Archive for October, 2009

Poker Misconceptions

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

I’m all-in pre-flop with QQ against AK; an ace hits the flop but I spike a queen on the river to win. ‘So lucky’ moans my opponent. ‘Not really,’ I mutter knowing that I was a 57-43% favourite at the moment that counts – when the chips went in. Two popular misconceptions are caught up in one grievance here. Firstly, the big one. An astonishing number of poker players classify QQ vs. AK as the classic coin flip, a race where both players have an equal chance of success. This is almost true, but crucially in the long-term QQ will win 6/10 times more often than 5/10. AK will consequently prosper 4/10 more often than the perceived half the time. In a one-off event this advantage is very slight but over thousands of ‘races’ this differential will really add up.

The second daft element of the grumble would be that AK was a 95% favourite before the 2-outer queen reversed fortunes on the river. Therefore I am supposedly a ‘fluky donk’ for winning such a long shot. The implication is that I would have willingly risked all my chips after the turn (when 19:1 against) in the outrageous pursuit of a queen, out of choice. Clearly the manner of the outcome is irrelevant once all the betting occurs pre-flop. It is simply more galling to lose like that, not more unlucky. The latter misconception is taught at the school of sour grapes but the former misnomer is merely down to ignorance. There are many other similar examples and I’ll give you my thoughts on a few of them.
Another favourite misconception would be that bluffing is bad play. This one still boggles the mind. I’ve discussed before that there seems to be a bizarre school of thought out there that bluffing is somehow grubby and rotten. I swear some players view the exposure of bluffing as tantamount to uncovering a paedophile ring. Apparently if you can’t win playing the cards you’re dealt in the textbook manner then you ought to lose pitifully in the same ‘dignified’ manner as the feeble and unadventurous have to.

Putting to one side the obvious merits of being unpredictable and thinking outside the box there is mathematical sense to bluffing even when there’s a reasonable chance of getting caught. Imagine that! Bluffing so shamelessly that you’re willing to put yourself at high risk of being caught and exposed to the ultimate humiliation. But thinking logically if you believe that a £20 bluff into a pot of £100 will succeed a third of the time then you should make the play even if the majority of the time you may look foolish. So you lose £20 twice and look cheeky – big deal. If on the third occasion you win £120 it’s clearly a profitable play. This is basic concept poker and yet I can guarantee that a huge number of poker players out there, many of whom will rate themselves highly, never take this chance. Crazy but true.

It’s a similar mentality and an ignorance of pot odds that can lead to another funny, yet common misconception. ‘Thou shall not defend your big blind with 2-7o under any circumstances’. Most Holdem participants quickly learn that that this is the worst start hand in poker and therefore assume it should be folded in all circumstances. Again, this is untrue. If the pot odds to call are correct then you call, it’s that simple. I’ve lost count of the number of times when an irritable, and presumably inexperienced opponent has chastised me for calling his short stacked all-in with a hand like 2-7. But let’s say the blinds are 200-400 and he puts his last 1000 chips in on the button. If the small blind folds I have 600 to call to make it a pot of 2200. Supposing he has a strong hand that dominates me such as 6-6, I still have a 27% of winning. I can therefore assume to win 1 in 4 times ( 1 in 3 times against AK) and should therefore call. The maths is simple: lose 600 three times (1800) but win 2200 once, thus making a profit of 400.

Calling with 2-7o is somehow seen as indecent even in the face of mathematical fact. I mean, it’s almost as disgusting as bluffing, or winning a pre-flop ‘race’ on the river of all things. There can’t be many other games where a good player is so easily dismissed as lucky or even as downright poor, by inferior opponents. In football I rarely see strikers criticised for scoring in off the post. Yet presumably some of these muddled poker players see a footballer putting the ball in the corner of the goal merely as proof that they ‘nearly missed‘. So lucky.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker

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Bring on the Glory

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

It’s like Christmas morning; if Christmas morning could arrive unexpectedly in mid-October. You hope it’ll happen and deep down you secretly assume it will happen at some point, but it does you no good to anticipate it  The moment I speak of was my first big  multi-table triumph of the year, which according to my records, came at the umpteenth time of asking. As often happens in these situations fate seemed to play a part. It was Saturday night, for me traditionally a night off from online poker, but other plans fell through and I found myself in a $30 rebuy tournament the like of which had tormented me through the summer. So there I was in a tournament I had no plans to enter and yet 7 hours later I found myself the last man standing of 248 runners with $5400 more than I started with. Good times.

Any sense of pre-ordained destiny was certainly absent when I ‘busted’ on hand 1. A pair of tens is always a hand I will play hard in a rebuy format but this policy would quickly change if I always found myself massacred in this situation, as I was here, by QQ and KK. This setback was the equivalent of a tough tackling centre half picking up a booking in the first five minutes. I would have to tread a little more carefully from then on. I like the $30 rebuy format because I will happily rebuy once or twice and always add-on for value. However, an aggressive rebuy strategy is not the same as a wild and reckless one. I am always reluctant to rebuy more than twice and thus a reload after one hand is certainly sub-optimal and sounds a note of caution. I would still play my big hands hard while remembering that the clock was slow enough to keep me competitive with a mediocre stack after one hour. A willingness to see my stack dwindle quite low before panicking would prove vital later on. I drifted under 4000 chips with an average stack of 11,000 when I pushed 7-7 and doubled up against A-Q. Winning a race was something I was unaccustomed to in the numerous MTT events I had played in the previous weeks. I won’t labour this point because everybody thinks they ‘run bad’ so I should clarify that my luck factor on SNGs had been pretty good in recent weeks I just couldn’t catch a break in the longer format. Anyhow all this was about to change when I doubled through again with J-J vs. 9-9 and then had my big moments of good fortune when K-Q toppled A-9 with a timely river Queen. I was really starting to think it was my night when my 10-10 overturned A-K after a soul-destroying K-K-Q flop. The runner-runner spades on the turn and river snagged me an unlikely flush that had me punching the air.

As lucky as all this sounds I had in reality just won a couple of flips and won a 42% shot with K-Q. If you play a lot of MTTs you should really get a run of fortune such as this quite often and I was long-overdue the roll of the dice after a relentless string of 2-outer dismissals previously. In fact only days earlier I had looked well set for a decent cash when my K-K-K got inevitable action from another big stack with 9-9-9. All the chips went in on the turn before the 1-outer 9 spiked the river. With this in mind I wasn’t about to feel embarrassed about winning a couple of races for once!

Of course when good fortune does pay a visit you must take advantage. I soon found myself as chip leader with 11 left and sought to push home my advantage. Play was six-handed, several waiting timidly for the final table and I was stealing the blinds for fun. To make life easier the good cards kept coming meaning I could stay aggressive without getting ‘out of line’ too much. I had hoped that the frequency of my raises would encourage a feisty rival to play back at me eventually when I had a genuinely reasonable hand. When a medium stack finally did re-raise me all-in I was comforted by the knowledge that my A-A fit neatly into said category of ‘genuinely reasonable.’ Sadly my swagger was to be short-lived as the rockets got outrageously turned over my K-Q. Here we go again. Just as I had felt that it was to be my night half my stack was crushed in miserable fashion. It’s pretty hard to pick yourself up off the floor after a beat like that because what future scenarios could I put myself in with any confidence? Drawing on my experience I had to tell myself that 70,000 chips was still a playable stack even if I was now 9th out of 11; I would now have had a monstrous stack, but for the outrageous. ‘Shoulda woulda coulda’, the last words of a fool, apparently. Not to mention a few aggrieved poker players.

Anyway, the rollercoaster continued as I played my best poker and did get some hands to hold up. A fitting Hollywood ending was ensured when I found myself head-up with, who-else, but my nemesis who had cracked A-A with K-Q. He was a competent opponent and a game of cat and mouse was to go on for some 45 minutes, a long heads-up session by online MTT standards. The key moment arrived when my opponent checked a 4-6-10 flop in position. The turn brought another 4 and I decided that if he checked again he could be very strong but if he bet hard at all then a bluff was on. He did so and I re-raised hard with 5-2o, a gutshot draw, but essentially five high. It was the bluffiest of semi-bluffs but I was confident I could force a lay-down. He called the draw-heavy board. The river card seemed irrelevant and completed no draw so I bet hard again, successfully forcing the fold. It was a decisive moment with a dramatic shift in the chip stacks. A short time after I completed the job calling with A-2 when my increasingly desperate opponent shoved 6-3. It was a gratifying moment of triumph made all the sweeter by the manner in which it occurred.

The $5.4k (about £3.5k) really feels like a bonus, which was always the idea behind my approach.  I see the SNGs as the bread and butter which bring the most consistent, steady reward, even with their own pesky variance. The MTTs are the icing on the poker cake.

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Block Busters

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Could I still pass a poker MOT? This is essentially what I try to ask myself from time to time to make sure that I don’t let standards slip or fall into bad habits. Obviously it’s important to keep looking for improvements in your game but it’s just as vital that learnt lessons stay learnt. Otherwise, before you know it you could be chasing your flush draws unprofitably or just playing at the wrong stakes for your bankroll. All the while not noticing the leak in your game because you haven’t taken a fresh look at things in a while.

When reading some poker literature recently it suddenly occurred to me that I wasn’t really ‘block betting’ as well as I should be. This is often described as an advanced Holdem move even though the basic premise of the play is quite simple. The idea is that you lead bet out of position to discourage your opponent from making a larger bet that you wouldn’t want to call. As straightforward as this sounds the artistry comes, as always, from applying the bet at the right time, in the right way. This requires a great deal more thought.

Authorities on this subject seem to suggest that block betting is often a good approach when chasing a draw. The theory would be that by betting a smallish amount you give yourself the odds to stay involved in the pot. The alternative of checking can lead to your opponent betting much harder thus making it unprofitable to chase your outs. This play therefore sounds good but my experience suggests that it doesn’t always work so well in practice. The first problem is that a weak lead out bet on what they call a ‘wet flop’ (cards that potentially suit a wide range of hands) normally represents a draw, and typically it will be made by a loose player. With that read I will normally re-raise my opponent assuming I like my own hand. Naturally a re-raise is the nemesis of the block bet if the intention was to keep the pot small.

But of course block bets don’t have to be the calling card of the loose draw chaser. It does seem to be the case about 80% of the time in shallow stacked SNGs but that’s all the more reason for good players to make the same play with genuine strength AND with draws. Imagine if you play your flopped sets in much the same way as your flopped flush draws. Suddenly you become very difficult to read and the automatic re-raise of your opponent may well be abandoned.

But it is block betting on the river that interests me most as an area for personal improvement. To give a classic example of when the play may be invaluable consider the following. I have raised pre-flop and hit top pair on the flop prompting a continuation bet. The turn is seemingly even better giving me top two pair so I gleefully bet again. Then possible disaster on the river. Suddenly there are four clubs on the table and I have none. On the turn I would have been relatively unconcerned by the three clubs as my one opponent was a lunatic calling station who chased everything and was liable to bluff given half a chance. But with four clubs surfacing the situation was suddenly much more perilous. Any one club in the lunatic’s hand would put him ahead and yet there would be still every chance I had the best hand with top two pair.

What to do? Well out of position my tendency for too long has been to check in this spot a very high percentage of the time. It would be a check with a very high likelihood of calling my rival’s bet but this is always fraught with danger. I could call a large bet and win against a total bluff or I could call a big bet and find that I have indeed been beaten by the river club. But why not a river block bet for about half the pot or even slightly less? If the lunatic has missed the flush as well he will require a lot more bottle to re-raise bluff against apparent strength than against the check that appears to give up on the hand. Furthermore, he might call and win the hand with a low club and you will be annoyed, but actually you will have made a money saving play. Coaxing your wild opponent into winning less by his calling of a bet of 500 is much better than check-calling for 1600 chips yourself.

Poker is a game where you try to maximise your pot wins with your best hands but it’s just as important to lose less when the community cards turn against you. Money saved is effectively money won in the long term. Blocker bets can be invaluable in this pursuit but just be careful not to over-use them either. Always remember that a weak lead-out bet, however small, is still capable of costing you chips instead if your opponent was in fact going to check out behind you with the best hand. Unless you induce a fold that is…

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