Limit versus No-limit: Science versus Art
January 25, 2010
Like many before me I started my poker career by playing fixed-limit Hold’em online. Only being able to bet, and therefore lose, a specific amount on each street appealed to my novice psyche. The very thought of being able to lose an entire stack during a single hand quite frankly scared me to death so I avoided no-limit variants like the plague for a couple of years.
After becoming a winning fixed-limit player, albeit at small stakes, I decided to make the transition to the dark side and play no-limit Hold’em instead, expecting to take what I had learned at the min-bet tables and apply it to this game. After all, they are the same game barring the betting structure, aren’t they?
While on the surface this may seem true, it would actually be extremely incorrect to think fixed-limit Hold’em and no-limit Hold’em are anything like each other. The strategies and skills required to succeed at either are drastically different, with both games needing a unique approach in order to become successful.
Both games are based on mathematics but fixed-limit even more so than its no-limit cousin. The goal in fixed-limit is to push small edges as hard as you can, chipping away at your opponent’s chips but to also try and conserve losses. Compare this to no-limit where the goal is to win your opponent’s entire stack in one fell swoop.
There is little in the way of bluffing in fixed-limit Hold’em, this is not to say it does not have a place in the game, just that it is more difficult and less useful than in other games. Due to the betting structure, your opponents will often have the correct pot odds to draw to the most unlikely of hands, resulting in frequent bad beats which in turn leads to much more variance.
No-limit players have the luxury of setting the pot odds for their opponents, which can push them off certain draws and hands much more easily than when playing fixed-limit. Being able to bet what you wish also means you do not need the best hand to win as you can force your opponents to fold. In fixed-limit it is more difficult to do this so you need the best hand at showdown to win the pot.
Fixed-limit is like a science, always analysing the odds on each street, extracting small pieces of information, processing them and acting accordingly. No-limit is more like art – more flamboyant and creative. It’s about looking to paint a story in the eyes of the players to mesmerise and confuse them and force them to make an incorrect play.
Both games are still very enjoyable but which category do you naturally fit into? Are you more of a scientist or an artist? You can be sure the best online poker players know which they are. Maybe you would be better off switching disciplines.
Full Tilt Rush
January 22, 2010
Evolution or devolution? Call it what you will but it certainly won’t leave you bored anymore! Yes online poker has changed and quite drastically, obviously you can play normal ring games on Full Tilt too but if you are feeling adventurous press the Rush Poker button.
What is it exactly?
Well first of all when you click join Rush Poker you will be entered into a pool of players. The idea is as soon as you fold you will instantly be sat holding your next hand with a different set of players. It is quite hard to explain although the idea is so simple, here is a video of it in action.
Forget Poker Trakers if you haven’t got any software that tracks hands or players then you are now on an equal footing, as trackers do not work on these!
A little tip from me if you can, is to get a new FT account even if that means cancelling your old details, wipe it off and try and get a decent rakeback deal such as the Hendon Mobs as you will eat 300+ hands in one hour!!! Somebody suggested on one of the forums that if you play 1 table for 3 hours at $1/$2 your rakeback for the month will be $3,000. Can you imagine how much FT will make at these tables??? Not long before Stars has something similar.
You can join Rush up to 8 times at the same time, so you may even be in the same pool as yourself, although you will never play yourself (In fact I can’t wait to see anyone 8 tabling this nuts game – as you know some internetz whizz will have a go and master it). I would hate to imagine how much programming is involved in this 8-s
Is there a strategy? People will say that they get outdrawn more often or see that their kings have aces all the time. Remember how many hands you are seeing. This is the equivalent of 5 tabling, except you wont miss any hands and poker “information” is next to none. Play ABC poker with a higher/smaller range of starting hands and you wont go far wrong, do not try and be cute and certainly refrain from going on tilt …. THIS WILL BE DANGEROUS …… but hell it’s fun! For added adrenaline use the quick fold option;)
Best of luck at the table 
Standards
January 21, 2010
Travelling across the UK and visiting many poker rooms, it has come to my attention that as in any business there are good and bad staff. It is a personal bugbear to myself of chatty dealers.
It is nice to be on friendly on terms with dealers and to chat with them off the table, but I would prefer it if they didn’t chat to me whilst I am playing. In some respects when they do this I feel uncomfortable as at best other players are ignored, at it’s worst though is the slowing down of play as the dealers finish a sentence, even a conversation before moving on.
The other problems that I can see is that some dealers pitch and not very professionally, I much prefer dealers to slide the cards to me as there is no chance of other players seeing what cards have been dealt to me.
Collecting the chips in before the action has finished is also infuriating as I know as a player it is my responsibility to follow the action. If I turn to a waitress to order a drink it is impossible for me to know where the betting starts and if anything changes when the dealer comes to me.
Imagine my delight when Dusk Till Dawn opened, a poker players paradise!! All seemed good and well and any players disrupting the game were asked to leave, everything ran smoothly with no complaints.
I would just like to ask readers that play there if they feel the same as me now, as it looks like D2D has regressed to the old days of casino poker standards. Dealers chat constantly, bad dealing, cutting the deck with 2 hands, collecting chips in with action still taking place and loud aggressive customers that seem to get preferential treatment.
Dik9 have a word please!
Crapshoots!
January 19, 2010
Recently Dusk Till Dawn have been holding affordable deepstack freezeouts, with their Super 50 and 20twenty weekends. During this time I have been amazed to hear people tell me what a crapshoot these competition become at the business end (and sometimes before). Quite frankly these statements amaze me but I have a theory.
In the days before pc’s in cardrooms competitions were run using an egg timer! I remember opening a cardroom in a brand new casino and on the opening day running down to the market to find such a device for that evenings fanfare competition. The owner looked bemused as I turned up for the press launch with a clockwork apple the stall had run out of the swish looking Salter’s egg timers.
It was also true that freezeouts and no limit games were very rare, the average competition was 1000pt rebuy with blinds starting at 25/50 or even 50/100. There was however a rule of thumb that most of the players tried to stick too. This was to be in contention to have a minimum of 20 big blinds and to play accordingly. As there was no such regular competition to have a 75/150 or a 150/300 level this meant that aggression was the key in the early part of a tournament, with many early exits (it suited the casino to get people on the gaming floor asap anyway).
In 2001 the egg timer finally became a thing of the past in any decent cardroom as some software was approved by the gaming board (at the time) called Cardroom Magic. This was what every TD ever dreamed of, no more buzzing of a 2 bit timer but a clear announcement of blinds to be raised/breaks/starting etc, also it cut the unnecessary paperwork by 80%. It also was pleasing for the players as they could look at a plasma screen and find all the information about the tournament that they were playing, how many people left, how long was left of that level, prize money etc., but most importantly it gave a little piece of information that no-one had used before ” Average Chipstack”. I believe that this is the most looked at part of any TD software and it is the most misleading piece of information. If you go to any cardrooms smoking room during a break, all you will hear is “How many chips have you got?” The answer is usually “Average chips” or “Just under/over average”. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ignore this information, an average is just what it says on the tin, you may have someone on a monster stack and 10 very short stacks (this is not uncommon) when those shorties bust, those sitting on their “average” chips now are in a whole heap of crap, hence why you are now playing a crapshoot, as now most of the shorties have bust, let’s say 2 levels go past without losing a player (i.e. bubble scenario) you are now in a shit or bust situation and the skill of poker has now been thrown into the lap of the poker Gods.
Revert to the old ways dear friends, keep your stack above 20bb’s, this may mean you have to play poker, steal a few blinds, be braver ……… you will be rewarded in prize money!
So for those of you that are looking at a starting stack of 10,000 chips with starting blinds of 25/50 (200BB’s!!) and have a competition that includes all festival levels on a decent clock, think that the tournament is a crapshoot please re-adjust your game and play poker, or get blinded out!
What is ‘feel’?
January 18, 2010
You often hear the phrase from poker players about the ‘feel’ they get in certain spots or against certain players. To be honest, I think that a lot of the time, players use the phrase ‘feel’ to somehow defend a play which they know deep down was incorrect. If only I had a pound for every time I’ve seen someone call a pot sized bet to then hit their gutshot on the river and then make some bollocks reasoning of how they ‘felt’ they needed to call!!
I write this as I just called a large river bet in Omaha holding only two pair when the board was set up perfectly for a broadway straight which obviously my opponent had. Why did I call this bet? Because pre-flop I had a good ‘feeling’ about the hand. As I type this, the ridiculousness of my actions is becoming clearer by the second!
I consider myself to be of slightly above average intelligence and somewhat logical and analytical. How then do I make such a poor decision, simply because I had some silly feeling about a hand of poker based on no logical reasoning whatsoever? I don’t have the answer really, but basically, I think it’s the fact that although Poker is a pretty technical game, emotional control is almost, if not more important than the fundamental grasp of statistics and probability.
I remember having a discussion about feel on the UKPI forum a while back, and Kev Stevens (Devilmeat) put forward the point that feel is a subconscious understanding of a situation based upon many hours of play and study. I actually think this is a very good way of describing the aspect of feel but I would say that this sort of feel is the sort of thing that can make a good player great. Unfortunately for me, whenever I try and play with ‘feel’ it makes an average player poor!
That Feeling
January 16, 2010
I often write nonsensical pieces about specific emotions I get whilst playing poker and this another of those; so if the last few have bored you senseless then please switch off now.
As per most Thursdays, this week I was down at Hartford Social Club with my mates having an average game of poker in the same old setting with the same old faces and it’s still as enjoyable as ever. Now maybe most people don’t think like I do, maybe I’m weird, but I have this thing inside my head whereby if something happens to me that is pretty normal at the time but is one of those things that when you look back at it in twenty years you’ll go on about how good it was; well I try to take those things in and appreciate them at the time. It’s a bit like a decent night out in a city centre. At the time, you go out, you have a laugh, get pissed, fall asleep then get on with your life the next day. Five years on, when you’re a bit older and more boring, you reminisce about that night and then truly appreciate it for the great night that it was. Anyway I’m digressing.
So the same old game is running as it does every week and I toddle along nicely, winning a few pots, bluffing a couple and losing a few. We start with 20 players and without much to report I make my way to the final table. Everyone is relatively similarly stacked although I’m maybe one of the lower ones. It’s the same old final table we’ve all played a hundred times where in a single hand, the short stacks and big stacks are swapping places regularly. Then the following hand crops up; I think we were still eight handed at the time and blinds were 1k/2k. Average stack 50k and I had about 40k.
To my immediate right is Jeff, a solid player and very good. He raises 3*BB from early position and I call behind holding 710 suited. I know this seems like an odd play, especially given our position but given the blind sizes only 2/3 players were ever seeing a flop and although Jeff is very solid, if I’ve got position on him I can be pretty sure where I am and can easily take a decent post post flop. My thinking is proved to be nonsense when my flat call induces three more callers!! One of them is to my immediate left and it’s the infamous Devil Neck, a player I love to have at every game. You can’t put him on much, you never, ever, ever bluff him but he’s not as bad as some players like to think. Anyway, with the pre flop action, the pot is already healthy and we see a beautiful flop of 7-10-3 with two spades. Even better, Jeff leads out for 12k. Now the pot is already something like 30k, I’ve got about 30k behind facing a 12k bet so I just ship the lot. I think I’m someway ahead of both players and the pot is now the biggest of the night by by a mile.
A soon as I ship it Devil starts think about the call and I can see that Jeff is really, really thinking hard, both of them think they’re ahead. That said, Devil is infamous for calling with any sort of draw; I saw him draw at a flush once after facing overbets on the flop and turn and he only held the two of the suit he was chasing!! Anyway, as I sit there I got that old feeling back. My heart was literally thumping in my chest. Now this is a poxy poker game in a poxy club with a bunch of players of ability ranging from ‘good’ to ‘atrocius’. The prizepool is about £250 total but for those short few moments, the game draws you in and it becomes as important as anything else in the world. As it happens, they both held top pair but due to the nature of the action and the fact that it was me who shipped the chips, they both convinced themselves everyone else was on a draw and both called. The board blanked off and I took the chip lead to subsequently finish third for a massive £40!!
That’s the point of this piece, I love the way in which poker can matter so much when it actually matters so little. Aside from a European Cup Final penalty shootout, I don’t think that there’s anything else in my life that could give me that feeling. Now maybe that says more about how sad I am rather than how great the game of poker is but I really don’t care. As long as I can continue to enjoy a simple game of cards more than other hobbies which cost other people hundreds and thousands of pounds then I’ll continue to be an extremely sad individual. I suppose if you’ve bothered to read this piece to the end, then you’re about as sad as me 
.
S
Poker Tourettes
January 9, 2010
This week in my local game, I coined the phrase ‘Poker Tourettes’ much to the amusement of my friends and opponents, Wilko and Tourist. This isn’t intended as a cheap gag at those that suffer with the terrible affliction (even though I can’t resist laughing at times), it’s just the best way I can explain how my mind works. When I was a kid, my best friend at school suffered with tourettes at a time when it was relatively unknown and misunderstood so I do actually understand the pain it causes and certain ways in manifests itself. It’s a truly horrendous affliction
The reason I was thinking of why I had the phrase in mind was that I managed to overcome and control an involuntary and sudden action that I didn’t intend; the same way in which my friend used to just blurt out ’shitting hell, shittin hell’ with no good reason but learned through various exercises to control his outbursts. The tourettes seems to take hold of me at certain stages of tournament poker, normally when I’m approaching a short stack position, say 10BB’s or have a healthy stack and am trying to dominate a table when the blinds are starting to damage my competitors. This action must have cost me numerous torunaments over the years and it’s only now that I’m starting to correct it.
It stems from the generally accepted ‘aggressive’ approach that seems to be bandied around by anyone willing to put their thoughts about tournament poker on the web or in print. I’ve been indoctrinated by Mr Harrington into thinking that as soon as my M goes orange I need to think about shoving every pot I can open. Mr Hansen told me to dominate the table when I’ve got the chips to use and Mr Ivey just looked so cool when he bluffed Paul Jackson off that hand in the Monte Carlo Millions. I’m not criticising these players, but I’ve taken their advice far too literally and I’m exaggerating their impact on my poker style.
This week I’d been playing well and was generally in control of my table until I got it all in on the flop with AK overcards and the nut flush draw to an opponent holding second pair which held up and he cut my stack in half. I was 90 % sure I was favourite, was happy to play for stacks, and was right to do so. All of a sudden though I feel like I’m short stacked when really I’m not. (You may be seeing echoes of my last DTD write up here). For the next half an hour, all I wanted to do was throw my chips in at every chance I got. I saw every raise as a steal that I should re-steal. Every unopened pot was a chance to take the blinds, I almost announced ‘all-in’ involuntarily on at least three occasions. I’m sure it’s another example of tilt manifesting in my play as I really don’t get upset when the cards fall against me, but even though I always remain calm, this must be the way in which my mind lets the tilt take control
Whilst I was trying to distract myself from shoving all my chips in the pot with 6-4 offsuit I tried to think of other occasions in which this had happened to me. I came third in a tournament recently against two of the worst players I’ve ever come across when I bluffed pre-flop/flop/turn/river with nothing but A high against the biggest station I’d ever met. I knew he had nothing and he duly called me down with nothing but J8 which hit a J on the river to win him the pot! Most people, if they’re honest, would berate the moron for making every call to river; personally I think I’m the moron for making such a horrendous series of bets to lose a tournament I should have walked. The thing is, I made each bet almost instinctively; I couldn’t control it, I just had to bet.
The upshot of this is that I’m a person expressing their thoughts whilst learning to control a major leak. Don’t get me wrong, I still think aggressive tournament poker is the most fun, and most successful way to play but there’s a difference between aggression and lunacy, I just need to try and reverse an instinct that’s been ground into my poker character for the last four years. Maybe if you look at yourself hard enough you might spot a couple of similarities, even if it’s a different response to an instinctive action.
Anyway, if ever you see me shoving 8BB’s from UTG with 6-8 off, then please remind me of this piece when I head to the rail!!
DTD 20/20 weekend part deux
January 6, 2010
So as my last piece explained we were having a cracking day out at the DTD 20/20 in December in which I played pretty terribly but managed to consume plenty of ale and a lovely burger whilst my travel companions managed to consume even more lager and cash for over four grand.
I busted from the 20/20 event at a pretty nice time, about six o’clock. This gave me time to have another drink or two, something to eat, play some cash and enter the £40 deepstack at 20.00. From the point that I exited the 20/20 my day got better bit by bit.
The cash went well, I sat down at a £1/£2 £200 cap game with £140 with the same again kept in my wallet as a fall back. We started three handed but the table soon expanded to eight handed. I won’t go into detail but I got a great table with some real soft players but as I wanted to play the deepstack I only had about half an hour to kill. The cash went well, I got maximum value for a pair of aces, got a couple of bluffs through and was well up when I played a hand well (IMO!) but had to let it go on the river. The result was that I made over £50 in the thirty minutes I played which meant I was freerolling the entry fee to the £40+£6 comp.
I buy in with my other two companions who’d been knocked out and only just manage to get to my seat as my cards are dealt. First hand I look down at a pair of tens sat on the button. I must say that tens are my least favourite poker hand, I’ve lost more than I’ve won online with them so I have some pretty conservative ways of playing them deepstacked, I really think more people should do this. In this instance I decided to play them pretty slowly, like a small/mid pair rather than treating them as a premium hand. There’s a raise from UTG+1, a mid position call and I flat call as well. The three of us see a Q57 flop. UTG checks, MP bets, I flat call as does UTG. I’m not 100% where I’m at here, I don’t think I can fold the flop to a single bet with one overcard and I have position to re-asses the turn. The turn comes a beautiful ten. UTG checks, MP bets, I call and UTG raises!! MP gets out of the way and I’m sat there happy as a pig in shit. Obviously he may have the QQ but if he has then good luck to him, I’m putting him on TPTK, two pair or another set. I ship the rest of my stack, he insta calls, I flip, he shouts that I’m a ‘lucky boy’ and storms off having showed a set of fives. A double up first hand of the comp, yours truly is chip leader!!!
After that I continue to run hot, the only problem is that I did scare off some people as my big stack is scaring people out of pots and I’m not getting good value for some really good hands. By the first break I’ve run my 8k starting stack up to over 24k. I then go on to lose a big pot which nearly costs me the comp. A player I’d intially marked as soft, but subsequently re-assessed as anything but, had raised from MP. I flat call on the button with 55. Flop comes AA10. He bets and I call, standard cbet, let’s see what happens. Turn comes a blank and we both check. Similar to my hand in the 20/20, I don’t like my hand enought to bet but still think I may be ahead so check the turn with the intention to call a bluff possibly on the river. River comes a Q and he makes a massive overbet, something like 6k into a 2k pot. I think a little this time but still read it as a pure bluff. I’ve not got good odds, I should let it go but I was getting brave, thought it was a shit bluff by a shit player and make the call. He shows AQ for a boat, great read Gaz!!!!
This hand severely tilted me. I was drinking, I’d made myself look silly, I got check-raised off a pot shortly after and was in danger of throwing my stack away needlessly. My 24k stack was now down to about 13k so I’m still on the tournament average but I felt like I was losing it. I’m just regaining my composure but not really enjoying the poker. I didn’t really like anyone else on my table, I had a bit of needle with one player who I tried to straighten out as being cocky when he said something thinking I couldn’t hear but when I asked him straight he said he was paying me a compliment, dunno which was right but he certainly backed down. I then get KK. I get most of a players stack in by the turn, hit trips on the river after the flush completed and I really, really read him for the flush so just checked down the river in position. It was only then that I realise the board had paired on the turn also thus giving me a full house and meaning I miss out on 4k of chips but more importantly look like a complete tit to everyone else there. I decided to stop drinking at this point as I was in FBMT. (Full Blown Monkey Tilt copyright Kev Stevens)
Luckily I get moved tables to a really friendly table which I can calm down at. There are some really nice older fellas on there. We talk Golf and Football, compliment each others play rather than the usual criticism and bravado bollocks that younger players usually bring to the table and I remembere why I love poker again, it was great. My stack tootles along nicely and I build it along with the average whilst we lose a few more players. Before I know it we’re down to two tables but the blinds are starting to bite. I’m letting my stack dwindle but rather than start shoving every chance to get, I learn from my mistake in the 20/20 and start to use selective aggression. There are no major hands until I pick up J10 on the button. I’ve got about 8-10 BB’s from memory. Previously I’d shove here, but I just raise 2.5BBs. People will argue with this strategy but I’m starting to change my thinking now. There are five reasons I did this but I won’t bore you with them. Bottom line is that the BB calls, I flop the nut straight and we get it all in on the turn as he’d hit top pair. before you know it, we’re on to the final table.
The final table is a strange affair. Minimum cash is £125 I think, going up in £50 increments for the first five or so out, then the final five spots jump something like, £300, £425, £665, £1,000, £1,750. At this point one player suggests a nine way split for £500 each. This is usually something I’d reject out of hand but the average stack was probably about ten BB’s, you’d have to finish third or better to get more than the deal, and with the blind/stack ratio, no-one could honestly say they had enough of an edge to assure themselves of that. Most were happy to deal but the few bigger stacks obviously didn’t want to so away we go. The highlight of my final tabel was the free drink you get for making it!! I opted for the Vodka and Red Bull as it was now about 3am.
I had a competent player to my left, a female nit to my right. Three big stacks of average ability to the left again, one good player and one TAG further to my right, soemthing like that anyway. The problem I had was that many fo the final table were relatively short stacked. I had the three big stacks to my left with a player I think capable of a re-steal so I’ve got to wait it out.
I played the final table as well as I could. I wait out three eliminations, steal a couple of pots and get sucked out on for a really big pot but before I know it we’re down to four handed. This was the toughest part of the tournament. I had the female nit to my right who was short stacked and the two huge stacks to my left. This meant stealing was hard and the woman on my right was trying to wait me out. I realised I couldn’t really aim for the two top spots but had to finish above the woman as it was a £240 pay jump from fourth to third. I played four handed the tightest I’ve ever played short handed in my life. I was completely card-dead but I made some small raises that looked like really strong hands, were read as such but were actually steals. I outlast the woman with only about four BB’s left. I shove the button with 4/5 as I’m pot committed from the blinds after that and get looked up by KJ which hits and knocks me out.
I must thank my good friend Rich Wootton for his company during the breaks of this competition. A bit of sensible conversation and someone watching me play who I don’t want to look a tit in front of really helped me to concentrate!!
All in all the £40 comp was great The structure is as good as you can for the time frame you have, everything about the place is brilliant, I cashed for £665 from an effectively free buy-in and I go home happy. It takes about another half hour to get my mates Wilko and Chris off the cash table, DTD have now refused to serve them any more ale and they’re arguin like a pair of children. We leave the club about half four and I got home at 6am, tired, sober again, but happy.
Thank you DTD, can’t wait to see you again.
DTD 20/20 Weekend
January 4, 2010
Me and my mates usually have a little poker road trip over the festive period. When we weighed up our options there was only one serious choice, the DTD 20/20 on 27th/28th December.
The Sunday game saw the poker room at capacity with alternates in play and a £8.5k first prize. We opted for the Monday game on 28th december which attracted 227 runners from memory. The game was perfect for us lads having a day out at the poker. There’s the £100 early start at 14.00 then a deepstack £40 at 20.00 in case if you get knocked out and even a £15 game for those wanting to watch the budget after Christmas. Let’s also not forget the numerous and varied cash games on offer to suit all poker tastes.
Myself, Mark ‘Wilko’ Wilkinson, Chris ‘Poker Dog’ Goward, Stuart ‘Tourist’ Clarke and Big Kev set out around quarter to twelve and due to a little traffic congestion on the M6 and around Nottingham managed to get there just in time for kick off. I must say that having registered online and checked my entry with customer support, the club still delivered the first class service that I’d expect before I even got there.
So we sit down for the £100 er and I start to weigh up my table. I’ve got a nit to my left, a TAG left of him, most players in mid position from me appear to be standardish and the player to my immediate right is playing very tightly but without seeming like a big gob seems to play some pretty big games. The first few levels are pretty uneventful, I get my 10k stack up about 3k with one TPTK hand I get two streets of value for with a bet, check, bet in position and another bluff on the turn after a checked flop. I then lose a couple of k or so with a few hands like with a missed AK in a mulitway pot and other standard missed boards. I then lose a decent chunk to the player on my right.
He raises my BB from the SB by a small amount, think it was just above a min raise. I call with Q-10 offsuit, partly for value but partly to defend and I’ve got position. Rag flop which he check calls a half pot flop bet by me. A Queen comes on the turn which gives me top pair albeit with a weak kicker. He checks again and I check as I’m not mad about my hand but think that I now look like weak and can call a bluff on the river; a bet here only gets called by hands that are beating me so I don’t see much value in it. River blanks again and he makes a very big bet, about twice the pot. I’d decided on the turn to call any river bet, I was bluff inducing but on reflection I maybe should have known that often these massive river bets after two checks are desperate value attempts, after slowplaying the early streets. I actually snap called but should have thought about the hand a little more and decided not to risk another 3k on the river when there was only maybe 1500 in the pot to begin with. Anyway, it’s not a horrendous call given the way I played then hand but he flipped a set of 7’s and I’m back down to about 7k.
This hand tilted me a little as it was the first big pot I’d shown down in, and I came off the worst. Add the fact that I was also 7/8 bottles of Peroni in now and I started getting itchy fingers. I’ve got a common fault which I think many players have who sometimes over-egg their strategy at times rather than reading the situation a little better. It occurs especially when I’ve had a drink, but if I’m getting short stacked (by the M ratio) then I just can’t wait to get chips in, I’m looking to open every pot I can, re-squeeze when I can, C-bet every time. It’s not terrible but I’m far too aggressive as I see my stack as far shorter than it actually is, I use over-aggression as opposed to controlled aggression. I can’t specifically remember many more hands after the one mentioned above as I got myself into a couple of raise, bet, fold pots until I got to about 4/5 big blinds, shoved over an AK and went home. It’s a pretty common occurence in my tournament game which I need to sort out.
Meanwhile, some of my fellow team were faring a little better. Tourist and Big Kev went out at around the same time as me. I decided to try the DTD burger which I would wholeheartedly recommend to any potential diner, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. Big Kev also ordered onion rings with his. They are massive, fresh and tasty but please share them, they were far too much for even the two of us with our burgers.
Wilko and Poker Dog were going along very nicely indeed. By about the second or third break (say about 12 levels in) they were both well above average chipstacks. They were also amongst the leading alcohol consumers in the comp and during one of the breaks they decided they’d split any prize money won as they figured surely one of them would cash. As the tournament continued it became clear that Wilko was doing well, he had a chipstack dwarfing every other player. As he got drunker I could hear him getting louder. He was pulling stunts like deciding to call an all-in 3bet holding 55. He flips tails, makes the call and duly wins a monster pot, it was that soprt of scenario. Chris is going well too but I can hear him even more, at one point I overheard him say runner-runner-runner-runner-runner very loudly. The upshot of this is that Chris missed the final table but cashed for £300. Wilko went into the FT with 700k of the 2.2m chips in play and ended up agreeing a split when three handed. He cashed for £4k, finished third but had to give Chris £2k of his hard earned winnings!!!!
When all said and done though, a class comp, in a class card room with class service. I can’t find a single thing wrong to say about DTD, except that it’s not in Northwich.
As well as the 20/20 I decided to take part in the £40 deepstack and some £1/£2 cash, I’ll update this in my next piece as I did slightly better than in my first attempt of the day!!!
Why Do People Hate Short Stackers So Much?
December 31, 2009
One of my favourite blogs is located here, the two contributors are Travis “The Dirrty” Rose and Lorin Yelle. The reason I enjoy this blog so much is because it’s fantastically well written and offers some very thought provoking ideas in digestible chunks, I promise a look back through this blogs archive will be a few hours well spent.
Lorin and Travis blog gets tons of comments, primarily abusive as both players are professional shot stack grinder’s and this seem to engender a level of vitriol that is normally only reserved for child abusers and Ashley Cole. A cursory flick through the comments section and you will see what I mean.
Now I’ve heard all the arguments about short stacker’s (SS) killing the games etc, which if they where all playing solid SS strategy, which when employed perfectly is pretty much un-exploitable then yes they probable would be harming the games, but lets be honest in the main SS are like all other poker players, a mixed bunch at best.
There are the tough SS like Lorin and Travis but there quite easy to spot and it’s just the age old issue of game selection, if I find myself at a table with one or two good SS, then I just pick the fuck up, same as I would facing a couple of good full stackers.
So where does the anger come from? I really don’t know to be honest. I know what I find it annoying, and that’s Rakeback sites that have been training and employing farms of short stackers in Eastern Europe. But that’s not a personal dislike, its just an abuse of poker I resent and I’m quite happy that I-Poker at least are making moves to make this unprofitable with changes in the distribution of rake to players and how they pay skins.
I could never hate someone just because the way they play a game, it all seems very odd to me, maybe though I might feel differently if I was playing 10 tables for 8 hours day.
Sign of the Times?
December 30, 2009
I’m not sure if this is anything or just a sign of the changing times in poker we have seen over the past few years with the death of the weak/passive players that used to frequent online and live poker. This morning I decided to play a little bit of heads-up cash NLHE on a €.50/€1 Euro table playing on the Black Belt Poker Skin on the I-Poker network.
I picked a table where an opponent was already seated, I selected this particular table because although he was only half stacked, my opponent was sitting with an odd amount €49.70 or so. I like to look for these guy’s because it’s often there full roll and there on mega tilt trying to get back losses after a bad run at the micro’s.
After a half a dozen hands or so my opponent moves about 10 euro’s up on me and its playing like almost any other game. Then a hand comes up that requires me to check/call to the river on a scary board with my top pair no kicker being not much more than a bluff catcher, my opponent has a missed draw and we find ourselves level.
I mentioned this hand because it seemed to be the catalyst for some very strange poker, I raise the next pot, my opponent folds, my opponent then fold there small blind. And this continues to be the pattern for the next 20 or 30 hands as my opponent blinds down to €20, A little strange but nothing a really, really shitty run of cards wouldn’t explain.
Once my opponent dipped below €20 they started to auto rebuy to the minimum buy-in of €20 but they continued to fold to every raise, one change is that they are now limping the occasional small blind and then folding to my flop bets. They re-bought exactly 10 times and then continued to play in this extremely passive manner until they reached €6 where they opened €3 with K10 and called my shove with 99 and I won the flip. I typed in GG, no response but they wouldn’t leave the seat, I asked them to reload or move on, no response, I called them a world class fish, no response.
As mentioned I have a feeling this was a malfunctioning bot with my check call with top pair acting triggering some kind of glitch, but maybe I only think this because I haven’t played a weak passive like this in a long, long time. Maybe I really did manage to find the last player in online poker who hasn’t developed an aggressive stance. Either way I’ll be watching for there name online and jumping on a table with them every opportunity I get!
NumberWang
December 29, 2009
I really like the BBC2 sketch show ‘That Mitchell and Webb Look’, a particular favourite skit is ‘Number Wang’ where contestants take part in a quiz show with totally impenetrable rules and where the quiz master just keeps throwing numbers at them.
This reminds me when I first started playing poker and people would just throw numbers at me, “your 8.5-1 to flop a set” or “you shouldn’t call there with the flush draw because you’re a 34% underdog against any set” etc etc. That was all along time ago and during my early day’s playing poker I learned most of the key numbers by heart, just recently though I realised I didn’t have a clue anymore.
I couldn’t be arse to relearn them all and the truth is after a while you really shouldn’t need to know the chance of making your hand to three decimal places anyway. I think the set making stat is interesting, we know it’s about 8.5 to one but should be fold if we are only getting 7-1?
This would have to be very player dependant decision; personally I can’t see how it can be incorrect to call when getting less than 8.5-1 if you know your opponent is an absolute calling station. Surely as our opponent’s ability goes down our implied odd’s go up and there can’t be many players at the lower stakes that can fold top pair type hands against what is after all the silent assassin of poker, the set.
Instead of relearning all the key numbers periodically, you just need to know if your getting value because at the end of the day if you really want to play the game bad enough you can manipulate most hand’s so your always getting the right price to call with any draw!
Dangerous Habits
December 28, 2009
Habits are like warm beds, easy to fall into and bloody hard to get out of, especially when you have to get up to go to work(Sorry, back to the office tomorrow and its on my mind!). I have recently been struggling a bit with my game, a lot of this brought about by my some habits I have picked up whilst bank roll building on a new site.
I have been concentrating on two relatively new formats that are solely available online, the ‘Super Turbo Head-Up’ and the ‘Double Up’ sit and go formats. The truth is that poker rooms have spread both of these formats for two very specific, yet totally different reasons.
Super Turbo’s are there for the gamblers pure and simple, the only reason it’s possible to make a profit playing them at all is the quality of the players these games attract is lower than normal and more importantly most poker players are very poor at playing with small effective stacks in heads-up situations.
The Double up games have been invented to keep players in action longer thus raking more for the online rooms, there actually very good for solid players with experience of satellite bubbles and are a good way to build a bank roll, they are primarily profitable because there is almost always a couple of nutters playing for the win.
And as much as playing high volumes of these game formats can be good for the hourly return, they are actually very simple forms of poker and will not stretch a good player very much. You will primarily be learning how to better exploit players who don’t understand how to play the format and will do much less for your all round poker playing ability than playing the same volume at a 1Cent/2Cent cash table.
To avoid your game becoming staid yet still exploiting these profitable formats I would recommend;
Playing quality opponents will allow creative thinking and gives you that extra edge over your regular opponents over time, so maybe try joining a site like Black Belt Poker who hold regular low buy-ins against quality opposition.
Although volume is essential for exploring the sheer number of hands and situations that can develop and is also important for your hourly or monthly income from poker, be aware that certain formats have deeper levels than others.
Find the right balance for you when your multi tabling and make sure you challenge yourself occasionally to avoid becoming too robotic in your play.
Dedicate time a significant part of your poker playing time into studying your own and your opponent’s game, this is just as important as putting in the hands.
Thanks to all the guy’s at Black Belt Poker that shared there thoughts on this interesting topic and for Nik Persuads original article here, that inspired the debate.
PokerStars UK & Ireland Seasonal Treat
December 23, 2009
The world’s largest poker room, PokerStars.Com has a special treat in store over the festive period for all there UK & Ireland customers. Starting December 26th and running to the 28th the world most popular online room will be adding $3,000 to the prize pool of there specially selected added value UK & Ireland only tournaments.
PokerStars have made sure there is added value for those of all bankroll’s by adding the 3K to three tournaments with varied buy-ins, the 26th see’s a frugal $1.10 buy-in, the 27th a $5.50 buy-in and the 28th a $11 buy-in, all will start at 17:00 UK time so put down the turkey and get yourself some real value this Christmas.
To register, open the PokerStars lobby, click ‘Tourney’ & ‘Private’ (they don’t want any old riff raff entering)
Clarkatroid Knows What You’re Holding
December 22, 2009
Adam ‘Clarkatroid’ Clark writes a superb blog here; and I would recommend a read, especially now because he is currently recounting his path from online poker novice to top flight cash game regular and it’s been an excellent read thus far.
Whilst reading his blog the other day it reminded me of a conversation I had with Kev Bloor and Lucy Rokach in Killarney. Lucy has had an extremely successful career on the live poker circuit, winning more money than any other European female, yet she hates online poker and is very sceptical of the nature of the games and believes the style of play of so many of the online breed turn it into a total gamble.
Myself and Kev Bloor tried to convince Lucy that online poker is almost a totally different game to live poker and the main reason she and other successful live poker players struggle online is because they are giving up a huge edge as the online specialist players have a ton of information at there disposal that others do not.
Kev Bloor was using a recent conversation he had with ‘Clarkatroid’ where he had described when playing online he could use the statistics at his disposal to identify a players tendencies and then exploit them for profit. In trying to support our argument I recounted a recent training session I had undertaken with a good cash game pro, I’m pretty bad at cash and had been only too eager to enlist the help of a friend!
It was a bit of an eye opener to be honest and although I had been using tracking software for a while I was surprised at how poorly I had been utilising the data at my disposal. I quickly came to realise I had been completely underprepared for my occasional dips into the shark filled mid stakes cash game waters and I watched amazed at my trainer attacked opponents calling and betting ranges and slashed his way through the tables.
Afterwards I felt naked at the tables and I stopped playing mid stakes cash completely, because people like ‘Clarkatroid’ knew exactly what I was holding enough of the time that I was at a significant disadvantage. I tired to apply similar tactics at the lower stakes and learn the ropes but without constant supervision it proved to difficult so I decided to specialise in other forms of poker, because if you can’t beat em, avoid em.
A Brief History of Skins
December 21, 2009
Many years ago entrepreneurs from the four corners of the earth cast there eye’s across the internet poker scene and thought, “That’s money for old rope, I’ll have me some of that”.
Soon the internet was awash with poorly conceived and badly managed poker room’s and each had there very own platform built with varying degrees of competence. Unfortunately some quickly learnt the hard lesson that the surfaces of the internet’s super highways were not exactly paved with gold and they soon fell by the wayside. But still others grew and grew and as nature intended the strong preyed upon the weak and grew stronger still.
As technology advanced and start up costs spiralled ever upwards the concept of the white labelled poker room or ‘skin’ as they became known, was born. This of course dramatically reduced the overheads of launching a new online card room and on paper at least would allow the two parties to benefit from each other strengths, i.e. allow the poker network to concentrate on building a robust and slick infrastructure and the online room to focus on recruiting new players and offering a 1st rate customer service.
And for a while all seemed happy in the rose garden of shared poker infrastructure, and why wouldn’t it? After all white labelling is a model successfully used in many other industries, well actually here in lies the problem, poker isn’t like any other industry.
With numerous poker rooms of vastly different size and scale existing under the same roof, sharing the same player base soon many, many problems became apparent. The behemoth rooms on the network where spending vast sum’s of money to attract new players to the network which of course was good for everyone, but it soon became apparent it was actually much better for some than others.
Marketing people love graphs, they fucking love them, and one day a probably pony tailed ponce from one of the giant rooms that existed on the network was staring at a pie chart with lots of lovely colours when something occurred to him, there numbers where shit.
You see this pie chart was an extrapolation of the amount of money spent to recruit each depositing customer cross referenced with the amount each new depositing customer would be raking, and boy there was a lot of red ink on this chart.
So they had figured it out, they where spending $20 dollars per newly depositing customer recruited and on average these players where depositing on average $200 but they where only getting paid $15 in rake! A net loss of $5 per new customer recruited.
Initially of course they thought the other large rooms on the network must be doing something much better than them, but after some low key discussions it became clear the main opposition where seeing the same trend within there own numbers.
After some investigation it became obvious that the players they where recruiting just weren’t good enough and that the smaller skins on the network had done an outstanding job of recruiting all the best players by offering vastly superior under the counter rack back deals and in some cases training there players to be better. The small rooms had another advantage, most of there customer came through mail shot’s and direct contact so they could spend bugger all on advertising aimed at recruiting new players and instead concentrate all there efforts on bringing in high raking players.
So the big guys cried foul to the overlords of the shared poker network, who immediately banned rake back deals and tried to even the playing field by introducing fines to the smaller rooms for withdrawals from the network and not bringing in new depositors which the poorly disguised intention of driving them out of business.
And eventually all was good in the rose garden of shared poker infrastructure as the site was now divided up amongst the large networks all of an equal size with similar business models, and everybody won, apart from the little skins of course and their customers who got fucked out of money.
THE END.
So Long and Thanks For All The Chips!
December 20, 2009
Just been on the receiving end of a tirade, one day PokerStars will offer the opportunity to play music across the tables, when they do I’m recording and uploading this.
So long and thanks for all the chips,
So sad you paid off my flopped trips,
Please don’t cry your Donkey tears.
You may not share our intellect,
Which might explain the disrespect,
To all the players that surround you,
So long, So long, and thanks, for all the chips.
You act like your worlds been destroyed,
Theres no point getting all annoyed,
Next time maybe you can find a fold, but I doubt it.
Despite those abusive chat box words,
We thought your tilting although absurd,
Quite amusing, apart for the sexist abusing,
So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
(high voice) So long, So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
So long, So long, and thanks, for all the chips.
(Choir) So long and thanks for all the chips,
(Choir) So sad that it should come to this,
(Choir) Please don’t cry your Donkey tears, oh dear.
(Choir) Despite those abusive chat box words,
(Choir) We thought your tilting quite amusing,
(Choir) Apart for the racist and sexist abusing,
So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
(high voice) So long, So long, So long, So long, So long,
So long, So long and thanks, for all the chips.
What’s The F@*%ng Hold-up?
December 19, 2009
When I used to watch my Dad play online it used to drive me mad, every time an opponent took more than a 5th of a second to act on there hand he would start typing ‘zzzzzz’ in the chat box.
It was so arbitrary, it didn’t matter if they had a decision to actually make or whether this was the first delay they had caused he was just so impatient, this coupled with the fact he called everything down to the river regardless of the board or his holding “just in case they where bluffing” made watching him play extremely painful.
So recently I was disappointed to find myself bashing the Z key frantically in much the same manner, I was playing Omaha cash games across fours tables I had to continually wait for half the table to act on all four!
The increasing number of player’s multi-tabling has seen a major slow down of online games and there are a number of players who clearly aren’t very good at it., Jesus if Islidur1 can multi-table highstakes games against Antonius, Durrrr and Ivey with no discernible delays then this .25/.50 should be able to manage it!
The long term affects of a continual slow down of the games might be extremely negative and online poker might become a much less attractive proposition to the causal gambler looking for a quick fix.
Another bug bear is PokerStars and there never closing bloody tournaments till the first break. Half the time you sit down and think I’ll play a quick tournie with only 100 or so registered and you find with the extended registration that after the first break there’s more than double the number you started with still in the game!
Is It Just Me Or Is Scotty Nguyen A Bit Of A Prick?
December 19, 2009
I used to think Scotty Nguyen was all right, maybe a bit odd with but generally ok and a bit of a character and probably overall good for the game of poker. But then there was that incident at the final table of the 50K HORSE (see Video) which was made all the more unpleasant by the fact the tournament had just been renamed to honour one of the all time great ambassadors of the games passing.
And all though you do wonder what the great Chip Reece had ever done to Scotty to have the tournament named for him so disrespected you had to pretty much think the person damaged the most by the whole unpleasant business was after all Scotty himself. This should have been the pinnacle of his career, the highlight of a lifetime playing poker, yet all anyone was ever going to remember is his drunken table antics, following his disgraceful performance Scotty made all the right noises and issues an apology so story over.
Well not quite;
Courtesy of Cardplayer.com:
Scotty Nguyen got in on the act, as well. Nguyen was being his usual boisterous self when he criticized a dealer over a small mistake. Dan O’Brien tried to calm the situation down, and Nguyen took offense to him chiming in with a defence of the dealer. Shortly after that, Nguyen decided to play a hand completely blind against O’Brien and ended up giving the young pro more than 100,000 in chips before finally taking a peek and mucking on the river.
Scotty Nguyen was clearly upset with O’Brien, but the barrage of F-bombs were unfortunately unloaded on the quiet and polite man sitting to his right. The action started with the unknown player, who raised to 24,000 in the cutoff. Nguyen reraised to roughly 50,000 on the button, and the cutoff then reraised to 150,000. Nguyen called, and the flop came KHeart 7Spade 3Heart.
The cutoff moved all in, and Nguyen called all in with 7Heart 4Heart for a pair and a flush draw. His opponent showed pocket aces, but they were cracked when the turn and river came 5Club and 7Club, giving Nguyen the winning hand with trips. Nguyen immediately slammed the felt when the river fell and began screaming obscenities toward the cutoff and the rest of the table, explaining that he was tired of people messing with him. The unknown player, clearly devastated by the hand and left with just a few big blinds, could only sit quietly as Nguyen scooped the huge pot. Despite immediately receiving a 10-minute penalty, Nguyen took his time stacking the million-plus pot, carefully manoeuvring each chip around his beer before taking his punishment.
Bad Advice
December 18, 2009
Spin-ups and taking shot’s are just plain wrong, both fly in the face of good bankroll management which is the corner stone of being a winning poker player so you just shouldn’t do either, they are a lot of fun though and personally I have a crack at higher stakes occasionally.
Seeing as I’m in the mood to break poker conventions, I’m going for the big one, I’m going to commit the ultimate sin for any poker writer, I’m going to quote directly from ‘Rounders’ because as Mike McDermott said “But finally, I’ve learned this… If you’re too careful, your whole life can become a fuckin’ grind”
And isn’t that the fucking truth, if you have the mental fortitude to grind your way up via 30 buy-in increments to the higher levels good luck to you, personally though I got to need a little bit of excitement every now and again.
I do try to implement a modicum of control though and stick to gambling with won money and I also ensure I leave myself plenty of money to rebuild the account if it all goes tit’s up, because as Mike McDermott also said “Always leave yourself outs”.
I recently found this Tony G video of an attempted spin-up, it al goes a bit pear shaped but I still enjoyed the video and you have to love the ‘G man’.
Link here;
There’s another good one here where he fares much better;