Playing No LImit Poker

Getting crippled with top pair

2008-12-04T08:44:00.001-06:00

From a hand history discussed on rgp.

After this hand I was questioned about it. I have put in my thoughts in
from when I was playing the hand. Help me understand where I can improve.
Bet preflop? can you fold to the flop bet?

Grant (Morphy?) and Fell both jumped on me about it

> PokerStars Game #22603082268: Tournament #124719100, $5.00+$0.50 Hold'em No
Limit - Level III > (25/50) - 2008/12/03 22:37:10 ET
> Table '124719100 1' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
> Seat 1: jimpic79 (3390 in chips)
> Seat 2: charrison100 (4145 in chips)
> Seat 3: bgadams (2250 in chips)
> Seat 4: brewcam (1405 in chips)
> Seat 5: Grant1525 (1690 in chips)
> Seat 6: jpawloski (1530 in chips)
> Seat 7: k1d_qu1ck (960 in chips)
> Seat 8: Porsche_Dan (2855 in chips)
> Seat 9: aakringle (2775 in chips)
> k1d_qu1ck: posts small blind 25
> Porsche_Dan: posts big blind 50
> *** HOLE CARDS ***
> Dealt to charrison100 [Kh Qs]
> aakringle: folds
> jimpic79: folds
> charrison100: calls 50

MP limp to see if I hit

> bgadams: folds
> brewcam: folds
> Grant1525: calls 50
> jpawloski: calls 50
> k1d_qu1ck: calls 25
> Porsche_Dan: checks
> *** FLOP *** [Qd 9d 8s]

pot 250
TP 2K

> k1d_qu1ck: bets 910 and is all-in

Against 3 players I saw this as a steal. I called with my hand given it
was 1/3 my stack and a chance to knock him out. I was thinking A9 A8 two
diamonds or gut shot. No bet preflop from him in the blind made me
discount any pair or A face.

> Porsche_Dan: folds
> charrison100: calls 910

Thought the bet and the call was enough to isolate and that Grant and
Jason would fold.

> Grant1525: raises 730 to 1640 and is all-in

Ummm
Flush draw or straight draw or top pair

> jpawloski: calls 1480 and is all-in

Damn it
Flush draw or straight draw or top pair
One of these 2 has me beat.

> charrison100: calls 730

There was too much in the pot to not call and I was still going to have
1/2 my stack if I lost and that was a chance for a triple elimination.

> *** TURN *** [Qd 9d 8s] [Ad]
> *** RIVER *** [Qd 9d 8s Ad] [7d]

Made his flush. Grant and Jason both having the straight was a shock I
figured one had it and the other had AdXd but like I said with the pot
size and the amount of a call I felt it was justified.

> *** SHOW DOWN ***
> charrison100: shows [Kh Qs] (a pair of Queens)
> Grant1525: shows [Jh Th] (a straight, Eight to Queen)
> Grant1525 collected 320 from side pot-2
> jpawloski: shows [Ts Jc] (a straight, Eight to Queen)
> Grant1525 collected 855 from side pot-1
> jpawloski collected 855 from side pot-1
> k1d_qu1ck: shows [8d 6d] (a flush, Ace high)
> k1d_qu1ck collected 3890 from main pot
> *** SUMMARY ***
> Total pot 5920 Main pot 3890. Side pot-1 1710. Side pot-2 320. | Rake 0
> Board [Qd 9d 8s Ad 7d]
> Seat 1: jimpic79 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
> Seat 2: charrison100 showed [Kh Qs] and lost with a pair of Queens
> Seat 3: bgadams folded before Flop (didn't bet)
> Seat 4: brewcam folded before Flop (didn't bet)
> Seat 5: Grant1525 showed [Jh Th] and won (1175) with a straight, Eight to
Queen
> Seat 6: jpawloski (button) showed [Ts Jc] and won (855) with a straight,
Eight to Queen
> Seat 7: k1d_qu1ck (small blind) showed [8d 6d] and won (3890) with a flush,
Ace high
> Seat 8: Porsche_Dan (big blind) folded on the Flop
> Seat 9: aakringle folded before Flop (didn't bet)

>

From above

> Made his flush. Grant and Jason both having the straight was a shock I
> figured one had it and the other had AdXd but like I said with the pot
> size and the amount of a call I felt it was justified.

Do you understand what you just said?

You thought you were drawing dead but called because the pot was big?

Do you know what zero times a big number is?

You need to pay more attention to position and think of third to act in a nine handed game as third to act in a nine handed game rather than as middle position.

Given the situation (position and stack sizes) a KQo should probably have never been played in the first place.

Top pair with that coordinated flop is not what is meant by "hitting the flop"

So I guess that's three pretty big mistakes.

Picking on Brother Ed, part CVIII

2008-09-16T16:33:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'll admit it, I don't really like Ed Miller. The reason is that he's just a bad neighbor. An unfriendly member of the poker blog community.

To me that just makes him a jerk.

He has a policy of simply not recognizing that he's a member of a community. He never links to other blogs and never gives any sign of recognition when other's link to him. That makes him a bad neighbor, makes him a jerk.

The only thing I can figure is that he learned his neighborly skills from his ultimate mentor, Mason Malmuth. He certianly didn't learn it from his wife, who is actually a pretty good internet neighbor.

Ed has partially parted ways with Mason, primarily because Mason couldn't understand why Ed couldn't (Mason doesn't understand that maybe Ed just didn't want to) control his wife. But for some reason known only to Ed it is still important to Ed that he please Mason.

Part of pleasing Mason means to not recognize other internet sites. It's kind of sad.

But none of that is why I'm making this post. I'm making this post to point out a recent example of Ed missing the point.

Ed gets a question from a loyal reader

Recently a reader of my website, John, asked about the $1-$2 blind game at his local cardroom. Here’s what he had to say about his game:

The players there are very loose and pretty terrible, and they call everything pre-flop.

For example, I’ll be under the gun with A-K, raise to $20 preflop, and I’ll get four callers consistently!

That means the pot is already at $100 when the flop comes, and I usually start the hand with only $300.

A-K is a good hand and is meant to flop top pair, best kicker (1 out of 3 times), but as we all know, flopping one pair is only a ‘good’ hand and not a ‘great’ hand. So when I do flop top pair it puts me in a sticky situation. The pot is already too big!

I have gotten to the point where I think I may do one of the following things:

1. Don’t play as deep, so when I do hit my flop I don’t have to worry about reverse implied odds. (Loose play collusion is a killer there with people hitting two pair with junk.)

or

2. Simply limp in with hands like A-K, K-Q, A-Q, and so forth, in an effort to keep the pot small if I do hit it.

Ed responds

While John has identified an interesting issue, I think he’s overestimating the frequency of bad outcomes and underestimating the frequency of good ones.

I actually agree with that. AK (even if it's not suited) is actually going to hit a good flop about half the time. It will flop top pair about a third of the time, but other flops put it in pretty good shape (JTx as an example).

But reading Ed's next paragraph leaves me unsure that he and I agree on the above as much as it might seem superficially.

He says,

First off, if you raise to $20 with A-K and a $300 stack and four people call (and it isn’t a fluke), you’re in a fantastic situation. It’s such a good situation that you could probably push all-in every time it’s checked to you on the flop and still turn a profit. If you do something smarter than that (and it’s not hard to get smarter than that) then you’ll be solidly in the black.

No, Ed, you aren't in a fantastic situation in early position with AcKh and a flop of Kd 9s8s with a $100 pot and four people behind you. In fact that's a terrible situation.

Sure, you probably have the best hand. But you aren't real likely to make any money with it. You might, however, lose a hefty slice.

Ed seems to think that the frequency various outcomes is what matters. He says,

Before I continue, I want to disagree with something John said: “Loose play collusion is a killer there with people hitting two pair with junk.” That’s an example of overestimating the frequency of bad outcomes. It’s not the mathematical reality. Even four opponents are a significant underdog to flop two pair among them. For instance, an unsuited connector such as 8-7 has a 4.8 percent chance to flop two pair or better. A pocket pair obviously has a better chance to flop a set, but on average I’d guess one of your four opponents will flop two pair or better no more than 25 percent of the time.

When in early position against a large field you're not going to be able to maximize your win in hands you're ahead in, and you're not going to be able to minimize your lose in hands you're behind in.

The solution is to never make the pot big to begin with when you're out of position. If you hit a perfect pot then fine. If you don't then just let it go.

In a really lose game save those preflop raises for late position.

Feel v. Math

2008-09-11T16:10:00.002-05:00

Feel, or instinct, is just a technique used to estimate the parameters used in math, it's part of what math is.

Pushing Small Edges

2008-09-11T03:02:00.003-05:00

One really large difference between nolimit poker and limit poker is the need to push small edges. In limit poker it's usually important to push every edge you can. Not so much in nolimit poker.

Risk control is much, much more important in no-limit than it is in limit.

Counting your outs

2008-09-09T13:32:00.003-05:00

Before the river (and the showdown) hand evaluation isn't based on the poker hand rankings of one pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, etc. Hand evaluations and rankings are based on the distribution of possible outcomes.

An out is a card that will improve your hand to a winning hand on the river based on the traditional poker hand rankings. A hand with a lot of outs before the river is often a very good hand even though it hasn't yet achieved anything in terms of the traditional hand rankings.

For example, a no-pair hand on the flop that has a flush draw, a straight draw, and two overcards is a much better hand than top pair on the flop even though one pair beats no pair. That's because that hand with all the draws is the probable winner at a showdown on the river, after two more cards have come. It's a hand with a lot of outs.

The breakeven point between a pair and a draw is 14 outs on the flop. A hand that has 14 outs on the flop is a slight favorite over a hand with one pair and no redraws on the flop.

That would mean hands like:

bottom pair and a flush draw (14 outs)
a flush draw with two overcards (15 outs)
a flush draw with a straight draw (15 outs)
a straight draw and two overcards on a rainbow flop (14 outs)

are pretty good hands to have on the flop.

Note that when I counted a straight draw I specified a rainbow flop. That's because a hand like 8c7c on a flop of 2d 5d 6s doesn't have 8 clean outs to make a straight. Two of the cards that will make it a straight will put three diamonds on the board, possibly killing the straight by giving someone else a flush. You can't really count those 8 outs as an improvement to a winning hand. I count the straight draw on a two suited flop as 6 outs, 7 outs if you have a backdoor flush draw (such as a 6c instead of 6s in the above example).

Counting outs for straight draws can sometimes be problematic. Not only might your straight draw give someone a flush, it might give someone a higher straight. So it's best to be very conservative when counting outs on a straight draw. That's the case in both limit and nolimit forms of hold'em, but it's especially true in nolimit becazuse of the potential cost of making your hand and losing anyway.

Dawn, of I had Outs, recently described a hand she plays which serves as an example of what I'm talking about.

On the button I get 9c8c, I raise to fifteen. Now, I haven’t raised in hours, no one has seen me do anything but listen to my ipod and drink Grey Goose with pineapple. And yet, six people call me.
The flop is a lovely TcJcAs I bet out $40, I get two callers. Qh comes on the turn. I bet $50 and the guy in the one seat raises all-in. I have like $92 left.

Although she's right that a flush draw with a straight draw is a god flop for her, it's not as good a flop as she thinks it is. She effectively has something like 11 outs, not enough to make her a favorite against even bottom pair. A queen will make her a straight, but it's a very dangerous straight. Anybody with a single King will make a bigger straight with that card (which, of course, is the card the guy in seat one has).

She should have at least thought about checking that flop, keeping the pot small so that should a queen fall it probably won't cost her all her chips to draw for that flush. I'm not saying she should have checked, I'm saying should have given it some serious thought.

Protecting your bankroll with short buyins

2008-09-05T15:44:00.003-05:00

Some writers, Ed Milller in particular, advocates buying in short as a way to protect your bankroll. It's complete nonsense.

It might work to protect your bankroll if you're a losing player.

--- I have an errand to run. I'll have to finish this post later. Go ahead and share your thoughts on the subject while I'm gone.

UPDATE:
A commenter took issue with my suggestion that short buyins might help protect your bankroll if you're a losing player. He said, "most deep stacks don't know how to play against an aggressive SS".

Okay, that might be true, but that doesn't mean that you can protect your bankroll by using short buys even if you're a winning player otherwise. It's possible that a loser with deep stacks can convert himself into a winner by playing short stacks if he has opponents who don't know how to play against a short stack.

So even if playing a short stack might improve your lot, that doesn't mean you won't improve even more by just learning to play better and keeping a big stack.

If you're a winning player with a big stack then you'll give up a huge edge by reducing your stack size. Reducing your stack size is reducing the size of the game (for you). In no limit games your win is usually going to be expressable as a percentage of your stack size. If you cut your stack size by 90% your hurting your win in a big way even if cutting your stack will double your percentage win.

A $100 stack with a growth expectation of 20% is more profitable than a $20 stack with a growth expectation of 150%

----- I'm being called for supper, I"ll have to finish this later.

Attempt to define specialization

2008-09-05T13:18:00.004-05:00

I take a look at the discussion forums at 2+2 every once in a while but I'm not a regular reader. For some reason I've never actually looked at their list of forums on PL/NL hold'em.

Here's a list of forums.

High Stakes NL
Medium Stakes NL
Small Stakes NL
Micro Stakes NL
Medium-High Full Ring
Small Full Ring
Micro Full Ring
Heads Up NL

I think that's just amazing. They don't distinctions between pot limit and no limit (which are actually different games) but do distinguish based on blind size. I'm just floored by that.

High Stakes

If you don't at least play 5-10nl or higher then don't give advice in strategy threads. Without a familiarity with the games and players in question your advice is not relevant to the discussion. If you are a lower stakes poster you probably are also not thinking on a high enough level for your advice to add anything but clutter.

Medium Stakes

It is generally assumed that players in the Mid Stakes forum will have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of NL Holdem. Questions related to math (odds), fundamentals, and basic ABC play belong in Small Stakes.

Small Stakes

The SSNL forum is centered around discussion of shorthanded no-limit hold'em cash games from the $0.50/$1 blind level to $1/$2. For full ring games or other blind levels, use the forums listed below.

This is all just nonsense. They are attempting to make fine distinctions between situations (blind sizes) where no actual distinctions exist. But the one place that has real distinctions -- the difference between pot limit and no limit -- they completely ignore.

I wonder if there's anyone at all at 2+2 who has any concept of what poker is actually about?

UPDATE:
I sometimes play in a cardroom in Newkirk, OK that spreads no limit games with two different blind structures. A 1/3 blind and a 1/2 blind.

But the one with the smaller blind also has a $5 minimum bet -- it's played as a "red chip game". That makes the 1/2 game much, much bigger than the 1/3 game. It also changes player habits. There's a lot more preflop raising in the 1/3 game than in the 1/2 game.

There's a hell of a lot more to strategic theory than the size of the blinds.

UPDATE:
I tend to agree with the commenter that says he thinks 2+2'ers are arrogant, egotistical jackasses.

I think there's an explanation for that which is important to keep in mind whenever you follow any sort of intellectual pursuit.

The 2+2 publishing company touts itself as a provider of "correct information". I'm not sure that phrase actually has any real meaning, but the thought behind it is very comforting to a class of people who want desperately to be able to think of themselves as intellectuals even though they don't actually have the mental capacity to engage in true intellectual pursuits.

Such people tend to be quick to support ideas that simplistic and rigid. Being correct takes on some sort of meaning with bears no resemblance at all to being accurate. Complicated situations make them very uncomfortable. So they are quick to just assume away situational complications.

Playing from the small blind

2008-09-04T21:26:00.002-05:00

It's often tempting to simply complete the small blind and see the flop with rage. Resist that temptation.

If there's been a couple of limpers you'll be getting good odds to call from the small blind. But the good pot odds are very deceptive. You'll be out of position in every subsequent betting round and your implied odds for most hands on future betting rounds are negative.

Tournaments

2008-09-04T16:34:00.002-05:00

I haven't looked at the book yet, but based on Hammer's comments on it I think I should read Arnold Snyder's book The Poker Tournament Formula

Maybe somebody will buy me a copy.

Value Bets

2008-09-01T17:10:00.002-05:00

Random Shuffle takes Brother Ed to task again. This time for screwing up an important point about value betting.

Today's installment is entitled, "Why do so many of Ed's examples suck so bad?"

The crime scene (emphasis mine):

Someone open raises and a player in the blinds calls. The flop comes J85. The blind checks, the raiser c-bets 3/4 pot, and the blind calls. The turn is a 2. The blind checks, and the raiser checks. The river is a K. The blind checks, and the raiser checks. The blind shows A8, and the raiser wins with QJ.

This is from a post on value betting the river.

Random Shuffle then goes on to point out that in Ed's example the hero missed a more important bet on the turn. Go ahead and read the whole post.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to point out that turn bets are often very important bets.

Look at the board

2008-08-31T23:12:00.002-05:00

I was playing a 3-handed game the other night, we were playing 1/2 blinds with a $10 straddle on the button. I had about $450 in chips and the other two players each had a little more than that.

I had gotten stuck about $300 in the game before we got shorthanded and had recovered by just chipping away, mostly one of the two opponents. Both of them were pretty good players and the game wouldn't have been playable if one of them didn't have a clear tell. Whenever she really liked her hand her body got erect, shoulders back, head high. It was very obvious.

I had a J7 on the button and both the other's limped. I checked.

I thought the flop was 8 9 10 rainbow. It turns out I misread the flop, but I thought I'd flopped a straight. The woman with the tell bet $10. I could tell she liked her hand. I was unsure about whether my straight was good, but I made it $40 and she got deflated. So I was no longer worried about her having a better straight, I thought maybe a set, more likely top two pair, maybe even a T J.

The turn was a K. She sat up straight. She really liked that card. Liked it a lot. I could tell from her body language. She bet $40. I'm thinking she likely had KK. That's the only hand I could think of that would explain her first liking her hand, then not liking it so much after I raised on the flop, then liking it again when the K hit. She could have limped with KK preflop. She'd done that before.

I raised $120. She called but she clearly still liked her hand. The river was a 7, giving us the same hand if she had something like TJ or KJ. She checked. I bet $150. She raised, I had about $75 left. Now I didn't know what the hell she had, but I thought the same jack high straight I had was the most likely. Of course I called.

She had a K T. That would have been great if I'd have paying less attention to her posture and taken the trouble to look back at the board at sometime during the play of the hand. The original flop hadn't been 8 9 T. It had been 8 T T. I didn't have a straight. I had a pair of 7's against her tens full of kings.

I'm an idiot.

Position, position, position

2008-08-31T16:45:00.003-05:00

Most players (and most writers) tend to think of position in terms of your distance (and direction) from the button.

Particularly in no-limit games, there's a lot more to it than where the button is.

Position 1.
The button matters. Having the button is having a large weapon. Being last is good. The more active hands the more valuable late position is.

Position 2.
Aggressive opponents also matter. It's usually better to be to the left of aggressive opponents, so that you know whether or not they've raised before you have to act. But hyper-aggressive opponents are usually better placed on your left - since you don't have to wait for them to act to know that they'll likely raise/bet. Acting ahead of them lets you check hands into them and trap other players between the two of you.

Position 3.
Stack size matters. You want to be to the left of big stack sizes (if you have a big or moderate stack size).

When thinking about position think in terms of the button, aggressive opponents, and big stacks.

Loose no-limit hold-em games

2008-08-30T18:45:00.003-05:00

There's a short thread on rgp about playing in loose no-limit hold'em games.

Like many of such threads, some of the advice is really bad, some is pretty good.

Here's the original question in its entirety.

What is the best way to play a loose no-limit table, a
lot of limping, frequent raises with mediocre hands?

Here's the non-responsive response from one of the resident experts.

The big question is what do you mean by loose? Loose preflop, loose
passive, loose aggressive? Loose the whole way down? Do you get people
who will raise any 2, or people who call any 2? Saying "loose NLHE game"
isn't very descriptive.

If that's all the original question would have said then he's right. But that's not all he said. First of all it's very clear the question is just about pre-flop hand selection. That's a fairly easy question to answer without having to worry much about post-flop behaviors.

He's talking about a field that plays a lot of hands and does a lot of pre-flop raising and a lot of calling those pre-flop raises.

In such a game you should pay more attention to position. Play tighter in front, but play more hands from in back. Be willing to call multiway raises from the back. With a large stack be more willing to play for implied odds (play more hands). Especially if another large stack is playing from early position. If you have a large stack on your left be more careful if you have a large stack. (that's part of what it means to play position)

UPDATE:
As the rgp thread progressed it became clear that I probably misunderstood the original poster's question. I had interpreted his "a lot of limping, frequent raises with mediocre hands" as a description of table conditions. It's more likely he meant that as a proposed answer to his own question of how to play at a loose table.

If that's correct then he's describing a passive table (you can't do a lot of limping if it's not a passive table).

My answer of "pay attention to position" still isn't far off, but it's not as critical as it would be at a more aggresive table.

Making a mistake in judgement

2008-06-22T16:52:00.002-05:00

One thing you can count on doing a lot of is making a mistake in judging a situation. You'll mis-read a player, you'll make a bad estimate of an opponents stack size, you'll miscount a pot size, you'll misread a board, even misread your own hand at times. It's something that's going to happen.

I'm not even talking about making a mistake in picking the right strategy for a given situation, I'm talking about just getting the fundamental situation wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is failure to realize that you're confused about a situation. Thinking you know what's going on when in fact you don't know is a far bigger mistake than just not knowing what's going on.

Here's an example of what I mean by confusion.

Situation: 6 handed NLHE cash game, blinds $2/$3. You are on the BB with
a $190 stack. UTG is new to the table but you've played him before. He's
a standard straight forward TAG player. He's quiet enough that he doesn't
draw attention to himself, almost always shows down strong hands, typical
big hand big pot, let the pots that don't matter go without a fight, etc.
He has or is affiliated with cardrunners.com in some way or another based
on google searches if that matters at all. All of this information is
known from previous play and research. He has $320ish and has been at the
table for a few orbits.

Player just sat down. Player has been at the table for a few orbits. That's confused thinking. That's a sign of strong uncertianty about the situation.

There's nothing inherently wrong with such uncertainty. But there's something terrible wrong with thinking that noticing the inconsistency in thought is just nit-picking and doesn't matter. The original poster just reacted badly overall. An example of his reaction is in the subsequent discussion thread is

> Do you want to try to explain why it's not bad poker to fold AK to a
> single raise in a high stakes 6 handed game?

No, because if I happen to use the wrong word or use a word in the wrong
way you won't understand it and will spend the next 20 posts complaining
about it. Instead I'll just ignore it and hope you go away.

The ">" item is from a post I'd made in the thread.

You have to not just recognize your mistakes but you have to allow for them. As I said in that thread

-

> On Jun 21 2008 11:11 AM, garycarson wrote:

> > On Jun 21 2008 11:03 AM, chandler wrote:

> > > On Jun 21 2008 1:10 AM, Travel A wrote:

> > > > If UTG raised and it folded around to me in the BB, creating a heads-up
> > > > a situation, I'd call. UTG, by raising, has already given the
> > > > information needed. The problem with reraising is that you're out of
> > > > position and there's no additional benefit of getting information.

> > > The thing is the raise preflop UTG doesn't really tell you much about his
> > > hand... which the OP adds later. And if you reraise preflop it does in
> > > fact get you some information. If he doesn't come over the top of your
> > > reraise you can probably eliminate AA/KK from his range.

> > If you're suidical.

> > If I'm him and I have AA I'm going to call your re-raise. I'm right where
> > I want to be -- with the best hand with position against a player who
> > thinks he knows what's going on but doesn't and deep money.

> > The only thing Re-raising gets you is having him fold exactly those hands
> > you want to play against -- like AJ or KQ.

> > > If he comes over
> > > the top, I can get away from the hand.

> > Which is why he should just call if he has AA.

> I'm not suicidal, just not very good.

It really kind of depends on what the OP meant by "straight-forward".
Many responders seem to think it meant predicible. But that doesn't
really make much sense as a definition since some of the most predicable
players have heavy doses of FPS.

I defined the term in both my books, basically just as a player who tended
to bet when he had a hand and checked when he didn't.

That wouild not preclude a straight-forward player from raising with AA
than just calling when re-raised, particularly when the money is deep.

I think you were just using a different operational definition of
striaght-forward than I was.

> There is a difference in the intent
> if not the result. In my defense, most of my current opponents would be
> happy to relieved to come over the top of me with AA/KK after that preflop
> reraise... And they are not necessarily wrong because they get calls from
> inferior hands with some frequency. Calling AA there makes sense. I have
> smooth called my AA to a single raiser when playing out of the BB, but
> never just called a reraise.

That's why I had orignially asked the OP what the Evil One thought of him.
He didn't answer.

Has our hero shown a willingness to re-raise then fold to a huge playback?
We don't know. If so then I'm leaving open the possibility that the Evil
One has AA or KK. If he has then there's still some chance of AA or KK
although the chances are reduced.

Generally in no-limit it's a mistake to put your opponent on a specific
hand or to eliminate a specific hand from possibility. You can do that in
limit becuase the cost of being wrong is controlled, but that's not the
case in no-limit and you need to always let your mind consider even
unlikely possibilities -- unless one of you gets real short-stacked, in
that case you can eliminate AA from possibility if he only calls the
re-raise.

> OK, I started out with calling the AK preflop and toyed with the idea of
> the reraise, but check calling every street after you hit really has me
> intrigued.

You might not check/call every street. If he ever makes a really big bet
you need to think about giving it up. Also if the board gets real scary
and he doesn't seem worried about it then you might think about giving it
up.

> If I'm thinking I can see how attractive this is. It keeps
> inferior hands betting, keeps the pot smaller if you're beat and you can
> shift gears to value bet later if the action dictates, but everything in
> me is screaming to bet when I hit that TPTK... and I usually do. I'm
> going to have to give that tactic serious consideration.

In limit blind aggression usually gets it at least close to right. Not so
in no limit. Don't let your ego get in the way, you don't need to control
the betting every hand, and you don't need to control information flow
every hand. Particularly with deep stacks.

With deep stacks you should tread carefully.

In limit you usually want to go after every sliver of value. In no limit
you need to look more at the skew of the distributions of possible
outcomes and avoid negative skews. A negative skew is one where you'll
usually win a little but sometimes you'll get dunked. A winning
distribution of outcomes in no limit is one where you'll usually have a
small loss but sometimes have a huge win (I'm talking about per hand, not
per month).

The distribution of outcomes for winning no-limit players looks very much
like the distribution of outcomes of winning limit players who play in
wild/crazy games.

This, btw, is one aread where the poker hand history analysis software
falls down -- they have too much focus on mean and variance (first and
second moments for you physics majors) and tend to ignore the third moment
(skewness).

The point is that if you're not sure about the situation don't worry about. Just be aware that you aren't sure.

Curiosity

2008-06-03T11:51:00.002-05:00

Curiosity is a generally good trait for a student of poker to have. But it's a trait you need to indulge away from the table. Wondering What If away from the table, and thinking about it deeply, can help you garner a deeper understanding of the game. But too much wondering What Is while at the table can cause serious dents in your stack.

The best known example of a player who needs to learn to compartmentalize his curiousity is Danny Boy Negreanu. From one of his recent blog entries:

He raised me 4100 more all in. A bet that "looks" like it has to be the nuts or close to it. Bill knows I know that, and I was very curious to see this hand. It was played so strangely that I couldn't figure it out. Did he put me on a hand like JJ and think I was making a defensive bet? Did he think he could rob me if he moved in? I had no idea, so since the pot was laying me a price, I had no real choice but to call. Seems odd to say "no choice" but that's what it felt like since I had no clue what he had.

When they're raising with any damn thing

2008-03-28T09:10:00.002-05:00

I was in a game the other night with a couple of wild and crazy guys to my immediate right. The rest of the lineup consisted of four nits and two other guys of with no real distinguishing characteristics.

I did really well, two of the nits went busted, the other two made no progress, and the two wild and crazy guys went busted and left. I left shortly after.

One of the reasons I did well was that I got lucky. One of the reasons that none of the nits did well was that none of them knew how to adapt to players who raised or called raises with about half their hands (which is what the wild and crazy guys were doing).

For example, one of the nits frequently would limp in (he was in front of the wild and crazy pair) then fold to a $10 raise from wild and crazy guy. Later he told me that he was folding hands like KJo in that position.

The wild and crazy guy was making those raises with at best hands like 98o and better. That's about 44% of his hands. He may have sometimes been raising with worse hands. Against that range the KJo is a 53% favorite.

At the same time he was folding hands like KJo to a raise I was calling those raises cold with ands like K5s. With that hand I was a dog to the raising range, by 45/55, but the wild and crazy guy had a terrible bet tell (he bet small when on a draw and bet big when he flopped a hand) so it was easy to play with him after the flop.

Adapt. If they want to gamble then get in their and gamble with them.

Ed Miller plays a no-limit hold'em hand that just seems bizarre to me

2008-02-19T07:48:00.002-06:00

Brother Ed describes the first round of betting in a 50c/$1 blind online no-limit hand as

It’s a $0.50-$1 game, and the villain has $109 (and I have him covered). Everyone folds to me in the small blind, and I make it $3.50 to go with A 5 . The big blind calls.

He then tries to tell us something about the player in the big blind.

big blind plays in a way that I find fairly common in the 6-max $0.50-$1 games, so he’s not an atypical or bizarre player.

I have no idea what that means. He's not a bizarre player? He's not atypical? A lot of different things could all be fairly common. This doesn't tell me anything. Maybe it does to regular Ed readers. But it's pretty much just vague mumblings to me.

And there's no context. Is this an unusually tight game where blind v. blind confrontations happen a lot? Has Ed raised from the SB the last 3 rounds and the BB folded? Context matters. We don't have any. So we're just going to have to fly blind.

The flop is 986 with two hearts. I think I have the best hand here with the Ace high and the bad gutshot. But, Ed checks. I'm not sure why (there was some previous post where I guess he discusses that but I didn't look it up). The BB checks.

A 2 comes on the turn and Ed bets $5.50, The BB calls.

I'm not sure what this bet is all about. After checking the flop the BB is going to likely upgrade the prospects of his own hand, he's going to think of Ed's hand in terms of weakness. A duece isn't going to change that assessment any at all, no matter what Ed does on the turn.

Ed says that it's a good bet because in his experience it will yeild a fold most of the time in this situation.

That's very bad analysis. The fact that your hand is best and a bet will get a worse hand to fold isn't really that important in a no-limit game where you're making large bets. What matters is whether or not a better hand will fold or a worse hand will call. If the opponent will always fold a worse hand and always call a better hand then you'd still often see him fold to a bet in this situation but it wouldn't be a good thing for you at all unless checking would tend to induce a bluff on the river that you're going to fold to.

That sure was a long sentence. I hope it made sense.

In a limit game getting a worse hand to fold is often good because you gain some equity while only risking a small bet relative to the pot size. That's not the case in a no limit game, however.

The Kh comes on the river, putting the flush card on the board. But neither of these guys is going to worry that the other guy made a flush. Ed having checked the flop is a strong indication he didn't have a flush draw, the same with the BB. They might worry about the K though. Ed wasn't worried. He bet. The other guy folded.

Ed is real proud of that river bet.

My experience in the $0.50-$1 games has consistently been that a pot-sized bet against a scary river card that’s mostly missed my opponent’s range is a big favorite not to get called. It’s easily better than the 50% fold chance it needs to be to make the bluff profitable. (To make the bluff more profitable than checking, it actually has to be substantially better than 50% because checking leaves us with at least some showdown equity.) My opponent’s range is dominated by weakish one-pair hands, and my experience is that most $0.50-$1 players are folding those hands to this river card and a pot-sized bet.

I don't know what that last sentence means.

I can't see how Ed might think it likely that he doesn't have the best hand and I don't see how a bet is going to get a worse hand to call or a better hand to fold.

Back in his discussion about the turn bet one of his arguements for the turn bet was that by betting the turn he increases his chances of getting a free showdown. But then he doesn't take a free showdown.

I think maybe this is FPS.

avoiding tough decisions

2007-12-21T03:01:00.000-06:00

I havn't read Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume I (pretentious titles turn me off) but The Surly Poker Gnome has a quibble with this passage.

Many players think experts win because they make these tough decisions well. They miss the point. Good players plan ahead to avoid tough decisions, and so should you.

Here's what The Surly Poker Gnome says about it

Yes, it's true that avoiding tough decisions by planning your hands can help improve your game. But money isn't made by dodging difficult situations. Profits come from making correct decisions, whether they're simple or complicated.

They're both wrong.

You do not make money in poker by being smart. You make money by the other guy not being smart. You simply want to avoid mistakes.

The decisions you want to focus on are the ones with big potential payoffs and small risk, it doesn't matter whether they're easy ones are hard ones, it doesn't matter whether you make most decisions correctly. It matters that you make the important ones correctly.

Enticing a call

2007-12-04T10:49:00.000-06:00

I don't know why this works, but it does.

In a 1/2 game I limped UTG with KK. The limp left me with a stack of $125. Another early position player made it $15 and two players called. The raiser had another $75, the other two each had a couple hundred. I made a huge overbet, moving all in.

The initial raiser went into the tank and gave me his best imitation of a TV staredown.

Then I said the magic words. "Can you beat two jacks?"

Somewhat taken aback, he said, "Maybe".

I said, "Well, then you know what to do".

He called. One of the other two called, the other folded.

I turned my hand over, the board got dealt, they both mucked.

I don't know why causing them to focus their thoughts on a pair of jacks makes them call, but it does.

I have some thoughts about what the reason might be though.

When they mention a pair of jacks they'll tend to think about your hand as it relates to jacks, not as it relates all the other information they might have. They'll tend to think, "He might have jacks, he might have overcards to jacks, he might have a pair smaller than jacks and he might have a pair bigger than jacks. But he's thinking about jacks, so he probably doesn't have a bigger pair, he probably has TT and my KQ is a coin toss".

I don't really know though. But it works.

I learned this trick from John Mioton, I guy I used to play with in Mississippi (in Gulfport and later in Tunica). John has a lot of technical flaws in his understanding of the game but he does have very good insight into people.

Where to sit

2007-11-19T10:54:00.000-06:00

Popular wisdom is that you should sit to the left of a maniac so that you can re-raise and isolate him. That popular wisdom is an idea from limit poker, but that's not really why it's not a good idea. It's that it's based on ideas about table composition and game conditions that are seldom found any more.

If you saw the movie Rounders it has a scene that takes place in an Atlantic City cardroom with a table of 8 pros and 2 other seats that keep rotating among various tourists. Essentially the pros are taking turns bleeding chips from the tourists. In that kind of table composition the idea of isolation makes some sense becuase if you raise then the pros behind you are likely to not want to fool with it, they'll "get out of your way".

You just aren't likely to find that situation any more.

It's much better to sit on the right of that maniac so that you have as much information as possible about how the rest of the table is going to react to him before you have to make a major commitment.

How big

2007-10-18T23:08:00.000-05:00

The poker how-to blog suggests looking at the flop and asking yourself "how big do I want this pot".

That's part of what you need to think of. But more than how big you want to pot to end up you need to ask yourself the pot size trajectory you want to plan on -- how fast do you want the pot to grow?

He gives an example of what I'm talking about although he doesn't get explicit about that part of the plan.

.50/1.00 NL, hero has $100 and villain has $25

Folded to hero on the cutoff whe raises to $3 with JhJd. The villain on the button, an unknown shortstack, calls.

Flop: Td 8d 7c (pot: $7.50)

Our opponent has $22 left in a $7.50 pot. With so little left to bet and so many draws out we are happy to get $22 in the pot.

He suggests betting the pot and getting raised. I'm not so sure I like that plan. It's going to be hard to count on getting raised. In his example trajectory the hero gets all the money in on the flop, which I think is fine.

But what if you bet and don't get raised? There's a lot of cards that might scare you on the turn. Do you really want to triple the size of the pot and leave yourself with an almost pot sized stack left? I don't think you do. I think you want to try real hard to avoid putting yourself into a situation where you have to make a tough decision.

If you check that flop one of two things will happen --
1. He might check, leaving the pot relatively small until you see the turn and decided then what to do. or
2. He might bet, making it fairly easy to just pick up the pot with that little extra right now.

If you check neither possibility leaves you in a real bad spot, the pot is still small enough so if he checks then you can fold the turn if things turn sour. At the same time it gives him a chance to put some more money in the pot now, allowing you to easily get it all in now.

When you think about the pot size you want don't just think about the size, think about how you might get there, and think in terms of multiple possibilities, not just one path.

Give yourself options, and avoid having to make tough decisions later.

Talking at the table

2007-10-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

It turns out that if you want someone to believe something, for example if you want to think you're a very tight player, just say so. Even if it's clearly false, other players that aren't paying complete attention to you will hear it and believe it.

Skill

2007-10-08T23:14:00.000-05:00

I dropped out of school in the 9^th grade, when I was 14. (I later went back, finished high school, got a couple of graduate degrees).

When I quit school my grandfather gave me a job. He managed Eagle Rock Ranch, outside of Wimberley, Texas. It has since become Woodcreek, a residential subdivision, but at the time it was a working ranch during much of the year and a Resort Ranch during the summer months. During the summer they employed college students as waiters, lifeguards, wranglers, etc. But during the off-season the employees were all full time cowboys and maintenance people. I was hired as part of the maintenance crew during the off-season, and part of the resort crew during the summer.

They had two separate barracks for cowboy housing -- one for Mexican cowboys and one for Anglos. (1963 Texas wasn't just a different time, it was a different place). I bunked with the Anglos. One night we went over to the Mexican bunkhouse for a crap game. I'd never played craps before but I knew the basic rules.

I also had a skill that nobody else in the game had -- I knew how to calculate the probabilities of various dice combinations and how to translate those probabilities into odds. Yes, I was a 9^th grade dropout (which was what most of those cowboys were) but boredom had actually been a big part of my school problem. My grades had been bad but I read a lot, and liked math.

There was no host for the game. Shooters had the dice and shot until they either made a point or crapped out, then the dice passed. All bets were side bets, and all bets were at negotiated odds. That's right, there were no fixed prices for various propositions. We negotiated it. That gave me a pretty good edge. I actually knew the difference between the probability of making a point of 8 and that of making a point of 4.

The point of this story is to try to point out the nonsense that the idea that poker should be regulated rather than banned because it's a game of skill.

Well, that craps game I played in Wimberley, Texas in 1963 was a game of skill also. That didn't make it any less a gambling game.

And it gets really interesting when you think about what happens when you start regulating that crap game. Once you start regulating it, having a government agency overseeing a permanent host of the game, the negotiated odds go away and any edge I might have had from my skill is gone.

Regulation takes the skill completely out of that game.

That's what too much regulation will do to poker also. Regulation and taxes increase costs which causes increases in rake which reduces the value of any skill you might have.

Starcraft and poker

2007-10-08T20:47:00.000-05:00

I ran across this passage on Reasonable Deviations, quoting from Nuclear Phynance

I used to play this game called StarCraft in the late 90s, wherein you can build up an army and advance your own technology by collecting resources. My strategy against the computer was to avoid battles and focus on defenses until I had advanced to the highest point of technology, then to Unleash the Fury and wipe the computer out in a massive but short battle of inevitable victory.

...

But when I started play online against other people, I found that sometimes relatively weak players could win battles against me by ‘rushing‘, wherein they focus all of their initial efforts on offense, ignoring the longer term goals of resource collecting and defense.

Sound familiar?

And Starcraft players even started acting like poker pros when

In other circles, some players would agree beforehand that there would be ‘no rushing‘, because they preferred the long game.

Implied odds in no limit

2007-10-05T18:26:00.001-05:00

The concept of implied odds isn't really the same in no limit as it is in limit.

In limit your concern is about getting some extra bets on future betting rounds. But in no limit it's really about winning or losing a stack.

This came up in a thread on playing AKo in a no-limit game.

I had pointed out that AKo against a very tight early position raiser (QQ+, AKs, AKo) is an equity dog and has no implied odds since it won't get a of action against QQ.

A commenter expressed a dissent because he says you have implied odds from an expected contiuation bet even if an A flops.

That's not really implied odds to me. The only flop that has any chance at all of busting QQ is a TJQ flop and even then you aren't really a huge favorite with the flopped nuts. If you get action with a flop of AKx you're in pretty bad shape, probably drawing almost dead.

Angle Shooting Slime

2007-10-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

Some TV poker is on, I don't know what it is.

Todd Brunson is very short-stacked, I think on the big blind, I'm not sure.

Mike Caro raises $1,000, enough to put Todd all in.

When it's Todds turn he says, "I raise".

Of course he doesn't even have enough to make a full call, and subsequent discussion indicates he knows that.

He just can't help himself. He so short-stacked he has to call and he's just taking a shot in the remote hope that Caro hadn't noticed he's short-stacked and might fold when he hears him re-raise.

He's really a slime. The worst. Really bad. I don't know if he learned that from his daddy or not.

Continious improvement

2007-09-27T21:31:00.000-05:00

There's a concept in operations management called continuous improvement.

One approach is

Plan: Identify an opportunity and plan for change.

Do: Implement the change on a small scale.

Check: Use data to analyze the results of the change and determine whether it made a difference.

Act: If the change was successful, implement it on a wider scale and continuously assess your results. If the change did not work, begin the cycle again.

I prefer a slightly different approach for a continuous improvement plan in poker.

Plan Identify a potential problem area or opportunity for improvement.

Analyze Collect data and make observations to determine the extent of the problem or opportunity and potential improvement

Implement If the potential for improvement exists then make changes

Evaluate changes If the change doesn't result in improvement then redo the process to make sure you correctly identified the problem/opportunity.

Poor Danny

2007-09-27T20:57:00.000-05:00

Danny Boy explains a hand he played in a recent tournament.

My last hand actually went like this: I had just raised two hands out of the last three and won both with no contest. Based on that, I limped in under the gun at an 8-handed table with A-Q, also because I knew the big blind call my 2.5 times the blind raise. The button made it 2500 and it felt to me that it was simply a position raise. THE SMALL BLIND CALLED and I called.

He limped because he knew the big blind would call?

He limped because he knew he'd get 2 to 1 on a raise?

Has he quit drinking or something? If so, he needs to start again.

Another tell on TV

2007-09-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

F-train mentioned this verbal

tell by Hellmuth

on High Stakes Poker the other night. It's a good one. The boy just talks to much.

The 80/20 rule

2007-09-09T20:51:00.000-05:00

Wayne Vinson doesn't think much of my blog. In a comment on a previous post he says

Well, good for you to man up and admit you were wrong. Now you need to tackle about 80% of the rest of this site, because your errors are rampant, not localized.

I'm not so sure that 80% of what I say is wrong. But, even if it is, does that actually mean anything? I don't think it does.

The old 80/20 standard says that 80% of the value comes from 20% of the information. What that means is that the stuff I'm wrong about is likely stuff where being wrong doesn't cost much, where the difference between right and wrong is small. But the stuff I'm right about is stuff where it matters, and it's also not superficially obvious.

So it could well be that even if I'm wrong 80% of the time my thoughts have more value than someone else who's only wrong 20% of the time. It just depends on which 80% and which 20%.

It would be helpful if Wayne offered more information about which 80% I'm wrong about. Maybe he'll do that.

Pot odds -- a clarification

2007-09-09T20:26:00.000-05:00

In a comment to a previous post Wayne Vinson says

Harrington uses different terminology than you do, Gary. Specifically, "pot odds" are a broader concept in the way he defines them.

He's making that comment as a result of my having said

On page 14 of Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play they say

There are a variety of mistakes one can make in poker, but one of the most serious is to make a bet or call which is not correct given the pot odds available to you ...

That's just a fundamentally wrong statement that I'm not sure how a book that starts out with that idea has any credibility at all. The power of TV I guess.

The stunning error in the statement is about the idea of betting without the correct pot odds. Pot odds have nothing to do with betting. At least not your pot odds.

Wayne's comment caused me to go look up how Harrington does define pot odds. My comment was about something he'd said on p.14 without having defined pot odds so I just assumed he meant the term in it's generally understood meaning.

Harrington does define pot odds later, on page 122. He says

If your opponent has put you all-in, or has made a bet which is the last significant bet of the hand, then the pot odds are easy to calculate. Just calculate or make your best estimate of what's in the pot, and compare it to the amount required to call.

While it's true that Harrington uses more words in that definition than needed, it's not a broader definition than is the norm. If anything it's a more restrictive definition than normal, not a broader one.

Harrington goes on in that chapter to discuss potential changes in odds if there's a player behind you who might call or raise, and to discuss how pot odds might be modified to account for implied odds.

But there's nothing in his definition that suggests he's using the term pot odds in any abnormally broad way.

Maybe Wayne can clarify his comment?

It is true that Harrington tends to use language rather loosely. His phrase "when your opponent has put you all-in" is an example. Your opponent might have bet enough to put you all-in, but he hasn't put you all-in. He's bet enough so that if you call you're all-in. You still get to decide whether to call. That's a subtle looseness of language, but it's still an example of Harrington not getting it exactly right.

So, it's probably true that Harrington does use the term pot odds in ways outside the generally accepted meaning of the word, and outside his own definition of the term. But that just means he's sloppy with his thinking, which was my point in the first place.

Anchoring bias and adjusting your strategy from a base

2007-09-09T14:40:00.000-05:00

I've often argued that it's not a good idea to think in terms of a base strategy that you adjust to meet changing conditions. I'm not sure I've ever made a good arguement or explanation for why I think it's a mistake to do that though.

So I thought I'd give it another try.

Rational thought is not the norm for human beings. There tends to be natural bias of many different kinds that bends the way we make decisions. There's probably evolutionary reasons for this. But the reasons for it don't really matter. We do tend towards bias in the way we make decisions, in the way we think, and if you're a fan of the idea of rational thought it's important to recognize these natural biases and to guard against them.

There's a human decision making bias that psychologists call anchoring bias.

Let me explain it with an example.

Suppose I spin a Wheel of Fortune device as you watch, and it comes up pointing to 65. Then I ask: Do you think the percentage of African countries in the UN is above or below this number? What do you think is the percentage of African countries in the UN? Take a moment to consider these two questions yourself, if you like, and please don't Google.

Tversky and Kahneman (1974) recorded the estimates of subjects who saw the Wheel of Fortune showing various numbers. The median estimate of subjects who saw the wheel show 65 was 45%; the median estimate of subjects who saw 10 was 25%.

If I try to determine the best strategy for a given situation by a focus on adjustment from some baseline strategy you'll likely not arrive at the best strategy, your judgement will be biased no matter how hard you try to compensate for the bias.

Debiasing manipulations for anchoring have generally proved not very effective. I would suggest these two: First, if the initial guess sounds implausible, try to throw it away entirely and come up with a new estimate, rather than sliding from the anchor. But this in itself may not be sufficient - subjects instructed to avoid anchoring still seem to do so (Quattrone et. al. 1981). So second, even if you are trying the first method, try also to think of an anchor in the opposite direction - an anchor that is clearly too small or too large, instead of too large or too small - and dwell on it briefly.

The best approach for poker players is to focus on the current situation rather than a baseline strategy. What is it about the current situation that creates value or risk? Don't ask yourself How should I play suited connectors in general and how should I adjust that for my position? Ask yourself What is it about my current position that creates value then look at your hand and see if you have a hand that can exploit that value.

It really does make a difference how you think about something. It might seem silly and trite and unimportant to think about things in a certain way, but it's important if you want to avoid mistakes generated by psychological bias.

Flopped full house

2007-09-09T08:21:00.000-05:00

Looking for something to blog about I ran across this poll on how to play a flopped full house.

The situation is that you're in late position with a T9 and a flop of TT9, two suited. There are 4 other active players, the UTG had limped preflop, two callers, you called, the BB checked.

Now, on the flop, the UTG bets 5 (it's a 1/2 game), there's two callers, the BB is still behind you. There's plenty of chips. One of the callers has $70, everybody else has a couple hundred, you have everybody covered.

What do you do? The poll gives three options, call, raise a small amount, raise a large amount.

70% say call
25% say small raise
5% say large raise

I think call might be right, but I don't think it's clearcut. It's the first impulse of most players, it's my first impulse.

Aggression in no limit games is often overrated. Passive play often gets more money than aggresive play. But at the same time slowplay is overrated also.

The more I think about it the more I think it's a good chance one of the 3 hands that have already put money in the pot this betting round has a T. If that's the case and they're slowplaying it then a small raise might well get them to come out of the woodwork. A small raise might well have a good shot at getting all the chips in right now against one player with at most 3 outs.

Raising might scare off the flush, straight, and overcard draws. But if somebody else has a T and you're both slowplaying it then I think that might well be as big a disaster as driving off the draws. You aren't likely to get all the chips of a flush draw even if he gets there.

Then again, against another T you can probably get all the chips in on a later street.

In a limit game I think a raise is clearly the right thing. In a no limit game I don't think things are ever that clear.

Calling on the button

2007-09-08T23:44:00.000-05:00

The UTG player makes it $10 in a NL 1/2 game and everybody folds to you, on the button and you have QhJh. What should you do?

Well, of course, it depends. It depends on a couple of things. What is the range of hands the UTG player would be making that raise with? How likely is it that the UTG player has a big pair that he'll fall in love with? How deep is the money?

The deeper the money, and the more likely he is to fall in love with his hand, the more likely you should be to call. It's harder to quantify that than the effects of the range of hands he might have though. So, let's just look at what's easy to look at, his range of hands, and use Poker Stove to try to map out a general approach.

1. If he's a very tight player and you can put him on QQ+ or AKs then he's pretty far ahead. He has over 78% equity against a QJs.

In this case you're going so far uphill that even with very deep money and an opponent who's very likely to fall in love with his hand it's probably not worth trying to climb that hill. Just give it up.

2. But most UTG openers won't have that tight an opening range. Even most fairly tight players might have AJs, or AQo, or even 99. Looking at that range his equity against QJs is only about 69%. He's still pretty far ahead, but not so much that you might want to take a shot if the money is deep and he's the type to fall in love with a hand. The money does need to be pretty deep though. Probably an extra $200, which isn't always available in todays capped buyin 1/2 games. And just deep money isn't enough, he also needs to be a stubborn type who won't give up the hand when he's clearly beat.

3. How about a more typical player? One who will come in with KQo and pairs as low as about 77 and even suited connectors down to JTs? How does your QJs look against that range? In that case his equity has dropped to about 63% and you're not in such bad shape. Now the money doesn't need to be as deep, maybe $100 left in the stacks is enough, and he doesn't have to be 100% stubborn, just a good chance he'll fall in love with his hands is probably good enough, you don't need to be sure of it.

4. There are players who are even looser. They'll come in UTG with that raise with hands like KJo, or even 76s or KTs. Against a player like that you're in pretty good shape, he's about a 60/40 favorite. Stack sizes as small as $60 or so is probably enough.

The main thing to learn from this short analysis is that you aren't ahead with QJs against an UTG raise, even with your positional advantage you're going to be starting out behind. You're going to need fairly strong implied odds to justify a call even against some of the loosest early raises. Most of the time you're probably better off just passing.

Get some rest

2007-09-08T22:55:00.000-05:00

Random Shuffle has a post about not playing when you don't feel up to it.

I support that line of thinking completely. I think the single most important controllable element for a winning poker strategy is to play only when you're feeling your best.

And I don't mean feeling good because you've been doing to much cocaine.

A tell

2007-08-13T13:23:00.000-05:00

The last visitor to my women and poker page got there from a search on "clonie gowen" cocaine. And a friend recently told me that it's common knowledge among Vegas dealers that Clonie has a coke problem. And, she exhibited some weird behavior during the tournament in Tulsa this last May that a coke problem would have explained. So I checked out that search result out of curiosity.

I ran across a UTUBE video that shows Clonie scratching at her nose in a somewhat telltale sign.

But she also shows a classic tell. Twice.

When she calls on the flop with a nonchalant flip of the wrist, and does the same thing when she bets on the turn, she's demonstrating a classic "weak means strong" tell. She's throwing the money in the pot with an air of resignation, "I don't care, I give up". It's an act of weakness.

I think Vanassa should have folded on the turn if she'd being paying attention to Clonie's mannerisms

The attempt to borrow money from Matasow is another classic indication of a drug problem.

The Raise/Fold sequence

2007-08-04T09:28:00.000-05:00

In a previous post I made light of the idea that you should make a habit of coming in for a raise then folding to a re-raise. The particular had someone had suggested doing so with was AQo.

A commenter (DMV) didn't think I was being very bright when I thought you were opening yourself up for being played back at

You're dead? Why? They are going to start coming over the top of your EP raises with weak hands? Bring it.

I thought I'd look at that in a little more detail. I'll use some PokerStove.

Let's just say that AQo is the worst hand you'll make an early postion raise with, with AA you'll push me all in if I re-raise you, with AKs, AQs, AKo, JJ-KK you'll call. You won't be raising with any other hands.

Roughly then, you're response to a re-raise will be re-re-raise 11% of the time, calling 68% of the time and folding 21% of the time.

Let's just pick a number and say I'm re-raising with the top 40% of my hands after I see you raise/fold once.

I have 100% equity those times you fold.
I have 15% equity those times you play back with AA.
I have 31% equity those times you call.

Let's just treat all raises as pot size raises, 1/2 blinds. Ignore rake. You raise to 8, I re-raise to 20, you re-raise to 52. I think I got those at about pot size.

21% of the time I have 100% equity of $11
11% of the time I have 15% equity of $107, and $52 of that I put in.
68% of the time I have 31% equity of $43. and $20 of that I put in.

Okay. You're right. I'm wrong.

But, we can't stop here. We have to find some situation where I'd be right, otherwise the world is out of kilter and we'll all die.

Let's say you'll fold not just with AQo but with any AQ (a player who'll raise/fold with any hand probably doesn't understand how much more powerful suited is than non-suited).

Okay, I ran the numbers for that and it's still not enough, you'd still be right.

I'll concede. You'd have to have a pretty wide range of hands you're raise/folding with to make it worthwhile for someone to play back very frequently.

I just hate it when I make a mistake. I really do.

Conceptual errors

2007-08-04T08:33:00.000-05:00

On page 14 of Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play they say

There are a variety of mistakes one can make in poker, but one of the most serious is to make a bet or call which is not correct given the pot odds available to you ...

That's just a fundamentally wrong statement that I'm not sure how a book that starts out with that idea has any credibility at all. The power of TV I guess.

The stunning error in the statement is about the idea of betting without the correct pot odds. Pot odds have nothing to do with betting. At least not your pot odds. Here's some of what I say about pot odds in The Complete Book Of Hold 'Em Poker: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Winning

Money odds
The concept of money odds is often confusing to beginning poker players. It's really not that difficult: At any given point in the play of the hand there are three sources of money, and each needs to be considered separately. There's money that's already in the pot. That's called "pot odds". There's money that's going into the pot in the current betting round. I call that "bet odds". And, there's money that will be going into the pot on future betting rounds. That's called "implied odds".

Past-----pot odds
Current--bet odds
Future---implied odds

All of these money sources are important, but their importance needs to be considered in different ways.

Pot odds
Pot odds are an important consideration when you're deciding whether to call with a hand that's probably not the best hand. It has nothing to do with betting. That's Harrington's major conceptual error in the statement.

Pot odds are just the ratio of the amount of the current bet to the amount of money already in the pot.

Pot odds are about calling with the worst hand. In limit poker it's often a mistake to fail to call when you're getting a good price.

In no-limit (what the Harrington book is supposed to be about) you're seldom betting a really good price. It's not unusual in limit to be getting 10-1 on a 4-1 proposition. That's a pretty good price. It's really unusual to get that kind of price in no-limit.

And how big a mistake it is to call with the right price depends on what price you're actually getting.

If, for example, you habitually called with a 11-1 gutshot draw getting 10-1 pot odds is that a big mistake? If it's not for all your money it's not even a mistake at all, implied odds certainly make up for the very slight shortfall.

Even if the call is for all your money it's a mistake, but not a very critical one.

That's Harrington's other conceptual mistake in that sentence. He attaches way too much importance to getting the "correct" pot odds.

In no limit you're not making a huge mistake if you just don't even worry about it, just focusing on making accurate judgements about when you're beat and throwing your hand away if a better hand bets into you.

Am I being unreasonably critical of Harrington?

Online Poker v. Live Poker

2007-08-01T15:15:00.000-05:00

I just read this post on rgp.

If I raise with AQ and get reraised, I'm dumping it, and if there's an EP raise,
I'm probably folding AQ. For me to get burned with AQ, I would need to raise in
EP with AQ and just get called, or, AK raises from MP/LP, and I would call
there.

All I can say is that he must play poker online a lot.

You can get away with playing like that online because most of your opponents are not paying attention at all to any mistakes you're making.

But in live poker games where even the really bad players are paying attention, once you come in for a raise in EP then fold to a re-raise once you've just got a target painted on your forehead. If you do it twice you're dead.

Freeroll

2007-07-29T20:06:00.000-05:00

A comment on a recent post asked what a freeroll is.

A freeroll is a situation where, depending on the outcome of some future event, you might win some money but you have no money at risk.

A freeroll tournament is an event with no buyin requirements that pays cash prizes.

You might be freerolling on the turn if you and another player have the nut straight, but you also have a flush draw (if you don't make the flush you get your money back).

The freerolling reference I made in the previous post meant in a loose sort of sense. When some opponent is playing like an idiot you're freerolling in the sense that you're chances of a large win are much better than you'd thought they would be when you sat down. Using the strict definitino of the term it's not really freerolling.

Do you have to double the big blind after the turn?

2007-07-28T00:20:00.000-05:00

That was the search term in a google search that landed someone on this blog recently. I doubt that they found the answer to the question her, but I'll try to answer it now.

In no limit poker the minimim bet at each betting round is usually the amount of the big blind. It does not increase on the turn.

But --- some online sites do have software that changes the minimum to twice the big blind on the turn. That happens because they based their software design on an initial design for limit games, not because of a general poker rule.

In some poker rooms a straddle might complicate things somewhat. Depending on local rules the minimum bet might be the amount of the straddle at each round, or it might be the amount of the straddle preflop then the amount of the big blind thereafter. But the minimum won't double on the turn.

Winning v. Losing

2007-07-27T14:40:00.000-05:00

“I’d rather win a small pot than lose a big one is a common popular truth you’ll hear poker players mumbling. Well, being a popular truth doesn’t make it a useful truth, or even a real truth when talking about a poker game. How about winning a big pot? Since when is that not an option in the poker world?

There are more than two options in the real world of poker games. People will use that incomplete proverb to justify all sorts of weak and timid play, and even to justify overly aggressive play. It might protect them from losing big pots but they aren’t likely to go home with any money if they don’t win some big ones. Avoiding the big pots is not a winning poker strategy. Winning the big pots is the poker goal to strive for. Just don’t even worry about the small ones.

The reality is that I often don’t care at all who wins the small pots. Small pots don’t have much effect on my bottom line at all. A lot of small pots might, but not one or two of them.

I'm Leaving (in a huff)

2007-07-25T09:20:00.000-05:00

I've been playing 1c/2c blind PLO on Ultimate Bet the last few days. I have some left over bonus bucks from long ago on the site (they're hard to work off, but never expire) and since I don't know how to make a deposit anymore it's just been sitting there. Then I won $2 in a freeroll so I can play some cash games and work off those bonus bucks.

I was playing for a few minutes this morning while I was having coffee and one player said to another "You act like you're playing a freeroll, I'm going to another table".

I always thought that if someone at the table was playing like they were in a freeroll that I was actually freerolling. But, what the hell do I know? I can't even figure out how to make a deposit.

Reacting to bad luck

2007-07-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

My impression of the popular conception of the best way to react to a short run of bad luck at the table is to tighten up and hunker down. The thinking being that other players get used to seeing you lose so they'll both take more shots at you and will call you more often. So you want to make sure you only get involved when you have some extra strength to withstand that.

Random Shuffle has a slightly different take on that popular wisdom.

This advice may seem paradoxical, but when you've been running bad in No-Limit Hold'em, try raising more. And I mean more in both senses: (a) raise more often and call less often; and (b) make your raises (and bets) larger.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't tighten up and play fewer hands, you probably should. But it does mean you shouldn't hunker down.

I think that's closer to a good way to think of things than what popular wisdom seems to be on the subject.

When your top pair is beat

2007-07-20T16:42:00.000-05:00

Some players seem to think the only real poker tactic is deception. Their whole game is built around that one tactical ploy. You can save yourself a lot of money by early identification of players whose entire arsenal of poker tactics is built on that singular idea of deception.

I was playing some 1/2 blind no limit last night. The game had a capped buy in of $200.

I'm on the big blind with a Kd 8d, there are 3 limpers and the small blind in the pot and I check preflop.

The flop is a 346, with 2 hearts and a diamond.

Everybody checks.

The turn is 8c. The small blind checks.

I bet $10. One caller. Then the mid-position limper makes it $30. The late position limper folds, as does the small blind.

It's my turn.

What does he have? Is my hand any good? If I'm not best how many outs do I have.

I thought I was drawing dead. What hand could he possibly have that he would've played from mid-position, checked that flop, then raised the turn?

In answering those questions we need to start with what I know about the player. I didn't really know much. I'd just recently arrived at the table and hadn't seen anything noticeable occur in any of the hands I'd watched so far. But this is a live game. I could look at the guy. Stereotypes can be helpful, and this guy fit one poker player stereotype that you don't often see discussed. He looked like a farmer.

He was in his 50's or 60's, wearing a feed store ball cap, tanned, weathered face, and large, rough hands. Casual clothes, neat but not pressed. I've seen that type in cardrooms around Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, and even Reno. They generally fall into one of two categories, a wild gambler type or a steady but loose and tricky type.

The first type often gets out of line and overvalues his hand and situation. The second type seldom overvalues his hand and seldom gets out of line for more than a minimum bet.

I'm not able to tell which type of farmer I'm looking at by just looking, but the way this hand played out gave a strong clue as to what kind of player he is. If he'd have hit any part of that flop at all you would not have checked the flop, with something like an 86 or even 84 or just a flush draw he'd have bet the flop, pushing the boundaries of his marginal hand. Neither type is likely to raise me on the turn unless they can beat top pair or have a strong draw to beat it.

With a player left behind him the steady but tricky type of farmer would be very likely to have checked that flop with a 75 however.

That's what I put him on. Exactly a 75. I thought I was drawing dead with my top pair. I folded. That early position limper called his raise then called another $40 when a blank face card hit the river. The farmer had flopped the nuts, just as I'd concluded after his turn raise.

I don't think my laydown was particularly special, it's almost never a good idea to call a turn raise with just a pair, but I decided to blog about it because I think my read of that player is a good example of how to combine thoughts about stereotypes and the particular beating pattern of a hand.

This sort of thing is one way that poker math relates to poker psychology. There are separate things but the complementary aspect of the two is more important than either individual view. Poker math and poker psychology serve each other, and you can't really meaningfully apply either of the two approaches without incorporation of the other. The psychology comes in when identifying the stereotype. The mathematics comes in when comparing the betting pattern two the two different possible interpretation of player stereotype of the middle-aged, tractor driving, farmer.

Update: I corrected a minor typo

A PLO laydown

2007-07-19T12:20:00.000-05:00

I have 6422 double suited in the small blind in an online PLO game.

There's an early position raise, a late position call, I call, the big blind calls.

The flop is T66. I bet. The big blind raises. The original opener re-raises. The late position player folds.

Now what?

I can't imagine how my hand could possibly be any good. So I fold. The big blind goes all in, the opener calls.

I'd have ended up with 6's full of 2's. But that's not important.

The big blind had a single T, and not much else. He'd raised with JT88 on that flop.

The other guy, the opener who won the pot, had KKxx.

OK. This is going to be fun.

More on overplaying a pair revisited.

2007-07-17T22:20:00.000-05:00

Someone on rgp made a comment about an old post from here about my overplaying JJ when it flopped 3 smaller cards.

In that post I raised after this

The flop is 742, all black, my jacks are red. My caller bets into me, bets $10.

and concluded afterwards that it was a mistake based on my read that the guy likely had either a flush draw or a set or two pair, with some possibilty he had a straight draw.

Here's the relevant part of the rgp comment (it's from one of the rgp posters who often misses the point)

> when you think it's a mistake to get a whole bunch of money in with the
> 2:1 best of it. I think you need to re-read theory of poker and
> understand what a mistake is, because that ain't it. You've got a
> ridiculous case of playing results rather than expectations if you think
> that was a bad play.

Of course the mistake he's making is exactly the estimation mistake I talked about earlier today at mathandpoker.com. I wrote that post a few hours before the rgp comment.

He's thinking of himself as a 2-1 favorite with the overpair when that's not his edge, that's the best edge he might have, not the expected edge. But he uses that as if it's an expected value.

Strippers do the same thing when they tell you they make $1,100 a night. That's not their average earnings, that's how much they made on the best night they ever had.

In the follow up on that rgp thread I suggested the commenter was being results oriented, because he made the 2-1 comment after learning what the guy actually had. But, even that's not right, because the evil opponent actually had a pair, a back door straight draw, and a flush draw. The way the cards actually lay I was a 48/52 dog, not a 2/1 favorite.

If the guy actually had the range of hands I put him on then I was ahead, but not as much as the commentator thinks. I'm not going to bother trying to compute my actual odds because they aren't important.

The point of that post is that in nolimit probably being ahead isn't good enough to raise. That's because when you make the pot bigger you're creating a situation where those times you're behind the pot is likely to get a lot bigger, something you don't really want.

In that hand in my previous post, if the guy had moved allin after my raise I'd have the worst of it, even though I was right to call on the flop even being behind because I wasn't so far behind that I wasn't getting pot odds for a call.

In no-limit, when you're probably ahead on the flop, but if you're not ahead you're in real bad shape, it's not a good idea to get too busy. I'll close with the observation that if I'd had Jc then with the cards he had I'm ahead 52/48 against his pair and flush draw rather than being behind 48/52. Having that club both takes away one of his outs plus gives me a re-draw, tipping the balance.

But I didn't have Jc and I overplayed that pocket pair, costing me more money than it should have.

A Chapter from Another Book that Doesn't impress me

2007-07-16T20:34:00.000-05:00

Twoplustwo has book coming out some time or other on sit-and-goes, or one table satellites. The title says sit-and-goes and also says one table tournaments. -There's a difference between sit-n-goes and satellites in the payout structure. The title just doesn't make it clear.

Again, twoplustwo magazine has a sample chapter. Again, I'm not impressed.

If anybody wants to read it and comment on it I'll probably have something to say, but otherwise, I find it so confusing and incomplete that I'm just not in a mood to get into it right now. It looks pretty bad to me.

Maybe I just need to take more naps.

Update: What I don't like about the book?

1. To start with the title is confusing. I'm not sure what the book is about. One table sit-n-goes or one table satellites? Doe's he deal with different payout structures? I don't know, and if he's going that have a long title with a long sub-title it just seems like he could tell me that.

But that's not a big deal. My hold'em book gets a lot of grief from people who don't like the title and I don't really want to be one of those people.

But the second thing is really more substantive.

His start in the chapter is

Before discussing the crucial re-steal play of next section, we must learn how to classify a raise. When someone makes a raise during mid-blind play, his motive may be broken down into two components:

1. Desire to steal the blinds.

2. Wanting value on a superior holding.

Huh? I'm not sure what mid-blind play means, I guess it means the blinds are above the starting levels, but he never says.

But his two component list is very incomplete, very superficial, enough so to just make it wrong. There's lot's of other reasons someone might make a raise, even if he's only talking about pre-flop raises (which he doesn't say).

I guess he intends to talk about things within a very limited context and I'm supposed to figure out what that context is. I'm not a fan of that approach.

3. He somewhat clarifies things in his next section where he gives 4 situational examples in a Q/A format where he asks the reader to classify each as a steal or a value raise. Each of the 4 is a situation where the raiser is the opener pre-flop. So, although he never says, it appears he's going to treat someone who raises after a limper separately somewhere else.

That's fine, someone raising limpers is a different situation than someone opening with a raise. But when you don't tell me what the hell you're talking about, when you leave it up to me to pick up the bread crumb clues to figure out what the topic is, then I'm not going to be happy.

4. Then he goes through a bunch of structured examples of when you might want to conclude on opening raise is a steal attempt and try to re-steal. I don't really like the format of these examples, but they're okay, and I really have no complaint about them.

5. Until he gets to the end, that is. This illustrates what's really wrong with the whole chapter. He says.

There is a key restealing principle in this hand:

You should be much more inclined to resteal against a stealer and a caller(s) than against a single stealer.

This is because the pot grows enormously with each extra caller, yet no more strength has been shown. Sure, a tricky player might sometimes smooth-call a pre-flop raise with aces or kings. But in general, a second player who stays in the pot is showing weakness by not reraising, and you should attack this weakness when the pot is large and your hand has decent showdown potential.

That's just flat out wrong. It's very important to think about what kinds of players these are and what they think about you in this situation. That's one of the keys he just ignores in the whole chapter.

If you have an image of being an aggressive player with FPS (and his focus on re-stealing in this chapter suggests that might be the case), then you'll get called by that limper (who isn't bluffing, even if he's weak) hoping to hit a flop and check call you to the felt.

There are nuances to everything that he just ignores. It's a very hack oriented, formulaic approach to the game. Against weak opposition in small buy in sit and goes online it might work. But it's not a general approach that's going to really win a lot of money.

I think mostly I'm not impressed because that lead material is just flat out wrong unless you know he's talking about a very specific situation that he never clearly identifies. That kind of sloppiness in writing always suggests to me a sloppiness in thinking.

Update:
The thing that really bothers me about the presentation style has nothing to do with nolimit poker and is just more generally about the style of presentation of poker analysis. I talk about that elsewhere.

A sample chapter

2007-07-16T10:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a chapter from an upcoming book on nolimit holdem poker

The chapter is on twoplustwo magazine, and they only keep their stuff up for about 3 months, so download it or print it now if you think you might want to refer back to it.

I'm not impressed so far. The chapter starts out with

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If we had to summarize no-limit strategy in a single sentence, it would be this:

Plan Your Hands

What the hell does that have to do with no-limit? Are they suggesting you don't need to plan your hands in limit? In limit I think a plan is probably more important. Plans are important in no-limit but they are also much more fluid and really don't need to be that complete, they just need to be re-evaulated at every step.

In The Complete Book Of Hold 'Em Poker: A Comprehensive Guide to Playing and Winning I pretty much say that the most important concept in no-limit hold'em (actually in no-limit poker) is simply

Don't Call

I still think that's true most of the time. Against some opponents it's not true, against some opponents you're better off check calling than you are betting, but it's still the basic idea.

Then, after talking about planning, they jump right away to the idea of finding a balance between risk and reward, and use a really bad example to do so.

They have two read aces on the big blind, the small blind limps, they raise, he calls, the flop is a 3 card straight in spades, the small blind goes all in, the stacks are very deep.

What do you do?

They talk about risk/reward tradeoff only in terms of the amount of money, they never, not once, bring up the players.

Against some players I'm calling here every damn time. Against some players I know for sure he has a naked flush draw, he doesn't even have as much as a pair and a flush draw. Against some players I know for sure they don't have more than 9 outs because with a hand better than that they're checking to let me bet.

They don't even talk about that. So what the hell do they mean by risk? They mean how much money is involved.

The next example is almost comical. They give a of having KK in mid-position and opening for 15, getting two callers, one behind you, one in the blinds.

Then they go through an analyze a particular flop where you bet and the player behind you calls, and you get in an iffy situation on the turn where you're probably best but don't want to commit all of your deep stack.

Then they re-look it and decided that you made a mistake with the raise to $15, you should have raised to $30 and gotten two callers, then on the turn the pot would have been large enough to be pot committed.

All I can say to that is

What?

Big hands and pot sizes in poker games

2007-07-16T09:27:00.000-05:00

Here's the lede on an Ed Miller post.

Big hands deserve big pots. It’s a fundamental no-limit concept.

What nonsense. It's not only not a poker concept (it's a bumper sticker phrase) it's not even true.

Inanimate objects don't deserve anything. And you don't deserve anything at the poker table by virtue of having some particular combination of inanimate objects in your hand.

When you have a hand that has a very high probability of winning (which is actually not what many players mean by big hand) then you want to get as much other people's money in the pot as you can.

I guess that's what he means. And if he was selling bumper stickers instead of giving poker advice then the phrase he uses would be okay. Maybe that't it. Maybe he is selling bumper stickers. Bumper stickers probably have a pretty big market.

I guess I'm just being mean this morning.

Is Miller's call bluff just a thin value bet?

2007-07-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

Ed Miller seems to be following the Sklanaksy tradition of giving something a name and then thinking he's done something.

In a recent post he defines a call bluff

The Play: The Call Bluff

How It Works: You have position on a lone, aggressive opponent. Your opponent bets a small percentage of the remaining stacks. You have a marginal hand, but you call. The next round, your opponent checks, you bet, and she folds.

I don't understand how that's a bluff?

What does marginal hand mean? Bottom pair?

He gives an example of a call on the flop with a gutshot and backdoor flush draw then a bet when an offsuit Ace hits the turn and the opponent checks the scare card.

I guess thats a bluff, but I call it betting a scare card.

I call it that becuase I think it's important to think about bluffs on scare cards as different from other kinds of bluffs. That's becuase when you're known to be aggresvie and/or tricky an attentive opponent will often expect you to bluff at scare cards. So before you do it you should be aware of how the other guy is thinking about you.

He does explain a little better later in the post

Predictability (of your opponent) is good because it improves the quality of the extra information you get. Some players will raise preflop and routinely continuation bet with almost any hand. But on the turn, they bet only if they have something, and they give up otherwise. The call bluff is a great counter to this strategy.

But if that's what he's talking about I'm not so sure he needs a marginal hand to call the flop bet.

That's the part that confused me. What does he mean by marginal hand.

His definition suggests to me he means calling with something like bottom pair, good kicker, then when the evil one checks the turn, essentially giving up, you value bet because your marginal hand just got strong.

His example suggests to me he means calling with a weak draw intending to bet if a scare card hits (his example had two clubs on the flop so any club and any ace might be scare cards to the evil one). Or bet if the gutshot hits or semi-bluff if the backdoor flush continues.

In the first case you have a hand that might actually be good. In the second case you have a lot of cards that can improve your hand without looking like it improved your hand and a lot of cards that do nothing but look like they improved your hand.

But then his clarification is something else entirely.

I guess I just don't know what he's talking about and things like this closing sentence don't exactly clarify things for me.

Furthermore, with some hands and stack sizes, you can delay the bluff a second time, playing it bet-call on the flop, bet-call on the turn, and check-bet-fold on the river.

Update: Some of the comments on his post say his call bluff is also called floating the flop. Another term I have no idea what it means. I should get out more.

A raise on the river

2007-07-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure I agree with this raise on the river.

The flop came 9h-8h-7s. Everyone checked and I checked.

The turn was the 6s. The small blind checked, the big blind bet $3. One other player and I called. $14.25 pot after rake.

The river was the 6h. The small blind bet $4. The other player folded, and it's my turn.

Our hero made it 12, the villian folded.

Read the post. There's a lot of explanation of why it's a good raise.

I'm not so sure about it myself.

Any thoughts?

Update:
One of the things I often forget to do is to write for the search engines. This post is about an online, nolimit holdem poker game. A low stakes poker game played on the internet. Just wanted to clarify that poker concept and comment on the strategy.

Overpair

2007-07-13T13:22:00.000-05:00

This isn't really a heavily read blog, partly my own fault becuase I don't post as often as I should.

I just wanted to call attention to the comment thread on a previous post on overplaying an overpair.

I think an overpair on a drawy flop is an interesting decision point.

Strategy v. tactics

2007-07-12T15:24:00.000-05:00

I said something on rgp that I like

In poker the
> distinction between strategy and tactics are admittedly blurred but it
> is fairly clear in chess,

It's fairly clear in poker also.

For example, the book Theory of Poker is 100% on the topic of tactics, it
doesn't address strategy or theory.

Tactics is about how to react.

Strategy is about how to create a situation that will cause the other guy to
react in a way that you like.

Pay attention to stack sizes

2007-07-12T12:16:00.000-05:00

Here's a post from rec.gambling.poker.

>
> A curious thing happend the other day while playing at a no-limit hold'em
> game,
> and I'm now seeking some clarification regarding betting rules. Here is what
> happened. Everyone called my raise preflop. Flop comes down. I'm first to
> act
> and I bet $50. Person to the left of me calls $50. Last person to act
> re-raises all-in for $68. At this point I try to reraise all-in for another
> $300 over the top to get rid of the first caller ... club tells me I cannot
> reraise in that situation, I can only fold or call the extra $18. Club tells
> me
> I cannot reraise because the first raise was an incomplete bet, and
> essentially
> I would be raising myself ... anyone have any other (better) explanation ?

Not really.

A term used is "re-opening the betting". The betting is only re-opened if
there's a raise. When you bet 50, it takes a $50 raise to reopen the betting.
No one can raise less than that unless that's all the chips they have, in which
they go allin and you have to match their allin amount to remain active. It's
just the rule. There is no explanation. The "raising yourself" language is
must some mumbling that doesn't really have any meaning.

It's one of the reasons it's important to pay attention to stack sizes. If you
had some reason to think he's likely to raise you might have wanted to have bet
$30 instead of $50, giving him a chance to make a full raise so you can trap
intermediate callers for your re-raise, for example.

Small bets

2007-06-04T20:09:00.000-05:00

Random Shuffle has some comments on a post of Brother Ed's about making minimum size raises.

A bet is a bet. Even a mini-bet means something a check doesn't. The fact that the player bet the minimum rather than checking means something. This distinction between checking and mini-betting is more important than Miller seems to be saying here. There's no benefit in deliberately conflating small bets with checks - if anything, this smacks of the sort of mental laziness Miller is railing at.

I often make a min size raise online because I was not paying attention and the time is ticking and I want to make a raise but don't want to fool around and risk a time out.

I agree that any attempt to lump all small raises into some standard category is pretty much just intellectual laziness.

The important thing to keep in mind is that in multi-way games (even if the action has gotten to heads up) you're going to have to do things that are unexpected and contrary to the norm to get the money. That's what strategic thinking is all about. It's important to consider the possible reasons for the min raise, and Random Shuffle is right that there's always a reason and the reason is seldom intellectual laziness. Other than the being in a hurry reason, the two main reasons are as an attempt to seem weak and entice a raise and an attempt to take away the initiative while keeping the pot small.

A player who is making the min raise for the first reason is hoping you'll think it's for the second reason.

One of the holes in Miller's thinking is a common 2+2 shortcoming, a failure to recognize that even when your opponent is making a mistake he often thinks he has a good reason to do what he did.

Fun with Poker Stove

2007-06-03T18:49:00.000-05:00

I spent some time this morning just playing around with Poker Stove.

No starting hand is a favorite to beat nine other players. Not a single one. Pocket aces has about a 30% chance of prevailing against a field of 9 random opposing hands.

Of course getting 9-1 on a 30% proposition is a money winner, a very good money winner, but most of the time it’s going to be a loser.

As the field narrows the win percentage of AA grows a lot. According to Poker Stove it will win 85% of the time against a player who plays the top 20% of his hands.

But when Poker Stove says top 20% it means in terms of win percentage against a random hand. That includes things like A9o and A4s, which aren’t considered power houses against someone who’s shown strength or might show strength. Players who’ll call in early position limper with 20% of their hands aren’t likely to be playing A9o.

Here’s the top 20% against a random hand
AA KK QQ JJ TT 99 88 77 66
A9o ATo AJo AQo AKo
KTo KJo KQo
QTo QJo
JTo
T9s
J9s JTs
Q9s QTs QJs
K8s K9s KTs KJs KQs
A4s A5s A6s A7s A9s ATs AJs AQs AKs

What’s the top 20% against a strong hand? First you have to define what we mean by strong hand.

How about the top 5%? The top 5% against a random hand are AA KK QQ JJ TT AKs AKo AQo

I think everybody will agree that’s a collection of strong hands. Some might quibble on the margin, arguing for inclusion of 99 and 88 77 instead of AQo. There are more combinations of AQo than 99, so to replace the same number of hands that are removed by taking AQo out of the mix you need to go as deep as 77.

Against the top 5% that includes AQs AA wins 84.4% percent of the time. But against the top 5% that includes the middle pairs AA wins 84% of the time. Not a big difference, but big enough to suggest that when you’re against a known strong hand, or even just a suspected strong hand you might want to steer clear of the offsuit Aces, even hands as strong as AQo might be suspect.

What to play when you put the other guy in the top 5% and he’s playing the distribution that doesn’t include AQo but does include pairs as low as 77?

Playing any pair against that distribution is a loser, winning only about 45% of the time.

Because he’s playing strong pairs, you don’t want to get involved with some of the more hopeless pairs. Playing only the same pairs he does (77+) puts you at about 56% winning.

But since he’s playing other hands than pairs you can include pairs smaller than the pairs he plays, just not all of them.

Against a distribution of hands
77+
AKs AKo

Here’s how you’ll do calling with various pairs

44+ 48.7%
55+ 50.6%
66+ 53%

When against any kind of strength, think about staying away from those little pairs, 22, 33, 44 aren’t likely to be winners.

More on overplaying a pair

2007-06-01T17:06:00.000-05:00

I fell in love with JJ yesterday in a 1/2 game and lost about $90 that I should not have lost.

I raised pre-flop, I think I made it $7 first in. One caller, he was in front of me, in one of the blinds.

The flop is 742, all black, my jacks are red. My caller bets into me, bets $10.

This is where I made my first mistake. I raised, making it $40. That was a huge mistake.

Why would I raise here? Yes, I think I probably have the best hand, but even if I do he's going to have outs. He probably doesn't have a 7, with a 7 he'd fear a bigger pair from me and check/call. He is more likely to have a flush draw or even a 35 for a straight draw. Should I raise to "charge him" for his draw. Well, if I know for sure that's what he has, then yes. But, what if he doesn't have a draw. Well, if he has a set of 7's or 4's or some such thing then I'm really in bad shape.

A much, much smarter way to play this hand is just call and see what happens on the turn.

What happened was a Qc falls, putting 3 clubs on the board and he fires right out with $30. Did I fold? Not me. Once I make one mistake I dig in my heels and try to make as many mistakes as I can. I call. I call again when a blank falls on the river and he bets another $30.

What I should have done was call the flop and fold the turn. He had 4c5c.

Probably ahead isn't good enough. Even if you're sure enough that you're ahead to make a raise an action with positive expected value it's not enough. You need to think you're probably ahead plus have some kind of extra protection in case you aren't. Even something as little as having the Jc in my hand might have been enough to feel a little more comfortable with the hand.

Whenever I make that kind of rookie mistake I just cash out and go take a nap. Which is what I did after this hand.

Going broke with top pair

2007-05-29T12:00:00.000-05:00

Here's a hand where I went broke with top pair and I think it was a reasonable risk, contrary to the adage against it.

It was a 1/2 blind NL HE game with a $200 cap on the buyin. I don't usually by in for the max until I've been at the table a while. I bought in for $100 and lost a little. I had a little over $70 when this hand arose.

Six players at the table, a limp in front of me, I limp in the cutoff with QcJc, button calls, the big blind makes it $12. I don't really want to go up againswt a raise with this hand, but the player in front of me calls, so I go ahead and call, the button calls.

Flop is Qs 8c 3c. Top pair and a flush draw. Even a back door straight gut-shot.

Check-Check. I'm surprised at the check from the raiser. Doesn't seem normal. I'm suspecting a big hand of some sort. I'm thinking maybe AQ or AA. But maybe not. If he has me beat I have a flush draw. If he has a better draw then I have the best hand. Maybe he's got neither, maybe I have the best hand and he doesn't have a draw.

Anyway, the pot is almost $50 and I have a little over $60, so I just go allin. Button folds. He quickly moves allin for a total of about $100, the guy between us folds. Now I think I'm beat.

I turn over my hand. He doesn't. He's mister slowroll. But I'm still okay with my hand. I think he has an over-pair so I probably have about 15 outs, so I'm actually not beat.

Turn is a queen, river makes me a flush, he had flopped a set of 8's, his fullhouse wins.

Even against the worst case scenario I had 9 outs, after considering his redraw I had about 6 effective outs against a set. That's not great but it's only about a 3 to 1 dog at worst.

That's a key for considering whether a top pair is worth going broke with. Do you know you aren't drawing dead and at least have a few (more than 2 or 3) live outs? If so you have a lot more than top pair.

Top pair revisited

2007-05-26T03:50:00.000-05:00

The other day I made a post titled Don't fall in love with top pair. More recently Ed Miller has a post about Going Broke with One Pair. The two ideas are related, although not exactly the same. Falling in love with top pair often leads to going broke needlessly, but the converse is not so often true. There are plenty of circumstances besides inappropriately falling in love with top pair which might lead to going busted with top pair. Ed's post uses one of those other situations as an example to illustrate his thesis.

His thesis appears to be

Going broke with just a pair brings on a bevy of emotions, from guilt (for ignoring such a simple rule), to embarrassment (for losing so much with such a modest hand), to despair (as in, “Why the hell can’t I figure this game out?”).

The thing is, all that angst is often thoroughly misplaced. Sometimes it’s not only ok to go broke with one pair, but it’s the right thing to do.

I'm not sure that I'd say going broke is ever the right thing to do, although it might sometimes be a common result from doing the right thing.

Ed didn't mention my prior post in his, but making a reference to somebody elses blog isn't the sort of thing I expect from Ed anyway. He's just not that kind of guy.

Some of Ed's post is based on some misconceptions he has about poker history and the source of the phrase "Don't go broke with top pair" as an adage that is heavily adopted by many players. He doesn't seem to understand the motivation for the original adage.

I think the main thing that trips people up is a common poker fallacy. It goes like this: “I see bad players do that a lot, so it must be a bad thing to do.”
It’s similar for going broke with one pair. Bad players do it a lot. It’s part of what makes them bad. But that doesn’t mean that’s it’s always a thing to avoid.

That's not really the source of the adage. The source of the adage is that it's a solid truth in the context of the games that gave rise to the adage. Those games tended to be deep money cash games. In deep money games it's important to keep pots small with vulnerable hands. To relate it to some comments I've made on my mathandpoker blog, (I'm having some database errors on that blog, so that link might not work) what becomes important in deep money no limit games isn't EV, it's risk-adjusted EV. Risk-adjusted EV is a concept from mathematical finance that's based on mean/variance efficient frontiers.

The way to control risk in deep money no limit games is to keep the pot small enough so that you can easily get away from vulnerable hands if things go badly for you.

Ed gives an example of a short money game where the hero got all-in on a red flop of 566 with a pair of black queens. Flush draws, straight draws, three sixes, overcards, all kind of draws that put his hand at risk and at best he has a 2-card redraw if he's beat.

As a prelude to the hand history he says,

Sometimes one pair is more than enough to get all-in with, and if you go broke, you go broke. An example of this is today’s Q&A.

That's nuts.

It turns out that the villain had a black AJ and the QQ was far ahead. But with that flop, there's no way to put a typical villian on a black AJ unless you've shown a history of being willing to lay down pairs on drawy looking flops and he's shown an ability to overplay weak draws. Without that information (which I didn't see anywhere) this is not at all an example of when an ovepair is more than enough to get all-in with. Not even close.

While it turns out I actually agree with Ed that in the situation as given it probably is right for the hero to call a check-raise on the flop with all his chips (which is how he got all-in), the reason it's probably the right thing to do isn't because his hand is worth it, it's because he didn't have many chips.

There was $3.30 in the pot preflop, hero bet $2 and the villain goes all-in for $2.50 more. Sure call an extra $2.50 once the pot is over $7. But not because you have a hand to go busted with, becuase the money is short and you're getting a price.

The didn't go busted anyway when the villain rivered an Ace, he had the villain covered.

Ed seems to have completely missed the point. About the only time top pair (or an overpair) is a hand to go busted with is when you're short stacked and the pot has gotten big relative to what chips you have left. Or, as is the actual case in his example, when you're not really going broke.

Math versus psychology

2007-05-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

Dichotomous Thinking
Mathematics v. psychology

One of the most prevalent instances of intellectual comfort food among poker players is the idea that limit poker is about mathematics and no-limit is about people and their psychology. Such thinking basically gives the weak player an out. If you’re not doing well in limit poker games then you can tell yourself that you’re just not mathematically oriented, that you’re more of a people person and should shift your game to no-limit. Well, good luck.

The false dichotomy appears to come from people who think poker related math begins and ends with calculating pot odds. It’s true that pot odds doesn’t really come into play in no-limit games as often as it does in limit – and that even when it does come into play it’s importance is often just marginal. But, there’s a lot more to the mathematics of poker than pot odds. The distribution of possible hands your opponents might hold is a mathematical concept. Balancing your action against your opponent’s likely reaction is mathematics.

Poker is a mathematical game. The kind of mathematics that might be useful depends on the situation, often depending a great deal on your opponents. The whole point of the game is to exploit the mistakes of your opponents. Mathematics is an important tool in both identifying what kind of mistakes your opponents make, and in developing strategic responses to exploit those errors. If your opponents are making gross errors it’s probably enough to just sit back and let the money fall into your lap. But, if they’re just making ordinary errors you usually have to actively go out and get the money.

If you can’t do that in a limit game then you probably won’t succeed in a no-limit game either. In a talk Chris Ferguson gave right after he won the WSOP he said, “If you don’t think mathematics is important in poker, then you just don’t know the right mathematics.” He was primarily talking about game theory. Game theory is in some ways the mathematics of rational people. This isn’t a game theory text, but I talk about it a little in the chapter on strategic thinking. Other mathematics topics I’ll get into some are optimization theory, bayesian analysis, decision theory, and artificial intelligence.

Popular Wisdom

2007-05-18T14:52:00.000-05:00

02 Popular Wisdom

Before we get into strategic ideas about no-limit hold’em, let’s spend some time on popular wisdom about the game and why following popular or conventional wisdom isn’t always wise. Just because an idea sounds good does not make it a good idea. There are a lot of really bad ideas that sound good on the surface.

People tend to be attracted by simple ideas that tend to dichotomize complexity. You can see this effect strongly in political discourse. The popular ideas are the ones that can be expressed as a simple either/or television sound byte, even if the idea is based on absurd logic. It’s comforting to be able to divide things into either/or categories. It gives us a semblance of control, a sense of understanding. Simple assertions of faux truth are a form of comfort food for the brain. But while facing the complexity of reality won’t always bring you comfort, it’s usually the best way to win at poker.

The game of poker, and particularly no-limit poker, is not a simple game of either/or, black or white, win or lose. Almost everything that happens tends to occur on a graduated scale of some sort. And it’s seldom on a linear scale. It’s a dance. You have to constantly be weaving and dodging, setting traps for your opponents to fall into while evading the traps they’re setting for you. When you put an early position raiser on a hand it’s not enough to think either he has a big pair or he has AK. He might also have a pair of eights, or he might have a 67 suited. Those hands might not be as likely as a big pair or a big ace, but you ignore the possibility at your own peril.

It’s possible to rationally, even mathematically, analyze such a dance. It can get complex, but it’s certainly doable. But when forced with the need for a complex analysis, most people just let their eyes glaze over and they fall back on intuition. The problem is that when faced with complex, probabilistic situations our intuition almost always fails us.

This might seem to contradict some of the claims in the recent bestseller, Blink. But it really doesn’t. Blink is a book about first impressions. But it doesn’t claim that first impressions are always reliable. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they go very, very wrong. Your first impressions are important. But when the impressions are about a complex, probabilistic situation they probably aren’t reliable. Humans have some strong natural biases and blind spots when analyzing probabilistic events.

TV, Tournaments, strategic thinking

2007-05-17T14:15:00.000-05:00

Influence of TV

I wrote my first poker book in 1999 (it was published in 2001), long before the huge growth in poker triggered by television coverage of no limit Hold’Em poker tournaments. When I wrote my first book limit hold’em was the primary game, no limit games where very rare in cardrooms. So I didn’t devote a lot of space to no limit hold’em in that book. Most of the TV coverage has been of no limit hold’em tournaments, which has created a lot of interest in no limit hold’em among new players.

Limit games are still common, but small blind no limit games have become the predominant game being spread in many cardrooms these days and interest in the games is growing. A $50 or $100 buy in no limit game isn’t really all that hard to find. Three years ago it was almost impossible to find such a game in a cardroom.

It’s not just the TV coverage that’s spawned the growth in popularity of no limit hold’em – the internet has had a lot of influence also. The economics of an internet poker room allows them to spread penny-ante games. The marginal cost of them opening an extra game is essentially zero so they can profitably spread games that only rake pennies per hour – providing players an introduction to no limit hold’em that only requires them to put one or two dollars at risk.

Of course online poker rooms do face other costs, the risk of being faced with criminal sanctions from the US government is very real and unpredictable.

Of course TV coverage and the availability of internet games haven’t operated on the poker boom independently. The boom in both internet games and TV coverage was fueled by Chris Moneymaker’s win of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) in 2003. Interest skyrocketed when the internet laying accountant from Tennessee became an instant millionaire from winning the WSOP. Moneymaker had the effect of creating a bridge between the internet and TV as far as poker is concerned.

Tournament Strategy

Most of the TV coverage is of the final table of a large, multi-table event, the last 9 or 10 players of hundreds or thousands of players who started in the event. In the final stages of the event a poker tournament plays differently than a regular poker game. There are fundamental strategic differe3nces between tournament play and the play of regular poker games. Play is faster paced and more aggressive. There are at least four reasons for this: a structured payout schedule, limitations on time, a limit on total chips in play, and player fatigue.

The most important strategic reason tournaments are different from regular games is that tournaments don’t pay winner take all. When you buy in to a tournament you pay full value for your chips (there are some exceptions in re-buy events that I’ll get to later). But when you win a tournament you only get something like 30-50% of the original purchase value, usually towards the low end of that range. That’s because some of the money was paired out to losing players 2nd place got some, 3rd place got some, etc. You have to win all the chips to get 30% of the money. That mismatch in chips values makes for strategic differences between final table play in a large tournament and play in a regular game where you cash in any chips you win at face value and you can do so at any time. I’ll be pointing out some of the details of these strategic differences throughout the book.

Another factor that affects strategic play is time. Theoretically a cash game can last forever. Players leave, and new players sit down. After 24 hours it probably won’t be the same players, but the game can still be going. Tournaments don’t have new players arriving. And the old players can’t leave until they either go busted or win. So there has to be a device to ensure the end of a tournament. You could just have a tournament finish after a fixed amount of time, but tradition has settled on playing until one player has all the chips (even though he doesn’t get all the money).

But if you have two players who are fairly evenly matched, both with a log of chips, it’s entirely possible that they could play for a lifetime, just trading a few chips back and forth. That wouldn’t be a good result.

To ensure that the game eventually terminates, tournaments are played with escalating blinds and antes. The blinds are forced bets that are required every hand. Money will get put in the pot whether there’s any players who want to play that hand or not, and somebody will always win something, insuring that chips get transferred among the players. The blinds just get bigger and bigger even though the total number of chips in play stay the same. This escalation of the ratio of blinds to chips puts pressure on all the players to get in and mix it up. You can play a sit and wait game for awhile. But you’ll eventually reach a point where you simply can’t do that anymore, when you’ll have to take a stand or go broke posting bigger and bigger blinds while you’re waiting.

This brings us to a limitation on chips in play and the subsequent limitation on stack sizes, the third factor that often drives strategy in tournaments. Stack size, how many chips you have relative to the other players and to the blinds, makes a difference in how you should play in various situations. Stack size situations aren’t unique to tournaments, they also arise in regular games, but such situations occur more frequently in tournaments because the playing structure calls for regular increases in blind sizes and you can’t add chips to your stack during the tournament (at least in the late stages).

You probably can’t bluff a player who only has one chip left. So, the stack sizes of you and your opponents can have a major strategic influence. Stack size mismatches can occur in either tournaments or regular games. But since players can just keep buying chips in cash games, stack size mismatches don’t occur automatically.

Since you can control your own stack size in regular games, the mismatches of primary interest in cash games are from the point of view of playing against short stacks or extremely large stacks. There’s no reason for you to ever play in a cash game with a short stack because it puts you at a distinct disadvantage and you always have the option of cashing out and coming back another day. But in tournaments you don’t want to give up just because you lost most of you chips, so playing a short stack is an important tournament skill, while playing against a short stack is an important skill in both tournaments and cash games.

The ultimate short stack story is the chip and a chair story of Jack Strauss. The year he won the WSOP he was all in at one point and lost that pot. Then he discovered a single $500 chip that had been covered by a napkin and into included in his bet. It turned out that he’d only thought he was all in. The ruling was that the chip played, he was still in the game. He parlayed that one chip into a first place finish.

The fourth reason is one that isn’t often discussed. People get tired. In cash games you should never play tired. Period. Go home. Take a nap. There will be another game tomorrow.

Even if everyone at the table is equally fatigued, any edge you might have had at the beginning is probably gone. Fatigue is a great equalizer. But in tournaments you sometimes have no choice but to remain at the table while battling fatigue. The ability to maintain mental alertness and avoiding fatigue is a much more important factor in tournaments than it is in cash games. You can avoid marathon cash games (and I recommend you do so). You can’t win a moderate sized tournament without finishing a marathon.

The payout schedule, the ratio of blinds to your stack, and the ratio of your stack to that of other players can all have a strong effect on strategic decisions. The only one of these situations that’s totally unique to tournaments is the payout schedule. You should never play short stacked in cash games. You should just quit if you get short-stacked and don’t have money to add to your stack. But even if you don’t get short-stacked yourself, you will encounter other players who get short-stacked. From a strategic point of view, knowing how your opponents will likely be playing is one of the most important inputs into your decision making process, if not the most important. So, knowing how an opponent with a short stack will likely respond is important even if you’ll never be short-stacked yourself.

Aliens from outer space

2007-05-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

The readership on this blog isn't very high, so I tend to notice where visitors come from. Recently I've been getting readers who get here by clicking on a link at

pokerminutes.blogspot.com

But, it's not an ordinary blog. It's a secret society, some modern branch of the FreeMasons or something, invitation only blog.

Maybe this makes me weird, but I just think that's weird.

Variance, capped games, rest

2007-05-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

I used to play a lot of no-limit (and spread limit with wide spreads) draw poker in California. Mostly San Bruno and San Jose.

The games in San Bruno where all no-limit games. San Jose had a city
ordinance capping any bets at $200,. so no limit wasn't legal. But, they had
spread limit games, mostly $4-$40 draw and sometimes $20-200 lowball. I played
in the lowball spread limit game sometimes when it was short-handed, but mostly
I played the spread limit draw there.

The standard structure for the first betting round required that you raise the blinds, you couldn't limp in by calling the blinds. San Bruno was mostly $4 to go (4 to go means 4 is the minimum bet) no-limit, with $2 winner blind (winner blind means the winner of each pot must put in an out of position blind the next hand), to mostly $4-$40 with 1-1-2 blinds also was part of the reason for an increase in earn when I moved from mostly San Bruno games to mostly San Jose games -- the
spread limit started out with bigger pots and was really a bigger game, plus it
kept the bankroll fluctuations more stable. The $40 bet cap meant that one bad call wouldn't destroy me. And, San Jose had fewer cheats. I think the biggest reason I did better in the San Jose games though was my session habits.

I lived in San Francisco at the time. So travel time did enter into my decisions about session length.

I used to keep real detailed records. I'd even make a list of the players at
the table every hour. I don't do that anymore. But, back when I did I noticed
a big difference in results by length of session. My win rate in the first
hour was bad. In hours 2, 3, 4 it was very good. After 4 hours I started
taking a bath. My win in hours 2-4 was so good that I was actually losing
money after 4 hours but would still end up a 10 hour session ahead.

Anyway, before I noticed that I was just playing once a day, pretty much every
day, and playing anywhere from 6-12 hours a day. I'd bought into the silly
idea that every hour of play was an earn.

After I noticed the way my results fluctuated, I changed the way I scheduled
myself.

I quit playing every day. I had an RV. I'd just play in chunks of a few days
at a time, parking my RV in the parking lot (Garden City security guards made
me park it down the street). But, I'd play 4 hour sessions. After 4 hours I'd
cash out and leave the room. I'd eat, (I didn't eat in the room) or go rent a
hot tub for an hour (that's where I'd shower, it was right across the street
from GC), or take a nap, or just have a cup of coffee and read the paper. I'd
stay gone at least an hour.

After my meal, or nap, or whatever, I'd go back and play another 4 hours. If
the game was bad I'd leave early, but I'd never play longer than 4 hours. I'd
do that for 3-4 days, just immersing myself in poker, but only in spurts, then
go home for 3-4 days. I was still playing 12 hours a day, but not long
sessions.

My income tripled when I started doing that, even though I was playing slightly
fewer hours a week. (it was close to the same)

Back then gambling was my only source of income. It's not anymore and I again
often just play all night and piss away chips. I need to stop that.

Flopping a straight

2007-05-07T08:32:00.000-05:00

Flopping a straight can sometimes be problematic. It's not always clear how strong that hand is, straights can be pretty iffy hand, vulnerable when they're getting action.

You just never can be sure. If you're getting heavy action it might be from two pair, which tends to happen often when a potential straight is on the board because of players playing suited connectors. If that's the case you're in good shape, they're drawing pretty thin. But flush draws and draws to better straights aren't drawing quite so thin.

There was a hand discussed on rgp a while back that I think illustrates some of the problems that can crop up with flopped straights. Not so much in terms of how the hand actually played out, but in terms of the things you need to think about with such hands.

It was a 2/5 game, with most stacks about $500, one aggresive player had about $1,000. This hand put that big stack in mid position. He opened for $20, one caller, our hero has a T9 of spades and calls from late position. The button and the big blind call after him.

I think the preflop call is pretty automatic. If the stacks had been shorter it's a pretty easy fold. I think a raise is out of the question here.

JD,8C,7H

It's checked to the original raiser, who bets $25 into an $80 pot. What the hell is that all about? Our hero makes a minimum raise, the other two guys fold back to the original raiser who calls.

I don't know what's going on here. I'd have just called the flop or made a more substantial raise. Our hero said he made the small raise as an attempt to fish for a
re-raise. I don't like fishing for a re-raise when it's not clear whether anybody actually has a hand to re-raise with or not. The $25 bet by the aggressor doesn't look like a big hand to me, not with that flop. It looks like AK to me (but things always look like AK to me).

I like calling here. I think you're going to be more likely to get an overcall by a call than a re-raise by a weenie raise. With my hand and this flop I don't really mind continuing on to the turn with players behind me, I don't feel any need to raise to by myself the button or anything.

If the flop had been two-suited I'd be thinking very differently. I don't like just calling unless I'm fishing for an overcall. I also don't like just calling when somebody might be drawing to a flush.

A 10D hit the turn, possibly counterfieting the straight, possibly giving an AK a flush draw, possibly giving the other guy a better straight, although that's somewhat unlikely.

The hands that I might put the original raiser on that are helped by that TD are AKD, 9 9 or 10 10. I think it's real doubtful he has Q 9, so I'll only worry about that hand a little bit. If the turn card had been a 9D I'd worry a little about a Q 10, but I'm just not going to worry about the Q 9.75

The anti-hero checks. At this point our hero bets $75. He commented that his after thought is that $75 is a terrible bet. I'm not so sure it's terrible. I made have bet a little more, but I think I'd want a call here. I like our hero's hand at this point. Although he's a little more vulnarable after that ten fell than he had been on the flop, I don't see any reason to not think he doesn't still have the best. There are some possible scare cards on the river -- cards like a jack, a nine, or a diamond might slow me down quite a bit, but the most likely river card doesn't include any of those cards. He said he made the bet out of fear, but I don't know what he's afraid of. The anti-hero calls quickly.

The river brings 3D, putting three diamonds on the board. The anti-hero moves all in -- our hero has $350 left, getting about 5/2 on a call.

I think he has to call here. The anti-hero can't put him on a backdoor flush draw so has to think the hero will worry about a flush when he goes all-in on that river card. He could very well be overplaying an overpair here, hoping the hero will lay down two pair.

He did call, the anti-hero had 4D 5D for the flush.

I wouldn't have put him on that specific hand.

Should the hero have bet more on the turn? I think a little more, I'd probbably have bet more like $120, maybe even $175. But I don't think it would have changed the outcome. I think he'd have been called unless he made a huge overbet on the turn. And, I don't see any strong reason to do that, he's ahead enough on the turn that I just don't see the problem with betting as much as you think the anti-hero will call.

But, then again, I'm writing for a living, not making TV appearances, so what do I know?

Big pots in small games

2007-05-06T17:16:00.000-05:00

Karol of I had Outs has a quote from the author of Hunting Fish: A Cross-Country Search for America's Worst Poker Players

It’s $2-$5 and we’re playing very deep. At the start of the hand I have about $1,900 in my stack, and two people at the table have me covered, including one of the principles in this hand.

A fairly loose, rather aggressive player with about 3k in his stack, open-raises for $35. He’s been taking some liberties, I think, and when I see A-K, I decide to try and isolate. I raise to $125. FOUR PEOPLE call $125 cold. What book prepares you for a $500 preflop pot in a $2-$5 game?

While that's not typical in a 2/5 game, I'm don't think it's all that unusual, I think he needs to get out more.

I'm reminded of one pot in a 1/2 game at Gold Strike in Tunica. Four of us get all-in preflop, two with about $1,000 and the other two with about $500. Three pros and a land developer from Memphis. Three of us had AK. One of the pros had a 57 and he spiked a 7 to take down most of the pot.

That was a pretty big pot.

Another night in the same game the pot was over 3k preflop, heads up with AA (me) and AQs (the winner).

Don't fall in love with top pair

2007-05-06T01:36:00.000-05:00

I ran across this hand on the internet.

Our hero is in a 50c/$1 game (I think) with slightly over $100 and brings it in for $3 with JTh. Button makes it $6. He calls, everyone else folds. Flop is jack high with 1 heart and two diamonds, he checks, button bets $3, our hero makes it $10.

I don't like the check/raise for so many reasons I'm not sure where to start. A bet would have been fine. A check/call would have been fine. But his hand just isn't strong enough for the check/raise. A mediocre top pair with a mediocre kicker with a player behind who had re-raised preflop is not a strong hand.

But that's what he did, I think setting himself up for big trouble. The turn is a 7h, putting a pair on the board. He bets $15, the button goes all in, raising about $70 more.

Now he just has to give it up. He's shown much more strength than his had warrents, and the other guy doesn't seem to care how strong he thinks he is. He's already lost more money than he should, there's no need to go broke here.

2007-04-28T10:44:00.001-05:00

Here's a table of contents for the book I'm trying to get finished

Table of Contents

01 Nature of the Game ……………………………. 1
02 Popular Wisdom ………………………………. 13
03 Strategic Thinking …………………………..… 23
04 Opponents …………………………………….. 32
05 Image …………………………………………. 35
06 Games ……………………………………. 43
07 Seats ………………………………………… 65
08 Chip Values ….. 51
09 Stack Sizes ……….. …………………………… 71
10 Deception and Tells …………… 73
11 Hand Value …………….. 86
12 Bluffing ……………….. 87
13 Catching a Bluff ………………… 90
14 Slow Playing and Trapping ………… 85
15 Bet Size
16 Position
17 Starting Hands
18 Outs
19 Texture of the Flop
20 Straddles
21 Aggression
22 Coin Flip
23 Bad Beats and Good Bets
24 One Table Sit and Goes
25 Fighting Fatigue
26 Common Mistakes
27 Bankroll and Rat Holes
28 Away From the Table
29 Perennial Question

Firing blanks

2007-04-28T00:11:00.000-05:00

In Ed Wilson's ongoing series of 7 posts on no-limit hold'em, the 5th post is titled Pull the Trigger. With that title I expected it to be a post on aggression, but it's not. It's a post on bluffing. Of course bluffing is an aggressive act, but not really what I think about when I think about pulling the trigger.

The reason, I think, goes back to the difference in his attitude and mine in the importance of picking up pots. I talked about that in a previous post. He puts a lot more emphasis on the idea of winning pots than I do. I try to focus on the money, and that's not the same thing as trying to win pots.

He outlines some of the situations where you might be able to pick up a small pot with a bluff, but he seems to think that winning the pot is the objective. I also like to try to pick up a lot of small pots without a hand, but not because I care much about winning that small pot. I like to bet a lot, and by betting a lot you tend to condition your opponents with the idea that you bet a lot and they should tend to call more with medium strength hands. By betting at the small pots (with small bets) you tend to increase the chances that they'll call you later when you make a bigger bet into a big pot.

And the opposite it true also, by not betting at the small pots you set your opponents up with the idea you don't bluff much at all and later you're set up for a big bluff into a big pot where they won't call you with a medium strength hand.

So, there are reasons to bluff at small pots, but also reasons not to. And those reasons are about other pots, not about the current pot. That's what I mean by strategic thinking, the slant I'm using in the book I'm doing (and posting here in dribbles). Ed ignores all that in his bluffin post, focusing on each hand independently of the other hands. I think that's a mistake.

Nature of the game

2007-04-26T09:01:00.000-05:00

Strategic Thinking in No Limit Hold’Em

01 Nature of the Game

The popularity of no limit Hold’Em is exploding. With the exposure of no limit Hold’Em tournaments on TV, no limit Hold’Em games have gained wide popularity in cardrooms, kitchen tables, fraternity houses, and on the internet. Television defines and shapes American culture in amazing ways, and it can do so very quickly. The poker sub-culture is not immune from it. Television has recently had strong influences on the poker world. Poker has always been a popular game but until recently that popularity has been somewhat under the surface, and perhaps with a little of a naughty slant. The poker sub-culture had been something of a deviant sub-culture. No longer. Poker has become vary mainstream. When I was in college there were college bridge clubs. Today there are college poker clubs. There were campus poker games when I was in college, but they were in dorm rooms, not in the student union.

Social Interaction

Television brings the players. The huge influx of new players has changed the way the world looks at poker and has caused the nature of the typical no limit game to change dramatically. The nature of a poker game isn’t defined so much by the rules and procedures of the game as it is by the behavior of the players themselves. It’s a social game, not just in terms of the social interaction among players in games consisting of friends and family, but it’s social in the very way that the game is structured. Bets in poker are structured as a social interaction. A bet is a form of negotiation. When I make a bet it’s in the form of an offer. You have options in your response. You can reject the offer, closing off negotiations by folding. You can accept the offer by calling. Or you can counter offer by with a raise. The negotiation of a bet is a social act, even if there’s no verbal exchange, and it takes place in a social context.

The players and the way they interact make the game. Wild players make for a wild game. Passive, sedate players make for a tight and passive game. Some of the small blind, small buy in no limit games you can find today (both in brick & mortar and online cardrooms) can get a little wild at times. Although today’s new players are sometimes wild, mostly they tend to be loose. Today’s gambler came to play much more so than the gambler of yore. The image of the old, cigar chomping gamblers in the back room, carefully considering each bet, is gone. Players that are introduced to poker through edited TV shows, showing 30 minutes of highlights from a 10 hour day of poker, tend to have seen a lot of aggression and they bring it to the table with them. They don’t show 9 hours of folding on TV, they show the 1 hour of action.

Players make the game
Today’s games are very different from the way games used to be. That’s because the players are very different from what they used to be. When I was in the Navy, in the late ‘60’s, there were a lot of pot limit 7 card stud games on ships at sea. Those games where full of terrible players. But they were terrible in a very different way than are bad players today. The really bad players used to chase way, way too much. Calling when they had almost no chance of winning was the norm among bad players. To win at those games all you had to do was wait until you had an extremely good hand, bet it, and you’d be called by very poor players with hands that were almost hopeless in terms of chances of winning.

Today’s bad players don’t tend to be calling too much, they tend to be bluffing too much, inappropriately aggressive, or folding too much, inappropriately cautious. It takes more than sitting and waiting to get the money from either of these types of players. Sitting and waiting is still an important part of a winning strategy today, it’s just no longer all there is to it.

Online Games

Things are a little different online than live. There’s still a lot of inappropriate aggression, but the online games tend to be tighter than the live games. There are a couple of reasons for this.

One is an online player has to actually do some work to get into the game. He has to register with an online site, download software, find some way to get money to the site (and that part can really be difficult right now in the United States), deposit some money, and then he can finally play. If a US resident wins it can be difficult to get paid in a form he can easily convert into US currency. Then he can finally play. He’s going to be a more serious player than the guy who just got off work and drove over to the casino to play poker because his girlfriend didn’t answer the phone and he couldn’t find anything else to do.

A second reason that online poker games tend to be tighter is that many players are playing more than one table online. They aren’t going to start playing marginal hands because they’re bored, they have more than one game going to keep their attention.

And of course the more effective ways of cheating cause tighter games. If two partner players are sharing information about their cards and playing “best hand” the game will be tighter.

A stragegic approach to no-limit hold'em

2007-04-25T06:33:00.000-05:00

A little over a year ago I was pretty far along on a no-limit hold'em book when my laptop was stolen. The book was, of course, on the laptop. I got disgusted and depressed. I got sufficiently depressed that I went back to the VA and got back on some anti-depressants (I have a history of some pretty bad depression).

My work habits are such that I frequently print out paper copies of things and sit in a coffee shop someplace and do re-writes. So, I did have paper backups of most of the work. But, I was in the process of moving into a new house and the stack of paper got stuffed away someplace. The house was in bad shape when a bought it and I got involved with the work of making it livable and I got involved with a woman in Pittsburgh (I live in Oklahoma) and was just busy the last year working on the house and going back and forth to Pittsburgh.

Also I'd been dissatisfied with my relationship with my agent and was dreading the conversation with her about that which was going to have to happen if I got another book ready to go. So I expect I was unconsciously putting that off by not finishing the book. I recently went ahead and had that conversation (it was prompted by some problems with foreign rights).

The house is livable now, the agent situation has resolved itself, and the woman has decided she's not interested any longer, plus I'm not depressed at the moment, so I've got time to get back on that book.

About this book

Most poker how-to poker books are algorithmic recipe books. I try to avoid doing that. Since poker is very situational, and those situations can be very fluid and both tricky to define and to recognize, I don’t find such a recipe approach helpful at all. Some people do find that helpful, but I don’t. So, what I try to do is just give you some things to think about. If you’re thinking about the right things you don’t need anyone to tell you what action to take, doing the right thing will just tend to come naturally.

I’m a little different from a lot of poker players in that, to me, thinking about poker is as much fun as actually playing poker. The topics in this book, and the way I approach those topics, reflects that.

The material in the book will be kept current by an enclosed CD which will point to this website and other's such as www.garycarson.com.

Some strategic considerations other than actual card playing that I’ll be covering in the next few chapters includes players, game selection, seat selection, and stack sizes The idea of strategic thinking is so important to no-limit hold’em that I devote a chapter to just talking about what strategic thinking is. But, first I’ll bust some generally believed myths about no-limit hold’em.

Just following along

2007-04-20T10:20:00.000-05:00

I've been following a series of blog posts Ed Miller is doing. 7 Easy Steps to No-Limit Hold'em is what he calls the series.

I'm always suspect of anyone who claims things that aren't easy are easy. Too much snake oil, too much just telling people what they want to hear. But I'm not really all that good a marketer I guess. Because telling people what they want to hear seems to sell.

Anyway his first entry was the suggestion to play tight. I didn't really like that all that much. I like the idea of playing position, playing tight in front and much less so in back.

I guess Ed Miller was just reading my mind, because the very next installment covered position and he did it pretty well. I liked that one.

I was critical of his seeming lack of interest in how pot size effects the game. And golly, gee, in installment 3 he covers pot size. It's getting downright spooky how I know what he's going to cover next.

What’s in the pot and your opponents’ stacks is your potential reward, and what’s in your stack is what’s at risk. When the pot is tiny compared to what’s in the remaining stacks, like on the flop after two or three layers limp in, that’s a small pot. When the pot is relatively large compared to what’s in the remaining stacks, like on the river after there’s already been a lot of betting, that’s a big pot.

I don't understand why he wants to use stack sizes as a scale to measure pot size. Money works just fine as a measurement scale. If a pot has a lot of money in it then it has a lot of money in it, whether anybody has anything left in their stack or not.

Then he says something that really sets me off

There’s one guiding principle: Big hands deserve big pots, and small hands deserve small ones. If you have a super-strong hand like a set, then you want to get all the money in. If you have a weak or vulnerable hand, then you want to avoid a big confrontation. It sounds simple, but many no-limit players go wrong here again and again.

Deserves? Is this some kind of battle between good and evil. I've written before about the psychological danger of thinking in terms of just desserts.

Miller does think like that -- in a response to a comment on a thread at Poker Culture, I observed

I just opened it up to a random page and saw this sentence at the top of page 180. "The free card play punishes passivity".

That sentence is very atheoritical. It's based on a world view of "just desserts", not a rational world view at all.

The free card play exploits passive opponents. It doesn't punish. Poker isn't about punishment and reward. Winning isn't a reward given to you by the card god for doing things that please him, winning is a rational result from making good decisions.

Besides, the only meaningful definition of a big hand is one that wins a big pot. A royal flush that gets the antes is not a big hand. People who think like Miller seems to be thinking here are the reason wild card games are hugely profitable when played against idiots.

In episode 4 he continues the big hand/big pots and small hands/small pots meme. I reading it I realized something I hadn't realized when reading installment 3 --- Ed Miller is thinking in terms of controlling pot size based on hand strength, when I tend to think more in terms of using pot size to determine how strongly you play.

That's why he thinks in terms of a hand "deserving" a particular outcome. He starts his thinking with the hand and everything else follows. I tend to start my thinking with what the other's are doing. In some ways my way of thinking about it is more passive than his way of thinking about it.

He's not ignoring the other guy

Playing big hands well is an important no-limit skill. Remember the three basic principles:

1. Swing for the fences
2. Mentally divide up the stacks into bet-sized chunks
3. Think about how your opponent plays and choose the betting line most likely to build a monster pot.

But he doesn't really give them much thought until he's already made the decision to make the pot big.

I don't think that you should make the decision to make the pot big until they've done something to indicate they'll cooperate.

For example. I'll often limp under the gun with AA. Big hand. But I don't do anything to make the pot big, I just slip in and see what happens. If I get raised, now I'll do something to make the pot big. But if I don't get raised, rather than play an over-pair out of position in a multi-way pot I might just give it up. If the pot stays small I'm willing to just wait for another day. I don't move on the pot until someone else does something to make the pot big.

That doesn't seem to be what Ed Miller is suggesting.

Miller got one right

2007-04-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

Ed Miller has another post up in a series of post he's planning on the nth most important steps in playing no limit hold'em. His first was playing tight, and I had argued that that was not the most important step, the most important step is playing position.

I guess he decided he agreed with me after all. Now he's saying that the number one mistake he sees people make is playing out of position.

I think I agree with that, that depends on what he means by number one. It's certainly the most frequent. It's probably not the most costly though, that would belong to making bad calls on later streets.

People playing out of position is the #1 mistake I see. I probably make more money from chronic out-of-position players than from anyone else.

If that's true I think Ed plays too passively against calling stations.

A lot of what no-limit is too me is letting them have the small pots and me taking the big ones. Miller and I disagree in a big way about the fundamental nature of playing no-limit. But it's still interesting to see how he's looking at the game.

Maybe he'll get to that one next.

Laying down a full house

2007-04-14T10:56:00.000-05:00

I used to play a lot of no limit draw poker, with a bug. A bug is a wild card that's good for aces, straights, and flushes.

The bug creates 5 key cards when playing draw with a bug --- the aces and the bug itself.

For example, the two pair AA55x is not as strong as JokerA55x. Both are aces and fives, but having the joker makes it quite a bit less likely that someone else will make a straight or flush. Having a card that blocks other players hands can be pretty valuable.

Key cards don't come up as much in hold'em, but the concept of "if you have it he doesn't" is still something to keep in mind.

For example, if you have Ah and something else and an opponent is getting frisky on a flop with two hearts then he's less likely to be semi-bluffing a flush draw than if you don't have the Ah. That's because many players tend to not semi-bluff less than nut flush draws. That doesn't give you any definitive answers about his hand, but it does help you shift the balance at times.

But, that's not what this blog entry started out to be. I was just going to tell you about a laydown a friend of mine made pre-draw. He layed down a pat full house, before the draw.

It was a $1 blind, 10c ante game, with a $2 minimum opening bet and the stacks were all deep. Well over $100 stack for each player. For a game that starts at $2 and only has two betting rounds, that's pretty deep.

The betting went like this --- $5 open, raise to $10, call, raise to $20, my friend called, raise to $30, then back to the opener who called, then raise to $40, call, my friend flashed a 33355 to me and said, "that's no damn good" and folded.

He was right, he was beat in 4 places. There were 5 plaers with pat full houses in that hand.

How did he know? Well, in no limit games there's no limit on the number of raises (some online sites have limits on the number of raises, but I've never seen a live game with such a limit). But the idea of a bunch of little minimum size raises just was absurd on the face of it. Everybody seemed to want to be called. They must have some real hands.

If just one of them had a full house there was no way he could win with his small threes full.

That's a lesson that applies across all forms of poker. When they obviously want you to call, then don't.

Don't play tight, play position

2007-04-13T17:43:00.000-05:00

Ed Miller has a blog post up about playing no-limit hold'em.

Playing tight is the easiest and most important step you can take to improve your game.

That's what he says. And, he's right if you're a losing player. Playing tight will improve your game a lot.

But if your goal is to win more rather than to loss less he's not right. Playing tight isn't nearly as important as playing position.

You should play very tight in early position, and to some degree in middle position. But not in late position. Play a lot of unraised pots from late position. That's where you'll make some money. Throwing away hands saves money, and throwing away hands in early position saves a lot of money. But play position.

Short stack advantage

2007-04-02T15:07:00.000-05:00

In a blog entry on playing short stacks in no limit hold'em, Ed Miller makes the following amazing statement:

No-limit is about having a good hand when the money goes in. Having a short stack can be an advantage because your money goes in before your opponents (with deeper stacks) are ready.

I'm just stunned by that.
It's certainly a good idea to have the best of it when the money goes in, but that's far from a defining characteristic of what playing no-limit is all about. If fact, in some situations it's true that that kind of thinking is more important in limit than in no-limit.

That's not quite as much nonsense as the idea that you're better off playing a short stack than playing a deep stack, but it's close.

There are some situations where you're better off with a short stack. But there are also situations where you're better off with a big stack. And the potential payoff from having the big stack is huge compared to the payoff from having the short stack. Intentionally being short-stacked is more a risk reduction tactic than anything else.

Just giving a situational example of when you might do better being short-stacked does nothing towards establishing a benefit of being short-stacked.

I need to get some sleep, I'll get back to this later.

Bottom two

2007-03-30T01:57:00.000-05:00

Two pair on the flop is usually a pretty good hand, one that you should feel comfortable with in most cases.

But when you're getting a lot of action, and the flop doesn't look real drawy, it's sometimes a hand you want to think about backing away from.

When there aren't a lot of draws showing on the flop you can be pretty sure that any action represents a strong holding.

Let's say you have a 5h7h and the flop is 57J, rainbow, you bet and there's a raise and a re-raise. That's pretty heavy action. What do they have. If there was no raise preflop you might want to eliminate JJ or AJ (you might not want to eliminate those possibilities, but let's just do it for this example). That leaves Jx, say J7-JK, 77, 55, 57, or 86 as possibilities for the first raiser. The second raiser probably doesn't have a single pair, he probably has one of the stronger possibilities, or a straight draw. Running pokerstove we get a 36% equity for bottom two pair in the 3 way pot.

That makes it plus EV for you on the flop, but that's if the hand ranges I'm assuming are accurate. It could be that you're a little better than 36%, it could be a little worse. In any event it's close to a wash for you if the action is very heavy and the bets make the dead money already in the pot insignificant. If the money left is deep it could be a negative implied odds situation for you too. What are you going to do if a 9 falls on the turn? A Jack?

In limit poker, if you're estimate is that you're ahead you should stick it out almost every time. But in no limit you sometimes need to think in terms of what the finance people call risk-adjusted return. Sometimes in no limit a plus EV situation isn't really plus EV once you make a risk-adjustment. That's a topic I need to cover in some detail at mathandpoker.com one of these days. But, for the most part the thing to keep in mind is that if the EV edge is small and the risk is large you should often give it up in no limit, wait for a better situation.

AA and position

2007-03-29T08:38:00.000-05:00

Not all no limit is played with a cap on buyin size and when there isn't a cap you often have situations where the stack sizes are very large. There's a thread on 2+2 where this is the case.

Seat 1: Mjlivingston ($2,425.50)
Seat 2: pr1nnyraid ($6,158.50)
Seat 3: Klausen ($4,726.50)
Seat 4: truestthoughts ($2,213), is sitting out
Seat 5: Ph1LLeD1NGUE ($1,900)
Seat 6: tango1x ($1,950)
tango1x posts the small blind of $10
Mjlivingston posts the big blind of $20

It's a six handed table, but only 5 active players. But the stacks are fairly deep, particularly since the hand develops into a confrontation between Seat 2 and Seat 4.

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pr1nnyraid [As Ac]
pr1nnyraid raises to $70
Klausen raises to $240
Ph1LLeD1NGUE folds
tango1x folds
Mjlivingston folds
pr1nnyraid raises to $850
Klausen calls $610

The question being asked is about how to play the flop (we'll get to that in a minute. We need to look at the preflop play first because all subsequent play starts with what happens preflop and you need to anticipate future action when you play preflop.

Being first with AA when the stacks are deep is a tricky situation. You don't want to go anywhere but you don't want to get your foot halfway into the grave. In this hand you're only 5 handed, so the risk of being first isn't even close to what it is when you're at a full table. But it's still a critical situation to consider.

One important characteristic we're told by the hero is that he has an Insane image. That means that aggresive play isn't really going to do much in the way of giving away your hand and he should probably play a very strong hand straightforwardly. So his coming in with a raise is probably the right thing. The other little tidbit is that the other guy is somewhat nitty.

Without that Insane image I think it often pays to be a little more tricky, often limping with AA looking for a reraise. Whether or not you should do that 5 handed depends partly on what your image is and partly what the aggresive tendencies of the table are. You don't want to limp with AA and then have nobody raise.

If you do limp and nobody raises, if you end up with one or two players limping behind you then you might want to think about just giving it up on the flop if things look iffy. Don't fall in love with AA if the pot is small.

With the raise, raise, raise again that happened here though the pot got pretty big. This is usually what you want with AA but not when you're going to be first after the flop.

The flop is what prompted the thread.

[Qd 4h Tc]

What to do?

I like checking.

The hero thinks that JJ is the bottom of the other guy's range of possible hands. Which means the only two hands you'll really get action from if you bet is KK or QQ. A check will probably still get you action from KK and if you check he might be likely to underplay QQ, putting you on something like AK or 77 and wanting to suck you in.

What do you think?

Pot odds in no limit

2007-03-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

This blog entry makes a point about pot odds in limit hold'em that I strongly agree with and support.

But part of what he says in that post suggests a common misconception about the importance of pot odds in no limit.

Back before the no limit boom, Mason Malmuth wrote a couple of articles in Card Player pontificating on why so few cardrooms didn't spread no limit games. One of the things he often said about no limit back then was that not much skill was required -- all you had to do was bet enough so that you're opponents didn't have the proper odds to call.

You can take that idea for what it's worth (not much) but just keep in mind that it came from somebody who never played any no limit poker. In any event, like much nonsense about poker, if somebody writes it two or three times it becomes part of the popular knowledge about the game. Truth or relevance doesn't seem to have much to do with it.

Whether you are giving the opponent the right odds to call or not is one of the least important things to consider when bet sizing.

The most important thing to consider is your oppoenents habits in terms of tendency to call. If he tends to call a lot you should bet infrequently but bet big when you bet. If he tends to not call a lot you should bet frequently but bet small when you bet.

update:
My original post pointed to a plagiarized post. I've corrected the URL.

That's a hell of a lot more important than worrying about what odds he'd be getting if he calls.

Danny boy and American Justice

2007-03-28T12:37:00.000-05:00

The new Poker Road Trips blog site.

Cheeseburger in West Texas

2007-01-18T08:56:00.000-06:00

If appears that Friona, Texas is trying to lay claim to the cheeseburger capital of Texas.

It's some little town between Amarillo and Lubbock. I'll be driving through Amarillo tomorow about lunch time, and that area of Texas spawned a lot of my kin, so I think I'll take a drive through there for lunch Friday.

The claim is based on a Cheesburger Festival they have every summer, not on any particular cafe in town. But you'd think somebody will have a good cheeseburger.

What does he think you have?

2006-08-18T10:16:00.000-05:00

There's threee ways to think about the number of outs a player has --

how many he actually has -- from the point ot view of an external viewer who knows both his hand and your hand.

how many he has from your point of view, knowing your hand and only knowing a possible range of his hand, and

how many he has from his point of view, knowing his hand and only knowing a possible range of your hand

He is going to make his playing decisions based on the third of those -- based on what he knows at the time of his choice.

So many times we see players make judgements about another player based on number one above, on after the fact knowledge that the player didn't have at the time he made the decision.

Maybe he should have known you had AA. But he didn't. And you should know he didn't know that.

This came up on a post on another blog..

In a tournament, our hero was the short stack at the table. The anti hero didn't have a big stack either, but his stack was twice the stack of the hero.
Blinds are 25/50 and our hero makes it 200 after an UTG limper. That's not a big raise, it's actually a pretty small raise. Our hero called it a 4x big blind raise. It's not. It's a 3x big blind raise. The raise is 150, the bet is 200. Not only that, using the big blind as a proxy measure for pot size isn't going to be right after a limper. The pot contains 4bb (counting the sb as one bb and counting your call, as per convention). So a standard pot size raise would be making it 250, not making it 200.

In any event, our anti hero calls with J7s and everybody else folds. The anti-hero flops a gutshot, an overcard, and a backdoor flush draw. The hero goes allin, betting not quite twice the pot. Antihero calls. Antihero hits the gutshot and wins.

The hero then posts a bad bead whine on his blog. But the hero completely misconstrued what happened, not even noticing the backdoor flush of the antihero and looking at everything through his own point of view.

Here's my comment on the hero's blog post.

Actually he had a gutshot, overcard and a backdoor flush draw. Against AKo (which is what players will always put you on in this kind of situation) he has 11 outs.

Whether he’s right to think of things in this way or not, that’s the way he’s going to think of them and it’s rather pointless for you to get angry just because you didn’t figure that out.

Where you ahead? Yes, of course. And, by a lot more than he thought you were. But, he thought you were only slightly ahead and knew that if he was wrong that he wasn’t drawing dead.

You had an opponent who’s misreading the situation (fails to incorporate the chance you have a big pair into his thinking) and probably does so habitually. Would you prefer that he stop making that mistake? Do you think that would improve your results overall?

Our antihero made some big mistakes in this hand, and he got lucky. Our hero played it okay, it's always okay when you're ahead with AA and get the money in, but seems to have completely missed the point about what happened.

2006-08-08T22:07:00.000-05:00

I was playing in a small tournament online.

One player has 6600 chips, another has 650. The 650 goes all in with KJ, the 6600 calls with AA. The KJ makes two pair.

The AA comments about how much that sucks.

But does it really? I mean, how are things different after the hand than they had been before the hand. The AA lost less than 10 percent of his stack, the KJ doubled up but 2 times a small number is still a small number.

So what really happened? Nothing.

An opportunity to bust a player wasn't realized but we weren't close to the bubble, so that probably had little to no effect either.

It's not a big deal, but it's just a small example of people focusing on the cards instead of the situation. He got his AA drawn out on. But it meant nothing, it had no effect. If he'd have won the benefit to him would have been very small.

Some things really just don't matter. AA or not.

2006-08-07T16:41:00.000-05:00

How should I play AT?

That was a question on rgp a while back. I didn't comment on the question because I've taken a vow to become a nice person and the only good answer to the question would be the observation that it's a stupid question.

Why is it a stupid question? Becuse it has the wrong focus.

It has a focus on your hand, which about 3rd or 4th on the list of what's important when making playing decisions.

Before you even consider your hand you need to think about what your position is, what action has already occured, about what players behind you might do (and how many of them and who and how big their stacks are), and how big your stack is relative to both the players behind you and the ones who've already become active in front of you. And probably some other things too.

2006-08-04T05:07:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons that the difference between suited and unsuited connectors is larger than is commonly thought is that a flopped straight without something extra can be a problamatic hand.

It's certianly not a hand you're going to want to give up, but if you're getting much action is probabaly vulnarable.

I'm much more comfortable with a hand like 8s 7s than 8s 7c on a flop like 9s 6h 5h if I'm getting a lot of action. That backdoor flush doesn't really add all that much equity directly but it sure makes me feel better.

Of course I'm probably getting all my money in with either one of those hands.

2006-08-03T12:15:00.000-05:00

There was a question asked a bunch of players at the WSOP in Bluff Magazine recently. What mistake is most often made by bad players?

The predictable answer was always "plays too many hands".

That might be the most frequent mistake, but I don't think it's the biggest mistake. By itself playing too many hands doesn't really cost you much money, it's what happens after the decision to play that costs you the money.

There are two really expensive mistakes that I think are much worse than playing too many hands --- calling to many raises, and too much of a focus on trying to win the pot.

For many hands a raise by another player indicates a high probability of being dominated. That's a really, really bad situation to get yourself in. Don't call those raises unless you have either a very strong hand (after considering the hand he probably has to raise with) or are sure you aren't dominated and the remaining money is still deep.

The excessive focus on trying to win the pot tends to cause players to get much, much deeper into a pot than their hand or the situation warrents. Especially early in the betting rounds, when the pot is still small, a focus on gathering information, observation, and carefullness is much more important than trying to win the pot. Even later in the hand, when the pot is big, too much focus on trying to win just often gets you in trouble.
Best at the table.

2006-08-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Winning the pot isn't everything

Ed Miller wrote an interesting article on what he calls "Macro and Micro Poker".

He defines macro as a set of winning principles.

He defines micro as a process of optimization within the framework defined by the macro principles.

Then he goes about explain that it's more important to think in macro terms than in micro terms.

Well, duh?

Of course it is. The macro terms is what defines the micro process. In his definition the macro is the model that the micro is going to optimize. Should you know what the model is before you try to optimize that model? Well, I guess so.

These aren't two seperate approaches that are to be contrasted. They're one in the same. The way he defines it the macro is the overall model and the micro is the computational details of getting an exact solution to the model. I recently wrote a couple of posts in my mathandpoker blog on the contrast between general mathematical ideas and computational math. Although not exactly the same as Miller's Micro and Macro distinction, it's similar.

And it's got the same kind of "duh" to it. Of course formulating the overall mathematical model is more important than finding an exact solution.

Interestingly enough though a lot of people don't agree with Miller and I about that. A lot of people think it's better to formulate a model that's easy to solve because it's important to be able to have that exact solution. I happen to think it's more important to formulate a model which captures the essence of the situation than it is to be able to solve it.

This is starting to get more philisophical on the topic of math modeling than I intended for this blog. I'd started out this post intending to go in an entirely different direction. Maybe I'll pick up on that other direction some other day.

But this whole idea of macro versus micro or the approximate solution to a full model versus an exact solution to a baby model is really what strategic thinking is all about. The idea of strategic thinking is what I'm trying to organize my no limit book around, and it's really the fundemental part of everything I've ever written about poker.

How you think about things is much more important than what particular decision you might make given some particulars. As long as you're thinking about the right things, and thinking about them in the right ways, you'll get it right often enough to come out ahead.

2006-08-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

PLO hand

I was playing some short handed PLO the other day and this hand came up. It is quarter/quarter blinds. I think $25 max buyin. I was the table short stack.

Button mykkanen ($54.80 in chips)
Small blind aivovaurio ($96.85 in chips)
Big blind petehak ($18.40 in chips)
UTG Luonto ($19.10 in chips)
Mid Position gary1949 ($15.55 in chips)

I have JH,AH,JC,QH

UTG limps, I make it $1.25, both blinds call, limper folds.

3H,2S,7H

Flush draw and an overpair.

They check, I bet $4, they both call.

When they both call I'm pretty sure I'm beat.

aivovaurio checks, petehak checks, gary1949 bets $4, aivovaurio calls $4, petehak calls $4.

Turn brings Kd. Scratch my overpair. First player checks. Next one goes all in for $13. I only have $10 left. I figure I have 9 outs at least and might have 11 outs (if he didn't turn a set of kings). The pot is pretty big, I'm getting about 3-1 on my call. Not really enough. But, the first player calls behind me, probably bringing the price up enough.

I make the flush, with a 5h on the river.

RIVER [board cards 3H,2S,7H,KD,5H ]

SHOWDOWN
petehak (allin on the turn) shows [ 10C,2C,9H,8D ]
aivovaurio shows [ 5C,6H,6D,4S ]
aivovaurio wins $5.70, gary1949 wins $46.40.

The point of this is that my JJ was actually good on the turn.

Sometimes what you think is probably a bad call isn't so bad after all.

I still think my call on the turn was a marginal call at best. But, part of why I called was that his allin bet just made no sense to me.

Anybody have any insight on this hand? Or any obserations about what an idiot I am for having made that call?

2006-08-01T12:34:00.000-05:00

2006-07-28T20:28:00.001-05:00

Projection is a psychological mechinism where people project their own traits onto others.

When projecting you tend to see your own negative traits in the people you interact with. It's a common human behavior.

And it has a lot of implication for poker.

People who bluff too much tend to also call too much. They do it because they project. They know they bluff too much and the fear that other's do also. It's an important human trait to keep in mind when you're thinking about a thin value bet. If they tend to bluff to much, make that thin value bet every time.

2006-07-28T20:28:00.000-05:00

2006-07-19T23:01:00.000-05:00

Tonite I thought I'd try another one of those $10 5 handed sit and goes on WPEX. Even an idiot has a 40% chance of cashing in those things. So I figure I can cash at least 1 out of 3.

I started out lucky. I got the button first hand. Dealt a Q7s, it was folding to me. Blinds 10/15 and I made it 60. Blinds folded. So I started out ahead.

I think in the small buyin larger field events you get a lot of playrs who just want to gamble it up the first few hands. But I think that's not so in the small field events players tend to give up more easily in those first few hands.

It didn't do me any good. I busted in fifth place.

That's enough for tonite. I'll do it again tomorrow.

2006-07-19T22:18:00.000-05:00

Spam and strategic thinking

Some clown finially started spamming the blog, so I've changed the default to moderation if you aren't a member. I'm not even sure what it requires to be a member, some kind of registration I guess. But if you intend to post comments, and I wish you would, go ahead and register.

I'm not going to delete comments that aren't spam. Agreeing with me, or even being nice to me, isn't a requirement for a comment to be approved and stay.

Here's some more comments on strategic thinking

Behavior and Attitude, Thinking and Action
Henry Mintzberg is a well known management theorist who has done a lot of research on strategic areas of business planning. Mintzberg maintains that we think in order to act; but we also act in order to think. This is consistent with the general theory from social psychology that our attitudes are derived from our actions, not the other way around.
During the play of a hand, there’s an information exchange. Our actions often determine the information we receive and this can be more important than having our actions determined by the information we receive. In poker part of strategy development is probing to test out opponent’s reaction. Our deciosns should be jointly determined by their value in explotation of information we have, and the value of gathering more information. It’s a constant balancing act..
Part of the purpose of your actions is to gather information so that you can focus future action more tightly on directly achieving your objecftives. Strategic behavior isn’t totally proactive, we do react to our opponents, but we do so in a planned way, we anticipate his actions and plan our reactions

2006-07-17T11:40:00.000-05:00

Tit and Tat

Ed Miller wrote an interesting article on what he calls "Macro and Micro Poker".

He defines macro as a set of winning principles.

He defines micro as a process of optimazation within the framework defined by the macro principles.

Then he goes about explain that it's more important to think in macro terms than in micro terms.

Well, duh?

Of course it is. The macro terms is what defines the micro process. In his definition the macro is the model that the micro is going to optimize. Should you know what the model is before you try to optimize that model? Well, I guess so.

These aren't two seperate approaches that are to be contrasted. They're one in the same. The way he defines it the macro is the overall model and the micro is the computational details of getting an exact solution to the model. I recently wrote a couple of posts in my mathandpoker blog on the contrast between general mathematical ideas and computational math. Although not exactly the same as Miller's Micro and Macro distinction, it's similar.

And it's got the same kind of "duh" to it. Of course formulating the overall mathematical model is more important than finding an exact solution.

Interestingly enough though a lot of people don't agree with Miller and I about that. A lot of people think it's better to formulate a model that's easy to solve because it's important to be able to have that exact solution. I happen to think it's more important to formulate a model which captures the essence of the situation than it is to be able to solve it.

This is starting to get more philisophical on the topic of math modeling than I intended for this blog. I'd started out this post intending to go in an entirely different direction. I had intended to actually say something specific about no limit hold'em. Maybe I'll pick up on that other direction some other day.

2006-07-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

Strategic Thinking

Strategic thinking is smart thinking. In any sort of competitive endeavor, and poker is a competitive endeavor, you start with formulating an objective. In poker this objective is to win money. Then you develop a strategy. A strategy is a path that will lead you to that objective. But, the path isn’t going to be a straight road. It’s going to be bumpy and will have some sharp turns. You’ll have opponents who’ll be building their own road and sometimes removing the materials from your road to use in building theirs.

Throughout most of this book I’ll be assuming that the objective is to win money. But, it’s important to recognize that’s not the objective of many players. They often think that’s their objective, but the reality is that what they really want to do is not be the first one to bust out of a tournament, to finish in the money in a tournament (which isn’t the same thing as making money), or to make their money last all night, or to not look foolish, or to win enough to pay the rent, of whatever. If you can recognize these kinds of non-functional objectives in your opponents then you can profit from exploitation of that.

Before you plot a path to an objective you have to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. That’s strategic thinking. They’ll be using their strengths to try to block your path to your objective, but you can use their weaknesses to find a shortcut to your objectives.

Strategic thinking is proactive thinking, not reactive. You will react. But, your reactions are planned. You can use strategic thinking to anticipate problems and solve them before they happen, examining the pros and cons of various moves in order to identify the best path to success. You have to anticipate their reactions to each of your actions or potential actions and plan your response.

2006-07-14T11:45:00.000-05:00

Short handed play

I made some comments recently in a thread on short handed poker games that I think are worthwhile. Bascially I'm suggesting that you might need to adjust to the change in the way other players behave but you don't need to adjust to the number of chairs at the table.

2006-07-11T03:28:00.000-05:00

Big Hand of the Night.

I was playing in a 1/2 Blind NL game at Cherokee, Tulsa last night. It's a $200 max buyin game. We were 6 handed when this hand came up. The three relevant players were Seat 1, Seat 3, and Seat 5.

I was seat 5, the small blind. I had about $1,000 in chips.

Seat 1 had been in the game about an hour. We had gotten down to 6 handed and he and 2 other players came from a broken table to fill us back up. He brought a lot of chips with him. He seemed to be somewhat tight and tended to overplay marginally strong hands at times. But basically a straightforward player. He had about $950 in chips.

Set 3 had been in the game a while. He had bought in for $100 and had gone busted and rebought 3 times that I know of for sure. He'd recently won a couple of big pots and had a little over $300. He was very erratic, overplayed almost every hand he played, and he played a lot of them. Bet too much, called to much, chased too much. When he made a large overbet he wasn't bluffing, and it kind amazed me how many calls he'd get from people who just assumed that since he was usally weak that he must be weak when he was betting $150 into a $60 pot.

Anyway, Seat 1 was UTG and opened for $12. I took that to mean he had some kind of a hand. Probably in the range JJ-AA or AQ, AK. Maybe AJs but probably not AJo. He had a fairly tight range for that kind of opening, I'd seen him limp with AJo, 88, that sort of thing.

Seat 3 made it $25. That didn't mean much. Might be a strong hand, might be 8c9c. Probably not Td3d but I couldn't rule that out entirely.

I had QQ.

I wasn't sure what to do here. I was somewhat worried about what Seat 1 might have. If I did something really silly like make it $100, then what would I do if Seat 1 made it $400? But I sure don't want to throw this hand away. So I called.

Seat 1 made it $75. Seat 3 called.

Now I'm 99% sure that Seat 1 has AA. But we have $175 in the pot already, and he has over $800 in his stack and I have that covered, plus the stack of Seat 3. I called, pretty much just intending to give it up if I didn't flop a set.

The flop comes Q34. All diamonds. How do I play this?

Seat 1 does not have a flush. I know that. He as a pair. It might not be AA, it might be KK, but it's a pair. If he has Ad then it doesn't matter what I do. But if he doesn't have Ad I don't want him to worry about me having flopped a flush just yet. I'm not sure about Seat3 but at this point I don't care what he has. I'm looking to get the whole stack of Seat 1 into the pot.

I check.

Seat 1 goes all in.

I couldn't believe it. The pot has $225 in it and he bets over $800. And I know he doesn't have a flush. I just know it, I have no doubt about it.

Seat 3 calls his last $240. Of course I call.

Turn is 7d, River is Kc.

Seat 3 has 8h8d. Seat 1 had AcAs.

Seat 3 has a flush and takes down the main pot, about $950. My 3 queens takes the side pot, about $1,300.

I might be off $100 or so here or there in this story, most of the chips didn't actually get counted, just stacked off.

Thoughts? Observations?

2006-07-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

Should you call with pocket sevens?

A player in mid-position or so pushes all in preflop. You're in the big blind and it's folded around to you. You have two sevens. It's just you and the all in player. What should you do?

It depends on a lot of things.

How big is your stack in comparison to the blinds? It it's pretty small then you should tend to call.

What stage of the tournament are you in? In the later stages you need to balance the amount at risk and the win potential by discounting the value of the win. But you should also add some value for the potential of busting out a player right now. It's not immediately clear to me that this won't be a wash, but I'm not sure.

How much of your stack will you be risking if you call? If it's small, then you should of course tend to call. If it's a large part of your stack (or all of it) then you might want to give it some more thought.

And what I think is most important --

What is the range of hands your opponent would have pushed in with? The tighter this range is the bigger a dog you are, and the better pot odds you need to even think about calling.

I did some simulations with Poker Stove of 77 versus various distributions of opponents hands. Here's the result.

If he has a pair of Jacks or better, or AQ or better, or KQs, then your 77 is a 3/2 dog.

If he has a pair of 5's or better, AQo or AKo, or ATs or better, KJs or KQs or KQo then you're a little better off, only a 56/44 dog.

If he's fairly desperate, pushing with any pair or any two broadway cards, then your 77 is acually a slight favorite, 51/49

Besides giving you a little insight into how to decide what to do with a pair of sevens against an all in player, I think these numbers illustrate a much broader point -- it's really important to give a lot of thought into the question of what range of hands the other guy has before you make any playing decision with any hand.

Just in the example the difference between a fairly tight opponent and a fairly desperate opponent is the difference between you being a 60/40 dog or being a 51/49 favorite.

Of course, if he's completly nuts and would have done that with any two cards you're about a 66/44 favorite with those two sevens.

2006-07-08T12:14:00.000-05:00

The Complete Book of Hold 'Em Poker is available from most booksellers.

Or you can buy an Ebook edition from here for $6.25. It's in a manuscript format, in Word, readable by the current edition of Microsoft Word. It will be emailed to you zipped.

Included is the manuscript edition of the original book and some in-progress chapters of a second edition which will expand on a number of topics that the first edition didn't spend a lot of time on --

New material on topics such as on-line poker, no-limit poker, tournaments, playing the river, etc will be in the second edition. Some of that (not all, I'm still working on it) is included in this offer.

Click below to pay with PayPal, or send the money to userid garycarson at PokerStars. Email me if you pay via PokerStars.

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