Tinkering With The Nash Equilibrium, Pt. I- Unexploitable Shoving

The situation:  everyone folds around to you in the small blind.  You have 20BBs.  While everyone is confident in their ability to play premium hands heads up out of position, certain hands like weak aces and suited connectors can pose a serious problem, particularly when you are lacking post-flop maneuverability due to your short stack and the inability to launch an elaborate three street bluff.  You can either raise small or limp, though each of them has their own weaknesses.  If you raise small, when you are 3-bet, you will have to lay down a majority of these hands, whether or not you believe that your opponent is bluffing.  Limping will cause a serious imbalance in your range and makes you vulnerable to an in-position opponent whose range is completely undefined.

Two other options remain, and those are folding and going all in.  Since the aggressive move is usually superior, I would opt to go all in.  But which hands are profitable to do so?  A few years back, I was in awe of the Sklansky-Chubukov numbers as outlined in No Limit Hold'Em Theory and Practice.  For those who have not heard, the SC numbers represent the upper limit of your stack size in a $1/2 game where you can move all in from the small blind and have that play be preferable to folding- if you were to flip your hand over first and allow your opponent to play perfectly against you.  

At first I thought this was magic and now I look back at it as being hilariously nitty.  I have since been taught how to use the Nash Equilibrium via StoxEV to shove the highest percentage of hands for the maximum profit.  Though I have no idea how this was solved, I don't need to know how to build a car to drive it, either.

Here are the hands that we can shove for 20BB in a $2/4 game with the rake factored in (which the SC numbers fail to account for).

Not bad, huh?  Now suppose that an astute opponent knows what you are doing and what your precise range is.  How should he defend?

Clearly, there is very little he can do...not to mention that many players are not even comfortable calling with the bottom of this range.  In fact, players can only react to this in one of two ways.  They will either start calling lighter, which is a mistake, or they can call tighter and try and wait you out, making your shoves more profitable.

Although this lesson was fairly remedial, in the next, we will move on to some more advanced related concepts and you with then really begin to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes....

Determining the Correct 3-Bet Calling Frequency

Compared to the previous examples, finding your correct 3-bet calling frequency against a specific opponent is easy, though it takes a large sample.  Unlike 3-bet shoving, however, the penalty for making the wrong decision here is quite severe, being that you are now limiting to only winning one way- showdown.  Other than your opponent's range, you have two other considerations: the rake and the effective stack size.  For this example, I will summon our old friend "KaySmash" with a 20BB effective stack size and a $2/4 setting.  The stakes are very important here and that is due to the impact of the rake, which you will soon see.  In case you don't recall, KaySmash has a 3-bet range of 18%.  For this exercise, we will treat all 3-bets as an all-in shove, particularly since the 4-bet re-shove gets called somewhere in excess of 90%, despite the size of the 3-bet.

Using NoahSD's method as discussed previously, we combine the 18% 3-bet frequency with a quick hand history review off all such hands that were shown down.  For this particular player, we have a range of approximately 22+, A7o+, A2s+, KJo+, and KTs+ (actually 18.5%).  This is a fairly strong and not uncommon re-steal range.

For the simulation, I open min-raised every hand and then called with every single hand against the 18.5% range.  Here is what we get:

Probably a little tighter that you would expect?  The good thing is that this information is not privy to all players and they frequently make mistakes in this category...even when they [think they] understand what a shortstacker is doing.  While a call with with KQs is just a marginal no-no, a call with KQo or KJs is just disastrous!  Take a look at similar calls that often seem correct to players, like 22, A7o, and KJo.  And they say that being suited is overrated?

Even when we reduce the effective stack size to 16BB, the calling range changes only slightly, with the addition that you can now also call with A9o, A8s, and KQs.

A much more dramatic thing happens when we begin begin tinkering with the stakes.  Let's now run the simulation with 20BB's in a $.50/1.00 game.  Here is what we get:

Looks like 44 is now a clear fold with the stronger impact of the rake.  The effects become much more dramatic as we increase the re-steal range, but the evidence is clear- the rake matters.  What's more is that it penalizes the calling player more, since the winning player is the one who pays it, and when you call you only have the option of winning at showdown.

Using Your Holdem Manager for Ultimate Domination, Cont.

In a previous post, I had outlined a plan on how you can sift through your HEM database to gain crushing information on your opponents.  I had offered some specific numbers on Kaysmash, and now I will show you how we can use this information against him with StoxEV.  Here is what we do:

If we assume that he is raising 2.5x 44% of the time, his range is approximately 22+, A2o+, A2s+, K9o+, K2s+, Q9o+, Q8s+, J9o+, J8s+, 76o+, 54s+, 86o+, 64s+.  This does not need to be exact, as he will be folding out the weakest part of this range virtually* every time.  The important thing is getting his raising frequency correct, which we have already determined.

Now we must figure out his calling frequency of 56% (since he is folding 44%).  This not quite exact either, but still easy to figure out, particularly when reviewing my hand histories to find specific examples of hands he has called with.  In so doing, we get a calling range of 22+, A5o+,  A2s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo+, QTs+, JTs.  This is an admittedly broad calling range, but in so doing, he prevents getting heavily exploited by shortstackers.

By factoring in the stakes of $2/4, rake and dead money from the blinds and then running the simulation 5000k times with a 20BB stack, here is what we end up with:

Voila!  The highlighted hands are the profitable reshoving range and the number below is the exact amount in $ that we can expect to profit per trial, on average.  Depending on the stack size, we can begin to shove more or less hands, but now his calling frequency will also be affected as well.  However, if we were to deduct just 3BB from the effective stack (this will not likely change his default calling range), the grid now appears as thus:

Amazing!  Now the next time you hear someone complain about a shortstacker having a mathematical advantage you will have a true understanding of what they are talking about.

For those of you who are interested in this incredible piece of software, please contact me and I can get you a $35 discount. 

*Even good players sometimes get frustrated and go on tilt and will call with a ridiculous hand like 97s.  For players who do this consistently, you now must fold your "non-showdown" hands such as low off-suit broadways and middle suited connectors.

Finding Hidden Value in Pokerworld "Gold Chip Double Up to Cash" SNG's

At Pokerworld, there is currently a promotion offering two separate gold chip sit and goes.  The details are as follows:

12 entrants, top 6 earn cash!

Though the payouts are small at $5 and $15 respectively, the gambler in me is always looking for that freeroll hustle!  As it were, though these are a fairly easy score, they do not fill up often.  Just the other night, I had signed up for the $15 payout one, only to find that hours later, it did not even fill up.  I guess this would be understandable, as there are many gold chip satellite events that offer the potential of a significantly higher payout...if you have a few hours to spare.

However, if you plan on putting in large volume of hands and get started early in the day, you can score some extra EV, often just by sitting down!  How?  Since these take so long to fill up, it is very easy for someone to either have forgotten that they had entered (perhaps even the night before) or have gotten up to do something else and neglected them altogether.  The one I played in had just such a player.  He was "sitting" to left and we all had a field day stealing his blinds.   Having just one such player missing brings your average EV from $7.50 to $8.18.  That's an automatic increase of 9%.  Doesn't sound like much, but that ask any SNG pro if that matters, and they will all tell you that they would kill for such an extra edge!

Just remember to unregister before you leave your computer!

Using Your Holdem Manager for Ultimate Domination

I have felt it and I know you have too.  There's that one guy who you know, you just KNOW has been 3-betting you light and stealing your blinds more often than your HUD would lead you to believe.  This of course brings us to the inherent flaw of using one: it can only give us average statistics, and quite often says little, if anything, about how a foe is playing against you in particular.  But what if we could just take a little extra time to dig a little bit deeper into our database to find out the exact answers to these otherwise simple little questions?

Thus began my quest to find such answers.  Don't get me wrong.  Although I have railed against using a HUD in the past, I have since jumped this hurdle as I began to realize that using one is not something you do, but rather, something that you learn.  Helpful as they are, I was still craving these answers and knew that I could never be EXCELLENT as a shortstacker until I found it out.  Many people are reading this and surely believing that you can just tweak the filters and voila, there you have it.  Nope.  The "Vs Player" filter will only give you basic information such as total winnings and show you hands where said player is sitting at the same table as you.  Even if you try to get clever and filter it further for only hands where the action was unopened and you raised on the button and the big blind 3-bet you, the first thing that you will likely see when you replay a hand is that the villain you were looking to get a read on had already exited the hand.

I tried posting on forums, collaborating with confidants, and even writing to the actual programmers to find out how to do this.  Perhaps I was not explicit enough in that I was looking for actual percentages, but I got the same information over and over. It was simply not functional and led me to the same dead end.

Then the news broke on Pokertableratings about the 40putts/Kinetica/Littlezen shortstacker softplaying scandal.  A member of the esteemed DeucesCracked training site playing under the name NoahSD had taken extensive time to write a long and detailed report using statistical analysis to break down the 3-bet ranges of these players when playing against each other.  Aha!  So there is somebody out there who actually knows how to do this!

I thought for a while on how best to get this information from him, but then just decided to simply ask.  Lo and behold, in less than an hour's time, here is what he replied:

Hi Lorin,
Unfortunately HM isn't really designed to do this. I've been told that they plan to eventually add the stat "Player A's 3-bet % vs. Player B", but I think it's likely to be far in the future.

I used custom software to get my own answers, and frankly I have no idea how it works.  The only way I know how to do this without hiring a programmer to do it for you is with this tedious method:

To get Player A's 3-bet % vs. Player B:

1) Select player B in HM.
2) In the filter menu, go to more filters and add "PFR = True".
3) Run the report.
4) In the bottom half of HM, select the "All" radio button next to "last 500". Right click and select "export all hands to hard drive" and choose a spot to export those hands.
5) Options -> Database Management. Create a new database.
6) Import the hands that you exported into that database. This is a database of all hands where player B raised preflop.
7) Select Player A and run a report with no filter. The 3-bet % that the report shows is Player A's 3-bet % when Player B raised.

If you make a database with all the hands where you raised preflop, you should be able to quickly look at the 3-bet %s that various players have against you.

Hope that helps,
Noah


This was just awesome to me.  Though he might consider this tedious (and technically it is), I am no stranger to tedious work as I have spent countless hours running simulations using Stox EV that could often top 5 minutes for just a single, detailed run.  So what is one to do with such information?

Use it to completely dominate and control your opposition.

That statement being rather vague, I will give an example using a player whom we will term "KaySmash" to show you just how we can put this into practice.  On the HUD, it says that KaySmash opens the button 44% of the time.  I filtered out all hands where I was on the big blind.  Then I created a new database per the instructions and when I loaded it up, I set my filters to "Unopened" and "Button" and set it to run the report against KaySmash.  True to form, he actually was raising that frequency.  All that victimization was just a figment of my imagination!  More importantly, I can now see that he is folding to my 3-bet 44% of the time.  Since I am now armed with the information that he is not attempting to exploit my folding tendencies and just playing by a script, I can hereby assume that he will be treating me no differently when I am in the small blind as well.

While this information is excellent, it allows to me play a perfect shove or fold game against him, but doesn't really allow for much room for true exploitation since he is calling rather frequently.  So digging a little deeper, I then follow NoahSD's plan to find out how often KaySmash is 3-betting me by filtering out the hands where I raise the button and then running the report with KaySmash in the big blind and the small blind has declined to enter the pot.  Here is where it gets really interesting.

KaySmash is 3-betting me approximately 18% of the time, and never, ever just flat calling.  Though I was quite sure of this, since I am dealing with a rotating base of players on any single day, it is often easy to confuse them.  The fact that he is unwilling to get tricky makes him extraordinarily easy to beat.

I will give you guys a chance to digest this information for a few days and then in the next post I will show you precisely how we can use this information for an optimal strategy against this particular opponent.

Peace!

An Open Letter to Drew Chapman

Drew, first and foremost, a disclaimer: I am not writing this to single you out or criticize you. I am writing this publicly because it it something that has been troubling both myself and Travis for some time now and we believe that you and others will be helped greatly by reading this.

Though I sympathize greatly with your most recent downswing, I am concerned that you are dealing with it in the wrong light. What I am referring to is your decision to upload your hands to Poker Luck Meter and posting the results of it.

Yesterday I decided to finally do away with my own EV calculator permanently. The reason? I can not think of a single time that it has either helped or reassure me during a session or afterwards. Though I believe that there is both a time and a place for such tools (which will be addressed in a future post), they are far more likely to be a destructive force in your career than a helping hand. You already know that you are a winning player and with your very honest reflective skills, you know full well the quality of your play in any given day. Having an imperfect tool spit back that information without consideration of your opponent or metagame history and based solely on information gleaned in showdown situations is only likely to make you feel victimized.

As any economist can tell you, the pain of a dollar lost is more than the joy felt by a dollar won. What this translates to is that the visualization of a bad run will make you feel much worse than the knowledge of having run well will make you feel good. Perhaps more importantly, it is the denial of reality in that Sklansky bucks can not be withdrawn to pay your rent or put food on the table.

Of even more to concern to me is that posting a bad EV run puts your excellent blog in serious danger of becoming mediocre. Postings of bad runs on blogs are fodder for the common folk. It also tends to draw a powwow of other people who are anxious to spill their guts about bad beats to whom they expect will provide a sympathetic ear. These people usually have nothing to offer and will threaten to take you down with with them. Your self-awareness and the ability to express it is rare and it is what has drawn you your followers and the great respect of your readership. Don't let that go away. Every bad run hides within it a very compelling moral lesson. Find that lesson, and mine it into gold.

Dealing With the Consequences of Being Results Oriented

I wonder if it will ever be possible to escape the tyranny of the overplayed mantra of "you must focus on the long-term, young grasshopper."  This advice would be great, but only if delivered in a dojo or a confessional or perhaps from high on a mountaintop in Tibet.  Everyone can understand this on an intellectual level- this has never, to my knowledge, been contested.  Yet to repeat it, as I have been guilty of many times in the past is to ignore the mechanisms which truly allow someone to enjoy success in poker for the long run.

When I was outside today talking to my Ipad (an article for another day), I realized that in many situations it is often far wiser to babysit your mood than it is to invite marginal situations.  What am I talking about?  While this will vary greatly from player to player and game to game, what I am referring to for myself personally, as a shortstacker, is usually one of two situations:

1.  I get 3-bet all in and have to decide whether to deviate from the script and make a close call against a seemingly aggressive and relatively unknown opponent, knowing full well that the profit is measured in a few theoretical dollars to defend a raise one-tenth of the size of the call.  The variance is enormous and the metagame benefits are tiny, if they ever even existed in the first place.  After all, does my opponent ever need know that I just folded A9s or 66?  He will most likely just assume I was on a straight steal and forget about this hand 5 minutes later.

2.  Someone open shoves on my big blind from the small blind.  I am holding a hand like A7s.  I know that the call is usually correct, but it is actually much closer than most of you will realize.  As that is a discussion for another time, I will just state the obvious fact that you aren't a monster favorite over anything, particularly after paying the rake.


These two situations are basically identical in that I must risk a relatively large amount of money to score a tiny amount of equity with no ancillary benefits.  Even if I prove that I am willing to take a flip with perhaps somewhat the the worst of it with the benefit of the dead money from the raise or the blind, the chances of being able to leverage the outcome of these situations in any given session is very small.

But wait!  The Mantra of the Long-Term says you should always take a profitable situation.  I will counter that with the other great poker mantra of It Depends.  What does it depend on, exactly?  Why, your mood of course!  If you are feeling good and know that the outcome of making this call won't hurt you or it will be fun to take the gamble, do it.  If you know that making a bad call or losing $160 to defend your $12 raise will scorch you, you should decline.  Better still, if you even have to ASK yourself if it will bother you, I can guarantee you that it will.

Monitoring your mood, I have come to believe, is one of the most important ongoing actions you can take at the poker table.  Virtually every time that we sit down we will experience a wide range of painful consequences that vary drastically in their intensity.  And just as you won't have the energy to run five miles every day when you wake up, your ability to cope with the swings in this game is far from stable and can run the entire gamut, often within a single session.

In my best month ever at the cash game tables where I made over $20,000, this was the exact approach that I took.  I woke in the morning and immediately sat down at just $1/2 tables with a sprinkling of some $2/4 game.  If I felt good, I would begin opening some $3/6 games and perhaps even some $5/10.  If I was having fun or doing well, I would continue playing high, but if I began to dread shoving 75s heads up for $200, I would drop down to whatever level that I felt comfortable at.  By doing this and only taking on the level of pain that I felt I could appropriately handle, I could play longer and more often.  The end result was not only my highest grossing month ever, but also my highest volume as well.

In conclusion, we can not escape that we are results oriented.  This is part of our most basic mental wiring and most of us have as much control over this as we do control over how fast our grass grows.  In essence, if we are to believe in the long-term, we are required to trick ourselves and our natural thought processes.  Basically, we must delude ourselves into seeing things for how they really are.  Rather than to engage in such a bizarre contradiction, I believe that we are much better suited to simply ride the ebb and flow of our emotions than to deny their existence.  We are all results-oriented.  Deal with it.

A Patent on the Sun

Q: What do the upward mobility of women, low overnight interest rates, and Internet poker have in common?

A: They have all created a brain drain on society, to some degree or another.

Do you see why?

I decided to write this post while watching Michael Moore's newest documentary, Capitalism, A Love Story. While I think the man is by and large a serious blowhard, I do enjoy his films because there is always at least a smidgeon of material that is good food for thought.

There was a segment in the movie where he examines the great discovery of the polio vaccine by Joseph Salk. When asked who owned the patent for it, he replied, "The people do. You wouldn't put a patent on the sun would you?". Moore then proceeded to speak of how often some of the brightest minds nowadays moved on to very lucrative careers in finance where they produce nothing of real value, rather than giving their gifts for the betterment of humankind.

David Sklansky, in his brilliant new book, DUCY?, agrees, though he decides to peel back another layer to answer the question of "why"? In the first decade of this century, interest rates were unnaturally low, making the world of finance much easier to succeed in. Money was cheap and getting loans was easy. This made Wall Street the place where top graduates went after school, hungrier to get rich than to win a Nobel.

Though certainly in a category all by itself, the upward mobility of women has adversely affected the American school system. Just a few decades ago, when career opportunities for women were scarce outside of the home, the brightest minds competed for jobs in education. Now that the glass ceiling has been raised for women, they too, have decided to seek out ways to better their own lives in lieu of others.

Lastly, we have Internet poker. The boom ushered in by Chris Moneymaker's historic WSOP win created yet another selfish diversion for today's youth. Of course, you can't really blame them. Why should you sit around in your engineering class when you could be clicking buttons for $150 an hour in your dorm room?

Naturally, I would never think of casting judgment over any of these people who have chosen these paths, as that would be the height of hypocrisy. However, I often wonder what I would be doing with my life had I not stumbled into poker. I have always wanted to be a writer, first by means of fiction and now, more recently, nonfiction. I had always told myself that I would begin to pursue this other side of myself once I reached a plateau in poker where I no longer feared for money each month. Though I have no intentions of quitting the game, I am very happy to acknowledge that I am finally here.

I plan on creating a new blog that has a unifying theme that is very difficult to pin down. It will contain entertaining discussion pieces that seek out simple truths in life or examine existing contemporary wisdom. I would like to recruit some potential writers from this site, being that poker players get a unique glimpse of life that is often obscured to outsiders. If you are interested, please contact me!

Location:Venado Dr,Louisville/Jefferson County,United States

Tap Lightly on the Glass

The following article is a piece that I had written for publication for Parttimepoker.com.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we should do everything we can to avoid educating the fish.  This seemed simple enough to understand, and for the first six and a half years of my career I accepted it as gospel.  If they don't ever play any better, they can't ever beat you, right?  In an online session where you can always find a good game and might never see the same face again, I couldn't agree more.  But what about giving away a few gems in a live setting?

Back when I played baseball as a freshman in college, my team ran an annual fund raiser called the “Night at the Races” at the local Elks Lodge.  This was a rather embarrassing affair where we had to name a small wooden low-rider horse and then "ride" it by sitting on it and peddling our feet as drunken rednecks gambled on the outcome while bellowing out condescending vitriol in a smoky, cramped space.  As if this wouldn't have been memorable enough, it was also the first time I had ever received gambling advice that was just dangerous enough to get me into trouble.  Besides the veritable humiliation, the Night at the Races also spread notable sucker games such as Beat the Dealer and Parish-style blackjack.  Though Beat the Dealer was fun enough at first, I was eventually drawn to the illusion of control blackjack offered that other games did not.  Even though I was failing to exercise this perceived control at the time, the fact that you could handle your own cards and order the dealer to give you more cards seemed good enough.  I knew so little about this game that I didn't even care what the dealer was showing, I just thought that the goal was to get as close to 21 as possible without going over, much like games of paper football in after-school detention.

   

It wasn't long after I sat down that I found myself in a tough spot.  I had a hard 15 and the dealer was showing a 6.  Though I didn’t care what the dealer’s up card was, I did know that hitting a hard 15 meant that I was likely going to be watching my dollar bet sliding into the dealer’s tray.   A couple seats next to me was Paul Burke, our junior catcher and one of the team captains.  He was a great player who would later go on to sign a professional contract with the Atlanta Braves and a person that all the freshmen looked up to.  When Paul noticed my hesitation, he said, "Yelly- you have to expect that the dealer has a 10 for his down card, since there are more 10-valued cards than anything else in the deck."  His basic credibility combined with some quick common sense told me that he was right.  After thinking for a few seconds I decided to do something that I would never have done before- stand on 15 so that the dealer would bust.  To make a long story short, the dealer did just that, I felt like a genius, and thus began what would surely become a very profitable career as a professional blackjack player.  Of course, this would have been lovely, except for the fact that it never happened.  Intermittently over the next 5 years, my little bit of "helpful" knowledge was enough to get me to keep going back for more at our local riverboat casino and bled me to the tune of about $80 a session, which was my average daily take as a waiter at Applebee's.  How strange, I thought.  Why don't I ever win when I am as good as I am?

In the stores of every casino lobby, for $1.99 you can purchase a small card that contains the correct basic strategy for blackjack.  Ask yourself why a casino would sell such a useful item at such a low cost.  Surely the players would play worse without it, leading to a greater short-term profit for the casino, but is allowing them to do this better than earning their long-term business?  Does this card actually accomplish anything?  Yes.  It allows the owner to feel that he is smarter than his fellow tablemates,  even though he is certainly not going to follow the instructions on the card 100% of the time  (he’s psychic, too- don’t forget that).   This concept is not lost on the casino.  They understand full well the value of making that player comfortable within the game while still possessing an unbeatable, albeit smaller edge.  They would rather keep the golden goose alive and hatching than to slaughter it for its meat.

But what about the complete novice poker player?  Is he any different?  Does offering this player (read: potential customer) a bit of sound advice or perhaps recommending a good book really hurt your bottomline?  Should we really take the fly-by-night mortgage broker approach and punish them as harshly as possible on the first confrontation for merely being ignorant?  Much as getting a hot stock tip hardly makes you a solid day trader, no green poker player has ever immediately started crushing the games after being taught that 92o sucks.  Though Paul had no idea what he was doing when he gave me my first good tip about blackjack, he was definitely on to something...

Clearly, helping the semi-competent player who regularly wins the annual perfect attendance award at your local cardroom hardly makes any sense, but creating a long-term customer out of the curious gentleman who strayed a little too far from his regular craps game is sheer brilliance.  Though his motivations for wandering into the unknown might not be entirely clear, two things are for certain: he wants to enjoy himself and he doesn't want to look like a complete fool.  Obviously, berating this man's bad play is such a horrendous breach of good business policy that it warrants no further discussion.  Likewise, being courteous and sportsmanlike should be so obvious that it also need not be mentioned further as well.  But how about the heretical example of offering up a quick tip about something as remedial as pot odds or schooling him about the long odds of drawing to an inside straight and ask yourself which of the following it is more likely to accomplish: creating a dangerous adversary or potentially igniting a long-term interest into a game that on the surface seems so simple but is actually highly complex?  How about recommending a good introductory read such as Winning Low Limit Hold’em by Lee Jones or Getting Started in Hold’em by Ed Miller?  Will this man immediately stop donating to the Average Joe Poker Pro Fund or will this game instantly become more interesting than its upstairs 3-card variant on the blackjack felt?

From where I stand, I can only see the upsides to taking this approach.  After all, these novice players getting their feet wet in the game for the first time can never usurp your knowledge when you are the source of that knowledge.   You now know what they know, but they will never be able to grasp the depth of what you know and what it took for you to get where you are.  The next time they come wandering through and there are several open seats around, don’t be surprised if they choose to sit with you for being the helpful and kind soul that you are.  That tiny bit of knowledge that you drop on them will probably never be particularly helpful, but like Paul’s little blackjack tip, it might get them to keep coming back for many years to come.  After all, as we all know, you can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once.   

Looking Forward into the Month of April

As many of you are aware at this point, Lee Jones made an announcement last week that the Cake Network will be raising the minimum buy in to 30 BB.  Though this worries some people who are glued to their short stacking methods, I am actually looking forward to it because I see it not as an obstacle, but as a professional challenge.  I already have certain plans in place, but I will be spending much time on StoxEV to find new optimal strategies.

Other than that, I just got my new Dell 30 inch monitor on Friday in the mail.  Though the cost of almost $1,000 might seem insanity to some people, I was really turned by the idea of having 2560 X 1600 resolution and being able to fit what I thought would be 12 Pokerworld games with no overlap on one monitor, rather than 9.  Though some people can bring their A-game to 2 or even 3 monitors at once, I am definitely not one of them.  I can only focus on one screen at a time and any games designated to the second might actually be negative EV, though I will never really know for sure.  To my surprise, with the improved resolution of the Dell, I can now fit 20 Pokerworld games with minimal overlap!  That definitely sounds like too much at this point, though I very much expect to be able to profitably play 16 games at once for the first time ever.

As an aside, I also plan on getting back into SNG's, full stacking, and limit hold'em as well.  I have tried my luck at several thousand hands of limit so far, and though I have found the experience to be fun, I do realize that I need some serious brush up work to be very competitive.  I did find myself purposely calling down very light at times, often with very little chance of winning, just to see how the opposition is playing and to make notes.  Thinking about this method give me an idea for a simple piece of advice on what I believe that everyone should take a day to do (myself included), and that is just to watch several tables and just fill up your notes in as much detail as possible.  Try to standardize all of them beforehand so that you will be able to read it later quickly.  Also, try your best not to instinctively judge what your opponents are doing as either right or wrong.  If you see them do something that worked (or at least almost worked) that you would never have considered doing, resist the urge of privately writing them off as a donk.  Rather, do your best to figure out why they would take such a proposition.

In David Sklansky's amazing new book DUCY?, which is 2+2 shorthand for "Do You See Why?" makes a great argument for always using this sort of analysis before making any investment or taking any proposition, particularly when it seems that doing so would be a no-brainer for yourself.  After all, Sklansky makes the powerful point that if you are either unwilling or unable to figure out what the other party is hoping to gain, then most likely YOU are the sucker.

Correspondence With My Horse, Drew Chapman

About a week a half ago, I decided for the first time ever that I would back a player.  I have long been opposed to this idea due to the fact that winning players shouldn't need to be staked and, of course, the awful experiences of numerous other people.  This was different, though.  First of all, Drew never wanted anything more from me than advice, and secondly, he was already a winning player.  Though I won't give out the exact details of the arrangement, I will say that he has a strong winning record in the $8 HUSNG's on the Cake Network, which you can read at his blog, Heads Up Chicago.

After having some correspondence that night with Drew, I realized A) he is probably ready to step it up, perhaps into the $25's and B) that it would be a fun project on my part.  Partaking in this new field started me thinking on what normally goes wrong with such agreements, namely backing losing players and stressing their results.  I feel that these problems can be eliminated by putting someone into higher volume and/or bigger games provided that they are already winning, yet not properly rolled and also that the staking operation should be worthwhile as a recreational cost.  After all, if you are ever stressing the results of your horses, you are just playing above your roll!  I also believe too many people are involved in staking because they are trying to get rich.  I believe that other than the legendary staking operation of Sheets and Bax, you should do it with the goal in mind of creating a small supplementary income stream.

All that being said, I strongly urge anyone who is interested to check out Drew's Blog.  Though it is early in the making, it is very clear that he is going places in this game and the quality of the writing and analysis is just plain excellent.  Currently he has hit a rough patch and looking for advice on how to break out of it, though I think he has already figured it out.

Hey man. Thanks a lot for your encouraging comments on the blog, that means a lot.

Things are going okay. I still haven't completely "recovered" as it were from the slump of the last week-two, but things are looking up a bit. I had a decent session the other day, made about $60 in 3 hours. Of course, later that day I lost about half of that back in the course of two games, but it was at least, finally, a winning session in which nothing went too seriously or bizzare-ly awry.

In terms of the 25s, my record for this week is 8 wins/9 losses, so not great but not horrible. I've been good about employing focus and judgement, which has helped. 

I played a little recreationally last night. I have discovered a new way to play poker purely for fun when I'm not concerned about profitability or over-analysis of my game [read=when I'm tired/want a beer]: don't play hold 'em. Specifically, I hit up the micro and low stakes 8-game SNGs on Stars, which can be tons of fun, as I really enjoy razz and 2-7 draw without having the same degree of technical knowledge of those games as I have with HE...
Anyway, tomorrow I get back on the horse (no pun intended). Perhaps I'll have a little pre-game study session with Moshman's book and/or some videos to prime my brain, as well as possibly some physical exercise. I have been experimenting with such tactics to see how they affect my play, to some success; specifically, I've noticed that when I've spent part of the day out being mentally & physically active in other ways, my game benefits... I will let you know how things shape up. Thanks again for all your support!


-Drew




Having games that you play for "fun" is always important.  Ironically, when you are not playing for money, per se, you are often encouraged to try those things that you always wondered about that might be able to push your game to that next level, yet the fear of "playing incorrectly" (according to what we we THINK we know) often paralyzes our actions.  Besides, when playing for fun when are never auto-piloting the decisions and we actually become much more mentally active than we normally are when trying to play "well."


-Lorin




Something just occurred to me, and I wanted to run it by you. I think that i've been thinking about this stake the wrong way, and I'll tell you why. So far I've been treating the $25 games too much like the $5s & $10s; that is, I game select for opponents with a negative ROI, and play them with the same mindset and in basically the same way as I play my lower-stake, & mostly lower-skill, opponents, because I play them during the same grind sessions through which I try to eke out my profit. This raises two problems: 1) I'm not in the right mindset. I'm grinding, mostly playing ABC poker because that's mostly all that's needed to beat the smaller games. This means I'm not using these $25s to really push myself and learn how to play the "new" game at the higher level, and I'm leaving myself vulnerable to opponents who are playing a more nuanced game/whose focus is fresher/etc. And, 2) the losses that I take from the $25s have a more pronounced psychological effect on my session, for the reasons I mentioned in my previous blog posting. If I win $30 over the course of 4 matches and then lose most of it in one, the degrading effect on my confidence and momentum is significant, and probably makes me less effective. Perhaps if I played on your stake in exclusive sessions, or otherwise separated these matches from my regular grind, it would have an overall positive effect. Thoughts? I should prob turn this into a blog post...


-Drew




Hmmm....since you are very careful about game selection, there is no way of being certain that the fish in the bigger game are any better or worse than those in your regular game.  One thing that is for certain is that since the losses do affect you more acutely at the higher level, some part of you must be playing a little more weak-tight.  If this is true, then your opponents will be playing a proportionally more aggressive game than yourself, making them appear to be tougher, though it might only be you who is getting weaker.  I strongly suggest that you stick with your normal game, but if a player is doing something that you find confusing or frustrating, it is best just to move on.  Even though you are feeling down at the moment, you will adjust as your pain threshold increases.    


I do agree with the idea of game and stake segregation.  It is a known fact that when playing multiple stakes side by side, the larger game affects your judgment and you will pay less attention to the smaller game.  Rather than reiterate an article that has already been executed greatly, I will turn you over this link at Pocket Fives when it has already been explained, particularly Jennifear's comments at the bottom.


-Lorin

Lorin Offers to Settle the Bet

An Open Letter to Jolly Toper

The following post was originally going to be a reply to several comments by "jolly toper" in some of our recent posts.  However, when planning out in my mind what I wanted to say, I realized that the information I am about to put forth was too important to risk having it be missed by our regular readership.

Congratulations, Ronnie Kruger.  Rather than joining and being the third best player on "Team Charlatan", you have chosen to burn your bridges with Travis and claim the spot as the #1 player on Team Barfly.  I am failing to see how this has done you any good.  Rather than aligning yourself with players who have achieved the position that you used to seek and are capable of pulling you up, you are choosing to keep company with people who lack the technical knowledge and experience to ever prove any of your theories about poker wrong.

Being a long time friend of yours, you should be happy that Travis has finally taken the step to achieve a goal he has sought after for a very long time.  Now that you are attempting to dismiss and diminish his recent  accomplishments in a hurtful way, you have failed to seize the golden opportunity that had lain before you, and that is to simply ask him: how did you do it?  Even better, ask him what he did that you did not.

I'll tell you what that is.  Travis did not get there by possessing an overabundance of intelligence or natural ability, as he has neither :).  Both of these traits will only get you about 10% of the way there, anyhow.  What Travis did was keep pushing through when the experience reached the height of his pain threshold.  It was neither easy nor was it fun.  Though he may have been able to do this on his own, he had me by his side the whole time to make sure that he never gave up.  I supplied him with the knowledge and the standard and he made that extra push on his own.  It was nothing more and nothing less.  Though I can hardly take the credit for what Travis did by virtue of his own fortitude, he would gladly tell you that he could not have done it without me.

As a friend, Travis would have been willing to do the same for you.  Instead, you retreated back into the purgatorial shell that I like to call the "transition phase" and chose to discredit him rather than face where you are lacking.  The transition phase is the stage that exists when you are clearly the best player in your regular game and are entertaining thoughts about going pro.  However, making this transition is like going from being the high school basketball star to riding the bench on your college team.  It strongly arouses the insecurity that comes from being the best in the local pool to testing yourself against those who are clearly better than you.

Most potential pros will never get out of the transition phase, as they feel that acknowledging the accomplishments of others somehow lessens their sense of self-worth.  They prefer to label those with better results than themselves as "lucky", or take your unique position that we have contrived this massive illusion to mask the fact that we are just jacking each other off in our basements while collecting unemployment checks.  Players in the transition phase find it too painful to come to grips with their weaknesses as players and forcefully block any attempts by others to help them.  I would know, because I have been there.  Now at this stage in my career, I wish that I had taken more steps to surround myself with people who knew more about the game and played better than I did.  Unfortunately, at the time, my ego just would not have allowed it and I have suffered by choosing to pass up on the experience.

I doubt that this is what you had originally set out to accomplish in poker.  While being the best player in your home game might garner you respect on a small scale, you know that you can never respect yourself for having given up on your dream of being a professional.  So rather than trying to pull people back down to your level, get up off the floor and join them instead.  Now that you have officially severed your ties with both myself and Travis, you have to surround yourself with new poker friends.  Hopefully, they will know more about the game than yourself and thereby be in a better position to uplift you.

The good news is that you aren't done yet- not by a long shot.  Part of what makes poker so great is that you can take it up at any point in your life and you do not have to rely on the judgment of others as to whether or not you succeed.  It's completely meritocratic.  So if you still want make it in the poker world, stop reading this blog right now and pick up a poker book. You hold nothing but contempt for what it contains, anyhow.  However, if you want to stick around for one last piece of advice, here it is:  My baseball coach in college once gathered the team up and told us about how Tony Gwynn, the best hitter alive, would take 400 swings in front of a mirror every single day.  Then he said, "if Tony Gwynn has to do it that many times, then how many times do you have to do it?"

Stand right now in front of that mirror. Now take a long, hard look at yourself, and start swinging away.

The Prop Bet

First of all, I would like to congratulate Travis for officially quitting his 9 to 5 and going pro this month.  Fittingly, he not only had his first $2k day this month at the cash game tables, but his second and third as well.  Now that he is running hot and a little ahead of me in the winnings category for the month, we thought we should run a special little prop bet to see who can earn more.  The rules are simple: $ won and rakeback count, bonuses do not.

WHAT'S AT STAKE

The winner gets to dress as the pimp and the loser gets to dress up as the ho.  And oh yeah, we wear these outfits out in public at Travis's bar, The Golden Nugget.

It's very important that Travis get humbled immediately, else he start thinking that this whole poker thing is easy.  Besides, my massive ego simply can not allow this to happen.  We figured that this plenty demeaning, but if anyone else out there has a better idea, we would love to hear it!

Run Your Poker Game Like a Business…(Part I)

One of the most common things Lorin and I talk about nowadays are concepts concerning poker that have nothing to do with the play at the table. For any aspiring pro, or even for somebody looking to advance recreationally, there are a myriad of other factors to consider. We have touched on this topic before but I think that it bears it’s own blog post at it is some great advice gleamed from our successes (but more often from our mistakes) that doesn’t give away strategy to those Short Stack Haters that read the blog just to get a glimpse at our playbook.

There is no doubt that 95% (if not more) of the system we use at the table came from Lorin. The only reason that he keeps me around is that I have a much larger experience base for life factors away from the table. As he has really started to make some serious money, he needed someone to help him out with the other complications that inevitably arise from a rapid ascent into unknown territories. It worked out for both of us. He gave me the play book for shortstacking and I gave him advice on financial issues, marketing, “significant other” issues etc. (while we both got to hang out and waste time under the guise of “meetings”).

To get to the point, I have always believed that there is an optimal way to do EVERYTHING. The difference between “optimal” and “adequate” will often be quite small but their importance cannot be overstated. This should be apparent to students of the game. The difference between being a 1.00bb per 100 winner and a 1.25bb per 100 winner is monumental. While that seems like a tiny margin, (especially if a bb is only $1 or $2) over the course of a year, that is the difference between living in you grandma’s basement and buying your first house.

So, in order to give some hard learned advice to our loyal Short Stack Hero readers, here are some points that will hopefully help you make the transition to pro or help you out with some of the issues arising from that transition if you are already there….


1. Find the best Vendors…..
Before I sold The Bar that I owned, I got very good at looking for the right business partners. Some people may call them Vendors or Suppliers, but I always looked at them as business partners and that may have an ingredient of my success (and I will take this oppurtunity to brag, I won MAXIM magazine's "Great American Neighborhood Bar Search" a year and a half after I took over). Look for the best deal. Just because a certain company (poker site) is the one everybody uses, doesn’t mean that it is the best fit for you. If I found a liquor rep that was hungry and creative, I knew that we could make each other a lot of money if we worked together. There is a reason that Lorin and I both play predominately at POKERWORLD and speak so highly of RAKEBACKNATION. They have been fantastic partners (and us telling you this doesn’t hurt our game at all). Everybody Plays at PokerStars and FullTilt. But why? They are all the public know. They have great marketing plans. But ask yourself, what pays for that marketing and does it help you. Tilt may be superior to PokerWorld when it comes to High Stake game availability. But you know what? I don’t play $10 $20NL and up so I don’t care. Pokerworld has plenty of games at the stakes that I play and a great rotation of tournaments so the rest is just window dressing. But here is the real kicker. Smaller sites pay better because they are looking to build market share. If I was running a promotional event at the Bar, I didn’t approach Budweiser for prizes or financial support because they don’t budget much for Promotions because they don’t have to. They own the market. Coors, however, was awesome to work with because they want some of Bud’s market share. Same with Poker sites. Last Month I raked $4,711.63. With the rake chase that was done with RakeBack Nation, I earned a bonus of $575. A player that raked the same as me at Full Tilt only earned a bonus of $75. Not to mention that I earned 33% Rakeback while he only earned 27%. So, for the same amount I play I earned $2146 ($4700 x .33 = $1551 + $575) while he earned $1344 ($4700 x .27 = $1269 + $75). I won’t even mention the almost $800 I made from PokerWorld’s Gold stack bonus’ (although I guess I just did). So by choosing the right partner and nothing else, I made $782 extra last month. In a year, that is $9384. And that doesn’t require getting better at the game at all, just running your “business” better. I have nothing bad to say about FullTilt as I still play there (ie. Use that vendor) for some things, I just found a better fit to my current business model with PokerWorld as my major “business partner”. It is just choosing the smartest way to do business.


2. Stay up to speed on the Market.

Almost every industry has industry related material such as books, magazines, seminars etc. Poker is no different and actually has a HUGE volume of material available. And I am not just speaking of books on strategy, but also magazines, pod casts, websites etc. It is important to stay abreast of the “market” to help keep up with trends and be knowledgeable about your business. Not to mention, it is a great source of information for tips on the game such as the emergence of the UTG bet as a steal, common SNG strategies etc. It also fills you in on broad subjects like the UIGEA and the legal battles over Poker that may be going on in your state or country. If you owned a bar, you would need to be aware of possible changes to the liquor law. This is no different. After all, if you are going to be a pro, you should be an expert in the field.


Next Week I will address some other issues such as surrounding yourself with the right people and using all the tools (especially technology) to your advantage.

Loss of Focus to Focus of Loss

Today I ended the session fairly early after booking my largest loss of the year to date of $1,400.  More importantly than that, this was my first loss of the month.  Since winning every session is not particularly interesting, I decided to "make" this an opportunity to write a new post.  But first, take a leap of faith with me.

WINNING EVERY SESSION IS BAD FOR YOU

Until you have experienced this personally for a large sum of money, you will consider this complete and utter horseshit.  I don't blame you.  Several months ago, when said Mr. Kruger was challenging the credibility of my results, he questioned (at least to Travis, who passed the message on to me) why I would not be at home playing day and night and enjoying the fruits of my automatic money machine.  This is a very valid question and it has many answers, but the first and foremost, and the one by which I hope to make you understand is this: you lose the hunger.

Here is my analogy.  When you go the entire day without eating and decide that you will order pizza tonight, you engorge yourself when it first arrives (at least I do!).  Those first few slices are amazing but as your belly gets full, the pizza, while it may taste the same, declines in pleasure and you quickly find something else that is more entertaining.  Though I have stated this before and it has been stated many times before (as the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility), the reason this is bad for you is that when the money rolls in, there is no urgent need to improve.

To this day, I can not think of any time in my playing career where I was truly focused during a rush.  The facets of my game where I need improvement are always present and I make a mental list of them, yet there is no pressing need to fill those gaps as long as you are winning.  However, when that downswing hits, you are forced to look at your performance for the session and make a checklist of all the things that you could have done differently and with the pain of loss, the hunger quickly sets back in.

Now I am not saying that this imperfection within yourself is something that you should strive to eliminate completely once you finally get to experience it.  No professionals are perfect, rather, they are just more aware of their imperfections and can bounce back quicker when they arise.

The Midwest Poker Regionals: How Deep Are You?

Every time a tournament is played there is always at least one person who is asking "what is the structure"?  If the stacks are deep and the levels are long everybody is happy and everybody has an advantage.

Wait a minute.... Surely a long structure can't be good for everyone, can it?  Naturally, it can't.  This weekend I got a great opportunity to find out just how wrong this idea is in practice.  I am quite certain that starting with 15k in chips at blinds of 25/50 and hour long levels was the milkshake that brought all the boys to the yard to plunk down their $2,100.  Did it do them any good?  No.  Did it do me good?  Well, yes and no.

Here is what happens when you are this deep and the money is this significant:

Everybody gets scared and thinks they need the nuts to play a big pot.  Being that this was far and away the largest tournament around, the money spent for most people was very large and the anticipation leading up to the event was even bigger.  Not only did they not want to lose their chips, they were also afraid of losing out on getting their $2,100 worth of entertainment for the day with no other equivalent outlet for another few months, at least.  If you are in a position to play such an event, here is what you can expect and how you can get an advantage.

IMPLIED ODDS

Starting at 300BB deep, getting huge implied odds is a no-brainer...there aren't any!  Though this certainly flies in the face of anything you have been taught, a simple dose of common sense says that it shouldn't. Implied odds rely on a willingness of your opponent to cash off his chips to you.  If everyone is afraid of committing large portions of his chips at any point in the hand, then they are just not willing to give you implied odds.  I saw guys with big pairs, trips, and sets shut down immediately after getting check raised small on the flop and often times after just being flat-called.  After all, if the guy with a known big hand isn't willing to give action, then you definitely can't expect the guy with the lesser hand to be pushing real hard either.  In essence, perception becomes the consensus reality so if you had planned on playing a big pot, you had better have the nuts or....

LAUNCH A BIG BLUFF

This would have been trivially easy.  When you are this deep and everyone is playing this straightforwardly with big money on the line, this is how you play big to win big.  Three betting was virtually non-existent in the first 4 levels and few hands even went to show down.  Would I have had the guts to do this?  I am not quite sure, but I did perfectly well for the first 6 hours or so making lots of small bluffs with a success rate that was close to 100%.  Here are a few examples:

A weak player limps in early position and I notice that this guy is capable of peeling light on the flop but not willing to take any hands to showdown.  So I limp on the CO with 75o and if he checks, I will fire 3 barrels no matter what.  The older gentleman in the BB is of no concern as well because he shares the exact same tendencies, so barring anything unusual, I will try to bluff both of them on the turn if necessary, though I would probably give up on the river if they both got that far.  In any case, the flop is K94.  The guy checks and calls as expect and the BB folds.  Turn is a T and he checks and calls another 1/2 pot bet.  The river makes a backdoor flush and though my first instinct is to check because no one could ever believe I hit that card, I realize that I am not competing with poker competency, but their fear of failure and looking foolish.  So I another 2/3 pot and he grunts and lays it down.

#2.  A very loose, though seemingly decent post-flop player limps in middle position for 150.  I decided that I will make a play at him on my button if no one else enters, despite what my cards are.  I look down to see 96o.  First, I should give a little background info on this guy.  The very first hand of the tournament he limps in EP with AA.  He gets heads up with the BB, who check calls a board of 764 to the river and then leads out for $500 when the straight hits (about 1/3-1/2 pot), which he obviously has.  The loose player laughs disgustedly to himself and then flips over his aces.  Not a huge laydown technically, yet many people could not bring themselves to do this.  Personally I feel that this was a huge mistake on his part to show, but I happily file this piece of information away since I might be able to use it later.  Secondly, I see that he is perfectly willing to lead at a lot of flops, yet is not paying off on the river.

So I do what any reasonable player would do and raise my Big Lick to 600.  The flop is KT7.  He checks, I fire my annoying half pot bet and he grunts and folds.  It is duly noted that once I again I plan on firing at least two barrels and then making a judgment call on the third, if necessary.

KNOW WHEN TO SHOW

Just as bluffing indiscriminately should never be done, showing your cards should also be meticulously planned.  As I soon found out after my first table broke and I got moved, if you are winning too often without a showdown, it is crucial to show a good hand.  Here is where I feel that I made a rather small, yet significant mistake.  I had about 22,000 in chips with blinds of 100/200 and made my typical raise of 500 with KQo and got a caller behind as well as both blinds.  The flop was beautiful as it came KK7 rainbow.  Being that these guys often took off a card on the flop, I decided to go ahead and bet 1,000 and the loose player behind me whom I had already tangled with several times decides to be my only customer.  An ace hit on the turn which did me no harm but looked as if it would totally scare away any action so I decided to check it.

Though some people might advocate firing again in case he has a king, I just don't consider this to be good advice because if he has a K, the money is going in anyway and the chance that the ace really helped him is minimal and would only allow me to get one more bet from him if he does have it.  However, checking gives him a chance to think he can take it away.  He doesn't oblige and checks behind and a 9 falls on the river.  I bet 2,000 and he quickly folds and I muck my hand.  Being that we had played several pots and has now been moved off of all of them (I still had not showed a hand yet), he naturally inquires as to what I had.  I told him the truth, that I had KQ and even mentioned that I should have showed that one.

It was then that I realized that I had made a mistake.  Even though I had the goods about half of the hands in which I had won, the only thing they thought about me what that I was a complete fucking thief.  After all, though I had previously flopped a set and also had trip K's, they didn't know this.  By not establishing my honesty, per se, I actually encouraged "Wild" Bill, an old timer from Tennessee who wasn't particularly good, to take a shot at me a short while later on a scary turn card because he said "he keeps raising."

The hand in question occurred when I was on the cutoff and was playing my rush with a K4s.  The flop came down 764 with two spades.  Bill, who had been playing very loose and calling often in his blinds, decided to check and call my half pot bet.  When the A of clubs hit on the turn and he checked again, I saw an opportunity to move him off a better hand or get him to fold a straight draw.  I bet half pot, about 2,000 and he check raised me 6,000.  Did he have it?  It was hard to say since he was playing so loose, but then again, I only had a pair of fours which could have been good at showdown had I gotten there, yet my own thieving image could have spurned him to make that check raise when an ace hit that also completed a flush.  Excluding things like chaos theory, had I showed the KQo hand, I would have had more confidence in whether or not he was bluffing.  Bill showed plenty of inclination in that direction and though the result could easily have been the same, I would now have had a better opportunity to read how Bill was reading me which could have led to a profitable play in the future.

This highlights one of the more interesting aspects of the game in that what is real is not actually what happens, but rather what people believe happens.  The information flowing around the table amongst common competition tends to be very polarized.  In other words, you are either a thief or you aren't.  In Bill's opinion I was the former and I am sure that everyone around the table more or less agreed with him.  Therefore by betting the flush card in this instance and then folding, I was only confirming their suspicions and it was now going to be harder to pull of my tricks in the future.  Being that you have more shitty hands than good hands and miss more flops than you hit, I would rather preserve my ability to steal than to get a small bet paid off, since no one was really paying off big anyway.

GETTING PAID OFF (HOPEFULLY)

Now that I was down to 26k in chips after a high of 32k, I was delighted to pick up KK under the gun.  With blinds of 200/400 with a 50 ante, I made my standard raise of 1,000 and was hoping that Bill would take this opportunity to show me that a naive greenhorn couldn't sit at his table.  He said, "I'll be your huckleberry" and called.  The action folds around to Megan in the BB on my immediate right.  She has already proven to be nitty and unimaginative, though solid.  With 12k left in chips, I am excited when she 3-bets it to 4,000.  I announce that I am all in and after some deliberation, Bill folds.  Megan turns over AQs and the board runs her out a four card straight to take the pot.  Though it was my somewhat laggy image that caused this otherwise good result, it is very important to remember that preflop your edge can only be so big and therefore, it is MUCH more preferable to win a lot of pots uncontested.

At this point I was in quandary. Though I wanted to update my Twitter, it was now crucial that I be present for every single hand.  I also didn't want to sound like I was whining, because hey, that's poker!  So with a stack now of 14k, I was looking to either chip up or make a big move.  With the blinds rising however, open-limping, which was previously very common, was occurring much less frequently.  Here was my plan:  the new guy who had been moved to my immediate left was playing very nitty and was neither raising much nor calling any raises.  My goal was to force the action if we got to play heads up.  With his stack at about 30k, I was virtually certain that he wouldn't be calling open shoves with anything less than 99+ and AQ+.  However, my short stacking experience armed me with the knowledge that even if he was calling much lighter, it was still profitable to shove any two cards!  However, as my stack dwindled to 10k and the blinds now at 300/600 with a 75 ante, he would be much more willing to call with for 1/3 of his stack than for about 1/2.  So do I make a move now or do I wait?

Here is my philosophy about tournaments.  Once your stack dwindles beyond a certain point, the value of your tournament life plummets, especially if you are intent on winning the event or at least getting to the final table.  With 46 out of 102 players left, I was still a long ways out and was not planning on scrapping by the entire time.  My stack also needed just a little push so that I could successfully threaten other players with some power moves, which I was ready and willing to do.

With Smitty limping UTG (the player I had been tangling with) and a very laggy player limping two spots after him, I looked down to see A2o in the SB.  With 10k left, there was really only two options here: shove or fold.  Calling was not an option since I would only get action post-flop if I was beat and flopping a great with with A2o is a lot more difficult than most people realize.  In other words, I would be a waste of 300 chips.  Now I understand how this might look, but hear me out:

1.  The only hand I had showed this entire time was KK.
2.  Smitty was playing very loose with a combination of raising and limp-calling and showing no inclination to limp re-raise.  He had about 50k.
3.  The LAG behind him had a very large stack, but showed that he was willing to raise with any two cards.  When I first sat at the table, I even saw him raise Smitty and Bill with A2o.   Though I understand that he is certainly not doing this every time, it is much like playing blockers in PLO- he could have such a hand and be willing to call, but the prior action makes it much less likely so.  My main concern was that he would call with a small, yet larger ace or a small PP.
4.  The BB behind me is almost never calling.
5.  Any time you hold an ace, you have a shot against a player's entire range unless he holds aces.  Given Smitty's tendencies and the fact that I held a blocker, this almost never occurs.

Finally, #6, the X-Factor
Smitty and I had been chatting it up and this makes him somewhat more likely to fold in a very marginal spot, rather than eliminate his new buddy.

So combining the fold equity, the value of future fold equity by increasing my stack by 30%, my suckout equity, and the diminished value of my stack, I choose to shove.  The BB and Smitty fold as expected, but then the LAG calls and surprisingly shows me ATs.  I don't know why he chose to overlimp in this spot but I still spike my 2, only to be rivered by a broadway straight.

Given the outcome of the hand, I am still very happy with the decision I made, specifically because it was all meticulously planned.  Even though I was able to small ball my way to doubling my stack, I was very unlucky to have lost my tournament life to the only two large pots that I had played.  Once again, that is poker!

Rush Poker, Part II- Strategy Tips

Not too long ago I heard a brilliant saying that I would now like to quote: the man who understands how will always have a job, the man who understands why will always be his boss. Much like leading the horse to water, this post is not just going to be about what I think is good to do, but more importantly, why it should be done.  In the poker world, and often even among many low-mid level professionals like myself, there is an obsession with how to do things and emulating the people who do them well.  Those that developed these concepts and strategies did so because they understand why they work.  If you can follow and understand the "why's" that I will provide below, you should soon be developing similar strategies on your own and will gain deep insights to the intrinsic nature of the complexities of poker.

I will begin by explaining what I like to do on the button and then follow it up with a rather long, yet easy to understand explanation.  The good news is that you can easily execute the "how" for a profit without understanding the "why", yet fully grasping the "why" is necessary if you want to excel.

THE HOW: I open min-raise ANY 2 cards and follow it up with a 2BB c-bet if against only one opponent.  If both blinds call, I give up unless I hit something good.

THE WHY: Stealing the blinds is important.  In fact, it's huge.  As David Sklansky has said in several of his earliest works, all hands of hold'em begin as a battle for the blinds.  This concept is so simplistic and obvious that the fact alone makes it easy to overlook.  Those who believe that the game is just about winning huge pots are slowly losing money to people who are comfortable with this very basic truth about the game.  Min-raising makes this very easy, as it is a simple odds play and therefore only needs to work 57% of the time to break even since it is so cheap to do.  I can already guess what some of you might be thinking: if this is so easy and effective to do, why not do it all the time in any kind of game?  To answer this, we must now ponder the flip side of this equation by asking "why not?"

WHY NOT?  What prevents you from doing this normally is your table image.  This is one of those concepts that I had previously explored in theory for short stacking (in which case it is a very sound strategy and some players actually use it or something similar).  Even otherwise nitty and uncreative players would soon go to great lengths to prevent you from doing this and though your great hands would get payed off nicely, your marginal to medium-strong hands would suffer greatly after the flop, as it would be very difficult to figure out what to do with a hand like QJ when the flop is J95 and you face a large check-raise by a TAG.  Naturally, much more of your hands fall into the second category.

WHY NOW?  The constant shifting tables in a large player base make it very unlikely that you will face the same lineup in the blinds in the same steal situation more than a couple of times per session at most.  The small blind, who has made half the investment as the big blind, has little incentive to stick around with a couple of turds in the mere hope that he can make a 3-bet bluff to pick up your $2 raise when he can fold immediately and hope to pick up aces on the very next deal...even if he knows what you are up to!  Given that he can move on to the next hand with precious little thought, it is easy to assume that this is exactly what he will do, approximately in the ballpark of 60-70% of the time on average.  Essentially, this means that you are only facing one opponent over half of the time and his cards are completely random and you will have position on him the entire hand.  Knowing this, as well as the strong incentive to try to cash in on another lotto ticket immediately if he folds makes him more inclined to refuse to get tricky and just pass.

Attempting to steal the blinds in Rush poker is very similar to a back alley mugging in the real world.  With no witnesses around, your crime is not only more likely to succeed, but also very importantly, it is less likely to face retributive action from others.  Once they have folded their hands, the other players have been moved away from the crime scene and allow you to do your dirty work without their scrutiny.  While this has no bearing on the current situation, it makes it more probable that you can continue to get away with this for a long, long time.

But doesn't raising the minimum give him great implied odds?  Absolutely not...in fact, his implied odds are very poor.  A little known secret about implied odds is that they are only available when you choose to cooperate with your opponent and pay him off with a lesser hand.  Therefore if you are raising with trash, I recommend that you only commit a large portion of your chips if you make at least two pair or better.  Too many people instinctively believe that implied odds are a necessary component of specific two card combinations like 98o or 54s.  Unfortunately for them, flopping a large hand with their own breed of trash will occur very rarely and far more rarely will you have a hand that you are willing to commit with yourself.  The likely result is that they will frequently call with their pus and then fold to your tiny continuation bet.  Furthermore, by keeping the pot very small, you can fire another cheap bet of around 1/2 pot if your opponent check calls and a scare card comes on the turn.

The min-raise also has a very strong and yet subtle psychological aspect to it.  When you make this play, since calling is very cheap and folding feels compellingly weak, your opponents will often become indignant and call with a hand that has no post-flop potential out of stubbornness alone.  The small post-flop pot combined with a complete lack of information of you as a player makes them more likely to fold than normal because the incentive to play the hand out with some potentially very difficult decisions is simply not worth the hassle to many players.

WHAT ABOUT FACING LIGHT 3-BETS?  The question is: is it really light?  Here is how I would recommend determining if the 3-bet is indeed light.

1.  The small blind has 3-bet you.  For the reasons above, the incentives for the small blind to both plan and execute this kind of bluff are simply not there.  He also does need to be at least somewhat concerned that the BB might have picked up a large hand behind him, and although not likely, this is just one more facet to discourage this play.

2.  His stack is below 100BB.  Since short stacking is not allowed in these games and the typical reg is always sitting with a full stack, you must assume that anyone with less is either A) almost broke B) playing on scared money and C) just not all that likely to be very good.  Playing with a stack of 20BB or less can give you an automatic advantage and 100BB or more gives you maximum maneuverability against most players at the table.  Anything in between is no man's land and all good or aspiring players know this.  What's more?  Good players are also the ones who understand that defending your blinds matters.  Therefore, if a player has less than 100BB, be apt to give him credit for what he is representing.

3.  You see that your opponent in the BB has more than 1 entry in the game and you see him playing day after day.  This is the one who is most likely to be pushing back at you with air.

It is important to realize that the advice I am providing here is not new or original.  It took me about 15 minutes of play to realize that this was possible and therefore it was no surprise to be reading about it by other more well-known players.  When advice such as this becomes wide spread, good counter strategies are likely soon on the way.  The obvious solution would be to start light 4-betting opponents who fit the above criteria.  This was also very clear when I noticed that my legitimate 4-betting hands were causing most 3-bets to fold.  In light of this observation, I find that flat-calling with your best hands is preferable to 4-betting.

Originally, I was hoping that HUD's would never enter the scene.  This is not because I don't believe in them as a strategy tool.  After my rants against them this past summer, I came to grips with the fact that I must suck it up and learn them or put myself at a serious disadvantage to those who harness their power.  I did not want them in this game because I felt that this gave me a better edge against certain sectors of my competition who would be weakened without them.  I am also concerned that they will hurt the profitability of the plays recommended above, but these plays are sturdy and powerful enough in their own right that they should be effective in this particular arena regardless.

Given the news that PT3 and HEM are now offering fixes to make their HUDs usable in Rush poker, I will have to take this advance into consideration as I delve further into this game.  At this point in time, I have not had the opportunity to incorporate the new HUD features into this game and therefore am not qualified to comment on their effects (or lack of) at this time.  Hopefully, you guys who are reading this and experimenting with this game will try this out and share some of your insights on its effectiveness.  In a future post, I will supply and examine some hand examples in these situations with some in-depth commentary.  Best of luck!