Giving Up

No, I’m not giving up poker. Quite the opposite. What I am learning to give up however, are two things during the game of poker, made hands, and bluffs.

I wrote the above 2 months ago as an opener for an article I had in mind, then forgot all about it. Not too long ago though, there was this hand I was involved in that reminded me of why I wanted to write about this again.

This happened in a live game at the Poker Empire. I was holding ATs in late position on the cut-off. Mid position raised to 4x BB, and I decided to be a bit more aggressive and 3-bet him to 12xBB. All limpers folded and we see a flop of AQ8. This was a dream flop for me as Q8 were of the same suit as my hole cards, so I had a pair of aces and a flush draw. Original raiser checks to me, and I bet slightly less than 2/3rds the pot, and he calls. Turn comes a K which makes my nut flush. He checks again, and I again bet 2/3rds of the pot which he calls. At this point, I read him for a pair of Qs on the flop, making two pair on the turn with a KQ holding, or he could have been holding an ace like AJ or smaller. The river then comes another K and he suddenly makes a bet of 2/5th the pot. This was in-line with my read of KQ, but I found it hard to lay down my hand. I had incredible value to call, and my hand beats almost another other possible hand he could have been holding except AK, which was extremely unlikely. I made the call, and he flips over KQ to take down the pot.

This could have been labeled as a cooler, and I would usually just write it off as something that could not be avoided. Not now though. Playing based on reads is a very important skill in poker. Without hand reading, you would only be playing your own hands. And since you would only be making a hand about 30% of the time, and making a better hand than your opponent even less, you would actually be losing more money than you’d be making if you only played your own hands.

In this particular scenario, I could have saved myself some money by folding my flush to a more than probable full house. Losing as little as you can when you’re behind, while winning the most that you can while you’re in front is the key to profitable poker.

Another thing I am working on giving up is bluffs. There are times when double or triple barrel bluffs are profitable, and those times are rare. Have you ever been in a situation where you keep firing, but your opponent just won’t fold? These are times you should look back to see if your bluffs made sense. When ever you try to make a bluff, your opponent should feel that he cannot beat your hand and fold. If you can’t make your opponent believe that, your bluffs are bound to be non-profitable. Pick your spots to bluff, and don’t just push money in the pot and hope that your opponent will fold.

Till next time, may you always give up when you should!

Avoid Building Pots…

With small holdings. I was tilting again 3 days ago (and I thought I’d kicked the habit) and this friend told me, “stop building big pots with your small hands”, or something to that effect, and that phrase registered with me like it hadn’t before.

We need to first define what is meant by a small hand/holding. Based on personal experience, this would mean a pair or smaller. This includes over-pairs, though they are obviously stronger. When a pot gets to a certain size in relation to the effective size of the stacks in play, the hands you showdown with should improve relatively. Effective stack is a term usually used to refer to the smallest, most relevant, stack of a player remaining in the hand. For example, if UTG raises with a stack of 2k behind, and action folds to button with a 1k stack, who calls and everyone else folds, the effective stack involved would be 1k.

This was a hand I played a week ago in a live cash game. The game has been going on for about 2 hours and I have been raising aggressively on the button, showing down some mediocre hands. The button came around to me again, and I got AsKs, with a live straddle in effect. There were a couple of limpers before action was on me, and I made a raise to 6xBB. The blinds folded, UTG (straddle) calls, and the first limper folds while the second limper calls. UTG is a hyper-maniac who plays and raises any two cards from any position, second limper is a solid TAG who generally plays online more than live games (coincidentally the same friend who told me told me to avoid building big pots with small hands).

My stack size was roughly 200BB, while UTG had 250BB and TAG had 170BB. The flop comes Ad9d7c, and action was checked to me. I made my standard continuation bet of 3/4ths the pot, and UTG folds while TAG calls. An 8s comes on the turn, and TAG bets 1/2 the pot, about 30BB. At this point, the remaining effective stacks were about 110BB, should I choose to call that 30BB bet. With his general style of play, he would not have bet into me with a mere pair, but would probably have check-called. Thus the only likely hands he would have been holding considering the flop call would be A8, 98 or JT. All three hands have me beat badly; my AK hand would technically only be able to beat a bluff. I shoved all-in and he calls. He shows 98 to take down the pot.

While my hand had decent showdown equity, I believe calling the turn bet would be a bad play. With a hyper-aggressive player like UTG, AK would generally have been good enough to play for a large pot, but when you’re up against a solid TAG, and he’s betting into you after your initial aggression, chances are good that you’re behind. While raising all-in maximizes fold equity there, the effective stacks weren’t deep enough to force a fold from a hand as strong as two pair. In fact, considering my aggressive image on the button, effective stacks would have to be massive to force a fold from two pair. Thus, raising all-in was also a bad play. The only available move should be to fold.

With this in mind, folding over pairs like Aces or Kings becomes easier (but not by much, at least for me!). I used to like to think that when I get Aces or Kings, I just want to get all my money in regardless of the flop turn or river, because I should statistically win 70-80% of the time. These hands are only superior preflop, and if all the money goes in preflop, you should win or lose with no regrets. After the flop however, the hands have to be re-evaluated for equity, taking into consideration your position, your opponent’s position, effective stacks, pot size etc.

Till next time, may you always showdown in big pots with massive made hands!

On Coolers & Scare Cards

Live games are always very different from online games. Online games takes advantage of the fact that you can manage multiple tables at the same time, increasing your win rate through data-mining and pushing your edges. With live games, you rarely have that luxury, seeing much lesser hands than when online, and thus making it necessary for you to loosen up and play more hands than you would generally play.

It’s in live cash games that you get caught in more cooler hands than you would care to be in,  simply because hitting the flop strongly isn’t a common occurrence, and thus, you would tend to over-play hands that would be considered “moderate strength” hands in online play. Take for example this hand I played in a live cash game yesterday. I held AcTc pre-flop in middle position, with a very healthy chip stack, over-stacking all the players at the table. Action was folded to me, and I made the usual opening raise of 4xBB. I got three callers, including the blinds, and we went 4 way to the flop, which was Ad8s3d. Small blind  (a slightly loose player) went all in with a pretty deep stack, over-betting the pot 3x. Big blind folded and action was on me. AcTc on this board beats many hands that my opponent would have shoved with, so I made the call, and he showed me AJo, which held up to take the pot.

Admittedly,  his play was extremely unconventional, as he would only get value from a hand like the one I held, while forcing many other hands to fold, and reducing value, but this is the kind of play you can expect at live games. Hands like these increase the variance of playing lives games, so you will need to maximize value in pots that you win in order to overcome the losses you incur through coolers, bad beats and the inevitable mistakes.

As mentioned in an earlier article, bluffing is an integral part of maximizing value for your made hands. On that very same night, I was caught up in a three way pot with pocket queens on the cutoff. Action was folded over to the hi-jack, who raised 5xBB. I decided to slow-play my pair, and flatted, which resulted in the button also making a call. The flop was all under Q, with a flush draw and no cards above 9. Hi-jack makes a continuation bet, and I decide the flush draw was too dangerous to allow for further slow-play. I raised 3.5x his raise, and to my surprise, button flatted. Hi-jack folded after much hemming and hawing. Turn throws a T on to the board, which would also have completed any flush draw. I had already invested about one third of my stack, and decided to bet another one third of my stack to see if he had the flush (he would raise me if he had, since my bet was so strong). He flat called, and the turn put yet another card of the same suit on the table (none of my Qs were of the same suit). I decided to go for it and went all in with the remainder of my stack, which was about 3/4ths of the pot. He folded.

I later discovered that he actually made a straight on the turn, but didn’t raise due to the possible flush. The last card was enough of a scare card to weaken his resolve and allow me to bluff him off the best hand. This illustrates the fact that huge bluffs are often successful if you make them when situations are favorable to your bluffs. Some players attempt to “bluff” by making random big bets, and hoping their opponent folds, when the board isn’t conducive to a bluff. These are the times when you stand to lose your entire stack on a badly timed bluff, something I’ve been guilty of a lot in the past. That very night, I saw a player who had quadrupled his stack lose it all in a badly timed bluff that got called by his opponent who only had second pair!

Considering how tough online games are getting, it’s a nice change to play in softer live games for a change of scene. Try it some time, though take care to always play aggressively and in position! Check out the shot of this hand, the very first straight-flush to showdown in the live game I played in (Poker Empire!), and that was directly after the very same player flopped quad kings!

 

Bluffing for Value

Bluffing is an integral part of poker, and something a lot of players either over-do, or do too little. What exactly constitutes as “bluffing”? Simply put, bluffing in poker is to try and make your opponent believe that you have a better hand than he does. This is usually done in the form of bets, or the not-so-usual verbal connotations.

Let’s face it, the number of times you actually make a hand in poker is far and few between. A large number of hands you enter pots with usually end up missing the flop, and if you don’t “bluff”, you will usually end up folding when your opponent bets, simply because you believe he has a better hand than you do. This means that, most of the time, you will lose money by entering a pot, if you don’t bluff. A player that doesn’t bluff is also very vulnerable, as his hands are practically transparent to any semi-decent poker player, simply because he never puts money into the pot without a made hand. Thus, the easy way of countering these kind of players is to avoid paying them off, and fold most hands to them. How do these players lose money then? Usually by bad beats, mistakes, cooler hands and such, which all poker players face, but they can’t offset due to their meager wins.

Another reason to bluff is to disguise or rather, balance your play. If you occasionally raise with your worst hands, your hand strength will be hidden when you raise with your premium hands. Your opponents can’t simply fold to your bets anymore, or they risk getting run over. The key here though, is to keep a consistent betting amount for your bluffs and your premium hands. Some players bet overly large or overly small when they bluff, and do the exact opposite when they actually have a hand.

Bluffing adds value to your play, by forcing your opponents to pay you off when you have a hand. Make sure though, that you don’t keep bluffing at pots, so much so that you are called down by almost any player. Instead, limit your bluffs to times when you have an edge, like position, a board that’s friendly to bluff at, e.g. you raise with junk on the button and a rainbow disconnected flop with an Ace hits the board, you raise again to bluff opponents off their hand. Bluffing also adds value to your play, by giving you additional information about your opponents while keeping the strength of your own hand hidden.

An example of how bluffing can give you an edge happened a couple of nights before in a live game I was playing. Blinds were $2/$5, and I was on the button with Q9 suited. A few players limped into the pot, and I made a raise of about 6xBB. All players folded except one, a tight, and extremely passive player. His stack was relatively short compared to the pot, roughly 3 times the amount. The flop came 3s2c2h, he bet into me, and I re-raised him all-in. He calls with A3s, a Queen comes on the turn to put me in the lead and I take his stack. This was observed by all players at the table. After one orbit of play, I get J8s on the button, while there was a player who straddled. After the usual few players limped in, I again made a 6xBB raise. The blinds folded, and the player who straddled, went all in. His stack was again about 2.5 times the pot after I made the raise, which gave me the odds to call if he was making a move or even if he was holding two over cards. I chose to call to advertise my strategy. I lost that pot. Payback came when I got pocket Qs the very next orbit, once again on the button. I made a raise and a player shoved into me, I call, and my queens held up to take the pot.

Note that most of my “bluffs” were done from the button (the canonical position to bluff), which generally gave me a significant edge over my opponents simply because they would have to act before I did. Also note that you have to display your “bluffs” to let your opponent know you’re actually bluffing. Sometimes, if it doesn’t cost too much, it’s worth it to play to outdraw on your opponents, simply to do a bit of advertising, and get some implied odds on all future hands, e.g., you value bet the river as a bluff and get called, but your next value bet is for a monster made hand and you make the maximum amount.

This was a pretty unstructured article, but I hope I managed to convey the necessity and value of bluffing in poker. Till the next time, may all your bluffs succeed!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

To Be Lucky or to Be Skillful?

A few days back, a friend asked me a rather interesting question: If you had 100%, how would you distribute this on 2 stats, being lucky or being skillful. This brought out a small debate amongst us as he thought being skillful would give you the edge over the lucky person in most situations.

So, this prompted me to ask you readers, which would you rather be if you were playing a game of poker? Be Lucky or Be Skillful? Or maybe to some of you neutrals, be half lucky and half skillful?

The strange thing about a game of poker is no matter how good you are, or how skillful you may be, there will be days where you hit a bad run, or you just get constantly bad beat. And regardless the number of times you spin those scenarios in your head, hoping to see which plays you perhaps did wrongly, you find yourself confirming that you did everything right. You had the best hole cards. You hit the best possible flop you would ever dreamed of. You played the best way possible, every single step of the way. And yet you end up losing. How is that possible?

Interestingly enough, that very special friend of mine pointed out a game scenario to show me how a skillful person would easily beat the lucky person in a game of poker. Say for example we have Sean, a very skillful poker player, holding his AK non suited against Landon, our lucky person who was holding pocket J. Sean would start out manipulating the situation by raising preflop. Landon, being lucky and excited would just plainly call. You would not expect a re-raise from Landon here as he knows very little about the game. The flop comes out TJQ rainbow. This puts Sean in a great position here as he immediately hit his straight on the flop. Realising that he probably has the best hand here, Sean attempts to entice more money from Landon by putting in value bets. On the turn, a J is revealed letting Landon hit the quads. Now, this is where the debate is in full swing. My friend argued that Landon would fold if Sean put in a strong bet on the turn. His argument was solely based that a significant bet from Sean would indicate Sean has a strong hand and Landon, the lucky and non-skillful player of the game would fold on the reason that he thinks his pocket J is not good enough to beat Sean's hole cards. How many of you would agree this is true?

Now instead, try looking at it this way. Landon being only lucky and having no skill on how to play the game would figure he has 50% chance in any hand and he should just call all the way. He doesn't understand why one would raise so he would just merely call. The flop TJQ has no meaning what so ever to Landon. He has no thought that his opponent may hit the nuts. He has no idea what his opponent really has. To Landon, Sean's hole cards could be anything from QQ to AA or even 23.

So, how should Sean play from pre-flop, to the flop, and all the way to the river to win this hand. The answer would be regardless how Sean manipulates each betting round, he would still lose.

In a game of poker I played just recently, UTG and UTG+1 limps in pre-flop. There were 2 folds in between me and UTG+1. With pocket Aces and on the button, I raised 6xBB pre-flop. SB and BB folded. UTG folded. UTG+1 called. The flop opened out 6T2. UTG+1 checks and I raise, he shoves all in and I call. My opponent showed me a 62 off suite. The final turn and river cards were irrelevant. So, in this example, my raise of 6BB pre-flop didnt mean anything to him while holding 62 off suite. On the flop, he got lucky and hit 2 pairs while I played as if I had him. Bummer!

I only wish I was the guy with the 100% luck.