Making Hands

I just had a discussion with a friend yesterday on the subject of playing to make hands in poker. This friend plays a lot of online poker, and is a profitable player. There are a lot of poker players who just sit and wait around for hands like AJ or KQ, and then raise or call, see the flop and then depending on how well their hand hits, make further decisions from there. These players might turn out to be profitable, depending on how successful they are in getting their opponents to pay them off on their made hands. The problem with this strategy is that making hands is not a common occurrence, and these players lose money on hands that they miss and subsequently fold.

There aren’t many loose passive players online, and these are the type of players that you can expect to pay you off if you play to make hands. This generally results in a break-even or even a losing record for players who play to make hands (Fit or Fold players) online, simply because they aren’t getting paid off on their hands, while losing money consistently to hands that they don’t hit and the rake. Sites like Poker Stars give significant rake-back to players who play a lot of hands at higher stakes (ranked supernova or supernova elite), but how many players get to those ranks?

Fact is, in the game of poker, your two pocket/hole cards don’t matter until you finally showdown on the river. What matters before the showdown is what your opponent might be holding, your table image, your opponent’s table image, you and your opponent stack sizes, the money in the pot, and finally, your position relative to your opponent. Players who play to make hands simply ignore these important factors in the game, at least until they make a hand, which actually mean that they rely more on luck, i.e. they are gambling. Of course, there are times when playing to make hands is necessary. E.g. when you’re up against a loose passive player, and, that’s it I think. If any of you readers can think of more situations where playing to make hands is necessary, please comment.

How does one not play to make hands? Here’s an example in a recent online game I played. I was holding AcTc on a NL100 6-max table, sitting on the cutoff. The player to my right had stats of 38/25 which meant that he’s a loose aggressive player. My own stats were 15/12. My stack size was about $130, and he had $150 or thereabouts, so we were pretty even. Action was checked to him pre-flop, and he raised 3xBB. I decided to re-raise him and made it $9. Action folded over to him who flat called. The flop comes Kd9d8h, with suits different to the one I was holding, so I completely missed the flop, and had no draw. He checks, and I made a c-bet of $12 into a $19.50 pot. He makes a min-raise, which made the existing pot $55.50, a very nice pot. I had slightly more than $90 left in my stack, about the same as what he had since he put in $12 more than me. I decided to go for it, and raised to $40. He folded and I took down the pot.

A player who plays to make hands would do things very differently if they were in my situation. They would have called pre-flop, whiffed, and folded to any decently sized bet on the flop. Of course, they would only have risked $3, instead of $61 (half my stack), but think of it in a different context. Passive calling gives you no information on what your opponent might have. Say the flop comes AdKd7h, and your opponent makes a pot sized c-bet. Since you already made your hand, you would probably re-raise, and say the opponent 3-bets you. What do you do then? AT here is crushed by AJ, AQ, AK and A7, AA, KK and 77. It’s also only about even money against a pair plus flush draw, and only really beats a smaller Ace or flush draw. Most Fit or Fold players would not be able to fold here. They finally make a hand, but face a 3-bet. They would then call the 3-bet, and face enormous pressure to call all subsequent bets, possibly putting your whole stack on the line instead of only half your stack.

Note that this situation is not fictional, and occurs very often in a game of poker. A lot of experienced regulars online would make that 3-bet on the flop simply because its profitable to do so against a player who only plays to make hands. Every time that player folds, its instant profit. If that player goes over the top, it’s very easy to for them to fold since they can recover that loss in subsequent hands using the same line of play.

Hopefully this gives you an idea of how to play a more imaginative game. As always, comments and feedback are appreciated. Till next time, may you not play to make hands, but make your hand just the same!

Stayin' Alive

We’ve often heard people say tournament play is different from cash games, but what exactly does that mean? How much different can cash games get, when you’re playing the exact same game? The cards don’t change. Your odds and outs in a particular hand don’t change.

What changes is the fact that blinds played are progressively increased. Imagine playing cash games with progressively increasing blinds! You could only play as long as your bankroll can sustain your blinds. The more blinds (forced bets) you have to make, the more the game becomes a gamble. In fact, thinking about it, a single tournament could be used to represent a player’s progression at poker, that is, if you had the choice of remaining at a certain blind level until you’re ready to move on.

When you’re forced to move up in blinds, the more it becomes necessary for you to recover your losses through forced bets. This means playing more hands, which would eventually mean that luck decides the outcome. When should you start playing more hands in a tournament? At the beginning, where the blinds don’t matter as much? Or towards the end when you’re forced to play hands due to a diminishing stack size?

The ultimate goal of a tournament is to stay “alive” as long as possible. The person who stays alive the longest, wins. This is the fundamental concept of a poker tournament, and one that most players fail to understand. Everyone tries to accumulate as many chips as possible, but in an inevitable situation in the tournament when you’re forced to make a decision for all your chips in a cooler situation (e.g. nut flush versus a possible full house), players ignore the goal of “staying alive” when making that decision.

How does staying alive factor into a poker decision? Simple. Imagine that you’re playing a tournament with actual money. Blinds increases periodically, and you don’t stop playing till the last man standing. You’re given a decision to go all in pre-flop when you’re holding Aces, but you’d be playing for all the money you have left in the world, with no chance of earning more. This would mean that if you lost (which you will, at least 20% of the time!), you will be relegated to permanent bankruptcy. Would you still take the risk with Aces?

I was playing a hand in an online tournament just yesterday. I was the shortest stack, with 13 players left in the game. Blinds were $25/$50, and my stack size was $900, less than 20 times the big blind. I got AQs on hi-jack, and made a standard raise of 3xBB. Action folds over to the player on the Big Blind who was playing a loose aggressive style, and was at that time, holding the largest stack with about $4000 in chips. He thought for a while, then shoved me all-in. Based on his play, the chances of him holding a better hand than mine was slim, and I made the call. Sure enough, he was holding JTo, and my odds to win was almost 65%. The flop comes J66, and he flops top pair, but I flopped a flush draw, with two over cards. Even with him holding top pair, I was still the favorite to win with a 52% chance. His Jacks held up to take down the pot, eliminating me in the process.

I knew I had the better hand, based on all the information available, but if I had thought about it in terms of actual cash, and going bankrupt, I would never have made that call. With 15 big blinds remaining, and 6 players on the table, I could still see about 60 hands before I’m forced to play for all my (remaining) “money”. A lot can happen in 60 hands.

In reverse, the “staying alive” factor can also be used to advance yourself in the tournament. Big blind played an aggressive strategy, forcing me to make a decision for all my chips while only risking a 25% of his stack. He had 35% to win $900 if I called, and 100% to win $225 if I folded. He only had to risk 25% of his stack. This was an excellent play, and plays like this win tournaments. He ended up placing 2nd.

There are a lot of ways to view this, and the sheer number of possibilities that could happen is what makes poker an extremely challenging game. Sure, it was technically a suck-out by the JTo, but if you think about it in relative terms (since everything is relative), Big Blind was playing at a 25% risk, while I was playing at a 100% risk. The odds to win the hand was in my favor, but the odds to win the tournament was in his favor!

Which would you rather win? Till next time, make your decisions like all your money depends on it!

Bets

Making bets is pretty much what you do when you play poker. Big bets, small bets, pot-sized bets. The general mistake a lot of people make with bets is that they don’t size their bets correctly. Bets that are too large overly expose your stack, and increases risks. Bets that are too small don’t extract enough value.

When playing poker, its easy to get carried away betting into a pot in the hopes of getting a player off a hand. Sometimes though, it’s good to just recall the fundamental reason to bet. You bet to increase the money in the pot for hands that are strong. You avoid increasing the size of pots for hands that are weak. When you’re firing several barrels into a pot with an average made hand (or even on a bluff!), and your opponents are not folding, you know you’re doing something very wrong.

I think the amount to bet depends on the reason you’re betting. If you’re betting to push your opponent off a hand, you have to know from previous experience the amount and situation he would fold a particular hand to. For example, if you’ve observed that he folds top pair to an 80% pot bet on a possible made flush, you can do the same when you’re in the hand with him in a similar situation. If he folds to 80% pot bets 4 out of every 5 times, you should always make this bet in similar situations regardless of what you’re holding, simply because its profitable to do so. Bets like these also help you read your opponent’s hands better. If he doesn’t fold when you bet 80% into the pot, you can pretty much be assured that you’re up against something better than top pair and you can let go of your hand unless you improve.

If you’re betting to increase the size of the pot for your monster made hand, there are several things you have to note. Bets the opponent calls on a regular basis, your stack size and your opponent’s stack size, the aggressiveness of your opponent and his opinion of your aggressiveness. I was in a situation some time ago, in a $2/$5 live game, when I had JTs out of position against a tight solid player (TSP) in late position. I have a loose aggressive image, with a pretty deep stack ($650 or thereabouts). TSP had about the same amount and called my pre-flop 4xBB raise. The flop came JJ9, with a possible flush draw, a monster flop for me. The only thing you should be thinking at this point is to make as much as you can from your opponent. I knew TSP for a passive player from previous games, so I knew I could not slow-play. I raised $28, 70% of the pot, and he calls. TSP regularly calls me down with a pair or Ace high (because of my loose aggressive image), so I put him on a 9 or a possible flush draw. The turn comes a T which made the flush, but I had the nuts. I bet $60, and he makes a raise to $165. If I went all in or even made a raise at this point, he could barely call me with the nut flush, and anything less would generally fold, so I flat called. This made the pot equivalent to our stacks. The river came a 5, and I made a bet of $300. He calls with the nut flush, and I take down the pot.

This example might not be the best, but I think it illustrates the need to know your opponent’s style of play and also his view of how you play. The turn and river bet was also important imho. The turn bet increased the size of re-raises from possible strong made hands, while the river bet was strong enough to avert suspicions for an extremely strong made hand, while putting enough value for a strong made hand to make the call (2 to 1). Many people might be tempted to check the turn with the nuts, but there’s no guarantee that your opponent would bet in position if he made the flush.

This is a complicated topic, and I’ve barely scratched it, but I hope this gives a bit of insight on the intricacy of making bets in poker. 

Comfort Zones

Winning a major pot in poker is the ultimate high of the game, especially when you’ve outplayed your opponent to do it. I’m not talking about cooler hands, where you have set over sets, or *gasp* straight flush over quads! This actually happened in a live game played in the poker room I frequent. Check out a shot of it I managed to capture…

Have you ever noticed how some players manage to win huge pots on hands that contain a single pair, or some mediocre holdings like AT versus A4, when both hit the ace on the flop? Often times, players put wins like these down to loose cannon players and luck, but I believe there’s more to it. Many players, especially tight players, play weakly because they’re afraid of getting stacked by bad beats and cooler hands. They make puny raises, take down small pots, and wonder why the other player at the table makes 5 times his buy-in in the same amount of time he makes half a buy-in in profit at the end of the session. What’s worse is when they have a bad session and get sucked out multiple times, losing several buy-ins in the process. Imagine the amount of patience required to sit for hours at the table, making minimum profit and losing it all in a run of bad luck.

There are two ways to lose money in poker. Bad beats and bad plays. Whenever you lose, it’s either one or the other, and it’s important to identify which. But knowing why you lost is not enough. You have to know how to compensate for it. If you lost due to bad plays, you have no one and nothing to blame but yourself, and the remedy is simple. Don’t repeat your mistake. Bad beats on the other hand is a different story altogether. Beats are part of poker and instead of whining about how your bottom set got cracked by a two pair hitting a four-outer, think about how you can recover from it. Tight weak players will find this hard to do, simply because it’s rare for them to get a huge win (unless of course there are donkeys that pay them off regularly), and it will take many, many sessions of no beats before they recover from a downswing.

Which brings us to the topic at hand. Comfort zones. Every player has a comfort zone, and it is important thing to note of your opponents when you play a game, especially during live games, when there are no stats to help you make decisions.  The famous quote from David Slansky, which states that, whenever your opponent plays differently from when he can see your hole cards, you gain, and whenever you play differently from when you can see his hole cards, he gains. A simple example of this would be, if the player holding the quads in the picture above could see his opponent’s hole cards, he would fold his quads, and he would gain. This is pretty much the goal of poker, to make your opponent play differently from what he would if he could see your hole cards, that is, to make a mistake. The only way your opponent will make a mistake, is when he is pushed out of his comfort zone.

A regular player that plays at the room I frequent (who incidentally is also the person who held the straight flush over quads) is a very good example of such a player. He has a loose cannon image, one that’s well deserved, and initially lost a lot of money learning that players can’t be bullied out of pots by money and two rags for a hand. He is however, a quick learner, and all keen observers in the room would note that his play has improved tremendously. He’s quick to spot and prey on weak tight players, pushing up the stakes with a massive re-raise on their raise, forcing them to fold weak to mediocre hands pre-flop. Some of them try to counter this by flat calling, hoping to hit a monster on the flop, but more often than not, end up folding when his flop play pressures them to fold hands like Ace high. If they could see his hole cards, they would play differently, but having been forced out of their comfort zones, they naturally make mistakes they wouldn’t under normal circumstances.

It’s enough to observe from this that players can be pulled out of their comfort zones by hyper aggressive play, but there’s also a technique to it, and one can’t place a random huge bet into a pot and hope to take it down. I will write more about this in future articles, on bet sizing and value bets, that extract the maximum out of opponents, while maintaining a decent ratio on your “return on investment”. It’s also important to know that when you play within your bankroll, it is difficult to pull you out of your comfort zone, simply because your zone is so much… wider! Once again, more emphasis on bankroll management. So, till the next article, may you play successfully for bigger pots, and force opponents out of their comfort zone!

Burn Out

Can’t bring myself to go play poker for some reason. I’ve not played at all for almost 6 days now! That’s something new for me since I started the poker craze this year. Kind of weird feeling this way after playing so intensively for months. It feels exactly like when you’re at a job and you take a break to go on vacation, and when you get back, you just don’t feel like working.

Poker is a grind, and when you take all the glitz and glamour away from it, you see that it’s nothing but hours of sitting at a table, waiting for safe, decent hands. Still, when a guy like Joe Cada makes 8.5 million in ten days, it does make one dream somewhat. This makes me wonder though, when a poker player actually plays for a living, does it all become mundane for him? Imagine having to make your living playing poker for hours each day. Sure, they talk about travelling the world and such, but what does it really come down to?

I think to play poker, one must limit oneself to a certain time frame, say, 3 or 4 hours a day. That’s it. Win or lose, or break-even or maybe even a paltry win of 30 bucks. Leave, refresh yourself with other activities, catch some sleep, and come back the next day for another 3 hours. Come to think of it, this would probably be the best way to control tilt. Not by limiting your buy-ins, but by limiting the time you spend.

Just some thoughts. I’ll probably be back to full swing come the weekend, but for now, I’m burned out…

Reflections…

Took a short break from poker over the weekend. Reasons being, a night out clubbing resulting in a significant hangover the next day, and… some losses the day before due to inconsistent and just overall bad play. Gave me time to do stuff I’ve not been doing for a while, and of course, some time to reflect on my play.

I’ve always played a loose aggressive style of poker. So much so that almost everyone who’ve played with me has tagged me accordingly, and generally employ passive tactics against me in the hopes that I will bluff the pot (which I generally do!), and pay them off. Of course, when I run good and make my hands, people pay me off handsomely, but more often than not, it’s the other way around. Why? Simply because I’m a poor player, and generally make poor calls and bad decisions, some of them so obvious that when I look back, I wonder why I make them.

The LAG (Loose AGressive) play-style is a viable one in poker, but it takes a lot more skill to play successfully. In fact, it’s not just skill that matters but discipline, and proper bankroll management. I lack all three. Poker is not about gambling. I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again. Problem is, most poker players gamble, and that’s the bottom-line. The profitable ones don’t. I’ve recently read an article that said, playing poker is like being a fund manager. You “invest” in profitable situations, and avoid the high risk decisions that may involve significant losses. You avoid risking your capital (bankroll).

To play poker successfully, one should know one’s capabilities. Like a fund manager, a skilled one with foresight would make investments that would seem risky to his peers less adept than himself, while the less skilled would typically invest in rock solid, profitable ventures. Similarly in poker, skilled players may opt to play the LAG style, simply because they can manage the risks better, while their less adept counterparts just play TAG (Tight AGressive). I belong to the latter group.

What this means, is that upon reflection, I’ve not the skill required to play the style that I play now. That said, I will attempt to stick to the TAG style of play from now on, at least for a couple of months, to see if it makes a difference. Let’s see how long I stick to this resolution!

On and Off

Just finished a very mixed session of poker. Mixed in that I played both online and offline, both using the same strategies (at least initially for the offline play) and ended up with extremely different results, the strategy used being BSS. I made a significant loss in the live games, while enjoying a significant profit in the online counterpart.

Lesson learnt (that I realized much earlier, but apparently needed a refresher); Online poker and live poker are extremely, and I mean extremely different. Maybe it’s just because of my personality; a little hot tempered, and very impatient. These are two traits that are very bad for a poker player, simply because they are the exact formula for tilt. Suck-outs and bad play make me lose my temper, the latter being targeted at myself. Bad hands or flops, slow dealing and lengthy hands make me impatient. And together, both make me lose due to tilt plays.

My live game losses were only due to two major hands, both of which could be avoided. I was not getting any hands for about 3 orbits, and finally caught KJo, but was in early position. The BSS dictates that this hand should be folded, but I had gotten impatient after getting no hands, and decided to limp to see the flop. As usual, another 5 limpers called behind and the blinds checked. The flop came KQ6, two clubs, and small blind checks. Big blind over-bets the pot and action was on me. I frequently play with Big Blind, who’s a regular in the live games I play, and he has a tendency to play draws very strongly. I decide to raise with my Kings, and 3 bet him for 3.5 times his raise. Everyone else folded, and Big Blind says he’s all in.

I made several significant mistakes here. First of all, I failed to observe his stack, the remnant of which was smaller than my raise if he called. Secondly, his position as Big Blind gives me almost no information on his hand, him having checked, and thus could be holding almost any two cards, including K6 or Q6, both of which have me crushed. I then compounded both errors by thinking I was committed to the pot by calling the all-in, forgetting that in previous encounters, he hardly ever moves all in with a weak hand. I lost 3/4ths of my stack to Q6.

The second loss was when I had AQs in middle position. I raised and the guy to my immediate left raised 3x my initial raise. He’s generally a loose player, playing almost any two suited cards from any position but only aggressive when he does have a hand. I should have folded the AQs, being out of position and likely dominated, but once again, I have had very few hands, and the earlier bad play I made was making me impatient to win a big pot. I called. The flop came 554, two diamonds, which gave me 2 overs and a flush draw. I decided to play this slowly to gain more information, and checked. He bet half the pot, and I decided to 3 bet him to see if he had a pair or was simply betting with AK. He went all-in, and I snap-called, a huge mistake. The pot was barely giving me 1 to 1 odds, and I was 50/50 at best against a pair under Q, and a huge underdog with any other higher pair that he would make that move with. He had Jacks, which held up to take my entire stack.

Rebuilt my stack somewhat later on when I loosened up and played more hands, but made money on good plays and reads. The last hand of the day was an extreme cooler hand where I had straddled, and the guy on my left double straddled. I caught Kings, but the guy on my left had Aces and I lost a large pot (though not as large as it could have been).

Heading home feeling very frustrated, but aware of my mistakes, I decided to continue grinding it out online. I profited 4 buy-ins in 2 hours, playing 21 tables of NL50 using BSS, and that was even though I encountered 3 huge cooler hands which involved set over sets. That’s a BB/100 of about 10 for this session alone!

Fact is, BSS doesn’t work with live games. Playing too tightly gives you no action when you have monsters, and makes you lose a lot on beats, suck-outs and bad plays. Online games differ simply because you see so many more hands online, up to several hundred times more in my case, and thus, you make a decent profit just by winning blinds alone. Live games are so slow that you barely see 25 hands per hour, and you typically need to make money in that 25 hands or you’re just wasting a lot of time. You’d be better off waiting tables to make a living. This means that you have to loosen up, play more aggressively and read more accurately. This also leads me to believe that a profitable live game player is very much more skilled than his online counterpart, since it requires looser play (high margin for error) and accurate reads.

I learnt many lessons today. Seems like everyday I play poker brings new lessons to learn, some really expensive ones. I guess the key is not to have to learn the lesson twice.

Migrating from SSS

Moving on from the SSS (Short Stack Strategy) to the BSS (Big Stack Strategy) officially just yesterday. Reasons for moving being that the SSS is just too robotic, and while profitable, just doesn’t teach you very much, and soon gets extremely dreary.

Kept a steady BB/100 of 1.37 while playing SSS and found it hard to move any higher, but my initial attempt at BSS was pretty decent, holding on at 0.35, and moving up to 1.29 late yesterday. Dropped down to –0.2 today when I made several bad calls. I find that I’m learning a lot though. Maximizing value when you have a monster and learning to fold medium to strong made hands, sets for example.

As a side-note, several of my friends have made it to the top 20 of that local tournament I talked about in my earlier post! Yay them!… heh. Hope they make it to the big money. For those who are interested, check out the reports at pokerevents.wordpress.com.

I’ll be working more on playing BSS online in the weeks to come. Check back for updates!

Plugging away…

Couldn’t join a big local tourney that’s on going right now due to a player cap the organizers imposed on the event, so am entertaining myself joining online tournaments on PokerStars and Fulltilt. Got a whole bunch of friends playing at the event though, hope they do well…

It’s a good time to reflect a bit on my tourney play though. In a $26 tournament on Fulltilt, I was doing pretty well with an average chip stack early in the tournament. Got AKo on the button and cutoff raised to 4xBB. I decided to play it passively and flat called. Everyone else folded and it was me and him to the flop. Flop came AsTh9h, and cutoff bet 2/3rds the pot. I flat called and the turn came a Kh, which gave me top two pair. Cutoff checked, and I bet 1/3rd of the pot. He called and the river came an 8h. He shoved all in. I folded.

I probably played it horribly wrong from the flop, but I was thinking to wait till the turn before making any decisive actions. Sigh. Poker hasn’t been too kind to me. Raised again from the button later with ATs and got a call from big blind and an earlier limper. Flop came KQ5 and action was checked to me. I was short-stacked, slightly more than the pot, so I shoved all in. Limper calls with 54o.

Joined yet another tournament, and lost when I raised with KK, got a caller on the button and the flop came 679. I bet heavily and he called. Turn came a 2, and I went all in for 2/3rds of the pot. He calls with a set of 7s.

What am I doing wrong….

Justifying the 50/50

Poker has always been linked with gambling. It’s ingrained in the perception of the general public that any game of chance, no matter the skill required, that involves placing wagers on outcomes of luck is gambling.

Fact is, most poker players do gamble. They’d like to tell you otherwise, but when you look at the number of times players have to make critical decisions based on odds of 50/50 (or less!), you know that gambling is part and parcel of the game… or is it?

What exactly is luck? I like to define luck in two words, short term. Placing a bet on a single number in roulette gives you 37 to 1 odds of hitting, less than 2%. Hitting the number on your very first bet just means you got lucky. If you manage to repeat the feat, say, 30 times in a row, that goes against the odds and you’re either cheating or psychic (because betting on a single number requires no skill), not lucky. Simply put, something that goes against the odds in the short term is luck.

This applies to poker. Winning with AQo against KK all-in preflop once or twice is lucky, but you can’t do it all the time. The odds are just not in your favor. Hands like 66 vs AK is a different story though. This is what poker players call a coin flip, or 50/50. Betting on odds of 50/50 is gambling, and these situations happen a lot in poker.

I strongly believe, after going through the roller coaster ride that is poker, that to be a successful poker player, you should never gamble. But does that mean you should never call an all-in push from AK with QQ? No. Simply because there are situations that justifies playing for 50/50 odds. Let’s take an actual coin flip for example. If a guy offers to pay you $2 every time the coin came up heads, and you pay him $1 if it comes up tails, you’d be foolish not to take up that offer. Statistically speaking, the coin should come up heads 50 times out of a hundred coin flips, while the rest of the 50 are tails. So if you played this 100 times, you’d be $50 richer.

But let’s say you only had $10. You play this game 10 times and it comes up heads 9 times out of 10. You would be down to your last 3 bucks and have 3 more flips before you lose all your money. Since there’s no history involved in coin flips, i.e. each subsequent coin flip is not affected by its predecessor, you have no guarantee that you will make money. What this proves is that you will need more money than $10 to withstand the bad luck (short term) so you can profit from your statistical advantage (long term).

Which brings us back to our topic, justifying the 50/50. In poker terms, betting on 50/50 (or better) is justified when you have better than 1 to 1 odds on your money. You will also need a decently sized bankroll to withstand the swings in luck, so you can profit from your statistical advantage. The better the odds, the lower your required bankroll, which in any case, should be able to allow you to lose 20-30 “flips” in a row without you blinking an eye.

There is an exception to this rule though, best illustrated by this example; You’re in a satellite to a high buy-in tournament, which offers 5 seats, with 8 players remaining. You have roughly 35 big blinds left and are among the 5th in stack size. You’re dealt pocket Qs. You raise 4xBB from early position preflop, and you get re-raised all-in by a guy who out-stacks you. You’ve seen this guy re-raise with AK several times before, so you know that you are in all likelihood up against a similar hand, and have a 50% chance to win. Should you call?

The answer is no, simply because you are roughly 60% to win a seat if you fold and wait, while you’re 50% to win if you call. If you had KK and you believe your opponent had AK, you would be a 65% favourite, and that would give you a better shot at winning a seat than if you folded, and thus would justify a call.

In closing, I’d like to give an example from a personal tournament experience. This was late in an online $11 buy-in tournament. The payout was to the top 162 players, and there were 181 players remaining. I got pocket 7s in mid position and decided to raise after action folded to me preflop. Button called, blinds folded, and the flop came 2s3d3c. I raised, and button reraised. At this point, after committing the chips to the preflop and post flop raises, I still had about 30 big blinds remaining, a decent amount to make the money. I decided I was good, and shoved all-in with my over-pair. Button called and showed pocket 10s, which held up to take the pot and knocked me out.

The right move there imho was to fold the pocket 7s preflop since my “sticking around” equity was much higher than my chances of winning with 7s since of all the pocket pairs that would call me preflop, I would only dominate 5 of them, and lose to the other 7 (lower than 50%). I would be, at best, a 50% coin flip against two over cards, or a 4 to 1 underdog against a better pair.

Hope this rather lengthy post illustrates my view on how the 50/50 “gambling” decisions are justified. Till next time, may all your poker decisions not be based on a gamble!

Vegas!

I’ve finally played poker in Vegas. Yeah! Sin City, gambling capital of the world, etc etc. There’s something about all that glitz and glamour that just makes it different from playing anywhere else in the world. Check out some of the scenes I managed to capture on cam.

 

 

 

 

 

View Full Album

 

The thing about playing in Vegas though, is the sheer variety of players you meet. People from all over the world, like Israel, Greece and Belgium, just to name a few, and all with different play styles and ideas. There was this one hand I was playing against this chap from France. He was on his fourth buy-in, but managed to rebuild his stack somewhat.

I held Ac3c with a very deep stack (almost $900; yes, it was a good day!), and was sitting 2 seats behind him on the cut-off, playing $1/$2 NL on a full ring table. Thus far, I was only showing down winning hands, and the table image that I had was very strong. As is typical in a low stakes cash game, players were generally loose, and there were a lot of limpers to see the flop. This particular hand was no exception. Five players limped in before me, and I raised to $20, a very significant raise that forced all but two initial limpers to fold their hands.

 

The flop came 8h4c2h, giving me a gutshot, a backdoor flush draw and one over card. Action was checked to me and I made a bet of $35. First to act folded, and the French guy called, which meant that he hit the flop somehow. There was insufficient information to put him on any kind of hand since he has typically been a loose and passive player. The turn came a 4d, and he checked once more. I bet $50 and he flat calls once again. At this point, I put him on a hearts flush draw and resolved to fire a third bullet if the river comes a blank and he checks. The river puts a 9c on the board which was the blank I was looking for. He checks yet again and I bet $120. He started hemming and hawing, moving his chips, rechecking his cards, and that really made me rethink his hand. He finally says, “alright, I’ll pay you off”, and pushes in the $120. I flip over my Ace, and he shows… 72o.

The table went crazy. I bet none of you readers were expecting that huh? Amazing call. Thing about showing down these kind of hands though is that it pretty much gives you implied odds for your monster hand 3-barrel bets in all future hands on that table. I made all that money back 4 hands later with a nut straight, and cashed out after another 2 hours with almost 12x my initial buy-in. Happy times!

 

Three days of poker in L.A and Vegas, with a healthy profit calls for some form of celebration. What better than the Rio Seafood buffet!

 

View Full Album

View Full Album

 

Hope you guys enjoyed this peek into playing at Vegas. Till next time, may your 3-barrel bluffs never get called!

Limit Games

A couple of nights ago, a colleague of mine that played poker (found that out recently!) took me to a local card room to check out the games there. We were talking about the games he used to play all afternoon, so I was really looking forward to playing there.

When we got there in the evening, the place was packed. More than 20 tables, with 7 or 8 people waiting lists. It was great. At least until I finally got a seat, got 65s on my first hand and flopped trips, tried to re-raise the guy who bet in front of me 4x his raise, and found that it was a LIMIT game! No wonder their lowest stakes were $3/$6. Tried to adjust to the game, but man, it was tough. After playing no limit exclusively, playing limit games make you feel handicapped. The differences may seem slight to the inexperienced, but when you have played both, you know that’s not true.

First off, the blind structure is different. On a $3/$6 table, small blinds are $1, and big blinds are $3 (yeah, weird right?). You can’t raise more than 1xBB each raise. So say the game start off with UTG calling, UTG+1 folding, and another two callers before action is on to you in late position, you can only raise another BB. That means on a $3/$6 table, you can only make a raise to $6 (a min raise). Imagine only being able to min raise every time you want to raise. So what does the $6 in the stakes mean? It means that on the turn, the minimum bet is $6. The river minimum bet is also $6. And you can only min raise if you want to raise. I just had to repeat that. It needs to sink in…

How is that significant? It simply means that most of the time, if there are several callers in front of you, the pot odds become so good that it really doesn’t matter what you have. You’re almost obligated to call if you have anything decent at all! That’s pre-flop. And say there’s some one who wants to raise in late position with AA, and there are 4 callers in front of him, not a single one of the four in front will fold to his raise, simply because it’s only going to be a min raise. It will take a limp, raise, re-raise (and sometimes, not even then) to kick limpers out.

All that’s fine if you have a monster. Say you have aces and flop a set. Man, that’s when you have all the money flowing in cause you can only bet the minimum, raise the minimum, and the pot odds are so good that every one else will call with a decent draw or pair. The sick thing is that you can get out flopped, out rivered so often it makes you wanna rip your hair out. There was a hand where I had pocket 4s under the gun, I limped, and there were 4 callers behind me. Big blind raised (min raise) and everyone else flat called (obviously). Flop came Q64, and I made my set. BB raised, I re-raised (min raise again), and got three callers behind, including the big blind. Turn comes a J, and big blind checks. I bet and once again, got 3 callers. River came a T, and big blind checks to me, I bet, two guys fold, and big blind raises (min raise). I flat call, and guess what he shows me? Pocket tens. Ridiculous.

After playing a while though, I find there’s a method to all this madness. Limit games are not about bluffing. At least, you’re going to find it really really hard to make bluffs. Limit games are about making a hand, then milking as much out of it as you possibly can. This really reminds me of the no limit cash games I frequent, where players generally are loose enough to call down raises pre-flop with horrible positions and sub par hands just to “see the flop” and then pay huge amounts (that don’t add up in profitability) to draw on gut-shots. In any case, the real skill involved here is the milking. You need to be skilled enough to get the maximum value you can from your made hands, and you need to be able to lay down your made hands if you suspect a better hand so you lose less. This is different from no limit games cause sometimes, the pot odds are so good you’re almost obligated to call down if it was a no limit game.

This experience was interesting to say the least, and while I lost half my buy in, I found that it taught me yet another valuable lesson in poker. Namely, playing poker isn’t just about calling down with good pot odds. These marginal calls cost money, and the money adds up. Poker is about having several factors, i.e. pot odds, accurate reads, outs etc. add up to make a decision profitable.

Wish I took a few pictures of the place. I probably will, the next time I get to a new poker room. Look out for them. Till next time, do NOT call down with marginal hands! Or do, if you’re as lucky as the set tens guy…

Fit or Fold: Pt III - Avoid

In this final installment of the Fit or Fold series, we will discuss the various pitfalls that the average FoF player will encounter, and how to avoid being a FoF player yourself. If you've not read the previous two installments, you can find the first and second one on this blog.

The average FoF player would always run into scenarios where he has to make tough decisions, simply based on the fact that the wide range of hands he plays have the possibility of being second best, e.g. out-kicked, second best to an over-pair etc. Since FoF players are also generally very passive, they will generally not know where they are in the hand, and will call down to the river with a top pair and a bad kicker, losing huge pots to mediocre hands.

A very good example of this would be a hand I played in a live game recently. As most of you would know by now from the previous few articles that I wrote, I play very regularly in a poker room where there are a lot of loose passive fit or fold players. In this particular hand, I was holding Td4d on the cut-off. After all the usual limping from the early position players, a somewhat tight but passive player in early position raised 5xBB from middle position. Action folds to me, and I decide to isolate raise with a 3-bet to 16xBB. As expected, all the other players behind folds, and the initial raiser flat calls. The flop comes Ks7c3h, and the initial raiser checks to me. I bet 2/3rds of the pot, and he calls, telling me without doubt that he has the King, but possibly without a strong kicker. The flop was an extremely bad one for me, and I was almost drawing dead, so when the turn came a 5c, and action was checked to me, I checked behind, hoping to make my gut-shot on the river. River came the miracle 6h, and suddenly I had the best hand. The initial raiser bets slightly less than half the pot, and seeing that he had about his raise amount left in his stack, I shoved him all-in, he calls, and I show the straight to take down the pot.

What mistakes did the FoF player make here? First of all, he played a potentially mediocre hand out of position to a 3-bet. What he was basically hoping for was to hit either one of his hole cards and call down to the river. Second, after he made his hand with top-pair, he was still playing too passively, flat calling the flop instead of making a raise to find out where he stood. As he did not know my hand, it was entirely possible that he was still behind to a K with top kicker, since I 3-bet him on the flop (which illustrates the pitfalls of passive playing perfectly). Third, by checking the turn, he allowed the last free card to hit the board, which further puts him in the dark with regards to how strong his hand relatively is. Finally, he bet the river when he is utterly ignorant of where he stands, and calls a raise all-in directly after.

From this example, it is also all too clear how best to avoid being a typical FoF player. Three words, play in position. Playing in position gives you better reads on your opponents since you get to act after obtaining information from their actions. Placing myself in the position of the FoF player in the example, I would have 4-bet light to avoid playing out of position or folded pre-flop. On the flop, I would have check-raised and second-barrelled the turn to push a worse hand off the board. On the river, I would have bet, but folded to a raise if I only had top pair. Would you readers, have played this differently? Let me know in the comments section.

Picking your spots is crucial to playing poker in the long term. Of course, it is also possible to play poker as a loose player, but just to be loose isn't enough. There is only one type of profitable loose player, and that is those of the aggressive genre, typically known as LAGs. Good LAGs play loosely, but in position, and with controlled and calculated aggression. This is how they differ from the average FoF player.

This concludes the series. Till next time, good luck picking on Fit or Fold players, and avoid being one yourself!

When You're Meant To Lose

Have you ever been dealt a hand when you're predestined to lose from the get go? How do you cut or avoid losses in hands like that? The worst thing is when it happens when you're already down. It feels like a punch to the gut, and you're left wondering when it will end.

I play very regularly in a live game at a poker room where I live. Games there are generally very loose and aggressive, usually played at the $2/$5 stakes. This particular hand happened just last night on a full ring table, between 3 players, 2 of them extremely loose players (calling raises with 62o!) and another who would almost always play any two suited cards from any position (this isn't considered loose in that room!). Of the two loose players, one of them (Player A) is usually very aggressive, raising with almost any two cards while the other (Player B) plays a more passive game, only becoming aggressive after the flop. Pre-flop action was the usual limping from early position, followed by a 5xBB raise from Player A in mid position. 3 players after him folds, button calls, Player B in the small blind calls, and the big blind and initial limpers all call.

Flop came 2sTs5s, and action was checked to Player A who bet 5xBB. Button makes the call and Player B thinks then raises to 5 times the raise of Player A. With such a huge raise, it was almost certain that Player B had a made hand, at least 2 pair or better. Surprisingly, Player A and button flat calls, and the dealer dealt a 6h on the turn. Player B checks, Player A bets 20xBB (a minuscule bet compared to the pot), button calls and Player B instantly goes all in. Player A instantly calls and button goes all in immediately, flipping over the nut flush with As9s. Imagine the shock of everyone else at the table when both Player A and Player B flip over K high and J high flush! River, a 9c, was irrelevant as both players were drawing dead to the nut flush.

Imagine that! All three players flopped the flush, all three were slow playing, and all three thought the other was drawing to a flush (players in this room generally go for draws regardless of pot odds). This was the sickest cooler hand I ever saw, and I've definitely seen my share. How do you escape from losing the maximum with hands like the K high and J high flush? I remember a very similar scenario about 5 months back, of which I was on the receiving end. I had Ks9s in early position, UTG limped in, and I followed suit. A few other limpers came in as well, and the flop came three spades, no ace (I forgot the actual cards as it was such a long time ago). Blinds and UTG checks, I check, and one of the limpers made a 1/3 pot raise. UTG flat calls, and I re-raised to 4x the initial raise. Everyone else folds, including the initial raiser, but UTG calls. Turn comes another spade, and UTG checks, I bet, he goes all-in, and I knew he had the Ace, but I couldn't fold it and called. He showed pocket aces.

I think the simple "moral" of these hands would be - never play any two suited cards unless they are the nuts. Drawing to anything other than the nut flush or straight would potentially lose you a lot of money as making your hand would be tantamount to trapping yourself with the second best hand. This is why playing with any two suited cards is so dangerous. There was a similar hand that night where I also made a two hole card flush, but lost the maximum to the nut flush. This really sounds like a lot of bad poker, and it is. Embarrassing to tell, but one can only learn from such experiences.

Any of you readers have similar experiences? Let me know in the comments section. Cheers!

Knowing You're Ahead, but...

How often have you had a hand where you know you're ahead, pushed all-in and your opponent calls with a draw, and gets there? So many hands of poker come down to a face-off between a pair and two over cards, or even a pair and one over card. The former is a coin toss, and the latter the pair being the 2 to 1 favorite. In both situations, the pair is always the better hand, or as they say, ahead, but when the over card(s) spike on the flop or the following streets, the pair will be down to a two outer and will almost always lose.

Poker is not gambling, almost all poker players will tell you that. But placing all your chips at risk on a coin flip is gambling, like it or not. Some poker players will tell you that as long as you put your money in when "you're ahead", you will make money in the long run. That is true, to a certain extent. The only time that isn't true is when your bankroll cannot sustain you for the "long run".

An example from a live game I played just recently; I had Ac9c on UTG position, playing $2/$5 stakes, 9 handed. The game was crazy, players calling down with almost any two cards, going all-in with hands like J9o preflop with 5 callers in the pot, most players gambling with almost any two cards. UTG+1 calls, UTG+2 calls, player after that folds, and all mid position players called to the cutoff who raised to 6xBB. Button and the blinds fold, and action was on to me. I should have folded, being out of position with that many callers behind me, but I elected to call as the odds were decent, and the callers and raiser were loose players, the raiser having shown down extremely poor pre-flop raise hands. UTG+2 folds and the mid position player after him goes all-in for practically $600 in chips. This move forces every other player including the raiser to fold, and action was on to me. I have played many times with this particular player, and know him for a very loose, very aggressive player who doesn't mind losing his money. Limping from middle position and shoving all-in after a raise generally signifies only one thing. Weakness.

My A9s would be 50/50 against an under-pair, or two face cards, and a big favorite to any Ace with a smaller kicker. I read him for a small pair, suited Ace with a small kicker, or connected face cards like QJs, JTs. In all three situations, I would be at least 50/50 or better, so I made the call. He flips over KsQs, and we're down to a coin-flip with me having the upper hand (+13%). Flop comes 6d3cTs, and I'm almost a 3 to 1 favorite, when the turn comes a Kd and I'm drawing to a 3 outer. River was no help and I lost my stack.

How many times have you watched tournaments where players were knocked out based on 50/50 odds? In the recent WSOP $40k buy-in event, the eventual winner held Aces (no diamond) against 8c3d, and with a flop of QdTd8d was given 50/50 odds to win the bracelet. He called an all-in from the 83o (lots of donk plays by this guy, Haxton, the eventual runner-up) and his Aces held up, but it was certainly a toss-up. Even in situations where you're a 2.5 to 1 favorite, like KsKc against AsJs, should you put all your chips at risk? This was an actual scenario where I had the Kings on the big blind against a mid position limper with AsJs. We were both deep stacked, and I raised 6xBB to kick all the limpers out, but the AsJs then reraised 3x my raise. I over-bet with a shove all-in, and he reluctantly calls, spikes an Ace on the flop to take the pot. Doesn't seem fair but that's poker.

When or what makes it right to put all your money in? Here's my personal opinion, which is in one word, equity. When you have fold equity, e.g. you put the opponent's tournament life at risk with an all-in bet with a mediocre hand, that puts him in a decision for all his chips. You fold AKs pre-flop late in the tournament when there is a raise and a call in front of you with a healthy chip stack because you have better equity (cashing in the money) than 50/50. Is this gambling? Debatable. I like to think of it as calculated risks.

Let me know what you think in the comments section. Till next time, may you always put your money in when you're ahead!

Overview to Playing Multi Tables Online

Online play is measured by a statistic called BB/100, or Big Bets per 100 hands. The two major tracking software, Poker Tracker and Hold'em Manager measure Big Bets as twice the big blind. So if your BB/100 is 5, you essentially make 5 x 2 x Big Blind every one hundred hands you play, e.g. if you're playing at $1/$2 stakes and your BB/100 is 5, you would be making $20 every one hundred hands.

In live games, you would probably see 100 hands in two to three hours of play. Making $20 in that time is ridiculous. You might as well be serving tables and you'd likely make 3 times as much. In online play though, you could probably see 100 hands in an hour of play on a single table if you play 6 max. With a BB/100 of 5, that would equate to an income of $20 an hour. Now, for every additional table that you play simultaneously AND maintain your BB/100, you increase your income generated per hour. E.g. playing 5 tables simultaneously with a BB/100 of 5, at a rate of 100 hands per $1/$2 table per hour, you have an income of $100 per hour. This is why playing multi-tables gives an online player a significant advantage in terms of possible income.

I'm sure a lot of you have heard of players playing 20-50 tables at once, and you wonder how is that possible. I thought that too when I first started, but once I experimented with playing multi-tables, it was actually a lot easier than it sounds. Picking the right software is very important. I have used Full Tilt, Party Poker and PokerStars in my experiments, and right now, the best option seems to be PokerStars for a few reasons. First off, PokerStars has the most number of players at any one time, which makes it easy to start off 20-30 tables in a matter of minutes. PokerStars also puts in a lot of support for multi-tabling in their software. Simple stuff like automatic table pop-up when action is on you, table positioning memory, auto seating preference etc. make multi-tabling a lot easier. Another thing in their favor is the rake-back programme incorporated in their software which gives pretty much the best rake-back deals, especially if you manage to reach Supernova or Supernova Elite (I'm not saying all this because I'm getting paid to do so, which I'm not. This is just my personal perspective based on personal experience, so take it all with a pinch of salt).

Another aspect of multi-tabling is tracking. As you reach the higher stakes, tracking software becomes essential in aggregating your win rate (BB/100), hands per hour, income over time etc. Some players also used the Heads Up Display (HUD) to show opponent's playing statistics with VPIP (Voluntary Put In Pot), PFR (Pre Flop Raise), CBP (Continuation Bet Percentage), FCBP (Fold to Continuation Bet Percentage) being some of the stats likely to be used. These stats makes for easier decision making when you're multi-tabling and don't have time to observe your opponent's play.

Table and seating arrangement is very important as well. The less clutter there is, the easier and quicker it is for you to focus on what matters. With PokerStars, you can easily set the preferred seat location (I usually used the seat directly south) so your hole cards always appear at the same spot, making it easy for you to see and act. As for table arrangement, I used to tile the table across my monitor. The advantage of this is that you will be able to see all your tables at once, and pre-click a lot of hands you would like to fold, which saves time. However, since you're viewing multiple tables at once, the tables are much smaller, and if you play many tables, it becomes hard to focus. The best way imho (the method I'm using right now) would be to set your tables to automatically pop-up when action is on to you, and stack all your tables in the same location, one on top of another. This would mean that you never know what is going on once you've made a decision as the next table waiting on the list would pop-up after you've clicked (raise/check/fold) and you would not know the outcome till much later. This is not a bad thing though, as it forces you to make the best decision in that particular situation, based on pot odds, probabilities and stack sizes.

Hope this gives an insight on how multi-tabling is done online. I'm currently playing about 15-20 tables of SnGs at a time, with a win rate of about 20%-30%. I will write more about how I make my decisions when playing mutil-tables, and how various circumstances affect my multi-table play in future articles. Till then, try your hand at multi-tabling. You may find it a lot easier than you think. Good luck!

APT Macau 09: Making Effective Bluffs

Bluffing is an integral part of poker, since you can't get premium hands all the time, and you can't always hit the flop even with your premium hands. I'm not going to even attempt to tell you how to bluff, seeing as its an art all by itself, and I'm still trying to master the art! I will, however, try to surmise what I can on the subject based on personal experience.

Playing in the APT Macau 2009, I made two major bluffs that helped me make my chip stack what it was at the end of the day. The very first bluff was in a four-way pot, middle of the day when the blinds and antes were starting to become significant. I was on the small blind with Tc7s, a tight player to my left on the big blind with a relatively short stack, a somewhat loose fit or fold player as UTG, and J.C Tran to my right on the button, also with a short stack. UTG smooth calls and action folds over to J.C Tran who also makes the call. The two calls plus antes, with only one more player left to act behind me, gives me great pot odds to make the call. Big blind checked, and the dealer placed Jc6s5s on the flop. I missed the flop completely with no probable draws, so I checked, and big blind then bets out a small bet of only one fourth the pot. UTG folds, and J.C Tran calls.

At this point, I read big blind for a J or a 6 with a strong kicker, and J.C Tran for possible flush or straight draw. This put me in a good position for a squeeze play. I raised a very significant amount, about 5 times the bet of the initial raise, in an attempt to squeeze out either the big blind or J.C Tran. Big blind thinks for some time, then calls, J.C Tran folds. The turn comes an 8h, which gives me a gutshot straight draw. Since the big blind was pretty short stacked, I bet half his stack, he folded, and I showed the bluff.

What made this bluff successful? There were a few factors coming together that made this work. First was the tight image, and the short stack of the big blind. With his stack, he is unlikely to make a move in the tournament, since he's got a limited amount to work with. UTG missed the flop, and was out of position with two more players to act behind him, so calling with even middle pair was not an option. J.C Tran with a short stack, very likely had a decent pair or draw, and with the fantastic pot odds offered to him by the big blind, had to make the call. In my position, making the check-raise, I also used J.C Tran's pro-image to my advantage. Big blind could not have failed to consider the fact that I checked-raised into two players, and one of them a pro player which would mean that I probably had a very strong hand, possibly limping in with small pockets and making my set. With the check-raise, and call by a tight player, J.C Tran could not make the call. The second barrel, very likely forced the big blind to consider the fact that he would very likely have to commit his whole stack by the river, which, compounded by the fact that he was short-stacked, prompted him to fold.

The second bluff was made later in the day, against the tight solid player (from the previous article, in the 77 vs 88 hand) with a relatively short stack, and another deep stacker who just moved over to our table. Tight solid player was UTG, and I was on the button with AKo, out-stacking the UTG and the new player on UTG+2. UTG raised 3xBB, and Johnny Chan to his left folds. The new player who just joined our table raised almost 3.5 times the initial raise, and action folds over to me. I have a very solid hand, but it might not be good against a raise, re-raise. I however, have an excellent position, being last to act on the button with decent odds, so I made the call. Everyone else folds to UTG who thinks for some time, then makes the call, which signaled weakness and a possible hand of small pocket pairs. The flop comes all under 9 and I completely missed again. UTG checks, UTG+2 checks and action was on me.

At this point, I read the situation as a possible slow-play by UTG, calling with pockets and hitting a set, or having smaller pockets with one or two over cards on the flop. UTG+2 almost definitely missed as he was the final aggressor pre-flop, and there would be almost no made hand that he would check after a flop like that. The pot was huge with all the action pre-flop, almost two thirds my stack, and definitely worth making an attempt at. Since I out-stacked both players, I was in no danger of busting, and if I read my opponents correctly, the most I could lose would be the stack of UTG which wouldn't cripple me. Even if I was behind, I would still very likely have outs if an Ace or King came. A small bet of even half the pot would commit me and any callers, so I decided to go all-in for maximum fold equity. UTG thinks for a long time, then folds, and UTG+2 also does the same after much consideration, flipping over AKs!

In this scenario, both the short stack of UTG and the deep stack of UTG+2 worked to my advantage. UTG had to consider putting in all his chips on a possible small pair hand, and with a re-raiser behind him left to act, could not make the call. UTG+2 had AKs, but could not make the call as any pair would leave him with only 6 outs, costing him the tournament if he missed. As even a call of the raise, re-raise preflop indicated a lot of strength, both players must have read me for a decent pair, possibly TT or JJ.

So, in summary, both scenarios had similar conditions. Both involved squeeze plays on short stack players. Both placed the players involved in a decision for all their stack, and both involved showing a lot of strength either pre-flop or on the flop and a strong follow-up bet. In the first scenario, strength was shown with an out of position check-raise and bet on the next street. The second scenario illustrates how you can show strength, even without a raise pre-flop as even a flat call of a raise, large re-raise, generally indicates a huge hand. There were also no showdowns in both scenarios, which meant that even if I was holding 72o, the results would have been the same.

Hope this article helps in the much debated topic of bluffing in Texas Hold'em. As always, comments and feedback are appreciated!

APT Macau 09: Fine Line Between Good Reads and Bad Play

Haven't written much at all last month, and that was because I attended the APT Macau 2009, made day one chip lead, and lost it all in a span of two hours out of the money. Enough to drive anyone to quit poker, well, at least for a while. Not to say that it wasn't a fantastic experience. Grinding out the cash games, meeting great players and interesting people, and of course, playing to qualify for the main event in 3 satellites, making the final table in all three and only qualifying through the very last chance satellites... definitely an experience to remember.

In any case, I've recovered sufficiently to share several hands I played personally in the tournament that I felt was an interesting observation in demonstrating the fine line between good reads and bad play. The very first would be a hand played in the bounty side event against Liz Lieu, who like various Poker Pack members had a bounty of HKD 2.5k on her head. I was UTG with JJ, and raised to 3.5xBB, action folding all the way to Liz in late position who re-raised to 2.5x my raise. I joined the tournament relatively late, so Liz had already accumulated enough chips to out stack me. At that point, a re-raise would not be sufficient for me to release a premium hand like JJ, so I did a light 3-bet of 2.5x her raise, committing about one third of my stack in the process. To my surprise, Liz made a min raise which would force me to commit half my stack if I were to call. I put her on a big pair, but called anyway in the hopes of hitting a set on the flop due to good pot odds. Flop came rainbow, all under 9, I checked, she fired once more and I folded, revealing my Jacks in the process. She asked me in a very surprised manner how I could fold that kind of hand on a flop like that.

I had the opportunity to ask her when she eventually fell to aces later in the tournament about the hand, and she told me in a laughing voice that I should have called. I guess my Jacks were good there, but she played her position and stack advantage in a manner that gave me the decision of placing all my chips on Jacks, or waiting for a better opportunity. I had the honor of making the acquaintance of J.C Tran later in the main event (eventual winner of the bounty event), playing directly on his left, and I asked his opinion on the hand. He told me that he was of the opinion that she had me beat, and folding was not a bad play. What do you readers think?

After qualifying for Day 1B through the last chance satellite, I was placed directly on the left of J.C Tran, and got AdJd for my fourth hand in UTG+1. J.C Tran, who was relatively short stack raised UTG to 2.5xBB, and I decided to be aggressive and re-raised to 3x his raise. The raise succeeded in isolating him, and action folded back to J.C who smooth called. Flop came QXX, and I miss completely, not even having a back door flush draw. He checks, and I fire a continuation bet of roughly 1/3 of the pot which he calls. Turn comes another blank, and I continue my aggression, firing yet another 1/3 of the pot which he calls again. At this point, I had no doubt that he had the Q, and I might be drawing dead to a hand like AQ. River comes an Ace, and he checks yet again. There was no real possibility of a straight or flush on the board, but reading him for AQ, I checked behind. He flipped over KQo, and was frustrated to see that I caught the Ace on the river. He told me later that he was short-stacked, so was content to check-call all the way to the river, and very likely would have called a value bet on the river. A bad read on my part not to value bet? Note that I only bet when I was way behind, and checked when I was actually in front.

This other hand happened on the very same table, about 30 minutes after Johnny Chan joined the table (I know! Playing with the legend, how awesome is that!). I got 88 in early position and raised to 2.5xBB, hoping to steal the blinds which were getting pretty significant at that point. A solid tight player in middle position 3-bet light, and everyone else folds to me and I call. Flop comes J56 rainbow, I checked and he went all-in and this surprised me. I observed his play earlier and noticed that he never risked all his stack, even with a hand like AK top pair top kicker. I out-stacked him, but would be severely crippled by 2/3rds of my stack if I called and he had 99 or better. It was the hand just before the dinner break and J.C Tran said in with a laugh that I should take my time to think so they could go off for dinner. Another guy came by while I was agonizing over my decision, asking Johnny Chan to go with them for dinner, but he said he wanted to see the hand first (cool huh!). I finally decided to call due to the abnormality of his play and he shows 77, my eights held up to double me up. Coming back from dinner, I was lauded for a great call by the table (including the two great players, need I mention their names again :) ), but I was thinking how close it was, and the risk I placed my entire tournament on. Good call? You decide.

Final hand, one that significantly contributed to my crashing out without the money on the second day. I got KhTh in middle position and raised to 2.5xBB with a slightly diminished stack from Day 1, and David Steike (Aussie Millions event 8 winner) who out-stacked me called from SB, everyone else folds. Flop comes Qh7h5h, giving me the K high flush. David checks, I bet a heavier than usual bet of half the pot, and he calls. Turn shows a 6c and David checks again. I bet half the pot again, and to my surprise, David raises me 3.5x my raise, a very significant raise that would commit a total of 30k of my 80k chip stack if I were to call. I was still confident with my hand, as I would only lose to an Ace-high flush. He played the hand like how he would play a set of fives or sevens, and I resolved to put all my chips in on the river unless another hearts came or the board paired, so I called. The river comes a 6s and David fires 20k into the pot out of position, and suddenly I was in a dilemma. If he had the set, he just made a boat. I had the option of trusting in my reads and folding my K-high flush, cutting my losses, or calling and leaving me with 30k (one third of what I started the day with) if my reads were right. I thought for a long time, and decided to choose the former, but it was a tough fold. I never found out what he had, so I leave it to you readers for your opinions on the play. Good fold? Let me know in the comments section.

Hope this shows the intensity of some of the decisions made through out the tournament, and the fine line between good reads and bad play. When does calling down with middle / bottom pair become a good read, and when does it become bad play? When does laying down a flopped K high flush become a good read or bad play?

I'll write more about my APT experiences in future articles, so till then, stay tuned!

Fit or Fold: Pt II - Profit

In our previous article, we discussed Fit or fold (FoF) players, their characteristics and tendencies. This sequel will show how best to play against these players, so if you've read the previous installment, you will know that FoF players are statistically vulnerable, seeing as most flops miss most hands. This means that the money that they put in the pot are usually dead money, and up for grabs for any takers. How do you profit from this? There are a few key points in your game that you need to adjust when you play against these players.

First, your hand range. Fit or fold players have a high hand range, and play more than 60% of their hands from any position. This makes them easy to identify. Note the hands they show down, e.g. 67s, T8o, and simply only play hands that are superior preflop, like KQo. This gives you a significant advantage since you're almost always going into a pot with them with a mathematical edge. Do not fall for the trap of playing a wider hand range from any position as you would need the edge to make your plays profitable. The optimal scenario would be for them to hold something like 98s, and you holding A9o and both hitting the 9 on the flop. Since they are generally passive calling stations, you can easily profit by value betting on all streets.

Second, isolate the FoF player with aggression. You can do this with calculated raises and light 3-bets. Note the general amount that the FoF player would call preflop, and also the other players to the left. When you make your isolation raises, be careful of the non-FoF players who call. They generally have a strong hand, which make them a good target if you have premium hands like AA, KK, QQ or AK. When you have the FoF player isolated, you can make profitable bets against them whether or not you hit the flop, because these players are easy to read and you can easily calculate your odds and outs against them and bet appropriately.

Continuation bets are your key weapon against FoF players. Since you should hardly ever go into a pot without a raise (avoid the FoF tendencies) unless you're trapping, you should play very aggressively against the FoF player after isolating them. Always, always, make a c-bet when they check to you on the flop even if you missed. The c-bet will give you sufficient information on whether the player has hit or missed the flop, and allow you to hit your outs if you missed and are behind, or sweeten the pot if you're ahead. E.g. the FoF player holds 45s, you hold KQo, and the flop comes 256 rainbow. FoF checks and calls your c-bet, and the turn puts a Q on the board. This puts you massively ahead as the FoF player has only 9 outs to beat you on the river. You will win this scenario 80% of the time, so bet accordingly.

Position against the FoF player is very important. FoF players are generally passive, and will call you down with any two cards that have hit the flop sufficiently well. This means that you should always tighten up when you're acting before the FoF player, and loosen up (but still keep your range above that of the FoF player) when you're acting after. If the FoF player bets into you out of position, he would generally have hit the flop and is rarely on a draw. If the FoF player calls your bets in or out of position, they may have hit the flop either by pairing up or having a draw. Note these tendencies and calculate your odds and outs so each of your subsequent bets will be profitable in the long run.

Pot control is crucial when playing against FoF calling stations. Do not get greedy and push the pot up to the point where you're committed to call a raise should the FoF player make his hand. Keep the pot as small as possible until you're sure that you have the best hand, which should only be on the river. This would generally mean that you give a free card on the turn to see where you stand when you get to the river. Once you're certain of your hand, get as much value as you can by making the FoF player pay you off on the final street. Take note of bets that they would call down on the river and make similar value bets.

Last but certainly not least, learn to fold. It's all too easy to get caught up in your aggression and try to push the FoF player off the pot with brute force. This hardly ever works as they are simply calling stations by nature. Since its all too easy to read the FoF player, you should always know when you're behind and fold. All your bets should gain you information, and be mathematically profitable depending on your reads. There's always a luck factor in poker, and any player who's behind can still catch a miracle card and come out in front. Avoid paying the FoF player off any more than you have to.

The final installment of this series will be on how to avoid playing, and thinking like a FoF player. Hope you enjoyed this article. Comments, constructive or otherwise are always welcome.

Fit or Fold: Pt I - Identify

Poker has many different types of players, ranging from the loose aggressive, to the tight passive players, but those have been discussed to death since the dawn of mankind. Fit or Fold players though (hereby referred to as FoF), are a very different species. These players don't usually worry about what their opponent holds, but focus only on making their hand. Their general tendencies are loose passive pre-flop, aggressive if they hit the flop well, and generally fold to a bet if they don't connect.

Does this sound familiar? Yep, this is a genre usually linked with amateurs and beginners. In live or online games alike, these players are always welcome to any table because they are the easiest to profit from. Have you ever seen a player sit down at a poker table, and notice that after an hour or two, their chips have diminished significantly even though they've not been involved actively in many hands, and you wonder where their chips went? Observe them closely for an orbit or two, and you'll find them playing in the exact way that I described. Bleeding chips.

FoF players have a wide range pre-flop. They play with almost any two suited cards, especially those that include a face card. 2 and even 3 gap hole cards are not out of the question either. They call with these cards from any position, regardless of stack sizes or number or players involved in the pot. They "pay to see the flop", then fold to any bet if they miss. These kind of plays are theoretically a mathematical disaster, and I'll explain why.

Statistically, the chance for any two cards to make a pair is 32%. For two suited connector cards, the chance to make a flush draw or open ended straight draw is about 11%, and after that about 30% to complete the draw if play continues to the river. This sounds good until you realize that the chance for any two hole cards to miss the flop completely is more than 60%! This means that for any unpaired hole cards that are lower than your opponent's hole cards, you need good pot odds for these bets to be profitable in the long run.

For example, if the FoF player holds cards like J9s, and calls a raise against KQo, he's about a 3 to 1 underdog pre-flop. For this to be a profitable bet, he will need at least 2.5 to 1 odds (read about odds and percentages here). Change the FoF opponent's cards to a higher pair like QQ and you're looking at a minimum of 5 to 1 odds for the bet to be profitable. So, taking all that into consideration, imagine the effect on your stack if you call most bets only to fold more than 60% of the time on the flop! That's when you will hear complaints from these players saying that they are running bad, not even hitting the flop etc, when most of the time, their losses are just due to bad play.

The next article on this topic will be on ways to take advantage of these kind of players and benefit the most from them. Stay tuned. As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Minimizing Losses Pt:2

First off, I'd like to apologize for not updating the blog the past three days. I have been involved in a crazy live poker schedule, and barely slept. To top it all off, I had to compensate for being away from work for a week; Yes, I do have a job!

Thanks for all the comments on the previous article. It definitely helps to know that my articles are being read! Please use the reaction checkboxes to help me gauge the article quality, and improve on site content, and if you really like the article, Digg it.

Now all that's out of the way, back to business at hand. The answer to the last hand posted was this. The CO had the flush on the turn, K high, and was trapping. He was probably also applying pot control, as there could possibly be an Ac out there, which might make a higher flush on the river. This was a great scenario to illustrate minimizing losses as it happens on both sides. To minimize losses on my end, I had to raise the turn, and fold the river. For the CO, he minimized (potential) losses by making a small bet on the turn, in case another clubs or paired card came on the river. Of course, in this particular scenario, I did not minimize my losses, and called the bet.

Pot control plays a huge role in minimizing losses. We have been talking about pot control so often, but what exactly is it? Pot control is when you know you're possibly ahead, but could be behind when the cards on the other streets come. Here's an example to illustrate this. This happened in a live game $2/$5, 8 handed table. I was on the button with 57o, and everyone from UTG folded to the CO who called. I had fantastic position here, and wanted to isolate the CO who has demonstrated that he was a loose passive player in previous hands, only getting aggressive when the opponent shows weakness. I raised to 4xBB, and SB folds, but BB surprisingly calls.

I have played with BB a lot, and consider him to be a solid player, which immediately made me wary for what he might have called me with out of position. BB had also been calling a lot of raises, so I put him on a wider range than I usually would. The flop comes 3d4d6d, which gave me the nut straight but placed a possible flush on board. I have a very aggressive reputation, and would usually place a c-bet, so action was checked to me. This would have been a very good opportunity to cash in on my reputation, as most players in a hand with me in that particular live game would generally call my c-bet regardless of what they had. However, this was also a drawback as they might outdraw me on the turn or river. This fact, coupled with the dangerous board called for pot control, so I checked.

The turn was a Qh, which may have helped either the BB or CO. BB checks, and CO bets half the pot, making it $35 to call. I call and BB calls, which makes the pot slightly less than $200. River puts a Kc on the board, which by now has me convinced that I have the best hand. BB checks once again, and CO folds without bothering to wait for me to bet or check (a strange move but a money saving one). I put a value bet of $125 into the pot, same as what I had been doing in previous hands with bluffs which was called down. BB called and mucked his hand once I showed my straight, and I took down the pot.

Would you readers have played this hand any differently? Let me know your views in the comments section.

Minimizing Losses Pt:I

Have you ever been in a hand where you think you flopped the best, only to discover you were way behind and drawing practically dead to the actual nuts on the flop? I have; countless (and I mean that literally) times. In those situations, are you destined to lose a lot of money? I believe otherwise. Poker is a game of maximizing your wins when you're ahead, and minimizing your losses when you're behind.

This is a hand I played a couple of days ago, with Ah9h on UTG in a 6-max $0.25/$0.50 game. I raised 3xBB, and action folds to cut-off (CO) who calls, and the rest folds, 2 players to the flop. The flop comes Ac9d2c, giving me aces up. I decide to slowplay as I had been raising quite a bit in the previous hands, which makes this a good time to seem defensive. CO raises to $3, and I happily called. The turn comes 3h which is largely irrelevant, so I decide that my hand is relatively safe. I check, CO raises to $6.50, and I re-raised to $13, having about $14 left in my stack. He puts me all in, and I call only to see I was facing a set of deuces. The river was no help.

As you can see, I was way behind on the flop from the word go. With only 4 possible outs, I had only 8% to win the hand by the river. Yet, I thought I was ahead, and even tried to slow-play my hand. Could I have avoided losing my whole stack to this hand? Maybe. The set of deuces was extremely well disguised, and aces up is a tough hand to fold. I was blinded by the apparent strength of my hand, and disregarded the fact that my opponent could have caught a better flop than me. We can probably coin a new term here - Poker Blindness: A condition where you think you have the best hand without consideration to the strength of your opponents.

With hindsight, and without being poker blind, this would have been the best way to play the hand. The raise on UTG was correct, effectively pushing out most limpers, and drawing in one player to go heads up. CO flat calls a UTG raise, which shows some strength as he could be slow-playing big pockets (unlikely) or holding high suited connectors (JT), and small pocket pairs. Small pocket pairs are generally the best hands to limp in with as you could probably flop a very well disguised monster, while being able to fold if you miss. This is called set-mining. In very rare occasions would a set miner re-raise with small pockets due to the danger of being 3 bet and thus forced to fold.

The check on the flop was also correct as I could have the best hand, but when CO bet, I should have re-raised. If CO then goes over the top, it would be very apparent that he could only be playing with a set, AK and flush draw being very unlikely as he would have raised preflop with the former, and flat called with the latter. If CO decides to be tricky and calls the raise, I could then check the turn, and fold if he bets out strongly as a flush draw would very likely check the turn as well. Strange as it sounds, check-raising postflop would have saved me the most money.

The following hand illustrates an actual played-out situation very relevant to the current topic. I had pocket 8s on SB, in a 6-max 0.25/0.50 game. UTG had just sat down and paid blinds, so the inital pot without any bets was $1.25. UTG checks, UTG+1 folds, CO calls, button folds, I call and BB checks; 4 players to the flop which comes Kd5c8c, giving me middle set. Action is checked to CO who bets $1. I call to represent a flush draw, and the rest folds. 4c comes on the turn, and I check again to CO who bets $3. I flat called again, making the pot $10. River comes 3d, and I check once more to CO who goes all in for my whole stack of $21.25.

What would you readers do if you were in my position, and why? What do you think the CO had, and would you have played the hand any differently? Leave your answers in the comments section, or email me at entropically.driven@gmail.com. I will provide the actual hand and outcome in Part II of this article.