The Power of the Wheel

By Chips_Middle | November 7, 2008

Anyone who reads this blog will know that I’ve been playing a little bit of HORSE poker lately.  I wanted to use this post to talk about one of the limit games and specifically about a hand that shows the power of the wheel in split pot poker.  In this case, Omaha Hi/Lo.

This hand was played online in a HORSE cash game.  The game is $0.25 / $0.50 Omaha Hi/Lo split and there are 8 players at the table.  I am in middle position holding:

It’s not a great hand but it has some potential and I’ve commented at some length about how clueless the opposition in HORSE games are.  I figure it’s worthwhile seeing a flop here.

There is a limp and a raise in front of me and I call.  Some more call behind me and we see the flop 6 handed.

The flop is:

At this point I have the nut low with 7 4 3 2 A.  That’s great but it’s not what makes my hand strong here.  What makes my hand strong here is that I have the nut low plus some other prospects.  Any 2,3,5 or 6 will give me a straight to give me a two way hand that can compete for high and low halves of the pot. 

In addition, my low hand can’t be counterfeited.  If money were to go in the pot now, another nut low (2,3) is a strong possibility when assessing my opponent’s potential hand.  Mind you, in this game there is money going in the pot if they have any qualifying low, or a flush draw and in some cases a high pair but, whatever.  If a 2 or a 3 should come on the turn or river, the 5 in my hand means that I will still have the nut low.

In fact, the ace and 4 on the flop were the perfect cards for my starting hand.  The ace is crucial.  I have a low starting hand and it needs the ace to turn it into a strong low or draw to a strong low.  The A 4 7 on the flop is just icing on the cake, giving me the nuts in one direction and draws and redraws for high and low.

This is the kind of situation that you play Omaha Hi / Lo for and Omaha in general.  Hands that can develop in multiple ways with interesting possibilities, most of them good.

There is a check and a bet to me and I raise.  Only one of my opponents manages to fold and we see the turn 5 handed.

The turn card is:

Well that’s a blank.  The first player bets, I raise and the guy behind me re-raises.  First guy calls and I cap it at $2.  They both call.

The river is

Now there is a dream card.  I have the nut low.  An opponent who was sharing the nut low with me on the turn (quite likely, given the betting) has probably just lost.  No spade, means the flush draw didn’t get there giving me the nuts for high as well.

There is a check, I bet $0.50.  The guy behind me raises, $1.  The first guy folds and I re-raise to $1.50.  My opponent calls.

The guy who folded might have had some kind of low hand (or not) and probably had a flush draw.  The guy who called had 9 9 T 2 and had made a pretty strong high hand on the turn.

The pot ended up being $7 which is pretty big for those stakes.  At best his trip 9s figured to get half of that. 

Therein lies the power of the wheel straight and the cards that can form it. 

This is a junk hand in Omaha Hi/Lo.  Middle cards don’t play well in split pot poker and with only one low card he can’t make a qualifying low.  The best he can hope for is competing for high with middle set and that is less than ideal.

Compare that to my less than ideal hand full of low cards.  When my hand hits, it is competing for both halves of the pot.  On the turn, when my opponent’s dream card hit, I was guaranteed half the pot and still had outs to win the other half as well.  He was in the lead for the high half of the pot and could not under any circumstances win the low.

Incidentally, on the river he is raising with 4 low cards on the board in a situation where he is splitting the pot against any hand containing 2 low cards???

The aim of split pot poker is to scoop the pot (to win both high and low).  That’s why wheel straights and the cards that make them are so powerful.

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PLO Pre-Flop Problems

By Chips_Middle | October 23, 2008

My hand is and I am in the cutoff seat (1 behind the button and therefore 2nd last to act after the flop).

The table is 6 handed.  Under the gun folds and the guy in 2nd position raises pot (to $0.35).  I call, the button calls, the small blind calls.  Now the Big Blind decides to raise pot ($2.10)  and all hell is about to break loose.  The original raiser (in 2nd position) has a short stack and raises all in (to $4.35).  That’s $4 for me to call into a pot that will be $11.50.  Not quite 2:1.

What should I be thinking here?  I’m not certain.  I can tell you what I was thinking and maybe we can go from there.  I have a pretty good drawing hand.  It has a single gap but that’s at the bottom which is good.  It would be better if it were double suited but this is a pretty good hand.  It’s a hand I was very happy to play against the initial raise.

These guys have both clearly signalled that they have a hand.  The guy on the short stack raised from early position and then shoved over a 3 bet.  He’s on a short stack and so that takes some of the weight away from his all in move but he has something he values. 

The BB has been playing relatively solid poker.  He has a VPIP of 25% and a pre-flop raise % of 12%.  He is quite aggressive post flop and although his pre-flop numbers make him tight (for this game), he has started making a few moves recently.  He could be attacking all of the callers and making a play representing aces but I don’t think I have evidence to ignore the strengh that his 3-bet implies.

I’m thinking K high, single suited rundown.  I shouldn’t be in terrible shape here.  Against my dream hands, where both opponents hold AAxx I should be in good shape and am probably favourite.  I’m thinking I might be against AA on one hand and a drawing hand that I dominate on the other.  I’m thinking that with no Ace in my hand and a decent drawing hand, I am in alright shape against AAxx.

I call, hoping that the guy who is all-in has the AA and the Big Blind will just call.  I am aware that he might raise and I have a small feeling in the back of my head that I probably just did something stupid but I reckon that if this becomes an all-in fest it will probably be at least 4 handed and my hand ought to have at least some equity.  Hey.  My stack is up to 4 buyins and you’ve got to gamble sometime right?

Anyway.  I call, the button calls (so far, so good), the Small Blind folds and the Big Blind re-raises again and gets all-in ($9.40).  This time it is just over $5 for me to call and the pot will be nearly $30 so it’s automatic.  The button goes all-in, which is a raise of about $0.40 so doesn’t much count.

Showdown time.  How am I doing?  Was I right that my big drawing hand ought to end up with equity in a 4 way pot? 

Me:
Original Raisor:
Button:
Big Blind:

I have 19.5% equity here.  Not enough by a long shot.  The AA is nearly 45% to win this 4 way pot and is a massive dominating favourite.  They just ate my outs. 

I’m going in as an underdog against an AA hand and that’s ok.  That’s part of the game.  Look at the cards I need to improve though.  I need to come from behind to beat AA and all the cards I need are in my opponents’ hands. 

I need a T to fill the gap in my rundown.  For all the drawing power of my hand, it can’t make a straight without a Ten and 3 of the 4 tens have already been dealt.  Winning with 2 pair is going to be difficult because the K and the Q are in someone else’s hand and just about any card combination that gives me 2 pair gives someone else a draw to beat me.

If you put my hand against AAxx and a lower rundown like 8765 it’s not in terrible shape but is still below breakeven.  What I failed to notice here is that the bulk of hands that are rushing to play these raised pots pre-flop are usually featuring high cards.

The fact that they could be eating my outs was predictable and it was predictable early on.  I called a $0.35 raise and allowed it to get me involved to the tune of nearly a full buyin in a pot that I had little enough chance of winning.  After the Big Blind 3-bet and the original raiser went all-in, I was faced with a decision.  I had to call @$4 but I knew there was a reasonable chance that one of the other players in the hand would shove.  I had only $0.35 invested and could easily have simply folded.  I should have predicted that many of my outs would be gone.

So there you go.  It’s a characteristic of pre-flop raises that they tend to be saying “I’ve got big card strength”.  It’s a characteristic of pre-flop 3-betting that it tends to say I’ve got AA in my hand.  So, when 4 players are willing to get all-in before the flop, you should probably expect to see AAxx along with several high card hands of various levels of connectivity and perhaps another high pair (usually kings).

My assumptions about my own hand strength were wrong, in that although I did dominate one of the other big card hands the combined effects of my opponents were simply to use up all my outs. 

I shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss the weaknesses in my hand.  Having a 4 card rundown with no gaps and particularly being double suited instead of being single suited could have vastly improved my chances here (from roughly 20% to over 25% in this particular case).

There are plenty of individual situations I can simulate where I have some equity but there are few, if any, where I become a big favourite.  There are many situations (such as the one I am in) where I give up significant equity.   I should probably just fold when I have only $0.35 invested.  After all, I have $40 in front of me in a $10 game so I am obviously coming across more profitable opportunities than this one.

On a side note.  Often it is better to get involved in these situations with a hand like

In a confrontation with AAxx and 2 others on high cards, the double suited 8765 becomes the most likely winner.  While my KQJ9 hand in the same spot has only15%.

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A Good Day

By Chips_Middle | October 18, 2008

Ok.  So I said I’d update on how yesterday’s sessions went.  I had good fun playing yesterday.  No stress, no long hours, no tilt and easy pickings.  I started the day with a short session of Pot Limit Omaha over on iPoker. 

I have slightly more money on iPoker than on Full Tilt or the other sites, so it means I can actually play the lowest limit PLO games without being under-rolled and therefore have slightly less chance of busting myself.  Anyway, 2 tables of $0.05 / $0.10 and an hour and a quarter netted me $24.  That’s pretty good considering the stakes.

An over aggressive lag bullied me out of a few small pots and then ran into a hand I wanted to play for stacks.  I also hit quite a few of my draws, so while I was moderately happy with my play there is a bit of good fortune in there too.  I quit when I started thinking about the money. 

I was beginning to get anxious if I lost a $2 pot or if I didn’t play a hand for a while and my winnings dribbled down from $25.40 to $23.50.  I just can’t snap out of that and when I focus on stupid stuff, my game gets out of whack.  So I quit.  Good move.

On to Full Tilt and some more of those HORSE Sit n Go’s.  The change in game, the Sit n Go format (risks limited to your buyin) and the fact that I’m playing for peanuts all help to snap me out of whatever mental issues I was starting to get on the other table.  I’ve banked my $24 win and now I’m playing two $1 + $0.25 Sit n Go’s, so it’s all gravy.  Relax, listen to some music and play some poker for fun.

Well, that’s just what I did.  I didn’t place in the first one and came first in the other.  So, that’s 6 HORSE Sit n Go’s and I’ve got 1 first, 2 seconds and 1 third.  I’m liking this game so far.  I mean, let’s not get carried away, this is micro stakes poker and a ridiculously small sample.  I’m not about to forget that there is luck involved here and that I still don’t have a handle on basic strategy in most of the HORSE games but it’s fun.

After the Sit n Go’s, I decided to see what the cash games were like in HORSE.  The smallest tables were $0.25 / $0.50, so I don’t have the bankroll on this site to be playing this but hey, it’s only limit right?

I played HORSE for an hour and 45 minutes.  Was down a bit and then up a bit and then down a bit.  Then I started hitting some cards.  I ended the session up $21.25, which is a fairly decent win given the stakes.

I think I started with around $90 in the Full Tilt account and after the 2 Sit n Go’s and the cash session, there’s $113 in there now.  That’s quite a percentage jump.  I suppose, playing outside your bankroll is going to have a big effect one way or the other.

Anyway.  Up $41 or so is a good day when your bankroll is barely out of double digits and you are playing the micros.  Long may it continue.

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What is HORSE poker and how to play?

By Chips_Middle | October 17, 2008

I was playing HORSE again and was about to write a bit about how it went, when I realised it is entirely possible to be reading this blog and not have a clue what HORSE is.  So here goes.  HORSE is a mixed game format of poker where 5 games are played in rotation. 

Each game is played for a round (the dealer button makes a complete circuit of the table) and the games rotate in order.  The games played in a HORSE tournament or cash game HORSE play (as opposed to horse play) are:

H - Holdem
O - Omaha Hi / Lo
R - Razz
S - Stud Hi
E - Stud Eight or Better

All games are played in limit format.  In cash games, the rotation seems to move on each round of play.  In the Sit n Go tournaments that I have played online, each game is played for a blind level.  The games rotate each time the blinds increase.

That’s about it as far as HORSE goes, although a lot of people probably aren’t familiar with some of those games.

Limit Holdem should be fairly obvious.  The fixed limit form of Texas Holdem is, I am told, popular in casinos and card rooms throughout the USA and should be familiar to most people, I think.

Omaha, in the HORSE rotation, is the split pot form of the game which is known as Omaha Hi / Lo or Omaha Eight or Better.  Players are dealt 4 cards and must use 2 from their hand and 3 from the board to make high and low hands.  The high part of the game is exactly like the Pot Limit Omaha covered in the rest of the site.  The best 5 card hand wins and the deal includes a flop, turn and river as with Holdem or the other forms of Omaha.  At the end of the hand the pot is split with half going to the high hand and half to the low.

Razz is a version of 7 card stud where the lowest hand wins the pot.  Hands are made up of 5 cards of distinct rank.  The best possible Razz hand is A 2 3 4 5, the wheel straight.  The worst is QQQKK.  In my limited experience, I am yet to see a winning Razz hand with a pair in it.  Flushes and straights do not count against making a winning hand (low) in Razz.  Unlike with the 8 or better games (Omaha 8 and Stud 8) there is no qualifying low.

Stud is standard 7 card stud.

Stud 8 or better is the high / low version of 7 card stud.  The pot is again split between the high hand and the best qualifying low (if there is one).

Stud Play

There are 3 variations of 7 card stud played in a game of HORSE (Razz, Stud and Stud 8).  Each of these games plays with the same structure.  Players are dealt 3 cards to begin (possibly after antes have been posted).  Two of these cards are dealt face down with the last one being dealt face up and visible to the other players.  There is a bring in and a round of betting before 4th street is dealt.  The 4th, 5th and 6th cards are all dealt one at a time with a round of betting taking place between each.  4th, 5th and 6th streets are all dealt face up and visible to opponents.

Throughout a hand of stud then, a player will see not only his own hand develop but also the separate boards of each of his opponents.  The last (7th) street is dealt face down and is followed by a final round of betting and then a showdown.  Players use any 5 of their 7 cards to make up their best hand.

Split Pot Poker

There are two forms of split pot poker in the HORSE poker rotation.  Both are played with 8 or better qualifiers for the low hand.  What this means is that the low hand cannot contain any card above an 8.  If nobody can make a qualifying low hand, the whole pot goes to the high hand.

In each Hi / Lo game, the high half of the pot is won by the hand that would win the standard high only form of the game.  That is, essentially, the best possible 5 card poker hand from your cards.  In Omaha, of course, you must use 2 cards from your hand together with 3 from the board. 

The low hand is ranked according to it’s highest card.  A 7 low (e.g. 7 6 4 3 2) beats an 8 low (e.g. 8 5 4 2 A).  If 2 hands have the same highest low card then the next lowest card is compared.  And so on, etc. etc.

Suits and straights are irrelevant (i.e. you can still win low with 5 cards of the same suit.  I am pretty sure that in the high / low games, pairs will disqualify your low.  I.e. A 2 2 3 4 is not a qualifying low.

You should note that the high and the low do not need to be made by the same hand.  Each player gets to make his best Hi hand and his best low hand.  A player can win either Hi, low or both ( or of course neither).  In Omaha, for example, players can use 2 separate 2 card combinations.  One to make their best high hand and another to make their best possible low hand.

Wow.  That that was a long one.  That, in a nutshell, is how HORSE poker is played.  I am sure there are rules missing and things I should have described in some of the individual games but it will give you an idea.

Maybe, I’ll get a chance to post about how today went but for right now, I’m out of here.

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Lols at HORSE

By Chips_Middle | October 15, 2008

Well.  The other night I got my first chance in a while to sit down and play some poker.  It was getting late and I wasn’t in the mood for actually risking money and ending up in some tilt slide at 4am, so I decided to check out the mixed game Sit n Go’s.

My Full Tilt account had gone down to $35 or so after disaster, followed by withdrawals, followed by disaster.  It was back to $85 or so when I checked.  That’s not bad but it means I’m underrolled even for the $0.05 / $0.10 games of Pot Limit Omaha and I couldn’t face tilting over $10.

I tried to get a HA (PL Holdem / PL Omaha) Sit n Go up and running but nobody sat down.  I noticed the micro HORSE games were filling up quickly though so I ended up sitting there.

So I sign up for a couple of $1 + $0.25 Sit n Go’s and we’re off to the races.  (See that little horse pun slipped in there).  Now.  Pot Limit Omaha is my game.  I have almost no experience of limit poker and only a passing knowledge of the rules of the 5 games in the HORSE rotation.

I’ve played some No Limit Holdem like everyone else with an interest in poker.  I’ve also played a tiny bit of limit Omaha Hi/lo and even limit Omaha Hi.  But I’m Irish.  When we played poker at home it was pretty much no limit.  As for stud, razz and stud 8, forget it.  I barely know what hand wins, never mind having any notion of basic strategy.  I actually had to look up the rules on the Internet the first time Razz came round in the rotation .

This was great craic.  Fire up 2 tables and off we go.  At the first table I got my R and my S mixed up with only 4 players left and lost most of my stack with an unbeatable low.  I was somewhat shocked when the other guy didn’t seem inclined to fold despite the obvious unbeatableness of my hand.  I didn’t notice till after the hand that we’d moved from Razz (7 card stud where the lowest hand wins) to Stud (7 card stud where the regular best hand wins).  Came third in that one.

Second in chips in the 2nd tournament with 3 of us left I get dealt:

With the 7 showing (Stud Hi/Lo is the game).

I bring it in for 75, my opponent completes (250) and the 3rd guy folds.   The limits are 250/500.  My opponent has 6,405 and I am in 2nd chip position with 3,778.  I call.

*** 4TH STREET ***
Opponent  

Me [ ] 

He bets 250, I raise, he calls.

*** 5TH STREET ***
Opponent  

Me [ ] 

He bets 500, I call.

*** 6TH STREET ***
Opponent  

Me  [ ]

He bets 500, I call

*** 7TH STREET ***
Opponent  

Me [ ] [ ]

He bets 500, I think a while and call

I start with 3 low cards and since he has a high card showing, I reckon I have a reasonable chance to win the low.  Pretty much from then on, I forget totally that I need 5 cards 8 or lower to make a qualifying low.  I lose 2,000 there from my stack of 3,778 and basically cripple myself.  I don’t even know the rules .  This guy must have been laughing his head off.

Just to add insult to injury.  On the other table I manage to get a street or 2 into the next hand still playing razz while the rest of the table are playing stud hi (again).  Didn’t lose anything serious in that one and went on to come 2nd in both tournaments.

So that’s 3 Sit n Go’s and I placed with 2 seconds and a third.  Not bad considering this is mixed game poker and I don’t even know the basics of the games involved.  On top of that, I was playing 2 tables at a time and frequently didn’t even know which game I was supposed to be playing.  This was so much fun.  Going to do it again soon.

Mixing it up a bit can really reconnect you with the joy of playing poker.  It is supposed to be fun after all.

P.S. If I can get into the top 3 without knowing the rules, with no notion of basic strategy and so confused that I frequently don’t know what game I am playing, just imagine how bad my opponents must have been playing.

If anyone has no idea what this post has been about, you might want to check out What is HORSE poker? for some information on how HORSE is played.

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Some Pot Limit Omaha Action

By Chips_Middle | October 3, 2008

I played a quick session last night at the micros on Full Tilt.  There are a couple of half interesting hands here from the $0.05 - $0.10 game.

Pot Limit Omaha Hi

Stack Sizes
Seat 1: Seat: 1 ($7.10)
Seat 2: Seat: 2 ($11.55)
Seat 3: Chips->Middle ($9.35)
Seat 4: Seat: 4 ($23.20)
Seat 5: Seat: 5 ($18.60)
Seat 6: Seat: 6 ($16.60)

Seat: 5 posts the small blind of $0.05
Seat: 6 posts the big blind of $0.10
Seat 4 is the button

Chips->Middle has been dealt

Seat: 1 folds , Seat: 2 folds , Chips->Middle raises to $0.35 , Seat: 4 calls $0.35 , Seat: 5 folds , Seat: 6 raises to $0.60 , Chips->Middle calls $0.25 , Seat: 4 calls $0.25

Dealing FLOP:   : : Pot: 1.80
Seat: 6 bets $1.85 , Chips->Middle has 15 seconds left to act , Chips->Middle raises to $7.40 , Seat: 4 folds , Seat: 6 calls $5.55

Dealing TURN:   : : Pot: 16.60
Seat: 6 checks , Chips->Middle bets $1.35, and is all in , Seat: 6 calls $1.35

Dealing RIVER:   : : Pot: 19.30
Chips->Middle shows a pair of Jacks , Seat: 6 shows a pair of Nines , Chips->Middle wins the pot ($17.45) with a pair of Jacks

SUMMARY.
Total pot $19.35 | Rake $1.90
Board: [Th 9c 5h 2d As]
Seat 1: Seat: 1 didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 2: Seat: 2 didn’t bet (folded)
Seat 3: Chips->Middle showed
Seat 4: Seat: 4 (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 5: Seat: 5 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Seat: 6 (big blind) showed

My hand in this one is pretty half assed but I raise from the Cut Off.  I am trying to raise as many of the hands I play as possible these days.  Many of the marginal hands that I think need to be played in 6 max, play better for a raise than they do for a call.  Here I am also hoping to buy position by folding the button out and possibly ending up heads up, in position against the big blind.

Things don’t quite work out that way but I hit the flop hard enough to get stuck in.  I am marginally ahead of the AA that his pre-flop 3 bet represents.  He is unlikely to be on top set here but if he is, I still have 45% or so.  These small 3 bets pre-flop can often be bullshit efforts to disquise hands as AA and if he is betting out on that kind of hand repping an overpair, I may even get a fold.  He should probably fold AAxx here but this is a $10 game and he is unlikely to.

And this is where playing at these levels and being aggressive gets to be profitable.  The last thing I was expecting here was to get it in as a 75% favourite.  But there you go.

The second hand (below) is a fairly weak affair.  My starting hand is weak and I’m UTG and should probably fold pre-flop.  I’m not sure it’s the kind of hand I want to get involved in a limpfest with. 

On the flop I call a weak bet and call.  The bet is probably a weak attempt to buy the pot by someone with a draw.  The caller isn’t strong either and is either on a draw or has a weak made hand.

Well here’s where I get the comeupance for playing weak hands.  I have no idea where I am here.  I could easily be ahead, I have some outs, both my opponents are weak and I have no intention of letting go for a small bet into a small pot.  At the same time there aren’t many cards that I want to see on the turn.  I figure my Queens kind of act as blockers against some of my opponent’s possible draws and I might get a chance to steal.  Not at all sure WTF I am doing here to be perfectly honest.

On the turn I get lucky and hit the nuts.  I bet out weak hoping for a raise and get 2 calls instead.  On the river I hope they still don’t believe me and bet out full pot, resulting in 2 folds.  I’m pretty sure I misplayed this hand on every street.  I didn’t make the worst decision in every case but I am pretty certain that I didn’t make the best decision in any case.  Anyway, here it is so you can see what you think.

Pot Limit Omaha Hi

Stack Sizes
Seat 1: Chips->Middle ($18.70)
Seat 2: Seat: 2 ($12.15)
Seat 3: Seat: 3 ($7.80)
Seat 4: Seat: 4 ($14.15)
Seat 5: Seat: 5 ($38.10)
Seat 6: Seat: 6 ($11.10)

Seat: 5 posts the small blind of $0.05
Seat: 6 posts the big blind of $0.10
Seat 4 is the button

Chips->Middle has been dealt

Chips->Middle calls $0.10 , Seat: 2 calls $0.10 , Seat: 3 calls $0.10 , Seat: 4 calls $0.10 , Seat: 5 folds , Seat: 6 checks

Dealing FLOP: : : Pot: 0.40
Seat: 6 checks , Chips->Middle checks , Seat: 2 bets $0.25 , Seat: 3 folds , Seat: 4 calls $0.25 , Seat: 6 folds , Chips->Middle calls $0.25

Dealing TURN: : : Pot: 1.15
Chips->Middle bets $0.65 , Seat: 2 calls $0.65 , Seat: 4 calls $0.65

Dealing RIVER:   : : Pot: 3.10
Chips->Middle has 15 seconds left to act , Chips->Middle bets $1.60 , Seat: 2 has 15 seconds left to act , Seat: 2 folds , Seat: 4 has 15 seconds left to act , Seat: 4 folds , Uncalled bet of $1.60 returned to Chips->Middle , Chips->Middle mucks , Chips->Middle wins the pot ($2.95)

SUMMARY

Total pot $3.25 | Rake $0.30
Board: [8d Kd Js Ah 3c]
Seat 1: Chips->Middle collected ($2.95), mucked
Seat 2: Seat: 2 folded on the River
Seat 3: Seat: 3 folded on the Flop
Seat 4: Seat: 4 (button) folded on the River
Seat 5: Seat: 5 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Seat: 6 (big blind) folded on the Flop

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Assessing Your Opponents

By Chips_Middle | October 1, 2008

I’ve noticed recently that I have an awful habit of registering whether my opponents are good or bad without gathering any truly useful information.  I watch some guy call when he shouldn’t or bet when he shouldn’t and do so repeatedly and all I register is “idiot”.  This isn’t a good idea.

I mean, it’s not a bad thing as far as it goes to know that your opponent isn’t much use.  It might help you with table selection I suppose.  The problem is that in assessing my opponent as an idiot I have committed several errors myself.

Firstly, I have excluded the possibility that he is doing something that I don’t understand or that there is a reason for his play that isn’t immediately apparent to me. 

Secondly, I run the risk of generalising from one stupid play to categorise my opponent as stupid.  He may be tired and generally very good but made a mistake.  He may have been watching TV or otherwise not paying attention and he may even have done it intentionally.  He may be on tilt and I might face him again in future sessions in an entirely different mood.

Thirdly, playing against a table of “idiots” and losing is actually more annoying than playing against people you have some respect for and losing.  So, if I am having a bad day and categorising my opponents as idiots I run the risk of fueling tilt in myself.  After all, if they are all idiots then I am entitled to win, am I not?  In fact, often if I am in the state of mind where I am inclined to judge my opponents as idiots it is because tilt has already begun.

See, I shouldn’t really be assessing my opponents from a point of view of judging them against me.  In doing so I am just seeking to massage my own ego.  The most important reason why I shouldn’t do this is that I miss out on registering genuinely important information.

When I see my opponent make a play, instead of registering “What an idiot” I should register “Got stack in on turn with weak hand and no outs facing a raise and re-raise”.  It does me very little good to realise that my opponent is an idiot (even if I am right).  Knowing what kind of mistakes he makes, that’s another matter entirely because this is information we use to extract the maximum.

I should remove the emotion from the situation and register the information and see if I can use it to help form a picture of my opponent’s play.  When I have a hand and am deciding how best to play it, it does me no good to know that my opponent is an idiot but knowing that he calls too much is gold.

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Sets and Sessions

By Chips_Middle | April 8, 2008

A while back there I put up a post listing the books I was planning to read next.  Well it took me a while to get round to ordering them.  It took Amazon an age to get round to delivering them.  Then I devoured all 3 of them (and 2 DVDs) in about 5 days.  Then it took me a while to post about them.

One of the books was Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker.  Now this isn’t going to be a book review.  Elements of Poker is a great book.  Loads of stuff worth the price in there.  I pretty much already knew that before I read it though.

This post is about one suggestion from Elements that I’ve found particularly useful.  That is the notion of sets and sessions.  A session is pretty much what you would think but Angelo suggests breaking your sessions into sets.  A set is the gap between sitting down and standing up.  There may be 1 or many sets in a session.  He describes a set as typically an hour in length.  Less is fine.  More might be fine too but not more than 2 hours.

The point here is to take breaks in your session.  Even if they are short breaks.  In those breaks you remove yourself physically, but also mentally, from the game.  You need to stop the poker thinking during your break, even if it is only briefly.

Back when I was studying for my exams, I remember reading that I should study in blocks just less than an hour and take breaks.  I vaguely remember graphs of my attention span curving sharply downward somewhere around the hour mark.

Anyway.  Elements of Poker is all (or at least mostly) about maximising your A-game and minimising the amount of time you are playing your C-game.  This one suggestion of breaking sessions up into sets has improved my ability to focus and maintain my decision making throughout a whole session.

Many of the mistakes I make, and I would guess others are the same, come when I am losing focus or getting a bit tired.  Dealing with bad beats or a cold run of cards is very different when you are at your best and at your worst.  What I would shrug off in one state as unimportant and simply part of the game, starts to play on my mind when I am tired.

Going downstairs, making a cup of tea and forcing myself to think about something else has, I am pretty sure, saved me from a number of tilting incidents in the last few weeks. 

Picture this:

One of my opponents has sucked out on me in a big pot I was a favourite to win, then all my bluffs have run into hands and then I’ve gone 45 minutes without seeing a hand I could take to the river.  The chances are I’ll be starting to get a little tense.  Everything will be slightly out of focus.  I will want to get into hands.  As time goes by, my standards for what to play may go down.  My standards for what I’m willing to shove with on the flop may go down.  All I need is to double up after all and I’m right back in it.  All the other donkeys are winning huge pots with weak hands, why shouldn’t I?

Nah.  Have a cup of tea, take a break and come back with a clear head.  Re-set the clock on the tilt thinking.  Come back to the game with a clear head and at least I am less likely to do something stupid.  Often I can spot something I’d been missing in my previous state and find a way to start getting back in the game.

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Slings and Arrows

By Chips_Middle | April 3, 2008

I have been remiss about posting lately and really shouldn’t have left it this long, so apologies to the 1.35 people who read the blog.

March was a very interesting month where I actually got caught up in playing poker.  Some things went well and other things, not so much. 

At the start of March I freed up some more cash to add to the bankroll as part of a new plan to move up in limits.  Sticking to building with the money I have online seems like a false economy since it will keep me playing $25 poker for some considerable time when there is no reason for me not to be rolled to play higher.   So, at the start of March, I moved up to playing $50 games as my regular game.  My plan being to put in 2 weeks to a month of hands before going on to $100 games (assuming I don’t find some massive skill gap I can’t adapt to).

I also started experimenting with 2 tabling.  I have a negative history with multitabling but had become quite confident with my decisions and decided it was time to give it a go.  This is all with the aim of reaching a situation where my poker playing can actually have a chance of making some meaningful amount of $$ over the month.

So the results are that I managed to put in 8,000 hands in March which is the first time I met my 6,000 hand target.  I played the $50 tables profitably and quite a lot of $20 (I stepped back down to start the 2 tabling) through the first part of the month. 

Around the middle of the month I opened an account at Full Tilt.  Having a second site on a different timezone and one with higher traffic opens up more of the day in which I can play.  I have other things to do and so am not around in the evenings.  I need to be able to play daytime poker and Betfair frequently doesn’t have the game I want.  What’s more at 9am I am going to be facing regulars who are sitting down fresh.

So, as of the 20th of the Month, things had gone well.  I was up $525 from a combination of $20 and $50 games and was earning at a fairly impressive win rate.  According to the plan, it was time to move up and so that’s what I did.

Now.  I have some advice for anyone stupid enough to try this at home.  Do not, move to a new site, move up in limits and add 50% to the number of tables you play, all at the same time. 

Up to $100 tables, feeling good about my game.  Playing on Full Tilt for 3 days or so, that’s going well too.  This multitabling is easy, time to add a 3rd one.  2 days later and my $100 career is -$1100.

Now, if you’ve read any of my earlier bankroll updates, you will understand that this little swing is enough to wipe out not only March’s winnings but probably everything since I started the blog.  Earning at $10 and $20 buyins and giving it back in a $100 game is not good for the bankroll or the ego.

According to the statistics, I was still a winning player.  Even in March I was still winning at @5 ptBB /100.  The problem is that the game I had lost in has a much larger cash effect than the game I won in.

I was pretty unlucky over those few days and 2,200 hands.  I’ve analysed them and run them through handy pieces of software just to check and I really was pretty unlucky.  But I was also pretty stupid.  I compounded my bad luck with some bad decisions.  I probably courted some situations that led to big pots which increases the luck factor.

By moving up, moving sites and adding tables I put myself in 2 situations which are likely to involve changes in the game (new site + new limit = different opponents and possibly changes to reads).  At the time when focussing on these changes to the game, picking up on them and adapting my game was at it’s most important, I decided to add another table and make it that much more difficult.

Not for the first time, I have found a novel way for arrogance to screw up my figures for the month.

I had freed up extra cash to add significantly to my bankroll before moving up in limits and am sufficiently rolled to play the $100 game and to take the $1100 loss.  This is good, since had I just been taking a shot that went horribly wrong I would now be bust and this would be the last blog post.

Another lesson learnt and time to move on.  I recovered somewhat in the last couple of days of the month and overall I came out only $150 down.  With the bonus money I cleared at Full Tilt through the 2nd half of the month I’m pretty sure I actually come out slightly ahead.

Either way, $100 PLO is currently my regular game and I’ll update on how April is going in the next post.

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Finding a Keeper

By Chips_Middle | March 13, 2008

On my way over here this morning I was listening to the radio and some guy had written in with a story.  The previous night, on his way home from work, he had stopped at a garage for petrol (gas station for gas, if you’re American).  On his way in to the shop he spotted some flowers.  They looked well and he thought it would be a nice gesture so he bought them and brought them home to his girlfriend.

This is where his problems for the evening started.  His girlfriend didn’t look too happy and he made the mistake of asking her what was wrong.  She replied that the flowers were tacky and cheap and is that all that he thought of her that he would bring her flowers from a petrol station (gas station).  He wrote to the radio station to ask what his mistake was.

Well one answer would be that if you knew your girlfriend was likely to react this way, you’re probably better off not buying her flowers from the petrol station.  Had you not bought the flowers, she would have been perfectly happy and you could have got on with your evening.  So, let the snarky cow go without. 

The real answer though is that your mistake is nothing to do with flowers, you simply picked the wrong girlfriend.  It looks to the guy in the story like he made a mistake last night and he’s trying to figure out what it was.  Trying to improve his game if you will.  But his real problem is that when he picked the girlfriend, he just didn’t understand the consequences of the decision he was making.

What’s this got to do with poker you might ask?  Well, we often talk about not marrying our starting hands.  ”Try not to get married to your Aces after the flop” when you’re playing holdem, etc.  I suppose the point here is that there are many hands that you shouldn’t even be having brief affairs with and that not understanding the consequences of that first decision can have you scratching your head when it all goes wrong.

Say you hold:

T 7 6 4

And the flop comes:

9 8 4

giving you bottom pair and a massive 20 out straight draw (oh, and a backdoor flush draw too).

Suppose that you bet out and get raised and one way and another the money ends up all-in on the flop or the turn and you make your straight and lose to Q J T 9

Where did it all go wrong?  Well.  Perhaps when you faced action from a decent player on the flop you could have gotten away from it but maybe not.  On the turn, if there was still money left and the 7 or T or J fell you could have noticed that you had the sucker end of the straight.  If the third flush card came, that should have been pretty obvious.  There are several ways during a hand like this that you can be reminded not to buy your girlfriend those flowers.  Just fold and get on with having a pleasant evening.  Remember that there are no bad consequences to not buying the flowers.  Only buying the cheap flowers causes pain.

Again though, the real answer is you shouldn’t be going out with her in the first place.  You made a decision earlier in the hand and failed to understand its consequences.  The better you understood the consequences of playing the hand you played the more likely you would be to fold post-flop before you got in real trouble.  I.e. You wouldn’t marry her. 

If you really understood the consequences though you’d probably not have dated this hand in the first place.  Dump it.  Its not worth the hassle.  In pot limit omaha we are looking for keepers.  Looking for hands that we might be willing to marry.  We need to see the flop and find out whether we’re compatible before we make any rash decisions but we’re looking for potential not a cheap fling.

If you understood your starting hand correctly, you would understand that the 2 card gap at the top is a recipe for disaster.  You would understand on the flop that while you have 20 outs, a hell of a lot of them are to the sucker end of straights.  I’ve picked a rather extreme example here and it is pretty basic to spot the 2 flush on the board and not draw to your straight regardless. 

The point is, when are you going to notice that you have the sucker straight?  If it’s at showdown when you’ve lost, you need to find another game cause poker isn’t for you.  If it’s when the card comes then you might save some cash by not putting more money in the pot when you are obviously crushed. 

If you can spot it when you look at the draw on the flop and know that the turn is hardly ever going to give you a hand you are happy to back with your stack, then you are getting somewhere.  If you can do that, you can probably spot it pre-flop and understand that this hand has way more potential to cause you problems than it does to win a big pot.  In the end, it’s just a recipe for heartache.

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• The Power of the Wheel
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• A Good Day
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