December and January Results

Cash: $23,619
Rakeback: ~$6,750
Tournament Winnings: $573
Gold Stack Bonus: $323
Gold Card Race: $310
Race Chase: $3,200

Not shown: ~$350 Rush Poker (played on my laptop)
$120 Heads up

TOTAL: $35,145

I was kind of reluctant to post this at first in light of recent security attacks on my FT account, my rakeback account, and the blog itself.  Rest assured, there is no more money in any of these accounts, as I cashed it all away on one misclick against Isildur1 shortly thereafter (though it is still in dispute on a datamining charge).  If said hacking scum is reading this right now, you know who you are and I hope you die in a grease fire.

Essentially this was all made in about 6 weeks time, as I was actually stuck about $500 as of the middle of December and then immediately began to run like Cantu.  Over this span I ran over $5,000 over EV, but would have certainly been happy running totally even or below.  I did manage to skeet by on the January Rake Chase which added heftily to my January total, which also pushed me past the $20k mark for the first time ever in the cash games, which was truly exciting for me on a personal level.

Though I spent the first week and a half away from the tables this month, things are still looking solid, though I have a rather moderate goal of making at least $6k since I have not been able to log the hours.  Other than that, I am very excited to be an official affiliate of Rakebacknation and also have been invited to do some writing for parttimepoker.com, their affiliated site.  Though the details have not yet been worked out, I plan on offering more original content on that platform and hopefully offering my share of deranged humor as well!

As an aside, I would like to send a special thank you to my friend and colleague, Crazy Bear, whose influence on my game boosted my results practically overnight and without his help, none of what you see above would have been possible.

How to Cause Tilt

I found this as an addendum to a great article by grapsfan on Pocket Fives.  It was written by Jennifear and I consider this to be absolute gold:


I'm not much of a chatter, and you won't find this advice anywhere in a book, because it doesn't promote the game.  If you want to tangle in the chatbox and have a little fun, then I have one word for ya:


Illogic. 

If you want to tilt someone in a nasty fashion, use an argument devoid of logic.  The reaction you get is priceless.  When you beat KK with A4, then "it's about time I won a coinflip", or "no aces flopped last hand, so I felt they would hit this hand".... this even works better if the flop last time contained an ace. 


"It was suited."  "It wasn't suited so I had TWO chances to hit a flush, not just one."  "I had a feeling."  "I have all the chips now, so I must be better than you."  These one-liners work.
If they can't beat your argument with logic, they will become very frustrated and tilty.  Plus you aren't getting mad, your goal is now truly to get them upset, and use your newfound image to your advantage, so you won't get caught up in defending your plays.  One last word of advice if you are going to use the chatbox as a weapon:  Fight right, nice left.  You want the player on your right to call your 3-bet value raise out of frustration, but you want to be able to continue to steal from the player on your left.

An Appeal to Capitalists

I plan on playing in the main event of this series on the 27th of this month and I am looking to sell pieces of myself.  The total buy in is $2,100, of which I will be paying the first $1,000 as well as the $100 entry fee.  Anyone who wants to contribute will actually be getting a small overlay on their money (100% rakeback!) with an added bonus that if I place in the top 3 spots, I will be paying out an additional 10% of my winnings.  For example, if someone wants to buy a $100 dollar share of the $2,100 buy in, they will be contributing just over 4.7% of the total, but will be receiving a 5% share of the prize.

Here is how I plan to do this:

I will sell pieces of myself in increments no smaller than $25 with returns as explained above.  I will list all contributors and the total amount purchased at the end of this post and will keep amending the list as more people contribute.  Should anyone prefer to remain anonymous, your contribution will be listed with only your first and last initial labeled.  All stakers should send the money to Poopatron at Poker Stars and then follow up by email to let me know of the transfer.  If you do not have a PS account and would like to be involved, please email me and we can make an alternate arrangement.  I will be providing up to the minute updates via Twitter and will be taking photos from the event as well.

Here is a list of the contributors thus far:

$25- Jerry Hodges
$50- Adam Monteiro
$50- Jonathan Novak
$100- Daniel Yelle
$50- Rakebacknation Rob
$100- cucinella
$100- Crazy Bear

Total Raised- $475



Thanks!!

Rush Poker, Part I- Structure and Theory

By means of popular demand, I decided to take on this topic first.  Rush poker, in essence, is the action player's wet dream and finally fulfills the demand that has driven recreational play online in the first place.  For those unfortunate souls who have yet to try it, the premise of Rush poker is thus: you enter the game without having to post, as positions are dealt at random with the player who has gone the longest without posting the BB being the one who must take it.  From there, if you do not like your starting hand, you have the option of using a "quick fold" feature where you immediately leave your current table and are seamlessly transported to another and are instantly dealt into a new hand with an entirely new set of opponents.  Tables are unobservable as the action consists of one large player pool that is constantly shifting.  A full ring table that would normally deal between 55-80 hands per hour now averages about 250-275.  If it isn't already clear, the implications of such play are profound, as are the means of profiting from such play.  Here is my take on the advantages:


1.  No time spent on wait lists or waiting to post

Recreational and serious amateurs will have a hard time grasping how important this is to your overall profitability.  Given that I consider our readership here to be above the curve in general, this shouldn't really require an explanation other than to state the obvious: more time at the tables = more $.

2.  Lack of specific reads

Many people consider this to be a fault but I consider this to be an advantage.  The truth is that this is, in fact, neutral.  Those who admit that this burdens their play have unwittingly revealed a weakness in their game and all weaknesses can be exploited.  Naturally, that specific reads are difficult and often impossible to achieve works both for and against you.  So who benefits?  The guy who actually knows how to play fundamentally strong poker!  The Phil Hellmuths of the world would get slaughtered and the Sklansky-bots would reign supreme.  Being that your average work-a-day professional falls into the second category, this is good news indeed!

3.  Ease of folding makes hand reading easier

Funny how most people like to complain that a group of fish drawing against your aces makes the game impossible to win and then go on to complain that the fish now have very little incentive to play their crappy 53o now that they can instantly be dealt into another hand.  I can't say that I really care either way, except that now if you raise from EP and get a cold caller in the CO and they need said 53 to make the only available straight in a heads up pot, they almost CAN'T have it!  Likewise, elaborate bluffs will almost never occur except as the result of a draw that bricked on the river.  Naturally no game variant could ever be this predictable, but it certainly is to a higher than normal degree.

3.  Easy to rathole

No, I do not mean this in the short stack sense.  Though I plan on taking this concept one step further in my future post about reflections on a year of short stacking, I will have to touch on this briefly in order to make the point clear.  Pretend that you are 200BB deep and then look at the following examples and notice the error in thinking:

A. When I have AA, I want to be able to stack someone holding QQ.
B. When I have the nut flush, I want to be able to stack someone holding the K high flush.
C. When I flop a royal flush, I want to be able to stack someone who flopped a straight flush.

Here is my quick take on the above examples:

A. When you are this deep, it will be extremely difficult to get someone holding QQ or even KK to commit a ton of money preflop, and made much more difficult when there is essentially no game history established.  Furthermore, a bad flop such as 8h7h6h when the QQ holder does not have the appropriate suit and already made suspicious of the possibility of being up against aces is likely to make them clam up and play passively or simply make the correct fold early in the hand out of nothing more than fear alone.

B.  This is pretty much the same as the example above, with the added fact that if the board is paired or the fourth of the suit falls, they are very likely to play passively when there is a lot of money behind, but would of course have happily stacked off in the common 100BB scenario even when the above scare cards are present.

C.  This is the whole concept of "I want to be able to stack someone when I flop a set" taken to its logical extreme.  Naturally, this scenario is ridiculous due to its rarity, but it is something to consider when chasing what I like to call "jackpot hands" like small pairs.  Flopping huge is not the same thing as flopping huge and getting paid.  The deeper you are, the more difficult this becomes to do as a large favorite.  I don't know about you, but I would not feel particularly good about getting all in 200BB deep with a set of 2's on a rainbow board of K92. 

So what does this mean?  Being really deep adds significantly to your total bluffing equity but quite likely subtracts significantly from your value equity.  Unfortunately, with the lack of metagame built into the structure of Rush poker itself, exercising large bluffs on a regular basis would be suicide.  I would strongly suggest that you rathole your winnings when get much above 100BB and just re-enter the game with a full stack. 

While I am sure that this advice will ruffle a few feathers, my short stack experience has shown me the truth of the situation.  My win rate over the past 5 months has been about 1.5ptBB/100 (a true short stack artist can enjoy a WR in the 1.75-2 range).  With my somewhat extensive use of PTR, I have determined that this is approximately equal to what an ordinary full stack professional earns.  A very good full stacker can expect a WR of 2.5BB and only a small elite group can hope to ever earn anywhere near 3BB or higher.  Please don't draw on the example of Nanonoko, as his LTWR is extraordinary and he should be considered an outlier on all accounts. 

What sort of assumptions can we draw from this information?  That the first 20% of your stack provides the majority of your entire earnings!  Furthermore, the remainder of your stack forces you to take greater and greater risks for a proportionally poorer and poorer return on your investment.  While ratholing might be preferable in an ordinary situation, external factors like good seating and long wait lists make this a Catch 22 when playing in a good game.  They might hate that they are sitting the the right of a great player when they are both 200BB deep, but reluctant to leave a huge fish on their right who is spewing away all his money.  The constant reshuffling of tables and seating in Rush poker make this a non-factor and should be exploited to the fullest.


This concludes part I on my take on the basic structural theory of the game, and I will conclude part II with my advice on HUD availability and late position strategy.  I am really hoping for feedback from you guys so that we might be able to delve even further into this fascinating innovation of online poker. 

Thinking of Moving in a New Direction

As enjoying as it has been playing the part of the villain for greater part of the past year, it might be time to move on and wear the shell of a new identity.  No, it was not due to Full Tilt's move to raise the minimum buy in, which I am in fact quite pleased about for reasons that will be explained in an upcoming blogpost.  The move is more about the desire to not dilute the quality of the writing by visibly wearing such a divisive uniform.  As stated previously, this blog has never been to endorse short stacking or any other poker form or strategy.  When it all comes down to the wire, there are really only two kinds of play that I truly endorse- the fun kind and the profitable kind.  As it were, both Travis and I have been very grateful for the ongoing support of our dedicated readers and their openmindedness to strategies that they might not even necessarily agree with, yet can still respect as just another aspect to a complex and ever-changing game.

Incidentally however, this move is actually inspired by Full Tilt's introduction of Rush Poker.  Though considered by some to be a mockery of purist poker, I actually embrace it as a very innovative and profitable move on their part that fills a gap in an area that was lacking in both online and brick and mortar play- instant action and gratification for both enthusiasts and recreational players alike.  How does this tie in to the move to change the direction of our blog?  Due to my most recent strategy construct improvements in short stacking, I have gleaned some super insights on how to exploit a strategy glitch that this new type of play allows.  And no, I am not referring to short stacking these games.  Even if it were possible, I would not choose to do this.  I have been full stacking these games a bit this month to some good win rates and massive profits and I am eager to share these insights in the hope that our current and future readers will be able to explore them without bias in ways that they will find to be both enjoyable and profitable.  Too many people have been quick to judge my knowledge of the game based on the way in which I choose to express my skills within the game and I do want short stacking to hide the fact that I have been making a living purely off this game in one form or another for close to 5 years now- a feat that I am truly proud of.

This blog has always been and will continue to be about managing the professional lifestyle, thinking outside the box and challenging conventional and outdated poker dogma.  My ultimate personal goal is not to be the best short stacker in the world, nor full stacker, or even the best player.  I would prefer to leave a legacy as one of the great poker writers and thinkers about the game, and I feel that the identity of "The Short Stack Hero" will only burden this ultimate goal.  For this I would personally like to request a favor from our regular readers to let us know in which ways they feel they have benefited most from the content on this site so that we can pave the path to future.

In any case, here are the articles that I have been meticulously mulling over in my mind to post over the course of the last month, not in any particular order:

• January and December results
• Full Tilt's move to raise the minimum buy in
• Game Theory, Short Stacking, and "what's best for the game"
• Rush Poker review and strategy concepts
• Insights gained from looking back on a year of short stacking.  This will be truly epic!
• Bankroll Theory, part III (I was wrong)

As always, thank you for reading and your support!

Lorin

The Poker Stars Blogger Championship

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! Bloggers can register to play for free in the WBCOOP, if you don’t have a PokerStars account you can get your Free Poker Download at PokerStars
Registration code: 361858

Focusing on the Long Term

Just a few days ago, I began ruminating on the concept of "focusing on the long-term."  Widely accepted as the wisdom of dealing with bad beats and bad temporary results, poker authors everywhere have been regurgitating this advice for years, much to the dismay of...oh, just about everyone.  In fact, I can not think of a more abstract or depressing way of viewing this game.  After all, they say we can never get too high or low about a given cash game session as it is really just one long game that goes on and on and on and on and ON..... Apparently the journey of a thousand miles not only begins with the first step but ends somewhere far beyond the visible horizon at a place that we won't even recognize when we get there.  Luckily for all of you, I have managed to take this poorly constructed yet well-meaning advice and turn it into something usable.  I will be the first to admit that there is nothing groundbreaking that I am about to present here, yet I am sure that some of you have oft overlooked it.

This meditation first began when pondering the effects of attempting to win the rake chase at Pokerworld for the month of January.  That wasn't a typo- for those of you who don't know, a rake "chase" is different than a rake "race" in that there are guaranteed tiered payouts for everyone who reaches specific rake plateaus.  The one in question rewards an extra $1,400 in cash to all those who rake at least $8,000 (high volume, if this is not already obvious) and $3,000 to all of those who rake at least $15,000 (extraordinary volume!).  Being that you are rewarded for consistent performance, this is superior to the alternative.

While this goal seem ludicrous to me personally when I saw it, it seemed quite doable the first time I raked $800 in a single day and realized that it was about 9 hours of play.  Though I knew it was unreasonable to think I could do this every day, I was quite happy to realize that it would only take 19 sessions like this.  Doing some quick calculations yielded that it would take somewhere between 180-200 hours of play of 9-tabling.  Further examination showed me that not only would I bring home that extra dough, it would also glue me to the table and force me to play when I would otherwise quit, creating much higher earns overall.  Being that I can track my rake to the penny using HEM, the previously abstract "long term" now had an end in sight.  When you have a distinct end point in that is actually tangible and achievable, the bad beats become much more tolerable and the long sessions now have a meaning other "win more" or "get unstuck".

The "goal" of winning at poker over the long-term is no better than the goal of finishing college, losing weight, or making Supernova Elite next year.  All experts say that these things must be broken down into manageable sub-goals that are achievable and measurable and preferably have some kind of reward for each step.  The above goals would be better stated as taking 6 credit hours each semester, limiting yourself to 1,500 calories per day, or earning x FPP's each day.  While the idea of raking $15,000 is unheard of for myself personally, I know that I can get through each day visualizing that $3,000 pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

For those of you who would like to follow my progress towards this goal, click here and search for the player name "Papa Rozzi" at Poker World, right at the top of the list!


P.S. A quick word of caution: do not let goals of earning FPP's or rake or rakeback distract you from your ultimate goal- making money.  Do not consume yourself with pushing past your maximum table limits to quickly reach a goal that will happen on its own.  As always, if the amount of money you earn at the tables is ultimately eclipsed by the rakeback you earn on a monthly basis, you are doing something wrong or misusing your focus.

Moving Up and Losing Me Bottle

After last month of playing mostly $1/2 with some $2/4 and $3/6 and showing success in all of these stakes, I figured that the best move would be to start December playing only $2/4 and $3/6 from that point on, being well rolled for both games.  Being that playing the bigger pots in the larger games was distracting me from playing well in the smaller game, it seemed to make logical sense to eliminate the smallest game from my menu and enjoy the better win rates in the larger games.  Naturally, had this worked out so well, there would be no reason to make this post.

What I am attempting to explore here is whether or not you will do better in the long run by moving up now, EVEN IF you are well rolled and competent enough to beat the higher game.  Here is what I have found out:

1. BIGGER WINS CAN LEAD TO SHORTER SESSIONS

Coventional poker knowledge: you should always keep playing when you are winning.  Short stack hero says:  HORSESHIT. Don't get me wrong here: I am not disagreeing with what all of the poker authors are saying in spirit, but rather, what they are saying in practice.  They have never addressed the psychological fact that people experience more pain due to a loss than the joy they receive relative to an equal win.

When I first started the month, I went up about $2,500 right out of the gate, in 3 short sessions.  Most of this came in $1,000 spurts experienced in the course of short runs of about 1-2 hours.  While this might feel quite good while it is happening, it is totally eclipsed by taking a dinner break and giving back $1,000 in 30 minutes.  The result?  It is very easy to go up a lot (relative to the smaller stakes you had been playing) and then find some external reason to quit and enjoy your win for the day.  To make matters worse, we create our own psychological barriers according the law of diminishing marginal utility.  It feels good to win the first $500 of the day and very good to hit $1,000 for the day, yet beyond this point, things begin to change.  Going up to $1,500 will make me feel only slightly better, yet dropping down to $500 for the day will make me feel lousy, with the irony being that had you told me the previous day that I would be making $500 tomorrow, I would be satisfied.

In sum, though $1,000 is still the same to me that it was in November, when you are playing just $2/4 and $3/6, it is an average of 2 full buy ins.  Easy to make and easy to give back.  My mind was simply not prepared for this.

2. BIGGER LOSSES ARE LIKELY TO LEAD TO LONGER SESSIONS

This requires no extrapolation, for all of us have done this a some point.

3. BAD RUNS CAN EQUAL LONGER TIME AWAY FROM THE GAME

We all know by know that poker profits are not just measured by the month, but also by the day, the hour, and to some people, by the hand.  No matter how big a single session is, time spent afterward away from the table will likely hurt your profits more than a long, slightly tilty session if you are a competent player.  The second week of the month was terrible.  I lost about $2,800 in the course of 3 short sessions and ran $3,300 under EV.  I had intellectualized that this would happen at some point, yet I was stilled floored by the fact it not only did, but that it happened so soon.  When you take a loss that is this disruptive, the thought of sitting at your desk becomes burdensome, if not intolerable.  Some people are made of stone and things like this just roll of their backs.  I am not one of them and I imagine that you are most likely not as well.

4. GAME SELECTION BECOMES FAR MORE DIFFICULT

Damn short stackers have completely infested the full ring $2/4 and $3/6 games at Full Tilt (not for much longer, though)!  Rather than whine about it though, I just won't sit and play with them if there are too many and they have position on me.  Likewise, the higher you play, the fish become fewer and less frequent.  So for guys who are used to playing at 16-24 tables with little thought, this just becomes much more difficult to do.


As if it weren't difficult enough to make money at this game, making more money requires even more consideration than simply win rates and bank roll management.  Am I saying not to give it a try?  Absolutely not- just keep this on the back burner and be self-conscious at all times.

Following in Glenn Beck's Footsteps

This post is an apology to our regular readers.  We were going to do a series on the "debate" with narrow minded full stackers but are scrapping it after much consideration.  After all, winning an argument requires a certain amount of cooperation on the part of the arguee - where the person in question decides to submit and see things from your point of view.  Doing so in this case is also counter productive, because it is tantamount to tapping on the glass.  As long as we are dismissed, our play becomes highly profitable.  The minute we are taken seriously, we will seriously need to consider doing something else, like working at McDonald's ;)

As anyone who has been following the last few posts can see, narrow minded fools will not be persuaded under any circumstances.  They simply change the argument when they see a point which they can not possibly win and spout more and more ridiculous things as a consequence.  Had we not let our utterly massive egos get in the way, we would have ignored such blather long ago, and that is precisely what we will do from this point on.

For those of you who have been following this blog over the course of its evolution, you fully understand that this blog was not meant to promote short stacking or any other style of poker.  It was meant to challenge conventional wisdom and groupthink to reach conclusions that help a person succeed in their own fashion.  I should know.  I have read pretty much every single significant text on hold'em since the day I declared that I wanted to be a professional over 6 years ago now.  While I am very grateful for the knowledge that has been handed down to me, I also never had the chance to develop a style all my own.  This knowledge has given me the tools of the professional and given me a good living, though it has also almost certainly prevented me from ever becoming a top player with a unique approach to the game.  I am hoping to break that mold for the rest of you and not further waste your time by engaging in arguments with idiots.  I'll leave that to Glenn from now on.

An Amazing Hand by Any Measure...

The Law of Unintended Consequences

We see this everywhere. A smoking ban in bars leads to more drunk driving deaths when people drive further to get to bar that has heated outdoor smoking areas. Obama's "Cash for Clunkers" program hurts the Demolition Derby sport by causing a drought of old vehicles that now going straight to the junkyard. Why should we care? Because all players who are upset by the short stack epidemic are witnessing this happening right now. The culprit? A powerful new generation of poker software that we all love and enjoy.

Many people have suggested that we raise the minimum buy in. I would like to point out, though, that the minimum buy in has always been 20BB pretty much across the board. Yet if you peel the layers back a little further, you will see that there only exists a short stack swarm at sites where the newer highly advanced HUD's are not only rampant, but encouraged. After all, the 20BB minimum buy in exists at the Cake Poker network as well, yet there are very few short stackers who exist there and none of them are particularly dangerous...because of the site wide ban on this software.

The highly detailed HUD's available through HEM and PT3 et al. paved the way for short stackers who can now slice through you with razor thin margins because of a huge list of very specific stats that can track your patterns of play from every single position at the table and can feed this information into advanced simulators on their free time like StoxEV that can measure their expected value down to the PENNY. Even if a player has never logged any hands against you, they can still purchase hand histories by the million and have a complete profile against you as soon as they wake up at noon.

So is this new generation of software aids the true danger to the game? I would wager a "yes" here. Even Kyle "Cottonseed" Hendon made a remark in one of his videos on Stox Poker that the HEM HUD is so good that it is almost like cheating. While the lines have blurred tremendously since their inception, it is certainly quickly reaching that point. Had you explained to an old time pro back in 1999 what people were doing now to the game they almost certainly would have called it such.

The Perils of Emulating Your Own Success

It would seem a very rational thing to do. You pick the game of your choice, learn the fundamentals and mechanics of solid play and then slowly become a winner in that game. Though you don't quite know fully what you are doing yet, you try some creative plays and some of them turn out to be brilliant. Perhaps you got a little lucky here and there with these plays, but mostly they were fundamentally sound and based on good observation of your opponents and the flow of the game. You congratulate yourself and vow that you will do these good deeds again. Well done!

On the other hand, during your experimental phase you also make some plays that don't turn out quite so well. Actually, that is an understatement- they are monumental fucking failures. In fact, had you eliminated two of the plays from your session, you would have actually come out a small winner for the day. You take these harsh lessons to bed with you, only this time you vow to never make these plays again.

Now that you are bumping around less frequently in the dark and have pruned all of the major atrocities from your game, you start winning fast now...and BIG. You could keep on trying new things, but you are a professional and you have bills to pay, so better to just stick with the formula- at least for now.

Right now I play x tables with y win rate for z hours per week. If I play x + 3 tables for z + 15 hours a week, even if I can maintain a win rate of just y - b, I can pay off my car and my credit cards in 5 1/2 months!! ...And all I have to do is keep doing what I've been doing!

Except for one tiny little problem...it just doesn't work anymore. Is it the variance? The bad beats? The fact that your opponents are catching on to you? Perhaps a combination of all these things, but they are merely symptoms of the real problem. The real problem is that by failing to react appropriately to the situation at hand yet still playing fundamentally decent in a formulaic fashion, you moved from an exploitative/optimal strategy to one that is only approaching optimal, at best. This what occurs when you begin applying your commonly most effective lines to every single hand.

Once this finally dawns on you, it truly becomes easy to understand. Your best lines were developed in response to game flow that existed THEN but is not likely to be present NOW. In the past, you were to trying to play GREAT, not just ADEQUATE. However, in all likelihood, the lines that you are using formulaicly at this point are probably rarely awful, but they also going to rarely be great as well. And great play is what creates good win rates and solid monthly incomes. Making the occasional horrific play that you would not normally make is not necessarily something to be avoided at all costs, but rather shows that you still have blood pumping through your veins. The only types of plays that should be cut completely from your game are those odds defying blundering all-in calls on the turn.

By emulating your past success, you are settling for mediocrity and being just plain lazy. The bottom line is very simple- you must strive to get a little bit better every day. That is how you got to where you are right now. This is the very minimal requirement, even if you plan on only keeping your current win rate. As they say "if you aren't slowly getting better, you are slowly getting worse."

Some Poker Haiku, an attempt at Suckout Therapy

My Queens versus fours
Please Dear God no fucking four
That is such Bullshit

Douche bag sucked out
I bounce around in huge Tilt
I hope he gets AIDS

I hate this damn game
I will never play again
and then I reload

Now Douche bag will pay
Just need a fresh beverage
Will kick him in cunt

Why does God hate me
Douchebaggery Rewarded
This site is rigged

Holy Shit, I won
Finally Motherfucker
Suck on these Nizzuts


I hope these Haiku brought some Peace and Serenity to you as the did me....I would love to see some from our readers if any of you get inspired....

My Favorite New Line and Why it is Perfect for Short Stackers....

One of my Favorite things about Poker, and especially ShortStacking, is using players preconceived notions against them. This is part of the "changing gears" that you hear about all the time, but you can take it much farther than that. One of the nice things about Shortstacking is that you don't have to take the time to establish a table image, as most players already have a preconceived (and misguided) notion about what type of player you are the moment that you sit down at the Table. My new favorite "value line" is nothing new or groundbreaking, but it takes perfect advantage of those notions and the ego that SS haters attach to the style.

The basis is this: If you flop a big hand that is obvious, start with a bet. Lets say you raise preflop with AQ of hearts and get a caller. The flop comes down 9 6 3, all hearts. You flopped the nuts. Conventional wisdom, and natural urges tell you to slow play and let them catch up. The problem with this is that they are going to be very suspicious of any flop check with a big move later, and unless they have a set or maybe the K of hearts, you might get some money from them, but not much. So since there is nothing to lose, bet it. It looks like a steal and since most players see SS'rs as tight, overly aggressive push-monkeys, they aren't going to buy it. They will call with a lot of single pairs, weak draws and ANY overpair.

Now that you have set the stage and got them involved, check the turn. It almost doesn't matter what the card is. Check it. Now it appears that you took a shot to win the pot but you are a spineless, unimaginative push-monkey and are giving up. This sets the stage for the next step....

Shove the River! By playing this line, it appears that:

You missed the flop and continuation bet the flop to take it down. Their call scared you. The turn didn't help (or you would have shoved, that is what you do, after all) and then, when you smelled weakness, you tried to buy your way out of your bluff by shoving all in (it only costs a little for you to shove, you are a Broke-ass SSer after all and it is the only move you know).

I have found that this is almost universally how they perceive this line.

Imagine their chagrin (and my titty-rubbing joy) when they call and I turn over the nuts to crap all over their A-9 (or whatever crap they tricked themselves into thinking was good enough to beat your "Bluff") and show a play so imaginative that they NEVER saw it coming from a "simple-minded Shortstacker".

There are of course a few exceptions to this line, but it works great when you flop that obvious big hand and want to extract value (it works very well when you flop the trips on a paired board as well). It really tends to throw opponents off balance because now they can't pigeon hole you into a non thinking shove monkey which is where they are comfortable with you being. Play around with it a little but I guarantee that it is a VERY worthy addition to your arsenal.

If you generate any feedback with this line or have variations, please let us know. We love the discussion.

P.S. Congrats to our own Short Stack Hero, Lorin Yelle for buying his first House. He closed last Friday and moved in Yesterday. He now has a Righteous "Man-Cave".

Alternative Line #2: The Mega-Raise Pot Shove

Unlike the previous example, this one does not actually need to be AK per se, but rather any medium-strong hand with showdown value. Here is the criteria needed:

1. You are in one of the blind positions.
2. You have a medium strong hand that doesn't play particularly well post-flop out of position, preferably in this order:
AK, AQ, AJ, 99, ATs, 88, KQs, KQo, ATo, KJs
3. You have no more than two limpers in the pot and first limper must be very loose, with a VPIP of 30% or higher. The higher the VPIP, the looser on the above scale you can go.
4. You raise to approximately 1/3 of the effective smaller stack.
5. You shove all in on any flop when called.

The theory: You do this because the alternatives are to limp (which clearly sucks and will never show any real profit), make a normal raise, or move all in. Making a standard raise makes your stack size really awkward for post-flop betting and makes these hands very difficult to play since you will miss the flop about 2/3 of the time. Moving all in is a fine, though sub-optimal play. Even a fish realizes that he needs a showdown value hand to call a bet this size and it will scare away his business virtually every time.

So let's be straight here from the get-go: usually when you attempt this play, your opponent will fold. In that regard, it is no different than shoving over a raise with your premium hands. You don't expect to get called with those hands in every instance, though you are happy when you do. When he does call, take a look at what happens in the example above. By raising one third of the effective stack, you are facing your opponent with a pot-size bet on the flop and offering him odds of 2:1 to call. In other words, you are putting him in the position of making the largest mistake.

Surely, for a bet this size on the flop, your opponents will only be calling when you are beat, right? Wrong. Here is a list of common calls you will see in this spot:


1. Top pair or better
2. Any pair
3. All draws including gut shots
4. Overcards
5. Naked aces

In a nut shell, very few good hands and a whole lot of complete shit. Once again, this play in not done for any kind of deceptive purposes, but rather is a strong psychological lure for weak-minded opponents and gamblers. By targeting exclusively loose opponents who have pretty much already told you explicitly that their hand was not good enough to raise but they wanted to see a flop anyway, you are seducing them into making a bad play.

Of course, when you flop a relatively strong hand, you should either bet very small or check. Typical opponents who are bad enough to call a raise this large in the first place are primed to make a hopeless bluff at such a large pot. By relatively, I mean relative the the board and your opponents likely calling range. A hand like AK on an A-2-2 board is extremely strong and even weak opponents are not likely to stack away with QJs in this spot (though they sometimes will!), but of course he is not getting helped by any free cards, so give him a chance to piss his money away.

Why does this play work? Perhaps it is best not to ask such questions. Never in my career have I been bad enough to get lured by such an obvious ploy, so I can't even begin to imagine what is going through the mind of someone who does. Admittedly, this play was not created by myself, but rather snatched from the hands of a short stacker who is much better than me. When reviewing his hand histories, I was astonished by the horrible calls his opponents were making, including a K7 on an A-A-5 board when he was holding KQ! I began making this play indiscriminately only to soon find that it was never working when I wanted it to, and "working" when I didn't want it to. It has only been recently that I have found it to work astonishingly well against very loose opponents. Against typical opponents or unknowns, you are better off either limping or moving all in with these types of hands.

The Consequences of Failing to Listen to Your Inner Voice

Am I on tilt right now?
Am I getting too tired to play?
Should I leave this table?
Should I call this raise?
Should I play ATo under the gun?
Should I go ahead and bluff here?
Should I steal with this turd of a hand?


No matter what the question is, the answer never changes. It's always the one you least wanted to hear. Notice how the simple act of asking yourself that question gives you the answer. Also notice how failing to act on the advice given back to you is a mistake about 90% of the time.

Ahh...one of the beauties of this game of poker. That same voice inside you that you use to consistently lie to your girlfriend, your wife, your parents, your kids, and even yourself will not persuade the powers of the universe that you are not completely full of shit. Because when you deny that inner voice, you are betraying your well-honed poker instincts in favor of your ego or your emotions, which are the least suited for rational decision making at the table. Decisions made on the fly are almost never good ones. Great decisions are planned in advance with contingencies already put into place for any card that can hit on the turn or river.

Though it is never easy, this is some of the most solid advice you will ever receive: if you have to ask the question, you already know the answer.

Busted!! The Short Stack Hero is as Cheap as I said...

Here, as evidence to back up my previous claim as to How Cheap The Short Stack Hero is, are pictures shot by an accomplice of Lorin in all his Cheap Ass Glory!!!


This is him stealing a butt from an ashtray to smoke.....



...and here is him snagging his tip back from the bartender.....

I may be fat but I can always go on a diet. This kind of cheap lives forever!!!!

Alternative Line #1B: Defending Against the Limp Re-raise

It is undeniable that after reading the previous post on how to play AK that some short stackers out there will undoubtedly be using this play. The question is, how should another short stacker respond? Rather than come out and say it, let's just look at a hypothethical example.

A short stacker (abcy123, perhaps?) limps from early position. You are dealt QQ on the cutoff. Should you raise? No!!!

Why? Pretty simple. Mr. Abcy123 has just played his hand face-up. If you raise, you know he is going to shove and you are right back to a 54% favorite (vs. AKs), and you are essentially flipping for the pot with no real advantage, which is contrary to why anyone would short stack in the first place. Of course, your hand is clearly too good to fold, so what should you do? Break the short stacker's one Commandment and limp, goddamnit!

Why limp? If it isn't 100% obvious at this point, then I will state the obvious. The AK is 2:1 to hit on the flop. If you limp and someone else raises, you can now get all in as a favorite against one or two players. Not perfect, but certainly better than getting all in against a single player as a 50/50 proposition. Even better still, you get to see the flop in position and you can instantly bail if the dreaded A or K hits or you can even slow-play if you hit a Q and the AK bricks. What could be easier than playing a hand face-up?

Don't be that Guy: An introduction to the "Kruger Complex"

We all know that guy. Unfortunately, most of us have been that guy even if only for a moment). But let me urge you.....DON'T BE THAT GUY!!! In case you are wondering to which guy I am referring, it is the guy that bitches and complains that the game is rigged and yet continues to play anyway. He will swear that the game is rigged, speak knowingly about the "Doomswitch" and try to utterly convince you that the poker site that he plays at deliberately rigs the deck, just to keep him from bankrupting every player on the site and thus ruining their business. Their arguments are sincere, numerous and ultimately, retarded. This kind of mindset not only taxes your emotional bankroll and limits your ability to accept the realities of, and therefore improve your game, but it also proves to everybody around you that you are, indeed, a total douche bag.

Lets start by looking at their arguments and pointing out the stupidity of each in turn:

"Everytime I get all in and am ahead, somebody hits a 4 outer to beat me! This game HAS to be rigged!!!"

This is the most common one. This generally develops from two main shortcomings. One is the general disability of the people dumb enough to believe this shit to accurately figure out the outs that beat them. They also tend to believe that if they are ahead, they deserve to win. The other main reason that this theory stays around is the phenomenon of SELECTIVE MEMORY. The brain doesn't usually bother to register the 3 times out of 4 that AK holds up against AT (that's right, you should only win that 3 times out of 4 so quit your bitching. It is not a guaranteed win.) That is the expected result so your brain doesn't bother to take much notice. It will, however, go bat shit crazy when it fully expects to win and doesn't. The rush of adrenaline, mixed with shock, anger, diappointment, and then some more anger (not to mention the deep seeded psychotic, murderous rage directed at the galloping donkey that beat you) is a pretty potent cocktail of mnemonic devices. No wonder you remember every single bad beat. Of course it seems like you always get sucked out on. In your memory it is 100% true, but in reality the universe tends to work itself out as it should, and you, even in all your poker glory, are no exception.

My next favorite theory is the "deep" one that provides the motivation for the site to cheat you. I mean, every murder (especially of a bankroll) has to have a motive. The motive, the pundits say, is that the poker sites want to keep the fish around, to keep them contributing rake to the site. In order to keep the fish from going broke, they have to take money from the "good" players to keep the fish in the game. They do this through bad beats. This argument is stupid for many reasons. First of all, fish are fish for a reason. They will keep coming back. Period. Have you ever known somebody that thought that they were good at poker just give it up? No. Nor will they. They may take a break for a couple weeks to raise the cash for another deposit, but after they grab some cash from mom's purse, they will be right back. The sites know this. Another debunker for this asinine theory is that it is always the douche bag that is down to the felt that is the biggest proponent of this theory. The only problem is, he is the argument against his argument. If the sites are doing this to share the wealth and keep everybody in the game, why do they keep busting you? Because they know you will come back. Saddle up to the hook and have another worm Mr. Fishy....

Another one of my favorites is that there are just too many big hands online as compared to live. It's just not possible. So the Poker sites must be stacking to deck to make hands more exciting. My response to this is simple. You probably haven't played enough live games or you are a total fucking moron. First of all, you are going to see more large hands while playing online. Even if you are only playing 1 table online, you will still see almost twice as many hands an hour as compared to live play. So if you would see one unusual hand in an hour live, you would see one on average every half hour or so online. Now keep that in mind and factor in that most players are playing anywhere from 2 to 24 tables. If you don't see something weird pretty often, you should be concerned. Not to mention, those bumbass bad beats happen live as well. Just last week Lorin and I went to the local casino. We were playing at a pretty loose $1/2 game and on my fifth or sixth hand I raised with 99. Got 2 callers. Flop came 9 6 4 with 2 spades. I bet $25 and get one caller. The turn card is a beauty...4 of spades. I have the top full house and if that guy was drawing for a flush, he just got there. I check, he bets $35 and I just smooth call. The river is the 7 of spades. I bet, he raises, I shove, he calls and tables 44 for a turned set of quads. Fifth hand at the table. I didn't even have to work my way up to that kind of ass whooping. I just laughed. That is poker and it goes to prove that stupid shit happens live. It happens all the time (maybe someday I will tell you about Frenchy and the "one-out-mouth-piss hand").

The reason that it is so important to not be that guy is that you won't really progress in your game if you find shit to blame your results on. Variance is part of the game. As it is in life. I think that one of the things that draws most of us tho this game is that it is so similar to life. You can do everything right and bad stuff can still happen to you. As a matter of fact, it is guaranteed to happen to you. Poker should be teaching you how to deal with those things, not teach you to write it off on some imaginary admin behind a curtain somewhere who is laughing his ass off trying to get you (see pic above, to see how stupid this is). I have seen that truly intelligent and very gifted poker players that hit a wall in their development because they either don't accept the leaks in their game because they don't see their losses being due to leaks, or they live their lives in a perpetual state of TILT because they sit down at the table believing the world is against them and they are going to lose. And they do. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. So for that reason, don't be that guy. You are wasting your time trying to advance in the game if you will let yourself fall into that kind of trap. Also, don't be that guy because it is fucking annoying.....

If you have any other theories on this, we would love to hear them. Both the silly shit that people say to prove the sites are rigged, or the multitude of realities that debunk them. Personally, I could have written for another hour or two on this but I am a little tired of being sober at the moment, so I am going to take care of that.

Hope to hear from you all on this and good luck at the tables (and away from them as well.....)

Short Stack Sexiness- Low Volume/High Win Rate

The month of May was pretty relaxing. I was still working on my new website, so about 25 hours of these results came from 4-6 tabling. I have also been out shopping for a house, so I was "forced" to take several days off for that as well. Although this win rate (measured in ptBB/100) is not likely sustainable, I am certainly enjoying the current run.

Here are the totals:

Hours: 113
Short Stack Winnings: $7,987
Tournament Winnings: $205
Rakeback: ~$1,500

Total: $9,692
Hourly rate: $85.77