From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher

This time last year, I set four major poker goals for myself. It's time now to review and evaluate the year in light of those goals:

Goal 1: Make $X Playing Poker Failed

Sorry, but as usual, I don't want to specify my exact goal or my exact income. I will say, though, that the goal was very ambitious, and I ended up making only a little more than 60% of what I hoped to make. This was largely a matter of not putting in enough hours. My goal assumed both a range of hours I might average playing in a week and a range of what I hoped an hour of playing poker would be worth to me in 2007. I ended up at the low end of my hourly rate, but the real problem was that I was hoping to play 30-40 hours a week and ended up playing a little less than 25. There's a graph of my cumulative profits at the end of this post.

Goal 2: Be a Winner at 10/20 NL Achieved

I was playing 3/6 NL when I played cash towards the end of 2006, but that was also about the time that the UIGEA passed and the games got tougher. I ended up dropping down as low as .5/1 NL and working my way back up. A few months ago, I was not optimistic that I would achieve this, but I have. Although I'm not at the point where I'll just sit down in any 10/20 NL game that's going, with good game selection and over a small sample size, I've been a pretty substantial winner at 10/20 and 10/25 NL. Specifically, I'm at 10.3 BB/100 over 3000 hands. And that actually doesn't count two of my most profitable heads up sessions whose hand histories I failed to grab (stupid UB).

Goal 3: Master Other Forms of Poker Achieved
This one was a little more vague, but I wanted to be good enough to beat some Stud games at some of the higher limits and to be comfortable playing the smaller WSOP events in these games. I didn't end up playing any of these WSOP events, but I think I definitely would have been profitable in the Razz and Stud/8 events, and I did final table major PLO8 and Stud/8 internet tournaments.

I'm at 2.5 BB/100 at 15/30 Razz (though I'm a loser at 20/40 and 30/60- all three over small samples), I'm a big winner at 3/6, 5/10, and 10/20 Stud/8. To my surprise, I ended up having the most success at PLO and PLO8, which were two of my worst games until very recently. Over 7K hands, stakes from 1/2 to 5/10, I'm running at 6 BB/100.

Goal 4: Start a Poker Blog Achieved

I've really enjoyed writing this, and I think it's helped my game tremendously to review and articulate my play every day. I'm especially flattered that I've managed to keep the attention of some non-poker players, such as my father, my friend Mike, and his father, who nevertheless tell me they enjoy keeping up with my exploits. For the sake of 'the outsiders', I should explain the BB/100 notation. BB actually stands for big bet, which is twice the size of the big blind. It's a term that originated in fixed limit poker and doesn't transfer well to NL and PL games.

So when I say I'm running at 2.5 BB/100 at 15/30 Razz, that means that I've made 2.5 * $30 = $75 for every 100 hands I've played of Razz at those stakes. But 10 BB/100 at 10/20 NLHE means I've made 10*$20*2 = $400 for every 100 hands I play of NLHE at those stakes. These large numbers are owing to a small sample size over which I've enjoyed some above average luck and also some extreme selectiveness about which games I'll play. In other words, I make this much because I only play this high when the games are particularly good. I can't just sit down and make that kind of money whenever I want.

Other Accomplishments and Disappointments

1. Cashing for a second time in the main event of the World Series of Poker was of course a huge thrill. If you haven't already, you should check out the trip report. I think it's some of the best writing I've done.

2. Although I spent an entire day at the ESPN feature table during the 2006 World Series of Poker, I actually saw more air time this year when I eliminated well-known professional Barry Greenstein. The autographed copy of his book that he gave me is a treasured souvenir from the experience.

3. Every Sunday, the major internet poker sites all offer their largest tournaments of the weak with buyins ranging from $100-$1000 and some drawing thousands of entrants. I spend most of my Sundays grinding my way through for five or ten of these and end most of my Sundays with suicidal ideations. That's how frustrating it is trying to navigate these huge fields. But I did finally win one of them last month, the $200K Guarantee on Ultimate Bet.

4. In March, the editor of 2+2 Internet Magazine invited me to start contributing to the monthly publication. I've published an article in every issue since, and my 11th should be published tomorrow. Even though it's just an internet magazine, the pay is decent, and it's very flattering to be affiliated with the publishers of what are, in my opinion, the highest quality poker books on the market.

5. My biggest disappointment of the year was not winning satellites to any international tournaments. I had a great time last year at EPT Barcelona, and while I didn't play a ton of satellites, I played enough that even as a break-even player it was more likely than not that I would have won something. The closest I came was finishing fourth in a tournament where the top two were going to get seats. I lost a coin flip to a guy who made what I consider a pretty bad call with AK.

6. Despite a few big wins, my Return on Investment in tournaments this year was a fairly lackluster 23%. It's pretty much impossible ever to play enough tournaments to get a meaningful sample size, but I think my true ROI is probably around 50%, meaning that I experienced considerably below average luck in the 872 tournaments I played this year.

Year-Long Graph

This pretty well reflects the mix of tournaments and cash games that I play. I win pretty consistently at cash games, slowly growing my bankroll and offsetting frequent, small tournament losses. Then occasionally I make a big score in a tournament- you can see clearly where the WSOP and the UB 200K occurred.

Tomorrow, I'll have another post about my poker goals and resolutions for the New Year.

Labels: personal, poker

Stumble It!

This was my bust-out hand from yesterday's $300 weekly on Poker Stars. This is a minor point, but there's almost no downside to doing it, so it's worth considering:

Poker Stars, $300 + $20 NL Hold'em Tournament, 300/600 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: 9,634
SB: 30,900
Hero (BB): 5,625
UTG: 18,341
UTG+1: 18,050
UTG+2: 11,081
MP1: 21,885
MP2: 15,364
CO: 22,067

Pre-Flop: (1,350) A K dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG raises to 1,750, 4 folds, CO calls 1,750, 2 folds, Hero raises to 2,900, UTG raises to 5,775, CO calls 4,025, Hero calls 2,675 and is All-In

Flop: (17,875) 8 2 7 (3 Players - 1 is All-In)
UTG checks, CO bets 16,242 and is All-In, UTG folds

Turn: (17,875) 9 (2 Players - 2 are All-In)

River: (17,875) 2 (2 Players - 2 are All-In)

Results: 17,875 Pot
Hero showed A K (a pair of Deuces) and LOST (-5,625 NET)
CO showed 9 9 (a full house, Nines full of Deuces) and WON 17,875 (+12,050 NET)

If there weren't two players in the pot already, I would just move all in pre-flop. I'm in good shape versus anyone's calling range, and I'm also happy taking it down preflop. In this spot, though, I've got almost no chance of winning without a showdown.

What I want, then, is to do everything in my power to showdown against only one opponent rather than two. I don't really have enough chips to accomplish this on my own, so I need to give the other players in the pot every opportunity to help me out. By only reraising the minimum pre-flop, I give myself the opportunity to re-open the betting again after the flop.

In other words, what I don't want to happen is for both players to call my all in pre-flop and then check it down all the way. I'd rather one of the players isolated me and knocked the other guy out. That's really what they both ought to want also, but many dumb players think they are supposed to check it down. If I raise less than all-in pre-flop and they both call, I can move all in after the flop. This makes it more likely that the first player to act after me will raise rather than call in a situation where he may have checked otherwise. Hell, he might even fold! It's a longshot, but there's really no drawback to leaving yourself some chips to try something like this, so it doesn't have to make a difference very often to make it a better play than just shoving at the first opportunity.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

The Razz chapter of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition is presented in a unique way, with Michael Craig summarizing, narrating, and quoting a conversation between Ted Forrest and Huck Seed. Given my extensive involvement with competitive debate, it's probably no surprise that I find this a very promising format. I only wish that Craig had played a more active moderating role in order to encourage the two pros to delve deeper into their differences and explore their competing perspectives. What we get instead is a series of hastily explained concepts that are usually thought-provoking, occasionally misleading, and sometimes even both.

One thing upon which both players agree is the importance of the exposed cards in determining how to play on 3rd street. Obviously I knew this was a factor to consider, but their conversation really hammered home what a huge consideration they could be, in extreme cases making a three-card seven either unplayable or a favorite over A-2-3. As Forrest puts it, "When the good players get aggressive, you can put them on duplicated cards in the hole. When a beginning player gets aggressive, it's more likely he has A-2 in the hole." Unfortunately, the chapter examines only extreme examples. It would be interesting to know how 4-5-7 rates against A-2-3 when there are two dead 4's and a dead 7 instead of three 4's, three 5's, and three 7's.

The pair consider other 3rd street decisions such as how to defend the bring-in and how to adjust to larger or smaller antes. To my surprise, they both contradicts Sklansky's well-known advice to never open limp in Razz and suggest open limping for a variety of reasons: to trap an aggressive player, to cut down on variance, to set up a cheap steal on 4th street, or to see what the other low cards do before getting overly involved.

The question of courting variance by pushing edges on early streets versus playing cautiously and passing up favorable odds in order to maintain a stack proves a contentious one. Seed recalls some tournaments where he was able to steal his way to the final table with no big confrontations and argues that when the stealing is good, "I don't want to gamble with a certain percentage of my stack." He even claims he would pitch a live A-2-3 on 3rd with a raise and reraise in front of him simply to avoid playing a big pot, even as a substantial favorite.

Forrest clearly disagrees and insists that even good players need to gamble when they have big odds in their favor. Craig quotes a longish conversation on the subject, but it is disappointingly lacking in substance. Instead of delving into the details of how an edge might be won back later or what situations, if any, might be passed, the two ask each other loaded questions and repeat tired tournament cliches. Forrest gets in a good last word, though: "I think I could make money playing Huck's discards."

The entire passage proves misleading because they never mention that only an exceptional player like Seed should even consider passing on a profitable spot in any kind of tournament. There's a very real danger that inexperienced readers may take Seed's advice out of context and make some atrocious folds as a result.

Their discussion is much more productive on the subject of playing a short stack. Both ask and answer some good questions about how short is short and how one should play with stacks of various sizes.

Overall, however, there are a lot more questions than answers, in no small part because the two men never explore in-depth their disagreements with each other and with other authors on the subject. There's insufficient discussion, for instance, of the survival versus accumulation debate and no mention of Sklanky's well-known objection to open-limping, despite the affinity of both pros for the play. Given how well suited the dialectic format is for investigating differences of opinion, these are particularly glaring omissions

Also absent is almost any discussion of how to play after 3rd street, even how to handle such common situations as a strong starting hand that bricks on 4th, what to do when you appear to catch well but actually pair a hole card, what to do when both players brick 4th in a heads up pot, how to handle various draws on 5th and 6th streets, and how to play the river. It might be argued that this chapter is just a glimpse into an interesting conversation between two top pros and not intended as a comprehensive introduction to tournament razz. That would be fine if there were another chapter that covered the game in a more traditional way.

Still, this chapter does contain a lot of interesting material, and despite its shortcomings, it does provide a glimpse into how two different players approach a Razz tournament. Once again, Forrest gets in a resounding last word:

"[T]he average player in these razz tournaments is pretty weak. So playing by the book should be good enough to build up your chips. But when you match up against good readers, good razz players who have a little speed to their game, you will be at the mercy of getting good starting cards.

Razz in one of the purest forms of poker, because the good players will make the money and the bad players will lose the money. It's a beautiful, beautiful form of poker."

Labels: book review, poker, poker strategy, Razz, tournament

Stumble It!

Poker Stars has recently decided to extend its ban of Josh Fields, known to the online poker community as JJProdigy, from their online poker site to the annual live tournament they run at a Caribbean casino/resort called Atlantis. I've got a few thoughts on this that I'll offer after a quick summary of the situation for those who don't know:

Summary

Apparently (I was just a small stakes grinder at the time), it was fairly common among successful high stakes multi-table tournament players to enter multiple accounts in the large-field Sunday tournaments. For the most part, the intent seemed to be to have multiple shots at winning one of these very juicy but ridiculously high variance events, not to gain any intrinsic advantage from the unlikely occurrence of having multiple accounts at the same table.

Although this was technically against the rules of all the major online sites, it was very difficult to enforce and seemed to be a pretty widespread practice such that most serious players knew it occurred whether or not they did it themselves. It was not, however, public knowledge.

There's been a lot of speculation about how unethical this practice is and exactly how much it might really cost other players in terms of their EV. Without getting into that here, I'll say that in my opinion it's the equivalent of stealing a few pennies from a few thousand people every week: it doesn't hurt anyone very much, but it the overall effect is large.

It's also very bad for the reputation of online poker for stuff like this to be common knowledge. There's been some disagreement over whether it's better to keep a scandal like this quiet, and while I certainly recognize why non-cheating professionals feel this way, I can't endorse it ethically. Recreational (losing) players have a right to know that this is happening and make their own decisions about whether they still want to play, even if we think it's likely that they will exaggerate and misinterpret the impact to them personally.

Anyway, JJ was the first high-profile player to be exposed for multi-accounting. As a 16-year old, he won nearly $200,000 in the $200 Sunday tournament on Party Poker, only to have the prize confiscated when a friend of his accidentally revealed that he'd entered multiple accounts in this tournament. He was banned from most online poker sites, ostensibly for playing as a minor. Unlike others who were caught since, he has admitted to continuing to cheat by playing on other people's accounts. He is a well-known staker of a lot of high-profile players and is widely suspected to have won several other large tournaments by taking over for one of his horses deep in the tournament.

My Thoughts

JJ is about to turn 18, and though he hasn't played (at least under his own name) on Poker Stars since his banning, he was looking forward to attending their tournament at Atlantis, his first live event. He made a pretty transparently self-serving 'apology' post on 2+2 (where he used to be a moderator well before this whole thing blew up) that reignited a lot of people's anger. Shaun Deeb started an email campaign to Poker Stars that resulted in them banning JJ from the Atlantis tournament.

I think this is excellent news for the integrity of the game. There's a legitimate concern that punishing him anew when he's finally shown some sign of contrition is counterproductive and likely to drive him and other cheaters underground, but I think the benefits of such a visible punishment far outweigh the costs. Precisely because cheating of this kind can be hard to detect, it is essential to punish those who are caught severely. This logic shouldn't be lost on any serious tournament player.

Even if the 'backlash' argument is true and even if driving cheating underground makes it harder to detect, it is still good for the reputation of the game and essential to decreasing the total amount of cheating. It isn't a coincidence that JJ was caught because a friend of his had a big mouth. For him to violate his ban, either by using someone else's account, providing real-time advice to one of his horses, or even taking over for them, he needs the cooperation of others. Anything that forces cheaters to keep a lower profile will make it harder for them to find willing accomplices.

I'm also glad that, to my knowledge, the days of "multi-accounting is rampant and everyone who's anyone knows it" are over. This environment of implicit consent almost certainly made cheating seem like less of a big deal, since 'everyone' was doing it and largely getting away with it. In other words, not only was there no threat of punishment, but it didn't even 'feel' wrong. Banning JJ from the PCA sends a clear statement that neither Poker Stars nor the high-stakes MTT community will tolerate cheating and that getting caught will have real-world consequences for years to come.

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

I just found an old note to myself to blog about this old Salon article called Requiem for a Poker Game. The author's point is an interesting one: the current poker boom, fueled largely by the game's presence on television and the internet, have also changed fundamentally the nature of the game. It used to be a much more social experience (the author claims- I wouldn't know one way or the other) and in particular better social skills were required to succeed. Internet players such as myself have been able to master mathematical elements of the game by playing hundreds of thousands of hands and using computer programs to calculate equity and otherwise learn about complex concepts that were once acquired only through a long, often expensive apprenticeship.

This, according to the article, has fundamentally changed the way poker players perceive and interact with each other when they do meet face to face at the World Series and other big tournaments:

"The vast majority of new young players have primarily learned to play poker online. They have honed their skills with the aid of computer simulations and data mining -- complex software programs that monitor the play of their opponents and provide a detailed categorization of each style of play. This new breed of successful players comes from the virtual arena; they are likely to spend most of their playing time either alone or with similarly inclined computer geeks. As people do in the digital community Second Life, players develop virtual personas, fictitious avatars and cartoonish social skills, and are seldom accountable for their behavior. Other players aren't colleagues, comrades in crime or even casual social acquaintances; they are obstacles to be overcome on the way to the big score."

The author's take on the game is excessively nostalgic and more than a little simplistic, but it's not without merit. One of the things that I love about the WSOP is the interesting people I meet and experiences that I have. But for the most part, I haven't been able to replicate that in other live poker environments. Particularly in higher stakes games, I'm playing mostly with stone-faced twenty-somethings who rely on Ipods rather than conversation for their at-the-table entertainment.

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

Stud/8 is one of my favorite poker games, and Ted Forrest's Stud Eight-or-Better chapter in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition highlights many of the game's most interesting, and potentially profitable, facets. Stud/8 is a complex game, with a huge variety of situations that can arise, which makes it difficult to write a comprehensive strategy guide. Forrest does an admirable job of explaining hand selection, hand reading, tournament adaptation, and other key concepts in a relatively organized way.

Forrest starts by laying out an overall framework for approaching tournament Stud/8 play, which I appreciate. He advocates fundamentally tight play, as you are likely to be against skilled competition, split a lot of pots, and feel less pressure from the antes than you would in a cash game. It would be helpful to get a stronger sense of where a winning player finds his edges and what kinds of situations he seeks to create. Still, keeping this framework in mind helps readers to orient themselves towards the rest of his advice and understand its context and motivation.

The reader actually gets a more detailed and helpful framework after Forrest begins his discussion of third street starting hands. We learn that the goal in a split pot game will be to 'scoop', or win both the high and the low. When play is loose, this often translates into the occasional scoop with half the pot serving as a consolation prize more frequently. However, in late-game tournament situations, he argues that you are somewhat more likely to scoop a pot through sheer aggression or with a high-only hand when no one makes a low.

This leads into another central Stud/8 concept that Forrest cleverly terms the "push" and "pull" factor. Even moreso than in many other poker games, you cannot play your hand in a vaccuum. From the moment you enter the pot, you must consider others' possible holdings and decide whether you will be better served by trying to pull them into a multi-way pot where even half could mean a juicy score or push them out and increase the likelihood that you will scoop a smaller pot.

This is such a fundamental decision, in fact, that more time ought to have been devoted to it. Some explication is forthcoming when Forrest examines how to play each type of starting hand, but I would have appreciated even more, particularly with regard to how the actions of others might influence whether you enter the pot with a raise or a call. Still, he summarizes this important difference from NLHE when he says, "aggression plays a different role than in... hold 'em tournaments. I am not looking to be aggressive for the same of aggression. I will be aggressive in two main situations: when I can push out opponents when my hand plays best heads-up, or when I have a hand for which I want to create a big pot and several other playrs have already put in a bet."

The third street section also hints at the importance of reverse implied odds, which play a far larger role in Stud/8 than in any other fixed limit game. Forrest has much more to say about this later, but he makes clear that big mistakes begin on third street. "For opponents to outplay you, you have to become an accomplice by taking hands into situations where that can happen."

This segues well into the first point about playing later streets, which is to get away cheaply when you brick. It's rare to see a pot get capped on a late street in seven card stud or fixed limit hold 'em. Because of Stud/8's split pots, however, a player who isn't careful can find himself caught in what Forrest terms 'the gas pipe', where the reigning high and low hands trap an unfortunate third player into calling multiple bets to try to hit his draw on the next card.

He goes on to outline the kind of hand you need to take the gas pipe yourself (a strong two-way draw) or to give it to a third player (often trips or better or a made low with at least some gut shot outs to a high). Especially in a tournament, getting the gas pipe can be "excruciatingly expensive" and avoiding it may require some tight folds simply because of the risk that there will be one or more raises behind you.

One of my favorite things about Stud/8 is that it all but requires third-level thinking: what does my opponent think I have? Depending on what your opponent is showing and what you have represented, you may find yourself betting a small pair for value or checking and folding a pair of Aces on the end. Forrest explores how to save and make these extra bets on the river based on your opponent's possible holdings and his likely perception of your hand. He even brushes on some advanced bluffs and 'semi-bluffs' where you attempt to 'promote' your weak hand into a winner for half the pot by knocking out a better one with a well-timed raise on the river.

Tournament strategy is clearly in the background of the entire chapter, but it comes to the fore at the conclusion with a dedicated section. Late in a tournament, there will be fewer multi-way pots and more opportunities to steal. Conversely, when a player, especially one on a short stack, does get involved in a pot, you need to back off of your steals quickly. These players are looking to double up or bust.

Forrest provides some helpful guidelines for recognizing when you are short or in danger of becoming short. With 7 BB's, you can afford to see fourth and maybe fifth streets without tying yourself to the pot, provided you can get there cheaply. He offers a series of questions to help you handle these difficult decisions. With 3-5 BB's, you'll almost always be going to showdown and can start valuing medium pairs, ordinarily tricky hands to play, over even some strong low hands.

Playing to scoop and the dangers of the 'gas pipe' are such important concepts that they influence almost every decision a Stud/8 player makes and for this reason probably should have been introduced sooner and perhaps even given more explanation. Aside from these largely organizational quibbles, however, I must admit that Ted Forrest's Stud Eight-or-Better chapter provides a clear and helpful summary of an extraordinarily complicated game. It should help NLHE players to succeed at Stud/8 in its own right and also to access quickly the Stud/8 skills that could end up improving their NLHE games in the long run.

Labels: book review, poker, poker strategy, Stud/8

Stumble It!

Yesterday's Boston Herald, prompted by today's opening of The Great Debaters, included a short feature about the Boston Debate League. Frankly, I was a little disappointed by the article's length. The reporter spoke with myself and several of the coaches in the BDL, but the article mentioned only one of our schools by name:

"Students at the Josiah Quincy Upper School, and six other schools, represent the city locally and nationally as part of the program.

“Debate is about taking a risk,” said Alexander Chan, 17, captain of the Josiah Quincy team. “It is about finding a voice.

“Debate used to be very upper class. With urban debate you have all different backgrounds,” said Chan, a three-year veteran of the team. “It gives us a taste of what we can accomplish.”

For the students at Josiah Quincy Upper School, the debate squad gives students a team they can call their own. For football, athletes must play for South Boston."

Also, a photographer was there and took literally hundreds of pictures, but the only photo accompanying the piece was a still from the film. Still, it was great to get the exposure and media attention!

Labels: boston debate league, urban debate league

Stumble It!

That guy who I quit abruptly yesterday came back today and dropped another three stacks or so to me. We played for a good three hours, and he was definitely playing a little better than yesterday, though he was still far from tough. Ironically, he was at his most challenging when he was tilting, since he tended to 3-bet me more often pre-flop, continuation bet more flops, and check-raise my continuation bets more often. However, he also made more bad calls and hopeless bluffs, so really it just required appropriate adaptation on my part.

I'm having trouble getting Poker Tracker to work on my laptop right now, but I may post some hands once I'm back in Boston. There weren't any super exciting ones, though.

He was friendly throughout the match, and this time I kept at it until he wanted to quit. He told me "gg" just before taking off, so hopefully there's no hard feeling and he'll continue to play me.

Labels: poker, session review

Stumble It!

I saw The Mouth sitting with a full stack at a 25/50 NLHE table along with a guy from my buddy list. The waiting list was 7 deep, but I hopped on anyway. I've never played with Mike Matusow myself, but I know people who will join games they don't even know how to play if he is sitting. It's not as though he's terrible, but even relatively weak players are not a dime a dozen at these stakes. Anyway, we tangled in the first real pot I played.

Full Tilt Poker, $25/$50 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $5,422
BTN: $5,047
SB: $2,357
Hero (BB): $4,925
UTG: $5,927

Pre-Flop: K K dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG raises to $175, CO folds, BTN calls $175, SB calls $150, Hero raises to $875, UTG folds, BTN calls $700, SB folds

Flop: ($2,100) 8 8 7 (2 Players)
Hero bets $1,050, BTN calls $1,050

Turn: ($4,200) 4 (2 Players)
Hero bets $3,000 and is All-In, BTN calls $3,000

River: ($10,200) 3 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $10,200 Pot ($3 Rake)
BTN showed 8 9 (three of a kind, Eights) and WON $10,197 (+$5,272 NET)
Hero showed K K (two pair, Kings and Eights) and LOST (-$4,925 NET)

I certainly can't see myself playing this any differently. When 20% of the effective stacks go in pre-flop, I'm surely stacking off with KK on this board. It's hard to say whether his pre-flop call could be a money-winner, but I have my doubts. It would depend a lot on how he plays stuff like a weak top pair or a bare flush draw, and I don't know what his plan would have been with those.

Anyhow, the other fish left the table and Ansky too his seat on my immediate left, so I just quit. Thankfully, I'd managed to attract a pretty weak player to a 10/25 heads up game on Ultimate Bet. Initially, the guy sat with just $500, which he lost calling a raise out of position with 86o and open shoving a T72 flop for several times the pot. He'd been pretty tight, but the play was so strange that I snapped him off with 97.

I figured he'd quit after that, but instead he reloaded for $2500, which I took when I checkraised him with 33 on a 983 flop and he shoved it in with TT. Then I stacked him again with AA versus KQ on a K879 board. I wasn't thrilled when he called the flop and shoved the turn, since he could easily have 98 or 97, but it worked out this time.

After that, he sat out but didn't quit. I was supposed to be leaving for my father's house for an early Christmas celebration in about half an hour, but I informed my brother we might be leaving late if this guy did reload again. My patience paid off when he reloaded for another $2500. A fish with deep pockets like this is a rare find. He'd already set me even from my shot at 25/50, and now it was time to get into the black.

He seemed to be tilting initially, or maybe just catching well, because he was check-raising me a lot more often than he had been. In fact, he won back about $1000, but fortunately did not quit me, and eventually I turned the tide on him. I called a raise out of position with JTo, and we both checked a K94 flop. A lovely Q came on the turn to give me the nuts. I potted it for $150, and he raised pot to $600. Thinking I had him for sure, I just overbet shoved another $2500 or so. He tanked and typed "wow- 444 here." To my shock and horror, he folded.

I can't say I believe him. Given the spots where he'd stacked off before, I can't imagine him folding a set. JT and 99 are really the only plausible hands I could have to beat him, since I'm almost always 3-betting KK and QQ preflop. Then again, to play devil's advocate for a moment, KQ is probably the only worse hand I would play like this. Against this guy, even something like Q9 would give me a pause when he re-potted the turn.

It was nearly time for me to leave, but I wasn't prepared to quit this guy yet. We played for about 10 more minutes, and finally I caught him. I raised 97 on my button, and he just called out of the big blind. The flop came a A97, I bet $150, and he check-raised to $300. He did this often enough that it was probably just top pair, not a monster like Aces up or a set. I made it $800, and he shoved for $2500 with AK. My hand held, and since I was already late, I quit immediately.

I felt pretty bad about that, since it's always poor etiquette to quit immediately after winning a big pot and especially since I was up more than three buy-ins on this guy and we'd been playing for two hours. Even though he's probably only going to lose more money sitting with me, it's polite to let the player who is losing decide when the match ends or at least give him some notice that you'll need to leave soon. Oh well. Hopefully it won't stop him from playing me again in the future!

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review

Stumble It!

Poker has been getting some largely positive publicity in the mainstream media lately thanks to Professor Nesson and the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. First came a New York Times article entitled "High Stakes Poker as a Learning Tool." Then came the Economist with its article, "A Big Deal":

"The skill, Mr Lederer argues, is in the betting. And it is apparent in the fact that you can win without the best hand. More than half of all hands end without the cards being shown, not because one player got lucky but because he managed to persuade the others, given their analysis of the available information and the size of the pot, that it was sensible to fold. When no one declares their hand, can it really be argued that the outcome was determined by luck?

At the highest level, decisions about betting, bluffing and folding are based on the complex juggling of probabilities. “What drew me to poker is that it is essentially an academic endeavour,” says Ms Duke. She is one of a growing group of full-time players who came to poker through game theory and mathematics, not through any love of a flutter. (Indeed, she never plays craps or roulette.) Others include Mr Lederer (her brother) and Mr Ferguson, who has a doctorate in computer science and writes academic papers on probability theory with his father, a statistician at UCLA.

Thomas Bihl, winner of a recent HORSE tournament, in which players have to show mastery of five different styles of poker, thinks the game has more in common with finance than it does with basic forms of gambling, because it requires the constant pricing and repricing of risk. Mr Bihl, a former stock trader, says the move from his old job into poker was a natural progression. Though his £71,000 win was “a huge lift”, he says that he is motivated not by money but by the chance to use his brain to outfox opponents. This is a common refrain among regular players. As Ms Coren put it in a recent article: “Cash is nothing more than chips, just the tools of the trade, like fishing rods to an angler. The game is all about money, and nothing to do with money.”"

As this passage illustrates, both articles give voice to the arguments in favor of skill's predominance over chance in poker and make only passing mention of the arguments to the contrary. The Economist article even casts last year's legislation in a negative light, referring to "a law last year, sneakily tacked on to a port-security bill, which sought to bolster existing legislation against internet wagering by blocking Americans’ access to accounts that can be used to gamble online."

Nice work, GPSTS!

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

To his credit, David Gray's Seven Card Stud chapter in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition is actually about tournament strategy. Even when introducing basic concepts such as starting hand selection, which he is wise to do given that most of his audience will likely come from a NLHE background, he makes clear how his advice differs from standard cash game strategy. Having little background in tournament stud, it is hard for me to evaluate the quality of Gray's advice. The strategy he suggests seems a sound one, but it concerns me that much of what he says sounds disturbingly like the overly weak tight approach to tournament NLHE that many sub-par players adopt.

In the early rounds of a stud tournament, where stacks are deep relative to the stakes, Gray advises nothing more than a "good, normal, solid strategy" akin to what would be appropriate in a cash game. I appreciate that he doesn't elaborate overly much on what exactly that is, since there are other, presumably better resources for learning the game of Seven Card Stud.

As its name implies, this compact chapter sets its sights on tournament stud, his approach to which Gray sums up as follows: "After the first few levels, you can't afford to lose a full pot in a tournament and still have relative chip strength. You are definitely looking to play a top hand and move on people you think have nothing." His point is that you can't afford to play from behind. Even when getting the right pot odds, the price is too high to chase a likely big pair with a flush draw or an underpair and an overcard or two, since you end up crippled all too frequently.

But doesn't one also lose money by folding when the odds are good? Gray does his best to mitigate this effect by advising extreme selectiveness on third street (you can't make a four-flush if you fold your three-flush) and again on fifth street, when the bets double and calling is likely to price yourself in until seventh.

Intuitively, this cautiousness makes sense, and I'm inclined to say that it's good advice. What concerns me is Gray's occasional resort to weak-tight tournament platitudes such as, "a tournament... is about losing the least, especially because losing hurts you more than winning helps--when you're out, you're out." I've just heard this from too many old nits at live tournaments to accept it as gospel in a stud tournament with no further analysis. I'd like to know that Gray is aware of this principle's flawed application in NLHE tournaments and nonetheless believes it relevant in a stud setting.

It is also hard to say when exactly one ought to switch from cash game to tournament strategy. Gray advises that, "Until you are very close to the money, you should play your normal strategy." However, his warrants for especially cautious play relate more to stack depth than to the divergence between chip equity and cash equity.

Presumably it is acceptable and maybe necessary to take some gambles when your stack gets small relative to the stakes. As he cautions, "If you play too tight, you can become so low on chips that even winning with your last chips doesn't improve your position." But in lieu of advice about how to navigate between these extremes, the reader gets only an acknowledgment of the challenge: "Weighing proper strategy... against your survival is difficult, and though I recommend you place a very high value on your survival, you sometimes have to risk going broke."

This tight strategy works, Gray believes, because other players tend to be overly loose and because stud poker is not a game of implied odds. It is difficult to make a killing with a concealed monster the way one can in NLHE by flopping a set or an unlikely two pair. Thus, his goal is to stay out of trouble, play mostly big pairs and rolled up trips, and take advantage of others' loose play. As Gray puts it, "I don't ever want to enter a pot where I don't think I'm a favorite."

Gray addresses some other unique elements of tournament poker, such as the fact that the ratio of ante:big bet will change from level to level, necessitating an adaptation in hand selection that few players recognize. He also considers short and big stack play, arguing that the former need to pick a hand and stick to it, whereas the latter ought to splash around a bit more but get out of the way quickly when a shorter stack shows interest, since that player can probably not be bluffed out.

David Gray's tournament stud strategy seems like a useful one, particularly for those new to the game, ie the majority of his readers. It is designed to keep you alive, keep you out of trouble, and put you in position to win some money. With a good table draw and a bit of luck, it might even win you a tournament or two.

Labels: book review, poker, poker strategy, Stud, tournament

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Poker Stars, $300 + $20 NL Hold'em Tournament, 500/1,000 Blinds, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

MP2: 27,401
CO: 95,299
BTN: 29,780
Hero (SB): 28,070
BB: 25,954
UTG: 20,960
UTG+1: 15,156
UTG+2: 21,026
MP1: 46,580

Pre-Flop: (1,950) J J dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, UTG+2 calls 1,000, 3 folds, BTN raises to 5,000, Hero calls 4,500, BB folds, UTG+2 calls 4,000

Flop: (16,450) 4 6 6 (3 Players)
Hero bets 23,020 and is All-In, 2 folds

Results: 16,450 Pot
Hero mucked J J and WON 16,450 (+11,400 NET)

I was new to the table and did not recognize the UTG+2 player, so I was not sure what to make of his limp. That also made it difficult to interpret the Button's raise. Was he attacking a player whom he'd seen make weak limps before? Or did he have a legitimately strong hand? I did think that his raise to 5000 would make him more likely to show up with AK than with KK or AA. I also thought it was very unlikely for him to have a worse pair than mine, so my plan was to get it in if no Ace flopped.

However, I was also prepared to dump it if the limper moved all in and the raiser called. Giving them both a range of {TT+, AQs+, AK}, I'm getting just barely the right odds to call for the main pot but I'm a dog against the Button for our sidepot. It's a close enough to neutral EV spot that I'd be comfortable folding. If the Button had folded, I'd need to puke and call the limper getting better than 2:1. If he had done something really shady like min-re-raised, I probably would have folded.

More important than finding excuses to get away from my hand, though, was giving the limper the opportunity to make a bad call if he had been limping in with worse. He's almost surely ditching TT if I shove pre-flop.

Calling off 25% of my stack here looks very strong, and if Button does have a whiffed AK, I don't expect him to bluff at the flop. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the limper check this flop with a pair, even though he shouldn't be calling preflop unless he thinks his pair is best. So I thought the weakest-looking thing I could do was shove this flop. I can't imagine the average tournament playing folding 88. I don't know what UTG+2 had, but he thought a long time and folded. He probably did have a pair and realized that I was likely to have a better one. Good fold by him, but it's a realization he should have had preflop.

Really, though, this hand illustrates why I find tournament poker so frustrating. My first instinct was just to shove preflop, and although I think this is a better line, the difference between them is minuscule because the stacks are so shallow. There's just not enough room for skillful play deep in most online tournaments.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

Marc Fisher, who blogs for the Washington Post, just wrote about a group of debaters from the DC Urban Debate League who were invited to a special screening of The Great Debaters, like the one that I attended on Tuesday and the one that I am attending tonight, but were told the theater was full when the arrived:

"Touhey exchanged a series of emails with Carol Jones of the New York firm Bazan PR in which Jones confirmed that she had allocated 60 seats for the D.C. students. But when Touhey and the students arrived at the theater Monday evening, they were told that the seats were all taken by others who had been sent passes to the movie.

"Despite the fact that a guest list had been demanded and that the students and teachers were in line, the lists were not used to let people into the theater," says Touhey, a former teacher at Cardozo High School. "When I asked why I had been required to provide a list, I was told that this was to justify the numbers [of seats] that I had been offered. When I protested that the students had done what they were supposed to do and that Bazan was not living up to its obligation, Ms Jones said that she would try to get some passes for the opening day.""

I first heard about this not long after it happened. Since their screening was Monday night, the day before ours, I had the opportunity to speak by phone with my contact from Allied Publicity (not the same company with whom Colin Touhey was dealing) and confirm that we did indeed have VIP seats reserved for our organization.

I don't know the details of the arrangement that DC had, but the BDL got both some reserved seats and some general admission passes. Thankfully the theater didn't fill up, because our VIP seats were 'reserved' by nothing more than sheets of paper sitting on the chair at the end of each row, and from what I could tell they were easily ignored. Still, all the Allied Publicity people I dealt with were very helpful, and in fact they were initially not letting anyone except members of our group into the theater. We ended up seating about 70 people even though only 40 seats were specifically reserved for us.

The one issue that did come up in Boston was that the whole thing was very last minute. The location wasn't confirmed until four days before the screening, and up until they day of I wasn't clear on the logistics of what we needed to do to claim our VIP and other seats when we arrived at the theater. I can easily see how similar last-minute planning combined with a larger crowd and less helpful staff could have led to DC's situation.

It's hard to say whether the publicity company is really at fault there, but I can definitely see why Colin went to the media with this when the PR woman didn't respond to his complaint, and I'm glad to see that Marc Fisher chose to cover it.

Labels: urban debate league

Stumble It!

As you've probably noticed, I haven't put much effort into promoting my blog as a money-making vehicle. I've browsed some of the literature on search engine optimization and such, and while I find it interesting/impressive that some people are essentially able to be professional bloggers and earn a living off of ad revenue, I've got no interest in that. I'm sure my time is worth more at the tables than it is swapping links with every other poker blogger on the 'net.

I do, however, use an amazing free program called StatCounter to track some basic data on how many people visit my blog in a day, what link they followed to get here, etc. While browsing this info today, I saw that I was getting a fair number of referrals from a site called PokerTips. Turns out they ran a little piece recently on a few notable poker blogs and were kind enough to list mine along with those of Eric "Rizen" Lynch, Shannon Shorr, Terrence Chan, and Shane "Shaniac" Schleger. Here's what they had to say about me:

"...while he may not be a household name, Foucault writes a great blog titled "From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher". In it, he shares book reviews, interesting hand histories, and various insights on the poker world. With an unparalleled rate of new content, it's clear that Foucault takes a lot of pride in his blog. Those uninterested in reading hand histories might find this blog to be too saturated with them. Thankfully, Foucault uses a hand history converter. Without it, perusing his blog would be chaotic."

Apparently they had some trouble finding my real name, which is surprising, since it's front and center on my website. Anyway, I'm flattered, not just to be noted in this company, but specifically by the things they said. It's always been my goal to write really substantive and useful content rather than the self-absorbed bragging and whining that you'll find on a run-of-the-mill poker blog.

If this were any other kind of website, I probably wouldn't even bother with the Google Ads. In the months that I've had them up, they've made me literally pocket change, nowhere near the minimum that you need to get a check from Google. But I figure that since I'm giving away some valuable advice that could make you serious money, I may as well have a few ads up. I'd really like to get to the point where ad revenue at least covers the cost of hosting the blog (not that it's expensive, it's just a nice goal), so maybe I'll look a bit more into how optimize my earning.
Stumble It!

Stumble It!

Tournament players will probably be familiar with the "stop 'n go" technique, named by none other than Greg Raymer back before he won the WSOP and was just a 2+2 poster called Fossilman. What he envisioned was a situation with the following conditions:

1. you are out of position, usually in the blinds, though theoretically a limper could do this as well;
2. someone has raised your blind;
3. you want to take your hand to showdown;
4. you figure to be a coin flip against your opponent's range (ie you have 88 and figure your opponent will usually have overcards);
5. you don't think your opponent will fold to a pre-flop all-in move.

Given these conditions, you might consider just calling the raise and then moving all in on any flop. If you're called, you're no worse off than you were if you'd moved in preflop, and if you generate some additional fold equity, then something good came of the move.

This isn't something you see often in cash games simply because there aren't as many spots where you'd be putting your money in preflop on a coin flip. In the aggressive mid-high stakes internet games of today, however, such situations do come up. In fact, I had someone run a stop 'n go against me at a 10/25 NL game on UB the other day.

I don't have the HH, but I opened on the button to $75 (ie less than pot, because the big blind was short stacked) with AKo, and the SB re-raised to $250. I made it $750, hoping to create the illusion of fold equity so that my opponent might shove a hand like AQ. Instead, he just called the reraise.

The flop came QTT, and he moved all in for my remaining $1750. As someone with a lot of tournament experience, I recognized the move immediately. I assumed he almost certainly had a pair smaller than T's, though there was some chance he was on something like AJ that I really dominated. Even against a pair, I have a ton of outs: any J, Q, K, or A would give me the best hand. So, I called, and he did indeed have 77. He won the coin flip, but that's beside the point.

If he's going to play 77 against my 4-bet, this is a good way to do it. I'm not sure he ought to be playing 77 against my 4-betting range, particularly given that we had no history together at the time, but that's another story.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review

Stumble It!

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 0: berg5528 ($2465) -
Seat 1: maxEmus125 ($3546.50) -
Seat 2: Lent53 ($5583.50) -
Seat 3: _BeWater_ ($2660)
Seat 4: urbandb888 ($3215.70)
Seat 5: keep00 ($1929.50)


PRE-FLOP:

maxEmus125 posts small blind $10
Lent53 posts BIG blind $25
Dealt To: urbandb888


FOLD _BeWater_
RAISE urbandb888 ($85)
FOLD keep00
FOLD berg5528
FOLD maxEmus125
CALL Lent53 ($85)


FLOP:

Pot: $205


CHECK Lent53
CHECK urbandb888


TURN:

Pot: $205


CHECK Lent53
BET urbandb888 ($180)
RAISE Lent53 ($380)
CALL urbandb888 ($380)


RIVER:

Pot: $1145


BET Lent53 ($650)
CALL urbandb888 ($650)

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

It didn't even occur to me that I had less than the nuts here. I was thinking his turn range would have to be 100% bluffs since I held the Ah. I still would have raised a non-board-pairing river (not that his line makes any sense for anything that could make a boat) just because Th 9h hadn't even occurred to me. But that's exactly what I ran into.

Meanwhile, I got a top 20 stack back up in the Second Chance only to bust 91st after running JJ into KK and then losing the last of my chips on a "race" A9 < 54. Oh and I got JJ all in against TT on an 884 flop also at 10/25 just to see the @#$$%^#Q$# river his T. God I hate this game.

Labels: poker, session review

Stumble It!

This was a $1000 tournament with a great structure, as the other UBOC events have had. It also got over 800 runners, which is more than twice what I predicted. We started with 500 BB stacks, but I managed to blow about half of mine early with a pretty thin value play that backfired.

I potted KQo from EP. BelowAbove called in the CO and the BB called. The BB then led into me for pot on a QJ5 flop. There weren't any flush draws on the board, so I just called. The turn was an off-suit 9 and he bet about 1/3 of the pot. I was feeling pretty good about my hand but you never know with these clowns, so I just called again. River was a blank and he bet 1/3 pot again. At this point AQ was the only thing I could imagine him having that beat me, or maybe a verrrrrrrrry strangely played AA/KK. I raised about 4x his bet, and he called with AQ. I'm still not sure about that, it may be too thin.

Thanks to the deep starting stacks, I still had well over 100 BB's when this next hand came up. I raised Ad Ks from early position and got called by some guy and by BA. Flop came As Jc 8s. I had a feeling that BA was going to float a lot of hands on this flop and probably also bluff if it was checked to him. It's not really a bad thing if he calls, but there are a lot of turns that are going to be tough for me to play, so I decided to check and try to keep the pot smaller and/or conceal my hand. Below did indeed bet, I called, and the other guy folded.

The turn brought a Kc. I checked again, hoping to check-raise, but BA checked behind. The river was a third club, completing a backdoor flush draw. I bet about 230 into a pot of over 500 on the river, hoping to induce either a bluff raise or 'value raise' from a worse hand from BA. He did indeed raise, I snap-called, and he showed me 7c Tc that made a running flush.

After that I was pretty short. Eventually there were two limpers for 60, and I made it 300 or so with TT. The first limper folded, but the second moved all in for my last 1000. She'd been playing very straightforward, honest poker, and the shove was scary as hell. But had she really limped a big pair behind a limper? Yes, she had, and her KK eliminated me.

Please don't ask how the rest of my Sunday is going. I just AA < T8s (guy raised like 15% of his stack UTG and flopped an open-ender) for the chiplead in the Stars Second Chance.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

Although I'm running pretty low on cash on Poker Stars of late, I did have some $W sitting around, and since I don't actually have a conflict with the European Poker Tour Dortmund event at the end of January, I decided to play a satellite. We started off 250 BB's deep, and I felt I did a very good job of taking advantage of weaker players with such deep money. I don't think it will be necessary to offer commentary on each of these hands, but hopefully they are illustrative of some important deep stack concepts like pot control, isolation, and position. I am happy to answer any questions that get posed in the Comments section.

Poker Stars, $760 + $40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 7 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: 4,540
UTG: 4,630
UTG+1: 5,300
MP: 5,600
Hero (CO): 4,970
BTN: 4,900
SB: 5,060

Pre-Flop: (30) A T dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG folds, UTG+1 calls 20, MP folds, Hero raises to 120, 3 folds, UTG+1 calls 100

Flop: (270) 8 7 6 (2 Players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

Turn: (270) 3 (2 Players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

River: (270) 6 (2 Players)
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

Results: 270 Pot
UTG+1 showed Q T (a pair of Sixes) and LOST (-120 NET)
Hero showed A T (a pair of Sixes) and WON 270 (+150 NET)


Poker Stars, $760 + $40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 7 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: 4,510
SB: 4,640
BB: 5,180
UTG: 5,600
Hero (UTG+1): 5,120
MP: 4,900
CO: 5,050

Pre-Flop: (30) 5 5 dealt to Hero (UTG+1)
UTG folds, Hero raises to 70, MP folds, CO calls 70, 2 folds, BB calls 50

Flop: (220) 8 6 9 (3 Players)
BB checks, Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: (220) K (3 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets 200, 2 folds

Results: 220 Pot
Hero mucked 5 5 and WON 220 (+150 NET)


Poker Stars, $760 + $40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 8 Players

LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: 4,250
UTG: 4,530
UTG+1: 5,100
MP1: 5,280
MP2: 5,000
Hero (CO): 5,220
BTN: 5,660
SB: 4,960

Pre-Flop: (30) K Q dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG calls 20, 3 folds, Hero raises to 120, 3 folds, UTG calls 100

Flop: (270) 4 K T (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero checks

Turn: (270) 5 (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero bets 175, UTG calls 175

River: (620) 8 (2 Players)
UTG checks, Hero bets 425, UTG calls 425

Results: 1,470 Pot
UTG mucked 4 Q and LOST (-720 NET)
Hero showed K Q (a pair of Kings) and WON 1,470 (+750 NET)


Poker Stars, $760 + $40 NL Hold'em Tournament, 15/30 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

UTG+1: 9,340
MP1: 4,565
MP2: 5,180
CO: 5,395
BTN: 2,730
Hero (SB): 5,870
BB: 5,970
UTG: 6,400

Pre-Flop: (45) K Q dealt to Hero (SB)
4 folds, CO raises to 90, BTN calls 90, Hero raises to 420, 2 folds, BTN calls 330

Flop: (960) A 5 Q (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (960) 2 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: (960) A (2 Players)
Hero bets 450, BTN calls 450

Results: 1,860 Pot
BTN mucked 6 6 and LOST (-870 NET)
Hero showed K Q (two pair, Aces and Queens) and WON 1,860 (+990 NET)

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

My UBOC final table earned me a quick mention (by screenname only) in the official Ultimate Bet blog:

"Speaking of winning the Sunday Guaranteed...didn't "urbandb888" win that back on November 4th? Why, so he did!"

Labels: poker

Stumble It!

I was looking forward to this $500 6-max event more than any other in the series. UB tournament players suck, they suck even more at 6-max, and most of them have no business spending $500 on a poker tournament. But apparently they can kick my butt anyway.

I picked up a few smallish pots right away, then got into a messy spot raising UTG (but 6-handed, remember) with 99 and getting reraised by an aggressive player in the BB. Given the stacks involved, I probably should have folded, but I called and then peeled a T46 flop, only to fold the turn and watch 1/3 of my stack shipped to my opponent.

After that I was at an awkward stack size and called a button raise with KQo in my SB, something I rarely do but that felt right since I was too far ahead of his range to fold but stacks were too awkward to 3-bet. I check-raised a T9x flop and took it down.

After the break, I squeeze pushed K8s against a raise from the big stack in the CO and a call from the button. The CO called, I didn't even see with what because I was playing a bunch of cash tables, and apparently I lost. Oh well.

Labels: poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

This $200 NLHE tournament was over in like 20 minutes. I 3-bet a CO raise with AhKs in the SB, guy called. Flop Js 3 4h, I bet, he calls. Turn 9h, I pot it cuz that's what they always do when they have an overpair and a third flush card comes. He stuck the rest in with his KJ for OMGTOPPAIR and faded my 12-outer.

Labels: poker, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

After two days off, I came back to the UBOC with a bang last night, final tabling the $200 PLO8 event. There were nearly 400 runners, which surprised me, because in general even UB's NLHE events don't get that many runners. Predictably, only about 10% of them had much idea how to play PLO8, and I was able to get up a stack right away. I don't have the HH, unfortunately, so for now all I can do is sketch a few hands.

One of the first I played, I opened from late position with AQJ3 and was called by the small blind. The flop was Ac Qc 4c. I had no clubs, but I bet it anyway when it was checked to me, since I didn't want to give a free card to a bad low draw or invite a turn bluff. He called very quickly, and I was ready to be done with it, but then I turned an Ace, giving me the nuts. He checked, I potted it, and he quickly called again. The river was a fourth club, functionally a blank. He checked, I potted it again, and again he quickly called with 44xx for the worst possible full house.

Just like that, I was one of the chipleaders, but it didn't last. I forget how I lost the chips, but by the 50/100 level, I had about 1100 chips. I won a pre-flop all in with AAxx vs QQxx, picked up another medium pot with a bet when I flopped the nuts against multiple callers of a pre-flop raise, and then I just kind of built from there for a while.

Obviously I'm leaving a lot out, but the next hand I remember, I was sitting on like 25,000 chips at the 300/600 level. Action folded to me in the SB with AA25, one of the best possible PLO8 hands. I raised to 1800, and the BB, who had me covered, called. The flop came 774r, giving me the nut low draw and likely the best high hand. Still, I didn't like the idea of getting raised on this flop, so I elected to check and try to induce a bluff, since there weren't really any turn cards I was worried about. My opponent bet about half pot, and I called.

A 9s on the turn didn't change anything, and I checked and called another half-pot bet. At this point, I was representing just a low draw, and I was hoping that it wouldn't get there on the river so that my opponent would give more action with worse hands. Frankly, even though I was induc