Posts Tagged ‘published article’

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Off to a Good Start

On Day 3 of the World Series of Poker, I was feeling good. Nearly 6500 players entered the tournament, and now more than two-thirds of them had been sent packing. With roughly 2000 of us remaining, there was finally room for everyone to play on the same day. It had been a week since I played my first day, but now there were no more days off. Everybody would be playing every day until he lost his chips or there were only nine remaining.

Day 2 had been harrowing. I’d come in short stacked, and despite opposition so tough that Poker News called mine the “Table of Death”, I’d managed to finish the day with just over 90,000 chips, putting me right around the average.

What’s more, my Day 3 table draw looked to be a welcome respite. There were no names I recognized and only one or two other players who even seemed to be professionals of any stripe. Things were looking good for me.  Read the complete post...

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Ego and Variance

The most difficult thing about playing poker for a living, far more difficult than being good at cards, is dealing with the ups and downs. Although I’ve always ended up with a nice income at the end of the year, I have periods every year where it feels like nothing is going my way and I am losing tons of money. Even after experiencing them multiple times, I still find it difficult to keep a clear head during these “downswings”. This is probably due in part to the fact that for the last few years I have been playing ever higher stakes, meaning that each year brings the necessity of getting used to winning and losing larger sums.

Still, it surprises me a little that although I understand intellectually that poker is a game of the long run and that the results of a single day, week, or month don’t mean very much, emotionally I get stuck on these short-term results. After a good week, I feel like I am the greatest player ever. After a bad week, I often question all of my instincts and decisions, even though in both cases the cards probably contributed far more to the outcome than did my individual decisions.  Read the complete post...

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Jack Links and NASCAR

The 2009 World Series of Poker was presented by Jack Links Beef Jerky. It takes some effort to step down from Milwaukee’s Best, the presenting sponsor for the past few years, but when a man in a Sasquatch costume appeared on stage to speak, or more accurately to growl, “Shuffle Up and Deal!”, it was apparent that Harrah’s had pulled it off.

Jeffrey Pollack, the commissioner of the WSOP, is a man with an admirable mission and an enormous task: to bring poker into the mainstream of American sports culture. A lot has been accomplished in this regard, much but not all of which can be attributed to Pollack: poker programming has appeared not only on ESPN but on such diverse networks as GSN, Fox Sports, the Travel Channel, and even NBC. The most prominent players are household names, and the WSOP itself is a two-month long spectacle that attracts tens of thousands of players and quite a few spectators as well.

Despite these accomplishments, though, poker has not yet “broken through” entirely. It is still poorly understood by the American public at large and viewed skeptically at best by the sports editors of most major news outlets. Even the WSOP, let alone smaller poker events, have had difficulty attracting sponsors outside of the immediate poker market: online poker sites, poker apparel, energy drinks, and closely related products such as beer and beef jerky.  Read the complete post...

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Just before takeoff, the pilot announces that we are scheduled to arrive at about 11PM local, at which time the temperature will be 104 degrees. For the fourth year in a row, I’m spending the middle of the summer in the middle of the desert, braving the blistering hot sun to compete in the World Series of Poker (WSOP).

It’s surreal to think that three years ago, I was a young kid, barely out of college, who took a flyer on a qualifying tournament on the internet. Though even then I was earning a modest living at poker, I rarely wagered more than $200 at a time. I was more than thrilled when, with an investment of just a few hundred dollars, I won a seat in the $10,000 buy-in Main Event of the World Series of Poker. Though more than a little intimidated by the stakes and the competition, I was lucky enough to finish 279th place, winning almost $40,000 for my trouble. I’ve been back every year since, and remarkably, I’ve managed to win something every year, most recently finishing 35th in the 2008 tournament and winning nearly $200,000.  Read the complete post...

by Andrew Brokos

Implied odds are at once one of the most important and one of the most misunderstood concepts in no-limit hold ‘em. This is a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. Many players reduce this complex concept to a sound bite- “If I flop a big hand, I can stack him…”- and go about merrily lighting money on fire with their pre-flop calls. This article aims to debunk some common misunderstandings about implied odds so that you can start making, rather than losing, money with them.

Myth #1: “I Can Chase a Set for Up to 10% of the Effective Stacks”

This is by far the most common misunderstanding about implied odds, and while it’s been addressed elsewhere, I’d be remiss not to debunk it here.

Suppose that in a $.50/$1 NLHE game, you raise to $3 with a pair of 7’s. You get re-raised, and it is $7 more for you to call. It’s unlikely you can win unimproved at showdown, but you’re about 8.5:1 to flop a set. Factor in the risk of getting cold decked by something like a higher set, and back-of-the-envelope math suggests that you can profitably “set mine” if you expect to win about ten times your investment, or $70, the times that you hit  Read the complete post...

Equity calculators like Poker Stove and Pro Poker Tools are great tools for analyzing your play away from the table and after the fact. However, their usefulness is limited if you don’t understand where these numbers come from and what factors influence them. For example, why is your equity versus an overpair so much better with top pair top kicker than with a pocket pair? Why does a big draw lose so much equity on a blank turn?

An equity calculator can tell you how should have played a hand, but if you don’t know how to analyze and learn from it, then it won’t necessarily help you with real-time decision-making at the table or with difficult decisions you may face in the future.

This month, I’m going to discuss a hand sent to me by a student of mine. I found it to be an interesting situation in a multi-way pot where analyzing the ranges of various players and how each of them affects Hero’s equity suggests a better line than what may be the “obvious” play. As you follow along with my analysis, notice that although I use an equity calculator to prove certain points, I always provide logic for my reasoning in a way that can be considered in real-time at the table. The point is that I’m not just armchair quarterbacking here: this is the kind of thinking about equities and ranges that you can and should conduct at the table.  Read the complete post...

My latest poker strategy articles, Debunking Myths About Implied Odds, has just been published in the June 2009 issue of 2+2 Magazine. The article explores one of the most important and misunderstood concepts in big bet poker:

“Calling a late position raise with a suited connector when you have the button is a good example [of implied odds that don't depend on making a strong hand]. Since the pre-flop raiser probably has a wide and not particularly strong range, you can’t count on winning a big pot on the rare occasions that you make two pair or better. Because his range is so wide, though, you will often be able to steal the pot when you flop a weak draw or even a scary board texture. Whether you want to call it implied odds, bluff equity, or something else, this is as much a justification for taking slightly the worst of it on an early street as is drawing at a monster hand.”

Read more about this and other misunderstood aspects of implied odds in the 2+2 Magazine!

My latest poker article, Knowing is (Only) Half the Battle, is now appearing in the November issue of the Two Plus Two Internet Magazine. The article focuses on the way different betting lines taken in an otherwise identical hand can change which player has the edge:

“In other words, in two nearly identical situations, featuring two players in the same positions with the same pre-flop ranges and the same community cards and the same number of bets going into the pot, one of those situations is +EV for the Hero and one for the Villain depending on how the betting goes. If Hero bets flop, checks turn, and bets river, he is in a profitable situation. His opponent has given him information and also given up control over when and how money goes into the pot.

However, if Hero checks flop, calls turn, and finds himself facing a bet on the river, then he is the one who has given up information and control and now faces an unprofitable situation. This is a choice not about how to play top pair with a medium kicker but about how Hero ought to play most of his range most of the time.”

Enjoy!