Timestamps

0:30 Hello and welcome
3:05 Interview

For more information on our event with Just Hands Poker in NYC, March 25 and 26, click here.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello and Welcome plus WRGPT strat
21:35 – Carlos

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello & Welcome
7:47 – Strategy:
21:28 – Interview: Gags30

Strategy

$1/$3 NLHE

UTG limps, Hero ($600) raises to $16 with KsJs, V1 ($300) calls, V2 ($500) calls on the button, everyone else folds.

Flop ($51 in pot) Jd 3h 3c. Hero bets $20, V1 calls, V2 raises to $50, Hero calls, V1 calls.

Turn ($200 in pot) 6s. Hero checks, V1 checks, V2 bets $90, Hero?

In today’s post I want to bridge the gap between these issues that are of obvious interest to poker players and other political topics that may not seem directly poker-related but that still have some tangential relationship to poker players and the decisions that we make about where to play. These are topics about which poker players are likely to have divergent opinions, but I think that they merit more discussion than they get in the poker world, both over the table and elsewhere.

The opposing argument here is the “I come to the poker room to play poker, I don’t want to hear anyone talk about politics” attitude. Your decision to play poker at a particular venue is political, it has political consequences, and I see no reason why these consequences shouldn’t be legitimate topics of conversation. Choosing to ignore or refuse to discuss these consequences doesn’t make you apolitical, it just makes you ignorant.

The following is something like a case study. It’s an example of how poker players can’t just avoid politics, though we can and too often do ignore them. My stance on this specific subject is not a strong one, and I have myself played at these poker rooms before, though it always made me uncomfortable and I’d prefer to avoid playing at them again. I use it rather as an example of an issue that I think some but not all poker players would care about if they were forced to think about it. My point, overall, is that discussion in the poker world ought be more, not less, overtly political than it currently is, and the following is a small contribution thereto.

Playing Poker at Dog and Horse Tracks Subsidizes the Racing Industry

Many poker rooms in the US are at dog- or horse-racing facilities. Often, when seeking legislative authorization to introduce poker and/or casino gambling on their premises, the owners of these facilities explicitly argued that the racetrack alone was no longer economically viable and that other forms of gambling were needed essentially to subsidize the industry. Playing poker and otherwise spending money at these facilities is very directly supporting the racing industry, even if you don’t actually place any racing bets. The Florida Times-Union reports that,

The “decoupling” movement has created an odd alliance between racetrack casino operators, who see the races as a burden, and animal rights groups out to end greyhound racing altogether, much as they succeeded in outlawing cockfighting several years ago.

“When decoupling passes, it will lead to a slow and gradual end” of the industry, said Carey Theil, executive director of the anti-racing group Grey2K USA.

Dog racing’s troubles also could be a preview of things to come for the horse racing industry, which in some states has identical laws tying it to casino gambling. Money bet at thoroughbred tracks dropped from just over $15 billion in 2003 to less than $11 billion in 2013, according to the Jockey Club, an industry clearinghouse.

Though stronger financially than dog racing, horse racing is also far more expensive to stage, and only a handful of the biggest tracks are profitable without casinos to support them.

Some within the horse racing industry see decoupling laws as a threat to their own sport.

“They could set a dangerous precedent for all breeds of racing,” said Lonny Powell, the CEO of the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association, who worked for years as a regulator of dog races.

In Florida, casino owners and animal welfare advocates have actually gotten together to support a bill that would decouple casinos from race tracks, a move that would likely be the death knell for the racing industry in that state. This should give you an idea of the importance of casino patrons to the continued viability of the race track at venues where the two are coupled.

Animal Lovers Should Have a Problem With That

I realize that some people just don’t value animal welfare very highly, and I’m not going to argue that point right now. Judging by the number of “look at my adorable dog” posts I see on my Twitter timeline, I suspect that many poker players do not want to subsidize animal cruelty and have just never really thought about or been pressed on the topic. According to advocacy group Grey2KUSA,

“To racetrack promoters, dogs are short-term investments. Even the fastest dogs only race for a few years, and are expected to generate enough profit during that time to make up for their total costs. The pressure to generate profits can lead to negligent care. Adoption groups often receive dogs in a general state of neglect, including dogs suffering from severe infestations of fleas, ticks, and internal parasites. To cut costs, dogs are fed raw 4-D meat from dying, diseased, disabled and dead livestock. This meat is deemed unfit for human consumption. The quality of veterinary care a dog receives can also be compromised by financial considerations.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that,

horse racing continues to wrestle publicly with a drug culture that its officials concede has badly damaged the sport. A New York Times investigation in 2012 showed how a pervasive drug culture, encouraged by trainers and aided by veterinarians, put horses and riders at risk. The Times found that 24 horses a week died at American tracks, a rate greater than in countries where drug use was severely restricted.

These are at the very least problematic industries, and as far as I know there’s been virtually no discussion among poker players about boycotting events at these facilities, although in my opinion there’s more of a case for that than for boycotting the Venetian and other Adelson properties.

Not Talking About Politics is Political

This is a political issue of the sort that could prompt someone to say, “Shut up with your bleeding heart politics and just play poker.” Then again, bringing the issue up at a poker table could easily bring the issue to the attention of someone who does care about it and who will change his behavior accordingly. Thus, the call not to talk about politics is also a call to keep this person in the dark, which of course serves the interests of the racing industry, which would rather not have people talking about issues such as doping or the disturbingly high death rate of their animals.

I’ve gone into detail on this one, but there are similar issues related to many poker venues. Animal lovers might also think about the treatment of captive marine mammals before playing the PCA at Atlantis. Indian casinos have their own set of complications, as I’m sure do most casinos.

It’s easy to shrug and say, “I’m just here to play poker, none of that is my concern.” But should we? And more to point, should we chastise those who do not?

I think of my button as a tollbooth that enables me to collect a tax from anyone who wants to come into the pot this hand….

The button is particularly valuable in multiway pots, because I get to collect this tax from each player. There are plenty of hands that I’d fold on my button to a single raiser but call behind if there have already been two or three calls.

Enjoy, and please let me know what you think of it!

Congratulations to Vanessa Selbst for winning the $25K PCA High Roller. As Nate mentioned, you can watch her performance online. Nate’s top pick for best free strategy material on the internet is the final table of the 2011 $50K WSOP Players’ Championship. If you’re more interested in Minecraft strategy videos, check out xXidol’s YouTube channel.

Timestamps

0:23 — Hello! Brick-and-mortar game dynamics. The ethics of playing with drunks.
26:02 — Nate and Andrew discuss a 10-25 NL hand from the PCA.
50:04 — Derek talks about founding, running, and protecting the intellectual property of a poker training site.
1:40:44 — Good-bye!

Strategy Segment Hand

$10/$25 NLHE game, Hero straddles for $50 on button so action starts with SB. SB folds, BB calls $25 more, early position TAG raises to $150, drunk player calls, amateurish player calls, Hero calls $100 more with 9h 3h, BB calls $100 more.

Flop ($750) Jh 7c 4h Checks to amateur who bets $300, Hero calls, tough player in BB calls

Turn ($1650) Jh 7c 4h 2h BB checks, amateur bets $600, Hero raises to $1400, BB shoves $5400, amateur folds, Hero folds

I’ll begin with a small mea culpa: not only did I apparently screw up the pot size, but I think I also misremembered the board cards, because I’m pretty sure a straight flush was not possible. Thankfully I don’t think either of these mistakes affected the analysis much, but I do apologize for them.

Plan For a Raise

This is a big pot, and it may be about to get a lot bigger. Making a mistake when the seventh and largest bet goes into the pot would be extremely expensive, whether it’s a bad call or a bad fold. Even moreso than usual, then, you need to have a plan for how you will respond to a raise before you bet.

I think folding would be correct. A lot of you, Nate most insistently, made the same basic point that it’s a tough spot for Villain to check-raise as a bluff because the Ah is a healthy part of Hero’s range.

Moreover, it’s just generally difficult for people to pull the trigger on a 180BB river check-raise bluff.

Finally, as Rant 2112 says, “We know from his line that he has a value hand on the river 99% of the time. He’s not going to turn it into a bluff. He’s just going to show it down.” By “value hand” I take him to mean a hand with showdown value, ie a hand that could beat most of my bluffs. In that case, most players, live players especially, will prefer to call rather than check-raise bluff. People like to see showdowns, especially when it means risking a lot less money than a huge bluff into a nutty range.

That said, we shouldn’t read too much into the “primarily a live player” read. That was just a hunch, I didn’t have a lot to back it up. Regardless, whoever he is, it’s not too likely that he’s sick enough to check-raise bluff here with any great frequency, so I’m all for folding if raised.

How Often Do We Lose?

Given that we’re going to fold to a raise, any time that he does surprise us with a check-raise bluff, it’s going to result in a very expensive mistake. We have to determine just how confident we are that he won’t bluff and then allow for an appropriate risk of being wrong as part of our argument against betting. Here I think the risk is small, in the absence of extenuating circumstances which we’ll get to in a moment.

So let’s say that 5% of his raises will be bluffs, and the other 95% of the time we’ll be beat. Depending on how much we bet, that those bluffs would cost us $150-$200 in equity that we’ll need to weigh against the upsides of betting.

Of course he’s never folding a better hand, so next we should try to estimate how likely he is to hold the Ah and assume that we always lose the pot when that happens. There are three ways he could get to the river with the Ah: 1) slowplaying the flopped nuts; 2) calling down with AhX where X made a pair on either the flop or turn (we can put AhAx in this category as well); 3) calling down with AhX and no pair.

Given the depth of the stacks, I don’t see a lot of reason for (1). He’d need to raise at some point in order to get stacks in by the river, and I’d expect him to want to build the pot before the board pairs or a fourth heart comes, so I don’t think there’s a high risk of this. If he has a flush to the Ace, he almost certainly made it on the river.

Most of the scenarios for (2) would require him to call a 3-bet with an offsuit rag Ace deep and out of position against someone he probably assumes to be aggressive and one of the tougher players at the table. I don’t think we’re going to see A3 or A5 ever, and even AT would be a pretty bad call. AhQx would make a lot of sense. It slightly contradicts my read on his pre-flop range, but that wasn’t a strong read, so I think we can safely count three combos of AhQx and none of the others.

We also need to consider AhAx. That hand is more unlikely based on the preflop action, both because he may have made a larger opening raise and because he my have 4-bet it. Then again, this deep he may just choose not to have a 4-betting range pre-flop, so let’s count one of the three combos of this hand.

As with (2), the possibilities for (3) are constrained by the fact that Villain would have had to call the 3-bet from out of position with an offsuit Ace. Only AK and AJ are at all plausible, and as with AA/AQ both may have been played differently pre-flop. Unlike with AA and AQ, though, it’s less clear that he would take this line post-flop. Although I don’t think it would be awful, I wouldn’t call it standard either. Both AhKx and AhJx would be good candidates for check-raising the flop or turn. Generously, we’ll give him three combos of those.

The cost of betting then, is getting called by seven combos of hands with the Ah, plus a small risk of a bluff which amounts to much less than one combo (.35 to be precise, if we go with our 5% guess).

How Often Does He Call With Worse?

We estimated that he’ll raise with somewhere between seven and eight combos of hands, so if he calls with just eight combos of bluff-catchers, we have a profitable bet. These are harder to count, but we can get an idea by looking at both his and Hero’s range for getting to the river.

Villain probably doesn’t expect Hero to turn many hands into a bluff on this river that he thought were good enough to bet for value on the turn. If Hero expected to be good on the turn, then he’s probably still good on the river unless Villain holds a high heart, in which case he probably isn’t folding. That means Villain can only hope to beat triple barrel bluffs.

Of course if I’m 3-betting K2s my actual 3-betting range is quite wide, but I also wouldn’t 3-bet it if I expected Villain to realize quite how wide I actually was. My best guess is that he might expect my 3-bet range to look something like {TT+,A2s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,ATo+,KQo}. Even so, that leaves about 87 combos (according to my rough count that, historically, is likely to be inaccurate) that he expects me to 3-bet pre-flop that can’t beat a pair of Tens on the river, which is about the point where I think he’d expect me to take my showdown value rather than bluff.

Most if not all of those hands bet the flop. The turn is a pretty good barreling card, so even if he assumes that I’d barrel only half of my air range, that would still give me more than 40 combos of air that get to the river this way.

The one thing we haven’t accounted for yet is the fact that my barreling range ought to be weighted towards Ah, Kh, and other hands with hearts in them that improve on this river. So if I were actually betting half of my hands with trivial showdown value on the turn, much less than half of that range would still be air on the river. Let’s say then that I have 20 combos of air after seeing the river.

I’ll have about that many combos of Ah and Kh, depending on exactly how weighted towards Ax and Kx he expects my 3-betting range to be. The range that I gave above is pretty biased in that direction. This is a good bluffing card, and I’ve got plenty of air in my range, so if he perceives me to be aggressive, it’s a good bluff-catching spot, especially if he isn’t sure whether I’d bet the Kh for value (and I wasn’t sure myself!).

The catch is that his best bluffcatchers are hands containing the Kh, which of course Hero’s hand blocks but Villain doesn’t know that. So his bluffcatching range may be narrower than usual for that reason.

Ignoring the fact that we have the Kh, his plausible bluffcatchers are AxQh (3), KxQh (4), KhQx (3), AA (3), KK (6), QQ (3), TT (3), 55 (3), 33 (3), JJ (6), 9h9x (4), 8h8x (4), QhJh, KhJh. That’s 47 combos, of which 7 are blocked in this instance and some, like the big pairs, discounted based on the preflop action. We’d only need him to call 20-25% of his bluffcatching candidates for us to show a profit. If he only continued to a river bet with Ah or Kh hands, he’d fold to a bluff roughly 75% of the time, which is about twice as often as we’d need for a bluff of $1500 to be profitable.

If he bluffcatches with anywhere near the right frequency, and if he rarely check-raises bluffs, then this is a bet.

Bet Sizing

There was some interesting discussion on bet sizing as well, with some people advocating an overbet to polarize our range and deter a check-raise bluff and others advocating a small bet to keep his calling range wide. I incline towards the second camp myself, because I think that when we bet big, we should actually be polarized.

This is because the first hands in his bluff-catching range should be those containing Kh. The larger our bet, the smaller his bluff-catching range ought to be, and so the greater the ratio of Kh to other combos. In other words, when we have the Kh in our hand, he should call disproportionately more often the smaller our bet.

However, as swallsjr points out, “We want to size our bet on the river to maximize the chances of getting called by worse, without inducing a check raise by worse.” That means we don’t want to bet so small that he excludes the Ah from our range, because then we don’t know what could happen. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 to 1500 is what I should have bet.

Results and Lessons

Remember I mentioned extenuating circumstances? Obviously I couldn’t have thought through things so thoroughly at the table, but I still went into the tank for a while when he checked to me. At some point, I began to worry that the longer I tanked, he would bluffcatch less and check-raise bluff more, correctly putting me on a thin value bet.

That may have been giving him too much credit, but eventually I just gave up and turned my cards over. He mucked, and I collected the pot. There are a few lessons to take from this:

1. Do the work ahead of time. You may be looking at the length of this post and wondering how one could possibly do this sort of analysis at the table. You couldn’t, for lack of both time and tools. That’s what makes it important to do this kind of analysis away from the table, so that your instincts and rough approximations are better in the heat of the moment. No matter how much you try to balance your tanking range, you simply can’t avoid giving away some information if you have to think for several minutes about a complex situation.

2. Small edges matter in big pots. Don’t look at this, throw up your arms, and say, “It’s all so complicated, it’s a close decision anyway, just check it back and collect what’s already a nice pot.” If a $1500 gets called worse 60% of the time and raised 40% of the time (and very rarely as a bluff), then you lose nearly $150  $300 by checking back. That’s 6 12BBs, at least an hour’s two hours’ worth of work at a live cash table if you have a solid edge in the game.

Thanks for playing, and good on ya if you made it this far!

Edit: Corrected math error in the second-to-last paragraph.

Villain seems youngish and decentish but not a prodigy. We’ve been playing together less than an hour, so that’s not a strong read, but the sense I get is that he’s more of a live pro than an internet guy dabbling in live poker.

Effective stacks are $6000. The weakest, loosest player at the table is in the big blind. Villain opens to $75 in middle position, and I 3-bet to $225 on the button with Kh 2h. This isn’t exactly a standard 3-bet, but a lot of things favor it: we’re deep, I have position, and his raise size suggests he is trying to play a pot in position against the big blind moreso than build a pot with a really good hand, because that player was prone to overdefending his blind and would often be willing to call a larger raise.

Anyway, action quickly folds back to Villain who calls without much thought.

Flop comes Th 5h 3h. He checks, I bet $350, and he calls.

Turn Qs. Villain checks and calls $750.

River 7h. Villain checks. There’s now $2485 in the pot and $4675 in the effective stacks.

What’s your play and why? Leave your thoughts, questions, and comments below. I’ll respond as able and be back on Friday with the results.

You can assume in cases where I don’t give information about his timing and demeanor that I detected nothing noteworthy about them one way or another.

But not I! As usual, I loaded my bag with my own food to limit my enslavement to the Atlantis’ establishments. I don’t mind going to an expensive restaurant occasionally when the food and company are both good, but I’m not looking to get gouged on every meal. This time I brought five just-add-hot-water rice bowls, peanut butter, jelly, bread, two boxes of granola, coffee (which is actually available free in the rooms, I just wanted better coffee), my new Aeropress, plastic utensils, two boxes of granola bars, and several other snacks.

To save space in the bag, I took the bags of granola out of their boxes before packing them. Somehow one managed to split open in my bag, so there was granola all over everything, but cleaning that up was still less of a hassle than trying to find a quick and decent meal in this place at any price. Miklos went to a grocery store yesterday and brought back some milk that we’re now storing in our ice bucket (can’t risk displacing anything in the mini bar since they use those sensors that charge you automatically).

Of course that cut my cereal supplies in half, but thankfully PokerStars is hosting a series of seminars that include free breakfast! Yesterday morning Vanessa Selbst and Barry Greenstein talked about learning mixed games, and today Shaun Deeb and Jason Mercier explained the basics of Open-Faced Chinese Poker. The presenters only get half an hour, so there’s not a lot of depth, but it was interesting to hear a long-time veteran of the game like Barry talk about how he survived so long as a pro and why he thought being able to play many games well was important. The food wasn’t bad either.

After yesterday’s seminar I stopped by the tournament room to wish well to Miklos and a few others playing today. The first guy besides Miklos to arrive at his table was enough for me to say that his table was already better than mine, and they just kept coming. That was all based on stereotyping, but Miklos has since confirmed that it is indeed a very good table, so I was pretty jealous of that. He finished Day 1 with a stack just shy of average and as of now is still in the hunt on Day 2.

On the plus side, I got to spend the better part of the last two days outdoors. The first thing I did was lie on the beach and listen to the vendors harass the tourists: “Hello honey. Want hair braids? Jewelry? Be a real Bahama Mama?”

“Jet ski! Are you ready?”

“Real Cuban cigars! Smoke them now or later.”

I must have had a good don’t-fuck-with-me face, because none of the vendors approached me. I did, however, overhear a woman falling hook, line, and sinker for a story about a very popular catamaran tour. Tickets were $60, and though it was sold out for today, she could put down a $10-per-ticket deposit to reserve a seat for tomorrow’s tour. It occurred to me that perhaps I should point out the foolhardiness of handing $20 to a stranger on the beach in exchange for this supposed reservation, but then I thought about how I would feel if someone walked over to my poker table and told a fishy opponent to fold to my value bet.

Time to go check out the cash games…

If these guys had any faults, it was that they were too aggressive. That made it impossible (for me anyway) to ride out the run of bad cards I encountered.

In the first level, I avoided playing big pots out of position, as is my wont. I called late position raises with AJs and TT in my big blind only to end up folding them by the river.

With the AJs, I checked and called a half-pot bet on a K94r flop, checked a 7 turn, and checked and folded to half pot on a 9 river.

With the TT, I called a bet on a Qd 8d 5c flop and folded a 7d turn even though I had a flush draw. I consider both folds to be close, but I don’t regret either. Little did I know they would be among the best hands I’d see all day.

At the 75/150 level, I got JJ on the button facing an UTG raise to 300 from the high-stakes PLO/NLHE guy. I made it 900, and he folded.

Between the bad cards and the tough table, I mostly nitted it up for the first three hours, opening my game up slightly with the introduction of antes at the 100/200/25 level. For example, I opened to 525 with AJo UTG+1, and the same guy called. I bet about half-pot on a Q94r, and he called. We both checked a 3 turn, I bet 1800 into 2800 on a 6 river and folded and felt pretty owned when he raised to 5200.

So it was with a slightly more aggressive image that I opened AKo to 450 on my button. The aggressive Spaniard in the SB three-bet to 1425, and I made it 3425 intending to reluctantly shove over a four-bet.

Instead he called, and we saw a JJ2 flop. Thinking there was a decent chance I was good and that I couldn’t get him off of a better hand on the flop, I bet just 2200 when he checked to me, which he called without too much hesitation.

He checked a J turn, and I checked behind intending to pick off a river bluff. He surprised me, though, by shoving about 20K into an 11.5K pot. I went into the tank for a while and folded, deciding he wouldn’t feel compelled to bluff so big with his air hands, since I could easily have a weak hand myself, and also that if he was bluffing it could be with better hands than mine.

The next time I got AK, Dani opened UTG+1, one of the most aggressive players three-bet him, the tightest of my opponents (which isn’t saying very much) cold four-bet to 4400, and the action was on me with AKo and about 20K on the button. I actually don’t think shoving would be the worst play in the world, but I folded.

The only real move I made was against a guy was probably the weakest and most aggressive at the table. At 200/400/50, he opened to 800 UTG+1, and I made it 2000 with Qs 8s on the CO. He looked annoyed and called. The flop came Jc 9d 3c, he check-called 2400, which I took to be pretty strong. With 10K in the pot and 10K in my stack, I checked back blank turn and river cards and lost to his Ks Js which was surely not going anywhere. It seems like this was a good spot and just unlucky that he managed to connect well with the flop.

Dinner break came shortly after that, so I left a meager 10K in my stack when I went to eat. On the first hand back, we were playing 250/500/50, and I shoved QQ over an early position raise from Dani. He folded. Two orbits later, I shoved AJ over one of his raises, and he folded again. Then I shoved 55 in my BB over a HJ raise form the most aggressive player, and he folded.

Blinds went up to 300/600/75, and I posted one of my 16 remaining BBs. The second most aggressive player at the table opened the CO, I shoved ATo, he gleefully (and correctly) called with A8o, spiked a 874 flop, and that was the end of a tough and boring day of poker.

After that I was in New York for a few short but great days visiting two good friends who are also among my oldest poker friends from my first home game. It’s funny, Logan and his wife Jen were two of my best friends in college, and I used to stay at their apartment on the Upper West Side when I visited New York and just visit for an evening with Darren, whom I met through the aforementioned home game and knew much less well. Then Logan and Jen moved into a smaller apartment, while Darren bought a house in Westchester and had kids, so now I end up staying at Darren’s house when I go to New York and only get to visit with Logan for usually one day of my trip. It was nice that this time Logan and Jen spent a night at Darren’s house as well, so we had ourselves a little slumber party.

It was also nice that there was a direct flight from the Westchester County Airport to Nassau this morning, so although I had to wake up at 5AM I didn’t have to deal with any JFK craziness. Thankfully the flight was largely empty, because what passengers there were proved exactly what I expected from the Westchester Country Airport. This one family, whose members were straight out of central casting for The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, more or less turned the middle of the plane into their private lounge.

Other than that the flight was fine, and because Miklos was a supernova when he won his satellite, I got to take a PokerStars limo to the Atlantis, which was far nicer than the cabs bearing the scars of multiple collisions that I’ve taken in past years. I shared the limo with two Russians and a Venezualan, evidence of how international this game and especially this particular tournament have become.

Since checking in, I’ve already caught up with two of my favorite PokerStars employees and received a special emeritus invite to the Team Online social hour tonight. In a big improvement over past years, PokerStars is setting up its own wireless hotspots, which though not a lot better in quality than the hotel internet will save me about $100.

While sitting in the PokerStars lounge writing this very blog post, I told a German satellite qualifier that no, the seat next to me was not taken. A moment later he took his headphones off and told me that he thought he recognized me voice. Turned out he was listening to the latest Thinking Poker Podcast at that very moment!

He wondered off to watch the High Roller, and I’d just returned to writing when two drunk blokes sat down and asked what I was writing. I got to talking with them and they encouraged me to come drinking with them, but I had to turn them down so I can go eat and then catch up with my friends from Team Online. It was probably for the best, because even though they were a few drinks ahead of me, I still doubt I could have kept up with them!

I decided, at the last minute as usual, to play the PCA. I’m selling action in the $10300 main event at 120%, with a discount for buying 10% or more.

1% = $123.60
5% =  $618
10% =  $1200 (116.5% markup)
50% = $6000 (116.5% markup)

Please email me at andrew@thinkingpoker.net if you’re interested or have any questions.

The title of this post is in German because that’s where I am right now. My girlfriend and I have just embarked on a three-month Europe trip. My inability to play online poker has become a convenient excuse to travel the world, spending several months first in Canada and now in Europe. As far as occupational hazards go, these aren’t so bad.

In a sequel to my Gray Friday article entitled Three Days in Madrid, I described meeting two new friends after a last-minute decision to play the Grand Final of the European Poker Tour. Appropriately, both Soeren and Nico are also coming to Berlin for the EPT, and I hope to see both of them today. Nico and I traveled to Cannes for the WSOP-Europe a few months ago, but this will be the first time I’ve seen Soeren since Madrid.

In the last year, Nico’s home country of Spain has adopted legislation restricting its citizens to playing on Spanish-only sites, and Soeren’s home country of Germany threatens to enact similar legislation. Back in the United States, the patchwork of pending legislation at the state and federal levels is too complex for me to keep up with it. Although the holy grail would be legislation welcoming PokerStars back into the US market so that US players could compete against the rest of the world, at this point even the creation of a US-only market would be a vast improvement over the status quo.

For now, though, I remain a poker nomad. I play the EPT Berlin on Monday and hopefully the rest of the week as well. Last night a former student who lives in Berlin picked us up at the train station and took us to dinner. Soon we’ll be on to Amsterdam, where I hope to meet another former student and also spend some time with Richard “tzen1” Veenman, a member of PokerStars Team Online whom I first met in the Bahamas earlier this year.

A long-time blog reader offered us a couch to crash on in his Paris apartment, so that’s where we’ll be after the SCOOP. Then there’s hiking in the Swiss alps, hopefully meeting a student in Switzerland while we’re there, and then on to a small town in Germany for the wedding of one of my closest friends, who asked me to be his best man on this date in 2011.

I still haven’t answered any of those big questions, but I’ve managed to orient myself and muddle my way through a messy situation by focusing on what’s important to me: relationships with family, friends, and my girlfriend; traveling, meeting new people, and having new experiences; and making the best of any situation in which I find myself, doing my best not to look to the past with resentment or longing nor towards the future with fear or anticipation.

How did Black Friday affect you? What has your life been like for the past year? How do you feel on this important anniversary?

I got off to a good start, calling a raise to 2,200 from a seemingly tight-aggressive player in middle position with AJo in the CO. The big blind called as well, and we saw a K82 rainbow flop.

The pre-flop raiser bet 4,500. Against some players this would be a snap-call with a good Ace-high, but his TAG image gave me pause. I ultimately called because the board was so good for a continuation bet and the odds so tempting, but I didn’t feel great about it. The third player folded.

We both checked an 8 on the turn. The river brought a Q, and he checked again. AJ has considerable showdown value here, but I decided to turn it into a bluff by betting 7,500….

Give it a read and let me know what you think!

I also said that, in the absence of such tells, I still thought that check-raising all-in on the turn was the best play. Now, a few very good comments on that post have me re-evaluating that opinion. Here, thanks to commenter Todd, is the short version of the argument for betting the turn, planning to fold to a raise but to bluff most rivers if called:

I think the reasons you list, specifically the lack of planning and the value of survival make bet turn bet river a better plan than check shove. I don’t think you are going to get bluff raised virtually ever on your turn bet, and you stand to get the same folds you get by the c/r by barreling all the way – but for a cheaper price. Yes, if he raises the turn bet you have to fold, but if we believe he only raises with the strongest portion of his range such as sets, the alternative is having him call our c/r with that same range and us playing a big pot with one card to come… so bet fold isn’t the worst thing in the world here, and as long as we are correct about our other assumptions (he gets to the turn with a fairly wide range, he is less likely to have a multi-street plan than other players, and he has some value on his tourney life, double barelling the turn and river gets the same folds as c/r) then it seems to be the better line to me.

Gareth elaborates and adds some further arguments for bet-betting:

If his flop calling range is so wide (and we think it might be capped… though it wasn’t… maybe it just excludes or discounts AJ/QQ type hands that would see where they were at with a flop raise), check-raising all in on the turn makes sense if we can get him to bet/fold weak to strong show down hands like JT or TT or KJ. But the main advantage I see of it is that we get to see the river versus his nutted hands (with all the money in no less) whereas bet/bet we might not, depending on how big he makes his turn raise. The problem with this being a big advantage over bet/bet is the fact that you, and I, and most people, thought his flop call range was often capped, so we don’t expect to be raised very often, and we expect to be battling a wide, capped range going into the turn on this texture. That’s what makes bet/bet so great here, it let’s us manipulate his range so thoroughly because we can make excellent estimations about what his range is. In fact we know almost his exact range to raise, to call, and to fold the turn should we bet 7300 — and consequently we know how to best exploit that range, say if he calls, by bluffing the cards that scare him and by value betting the cards that don’t (but actually make our monster).

With check-raise all in we risk the turn checking through often and having severely diminished river fold equity. We often won’t be able to fold out those holdings on the river that we could of on the turn. Moreover those holdings that we couldn’t fold out on the turn with bet/bet we own often on the river in a larger pot, now with turn x/x they never fold in a smaller pot. You mention that he should be able to bet draws because of previous play, therefore he will bet/fold these draws often on the turn in addition to his strong showdown hands? What draws exactly? The diamond draws that turned top pair? The diamond draws that are gutted or double gutted… with an over or two?! Most of the draws that we can fold with a turn check-raise, it seems to me, will call a turn barrel and lose to us at showdown, like 89, T8, 86 (he already showed that he wouldn’t bluff missed draws). The other draws will talk themselves into crying calls often because they are combination draws.

Now I am not saying that we should worry about our river fold equity being diminished (in the turn x/x case) for the sake of trying to win every pot we play, but rather that why would we turn down a +cEV turn barrel that happens to have the benefit of setting up excellent river play versus this villains range and capacities?

Thanks for the great comments, guys, and for your persistence in arguing with me! There are a lot of things I enjoy about blogging, but I wouldn’t still be doing it if it didn’t continue to teach me new things!

Important Details

The first important thing to notice is that Villain’s range for getting to the turn is likely very wide. We’ve seen him make a loose pre-flop call, and there’s a lot of ways that he could have a small piece of this flop. I also happen to agree with BlueDuck that “He’s a middle-aged recreational player so I’d expect he’d play a straightforward in-position style – his call of the CB suggests a small pair or picked up a pair on the flop. If he had AJ, KJ, or QJ – I’d expect he’d have raised your CB.”

The second important detail is that Hero has a hand with a lot of equity but no showdown value. These two factors add up to a great spot for bluffing, as virtually everyone advocated. I think check-calling is the only really big mistake you could make with this hand – it’s simply too good of a spot to give up on winning without showdown.

Check-Raising

What surprised me is how few people suggested check-raising all-in on the turn, which is what I did. No one on Thinking Poker mentioned it, while Cardplayer commenter Blueduck mentioned it in passing. Nyy214 said a bit more than most, and I liked his other suggestion as well:

Check shove. If he gives you a free card then fine. Or what about a bet of like 3500 (I know its very odd), but if he calls either way you get make a bet of like 17k on the river. If he raises to like 11k then you can ship. I feel like these two plays give you the most fold equity.

I dont like betting 12k on the turn because if he shoves you have to fold and if he calls, he probably isnt folding a ton of rivers

With a draw this big, you really want to make the last bet, and nyy214 had some good suggestions for how to structure the betting to ensure that. Against a player of this type, I like the check-raise line because he’s less likely than a professional to bet the turn without thinking about the possibility of a check-raise. In other words, whereas a professional might say, “I’d like to protect my TT, but I don’t want to open myself up to a check-raise bluff I can’t call, so I better check behind,” this player is more likely to see how vulnerable his hand is, bet, and then realize after he gets check-raised that he doesn’t want to call it.

We’ve also seen that he’s willing to bet draws when checked to on the turn, so I feel comfortable concluding that he’ll have a wide bet-folding range. Thus, check-raising gives Hero a very good chance to get in the last bet and win a large pot without showdown.

Bet-Betting

This is my next preferred line. As cbeak says, “After calling flop and turn, I think a relative unknown’s river range is on the wide side, consisting of things like diamond draws, pair plus diamonds, second pair or top pair or better. Therefore, we might want to bet.” If we don’t get raised on the turn, then Villain’s hand can’t be that strong, which sets up a good river bluffing opportunity.

The problem, as many of you pointed out, is that if we do get raised on the turn, we probably have to fold away a lot of equity. This line prevents us from getting in the last bet (unless we bet very small with the intention of 3-bet-shoving, as nyy214 suggests, although this player probably doesn’t raise even an underbet on the turn without a very good hand).

If Hero does bet the turn, I agree with Gareth that, “we shouldn’t have to bet large to fold the hands we want to fold with a turn barrel. Those hands are basically pairs worse than a jack. So TT-88, A7s, 76s, 66. I think this is a card that coordinates well with his flop calling range, non of his diamond draws are folding, some paired up, the others added a gutshot. No Jx is folding and neither is a set or an overpair etc. So anyways I think we only need to make a smaller bet at this point in relation to the pot, I would go with 7300 into 15600.”

Results

I checked the turn, intending to shove over a bet. My opponent gave a little shrug and casually – a little too casually – tossed two 5K chips into the pot. I moved all-in, and he snap-called with a set of 7s. I didn’t get there on the river.

I was surprised that he didn’t raise the set on the flop, but mostly I was disappointed in myself for not paying more attention to his body language. I should have been more open to taking in new information and re-evaluating my plan, because in retrospect his little “Whatever, guess I’ll bet 10K” act screams strength.

I still like planning to check-shove in the absence of a tell like this. It just goes to show you how important it is always to be looking and listening for new information, even when you think your mind is already made up.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Blinds are 500/1000/100. I open to 2600 with Th 9h in early position. Villain calls in middle position, and everyone else folds.

Flop Jh 7d 5d. I bet 4000, he calls.

Turn Qh gives me open-ended straight flush draw. There’s 16,600 in the pot, Villain has 56K in his stack, and I have about 110K.

Please post your plan for the turn and a bit about how you’d proceed on both blank rivers and rivers that complete one of your draws. I’ll post results and my thoughts on Friday.

Steve Phillips left a comment that sums up the reasons for bluffing with KJ quite nicely and also sets up a few of the other things I wanted to talk about, so I’m going to post it here even though it’s somewhat long:

I think it’s a good spot to bluff-shove for several reasons:
a) Hero’s line is consistent with trips+
b) Hero’s stack size is perfect for it
c) Villain’s range is limited somewhat due to the turn action
d) If Villain holds a strong hand AA/KK and even AQ, it’s a difficult call
e) Hero holds one of the worst hands in his range
f) Given the read (older dude, probably solid/straightforward?), Villain doesn’t expect Hero to be turning JsJc/AdTd type hands into bluffs. Therefore Hero’s perceived range on a river shove is trips+ or wiffed draws, and there aren’t many wiffed draws
g) Villain might get to the river with hands that have no value (AdKs, AhKs, AsKd, AsKc, AcKs, AsJd, AsJh, AsJc) that all beat Hero if he checks but will fold if Hero bets
You might argue with my first point because Hero might have raised the flop with his strongest made hands (QQ/QT/TT/66) and his strongest draws (AsJs/8s7s/KsJs, etc.), but in general when Hero bets or shoves river he will have a strong hand a lot of the time.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on betting half-pot (or some other amount) instead of moving all-in.

The essence of a good bluffing situation is one where your opponent’s range is cappedor nearly capped, you can credibly represent many hands that beat all or most of your opponent’s range, and there aren’t a lot of hands in your perceived range that would need to bluff the river. All these factors are present in this hand, though I do think that betting less than all-in on the river will help with the bit about representing many value hands. Particularly given Hero’s identity as a recreational player, shoving would have the undesirable effect of removing hands like AQ and maybe even low flushes from his perceived value range, i.e. the hands I’d expect him to shove for value. I would fold disproportionately more to a smaller bet relative to the odds it was laying me, making it overall a more profitable option for Hero than shoving. As cbeak says, with a smaller bet “we rep a wider value range (Qx and flushes) a bit more credibly compared to a bigger bet”.

Ian makes an interesting point that, “the turn bet should be a bit bigger to set up an easier river ship”. This isn’t always desirable with a draw, since setting up a river shove also means setting up your opponent to check-raise all-in on the turn and blow you off of your draw, but in this case I agree. The key factor is that Hero’s draw isn’t actually all that great, particularly not relative to Villain’s check-shoving range, which probably contains both made flushes and nut flush draws, both of which crush Kx Js. So bet-folding isn’t a disaster, and building a bigger pot for what will be a profitable river spot is otherwise desirable.

A few commenters were very confident in their ability to exploit me. JeanNoel says that, “Villain is Andrew, so I am sure he can call here with AA, so I will give up and check the river” and JD is sure that, “Villain would have folded the turn if he was going to fold”.

I hope I’m not that easy to play against. For one thing, the river isn’t quite a blank. It’s significant that my KK now loses to AQ. Even if the river card changed nothing in terms of hands I could beat, though, the fact that Hero bets again is significant information that should alter my calling range from what it was on the turn. In other words, my range for putting 12K into the pot (just the turn bet) ought to be different than my range for putting something like 40K (turn and river bets) into the pot. If it’s not, I’m easily exploited, as these comments suggest, by never following up a turn bluff with a river barrel.

Dsho does a nice job of discussing balance and how to construct a river betting range. The only addition/correction I’d make is that when choosing hands with which to bluff the river, the key consideration is not “relative equity” that you had on the turn but rather how much showdown value your hand has and whether you have blockers to your opponent’s calling range. In this case, KJ is at the very bottom of what is generally a strong range, so it’s a natural choice for bluffing. Turning JJ into a bluff to get me off KK/AA wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, but it probably has slightly more showdown value than KJ (though not a lot, really), meaning that Villain should put all his KJ combos into his bluffing range first.

According to Giorgios, “AA, KK, and maybe JJ … are perfect bluff catchers”. I would actually argue that, because KJ is the hand Hero is most likely to bluff, KK and JJ are very poor bluff catchers. If I hold two Ks or two Js in my hand, that significantly reduces the number of bluffing combos in Hero’s range.

So in conclusion, I think that Hero in this hand definitely should have bet the river, and that something like 28K, or slightly over half-pot/half of my stack, would be a better size than all-in. For what it’s worth, I also agree with JeanNoel that “pre flop it is a fold, because utg raises and a good player flat calls, so it will be very difficult to play this hand (even when in position) with a lot of reverse implied odds”.

Thanks to everyone who participated. WYP will be back next week with another hand between the same two players, only this time you’ll be in my shoes, so be sure to check back on Monday!

It’s the first level of Day 2 of the PCA main event. Blinds are 500/1000/100. Villain raises to 2400 UTG, a good young player in early position calls, and Hero calls in the CO with Kh Js. Everyone else folds.

Flop is Qs Ts 6c. Villain bets 5600, the second player folds, and Hero calls.

Turn is the 4s. Villain waits 20-30 seconds before checking. Hero bets 12,000. Villain takes another 20 seconds or so to call.

River Qd. Villain checks relatively quickly. There’s 45K in the pot and 50K in Villain’s stack. Do you bluff? If so, how much do you bet?

Please post your thoughts, comments, and questions here. I’ll respond to comments throughout the week and post my own thoughts about the hand on Friday.

Q: I was wondering if you had considered 3b pre? You’re going to have the worst position in the hand going forward. You’ll also have the worst relative position since villain 1 isn’t going to lead the betting to often being passive. I think you get the button to fold a bunch and you get heads up, granted in a bloated pot, but vs a passive player where I’d think you get to show down easier with 1p hands.

A: The short answer is yes, I did consider it. Really, though, if you 3-bet, what are you hoping will happen? You’ll have to fold to a 4-bet, so that’s a bad outcome. Even if you’re called, you won’t be eager to play a big pot if you flop top pair. A passive player’s early position raising range is pretty strong, and it gets stronger once he calls a 3-bet. I think it’s safe to assume neither of these players continues with AJ or KQ, which means that your AQ won’t dominate anything in their calling ranges. If called, you’ll be hoping either to bluff or to flop some value and check it down, maybe squeeze out a value bet. It’s not a disaster, but it’s not a great outcome either.

If I 3-bet, I’d really be hoping for folds. And at that point, it doesn’t much matter that I have AQs. If I thought a 3-bet would get a lot of folds (and I don’t , because again the raiser’s range is strong), then I would rather do it with a hand that has less calling value.

The results of this hand notwithstanding, being up against passive players is actually a reason to prefer calling. You can keep the pot small and wait until they reveal more information about their hands. Plus, calling keeps all those dominated Ax and Qx hands in their ranges, which is what you really want to be up against when you hold AQ. Being suited adds an extra bit of value in a multi-way pot.

This isn’t to say that AQs is never a 3-betting hand. It’s often a very good one. The important thing to see here is that the original raiser has a strong range, so 3-betting serves only to isolate the best part of his range, the part that dominates AQ, while folding out the part that AQ dominates.

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

Saskatchewan limped UTG again, Belgium limped behind, and I raised to 1,000 with A4o in the CO. This raise really blurs the line between “value” and “making a move”, since I do expect to win often with a continuation bet but I also think A4 is ahead of both of their ranges. Essentially I’ve got position and the best hand, so even though it might be tricky to play post-flop, I don’t see how raising can be bad. Saskatchewan joked about how “you internet guys don’t allow limping” and called, and Belgium called as well. They both checked a K83 rainbow, I bet 1,600, Saskatchewan folded, and Belgium quickly raised to 5,100. I was sure he was making a move, so I considered my options.

This trip report focuses almost exclusively on the poker. If you want to read about the rest of the trip, check out Hello, Goodbye, Team Online.

As always, please let me know what you think!

I say I may be results oriented because I bet 3000, V1 sighed and folded, and V2 called with Jh 8h.

Value Betting

As many of you identified, Hero is very likely to have the best hand on the river. The question, however is not only how but whether he can get value from it. Especially in multi-way pots, where people tend to be more tight and passive, it can be difficult to get value from medium-strength hands.

I agree with Gareth that “we should assume we have the nuts versus V1”. We can’t, however, assume that he calls with worse when we bet again into two people on a card that improves some of the hands his JJ or whatever was beating on the turn.

I don’t agree that we have the nuts versus V2. His range looks more to me like busted draws or trips, meaning he either has us beat or can’t call a bet. In Bond2King’s words, “V2′s range is mostly missed draws or maybe an 8 or a 6, but he’s not calling with a 6 anyway.”

The key consideration behind betting, then, is whether the times V1 calls with worse outweigh the times V2 holds better. I’m still not sure of the answer. I’m also not sure whether Hero can call a river bet, and if so whether doing so is more profitable than value betting.

Scenario A: Villain 1 bets 3000, Villain 2 folds

Although V1 is very unlikely to hold a better hand than ours, I also think he’s very unlikely to bluff or value bet worse. Even with KQ, which would be oddly played to this point, I don’t see what he can expect to be called by. Passive live players suck at thin value betting anyway. Gareth suggests the possibility of a frustration bet, but he didn’t seem frustrated and in any event with something like 99 he may still be thinking he’s got a chance of winning if it checks down. Passive live players like seeing showdowns. I’d be inclined to fold.

Scenario B: Villain 1 checks, Villain 2 bets 3000

I feel better about calling here, but it’s not a lock. The scared money read makes me wonder whether he’d bluff into two people when so many draws obviously missed. He might, though, and I think there’s a good chance a live read could help me decide. Probably I’d call.

Scenario C: Villain 1 bets 3000, Villain 2 calls

I’d fold without thinking too hard about it.

In fact I like cbeak’s comment that, “another aspect of checking that I think is good is that it is lower risk insofar as we can see how things play out before deciding (avoiding, for example, hero bets, v1 calls, v2 raises, hero?).” When a decision is close, especially in live poker, I tend to err towards letting my opponents act, as they often give away information via physical tells or bet sizing. In other words, if it’s close anyway, I like to to create opportunities to collect more information that might help me make a profitable decision. So I kind of wish I’d checked here planning to see what happens and decide.

Thanks for all the comments, and sorry that I don’t have a more definitive answer for you!

I know that there is zero chance of herding fifteen online poker pros into a conference room by 10AM, I tell myself that this is true and that I need not rush, but nevertheless I am there for our PokerStars Team Online meeting at 9:51. I just can’t help being early. This gives me nearly an hour to chat with the other “early” arrivers before we finally begin.

They are a formidable crowd. Shane Schleger was already an online MTT hero six years ago, when I was just starting to grind my way up. Today is January 6th, and he has already final tabled the Sunday Million this year. Mickey Peterson, on the other hand, arrived much later than I to the tournament scene but has already put up results that surpass both Shane’s and mine.

In 2009, Kevin Thurman set a record by earning 3,055,385 VPPs. That same year, I was down to the wire getting the last few VPPs I needed to cross the 100,000 mark and make Supernova. It boggles my mind that people manage to earn 1,000,000 in a year to make Supernova Elite, let alone that Kevin accumulated thirty times as many VPPs as I did.

Bjorn Schneider, sitting to Kevin’s immediate left, broke that record last month. The two of them just met this morning, though apparently they were on the same flight to the Bahamas. Bjorn was sitting immediately behind Kevin and listening to him tell his seatmate about “the guy who just broke my record”.

The two players at the table who are more my speed are Adrienne Rowsome and Richard Veenman, both of whom are, like me, mere Supernovas who play about twenty hours a week. Unlike me, however, they both have jobs outside of poker. We later learn that they are the only two working stiffs out of the fifteen of us.

Perhaps the most intimidating character at the table, however, is Anders Berg. Anders has a PhD in Pure Mathematics and three WCOOP bracelets. He also finished second in an event in last year’s WCOOP, narrowly missing a record-setting fourth bracelet. Anders is the oldest player in the room, but also one of the most fit. When he introduces himself, he rattles off numerous feats of athleticism alongside his academic qualifications. Though quiet and humble, he gives the distinct impression of having never done anything badly in his life.

Anders is hardly alone in this. The room is full of people who have excelled in other competitive venues besides poker. Andre Coimbra won the Magic: The Gathering world championships in 2009. Randy Lew was a nationally competitive video gamer before taking up poker. Several members of Team Online have a background in high-level chess, and no one is surprised when Anders Berg adds his name to this list.

Despite their geeky interests, these aren’t your stereotypical pasty internet nerds. Shane Schleger, Richard Veenman, Tyler Frost, and Diego Brunelli quickly find a common interest in tennis and arrange a doubles match for the next morning. In what sounds an awful lot like a hustle to me, Richard claims to be a beginner but admits to practicing tennis two and a half hours every day. Jorge Limon races rally cars, which he later tells me entails off-roading with modified street cars and which sounds pretty damn dangerous. Adrienne Rowsome is a serious yoga practitioner and plays slo-pitch softball, though her league seems to emphasize drinking more than any other aspect of the game.

I am struck by what a great job Pokerstars has done of selecting individuals who are serious about online poker but also well-rounded and interesting people. I am looking forward to seeing as much of them as possible during the week we’re about to spend together at the Atlantis resort (though I would have preferred not to have them sitting next to me in the main event, which is where both Bjoern and Jorge end up).

They are good players, to be sure, but they are not necessarily the best or the most famous on the site. This is the moment when the meaning of Team Online crystallizes for me: these folks are workhorses. They are driven, and they log serious volume online without putting the rest of their lives on hold.

Barry Greenstein and Daniel Negreanu fill an entirely different niche. They are superheroes, impossibly successful professionals to whom the average PokerStars player can look up but probably can’t relate. This isn’t to say that Greenstein and his fellow Team Pro members don’t work hard. I’m sure they do. I just think that they also possess some innate talent that separates them qualitatively from the vast majority of poker players, no matter how dedicated.

Every Batman needs a Robin. With a few exceptions (cough, Randy Lew, cough), most Team Online players represent attainable goals. They make good money, to be sure, but for most it has more to do with hard work than superhuman talent. Players who saw the red spade on my avatar sometimes told me, in accusatory fashion, that they’d never heard of me. I’m realizing that was kind of the point. Your average Team Online member is an ordinary person who’s had extraordinary outcomes by taking advantage of the game selection and VIP rewards available on PokerStars.

Spending a week with these extraordinary poker players is both intimidating and inspiring. On the one hand, their passion for poker is contagious. Each of them represents a unique twist on what’s possible with hard work and dedication. Then again, the shear amount of hard work and dedication required by some of their more impressive feats (Kevin Thurman tells me he played 24 tables, 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week for an entire year to set his record) is enough to make you run screaming for the nearest lazy river.

Thankfully the Atlantis has a great one of those, and my teammates do find time to float and enjoy the beautiful weather in the Bahamas. More than a few are anxious about falling behind Supernova Elite pace so early in the year, and swapping intelligence about where to get the best wireless signal during VPP Happy Hour is a popular topic of conversation. You can take the player out of the game, but you can’t take the game out of the player, and this bunch are players through and through. It was an honor to play alongside them, even if I didn’t meet them in person until our time together was nearly up.

Hero: It’s me. Late 20’s, wearing a PokerStars Team Online patch and sunglasses, not saying much but friendly when I do happen my mouth. I’ve been quiet so far and recently showed down KK in a 3-bet pot.

Villain 1: Middle-aged Canadian, recreational player, on the loose-passive side. He limps more than he raises in early position.

Villain 2: Young Spanish kid, maybe 22 at the oldest. This is likely one of the biggest events he’s played, as he’s giving off a bit of a “scared money”-vibe.

Villain 1 opens to 450 in early position, Villain 2 calls in the CO, and Hero calls with As Qs in the SB. The flop came Qd 8c 2h and checks all the way around. Hero bets 900 on a 6c turn, Villain 1 quickly calls, and Villain 2 asks how much, thinks for 15-20 seconds, and calls.

The river is the 8d, making the final board Qd 8c 2h 6c 8d. There’s 4200 in the pot. Do you bet or check? If you bet, how much? If you check, how do you respond to each of the following?

a) Villain 1 bets 3000, Villain 2 folds.

b) Villain 1 bets 3000, Villain 2 colds.

c) Villain 1 checks, Villain 2 bets 3000.

I’ll post results and my thoughts on Friday, as usual.

Q: Though honestly I agree with what you wrote I just wonder since “Villain is a young online MTT wizard: highly ranked on Pocket Fives, tons of success” we know (and he might not know we know) that he knows he can bet anything and probably get a fold tons of the time because he can have AK and it is much harder for other people to (especially when they don’t check raise the flop). As soon as we call I think Villain needs to become super cautious. Against anyone else I insta fold k10. I actually thought this example was how to outplay a wizard but I was wrong. : -) I guess I leveled myself!

A: If I understand you correctly, you’re asking whether Villain couldn’t bluff this flop with a really wide range since he can represent nutted hands (not only AK but sets as well) more easily than we can. This would be more of a consideration in a heads up pot.

The nice thing about multiway pots is that they provide an opportunity to get free information from opponents who are otherwise very good at balancing their ranges and concealing information. This is because your opponent cannot play only against you. If you know what he thinks about other players in the pot, then that provides a framework for interpreting his actions.

In this instance, we’ve already said that the other two players in the pot were on the loose side. It’s safe to assume that a smart player will pick up on that quickly. Even if Villain knew that Hero would fold a hand like KT, he still can’t assume that the other two would. Loose players, by definition, don’t make tight folds based on sharp reads. On such a coordinated board, Villain must assume that he’s going to get action more often than not. Thus, we can treat his bet as honest and fold without going down the path of “but he knows that I know that he….”

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

I would probably fold although the pot odds are enticing and your hand (a pair and a draw) superficially seems very strong. This is a super wet board and a good player should not be leading into three opponents without something very substantial. I put him on KQ, AQ and stronger. If you raise all-in, I don’t think he folds much. I also don’t think you have the full 13 outs that a pair-and-an-OESD normally does.

Assuming you call, if your draw comes in, with an ace or a nine, it’s going to be a super-scary board, and it’s going to be tough to get paid off, especially being out of position. On top of that, your opponent will often also have a king, so you may well chop even if your draw comes in – or lose to AK.

Not all pair + draws are created equally. On a board like this, where so many draws are likely, it matters a lot that you have the worst pair and are drawing exclusively to non-nut hands. Out of position in a multi-way pot with action from a good player in early position, you can’t afford to treat this as a strong hand.

Against a range of {TT+,AQs+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,8d7d,AQo+,KJo+), Hero has about 26% equity. Adding in 99 and AJ, which I think Villain is more likely to check, gets us up to 30%.

Moreover, this flop smacks Villain’s range, and it’s not a board he’s betting light into three players. This means we can’t expect much fold equity by check-raising. Kordolius argues that, “the flop hits our range well too, and in his eyes we may represent better hands than we have.” I struggle to think of any high-equity hands Villain would fold to a check-raise. The fact that this flop hits our perceived range well ought to make Villain less likely to bet hands that can’t stand hear in the first place.  I think getting all-in on the flop would be a big money-loser.

Calling is not much more appealing. The immediate pot odds require Hero to have about 28% equity to call, which as we’ve seen is close. However, as Dangerhorse argues, there are significant reverse implied odds attached to drawing out of position to non-nut hands. With such a transparent draw, Hero can’t count on getting money in as a big favorite when he hits. Villain’s range also includes enough flush draws and high-equity made hands that bluffing diamonds won’t prove overly profitable either. In short, calling the flop would be roughly break-even if we were faced with an all-in bet, but on balance we’re likely to lose more than we make on future streets. Best to get out now.

This raises the question Georgios poses: “Preflop the odds to call are great (almost 7 to 1) but you never thought to fold? Isn’t [this] a trouble hand vs three player[s,] one of them early pos raiser tourney pro? Isn’t [this] a reverse implied odds hand?”

Yes, which is why we have to proceed carefully post-flop. The nice thing about getting really good pot odds is that you can afford to cherry-pick only the most profitable spots. As long as you’re disciplined enough to get away from a deceptively pretty hand in a spot like this, I think it’s OK to peel pre-flop with what is admittedly a dangerous hand.

Even with this flop, I can imagine some scenarios where I wouldn’t check-fold. If the flop checked around, I’d feel a lot better about putting money into the pot on the majority of turns. I’d also feel better about calling the flop if the last player to act bet at it, rather than the early position raiser. Then of course there are other flops and other scenarios where Hero’s hand would have better equity. It’s just a matter of knowing how often they will come around and comparing that to the price you’re getting to see the flop.

There was no way I was going to spend it on food and drink, so I assessed my other options. The snorkeling here is really hokey, because it’s just in one of Atlantis’ fake bodies of water. I’ve heard good things about swimming with the dolphins, but I have some serious ethical objections to keeping dolphins in captivity. Then I remembered Lawrence from Office Space‘s famous answer to the question of what he would do with a million dollars.

Mandara, the spa at PCA, offers a treatment called the Four Hands Massage: “Two therapists working on you simultaneously in synchronicity – and serene silence.” There was a realistic chance this was just an excuse to charge twice as much for a massage, but I figured I’d never have another chance to try it, so I made an appointment and came away impressed.

I began lying face-down with four hands pressing motionless into my back. A voice told me to take three deep breaths, and as I exhaled the third time, they were off. The whole thing was clearly choreographed and rehearsed and felt pretty awesome. First, one of the therapists worked on my back and shoulders while the other mirrored her movements on my legs. Later they worked in parallel, one on the left side and one on the right. It almost didn’t feel like hands at all, since there was so much happening at once.

I still can’t say that it was worth the asking price ($288 including the mandatory 20% gratuity), but I took a bottle of water with me when I left, and here at Atlantis that’s like a $5 value right there.

In addition to all the bragging, he had a really condescending attitude towards everyone else at the table. A recreational player sucked out on him in a big pot and apologized. He laughed in the guy’s face for apologizing and sent a clear message: “I don’t care about the $10,000, and you’re a fish if you think a bad beat is something you need to apologize for.” When the same player later lost his stack on a questionable shove, the kid said to him, “That’s how you spend my chips?”

People like this used to really get under my skin, especially when they directed their attitude at me. It made me want to prove something to them, and sometimes it even intimidated me. They and other types of unpleasant people (angry people, whiners, degenerates) were a big part of what I didn’t enjoy about live poker.

This doesn’t really make sense, though, because I know that ego is a leak in poker. The really great players don’t act this way. Anyone who does is insecure about something.

Getting upset about these players is as silly as the guys who get upset because “internet kids raise too much.” If we raise too much, then find a way to exploit that! Ego is a leak, and rather than letting arrogant opponents get under my skin, I am learning to see their behavior for what it is: a weakness, a personal failing on their part, and if anything a possible source of profit for me. Whether or not I wind up exploiting someone’s ego, not get upset about it is already a victory for me and something that helps me to make better decisions.

If an elderly person is walking slowly in front of me, I don’t get angry at him, because I know that he can’t help it. Why get angry when a rude person is rude or an arrogant person is arrogant?

This story doesn’t end in some redemptive moment where I set a bear trap for this kid and stack him. He was tough, he was on my left, and I stayed out of his way and avoided giving him opportunities to outplay me. I suppose his eagerness to broadcast his talent may have saved me a few chips that I otherwise would have lost figuring out what I could and couldn’t get away with with him behind me.

To want that kind of ending is already to stoop to his level. It is to seek some sort of definitive proof that after all I am better than he is! I want to spend my time and mental energy focusing on my own flaws, the ones that are within my power to change. There’s plenty there to keep me busy without worrying about what I don’t like about somebody else.

47 2 Sam Greenwood 90.100

47 3 Eric Mizrachi 58.000

47 4 Andrew Brokos 38.500

47 5 Greg Gokey 31.200

47 6 Corey Burbick 50.000

47 7 Micah Smith 141.100

47 8 Maria Panyak 39.700

47 9 Martin Debruhl 61.500

I think this is a typical PCA table, in that it looks good (i.e. no names I recognize) until I start googling names and realize I’m with a bunch of internet wizards. The three on my immediate left in particular have impressive CVs. I don’t know much about Eric Mizrachi, but I think he’s the one with glasses. We’re a little poor in chips, but that won’t be a barrier to me doubling up ;-).

It’s Level 4 of the PCA. Hero is wearing his PokerStars Team Online patch, which in Villain’s eyes probably makes him a cash game grinder with minimal tournament experience. Villain is a young online MTT wizard: highly ranked on Pocket Fives, tons of success, modest live experience but certainly knows what he’s doing in any tournament situation. He’s new to the table in the last hour and neither he nor Hero has done anything remarkable in that time. With the exception of Villain and one other good but short-stacked player on Hero’s left, the table is reasonably soft, certainly above average for the field.

Blinds 100/200/25. Villain (13K) opens to 500 UTG+2. Two of the looser players (16K and 40K)  at the table call, and Hero (35K) calls Kc Ts in the BB.

Flop Qd Jd Th. Hero checks, Villain bets 1450 into pot of 2300, the other two fold, and the action is back on Hero. What’s your plan?

Just to focus the discussion a bit, let’s assume that if you raise, Villain will shove or fold. If you call, talk about how you’d proceed on each of the following turns:

a) 2s

b) Kh

c) Tc

d) Ah

e) 8d

I’ll post my usual thoughts and results when I’m back from the Bahamas, which will likely be around the 13th. I play Day 2 today, so wish me luck!

I played a funny hand against one of them. Blinds were 400/800/100, and I opened to 2000 with K9s in the HJ. He called in the BB and check-called 2400 on a T55r flop. We both checked an 8 turn, then he bet 5600 on a T river. I wasn’t 100% sure he wouldn’t value bet an A, but I doubted it. I did think he was capable of floating out of position, and this was an ideal spot for it. So I called, and he showed A3 and seemed surprised to win the pot. “I was trying to bluff you off a chop” he told me. Lovely.

I’ve got tomorrow off and am looking forward to finally getting outside after spending my first two days here indoors!

It’s a beautiful morning in the Bahamas. Walking around in the morning is a totally different experience, because they are empty except for some grounds crew and a few early risers such as myself. Later today there will be screaming kids and booming speakers, but right now it’s oddly serene.

I’ve got stuff with PokerStars all day today and then I’ll be playing the tournament hopefully all day tomorrow, which means I won’t be able to take full advantage of the facilities until Sunday. Of course I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for those other things, so I can’t complain. I just hope the weather stays nice. One time!

Anti-Ballin’: I’m bringing a small pantry with me, because it kills me to pay $20 for a sandwich.

So wish me luck, and please be patient if the blog and Twitter feed are quiet. Historically the internet at Atlantis has been atrocious and expensive, so while I’ve pre-written a couple of posts, I may or may not be blogging from the Bahamas.

Oh some guy named Shawn Deeb also still in the hunt.

my ex gf’s mother finds overripe fruit at the store, takes it home and removes all the good parts, then drives back with the rotten parts and demands her money back. she cycles stores so she can do this on a regular basis.

Since it’s nearly PCA time, this seems like an opportune moment to recount a tale of my own stinginess, which began with me winning a seat in last year’s tournament (well I guess technically it was January of this year). The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure is hosted at the Atlantis Resort and Casino, which, unbeknownst to me at the time I won the satellite, is an outrageously expensive resort. It’s essentially its own self-contained world, and everything costs a gajillion dollars: continental breakfast $25, barely functional internet $13/day, sandwich $16, etc. Had I known how high the incidental costs would be, I probably would not have played the satellites in the first place.

The package that I won was worth $15K, only 10 of which was for the buy-in. Something in the neighborhood of $3000 went towards accommodations, and an additional $1000 tab was available for expenses at the hotel. Any unused portion of the $1000, less a ~$20 convenience charge, would be put in your Stars account months later. I imagine most people didn’t know this or just looked at it as an excuse to spend $1000 on food and drink, which of course was the idea, but I was determined to get the majority of that money back. I succeeded in retaining nearly $700 despite buying internet and fitness center access every day.

My secret? I brought peanut butter, jelly, bread, and dehydrated backpacker meals with me. For breakfast I bought a muffin and a piece of fruit ($10), for lunch I made sandwiches (bartender was happy to provide plastic utensils), and for dinner I heated up water in the coffeemaker and used it to prepare my backpacker meals.

Of course while I was there I was playing poker for thousands of dollars every day, and it’s not that I couldn’t afford a week of resort living. I would argue that it’s not even a matter of being stingy, per se.

In my other life, I work with kids who come almost exclusively from low-income families. I give very generously to charity, and I would simply feel obscene spending on myself in one day what many families spend on groceries in a month. In my opinion, anyone who spends money with that sort of reckless abandon has entirely too much of it, and if they are inclined to give it away, they ought to find a more deserving recipient than a resort.

This is the reason that I barely even tried to qualify for the PCA this year. I say “barely” because I did play one satellite. There’s plenty to criticize about the Atlantis, but they do have a bomb-ass waterpark. And I did get at least one good story out of it.

Like I say, I’m embarrassed I hadn’t heard of him, because it’s clear to me that he’s soon going to be recognized as a top-tier player. He final tabled the most recent WSOP Europe and now has won his second bracelet in a huge field $1500 NLHE tournament. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Praz, but hopefully not at my tables.

Goal 1: Average 15 Hours/Week Playing My “Regular” Games

I’ve found that 15 hours/week enables me to earn a pretty healthy income, far more than I could make at any real job I could get, without impeding too much on my lifestyle.

I consider my regular games to be anywhere from 2/4 NL to 50/100 NL as well as big tournaments like the Sunday Majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP; time spent playing any of these will count towards my goal.

Slightly ahead of pace: I played about 70 hours this month, not counting a few hours spent in smaller stakes games and the PLO8 tournament at the PCA.

Goal 2: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

It’s very tough to predict or control what I will earn playing tournaments. With cash games, though, it’s mostly a question of game selection and putting in hours. It’s not something I’m going to announce publicly, but I am going to set a target, and I am going to put in extra hours towards the end of year if I’m on pace to come up short.

Ahead of pace. Running good at 40/80 and 25/50 helps. A few more months like this one, and I’ll be a happy boy.

Goal 3: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

My plan for this is to table select as usual in the beginning of each month, and then assess my progress towards the end of each month. If I’m on pace to come up short, I’m going to put in extra hours above and beyond my weekly goal just grinding 9 tables of $1/2 NLHE (or smaller) until I hit my VPP target for the month. Hopefully this is something I can do relatively stress-free, just an hour or two at a time, when I’m not in the mood to put in a proper session in higher stakes games. To be honest, my hourly rate should still be quite good multi-tabling SSNL, so hopefully this will incentivize me to make a little money in what would otherwise be downtime.

On pace, barely. I picked up Silver Star with barely and hour to spare last night, but even 7500 FPP/month isn’t going to be enough. Then again, I spent 8 days playing live in the Caribbean without so much as signing into Poker Stars, so I still think is doable.

Goal 4: Monetize This Blog

I know I keep saying it, but sooner or later I really am going to look into making money a little more directly from this blog. I feel like it’s right on the cusp of being pretty profitable. That doesn’t have to mean ads, though it might. Maybe I’ll…

Under discussion.

Goal 5: Write a Book

I’ve talked about this before, but this is the first time it’s ever been an explicit goal. I’ve already got some downtime sketched out in the next few months to work on this and have been kicking around some ideas in my head. Rather than trying to write one big, expensive e-book as a lot of people have done, I’m thinking of doing a series of smaller, modular works that could be purchased separately or as a set. Those of you who read this blog regularly are going to be a big chunk of the target audience, so keep an eye out for posts in the next few weeks soliciting your input about what you’d like to see in a poker book authored by yours truly.

I’ve got about 15 single-spaced pages in a Word document so far, but it’s pretty directionless. I just decided if I was ever going to do this, I was just going to have to start writing and do some severe editing later. A lot of it will probably be used for articles or blog posts rather than a book, but I’ve found the only way to get myself motivated for a big project is just to start working and figure the big picture out later.

Goal 6: Average One Blog Post Per Day

I know it’s been a little quiet on here of late. Part of that is the holidays, and part of it is just laziness. I want to get back to posting once a day. There will probably be more non-poker content, and not all of the poker stuff will be equally in-depth, but overall you can expect to see more and better content here.

Close. I made 28 posts versus 31 days in January. That means I owe you a few.

Goal 7: Average Five Hours of Coaching Per Week

Coaching was extremely fun and rewarding for me last year. So far, except for my group seminars, I haven’t done much to market myself as a coach or actively solicit students. I’ve mostly just worked with students as they’ve come to me, and so so far that’s kept me just about as busy as I’d like to be with coaching. I want to ramp it up a bit this year by setting a monthly goal and actively soliciting students if necessary to ensure that I’ve got a regular stream of students.

I thought I was way ahead on this until I added it up. I’ve got three great students right now, all very good players who I feel like are in just the right place to be working with me and learning very quickly. Even counting the time I spend preparing for each session, I’m still not hitting five hours/week. I may not end up making this one, as I’m pretty happy with the amount of coaching I’ve been doing this month.

I probably will be taking on some new students soon, so if you’re interested, check out my poker coaching information.

Goal 7: Average an Hour a Day of Dedicated Studying and Improvement

I’m going to be very broad about what this can include: reading books, watching videos, reviewing hands in Hold ‘Em Manager, talking poker with a friend, and even blogging (when it’s related to reviewing my play).

Not even close. I came in at about 10 hours for the month, though I was pretty conservative about how much blogging I counted. Also, I tend to study more when I’m running bad, as I try to play a lot when things are going well for me and I’m feeling confident. Still, I think I’m going to have step up my efforts here.

Goal 8: Use Hold ‘Em Manager

I switched from Poker Tracker to Hold ‘Em Manager last year. PT2 is great, but HEM is just better. For the last part of the year, I was playing without it on my laptop. It does get in my way sometimes, but I’d rather learn how to work with it than insist on playing without it.

So far, so good. I’ve accustomed myself to using the HUD on my laptop, and it’s definitely helped me with some decisions. Even just checking out how tight the blinds are, how often the Button three-bets, and how often the guy on my right folds to three-bets has probably increased my win-rate by 10%.  I know there’s a lot more I could be doing, too.

Goal 9: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL and/or Higher

Same goal as last year, since I didn’t achieve it but still think it’s very viable. It might be cheating a little, but I’m going to allow myself to count my results from bigger games towards this goal or not depending on whether I do better in them than I do in 5/10 (this was the cast last year). Basically, if I am at 4 BB/100 over a big sample at 5/10, then I don’t care how I’m doing in bigger games. If I’m not doing quite that well at 5/10 but am at 4 BB/100 if I also count bigger games, then that’s certainly a fine result as well.

Killing it, baby! I’m running better than 17 BB/100 for my last 10K hands. Sustainable?

Goal 10: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE at 5/10 and Higher

Last year, my win rate at heads up was twice what it was at ring games. Plus, it’s a great way to improve poker skills in general, and at stakes above 10/20, it’s often the only way to get action.

Ahead of schedule, I’ve got 5500 hands under my belt. I’m down $1000, which of course is virtually nothing at these stakes, and I’m $3000 below EV. Still, I’m not happy with how it’s going, particularly after I made some bad bluffs last night (I’ll post those hands soon).

All in all, so far so good. I’m putting in hours, having fun (for the most part), and making money. Can’t beat that!

How did January treat you?

River Check-Raise

Two limpers, I complete J6s in the SB, BB checks. Flop KJ6, all diamonds. I bet $35, the first limper raises to $75, the other players fold, and I call.

Turn 5d, we both check.

River Jc, I check, he bets $150, I raise to $550, he pays me off.

Slowishroll

Two limpers, I raise to $65 with 88 in MP and get 3 calls. Flop 458 rainbow, I bet $200 into a $275 pot, one of the limpers calls and the others fold.

Turn J, he check-calls $400.

River is an offsuit 3, and he open shoves about $1500. I actually thought for a while before calling here just because I couldn’t figure out what he had. With two pair or a lower set, I’d expect him to have raised by now for fear of letting a four-straight show on the board. There also weren’t many draws to speak of that he could have missed and would now be turning into a bluff. I kind of felt like 76 was his single most likely holding, but I certainly wasn’t sure enough that he couldn’t have a lower set or a random bluff or something. I called and he indicated for me to show first, basically saying he was bluffing, and he mucked when I showed.

The whole table gave me shit for not snap-calling, but I don’t regret thinking it through. It was such a weird spot for him to shove, and it was a 150BB decision, so I’m not going to apologize for taking my time even with a strong hand.

Oh, OK- That Works

This one was at 10/25. I open to $100 with KJo in MP. Action folds to the BB, who is the weakest player at the table, a white guy in his late 50’s or early 60’s who played pretty loose-passive relative to the rest of the table. He looked like he wanted to call before even looking at his cards, and sure enough he tossed in three more green chips pretty quickly.

Flop comes 952r. He checks, I bet $125, he calls very quickly and nonchalantly.

Turn 2. He checks, and I feel like he probably just has A-high here (and not AK, so my outs are usually live), so I bet $325. He again calls quickly.

River Q, and I give up and I tell him that a pair is good. He tables KT. Ship it.

The Best Thing About Live Cash Games

You get to see and hold your winnings:

100/200, aggressive and very good guy raises to 450 UTG, I call next to act with Ac7c, same young kid from before calls in BB. Flop 7h 4h 2c. Checks to me, I bet 400, kid calls, original raiser folds. Turn 9c, kid checks, I bet 1100, he raises to 3500 with about 10K behind. After considerable thought, I call. river 9d, he bets 3500 pretty quickly, I call, he shows something random like Qd6d.

Sometime after this hand, the kid asks me what my screenname is online. “I don’t play online” I tell him straight-faced while wearing a Poker Stars cap and sweater.

He doesn’t get the joke and insists, “No no I recognize your voice, from a training video.” I can’t help but smile at being recognized. “Yeah, I’m Foucault82.”

“Oh yeah, from Poker Savvy!” I believe this is the first time I’ve been “recognized” in real life for the celebrity that I am.

Anyway, 100/200, the kid raises to 500 on his button, good aggro guy calls in SB. I have AKo in the BB and insist on counting kid’s stack precisely as he shouts random numbers, waves his hands back in forth in front of his chips, and generally behaves immaturely. Looks like he has a little over 6K behind. I squeeze to 1675, he shoves, SB folds, and of course I call. Kid shows A5, so I don’t know if he thought he had fold equity or if he was value shoving, but damned if he didn’t flop trip 5’s. “Don’t go telling people I taught you that,” I caution him as he drags the pot.

150/300/25, new, seemingly pretty decent young guy at table opens for 800 in CO, good aggro guy from before raises to 2200 (second time he’s done this), I count my stack and eventually cold shove for about 15K with QcJc. He snap-calls AK and I lose the flip. To be honest, as aggressive as he was, the dude really didn’t 3-bet very often at all. I think his range is pretty polarized there and he’s not folding many if any of his value hands just because I’m cold shoving. Stuff like AQ that he might lay down he’s probably not 3-betting.

Turn is the 2s. With the deck crushed and my opponent’s stack in my sights, bet sizing is important here. I’m thinking he can have four types of hands:

a) Float/total air- Almost certainly folding to any bet, and not factoring into my decision.

b) Trips or better- Money’s probably going in no matter what, so doesn’t matter.

c) One pair Queens or better- Probably not folding but not raising either. I think he’ll pay off with these on the river for anything up to a pot-sized bet.

d) Bluff-catcher lower than Queens- This could be a pocket pair or Ace-high. These may call again if my bet is smallish.

So my goal here is to bet the smallest amount I can that will still allow me to make a roughly pot-sized shove on the river.

I chose 1400. He called.

River Ts, giving me a flush. I shove for a little over 4K, he calls and grimaces, flashing me a 5. He didn’t show his kicker, which I assume means we were chopping most non-spade rivers. I don’t think he could have resisted showing A5 for the bad beat if that’s what he had.

A few hands later, there was one limp, and a new guy at the table raised to $35. He got one caller, I called with 3c 2c in the BB, and the limper called.

Flop came Td 3s 2s. We checked to the raiser, who bet $60. The next player called, I raised to $300, got one fold, the raiser called, and the other guy folded.

Turn 4d. I had the best hand about $2500 behind. I decided the best thing to do would be to bet $600 here and hope for a blank river (not because I was worried about him having the draw, just because it’s easier for him to call with an overpair when the draw misses). He looked genuinely concerned, asked if I flopped a set of 3’s, and called.

Sadly, the river was an offsuit T. I considered shoving anyway and turning my hand into a bluff, but I just didn’t trust him to fold an overpair. After all, a few seconds ago I was fully expecting to shove my bottom two for value if the draw missed. The T could be a bit of a scare card for him, but not enough. I checked, and after some thought, he checked behind and showed AT. He told me he was relieved I didn’t shove but he was going to call. It’s a weird spot where he can’t bet trips top kicker for value on the river, but I agree with his check. My check is either a weird trap or a busted draw, and the trap is virtually always a boat. Maybe he can bet super-small and try to induce a check-raise bluff, but there wasn’t really room for that.

As luck would have it, I flopped a flush vs. what I think was a set the next hand and won most of it back.

Oh the one showdown I mentioned earlier was another weird “likely best hand but can’t really bet it” spot.

I’m on the button with A9o. There’s like six limpers, and I raise to $85. UTG and a MP player, both of whom seemed pretty competent, called. The flop came 553r, and we checked it through. The turn was a 9 that brought a spade draw. UTG led out for $150. The other player folded. I thought about raising, which I think is better, but I wussed out and called. The thing is, when I check flop and call turn, I can’t really expect a competent hand reader to put money in on the river with anything worse. Raising the turn, on the other hand, keeps my range wider and is a better way to get value from what is almsot certainly the best hand.

I would have bet a blank river anyway, but it was the Ts, so I just checked to back and won the pot. I was damn near certain I had the best hand, but I’d heard this player talk about bluff raising the river before, so I knew he was capable of it, and I didn’t want to deal with that.

In other news, Nelly was playing a few tables over. From what I hear, he’s pretty into poker and plays somewhat regularly, but this is the first time I’ve seen him. Despite that, the room was pretty empty for a Friday night.

As I say, I’ve been working on this for a while, and on Day 1 of the PCA, I felt like I was doing it about as well as I ever have. I was a statue, sitting placidly at the table, back straight, hands in my lap, slowly and deliberately breathing in and out.

With about two hours left in the day, my original table broke, and I was moved across the room to meet a new group of players. I walked deliberately but unhurriedly across the conference center floor to take my new seat. Two seats to my right was a heavy-set kid with greasy hair, an unkempt beard, a backwards ballcap, and a basketball jersey stretched out over his considerable gut. He was loudly recounting the hand that had vacated the seat I now occupied, in which the European kid to my left (who spoke barely a word of English to defend himself) got it all in with AK in a three-way pot and busted ADZ, who’d held KK. The big hairball seemed to think this was an awful play and was telling everyone who would listen about it, though as best I could tell he’d not actually been involved in the hand himself.

I was still unracking my chips when the dealer said something about a player mucking his cards. “Players don’t muck cards. Dealers muck cards. Players discard cards, and then dealers muck them,” the shaggy sports fan corrected her, loudly and matter-of-factly. She nodded in acknowledgment, but he insisted on explaining the distinction several more times, in several different ways. I had finished unracking and was just sitting there, not reacting to this at all or even looking at the downy detractor, but taking it all in nonetheless. Annoyance slowly crept across the dealer’s face as the guy continued to bloviate, but she said nothing, and neither did anyone else.

About ten minutes passed, most of which was to the tune of the meatbag’s constant rambling. He talked virtually nonstop, to no one in particular, about things going on in the room and hands he’d seen, always returning to this AK vs KK situation with the Euro-kid on my left. I ignored it all, though, barely playing a hand, just breathing and looking and listening and sitting upright quietly and attentively.

So I’m just sitting there, I’m a rock, so fucking impassive that the Buddha would shit himself with shame to see me, when this same loudmouth recounts some story and specifically refers to “mucking” his cards. He finishes the anecdote, with none of the rest of us saying anything for fear of giving the impression that we’re paying attention or want him to continue. I let a couple seconds of silence go by, still stone-faced and unmoving, and then quietly say, never looking at him or even turning my head, “Players don’t muck cards.”

Only the people on our half of the table could hear me, but several of them chuckled. “He’s right,” Hairy assured them. “He’s making fun of me, but he’s absolutely right.” I didn’t acknowledge him or anyone else, didn’t crack a smile or in any way show pleasure at the reception my needling had received. I couldn’t help but notice the dealer beaming her appreciation at me, like she wanted to have her way with me right there on the table. But I was all business, dark shades and brim pulled low. No time for that now, ma’am.

About half an hour goes by without me saying anything to Chewbacca or anyone else. He’d actually kind of calmed down. Then a short stacked player moved all in for only two times the blind. After some consideration, Sasquatch flat called. I had 65o in the small blind and considered making a move. Slowly my eyes took in the short stack and then the caller, who was staring back at me knowingly. I mucked (sorry, discarded), the European who’d been the subject of so much derision called, and the big blind called.

The flop came QJ2, all clubs. It checked around to Tubby, who bet 3K. His fishy friend called, and the big blind folded. The turn was blank, and they checked it through. The river was an offsuit T, and now Euroboy quickly threw 11K into the pot in what could only be a show of extreme strength. I expected to see a straight or better.

The portly pontificator snap-called and discarded angrily when the kid tabled 74cc for a flush. “You’re the best. You’re too good,” the guy began his berating, standing up from the table. “I should have had you crushed on that flop. How do you do it? How do I not have you crushed on that flop? I have fucking Kings with a club, and you flop a flush. Unfuckingbelievable. The one time I try to trap. I’m trying to induce a back-raise from this guy,” he points over at me with one meaty paw.

Growing red in the face, he was beginning to look more and more like a primate. I was severely tempted to tell him that I’m at least as likely to play back at an isolation raise as at a flat call, maybe even moreso, but I just sat placidly, eyes forward. I couldn’t have gotten a word in anyway.

He’s really gone now, foaming at the mouth, eyes wild, speckles of saliva glistening in his beard as he snarls and rages. The Eurolucksack understands barely a word of it but seems to find it just as amusing as I do.

I’m looking now for opportunities to get involved with this guy, who I’m sure is in spewbot mode. At 300/600/75, I open to 1800 UTG with ATo. He makes it 4200 from the SB, and I can’t resist the pot odds. Flop is 855 with two diamonds (I have none), and we both check. Turn is the Qd, and he checks again. I toss a little T4400 underbet out there, ready to bet 15K on the river if called. He ponders for a while and raises to about 16K, and I, with just a hint of a contented smile on my face, quickly fold.

He fires his cards angrily into the muck, and, huffing and puffing, stares daggers at me. After letting him fume for a few seconds, I ask, with genuine concern, “What’s the matter?” It’s the longest phrase I’ll utter to him all day.

Somewhat surprised by my verbacity, he shakes his head confusedly for a moment and explains, “Just…not happy with the result of the hand. I mean, I won it, but…I mean, I guess you didn’t have anything…I can’t give you a free card though… versus your range…you could have the Ace of diamonds…” he fumbles some more, throwing around some disjointed jargon and generally failing to make much sense.

A few minutes later, he asks me if I’ll tell him what I had when we’re done for the night. I turn to look him in the eye, shake my head slightly, then face front and resume my thousand-yard stare. “You won’t tell me? No? We can’t share stories at the end of the day? It’s not like we’re going to play together tomorrow, bro.” I continue to stare straight ahead and give him a little half shrug.

He spends the rest of the night fuming, ostensibly at the Euro but really I think at himself, while I take measured in-breaths and out-breaths. Then I get into my big pot at the end of the night, where I’m all-in with 66 on a 5c6c8d flop versus 74 and AcJc and eventually lose my ass to the straight. He oohs and aahs for a while over the size of the pot, and then starts giving his take on it. “Wow…I mean, wow. Set, straight, nut flush draw… nothing anyone can do there. No one can get away from it… he has to call,” referring here to his favorite Eurokid. “Maybe you can get away from it?” he looks at me, then corrects himself, “No, no, you can’t fold.”

He says this last like he’s reassuring me. Are you sure? Are you sure I can’t fold? You know I’m the favorite, right? Do you get that? Do you get that I’m that I’m the fucking favorite to win it, you FUCKING BABOON?!?!?!?

I’m equally sure he’s going to get there. Sure enough, dealer opesn the flop and it’s Q32 with one spade. Turn and river blank off and finished.

Paul Carrillo

Stephen Baines

Lars Graf

Alan Complainsaw Kessler

Aaron Szerencses

Daniel Walter

Nam Le

Andrew Brokos

That’s right, I’ve got Phil Ivey on my immediate left. To be honest, I’m pretty excited to play with the guy, though I wish it weren’t in a 10K. At least I don’t have many chips to lose to him.

I haven’t googled anyone yet, but I also recognize Kessler and Le.

Only other hand of note was versus another young guy early in the day, at my first table. Blinds 75/150, I  limped KK UTG (had limped a couple times before as well). Kid  raised to 400, got two calls, I made it 2400 with like 24K behind, only kid called. Flop was 775, I bet 2700, he called. Turn 8, I bet 7200 with 10K behind, he called. River 6, I checked planning to fold to a shove but expecting him to check it back pretty much always. He mucked when I showed my hand but told me later he had JJ and was going to fold the river, which I believe (actually, I think there’s a chance he calls river, but I still like my check).

What I don’t like is my flop bet sizing. I really gave this guy credit for being able to lay down an overpair just because my hand looks so much like what it is. I think I need to just bet bigger on the flop and then shove for like pot on the turn. I need to stop assuming that just because someone is a disshevelled 22-year old, he must know what he is doing.

Got another story to share later, but need to get to slee now. Thanks for all your support. Oh and sorry but I’m not able to do the real-time Twitter updates, cell phone doesn’t work down here.

It’s been the same way on the road. Every year that I’ve played the WSOP, it’s been as a Stars qualifier, and I’ve also been among their players at EPT Barcelona and now the PCA. They’ve always had a great events team that’s friendly, flexible, and eager to go above and beyond to ensure that everyone has a great experience.

My flight for Nassau left early Monday morning, and on Saturday afternoon it occurred to me that I still needed to get cash from the bank. Well, I was spoiled in Boston by living just down the street from a flagship Bank of America branch that kept long hours. There were no branches open Saturday afternoon or anytime Sunday anywhere near me. Then I learned that Poker Stars would have a “bank” at the Atlantis where players could withdraw and deposit funds from their accunt. I withdrew some money last night, and it was a quick and easy process.

When I arrived  last night, I had two major concerns: first was how I could meet up with some of the people I knew would be here but whom I had no way of contacting, and other was how I could get a real meal  (the first I’d ahve all day) without paying an arm and a leg.

Poker Stars reception to the rescue! This was a two-hour affair with live music, open bar, and a full meal: salad, pasta, and two carving stations. This was well beyond what I was expecting from the “refreshments”{ they’d advertised.

Since I don’t play until tomorrow, I wantd to hit the beaches and pools today. However, I neglected to bring towel or sunscreen and feared highway robbery at the hands of the Atlantis if I tried to bring them here. On a lark, I opened my bag of Poker Stars SWAG and, buried amid some nice-looking shirts, was a small bottle of sunscreen.

Though not one to look a gifthorse in the mouth,  I couldn’t help but think how easy it would have been for them to provide a branded beach towel as well. But then I realized there was something inside of the small cooler they’d given us, and sure enough, there was a towel, along with a frisbee and an inflatable beach ball!

Sadly, the weather is less than ideal. It’s in the low 60’s and overcast, with a strong wind. Far better than it was in Maryland, to be sure, but not ideal beach weather. Get it on it, Poker Stars!

I stupidly managed to bring my laptop but forget the power cord, so I’m stuck making this crappy tiny post from the barely functioning WebTB-ish thing they have in the room.

But yeah, I’m here, just got back from a very nice Poker Stars reception where I ran into Shaundeeb, who introduced to a bunch of young internet players I previously knew only by screenname: Adam Junglen, MrBigQueso, FatalError, etc.

I’ll be playing Day 2B (Wednesday), and I’ll do my best to keep you posted. Hopefully I can get this laptop situation straightened out. Technically they have computers here I can use, but like everything here, they are gallingly expensive (the “nominal fee” for the fitness center is $15/day, which is also what I’m paying for this shitty internet.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 300/600 Blinds 70 Ante (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG (t18789)
UTG+1 (t12630)
MP1 (t35373)
Hero (MP2) (t15444)
MP3 (t15640)
CO (t6981)
Button (t16283)
SB (t3596)
BB (t42214)

Hero’s M: 10.09

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with J, J
1 fold, UTG+1 bets t1777, 1 fold, Hero raises to t15374 (All-In), 5 folds, UTG+1 calls t10783 (All-In)

Flop: (t26650) K, Q, 7 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t26650) 10 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t26650) 4 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t26650

Results:
UTG+1 had A, A (one pair, Aces).
Hero had J, J (one pair, Jacks).
Outcome: UTG+1 won t26650

The problem here is that the risk/reward is wrong for a satellite. Given our positions, Villain’s calling range is probably AK and QQ+, maybe extending down to TT if I’m lucky. That means most of the value here is coming from fold equity, and I’m probably better off pursuing fold equity with open shoves or shoves over late position raises, where the distribution of outcomes is heavily skewed towards winning without showdown. Given the size of Villain’s open raise, his range is probably weighted towards stronger stuff anyway. I don’t think this is necessarily -EV, but it’s very close, and in a satellite I can probably find better spots.

This, on the other hand, strikes me as a clear call. I’ve got a lot less to lose, insufficient chips to have fold equity on a reraise, and barely enough to get away with preflop shoving. Plus Villain’s range may well be any two cards:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 700 Tournament, 300/600 Blinds 70 Ante (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO (t17609)
Button (t25540)
SB (t34493)
Hero (BB) (t6878)
UTG (t16890)
UTG+1 (t6701)
MP1 (t15919)
MP2 (t1886)
MP3 (t41034)

Hero’s M: 4.50

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, K
7 folds, SB bets t34423 (All-In), Hero calls t6208 (All-In)

Flop: (t14246) A, 6, A (2 players, 2 all-in)

Turn: (t14246) 4 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: (t14246) 2 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: t14246

Results:
SB had 4, 7 (two pair, Aces and fours).
Hero had Q, K (one pair, Aces).
Outcome: SB won t14246

Half an hour earlier than I was expecting, a window popped up with my table. “Welcome to the $2000+$100 single table PCA satellite” it read, or something to that effect. Whoops.

It was definitely too late to unregister through the Poker Stars client. I quickly surveyed my opponents. They were a who’s who of high stakes sit-and-go sharks: Zangbezan, ActionJeff, busto_soon, stevie444, a few others recognized, and two I did not. Even the ones I recognized weren’t necessarily soft spots. For all I know, they could have been fantastic sit-and-go specialists. I hate the things myself and haven’t played them regularly for years. I was sure my proficiency with the proper and shoving and calling ranges was going to be rusty.

I vaguely remembered hearing about a $10 Sit-and-go player who accidentally registered for a $1000 but managed to sit out, e-mail support, and get his money refunded. I thought about trying something similar, but refunds are for wimps. To this day, I still judge a childhood friend of mine who asked for his money back when he misread his hand in a $5 pot at one of our high school home games.

No, that was out of the question. The only thing to do was take my lumps and tough it out. An hour and a half later, I had W$14,130 in my account. Ship it.

“Super Satellite
Buy-In: $665.00/$35.00 USD
585 players
Total Prize Pool: $389025.00 USD
Target Tournament #201001051 Buy-In: $14130.00 USD
25 tickets to the target tournament

Tournament started 2009/11/01 18:00:00 ET

Dear foucault82,

Congratulations – You have won a package for the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) 2010 Main Event. The PCA is at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas! You’ll be checking in at the Atlantis on Monday, January 4, 2010, and checking out on Tuesday, January 12. Your hotel reservation covers you and one guest.”

I go back and forth on whether it’s even worth playing the satellites for these big buy-in international tournaments. By the time you pay travel expenses, currency exchange vig, etc., the tournaments aren’t generally such a hot investment. Not to mention the variance that comes with playing these things on my own money.

I’m usually able to convince myself that the satellites themselves are usually a uniquely good value. They tend to be some of the higher buy-in events offered on Stars, and I think my edge is particularly large in the satellite format because so many people tend to play so badly on the bubble.

At least, they usually do. The bubble in this one was actually quite tough. There were more than a few players left whom I knew to be strong, and even a lot of the names I didn’t recognize seemed to be playing at a pretty high level. Naturally there were a few weaker players, but all in all it was about the highest quality of play I’ve seen on a satellite bubble.

Well, at least I get a vacation in the Caribbean out of it ;-).