Tricky AA Hand

Here is another submission by a student.  The play is standard from pre-flop to turn, but the river action is where things get interesting, especially when we begin to consider alternate paths that this hand could have taken.


 

Player Commentary on Turn:

Opponent is a pretty solid reg.  I'm not sure what to do at this point.  I feel like if I bet I might get some value from a worse FD calling but can't really think of a Kx or Qx hand that calls the flop here.  I'm free rolling against all other Ax hands but still felt like I shouldn't bet here since I can't think of almost any hand that can call, so I check.

Short Stack Hero's Analysis:

With a reg in the BB, he can have almost any hand in a 3-way pot, but you can be reasonably certain that his cards are almost always suited and/or connected in some way.

I don't suspect he has a set or made straight yet, because this is not the kind of flop that a reg (hero) c-bet bluffs at when up against two callers. If he was already there, and especially with the size of the pot already, I suspect he check/shoves and merges his range with all his draws. More likely, he has a pair/gut shot combo, or some kind of flush draw that he doesn't feel is good enough to check shove, which incidentally is probably not enough good enough to flat the flop, in my opinion.  For the record, I don't think he has a flush draw and I would weight the option towards the former.

The turn card sucks, even though you picked up a draw. Your straight has absolutely no value, obviously. If he were to lead more than 1/2 pot, you clearly have to fold, since he would be challenging an ace or overpair to call, and holding the nut draw, your implied odds are terrible. Your nut draw blocker also significantly reduces his holdings going into the river, but as you can see, it is pretty irrelevant to the way this hand plays out.

The river overbet is a must fold and only fish, amateurs, and low-level pros would make this call. Does he have it? I think maybe like 20-25% he has the straight, and like 10-15% he has a flush, at the most. More importantly, he has a pretty good idea of what you have, so he can purposely twist your arm into making a bad call or bad fold, but he also knows you literally can never profit here. I think he has nothing a majority of the time, but he has laid you such poor odds that you are helpless.

If he were to check, I would shove, for the opposite reason. Since he would likely lead out all bluffs and made hands, a check to you is a hope for a free showdown. And even though you never have a 7 here with the unlikely exception of exactly 77 (and he knows it) he can't be certain you don't have the flush, since this would have been the optimal way to play any flush/overcard combo. You could lay him such awful odds to a chop that he can't possibly call, even if he literally never believes you.

In an alternate scenario, I would make slight overbets in favor of shoving vs. fish, ironically, because they don't read hands as well, so a shove isn't necessary. On this particular board vs a good reg, he has a stronger awareness of ranges, lines, and odds and thus is more apt to call the overbet. With the shove, however, I suspect he is more likely to shy away due to pot odds, even though you are repping the exact same thing. 

Note: When in position, I make slight overbets here 100% of the time when checked to, and I would say that it gets folds about 75%. More importantly, it is very rare that you will bet and be beat at showdown.  This is VERY profitable, use it! 

B3RTstare's Hand, Revisited

Now...time to look over our work from the previous example!

My data on villain shows that he is opening 19% from MP.  Although he might be valuing his openers slightly different than I would, here is what I came up with:

Developing this range assumes that we are working with a substantial sample size of MP opens.  From a database of hands obtained through a vendor, I have 232 samples, which should put us close to where we need to be for this to be workable.  Being that villain is a 22/20.5, this seems roughly accurate.  The 19% range is actually kind of tricky, and the basis of coming up with an accurate estimate is highly dependent on how he values his mid-upper range suited connectors, which begin to take on a very subjective appeal around the 20% range.

Normally I wouldn't care so much, but the 9 dropping on the turn, in addition to flopped made flushes make this situation rather acute.  Looking back over his 232 samples of MP opens, I was fortunate enough to find a showdown one worthy example of 98s, in which there was a likely defender in the BB, meaning that we can expect villain to do this on a regular basis.

Plugging all this into Flopzilla yields this:

Villain is trailing B3RTstare just under 70% of the time.  But what happens on the turn?

Completely unfiltered, villain's equity has grown by a mere 1%, however, his turn call has eliminated all the trash from his range.  Assuming that I did this correctly by using the turn filters (close, if not precise), here is where we are now:

Equities now have almost flip-flopped, with villain taking a 63:37 lead in the hand.  Let's go to the river!

Facing villain 85% equity, it's time to call it quits on this hand.  There are two very important things to note here:

1) B3RT's open-ended straight flush draw provides a great blocker for reading villain's hands.  It eliminates virtually all possibilities of king-high flushes, and there seems little to no doubt in concern of flushes below a 9, given the opening range.

2) Virtually all possibilities for villain's flush potential is to the nuts!!!!  Would he turn a nut flush into a bluff or thin value shove?  Doubtful, in my opinion.  On the other hand, a very good player such as this could make great bluff shove with a top pair hand like AcQx, knowing that B3RT could really only make the hero call with the small boat.  

CONCLUSION:

Any way you cut it, this hand goes to villain, no question.

Is the case closed on this hand?  Not quite...there is still the possibility that something strange happened, like villain hanging around after the flop with 8c8x because he doesn't like folding to B3RT, coupled with the fact that he still has the slim hope of drawing to straight flush.  Or he might even be raising a different range to combat what he believes B3RT's blind defense strategy to be. 

Bottom line: I think this hand has great potential to open people's eyes to how ranges hit the flops and how using c-bet frequencies and blockers can seal the deal on reading an opponent's hand.

B3RTstare's River Spot vs. a Tough Reg OOP

B3RTstare's take:
Villain is a good reg. I haven't played for a month so I have no stats but iirc he has a cbet of just under 90% but I would imagine it would be less on this board*.

*When discussing this hand previously, someone had mentioned that this particular villain wouldn't often bluff the flop here. His call of the turn lead definitely eliminates this possibility. I dont know his MP open, but I recall this villain not being too loose.

What do you think of bluff-shoving river to fold out AQ, KQ, AA, KK? Ac is about the only bluff he can put me on here although at the same time my value range is super thin and probably only A9, K9.

Or c/c for the times he has an underpair or some other bluff? Or c/f because he can have Jx or 9x sometimes. I have no idea how much he's cbetting these hands on this board so it's a pretty tricky spot imo.

My take:
His flat range on turn that he would also bet on the flop consists of "get it in" hands, followed by strong draw hands, and made + strong draw.

Hands he would like play this way are:

Straights
Flushes
Two pair, which may have filled
Sets into boats
Overpairs
9, J, and Qx with big draw
AK, with appropriate suit for either card
AcTx
Naked Ac

I'm not sure he calls the K high draw without something to go with it, but I doubt he raises any low Kx from MP that hasn't already made at least a pair or flush. So his weakest Kx hand is exactly KTo, and he easily could have checked that back on the flop. This also makes Kc9x a strong possibility, and also a hand he wouldn't feel the need to raise on the turn.

The fact that you hold exactly the Tc is very telling, because that eliminates some very weak made hands with draw combos, like TcTx, Tc9x, JxTc, and of course, QxTc.

In fact, your blocker might be the perfect "x" for figuring out the river equation.

From here, let's examine what your turn donk looks like:

I would say precisely made flushes and trips, with a fairly unusual naked bluff float. Not to say that you don't differ from the crowd, but typically most players would check raise all in with a made straight on the flop and the naked Ax flush draw (particularly if you had a pair), but that is only likely to be A9o and ATo, depending on how loose villain is from MP. These naked ace hands will frequently donk the flop as well, hoping for a raise. There are fair number of nut and second nut flushes in your range as well. The hand that you actually chose to donk with is not likely a consideration for villain, as it doesn't really fit the profile for a check/call lead line and seems more likely to be a check-raise. I wouldn't exclude a boat, as Q9 and J9 are classic flat hands from OOP, but those are still going to check a fair amount. Even though you have a bluffy image, villain is far too good to make some crazy donkish float hoping to bluff the river, which he could only do if you chose to give up. Being that there are still some draws in your range, taking this line would be suicide. He has some kind of quality hand, IMO.

The river seems to seal the deal. You check your hand and he shoves. While he could do this to get you to fold a made flush on the flop, he can be quite certain that you are never folding a 9 and almost never led the turn with any sort of J in your hand. At this point, what are his possible holdings that he would play this way?

From strongest to weakest we have:

1) Quads
2) Full houses, big and little
3) Nut flushes
4) 2nd nut flushes
5) Straights
6) Overpairs, with or without the correct suit
7) Top pair, with or without the correct suit
8) Busted flush draws, typically with the ace

So which of these would he bet? 

He bets options #1 and #2 every time. Some guys aren't brave enough to bet the little boat here, but given the action, almost all good regs would take his shove line on the river. 

I doubt he value bets options 3 and 4, as this is just crying for hero calls from smaller flushes, and the fact that he holds two of the suit and the kickers are inevitably consisting of little cards, that means that he holds certain blockers to your range. And of course, these are just bluff catchers at this point.  Furthermore, he can pretty much always exclude any AQ or AK combos from your range, as these are almost exclusively 3-bet preflop.

If he has an overpair or top pair, it seems strange that he would try to get you to fold a flush and would be happy to check it down vs. a potential busted draw or even a 9, but perhaps so. Unfortunately, you can't even beat most of his "bluffs". IMO, at this point, he is just left with strong made hands and the occasional bluff. While I don't know offhand, I believe that the strong made hands seriously outweigh his bluff combos.

This is how I would look at this hand in real time.  For the next post, I will pull out the actual open % from HEM and take a look at his c-bet % on superwet boards vs. OOP flatters.  Then we can examine the actual hand percentages in Flopzilla and see how this analysis stacks up.

Student Hand Analysis

Back again!

After a long hiatus, I am finally back again.  I've had plenty to say, but yet for a while I was concerned that my post about The Null Flop had painted me into a corner.  For a bit, I was beginning to doubt what I had originally meant to say, but have now finally come full circle and agree again with what I was writing :)

I am not sure when that post will be concluded, but in the mean time I would like to display examples of my coaching acumen by giving some commentary on some PokerStars 20bb CAP hands that have been submitted by my students.  All names have been anonymized, as have stack sizes (with the exception of this first one, where I failed to change both the SB and BB.

The following hand was posted on my forum with the following commentary:



Villain is a nitty reg overall.

First off- you should NEVER bet here. Against a tight player who checks, here are the results of betting:

1) He folds. This means he had at most 2 outs to beat you. This is a fail in my book.

2) He check calls, which means he is either strong or has good to decent equity. Likely holdings are AK-AJ, KQ, QJs, JJ, JTs. 

His check call is not a good result. The reason is that unless he plans on going to the felt with KQ, you can only get a flop bet and possibly a small to medium sized river bet while and still having your hand hold up.

Most importantly...his check call potential combined with check raise potential make this bet disastrous.

3) Check raise. Holdings are AA, KK, QQ, TT, 88, QTs. AK will either check call or likely check raise larger if he is making a semi-bluff. AQ probably check raises every time, but yet I still suspect that when this happens the play is all in, as he would certainly like to avoid any dangerous turn cards should you call. On rare occasions if he is feeling frisky, he will check raise JJ, QJs or JTs. For argument's sake, lets assume that these final two hands also include a backdoor flush. J9s is rarely in the UTG range of a player this tight, so let's exclude that- but you never can be too certain when facing an action such as this....

Most importantly, this check raise is NEVER a bluff!!!! TAG players would literally never check raise bluff this flop vs. a reg flatter on a board such as this.

Let's see how this range stacks up in Poker Stove. We will even include the optimistic scenarios (JTs, etc.) just to see how awful a reshove is.

Against a range of AA-TT, 88, AK, AQ, KQ, QJs, QTs, JTs your equity is 51%.  


When you include the dead money in the pot that's a great result but this kind of optimism does not differentiate between a moderate fish and a pro.

Now for the likely scenario:

AA-QQ, TT, 88, AK-AQ, QTs

Your equity is a lowly 21.2%.

It gets worse. Given the tiny "call me" check raise. I would even exclude AQ from the equation. Once this is done, your equity now drops to a dreadful......11.3%.

SUMMARY

While this hand might look great to a majority of players, particularly those who customarily play rebuy tournaments, this hand is merely a marginal bluff catcher and should be treated as such.  I applaud our hero for exercising damage control by recognizing the nit's overpowering strength and cutting his losses.  Many regs are just not capable of laying this down after betting and consistently talk themselves into making losing calls based on the dead money in the middle.  Don't be one of them!

The Null Flop, pt. II

In my last article concerning the null flop, I ended with the beginning process of reading a donk bettor's hand on a K99 rainbow flop by first understanding his common flat range. If you have not yet done so, please read the previous article, lest you become hopelessly lost and confused as we move forward.

As it stands, the red-outlined ranked hands below are the only ones we will concern ourselves with, being that your typical villain has little to no desire to draw to a backdoor flush when out of position. Notice how I include all gutshots as hits, as they not only give villain some small chance to improve, they also allow him the ability to bluff even when he misses if some inconsistency in your betting pattern is detected.

Facing off against the widest possible villain flat range (most ranges won't include the weakest suited kings, etc.), we can see that he connects at least weakly with this flop just under 50% of the time. From here, we need to divide the two basic actions of betting and checking and determine which hand ranges are appropriate for each one. Check-raising is excluded from this specific flop because any villain worth his salt will quickly realize that this aggressive action can't possibly be supported by his range when contrasted with our own, i.e. all check-raises look like they are begging for a fold as few hands within our own range can bet/all in.

When villain checks:

Again, if we assume that he is only giving up in those rare instances when he flops a weak ace high, he is likely going into check/call mode with the very top of his range (due to the deck being crippled), as well as AA (occasionally donked, yet rare), some 9x, as well as all Kx hands, which are effectively now all bluff-catchers due to domination concerns.

The presence of the gutshot here might present something of an oddity to experienced players. Notice how I listed the appropriate response as a check/call. Since clearly he does not have the odds to draw to the gutshot, why is this appropriate? It's simple: by check/calling, he gets to realize the full equity of his hand because he can sometimes improve to a pair and win if hero just bets once with his air and then gives up on the turn and river. If you combine that with his ability to bluff if his draw bricks out after hero checks the turn, he now has a very profitable play on his hands.

When villain leads out:

Now we are down to business. Since villain's top pair range is severely weakened by domination concerns, we can scratch this possibility from the list. Though he might also choose to lead with AA, this most radical scenario that fails to include card removal from our own open raise range and a 0% 3-bet frequency on his end makes this a complete non-factor at just over 2%. We can effectively exclude this from his donking range entirely.

Adding all this up means that his donking range is severely polarized between air (50.4%) and trip 9's (12.9%). If we give him full credit for having trip 9's as well as all air when he donks, that means he is almost 4 times as likely to have nothing as he is to have a 9!

So we should raise every donk bet, right? Right?!

WRONG.

Check back in for The Null Flop, pt. III as I walk through every step from the flop to the river!

The Donk Bettor's Delight: The Null Flop, pt. I

Null Flop: a flop that typically has all of these specific characteristics

1) It contains a pair.

2) It contains zero flush draws.

3) There is at least a 3 gap between the pair and the remaining card.

Drier than the Sahara Desert, the null flop, by it's very definition, is extremely difficult to hit in any meaningful way, despite how tight or loose the players involved in the hand are. When I say "meaningful", I mean hit in such a way that it can support 3 streets of legitimate betting action vs. a thinking player and creates this massive black hole of null ranges for both opponents in a heads up pot. Here are three examples:

• Tc Td 4h
• As 5h 5d
• Kh 9s 9c

Many open-raisers are of the opinion that you can bet all your air with immunity on these types of flops, believing that they either tend to hit your opponent very hard or not at all.

And they would be right unless, of course, that particular villain is thinking precisely the same way you are and decides to take the lead in the betting with a donk bet, which is typically 2bb in a 20bb CAP setting. Perhaps it would be helpful to stop thinking in terms of the derogatory term "donk bet" and begin thinking of it more as a "reversed c-bet".

Before analyzing any of these specific flops, you must first begin thinking in terms of ranges. If you grew up in or around Russia, where apparently the only type of poker that they have been exposed to is played (coincidentally?) with exactly 20 big blinds at all times, your BB flat range vs. a standard button open of 33.3% will look something like this:

The specifics of the range are not nearly as important as noticing what this range almost never consists of: strong aces and small-middle pairs. There is a premium placed on suitedness and connectedness, but very rarely will villain sneak up on you with complete trash, although they will show up with the occasional KK or AA. Essentially, you are looking at a range of hands that can flop or draw well but tend to be undervalued in 3-bet situations even if they do still show a profit when shoved, like Q9s or KJo.

Now, let's look at how this flat range connects with Kh 9s 9c by means of Flopzilla, assuming that all hands will be distributed in equal proportions (they won't, of course):

And now villain leads into you...what does this mean?? Check back early next week to find out on the The Null Flop, pt. II!

Introduction to Donk Bet Counter-Strategies

Donk bet: the act of defending vs. a raise when out of position after limping or calling from the blinds and then leading into the raiser with a bet.

For these next several articles, I am going to explore the psychology and methods of donking that you will encounter. Rather than giving the solution (which I have), I first want to lay out the criteria for understanding why players are flocking to this increasingly important move in the 20bb CAP player's arsenal, as I feel that only if players understand the "why" first will they then be able to understand the "how" of defending against it.

I plan on doing this by introducing two special kinds of flops and their variants: the null flop and the "as yet to be cleverly named" other flop :)

An Interview With Max "Chisness" Chiswick, Prospective Isle of Man Representative

As you readers are probably acutely aware, the recent rake calculations from Poker Stars have caused quite a stir amid the poker population as they have shifted from the dealt method of rake calculation to weighted contributed, which is now the industry standard. In response to the uproar in the Two Plus Two community and the subsequent strike, Stars has confronted the issue and offered to alleviate it by selecting 4 respected members of the poker community to travel to the Isle of Man and work directly with Stars management to settle the matter. One of the volunteers is short stack legend, Max "Chisness" Chiswick. I knew him intimately from our confrontations on the felt, but thought it was best to delve further into his plans and intentions before offering my personal support to his cause.

Lorin: 20bb CAP was created as a solution to the short stacker problem in larger stack buy in games. Do you think it has solved this problem effectively?

Chisness: I think it's solved the problem of the anti-shortstackers having legitimate arguments (e.g. there shouldn't be overlap in stakes, not fair to have such a large gap in buy in sizes) against us, but feel like 20-50bb (or 20-40bb on FTP) was a fair compromise and overall better.

It involved the risk/reward of having to stick around with deeper stacks to attack a deeper recreational player. It had much more revolving of players at each table (many ss'ers leave after doubling), which led to shorter waitlists. Since full stackers had the option of deeper only tables, the 20-50bb solution should have been acceptable.

Lorin: I have heard reports that many of those strongly opposed to short stacking only gave their public support to 20bb CAP because they (falsely) believed that no one would want to play it. Now that many recreational players have flocked to this game, these very same players are once again in an uproar. Legitimate arguments aside, do you feel that their frustration is in any way justified?

Chisness: No, I think this proves that recreational players clearly like playing with shorter stacks as they've stuck with them throughout all the changes. I understand their frustration, but they're the ones who defeated the 20-100 games in the first place. If they want to be able to play with short recreational players (I remember always loving seeing the 20-40 buyin guys at the full tables) then they should accept these 20-100 games back rather than trying to attack the CAP games.

Lorin: That has been my observation as well. Before playing full time at FTP before finally ending up at Stars, I was a strong supporter of the Cake network. They were one of the very first networks to strike back against short stacking back in April of 2010, even though it never reached any "critical" level there. However, once the buy in was raised to 30bb, I noticed a massive dropoff in traffic, particularly that of the recreational player. I could only conclude that the rec players actually desired to play with small stacks. That being said, do you feel that there is room for short stack poker, mid stack poker and deep stack poker to exist side-by-side without cannibalizing each other?

Chisness: I think there will automatically be some harm done to the alternatives when multiple options are given (Wal-Mart being put in next to Target will always make things worse). Deep [100bb minimum] seems to be a fairly niche offering that isn't super popular so isn't too relevant. It makes sense for there to be a separation between short (CAP) and mid (regular) because of the uproar previously discussed so I think having 2 main levels is the best overall alternative to keep the majority happy. The only potential change that would make sense is switching back from CAP to 20-50, but that seems unlikely to happen and isn't really part of my goals in this meeting.

So I don't think they're killing each other, they're just making each offering more difficult than if there were only one.

Lorin: Ok, now that we have those things addressed, let's move to the original purpose of this discussion. Once the "natural advantage" of short stacking was essentially handicapped by the introduction of 20bb CAP, many of the players who stuck around began noticing a new problem, which is that of the rake. I noticed that your PTR graph has seemed stagnant over the past several months. Do you attribute that to the rake or is it something else?

Chisness: Well I think a lot of it was due to autopiloting and not keeping up properly with the games by studying. Also, other factors like the games generally getting tougher, fewer rec players, Black Friday, etc.

However, I do think rake is a big problem. As a percentage of rake my winrate (and everyone else's) has been getting smaller and smaller. I mentioned on 2+2 that when virtually no one can make a decent profit at a game, that the rake should be fixed (at what point that happens is unclear, but tons of graphs have flatlined lately). The rake has been essentially the same since Stars launched (I think), but it's important to put rake in the context of winrates. 8 years ago rake of 4bb/100 may have been half of a solid player's winrate, but now it's generally 2-4x or even much more.

Others have said in the forums that the structure of poker rake in general is pretty crazy and that it's got to be by far one of the most expensive games in the world (especially when compared to many games that offer monthly flat fees or hourly fees). This is unfortunately out of scope for my arguments, but seems very open for discussion now that the rake has crushed so many winrates.

Lorin: I was initially appalled by the announcement of the rakeback changes at Stars. However, after I had time to absorb the information and the public response from Stars, I came to the conclusion that they are making a genuine effort to restore balance to their overall gaming structure and thinking of what is best for their longterm goals, which are, in fact, in alignment with the goals of the players as well. Yet, even with the best of intentions, they can easily overlook flawed rake structures in existing games and potentially damage them further. I am thinking specifically of NL50-100 at 20bb CAP.

I understand that you are a midstakes player, but creating a healthy feeder system through the lower limits impacts you directly as well. Do you have any specific plans to address the rake problem at the small limit games if you are chosen to represent us at the Isle of Man?

Chisness: Firstly addressing CAP, before going I'd like to do some research into comparing CAP rake rates at same stakes with regular NLHE rake rates.

As for the stakes like NL50-100 (CAP and non), that problem is one of the biggest I've seen and seems like one of the most important to address. I wrote in my bio that Stars right now has increased VPP multipliers for the smallest limits (like NL5), but switching these to rake reductions instead and expanding the rake reductions to more stakes is crucial for, as you put it, a healthy feeder system that lets winners keep more *cash* in the system to move up through the stakes.

There's a fair chance that these sorts of indirect (to midstakes CAP) changes will be the core of what we're able to do in these meetings, so I'm going to be sure to do some rake analyses of these stakes as well in order to paint a picture of how it changes throughout the stakes. As potentially the only NLHE guy going, it's crucial for me to look at the lower stakes as well.

Lorin: I get lots of coaching requests from people who have literally never played online cash games before. Rather, they are looking to make a "soft" transition from their daily grind of SNGs or MTTs into the world of NL cash games while limiting their overall risk exposure. Looking at it from this perspective, I suppose it could be interpreted that CAP games are actually doing a service to the overall community of NLHE cash game players by, once again, creating a solid feeder system. However, I worry that if I direct them to the small limits which are, it appears, difficult to beat based on structure alone, they might become discouraged and return to the games they are familiar with. Do you think that emphasizing this idea to Stars management might sway them to apply more focus in this area?

Chisness: I think focusing on the general idea that "predatory" rake that makes games close to unbeatable (I can mention this is especially true of newer players who enter at these lower stakes) is certainly terrible for players and the health of the ecosystem, but may also be bad for PokerStars when so many players are discouraged from playing, not telling their friends about it, and generally just not enjoying the game.

Lorin: I would say that you are somewhat of a cultish figure in poker right now, well known among short stackers and 20bb CAP players, but perhaps not a recognizable name to the community at large (though I admit that I may be wrong about this). Even though you are an expert at navigating the Poker Stars rewards system, do you feel that having recently spent your career focused on short stack strategies can create too large of a stigma for you to garner support from the wider poker community? Basically, what I am asking is: why should non-CAP players support you?

Chisness: Well, there is a stigma with non-short players respecting anyone who does CAP/short which I can't do much about, but I have been playing seriously since around 2007 and spent from around 2006 to 2009 playing non-short poker, so hopefully that doesn't get completely overlooked.

More importantly, I am at the moment the main 6max NLHE representative option and pledge to do my best to support all 6max NLHE games, not just those that I play. I'm very willing to listen to advice from players at any game type or stake within 6max NLHE to consider their viewpoints.

Finally, many changes that affect my own games will also affect the wider poker community and non-CAP games, so my general analytical skills and poker experience are important to look at.

Lorin: Do you have any specific sources of information that you have planned to turn to in regards to how the WC change will affect other games? Essentially, do you have knowledgeable contacts who play other games besides 20bb CAP with whom you speak with on a regular basis?

Chisness: Unfortunately, since Black Friday and because I'm American, most of my friends aren't playing anymore. I think it's very important to get some data to compare dealt vs. WC and each indivdually across the stakes at CAP and regular NLHE 6max. If selected, I'd first make a spreadsheet listing the exact data I need to acquire. I'd then either request the data from Poker Stars directly (to be given either in advance or at their HQ) or go to 2+2 to get the data manually from [the players].

Lorin: Lastly, if no changes or improvements are made to the rake structure, do you think that Poker Stars is still the best place to play moving forward into 2012 and beyond?

Chisness: Poker Stars generally has better rake than other sites (and many other sites use WC as well), has a better rewards system, better game selection options, better software, and seems much safer (see recent botting scandals on other top networks). They've also shown much good faith in canceling the changes they made and letting this meeting convene to address them (and generally communicating well with players).

If I didn't play many tables, I might look into another top network, but would only move to that if I thought my hourly would be noticeably higher.

If you would like to lend your support to Chisness, you can cast your vote here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/2p2-community-choose-your-reps-negotiate-pokerstars-1148227/

Thanks to you Max, and best of luck in the polls!!

Keeping a Poker Journal

(Apologies for going so long without an update - I actually have two other blog posts in the works but they both kind of turned into "bit off more than I could chew" scenarios.)

So, I don't know what's going on lately. I feel like I've been playing well, doing the same things I always do, with one significant change: I am suddenly sucking at poker.

Anyone else had that feeling?

I should say, I didn't know what was going on at first. Then, I opened up something I haven't in awhile - a MS word document titled, "Poker Journal."

My poker career maybe hasn't been as long as some others, but I've been doing this for over a year now, and I've learned a lot of things, from a lot of different people, and from myself, too. All of that learning and studying and practicing pulled me from marginal microstakes loser to significant mid stakes winner. There's just one problem: Most of what I learned just doesn't stick.

It's not my fault, really. Studies show that no matter how good people think they are at remembering things, human memory is actually pretty crappy. No matter how much they do things by feel, they're wrong as often as right. So here I am, my knowledge slowly slipping, my play slowly regressing, until that stubborn microstakes loser is piloting my mouse in a handful of 5/10 games. Whoops.

The poker journal is the fastest and most efficient way to stuff the skeleton of that microstakes loser back in the closet. For example, when I took the Short Stack Revolution course, my VPIP went up, my 3bet stat went up, and the difference between my VPIP and PFR shrunk by a lot. But over time, that stuff started slipping. Without a journal, I'm screwed. I either have to go back and learn everything from the beginning, or, even worse, I have no idea what has slipped and I have no way back. The journal turns days or weeks of hard study into a one hour refresher course.

If you're like me, you flirt with the line between profession and addiction with poker (okay, actually I do that with everything I enjoy). Even on my days off, I'm constantly thinking about past plays, new lines, math tweaks, or whatever. Now, I know you think you'll remember it and apply it later. The honest truth is, you usually won't. The poker journal serves as a quick catch-all for all the wild poker thoughts roaming around in your brain.

Usually I try to update my poker journal about twice a month, once with thoughts about whatever I am digging through (even if it's something relatively devoid of strategic content), and once with an analysis/report of how the month turned out, plus whenever the impulse strikes me or I learned something specific I don't want to forget.

It might seem like a waste of time when you're doing it, but when you need it later, it'll prove invaluable. My suggestion: Take an hour a month and give it a try.

Apocalypse Nope

WARNING: Video spoken in the international language of comedy

Pondering the Aftermath

Update: The official statement is, apparently, that Full Tilt and Pokerstars have reached an agreement with the DoJ and will return all US players money, as well as continue service outside the United States, presumably in exchange for obscene amounts of money in fines.

However, at this point, the DoJ is saying "hey, we don't want your money, we'll make sure FT gives it back" while FT says "Hey, we want to give you your money, but the DoJ has it and won't give it up.

It's probably a waiting game at this point.


Friday April 15 is certain to become a legendary date in online poker history, as the United States Department of Justice issued a scathing indictment against three major poker sites: Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute/Ultimate Bet.

With the apparent removal of 20bb tables from Party Poker, Pokerstars and Full Tilt are rapidly becoming not only the best places to play, but the o

nly places, if you're a short stack player. If you're an American, then it's no choice at all.

I wish there was more that could be said on the topic, but for now it's all questions and no answers. It's unclear as to when (if) American players will be able to access their bankrolls on these sites, and these poker giants are currently blasted with epic volumes of customer e-mail, and hesitant to change customer addresses (I suspect their suspicions may be aroused by the thousands who allegedly managed to relocate outside the U.S. mere days after the announcement.)

For the record, my next blog post wasn't going to be about this at all. It was going to be about the importance of taking time off from your regular poker play. I guess I jinxed us all, because we're all getting a bit of time off. Even if you're not an American player, game quantity is shrinking and shifting considerably.

For those of you that don't know, I currently live in South Korea. My wife and I went on vacation to the port city of Busan, famed for its beautiful beaches. Yep, that means Asian swimsuit girl post-savers.

Thanks a lot, Department of Justice.

So for now, we wait.

I'm one of the "lucky" few, planning on moving to Canada in the next few months anyway to rebuild. How to rebuild is still a big question. It's a question that will likely remain unanswered in the coming weeks, as the dust on this won't settle anytime soon.

Good luck everyone, no matter how your poker is (or isn't) going. If the poker community can use their collective "one time" to find a strong way through this, I'd submit now is the time to bust it out.

Building True Loyalty in Online Poker

I read recently on Bill Rini's excellent blog which covers the online poker industry that the concept of "Loyalty" programs are a complete joke.  Poker is essentially a commodity business so most players will rationally act in their own self-interest and respond to whoever offers them the best financial incentives.  I generally agreed with this but got to thinking about ways that this could be changed.

Of course, when we are referring to loyalty programs, this generally only applies to players of the high volume nature.  While liquidity from recreational players is ranked the highest in terms of value, we still can't overlook the role played by high volume regulars whose play is necessary to run the engine that grinds recreational money down into rake for the site.

I received my Full Tilt Black Card in November.  I was fully expecting it to be just another piece of laminated card board, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a credit card shaped piece of painted steel with my name inscribed on it.  I know it's kind of cheesy, but I couldn't help but feel a little bit of pride while feeling it's weight in my hand.  Kind of like a trophy, I always thought.

On the surface, this can also be said of many of the items with Full Tilt's logo that can be found littered throughout their store, but herein lies the problem: once you have items that can be exchanged for points in lieu of cash based rewards that can be purchased with the same points, you have forever tainted the symbolic value of those items.  Let me explain:

Rakeback Nation has a great rewards system that offers items that can be exchanged for points built up by generating rake.  Unlike items bought at an online poker store for points, getting these items does not deduct from your rakeback in any way.  Similarly, there are no optional bonuses or gift cards that you have to pass up.  What does this mean?  This means that I can thoroughly enjoy the Kindle that I "achieved" without having to feel like I paid for it. 


While Full Tilt can counter that they offer a special avatar or watch for those who finish first in their FTOPS or Mini-FTOPS events respectively, since everyone understands that only one winner gets to enjoy these symbolic items and that there is a certain amount of luck needed to achieve them, they are not an appropriate way to incentivize play.  In the same vein, having your handle being listed on any kind of anonymous monthly leaderboard only to have it swept away the following month doesn't feel like your accomplishments are exactly being appreciated, either.  And just how are they recognizing such achievements?  By offering cash and buy in tokens, of course!  Once again, Bill Rini is right: all the sites are doing this and again reducing their product into a commodity business.  While this might be good for future advertisements of one's coaching services, it doesn't exactly appeal to someone's emotions and sense of loyalty.

Here is my proposition:  the sites should begin mailing out actual trophies and plaques that recognize personal, stakewide, and sitewide milestones that are achievable to anyone who grinds hard enough.  Furthermore, they should offer a permanent place on the site for a "Hall of Fame" for various achievements where a player can choose to be awarded with a photo and their real name.  Here are some suggestions:

Stakewide and Sitewide (based on minimum number of hands played):

• Most hands played
• Most money earned
• Highest winrate
• Most first place finishes
• Most knockouts
• Most cashes
• Most final tables

Personal:

• $10k in career winnings
• $100k in career winnings, etc.
• $10M in total wagers, etc.  (doesn't mean much, but makes you look a total baller)
• 100k hands played in a month, etc.
• Best poker blog ;)

It is no secret in business that people have bigger needs than just wanting more money- they want full appreciation for the work that they do.  Most of the work done by poker players is never recognized in any formal way- even for those at the top of their craft.  What player do you know that wouldn't want a special trophy room dedicated to honoring his achievements in a way that his friends and family can understand?  And how do you think they would feel towards the site that finally acknowledged such performances in a tangible way?

Let me know what you think!

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 2

Serious question time. Are you losing at this game?

Check your gut response (of course I’m not!) at the door and ponder it. How much do you make? How much time does it take you to get it? How do you feel when you’re done?

Keep in mind that in poker, the only reason anyone makes any money at all (and they do) is because there are hordes of people who don’t realize they are losing. If they did, they’d quit.

If you run far enough, there's a $20,000 bonus at the end!

Just don't overthink it.

Poker players are notorious for not being able to assess their own skill level. Well, finally in December 2010, after pushing myself to the absolute limit for three months, I was ready to really look at my poker game in the mirror, and I did not like what I saw. I was, without a doubt, a losing player. I had plenty of justifications for it (some legitimate, some... less so), but there it was. At the end of the day, it was costing me money to play poker.

A poker friend of mine told me about someone he knew, a guy named Lorin. He claimed that Lorin’s shortstack class was not only useful, it was a hell of a bargain. My first thought? Fuck that.

I’d already spent hundreds of dollars on poker related stuff. Hold’em Manager, Table Ninja, Leak Buster, coaching time, the list goes on. (Sometime, I’ll do a product review of all the crap I bought.) Any winnings I may have made were long gone to these “investments.” I was thoroughly convinced there were more people making money selling stuff to poker players, than their were poker players making money.

No matter which way I sliced it, I needed help. My “win”rate sucked, and I wasn’t really improving, despite all my study. So I made a deal with myself. I’d take a chunk of my quickly dwindling bankroll and spend it on Lorin’s training. Then, I’d dedicate the rest of my roll into learning his system. If I start winning, great. If I go broke, fine. I quit.

My first impression of Lorin was that he was a professional. A good thing, too. If I’m paying for a service, I'm looking for someone who takes the job seriously. A good poker player isn't necessarily a good coach.

With Lorin, it was clear he knew what he was doing. He had a clear system, a simple presentation method, and a no-nonsense attitude.

Every mentor is different, but despite my repeated begging,

Lorin refuses to teach me the secret to bitchin' abs or a date with

Helena Bonham Carter.

His repeated request was simple: If you want to make money from my system, just do everything I tell you to do. Fair enough. I figured, I paid him the money, no sense only going half way.

So off I went. I stopped playing at Pokerstars. I stopped mass-tabling. I started shoving more and calling less. I stopped playing at fishless tables. As each new video came out, I watched it like a religion and committed it to memory.

I can overlook the rest of it Judas,

but if you flat call with Q9o one more time,

we are going to have a fucking problem.

At first, it wasn’t easy. I immediately hit a severe downswing where my EV line made modest gains, but my actual profit line dropped like a stone. But something was happening. My EV line was heading somewhere I’m quite sure it was very confused and disoriented to be: up.

The downswing ended as they always do, and I started making money. Compared to where I was, I feel comfortable saying it was “a lot” of money. I moved from the .25/.50 game on Pokerstars, to the .25/.50 game on Full Tilt, and then very quickly to .50/1.00 and into 1/2. The best part was, because I was following Lorin’s system of table selection, the games didn’t really get much harder as I moved up. There became fewer games to play (not playing fishless tables meant more and more ineligible games as I moved up), but the games were still good.

Today, just two months later, I have the bankroll to play at 2/4 (NL400) with consistency, and I’m a winner in that game. Best of all, most of my profit comes from kicking ass (winning), not kissing it (rakeback).

I’m still learning. I’m not there yet. Right now I’m transitioning from working guy to full time pro. I expect that in the future of this blog, a lot of my posts will be about how I made and am still making that transition. But I can say with certainty that’s the direction I’m heading, and I wouldn’t be there without Lorin’s help.

Thanks man. I owe you one.

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 1

I wish this was a story I could have told from the beginning. It's an interesting one, all told - one guys journey from a casual tournament player, to a fish on a heater, to a mass tabling low stakes grinder, until finally getting it together and finding myself short-stacking for high stakes, with enough money on the line to make my parents and most of my friends feel a bit nauseous just hearing about it.

When it comes down to it though, there's an underpinning of consistency, logic, and hard, hard work that - for all the highs and lows - lets me make a living doing something I love: playing poker.

(Trust me, if you want to win, you better really love poker, because there are plenty of days when poker does not love you back.)

So, like most trendy stories these days, let's go ahead and start from the middle.

In November of 2010, I had had enough. I knew I was a winning poker player, or at least, I had it in me to become one. I just wasn't working hard enough.

Contrary to popular belief, desire and hard work are

not always a guarantee for success.

Nevermind that I was already playing five hours a day, studying when I wasn't at the table, and just generally driving myself insane. I was playing .25/.50 and .50/1.00 20bb games on Pokerstars, about 20 tables at once, about 200,000 hands a month. I got coaching. I played better, faster, harder and smarter than I ever had.

The month sucked. I posted something like a -2bb/100 loss rate, kept afloat by the rakeback I had generated.

Okay, bad luck. Still getting my feet wet. It happens. So December rolled in, I started with a clean slate, moved back down to .25/.50, and hit the tables harder than ever.

An artists rendition of trying to play on

Pokerstars in December.

On December 22, I was still losing. Badly. (Okay, not that badly, about the same as before. All I knew is that I had a goal - to play full time - and unless I planned on playing roughly 37 hours a day, I was never going to make enough money to do that.) Again, the Pokerstars bonuses were the only money I made, and had to use them to offset the losses, too.

It was time. I'd played literally hundreds of thousands of hands of poker. Sample sizes were not an issue. Nor was tilt, lack of discipline, or any other excuse I could come up with.

I was a loser. Not the funny, good natured hollywood loser who gets the hot emo girl with his fumbling charm, either. The kind destined to leave his money behind on the poker table.

Something needed to change and soon, or my poker career would be busto before it even took off.

Rethinking Lines for Creative Short Stack Heads Up Play

In the ever elusive quest for original material, I have been away for awhile plotting my next move.  While shooting a video for my Short Stack Revolution strategy video series, I discovered some very interesting lines that can be used to combat aggressive heads up min-raisers.  The short stack tourist reader might find the idea of creative short stack play to be shocking, but the advanced player should immediately recognize the need for taking tricky lines against such opponents because they know that even frequent 3-betting or playing fit-or-fold after the flop is the perfect recipe for getting robbed blind with minimal villain effort.

The first hand isn't truly interesting when viewed outside the realm of traditional short stack strategy.  When dealt A9s heads up and facing a min-raise, the knee jerk reaction is to shove, but that will just allow him to get away unscathed far too often for my taste.  The caveat here is that this particular villain is open-raising 90%.  However, once I make this call, I am probably never folding but I will have to let the flop texture and his betting line determine my overall strategy.  In this case, the flop makes it very easy to see how to proceed.



To the naked eye, it should appear obvious that this flop is hitting few players' ranges, but just to be clear, let's see what Flopzilla, another great program by the maker of Cardrunners EV, has to say:

After accounting for card removal, we can see that villain's range has only connected 16.3% of the time.  Even more telling is precisely how villain's range has hit.  The fact that he has bet on all streets on this board texture means that his range has become more polarized with every single bet.  Essentially, there are only 6 real categories of hands that can conceivably bet both the flop and turn:

1. Flushdraws
2. PP below TP
3. Overpairs
4. 3 of a kind
5. Full houses
6. Quads

Given the tendencies to check full houses and quads, we can discount those from the range, leaving probable villain hits now at 14.24%.  Of course, since we can estimate that he will be checking a Q as well some lower PP's and overpairs on either the flop or the turn, we know that this actual range of hits is considerably less in reality.  Given the overall board texture and the bet sizing, a call down is clearly in order.  Taking this line has more benefits than just winning the pot.  It also lets your opponents know that you are patient and fearless.  Though by habit he will most likely continue to open 90%, he will be forced to give up much more frequently after the flop, which in turn will allow us to call even lighter pre-flop and swipe away more hands with pure bluffs.

You don't need to be the Rain Man to figure this out in real time, but it certainly helps if you take a little time out of your day when you aren't playing to learn exactly how to handle some various situations.

If the first hand was largely unconvincing, this next hand is sure to raise some eyebrows.  Once again, villain is opening approximately 90%.



Though this hand is more difficult to solve with Flopzilla, I can say this with some certainty: his line looks stronger than the previous villain's.  By checking the flop and betting both the turn and the river, he is representing a hand that was either very strong on the flop or one that somehow improved on the turn but yet was willing to check call the flop, and to a far lesser degree, 2nd pair or QQ that was going for pot committing thin value on the river.  So which categories of hands were most appropriate for this play and how often are they hitting the flop?

1. Top pair:  11.9%
2. Overpair:  0.63%
3. Two Pair: 2.83%
4. Set: 0.94%

Just as important as his tendencies to miss the flop entirely are the relevancy of the turn and river cards.  Even when opening 90%, there is still no guarantee that 82, 83, and 32 are in his range.  So this leaves us with a much higher probability of bluffs than strong hands.

The fate of this hand was decided ahead of time.  As soon as I flopped a straight draw, I decided that I was never folding, simply because I was aware that this flop is rarely hitting my opponent strongly and I can combine that fact with my overall equity.  The question then becomes how to maximize my overall expectation given possible outcomes.

Notice that in no point of this hand do I want to risk getting check raised.  If I had no equity or a vulnerable hand I would surely bet, but by checking along I now have increased my overall winning percentage in addition to the ability to snap off bluffs. I would like to also note that if at any point I catch a T or Q I am calling down.

I showed this hand to one of my students who was amazed that I would try to bluff any opponent who puts in half of the effective stack on the river.  In actuality, this is precisely the point.  He is only committed to the hand if he has what he is representing, which is basically Kx+.  He also probably assumes that I know he isn't willing to fold after putting in this much money and believes that this lends credibility to his bluff.  Being that I wasn't particularly familiar with this opponent, I don't necessarily know how willing he would be to bet a weak king on the river, but it is quite likely that he is looking to check call any pairs J or worse.  In this light it now is beginning to look suspiciously like a polarized range.  Given his incredibly high opening raise percentage, I am just not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Short Stack Strategy is Now on Video!

After two weeks of blood, sweat, and tears I have 90% completed a version of my short stack strategy seminar on a video set.  All of the theoretical concepts are completed and ready for immediate download, leaving only the sweat session and HEM mastery versions to be recorded so I will be taking pre-orders at the introductory price of $295.  Starting on Valentine's Day, I will be showing my love for the world by raising the price of the video collection to $395.  The videos contain over 60 power point slides and over 60 unique, fully-visual hand examples to illustrate each post-flop concept. All purchases will also include my hand charts and a half hour consultation.  Periodic supplementary content will be available by popular demand

Here is a list of the videos and some of the contents of each:

1. Essentials

• HUD setup with explanation of both weak and strong stats
• Game selection with effective player tagging
• Seat selection
• The 4 major goals of post-flop play: maximum value, pot control, protecting your hand, and unexploitability

2. Pre-flop Concepts

• Interpreting different raise sizes by position
• Recognizing an iso-raise
• Squeezing
• Facing cold 3 and 4-bets
• Counteracting unusual 3-bet sizes such as the min 3-bet and the single re-raise

3. Single Caller OOP

• Evaluating flop texture
• Criteria for C-betting
• Playing all marginal hands, including overcards, 2nd & 3rd pair, and TPWK
• Playing draws
• Bluffing the turn
• Check raising marginal value on the turn
• Interpreting and countering the 3 different donk bets: the min-bet, the half pot bet, and the full pot bet
• Ace high flops
• Multi-way Pots

4. Single Caller IP

• Same concepts as above, with a strategy for playing draws on the turn on river
• Playing vs. a single limper by position
• Range balancing
• Going for thin value

5.  Blind Play

• Evaluating limper strength by position
• How to proceed on your free play
• Heads up strategy for the small blind
• Playing the BB when the SB limps
• Countering aggressive heads up min-raisers

Total runtime of the videos is over 5 hours.  Contact me for payment options or if you would like a short preview of them, which I can provide over Teamviewer.

The Great Fish and Pony Show

Though it is most likely that having a legal and regulated online poker market in the U.S. is good for the long-term health of our game, I am beginning to get extremely frazzled by this glowing report of how great things will be after a potential 15 month blackout period. Here is a partial list of my concerns that seems to be growing by the hour since I first learned of this a few days ago:

A NEW POKER BOOM WILL OCCUR THAT WILL DWARF THE FIRST ONE.

Though I believe this to be most likely, it is still theoretical at this point and likely to be short lived. That one was powered by forces that happened to coincide perfectly that no longer exist today.

A) The world economy was thriving on the real estate bubble.

B) Poker first entered the public consciousness through the entirely new usage of lipstick cameras to show hole cards for the first time and a Cinderella story titled "Moneymaker" won over the imagination of the masses.

C) Online poker was new and enthusiasm was at the highest point that will ever exist.


THE FISH POOL WILL BE GIGANTIC AND NEVER ENDING DUE TO THE EASE OF LIQUIDITY

Wow....where to start?!

With the possibility of states being able to opt out, it is very unclear just how many states will be contributing to this fishpool. Living in Kentucky, I am incredibly fearful that my state will not opt in due to the prior efforts of our governor whose sole interest at this point seems to be in protecting our statewide passion for primitive auto racing, aka "Horse Racing". Sure, I live right by Indiana and would be willing to make a moderate commute there to play, but with its state coffers juiced with the proceeds of riverboat gambling, can I truly rely on this?

Even after this is accounted for, the fishpool will be nothing like what we witnessed the first time around. Back then, poker knowledge at large consisted of little more than knowing that a flush beats a straight. Concepts like pot odds, blind stealing, and position were foreign and arcane to the general population and the outcome was such that if you stuck with top pair or better and drew only to the nuts, you were crushing the game. Nowadays, the quality of competition at your neighborhood bar freeroll is stronger than what you would have encountered online 6 years ago.

There was a serious information black hole that existed back then that no longer does. Training sites, forums, and high quality texts are the standard means of improvement and never again will sub-standard trash like Phil Hellmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros be so eagerly gobbled up by aspiring players. Now the pros not only play significantly better than their opponents, they play GOOD. Since the fish tend to copy the moves and tendencies of everyone else around them, they will play better by default...no question.

Where does this leave us? I believe that it is a certainty that we will eventually end up right back where we are right now. Eventually all shitty players go bust and the ones that don't will improve, and perhaps greatly so. The games will once again be tough, but hey, we can always cash out our rakeback without all the fuss!


In conclusion, it is extremely difficult to imagine a scenario that can possibly make up for over a year of productivity loss. I am not saying that it isn't necessary in the long run, but the ever-glowing reports of how great things will be seem incredibly naive at this point, especially in light of the fact that we are giving up something of great value that is currently guaranteed for something that we are only envisioning at this time. If history can help us predict anything, it shows us that people are really lousy at making predictions.

As the saying goes "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". Are there really two in the bush? I'm just so not sure...