The pitfalls of live poker

With just 24 hours to go before I find myself seated at the Las Vegas Team Challenge III tournament in Birmingham, I feel I should start preparing myself for the big day.

Whether poker can be considered a sport is debatable, but it’s fair to say I won’t be partaking in any of the special preparations that are required of most athletes.

No stretching, no muscle relaxation and certainly no waking up at the crack of dawn to go for a jog after a morning breakfast of two raw eggs. Bleurgh.

Instead, I must come up with a preparation plan for the unique problems any poker player faces when entering a live tournament.

Boredom

Poker is boring. There, I said it. Sitting in one place, folding hand after hand, waiting for something decent can be outrageously dull. More so when you’re playing live and you can’t have multiple online tables open to keep you occupied.

The first day of this tournament is approximately 9 hours of play, with a few breaks. That’s a lot of pots where I won’t be involved. Preventing boredom is one of the key skills of getting better at poker. The more bored you become, the more likely you are to play poor cards at the wrong time just to get some action.

Even professional poker players like Phil Laak can get bored.

Legitimate response: Use the time to study other players when you’re not in the hand. Who’s raising a lot? Who can be bullied out of hands? Every piece of information you gather helps you to build a picture of the quality of the players around you.

My probable response: Drink beer. It’s almost impossible to be bored while drunk.

Cramp/Stiffness

As I’ve outlined above, poker involves a lot of sitting around doing nothing. This can leave even the most flexible of people feeling like they’ve been held captive in a contortionist’s practice box for the day.

This isn’t helped by traditional poker table layouts, which usually crams nine or ten people onto the same table – meaning you are never more than a chronic smoker’s breath away from your opponents. Grim.

Legitimate response: Stretch your legs between hands. Go for a quick walk, check on how your friends are doing or stay by your table if you’re not keen on missing any of the action.

My probable response: Stretch my legs … by walking to the bar.

Body odour

Whether it’s the general lack of a female presence, the extraordinary lengths of time they spend at the table or that they’ve simply spent all of their money on poker rather than toiletries is anyone’s guess – but the fact remains: Poker players stink.

This isn’t the smell of someone who has forgotten to put on deodorant that day. A forgivable, if unpleasant, oversight. This is the overriding stench of built-up dirt and sweat from years, possibly decades, of habitual non-washing.

Imagine a rotting cow carcass, left in the hot sun all day before being gently marinated in the bin juice scavenged from a greasy spoon. That’s the smell of your average poker player. A smell so dense it is difficult to tell whether it’s actually a smell at all, arguably it’s more of a taste in the back of your throat.

Legitimate response: Ignore it. As disgusting as it is, it’s not against the rules to be a smelly beggar. Try to stay down-wind of the worst offenders.

My probable response: Drink more. When the smell becomes unbearable, create an air pocket with my hands and breathe steadily out through the mouth and in through the nose. The sweet aroma of malty hops beats body odour any day of the week.

Annoying drunk guys

Ahem. Okay, obviously the ‘drunk annoying guy’ is usually me. Almost always, in fact. But at the risk of sounding hypocritical, it is really irritating when you have a loud, obnoxious pisshead at the table.

In my defence, I’m a pretty quiet drunk when playing poker, which is not always the case with some of the weekend crowd spotted in some casino poker tournaments.

Harassing the dealer, berating other players and getting irate when their awful play sees them lose a hand, they can disrupt the natural flow of the game. The most annoying are the lucky ones who pick up chips by mindlessly bumbling through hands and hitting miracles on the river.

Legitimate response: Take advantage. These players are normally pretty terrible. Even the adept ones will have impaired judgement. Use this opportunity to collect their chips before they spew them to someone else.

My probable response: Keep one step ahead of their drinking. Drunk people are only annoying when you’re not drunk. It’s almost too simple a solution …

When in Rome ...

Conclusion

Only time will tell what approach I take in the Las Vegas Team Challenge tomorrow: Intelligent, focused and strategic or moronic, drunken and degenerate.

In all seriousness though, I will be playing to win and the top prize of a trip to Las Vegas with a huge chunk of spending money to play in the World Series is a good enough incentive for me to be at my best.

I will be posting tweets throughout the day to keep the blog updated with my progress. These should show up in the right-hand side toolbar or can be viewed at my poker Twitter page.

I’ll also do a full review of the weekend on Monday, with pics, videos and maybe some interviews.

 

Ode to a nit

The word ‘nit’ in poker has evolved in the years since I started playing. When I first heard the term around 2003, it had a very particular meaning that was outlined fantastically by Daniel Negreanu on his blog at the time.

Back then, a nit was someone who took what they wanted from the game but didn’t give back. They would sit down at a table, fleece any novices and then leave, breaking up the game. Always looking out for number one.

I think this is a true description of a nit; a tenacious, bloodsucking insect that is nothing more than a pest. However, this is being used less and less by modern poker players.

Nowadays, a nit is pretty much anyone who plays a tight style of poker, whether it be aggressive or passive, and it is still used as a slur – usually by loose-aggressive players.

And that’s because playing loose-aggressive is seen as “cool”. I’m a massive nit, but I often feel the pressure to loosen up my game, just because playing tight gets such bad press.

After all, taking down a huge pot with 7-2 off-suit on a monster bluff is way more exciting than sitting around waiting for pocket kings.

The thing is, being a nit works as long as you are tight-aggressive and not tight-passive (probably the least successful poker style ever).

Careful hand selection, controlled aggression and giving yourself easy decisions post-flop is a winning strategy for 95% of players at micro, low and some medium stakes games.

Patrik Antonius, Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan are among the best cash game players in the world and they play extremely loose-aggressive because the level of competition they face is very high and they need to avoid being predictable.

 

Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey are both considered loose-aggressive players

 

Most players do not have these restrictions. Whenever I sit down at a micro-stakes online poker table, I can be pretty sure that around 30 per cent of the people I’m playing with rode the special bus to school.

The chances they are able to process any information other than the two cards directly in front of them is minimal, so there is no real need to balance my range by playing anything other than the complete nuts.

I’ve lost count of the number of times at 888 Poker where I haven’t played a hand for an hour, I reraise with pocket aces and someone pushes on me with absolute garbage.

There is no need for subterfuge here, they don’t consider the fact I haven’t played a hand in an hour. They don’t think the reraise is suspicious and they don’t recognise how bad their hand is.

Time to take the bus to Value Town

Once you move up the stakes, you’ll find this doesn’t work so well and it will be important to vary the way you play to avoid becoming easy to read.

Until then, be nitty and proud.

 

Challenge back on track

Summary

Challenge: +$42.41

Total winnings so far: $175.25

For the last couple of days, I’ve been running deep in about 90% of the tournaments I’ve been entering, including three final tables.

Only one of these is really worth mentioning though – a second-place finish in Bwin’s Lucky Dollar tournament for $40.

 

I made it to the final table as chip leader

 

The blinds were going up insanely fast, although it made no mention of it being a turbo in the lobby. This meant that despite being in first place when I made it to the final table, I only had 20 or so big blinds.

Commence shovefest. I stayed out of the action while all the short stacks committed hari-kari, although I was able to extend my lead so that I was still a fairly comfortable chip leader with 7 to go.

Then I got pocket kings. I’ll cut to the chase and say that the other big stack at the table made a bad preflop call and ended up hitting a two-outer on me. On the river.

Despite the setback, I got to work amassing chips as the remaining players tightened up to squeeze higher in the rankings.

The ridiculous blinds ensured it wasn’t too long until it was me and the guy who had fluked me on the river heads-up.

This lasted around … 3 hands? I shoved with A♦ 7♦ and he tanked for ages before calling with my nemesis hand – A2.

I’d already lost with a better ace against A2 twice in this tournament, so it was a fitting tribute to bust out on it again.

 

A wheel on the turn leaves me needing a 2 or 6 on the river. Fat chance.

 

And so I fall short of winning a tournament again. To a suckout, again.

On the one hand, it’s nice to get back up to the $175 region, wiping away most of the last two weeks’ worth of losses in one foul swoop, whereas on the other hand, it sucks ass to keep coming second and third.

I’ve been playing pretty solidly though, and I have done well to take a break every time I get unlucky so that I don’t start tilting.

Unfortunately, I naturally deviate towards the fridge on my breaks, meaning a long stretch of beats could result in me becoming diabetic. Totally worth it.

 

 

 

A frustrating week

Summary

Challenge: -$12.78

Total winnings so far: $132.84

It has been a fairly frustrating week since my last proper Challenge post as I’ve continued to spiral downwards, meaning I’ve dropped nearly $50 since my last big win.

Once I lose another couple of buy-ins I will pretty much be back where I started and quite a way off meeting my target of being on $300 before the month is out.

Although, to be fair, unlike last week where I was just getting a sick run of beats, I haven’t been playing optimal poker for the last seven days.

My main problem has been tournament selection. I’ve been registering late for quite a few the best tournaments, while also entering a lot of turbos, where the blinds and antes increase faster than normal.

Turbos remove a decent amount of the skill element if you are an above-average player, as they pretty much turn into a shovefest within 20 minutes, with limited post-flop play.

I’ve also been playing a lot after work, meaning I’m topping up a day of staring at a computer screen by … spending hours staring at a computer screen. Bad times.

That’s not to say I haven’t been unlucky of course, particularly in Omaha where I have been getting some absolute monster hands that just never hit flops or hold up.

I also recently got crushed with this doozy:

As you can probably imagine, I was the one with pocket aces. Mathematically, A-8 has less than a 6% chance of beating rockets pre-flop so his rivered straight was particularly nauseating.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t an isolated incident because my big pairs have been getting owned recently, although this means I am definitely due a huge win soon.

I came very close in a tournament yesterday, where I was in 3rd place with only 40 people remaining. I went out in 38th. Skills.

Despite all this, I’m fairly upbeat. I had been running ridiculously well previously, and I would much rather have my bad streak of luck now that I’ve crossed the $100 barrier, rather than spend 2 months scrabbling around getting unlucky in freerolls.

Not to mention, if I win one tournament at this level, I will pocket in the region of $200, so I’m only ever a decent placement away from clearing my downswing debts.

Onwards and upwards… hopefully.

 

Dealing with a downswing

The hardest thing about playing poker is dealing with a downswing.

Whether you are a professional who puts in twelve-hour days or just an amateur who plays a few tournaments a week, there is nothing more soul-destroying than when the poker gods decide to have a laugh at your expense and give you a shitty run of beats.

Poker is probably one of the only professions in the world where you can put in a full day’s work, give it 110% and come back with less money than when you started.

The problem is that when you are winning you feel invincible. All of your raises are getting paid off, you’re hitting flops and taking down pots as big as your head.

Amateurs start thinking their pipe dreams of making a living off the game aren’t so far fetched after all.

Unfortunately, the euphoria of these hot streaks quickly wears off when the odds starting catching up to you.

And this is where I find myself now. It’s only been a week since I posted that I was running like Jason Mercier and the downswing I predicted at the time seems to be coming to fruition.

Since that last post I’ve cashed in just two tournaments out of 19, both of which were minimum cashes, meaning the Challenge bankroll has taken a bit of a hammering over the week.

These are still early days and downswings can go on for weeks, months and even years in some cases – but I believe you learn more about your play during the low periods than you do when you’re running good.

Here is a list of things I try to do when the cards are running bad.

Don’t Tilt: Not tilting is easier said than done of course, but I take a break if I start playing like a tool

Review my hands: It’s easy to blame the cards but am I playing hands perfectly? Unlikely

Put it in perspective: Remember that everyone has downswings, no one can run good forever (except Mercier)

Don’t change my game: When the cards are running bad, it is tempting to tighten up or get more aggressive. I become an absolute rock. However, it’s always best to stick to an existing winning style

Stay positive: I’ve worked $0 into $140 in around 2 months, so I should stop bitching

Failing all that, I could always sell all my possessions and retire to a Buddhist monastry for the next five years like Andy Black.

Black took a five year break due to the emotional lows of poker

Summary

Challenge: -$16.33

Total winnings so far: $145.62

My downswing at 888 Poker

 

Reading poker tells: Over-rated or an important edge?

Online poker has dominated the scene over the last decade or so, giving birth to a new breed of young, aggressive, mathematically focused players that are able to play 20+ tables at once to extract maximum profit.

In this environment, the skill of being able to read tells has been reduced to noticing specific betting patterns or hand ranges.

With so many tables open, most players rely on software such as Poker Tracker to collect information, allowing them to make decisions based on a variety of different statistics.

Obviously, being stuck behind a computer screen prevents you from seeing how your opponent behaves during the course of a hand, making it impossible to extract information on the strength of his cards other than to judge how he plays them.

However, in live tournament play, picking up tells can be a powerful weapon to add to your arsenal, particularly when you are playing at low-stakes games.

Even at the highest stakes, there are enough amateur players entering (and running deep) to make it a worthwhile skill to possess, even if it isn’t exactly foolproof.

Let’s look at some examples. What makes these quite interesting is that they are from televised final table events with huge prizepools, meaning tells can still be evident at this level.

#1 Looking disinterested

If someone looks disinterested in their hand it is often a pretty big tell that they have a monster (unless they fold preflop of course, sometimes people are just bored!).

In the most extreme cases, this can be accompanied by a yawn, a big sigh or gazing around the room to give off the impression they are weak.

Here is an example from series eight of the World Poker Tour involving amateur Jeremy Brown and online heads-up specialist Olivier Busquet.

There are a number of tells Brown shows throughout this hand, with most of them picked up by commentators Mike Sexton and Vince Van Patten.

40-46 seconds: Brown shakes his head at the flop, but has a massive grin

58 seconds to 1:05 minutes: Brown looks around the room, supposedly agonising over his decision

1:06 minutes: Big sigh … “How can I possibly call this”

This should definitely get the “Monster Alert” sirens going, but amazingly Busquet misses all of this, probably because he spends the hand looking at the felt rather than his opponent.

A general rule of thumb in poker is that players will often act strong when they are weak and vice versa. So also be on the look out for people shoving in their chips aggressively – this could mean they are on a marginal hand or a draw.

Now, these tells were pretty obvious and they are certainly something to watch out for when you’re playing.

However, you should also be aware that some people will try and pull the wool over your eyes by putting on an act.

For example, they will be thinking “I know that he knows that people act weak when they are strong, so I’ll act strong when I’m strong.”

This makes tells like this pretty unreliable, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. Particularly in local tournaments where it is unlikely the above kind of levelling is going on.

#2 Microexpressions

For me, microexpressions are a much more reliable poker tell than other behavioural changes. I’ve not actually read or heard anything about microexpressions in relation to poker, so I’m making this up as I go along, but I definitely think there is some merit in the idea.

Microexpressions (if you couldn’t be bothered clicking on the link) are exceedingly brief, involuntary changes to a person’s facial expression that usually display happiness, disgust or fear.

What makes them important in a poker context is that they are very difficult to fake and almost as hard to hide.The problem is that they are almost imperceptible, meaning they are easily missed.

Here is an example, again from the World Poker Tour. This time between 2-time WSOP bracelet winner Mark Seif and Dan Heimiller.

Blink and you might miss it, but at 1:51, when the 9♦ comes on the river, Heimiller nods slightly and smiles for the briefest of seconds. I think this is a microexpression.

Now, I’m willing to admit I am probably over-analysing. It’s easy to make these comments when you have the luxury of knowing his cards (plus I can rewind and watch it again), but I certainly think it is worth examining your opponents when the dealer brings new cards out, just to see how they react. You may save yourself money.

Note: Even if he missed this tiny tell, I think Seif made a pretty poor call here. Seif is an excellent player, far better than me, but I think he should make the tough laydown when Heimiller bets the river.

The lead out bet on the river is so strong, it reeks of a boat or flush, and I think the chances of Heimiller floating to the river with air are pretty slim. That puts the hands Seif can beat down to a busted spade flush.

Ultimately, I would say being able to read tells is an excellent skill to possess as a poker player, but it is definitely overshadowed by other, more important, skills.

Having a good basis in maths will definitely give you a bigger edge over the long term, as will the ability to analyse a hand step by step to try and isolate your opponents’ hand ranges.

It’s just a shame I suck at those.

 

The Highs and Lows of Omaha Hi/Lo

Omaha Hi/Lo is a fun game. Full of swings, high variance and hands that rarely dominate pre-flop, it can be both exhilarating and maddening at the same time.

For those who have never played, the full rules are here, but for the purpose of the blog I will give a brief explanation. Using the same hand rankings as in Texas hold’em, traditional Omaha uses four hole cards instead of two. However, unlike Texas hold’em, where you can use two, one or none of your hole cards to make a five-card hand using the board, in Omaha you must use exactly two of your hole cards and three from the board.

Sound confusing? Well, Omaha Hi/Lo Split adds another dimension by allowing you to create both a high and a low hand. The high hand is the usual flushes, straights and full houses, while the low hand is the worst five cards you can muster (from an eight downwards). Aces count as both high and low cards.

For example, if you are holding A♦ 2♠ 8♥ 8♣ and the final board is 8♠ 3♣ 3♦ 4♣ J♥ your “high” hand is a full house eights full of threes (using the two eights from your hand and the eight and two threes from the board).

However, you also have the best possible low hand, using the eight, four and three from the board and the ace and two from your hand for: 8♠ 4♣ 3♦ 2♠ A♦.

If you hold the high and your opponent holds the low, you split the pot. However, if you can manage to hold the best hand both ways (or if the board doesn’t have three cards 8 or lower) you can win the whole pot.

Since my last decent win I’ve been playing a lot of Omaha to blow off a little steam – with varying levels of success. I’ve been running bad in Omaha for a while now, and it looked like this wasn’t going to change anytime soon, managing to sink around $8 into tournaments.

However, at the last roll of the dice yesterday I managed to reach the final table in a 51-entrant Lucky Dollar Omaha Hi/Lo tournament on Bwin. Not only that, I had a healthy chip lead over everyone else.

With nearly $40K in chips, I was a fairly significant chip leader

Things only seemed to get better for me, as the majority of the table was playing super-tight in order to climb up the money. I raised the pot with a lot of hands, taking down the blinds and the antes without much of a challenge.

This was particularly true when it got down to the last four, where I was max-raising almost every pot. I finally eliminated two players and was heads-up with just under a 3-1 chip lead over my opponent.

I remained chip leader throughout the final table

The prize pool was pretty pathetic. Due to it only having 51 entrants (although it did have rebuys and add-ons), the winner got a measly $42. However, I was far more interested in getting my first multitable victory online since coming back to poker.

What followed can only be described as the most hideous run of bad luck in showdowns I’ve experienced in quite a while. My opponent was folding a lot of his hands preflop, as well as folding to a lot of my raises. Of the 51 hands we played heads-up, I won 32, he won 15 and we split 4.

Unfortunately, he won all four of the hands where we got the money in pre-flop. Including the last hand, where he flopped a boat and rivered quads against my queens and low draw.

Owned

In fact, he pretty much flopped me dead on the high because he was holding one of my queens, meaning I needed the case queen to win the high. I could have still hit any ace, two, four or eight for the low, but it was not to be and I busted out in second.

On the positive side, I did net $28.80 (minus some buy-ins for earlier tournaments) for the Challenge, and I was very pleased with my play, particularly at the final table. It was also nice to eek out a decent placement at Omaha, which is usually my strongest game, but in which I had been suffering a big downswing.

Summary

Challenge: +$20.65

Total winnings so far: $129.35

 

Alcohol and poker: The good, the bad and the ugly

I’ve been known to enjoy a drink every now and again. Mostly though, I like to have more than one drink, several, in fact. A dozen ideally.

However, apart from a few beers while enjoying the company of friends during a home game, I rarely mixed alcohol and poker – until Monday. I had been reduced to around 7BB after a terrible bluff on my part and I decided to buy a beer that I could savour while I waited for my inevitable knockout. It was my second beer of the tournament, as I’d bought one before the tournament started, but it was my first in a couple of hours.

I doubled up, continued to drink, and the rest is history. By the end of the night I’d probably had about 6 pints and I was pretty sozzled. So did alcohol help me to victory? If you ask most professional poker players, they would say booze is a definite no-no, and will eventually be a serious detriment to your expected value.

But is this true of everyone? Scotty Nguyen and Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen are just two players who are renowned for drinking while they play poker. The latter was famously paid $500 per hour by Johnny Chan not to drink when they were playing heads up – The Master agreed and then lost consistently for an hour until he backed out of the deal. Layne Flack is another player known for becoming more dangerous after sinking a few beers.

Scotty regularly drinks alcohol at the poker table

And is it really that surprising? What happens when we drink? We become more confident, more aggressive and less predictable. All qualities that make a good poker player.

While I won’t go as far as to say it allowed me to win my tournament, I could definitely sense an improvement in my play. I was making more moves, I was less afraid of being eliminated and, crucially, I was having more fun. Engaging the locals in a bit of banter gave me a little bit more information on the kinds of hands they had, something I doubt I would have done stone-cold sober.

But, and there is always a but, it is important to realise your limit. Once I’d had about 5 beers, I was on a slippery slope. Not least because I had broken the seal and was nipping to the toilet every half an hour. This may not seem too bad, but I missed at least half a dozen hands, including an absolute monster I would have flopped on my big blind had I been at the table (the dealer was nice enough to rub my nose in it by showing me my hand when I came back).

Also, I was probably lucky to win when I did, because any more drinks and I definitely would have suffered a loss of judgement. I was already becoming over-aggressive and risked busting out on a silly bluff.

Ultimately, I don’t think you can make a blanket statement of whether drinking while playing is bad practice. My ridiculously small sample of just one tournament could easily be a blip, but I’ll definitely be sinking a few casual pints when playing in the future – at least in live games.

That’s the Good and the Bad, so what about the Ugly side of drinking? Well, I’ll leave you with Scotty Nguyen’s infamous WSOP 2008 HORSE final table appearance where he was drunk as a skunk. All in all, it was a pretty classless performance … although, the astute of you will notice one thing. He won didn’t he?

 

Worst play of all time?

I was going over some hands in Poker Tracker recently and I came across a hand that could possibly be the worst played hand I have ever seen. Fortunately, it wasn’t me! I remember at the time that my opponent played it badly, but having had time to reflect I have decided that the mind-numbing incompetence of the player in question is worthy of highlighting in particular.

This took place in a Bwin freeroll (which you would think excuses idiot plays, but in this specific instance it only makes it worse).

Here is the hand history, I have changed the user’s name to DONK to avoid any confusion:

Seat 1: Klik4 (1500)
Seat 2: fcvs_4ever (1490)
Seat 3: Mace_Kyle (1480)
Seat 4: Nibnobbly (1500)
Seat 5: AnutaGabriel (1500)
Seat 6: djcelas (1550)
Seat 7: _PokerGodXXX (1500)
Seat 8: bazsakun69 (1500)
Seat 9: xaris23_x (1480)
Seat 10: DONK (1500)
Mace_Kyle posts small blind (10)
Nibnobbly posts big blind (20)
—
Dealing pocket cards
Dealing to Nibnobbly: [Jh, 5c]
AnutaGabriel folds
djcelas folds
_PokerGodXXX folds
bazsakun69 folds
xaris23_x calls 20
DONK calls 20
Klik4 folds
fcvs_4ever folds
Mace_Kyle folds
Nibnobbly checks
— Dealing flop [Qs, 9d, 5s]
Nibnobbly checks
xaris23_x checks
DONK bets 20
Nibnobbly calls 20
xaris23_x calls 20
— Dealing turn [5d]
Nibnobbly checks
xaris23_x checks
DONK checks
— Dealing river [7h]
Nibnobbly bets 80
xaris23_x folds
DONK calls 80
—
Summary:
Main pot: 290 won by DONK (290)
Rake taken: $0
Seat 4: Nibnobbly (1380), net: -120, [Jh, 5c] (THREE_OF_A_KIND FIVE)
Seat 10: DONK (1670), net: +170, [Qh, Qc] (FULL_HOUSE QUEEN, FIVE)!!!

***** End of hand T5-157292266-2 *****

Now, I’m not usually one to criticise other people’s play (their loss is my gain), but this is a truly astounding example of how to brutally mess up in every stage of a poker hand.

Let’s summarise

1/ He flat calls in middle position with pocket queens when the blinds are miniscule, encouraging pretty much any hand to limp in and catch a flop (shockingly everyone folds, even the small blind who is getting 7:1 on his money, which is pretty much a call with any two cards, but one fool at a time)

2/ He flops top set and minimum bets. This not only gives anyone with a draw the chance to suck out, it isn’t exactly massaging the pot, which is already looking downright anaemic because of his limp preflop

3/ When he hits his absolute monster, he checks again. Good stuff, keep that pot nice and small. Just what you want when you have an essentially unbeatable hand. Not to mention dishing out a free river for anyone who might be willing to pay for a draw

4/ After I hit my trip 5s, I’m keen to put in a small bet on the river (I’ve put him on a missed flush draw, but either player could have a pair they might call with). And this is where he manages to transcend poor play and reach a level of utter stupidity that I had to look on Thesaurus.com for an adequate synonym for ‘idiot’. I finally decided on ‘cretin’. He flat called my raise on the river with the second nuts! The only hand that was beating him was pocket fives for quads.

Now, I should probably note that I don’t necessarily disagree with some of his plays in isolation. Slow-playing top set/a boat isn’t a bad play on its own, but when you combine it with the other horrific plays in the hand, it only emphasises his cluelessness.

In a freeroll this is even more unforgiveable as he’s not risking any actual money by re-raising me with his nut boat (however, a flat call would be a ludicrous play in this situation regardless of the buy-in/risk).

I was just happy to escape with minimal losses, but I think this example definitely highlights the difficulty that can be encountered when trying to win freerolls. It is almost impossible to put people on hands because nothing they do makes sense.

Oh well, I can only hope that a solid and persistent style can continue to edge me ahead in these micro and low-stakes tournaments until I reach a level where decent play has a real effect.

 

The pitfalls of watching/reading too much high stakes poker

It has been a slow week for me in terms of poker. Not least because I’ve not had much time to play due to work and other commitments. When I have played in freerolls I’ve busted out quickly, either due to being sucked out on, or because I’ve struggled to pick any cards up in the first 15 minutes, which is pretty much game over.

As such, I’ll fill up the obvious gap by discussing a phenomenon I see quite a lot when looking on forums, speaking to friends or playing poker online and which frequently amuses me.

There is a fantastic chapter in Let there be Range that addresses common leaks in players who spend a lot of their time watching or reading high stakes poker, yet play low-mid stakes games and one of these is ‘outlevelling’ and I couldn’t agree more.

Outlevelling refers to people who spend too much time reading up on poker and who inevitably overestimate the level of competition they face when playing donks at their $2 multi-table tournaments. They tend to make their decisions as if they are sitting across from the table from Tom Dwan or Patrik Antonius rather than some average Joe who stuck $10 in his account because he was drawn in by the pretty colours while surfing for porn.

The players who frequently populate low stakes games are pretty poor. This is a generalisation of course, and you will definitely find some decent players who either don’t have the bankroll or the time to make a run at the higher stakes just yet (I’d like to think I am one of those players), but they will not make up a large percentage of the people sitting in your $1 donkaments.

How is this a problem for someone who reads too much high stakes poker and thinks they are the next Phil Ivey? It’s pretty simple, they don’t adjust their tactics for terrible players and they often make plays based on what THEY would do in their opponents’ position, rather than actually thinking what the idiot fool next to them will actually do.

Here is an example:

Player 1 (let’s call him IveyWannabe) thinks he’s a bit of a legend. He’s read Kill Everyone and spends a lot of his time watching YouTube poker clips. This player can’t get through a conversation without saying something like this: “I’ve found running at VPIP/PFR stats of 25/20 has resulted in me being massively EV+ over a standard range of 5,000 hands”.

Player 2 we’ll refer to as DonkTastic21. He has trouble tying up his own shoelaces, failed GCSE maths and thinks Annie Duke is the fit bird that works behind the bar in the Nag’s Head.

This is the kind of hand you will see play out with people who outlevel themselves.

IveyWannabe picks up 7♦ 8♦ in middle position. There are no limpers so he puts in a raise of 2.5X the BB. He’s a big fan of suited connectors and feels he will be able to outplay his opponents post-flop if he doesn’t hit.

DonkTastic21 is in the small blind. He looks down at Q♣ 4♠ and thinks “Well, that’s a small raise, I might as well call because I have a queen and queens are pretty good”

Flop comes: A♦ Q♥ 7♥

DonkTastic21 pauses for about 5 seconds clearly struggling not to bet out with his middle pair, before checking.

IveyWannabe sees the pause, but doesn’t put him on aces and decides to represent an ace himself, and so bets half the pot with his bottom pair. DonkTastic21 insta-calls.

Turn: 3♣

No help to either player. At this point DonkTastic21 puts out a minimum bet. A classic “I have a weak hand and I want to try and prevent you putting a big bet in” tactic that is fairly common in poor players.

IveyWannabe’s thought processes: “I’m pretty sure he has a queen, if I reraise him here, he’ll have to fold because in his position I would put me on a big ace, two pair or even a set”. He raises the pot amount and DonkTastic21 insta-calls.

River: 2♠

DonkTastic21 checks (this is an arbitrary decision based on the fact that his mouse cursor happens to be closer to the check button than the raise button).

IveyWannabe KNOWS he is behind, but decides that DonkTastic21 cannot possibly call an all-in over-bet on the river because it would be the most ridiculous call in the world. IveyWannabe has represented a big hand all the way through and this would be for all of DonkTastic’s chips quite close to the bubble.

IveyWannabe pushes. DonkTastic21 insta-calls and takes down the pot with second pair, awful kicker. IveyWannabe laments that his awesome play didn’t work, although fails to realise that it is a terrible play against this particular player.

The moral of this story? Don’t get clever with morons. They won’t understand what you are trying to do. Understanding a lot about poker will always help you with your game, but play to your opponents weaknesses not some abstract concept of what constitutes “good poker”.

If your opponents keep calling your 6X BB raises when you have AA or KK, keep doing it! Hell, try 8X BB and see where that gets you. Don’t mess around with 2.2X BB raises and let 4-5 idiots in with junk if you are getting paid off raising big.