Question for round 2 and feedback for round 1

Here is the question for round 2.

Note answers should be between 150-350 words for this round (so dont go over 350 or be less than 150.

"in the middle of an MTT with slightly more than an average stack should you call an all in where there is not much in the pot but just enough to give you pot odds to call", Competitors can either keep their answer to this or expand it to consider "when such a call would be more advantagous and when it would be less" (you always will be with the same stack in the same position of the (non satelite) MTT though

I am thinking of the sort of hands where you call an all in with ak confident you are up against a pocket pair and you are equally sure that its very unlikely to be AA or KK (you have a strong read that suggests they would play these hands in another way). So it would be the same situation as calling an all in with a straight flush draw on the flop in a pot that was quite small before the all in.

DEADLINE - 16th November 9am EST
The absulute deadline for this will be 7 days from when we know who is knocked out of round 1 BUT as soon as all the entries are in then the judging etc will start. So just send in the answers when you have them


FEEDBACK
ok no-one messed up and all the answers were of at least a reasonable quality. One answer went over the word limit and whilst we penalised it for doing so it was still strong enough to get through to the next round without a vote. I liked the answers to the first round but the following is geared to making them even better.

Most people struggled a little with the word limits. Truthfully i didnt envisage them being quite as restrictive as they were but also I am from a legal background and am used to working under really strict word limits but I can appreciate that this is a hard challenge to throw on people in the first round. I will probably keep the word limits larger for the remaining rounds. If you watch pros answers to questions they always keep things real short but still manage to say a lot - so it can be done well but over all I am sure we will get a higher quality of answer with a larger limit.

A few people could do with reading the question more closely before answering it as there were the odd mis-statement of the hand history. Similarly there were times when I said the player could have X, Y or Z and this was contradicted in the reply. My reads might be a load of pish but for the purposes of answering the reply you need to more or less accept them even if your conclusion in your answer is not to put alot of weight on the read. In the remaining rounds I will fictionalise the names and that should avoid this problem to some extent.

People would often make better posts if they depersonalised it. This means that whilst they say "I" they should be thinking "one". Some players only play low pairs to trip them others dont it doesnt neccisarily make it bad. Just as one player can slowplay KK and another fast play it. This was particularly true for the KK question where I appreciate few of us ever throw KK but we can all think of situations when they should be thrown. In the context of a forum reply it is very appropraite to keep things "i would do..." but try to widen it to what are valid ways of playing the tournament/ hand - whether they are the way you play or not. You can still say "i would" but you should be meaning "one should" when you say it.

It was clear that hindsight might have played an answer in some cases. Whilst in learning and assessing your own play you will often be assessing things AFTER knowing the outcome (whether a flush was caught etc) so assessing a hand KNOWING how it goes is an important skill BUT it is difficult to assess a hand neutrally once you see its conclusion. I will generally not post the outcome in future hands. there is still the sense that people will feel "tapped on the shoulder" and know to look out for trouble but this is better giving the whole HH.

Finally there was one case where someone who speaks english as a second language said something that was a little ambigious. In the particular case the answer was strong enough to get to the next round which ever meaning of the statement was meant BUT if this happens in future I will send a pm and find out what was actually meant to ensure that people are assessed for the quality of their answers and not for their ability to write in their second (or third) tongue.

Other than that keep up the good work. There were no poor answers and anyone who gets knocked out has still come up with a good answer to the first round and should leave with their head held high. There were no answers that were so weak that we could easily put them up for elimination without some thought - it was a tough decision selecting these 4.

This thread will remain closed but fink can open it up if he wants to add any feedback himself.