Stud

  Oh, Red went and bought himself a monkey
  Got him from a pawn shop broker
  Taught that monkey how to guzzle beer
  And he taught him how to play stud poker        The Coasters

   I've been playing Fixed Limit Seven Card Stud online for nearly five months now, having first started back in March. I'd never played this game before so I decided I'd better start by just dipping my toe in the water. So, having read a little on Stud strategy, I started out by playing in the play money games on PokerStars. After a couple of sessions playing for 'funny money' I started observing the real money games and then, finally, actually started playing at the lowest possible level; the 4c/8c game. So I was committing $US2.00 of my hard-earned cash to each session (ie 50 blinds).  I decided to adopt this cautious approach after getting a bit of a caning in the previous two 'new games' that I'd tried my hand at. The idea was to lose as little as possible.

   There's not a lot of information out there on this game but I read as much as I could find. Most articles are aimed at mid to high stakes play, not the loose tables you find at the micro level online. But the general consensus seemed to be to play good starting hands hard, to limp in with drawing hands and to play tight. In other words, the same sort of general advice you'll get for Holdem or any other poker variant. But one important difference between Holdem and Stud is that you can see most of your opponents' cards, which helps in deciding whether your drawing hands are 'live' or 'dead'. So when I started playing I concentrated on limiting the number of times I entered the pot by playing a reasonably tight starting hand range and avoiding playing drawing hands where many of the 'outs' were already gone.
   I soon found that Seven Card Stud games at this level are just as loose as other poker games at micro stakes.  Typically most players will limp in to see 4th Street and then check or call all the way to 7th St, always hoping to make a winning hand on the next street. You don't usually see any betting or raising until someone has made a hand, and then the raiser will get called all the way to 7th St by several players. Betting or raising with a good starting hand does little if anything to reduce the field and stop players from drawing out on you. In fact, the vast majority that go to showdown are won by hands that were made on 7th St. Typically, someone chases a made straight to the final street and then hits a full house, or someone with nothing but a pair of Queens makes a backdoor flush on 7th. This can be very frustrating. I've lost count of the number of times I've had the best hand up until 6th St then been outdrawn on 7th.
   Having said all that, on occasion I've come across an odd phenomenon where players start behaving in a completely contrary manner. Sometimes when I raise on 3rd St with a good starting hand I find myself in a raising and re-raising battle with two or more other players. Then, if I bet again on 4th St it starts again. By the time I get to 5th, I'm slowing down in fear of what the other players might have. Invariably I find if these hands reach showdown that the other players had nothing. Call me paranoid, but it's almost as if there is some sort of secret 7-Stud players' agreement to punish the 3rd St raiser. "How dare you raise on 3rd St when we just want to draw to showdown". The most memorable time this happened to me was when I had 999 on 3rd St, a MONSTER starting hand, and one player kept re-raising me, even though he was only showing a 5. By the time this had gone on for a few rounds I was sure he must have started with 555, or at least AA5. It turned out that he had something like J85 (not suited)! Weird.

 One good thing about playing Stud on Pokerstars is the hand replay feature. Players can choose a setting that automatically mucks their hand if they lose at the showdown. That way, other players don't get to see what they had. But it turns out that if you use the hand replay feature, you get to see the content of hands that were mucked at showdown. I've found this to be a very useful feature. You can pick up a lot of good information on the sort of hands people were playing by going back and checking the hand replay.                                                                                                          

   I've played in 16 money games so far, the first one of which was on the 10th April. In the early period, from March to May I had more losing than winning sessions and registered a net loss. This was no surprise, given that I was just getting started. In the next three month period I also lost more games than I won, but I actually ended up with a net win. This was somewhat surprising to me, as I remember the losses a lot more than I remember the wins. I guess the wins were just bigger than the losses. However, I'm not jumping for joy just yet. This game is proving to be very difficult to master and my last four sessions have looked like this: L L W L.

   This is my third year of playing a new version of poker. The first was Pot Limit 6-max Omaha and the second was Fixed Limit 6-max Texas Holdem. I found both these game types to be difficult to master. Omaha is a game of big hands and big draws. Typically, pots are won by two pair or better, with straights and flushes turning up much more frequently than in Texas Holdem. And players often have big draws that they chase all the way to the river. In Fixed Limit Holdem it's very difficult to bet drawing players out of the pot. This is because the fixed limit structure almost always gives the callers the right odds. So you get a lot of chasers following you to the river. Seven Card Stud seems to combine the worst features of these two games. On the one hand it features big hands and big draws and on the other, players usually have the odds to chase their draws, especially in an eight handed game. In short, Seven Card Stud is a devilish mix of the worst possible features of other poker variants.
   Nevertheless, I intend to persevere and keep trying to find the key to successful Stud play. At least I had the good sense to start playing at the micro level. So I have a very simple short term goal for this game; to have enough wins to justify moving up to the next level. If I can start playing 5c/10c Stud, then I'll really know that I've made it.
  

August Journal, Part Two

   Sometimes it seems like winter's end
   The weeks they just go on like a friend of mine     Texas

Monday 19th. Online 7 Card Stud.
   Too busy to play poker on the weekend, so squeezed a session in on Monday evening. Went in with no particular plan. Tried identifying the most successful players by monitoring their stack sizes, but there were too many variables to keep track. Played for three hours, had a small loss.

Tuesday 20th. Online SitNGo session.
   Had a sudden rush of enthusiasm to play some more poker.
*Game 1. Mid-game I hit the nut straight on the flop. Player 4 bets, I re-raise and he goes all-in with pocket 7s and a straight draw. I double up. I have a big stack for most of the game but gradually it dwindles until I have the smallest of the four remaining stacks. To my surprise, the three others all go all-in and I'm left in the top two. The remaining player has a massive chip stack and I can't beat him. Second place.
*Game 2. In this one I had a player to my left who kept quoting statistics about the odds of various hands improving. Not many good hands at first. I'm the short stack by the time I make the top four but careful, conservative play gets me across the bubble. After a long heads-up battle I make first place.
*Game 3. A very loose, passive table, with many players limping in pre-flop. I hit trips twice in a row, both times with hands that I would have folded to a pre-flop raise, and end up doubling up. In the end I cruise into the money and take out first place.
   A very good session; possibly the best SitNGo session I've ever had.

Wednesday 21st. Online SitNGo session.
   Only two games in this session.
The first is quite an active game. I don't get much traction and then lose a lot of chips trying to bluff the table (poker rule #7: you can't bluff the table). The second game starts well but then I lose a lot when my hand keeps improving - from top pair to two pair to a flush - and I re-raise a player who has a better flush (poker rule # 12: don't raise a player if you're only going to get called by a better hand). But I claw my way back into the running with a couple of good all-ins. Eventually I make the top two with the biggest stack but it's a real arm-wrestle. Finally I lose an all-in with my A8 vs Q7. This second place finish gives me a small profit overall. Two winning SitNGo sessions in a row! Things are looking up.

Friday 23rd. Live Tournament.
  I go into this tournament with a strategy to deal with all the loose calls. I've decided that I'm willing to raise up to 5% of my stack to protect my good hands pre-flop. Things start out pretty well and I drag in some decent pots. Then I lose about half my stack when I raise with AK and get called by K8 and my opponent (a notorious calling station) hits two pair on the flop. I reach the late stages with less than ten big blinds but there are a number of players with even shorter stacks. So I play conservatively and manage to hang on and reach the final table. In the top eight with an average stack I raise with QQ and the big stack re-raises all-in. Having committed about one quarter of my stack, I call and he turns over AT. There's an Ace on the flop and that's the end of my game. Not only does the player who knocked me out go on to win, but he overtakes me on the Ten Week Challenge leader board. Damn.

Saturday 24th. Online 7 Card Stud.
   Just for a change, I manage to find some spare time on the weekend for a poker session, so I play some 7 Stud in the afternoon. Once again I have no idea what sort of strategy might work, so I decide to play it by ear. Things start out poorly but after a while I win some good pots and after 4 hours of play I've more than doubled my buy-in. For now I'm just putting it down to dumb luck because I really can't see that I'm playing any differently than before.
   Unusually for Pokerstars, there is quite a lot of chat during this game, with a fair bit of joking around between me and two others. Then one of them suffers a bad beat when he loses a big pot to another player who hits quads on 7th street. So the loser goes ballistic and starts abusing the other player and ranting on for ages. Eventually he calms down a bit but that pretty much kills the friendly vibe of the table. I wonder how some of these people would behave in a live game?
   Hands where I saw 4th street: 46%
   Hands that went to showdown: 11%  (22 times)
   Hands won at showdown: 68%
   Hands won without showing: 11

Wednesday 28th. Online SitNGo session.
   This Wednesday night session turns out to be a real struggle. Can't seem to hit anything in the first two games and when I do, someone else has something better. Trying to bluff a draw chaser out of the pot in game 1 doesn't help (poker rule #1: you can't bluff a donkey). I end up all-in against AJ in both games, the first time with KQ and the second time with a desperate K8 push. I lose on both occasions, finishing 6th and 7th.
   Game 3 features lots of early knockouts. By the time we reach the fourth blind level (50/100) there are only three players left. I start as one of three small stacks against one huge stack but manage to work my way back up. I go into heads up play on roughly even terms and end up coming second after pushing all-in with 77 vs AK. In game 4 I double up early on then play fairly tight in the mid stages. But I lose a lot of chips when I decide that my pocket sevens are good with 3 Kings on the board, only to discover that my opponent has paired his Ten for a better full house. Oops. But I still manage to limp into the money, coming third, and coming out of the session with a very small profit.

Friday 30th. Live Tournament.
   There are 29 players at the tourney this week and the organisers have made it a Turbo; a stack to blind ratio of 3000/400 gives me less than 80 Big Blinds to start with and the levels increase every 12 minutes. I know I have to get into a lot of pots in the early stages but I'm coming up with nothing and by the time we hit the first break I'm down to about 15 BBs. Then a player raises the minimum pre-flop and I push all-in with AKs. He calls with his 99 and I hit an Ace and double up. Things improve from there and I manage to stay around the level of the average stack. The rapid increase in the blinds means that by the time we are down to the last 15 players the BBs are 10k and the average stack is 70k! So there are a lot of short stacks in the game. By the time I reach the final table some of the remaining players are nursing stacks that amount to just 3 or 4 BBs. I cruise into the money then play my way into the top two.
   Heads up, I'm up against R, the same guy I got into the top two with last time. But it's only 11pm and there's no splitting the prize pool this time. We each have about 6 Big Blinds so we know the game's not going to go on too long. After swapping chip stacks back and forth for a few hands R lets me check my Big Blind with 84 and we see a flop. I hit middle pair with my 8 and push all-in. R calls with a straight draw and 2 overcards. He pairs his Queen on the turn and the river is no help. I take second prize again and regain my lead on the Ten Week Challenge ladder. Maybe I should change my opinion on turbo tournaments.