On rigged games: I tend to play tourneys/sit and gos, so those games wouldn't be rigged in the sense that Bauer suggests (there's no rake, just an entry fee).
On tactics: anyone familiar with the Sklansky method? I read about it yesterday and employed it to good effect. It came about because a casino owner wanted to give his daughter the experience of playing in the WSOP. But she'd never played before. Sklansky had a week to teach her, and came up with this method:
1. Always either fold or go all-in.
2. If someone has raised before you:
2.1: Re-raise all-in if you have AA, KK, or AK.
2.2: otherwise fold.
3. If no-one has entered the pot:
3.1 go all-in with: any pair; AK, Ax suited; any suited connectors except the very low ones.
The idea is that top players will not want to commit their chips on a coinflip or worse, so they will fold unless they have AA or KK. So you will steal many, many blinds before someone stands up to you. Even if they do call you with a big hand, you still have a chance of winning, and hopefully by the time they do call you have such a big stack you can afford to lose a hand.
I used basically these tactics in a 1700 player MTT and came second (OK, it was a freeroll so the quality was poor).
I doubled up first hand with 44 vs A3o. Then basically didn't play a hand for an hour. Stole a few blinds, eliciting comments of "it's too early to go all-in".
Then things got weird. I hit a lot of monster hands - I probably had AA, KK or AK 10 or 12 times in a few hours. I kept jamming, and people kept calling me. I probably only won a couple of uncontested pots. Every other hand, someone called with worse cards, and I won. I couldn't believe that no-one realised I was only playing big cards.
I mixed it up when we got down to the last 18, started stealing blinds and playing my opponents, and that worked well and got me 2nd place.
Anyone ever used this method? It's like playing ABC Poker; maybe just A Poker. The most extreme possible way to play TA: all-in or fold. I do wonder what would have happened if I had picked up lots of suited connectors or low pairs - I would probably have run into a bigger pair and lost. But certainly, given the cards I got this seemed like an effective strategy (and it improved my discipline, because I threw away a lot of AQo hands in EP - I tend to over-value AQ).