Archive for December, 2008

Million Dollar Comeback

Monday, December 15th, 2008

Sadly, given the exciting title of the blog, this week’s subject has nothing to do with me. Instead it refers to last week’s exciting climax to the Ladbrokes’ Poker Million. The glamorous 6-seat format runs over several months and after dozens of the world’s top players tumbled out over 12 heats and semis the televised final didn’t disappoint. Belfast professional Marty Smyth, the only man to make the two previous finals was back again and this time he emerged triumphant. His success was made remarkable by a comeback from the dead that should inspire every tournament short-stack.

The live final began with Smyth rightly among the favourites for glory. However, nobody was backing him soon after he suffered an almighty setback that all but knocked him out. Southern Irishman Liam Flood raised in position with K-K, Smyth re-raised with A- K in the small blind and soon found himself facing an all-in bet from his veteran opponent. By this stage the Ulsterman knew he was in trouble but felt pot-committed to play a hand as strong as A-K to its conclusion. The better hand held up and Smyth was left with a measly 15,000 chips – the cost of one big blind and one small blind. Disaster. Of course it’s only in retrospect that I use the phrase ‘almighty setback’. At the time Smyth was assumed to be out. The old poker adage that ‘all you need is a chip and a chair’ is a nice thing to say, but to all intents and purposes, meaningless. Surely.

Soon after this major pot came a seemingly innocuous moment that will surely come back to haunt the likeable Liam Flood, known to many as The Gentleman. He was suddenly the new chip leader and determined to use that status to the full. This meant all-out aggression and raising a wide range of cards from various positions. This tactic is fully recommended for a man in such a position but needs a little adjustment or at least extra consideration when a tiny stack is left at the table and set to act after you. Flood promptly raised with 5-4 and Marty Smyth, somewhat inevitably, plunged his final 15,000 chips in with a King and half decent kicker. Everybody else folded and Smyth was left in a great spot to double up with only Flood’s mediocre holding to beat. Again the best hand held up and one further all-in success a few minutes later and the 3-time finalist was miraculously back in contention.

Although it would be harsh to blame Flood for such an unlikely reversal of fortune it was a loose move that sparked Smyth’s comeback and it shows the importance of finishing off a major opponent while you still can. The best prospect of finishing the Ulsterman off would never involve him taking his chances against 5-4. Had that hand being folded then it’s far likelier that a better hand or two would have been involved in that ultimately pivotal showdown. Raising trash hands has value against opponents with smallish but not desperate stacks because they are less likely to move all-in. If they do so then the weak raising hand can be folded and its limited showdown value isn’t exposed or relevant. This was not the case with Smyth who was guaranteed to play almost any two cards in his predicament.

Ironically Flood received his final comeuppance two hours later when again holding 5-4 he re-raised all-in on a bluff pre-flop from the small blind. This time he found the now fully revived Marty Smyth ready and waiting in the big blind with A-Q. Timing is everything and Smyth has a remarkable tendency to pick up great hands at the perfect moments, as well as being a terrific player. It’s a pretty formidable combination.

On another day the ingenuity of Flood could have been tournament winning and it was certainly a pleasure to watch. The re-raise all-in with 5-4 may sound like a wretched play to a novice player but that shows an ignorance of the table conditions he found himself in. First of all, the play was clearly intended to win the pot uncontested at a stage when the high blinds were vital to win. It was based on a read of the initial raiser and the belief that they couldn’t call an all-in re-raise with the hand they held. There were only a few hands Smyth could have called an all-in re-raise with behind him and he found one of them. In this respect it was bad luck rather than a bad read that denied the maverick efforts of Flood.

The difference between the first ‘5-4 hand’ and the second was all about fold equity. In the first instance Flood was almost certain to get a call from the short stack but on the second it was very unlikely, so he had lots of fold equity. Unfortunately for Liam Flood he got a call each time and his weaker hand failed on both occasions. In contrast, Marty Smyth never looked back from the defeat of Flood and it was third time the charm as he became Poker Million Champion 2008.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker

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Coping

Monday, December 8th, 2008

This week’s blog comes straight from the psychiatrist’s sofa as yet again I ponder why I put myself through the ringer of inevitable frequent disappointment that poker throws up. You know that bad beats will happen; you know that good play will often go unrewarded and therefore you learn to prepare yourself for the worst. Consequently, I would say that 95% of the time bad luck doesn’t really affect me anymore, mainly because it becomes so familiar and assumed. Becoming emotional and self-pitying not only doesn’t feel great but can also be counter-productive. The dreaded ‘Tilt Factor’ – not the latest Simon Cowell project – but the propensity to play worse when things are going against you, has to be avoided. Coping becomes one of the key components of a poker player’s weaponry. I try to view dealing with disappointment as a very real part of the game. It’s a skill in the same way that slowplaying trips is; the best players also tend to be the ones who cope the best. That said, you wouldn’t be human if every now and again frustration didn’t get the better of you. At such times, by all means knock your head repeatedly against a wall, but just don’t play poker for a bit.

There’s a big weekly multi-table tournament I like to play in that yesterday left me, yet again, lamenting the cruelty of this wretched game. There’s no happy ending to this story so I’ll cut to the chase to avoid building up suspense. I was nicely stacked and undeniably getting quite hopeful of a good money finish when the key moment arrived. A player who had raised my big blind in a middle-late seat on two recent occasions opened the betting up again with the same move. Given his position and the frequency of this play I was pretty sure he was stealing and knew that I should defend my big blind where possible. I had folded with junk on the previous two occasions but felt that my Qc-10c was attractive this time round. I called the raise and was not displeased with the ensuing flop of 10s-9d-4s. I checked into the pre-flop raiser, anticipating a continuation bet to follow regardless of how well his cards had connected with the flop. To my surprise the bet that arrived was an all-in one for about 17,000 chips. To put this in perspective the pot prior to the all-in was around 5,500 so this was an aggressive move to say the least. Furthermore, I sat there with about 20,000 chips to my name so my tournament future to all intents and purposes hung on whether to call.

I thought over the play pattern to this point and made my read. I didn’t know a lot about this player but the phrase ‘loose aggressive’ was increasingly coming to mind. I didn’t think I was facing a lunatic so I ruled out the possibility of a complete bluff; he had something but what? Well, in my experience this is a move that some players like to make with a flush draw and that was certainly a possibility with two spades on board. If he held Q-J, or even 7-8 he might even have made this move with the straight draw. For some reason A-9 then popped into my head as the sort of hand that might get raised with and played like this. But the key issue in my thinking was the size of that all-in bet, relative to the pot. It wasn’t a bet that wanted a call. This more than anything suggested there was enough weakness there to make my Q-10 a favourite. Of course you can never be sure. Some players might make that aggressive plunge with a hand that did have me beat, such as K-10, A-10 or JJ. But with those hands I knew I wouldn’t have moved all-in against a big blind with a comparable stack, because I would feel strong. It was settled then. I liked my prospects of being in front after the flop and I called. To my initial delight he turned over Kd-9d and I was an 80% favourite to win with two cards to come. The turn brought a terrifying rag diamond to suddenly give my opponent flush possibilities and more outs. The flush never arrived but a king did spike on the river to defeat me in cruel fashion. I had been a 4-1 favourite when all the chips went in and had that held I would have sat amongst the chip leaders as we entered the home stretch. But it wasn’t to be….again!

The main reason this hurt was that my prospects of a big payday were really pretty good if this one hand had held up. Knowing that you’ve made a great call in tough circumstances should be a massive consolation, and ultimately it is. Much worse to fold the best hand because you’re a wimp and then see your chip stack just wither away. That said, going out playing well is no consolation whatsoever in the moment it happens. It makes things feel considerably worse as the sense of injustice reaches boiling point. Stupidly, I then did something that could only make me feel worse. I followed the progress of my lucky conqueror as he marched all the way to the final table. Having badbeat me to stay in, he finished sixth and collected nearly $7000. ‘That could have been me,’ I thought. ‘Should have been me!’ In future I will try to cope better.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker

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Forewarned is Forearmed

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Last week I began discussing the importance I place in keeping detailed notes on opponents to prepare me for future encounters. This has to be a continuous work-in-progress as some players can behave inconsistently from one day to the next. This can be for a multitude of reasons, most of which you are unlikely to discover. But the tendency to ‘tilt’ – when you let emotions and other factors negatively affect your performance – has to be noted carefully. Obviously you want to be aware and remember if a rival can lose the plot, but don’t assume that this is the standard level of play you can expect in future. This would most likely be wishful thinking.

If I see a player make a hideous play then the temptation is to write him off. This temptation is multiplied about ten-fold if the said hideous play has resulted in my elimination, courtesy of a ridiculous badbeat. But when you remove emotion from the situation you have to allow for the possibility that the ‘maniac’ will play better in the future. What if this was comfortably the worst move that this player has made in weeks? Well if that was true then you would be foolish to ignore all future competence out of a lingering bitterness and end up under-estimating your opponent. If you do that then you’re liable to lose more big pots through your own poor play rather than a badbeat. It is therefore vital to only read so much into any one incident. In online games there needs to be the additional consideration that the one shocking play could actually have been nothing more than a ‘misclick.’ People are bound to press the wrong button on their mouse from time to time and occasionally this will work in their favour. Sickening, yes, but don’t make things worse for yourself by deleting all previous notes describing the player as very solid for what could have been a total accident.

When I think about what other players may think of me I’m led to an interesting conclusion. Most people who have played me dozens of times will probably have quite accurate notes about the way I play. However, what if the only major hand someone has played against me produced my worst moment of the week? Sadly it’s only too true that even I make mistakes and miscalculations. Let’s say for example that I made a big bluff on a mis-read, got called, but was then incredibly lucky on the river anyway and won. Now, I have to emphasise that this happens about once for every 50 times it happens to me. Nevertheless, based on this sole piece of evidence my opponent would probably be justified in assuming I’m a lucky fish; something that I hope not too many others would concur with. Who knows!

Almost all my player notes are based on how they play but this raises the salient point that where possible you must consider what they think of you. If a player does catch me on an extravagant bluff then I now try to note down that they did so, and therefore may be wary of me in the future. Of course, to be really thorough I could justifiably write down a note for every single player at the table that they may have observed me making a daring bluff. But this not only becomes a major effort but pushes note-taking into a dangerous and seamless new direction. Guessing what other people have observed and even more tenuously what they conclude is somewhere between very difficult and impossible. That said, there are normally people chatting at every table who make it very clear what they think and express openly their views on how the game should be played. Jotting down their comments into my own player notes is something I do frequently.

There is one format of tournament poker that I feel deserves a special mention with regard to note-taking though. Games with rebuy periods have to be given a special dispensation. The wild mayhem of that first hour can produce moments that those same individuals involved wouldn’t dream of in a freezeout. People who plunge all-in pre-flop with Q-9s are simply concerned with chip building and are probably more than happy to rebuy. This has to be recognised in player notes if they are to be of any worth whatsoever. It’s quite remarkable how many ‘experts’ are critical of loose aggression in this situation, failing to appreciate the unusual dynamic of the format. I would love to read the hysterical notes they come up with.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the player-noting internet practice is that you can’t use it after an opponent is eliminated and disappears from the table. This is often the most telling moment to comment on and yet there is often no time to do so. I’ll often get caught in a mad scramble trying to note that the guy who I assumed was ‘textbook tight’ has now pushed all-in from an early seat with 10-4 off-suit. But sometimes he is gone before it can be typed. The good news is that the characters who make shocking moves on a regular basis are highly likely to reveal that behaviour again early on in your next encounter.

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