I expect Villain’s flop raise to be his only barrel if he is bluffing. That is, he’s usually going to check down his air and bet only if the river improves his hand to one that beats mine.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (4 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (SB) ($709.80)
BB ($4005.10)
UTG ($413)
Button ($798.50)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, 7
2 folds, Hero bets $16, BB calls $12

Flop: ($32) 9, 7, 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $24, BB raises to $72, Hero calls $48

Turn: ($176) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks

River: ($176) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $124, Hero raises to $621.80 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: $424 | Rake: $2

Results:
Hero didn’t show K, 7 (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won $422  Read the complete post...

It was one year ago today that my girlfriend and I left our apartment in Boston and became officially homeless. For the past year we’ve been without permanent residence, living out of a Subaru Forester, camping, renting garages and spare rooms when we can, and staying in hotels when there’s poker to be played or coached.

It’s been an exciting and eye-opening experience. We’ve visited a lot of cool places including about a dozen national parks, visited some old friends in new places and met two new babies- guess I’m at that age where my peers are starting to pop them out, and gotten a better feel for parts of the country that we barely knew before. I’d never been to the American South or the Pacific Northwest, and I ended up liking the former a lot better than I expected and the latter somewhat less (though I’m just getting to know it).  Read the complete post...

The second installment of my trip report from the main event of the 2010 World Series of Poker, covering Days 3 and 4, has just been published in the September issue of 2+2 Magazine. Here’s an excerpt:

I came into Day 4 with a monster stack relative to the field. I had over 500,000 chips, when the average was about 180,000, ranking me 27th among the more than 1,200 players who remained. Day 4 was a particularly good day for this, as it was also the day that would separate the players who would win nothing from those who would take home at least $19,000. With 747 players to be paid, no one wanted to be eliminated in 748th place (or 762nd, for that matter), which meant that most people were playing more conservatively than usual.  Read the complete post...

Thanks for all your help so far in generating this list. Now that I’ve got a revised version of it, let me try to explain a bit more about what I’m going for here.

I believe that a bet or raise should always have an objective (or objectives), and that you should know your objective(s) before betting. This is crucial both to decide whether to bet at all and to size your bets appropriately. In theory, one ought to be able to write an equation for the value of a bet as a function of some combination of factors on this list.

For example, if I make a pot-sized shove with As Qd on an Qh Ts 5s flop in a heads up pot, I believe the value of that bet would be equal to

Value + Protection + Deception  Read the complete post...

Last week’s double float cost me about half my chips on the first hand of the $700 NAPT-Los Angeles satellite and was not so popular with the commenters. Here’s a similar bluff somewhat deeper in the same tournament this week. Our Villain is a slightly better target: I couldn’t tell you much about his playstyle, but overall I believe he’s a better player than last week’s Villain. I described the previous opponent as a 3rd tier Pocket Fiver, and this guy would be closer to top tier, maybe tier 1.5

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 530 Tournament, 250/500 Blinds 25 Ante (8 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

MP2 (t38150)
CO (t19145)
Button (t46070)
Hero (SB) (t15484)
BB (t40291)
UTG (t10654)
UTG+1 (t16138)
MP1 (t29062)

Hero’s M: 16.30

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, K
1 fold, UTG+1 bets t1250, 4 folds, Hero calls t1000, 1 fold  Read the complete post...

3 spots pay

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 109 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 50 Ante (4 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (UTG) (t8288)
Button (t219)
SB (t4401)
BB (t17092)

Hero’s M: 10.36

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 8, 8
Hero calls t400, Button calls t169 (All-In), SB calls t200, BB bets t17042 (All-In), 2 folds

Flop: (t1569) Q, 10, K (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t1569) J (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t1569) 4 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t1569

Results:
Button had 8, 10 (one pair, tens).
BB had A, A (straight, Ace high).
Outcome: BB won t1569

Anything other than checking it down all the way here is just preposterously bad and demonstrates a really fundamental lack of understanding of satellite strategy. This was surprising because Villain is a Team PokerStars Online Pro who plays a ton of these things and had otherwise played quite well as we approached the bubble.  Read the complete post...

Their flawless software that is now the best and most secure in the industry apparently produced this little gem in the UBOC O/8 event the other day. The bet sizes were all screwed up, enabling people to limp in for 15 at the 50/100 level, and for the player in the Big Blind to move all in. Their response was to cancel the tournament, refund buy-ins, and offer a freeroll for affected players with about $10,000 in UBOC championship event buy-ins added.

Thanks to TwoPlusTwo poster FreeFalling for this awesome image!

I was telling my girlfriend about the latest online poker gossip/scandal involving an alleged chatlog in which Thorladen and Imperium discuss multi-accounting with the help of services like GoToMyPC that allow you to access other computers remotely from a different computer anywhere in the world. The basic idea, and something that has surely happened dozens of times whether these two actually did it or not, is for a very good tournament player to stake several decent but less-good tournament players in super-profitable online events like the WCOOP or the FTOPS. Should one of the horses start to get deep in the tournament, the better player can take over for the decisions that will have the biggest impact on the team’s EV.

“They’re like poker fluffers,” she quipped without missing a beat. “They get it started, and then the pro comes in to finish it off. You’d have to be a pretty big tool to agree to something like that, not just ethically but like… as a matter of personal respect.”  Read the complete post...