ and AK, and fold everything else. This was a long time ago and I think that even at midstakes such a plan would get you harvested today.

However, it does bring up an interesting point (which I first heard discussed by the evil hellhound Annie Duke,) about creating different levels of variance based on your judgement of the the skill level of your opponents.

Her point was this: against weaker players against whom you feel you have a skill advantage you want to create low variance opportunities for yourself, avoiding flips and all-in situations and relying on your superior skills to build your stack and grind them down. But if you are in a situation where you feel you are at a skill disadvantage, (and if you have ever played $100+ online or $1k live you have probably felt that way,) then the answer is to create high variance situations for your opponents, thus reducing their skill advantage by introducing a larger element of chance.

Kill Phil.

It was Sklansky, who was approached by a businessman who wanted to put his daughter in the ME.

BTW, saw the aforementioned playing a $200 nightly at Southpoint this week....

The problem I face is I'll raise 2x from EP with a medium strength hand like KQo at 15ish-20ish BBs and then the players in front of me move in with garbage and I end up folding. Or another scenario, same situation except 40BBs. I get a bunch of callers and flop will come something like K87. I bet small and people call. Turn is a 6. SB donk leads big, BB Comes over the top. I'll end up folding and they'll flip over stuff like J5o and A8o.

For multiway pots, in theory, ranges should be significantly tighter, but when the other players deviate, it shifts the equilibrium to something weird. What ends up happening is I'm in a spot where I don't know whether to fold because the other player is representing something really strong or I should call because the other player doesn't recognize relative hand strength. If you always end up folding it seems like the edge ends up going to the tightest player postflop that doesn't recognize relative hand strength.

I probably also lose money open/folding. If I open KQo in EP and a player comes over the top, I usually fold it, but it seems to happen so much that I lose a large percentage of my stack. It makes me almost want to just jam or fold it.

I'm a profitable midstakes cash game player so adjusting to tournaments is a different element. I'm probably unintentionally too nitty in certain post flop spots and it costs me, but the player pool in tournaments just seems like it is full of bad players. Perhaps the best approach is to simplify jam/fold at like 25BBs and shallower and then make adjustments from there. I'd give up a lot of theoretical EV, but prevent myself from making massive EV blunders in multiway pots.

I think a really good hand to illustrate my frustrations is the Alec Torelli fold against Daniel Negreanu, I feel like Alec Torelli in tournaments:

Then don't fold?

I mean, sure, in theory it makes sense to in these spots, but if players in your games are really that wild and getting it in that wide, just get it in with them.

would be a pretty tall order to show that theres reasonable assumptions where shipping 100bb and letting people reduce their decisions to only two options is higher EV (cEV and $EV) than giving yourself at least
four opportunites to exploit pre and post

but hey if youre seeing people just calling it off with silly things then maybe sometimes lol?

Then stop folding in such situations. If people play very loose and wild, the solution is to not move all-in preflop for way to many blinds. The solution is to get better at postflop and maybe adjust your preflop ranges somewhat. If a min-raise from UTG usually get 4 callers, then raise bigger with strong hands and fold marginal hands like J9s or QJo.