The major difference between playing in a tournament and a cash game is the amount of time you have to play. In a cash game, where a typical buy-in is 40 to 100 big blinds, you usually have a deep stack and if you lose all your chips, you can just buy some more. Unlike in a tournament, you can sit back and wait for the right spot to play, because the blinds are never going to go up. I like to play in cash games whenever I can for this very reason; the luxury of being able to fold until I hit the right hand in the right circumstances. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of playing in a cash game is having a deep stack.
However, there are players who prefer to play in cash games with a short stack, and this requires a distinctly different strategy. The poker school online tutorials are divided into different sections: deep stack, medium stack and short stack strategies. In fact they recommend the short stack strategy for cash games because it is relatively simple and the claim is that if it is followed exactly, it is virtually unbeatable. What it amounts to is waiting for a big hand and then playing it very aggressively. The aim is to get all your chips into the middle on the flop. Apparently there are many 'short-stackers' playing online; multi-tabling and basically playing by the numbers. I'm not saying I would never try this strategy, but for now I'm happy to play in cash games with a deep stack.
When it comes to playing in live 'cashies' however, I've run into a bit of problem. The only live cash games I've been able to play in recently are those that spring up during a tournament, after a number of players have been eliminated. These games have a rather peculiar structure. They are typically for a $20 buy-in, no more, no less, and you can only buy more chips if you have lost all of your stack. The blinds are usually 50c/$1, which means you are buying in for just 20 big blinds; what I would consider to be a very short stack. What usually happens is that players lose their starting stacks very early and end up reloading, often multiple times. As a result more and more chips accumulate on the table and the stack sizes become deeper as the game progresses.
This is basically a strange hybrid between a cash game and a tournament. I can only assume that the games are played this way because the players come from a background of tournament play and have little or no understanding of how cash poker games work. Coming from a background of playing cash poker games, this is very strange to me, but if I try to suggest changes that would make the game more like a standard cashie, no-one is interested. There was one occasion when I succeeded in changing the blind structure to 50c/50c, resulting in a buy-in of 40BB, but that's about it.
So I've had to learn to adapt to this short-stacked structure and I've done so quite successfully. Even from the first time I played in one of these games I realised that the optimal strategy was going to be quite different from that used in a deeper stacked game. My strategy was and is fairly straightforward: fold a lot and wait for a big pre-flop hand, then push very hard, raising at least 3/4 pot, usually more. Then, if I miss the flop, I fold. If I hit the flop, I'm usually pushing all-in. I'm also willing to limp in to big unraised pots pre-flop with hands with a lot of potential; suited aces, big suited connectors and small to medium pairs, hoping to hit a monster hand, or at least a monster draw. These games are typically ridiculously loose and passive so if I hit a big hand, I get paid off. Of course, if I lose all my chips in one of these hands, I just buy another short stack and start again. And if my stack starts to drop too low, I look for a good spot to go all-in. Eventually I end up with a stack that's big enough to give me the latitude to play a more standard game.
Recently I decided to try to get a regular cash game going at my local club, the idea being to make it more of a deep stacked game. But I knew that the potential players for this game were likely to be almost exclusively from the ranks of tournament poker players. So I had to think long and hard about what structure I could use that would not put these people off playing. The minimum buy-in for a cash game is usually 40BB. I knew that most players don't like to play for such 'small stakes' as 50c, and that $1 blinds was probably the lowest I could get away with. But I also knew that, even though these players will reload $20 multiple times, they would probably baulk at paying $40 upfront to play in my cashie. So, what to do?
As it happens, my wife and I went on one of our occasional trips to the Skycity Casino during this period. As I had about $100 to spend on any gambling activity, I decided to go and check out the 'Poker Zone', even though I suspected the games would be pretty expensive. It turns out that the blinds for the cash game were $2/$4, but the minimum buy-in was only $100 (25BB). So I decided to have a go at playing with a short stack, just for fun. It went pretty well. I folded a lot and when I finally hit a playable hand it was KK. I ended up all-in with this hand and in the end I doubled the size of my stack. This allowed me to play a few more hands and in the end, after a couple of hours, I walked away with $200 in my pocket.
After seeing that the casino was offering games with a minimum buy-in of 25BB, I figured that I could probably do the same. So I set up my cashie with a buy-in of $25-$50. That way, the tourney players were able to buy in for their short stacks if they wanted to, and I was able to buy a medium sized stack. As it happened, most of them bought in for $30-$40 and the whole thing went off rather well. I've had a couple of these games since and I'm happy to be able to play in a cashie where I don't have to play the short stack.
I still play regularly in live tournaments and occasionally get into the short stack cashies that are played afterwards. It's just a matter of adjusting my play to the circumstances. If I'm forced to play with a short stack, I play a short stack strategy. However, there are limits. A game that started up recently during a tournament had the following structure: dealers choice, Omaha or Holdem, buy-in $20, one $1 blind when playing Omaha, $1/$2 blinds for Holdem. This game was set up by K, who is a big fan of Omaha, so I guess it was devised to make Omaha the more attractive option. But it meant that you were playing with just 10BB when playing Texas Holdem. Playing a short stack is one thing, but that's just ridiculous.
Tuesday, 14 April 2015
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
Playing the Short Stack, Part 1
You never count your money
When you're sitting at the table,
There'll be time enough for counting
When the dealings done Kenny Rogers
I have been aware for some time of the importance of stack size in poker tournaments. The number of big blinds that I have left is a critical factor for me in determining how to play (or whether to play) a particular hand. Of course there are other important factors in tournament play, but I think stack size is the dominant factor most of the time. Consult any book or article or tutorial on tournament strategy and you will usually find some variation on the following: play tight when the blinds are relatively small and conserve your chips, then as the blinds increase start playing more hands more aggressively. This is because the potential rewards become progressively larger as the blinds increase. It is because of this principal that I find myself frequently counting my chips at the table, and the deeper I go in the tournament, the more closely I will be monitoring my stack size.
It is often stated that once your stack reaches a certain minimum size, then the aggression factor reaches the level of going all-in pre-flop. This stack size is the point where calling or raising becomes counter-productive and it is better to either fold or push. Basically, at this point any betting on a hand is likely to result in being pot-committed. If you have, say, ten big blinds (10BB) left and you make a minimum raise, that's already 20% of your stack committed to the hand. And what's going to happen post-flop? If you fold, you've given away chips that you couldn't afford to lose. If you bet or call, you've got at least 30% of your stack in the pot already with two more streets still to come. With a stack this short there's very little room for manoeuvre.
But while a stack of 10BB is definitely a short stack, it still has considerable value as a single unit. In most cases where you are short-stacked there will be many other players with similar or only slightly larger stacks. Even a player with a stack of 20BB is going to think twice about calling an all-in bet that would commit half their stack to one hand. This is the principal of 'fold equity'. If you start pushing all-in with a decent-sized stack, then you can win in one of two different ways: you can get called and win the hand, or the other player(s) can fold and you win the pot uncontested. On the other hand, if you push with 5BB, you are far more likely to get called by the larger stacks and what's more, you're probably going to get more callers, which only reduces your chances of winning the hand.
All of the above is standard poker tournament theory and I have been aware of many of these principals since I started getting serious about my poker play. It's about 5 years ago that I started putting the principal of short stack play into practise. This was when I used to play in a weekly Friday night tournament at the Phoenix Tavern. Right from the start I had a simple game plan: play my normal game (basically, play the same as a cash game) until I reach a stack of 10BB, then either fold pre-flop or go all-in. I would usually be shoving with any Ace, any pair, or any two picture cards (actually, I can't remember if I was risking my stack with a hand as weak as QJ, but I probably was). This strategy worked pretty well for me and I was well into profit by the time they stopped playing these games.
My behaviour at these live tournaments was unusual; most of the other players weren't pushing pre-flop unless their stacks were very small. So most of the time they would get a lot of callers and get knocked out, or occasionally they'd get lucky and suddenly become the big stack. Online tournaments were and are somewhat different. Although I haven't played in multi-table tournaments much online, I've played in plenty of single-table tournaments (STTs). Even at the micro stakes level, the awareness of fold equity is considerably higher than in casual live tourneys. Players are far more inclined to push all-in with a decent sized stack in the later stages of the tournament. You still get some players who let their chips dribble away until they're almost down to nothing, but the majority have at least some idea of more aggressive short stack play. So, on the one hand it's trickier to negotiate the later stages of an online tourney, with more all-in shoves by the shorter stacks. On the other hand, I've found that these players are far more inclined to fold to an all-in bet and there are fewer 'hero calls' going on. So there are pros and cons to the different style of play found online.
I now play regularly in a number of live tournaments, but it's important to remember that these are essentially 'pub tournaments' where most of the players are not particularly skilled and some of them are absolute beginners or gamblers, or drunk, or all of the above. There is not much knowledge of poker strategy to be found at these games, and this is particularly evident when it comes to the end game. I am constantly amazed at the number of players who will continue to limp in and call with very short stacks. If you have 10,000 in chips in front of you, it might sound a lot, but not if the big blind is 2,000. And yet I frequently see exactly this situation. By this stage I'm already either out of the tournament or a decent-sized stack. And this is because I don't wait around to get blinded out. Once I reach what I call the 'red zone' it's push or fold. If I push, there are three possible outcomes: everyone folds and I pick up enough chips to keep me going a little longer; I get called and win, which usually at least doubles my stack size; I get called and lose, which usually means I'm eliminated. Either one of these results is better than limping along with a micro stack and going out with a whimper.
My current push-or-fold level is 12BB. I increased it from 10BB quite some time ago because I felt that trying to play a stack of 12 BB is pretty tricky, so I erred on the side of caution and expanded my red zone. My recent reading at www.pokerschoolonline.com has confirmed this for me. They recommend at least a 4X raise with premium hands and also say that if you're betting 1/3 of your stack you are pot committed and might as well go all-in. So if you have 12BB left, that's an automatic push. I've also tightened up the range of hands that I'm willing to push with. If there's a raise in front of me, all other things being equal, I'm probably folding everything but AK, AA, KK, QQ and JJ. With no raise I'm usually pushing with any Ace and any pair, and maybe KQ or KJ if the circumstances are right. This is not a hard and fast range of hands; the hands I'll play depend on a number of other factors. In fact, in recent months, I've become much more flexible on the boundaries of the red zone. Whether or not I push all-in now depends on my stack size, other players' stack sizes, my position and the number of callers in the pot.
These days I am far less likely to push with A5 or 66 from middle or early position. It's become increasingly apparent to me that if I get called with this sort of hand, I'll usually be facing a better hand. So position has become much more important. I'll push from early with the raise-calling hands mentioned above (and maybe a few others) and then progressively widen my range as my position approaches the button. The ideal place for me to push from is the big blind. If there has been no raise, then I'm definitely shoving with any Ace, any pair, KQ, KJ, and maybe a few others.
The other factor that I take into consideration these days is the number of chips in the pot. The more chips there are to win, the more likely I am to push all-in, especially in position. So if I'm sitting on the button, small blind or big blind, and a number of players limp in, then my all-in range suddenly becomes much wider. And conversely, if there are only a few chips in the middle, then I'm not so inclined to risk my stack for such a small reward.
All this is based on the assumption that I have a reasonable sized stack; say 12BB-10BB. If I'm unfortunate enough for my stack size to drop below this, then my pushing range gets progressively wider. If at all possible, I never want to get below 5BB. I consider this to be my desperation level. If I have 4BB or less then, if I don't get a pushing hand by the time the big blind hits me, I'm almost certainly going all-in with any two cards. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't, but it's better to do something than just get blinded out. I was in a situation like this a few weeks ago and went all-in from the big blind with T6. When I was called by three other players, I thought it was all over. But I hit a 6 and no-one else hit anything. The look on the other players' faces: priceless. The only thing that may make me think twice about pushing in this situation is if one player has raised and one or more has called; in that case I'm only going in with something decent.
So nowadays there are a lot of considerations that determine whether or not I push my chips into the middle. I am constantly re-evaluating my position as the stack sizes, the size of the pot, and my position changes. When I first started playing I had a fairly straightforward plan for playing a short stack in tournaments. But now it is much more subtle and when I'm at the table (or screen) my mind is a whirlpool of constantly changing scenarios.
When you're sitting at the table,
There'll be time enough for counting
When the dealings done Kenny Rogers
I have been aware for some time of the importance of stack size in poker tournaments. The number of big blinds that I have left is a critical factor for me in determining how to play (or whether to play) a particular hand. Of course there are other important factors in tournament play, but I think stack size is the dominant factor most of the time. Consult any book or article or tutorial on tournament strategy and you will usually find some variation on the following: play tight when the blinds are relatively small and conserve your chips, then as the blinds increase start playing more hands more aggressively. This is because the potential rewards become progressively larger as the blinds increase. It is because of this principal that I find myself frequently counting my chips at the table, and the deeper I go in the tournament, the more closely I will be monitoring my stack size.
It is often stated that once your stack reaches a certain minimum size, then the aggression factor reaches the level of going all-in pre-flop. This stack size is the point where calling or raising becomes counter-productive and it is better to either fold or push. Basically, at this point any betting on a hand is likely to result in being pot-committed. If you have, say, ten big blinds (10BB) left and you make a minimum raise, that's already 20% of your stack committed to the hand. And what's going to happen post-flop? If you fold, you've given away chips that you couldn't afford to lose. If you bet or call, you've got at least 30% of your stack in the pot already with two more streets still to come. With a stack this short there's very little room for manoeuvre.
But while a stack of 10BB is definitely a short stack, it still has considerable value as a single unit. In most cases where you are short-stacked there will be many other players with similar or only slightly larger stacks. Even a player with a stack of 20BB is going to think twice about calling an all-in bet that would commit half their stack to one hand. This is the principal of 'fold equity'. If you start pushing all-in with a decent-sized stack, then you can win in one of two different ways: you can get called and win the hand, or the other player(s) can fold and you win the pot uncontested. On the other hand, if you push with 5BB, you are far more likely to get called by the larger stacks and what's more, you're probably going to get more callers, which only reduces your chances of winning the hand.
All of the above is standard poker tournament theory and I have been aware of many of these principals since I started getting serious about my poker play. It's about 5 years ago that I started putting the principal of short stack play into practise. This was when I used to play in a weekly Friday night tournament at the Phoenix Tavern. Right from the start I had a simple game plan: play my normal game (basically, play the same as a cash game) until I reach a stack of 10BB, then either fold pre-flop or go all-in. I would usually be shoving with any Ace, any pair, or any two picture cards (actually, I can't remember if I was risking my stack with a hand as weak as QJ, but I probably was). This strategy worked pretty well for me and I was well into profit by the time they stopped playing these games.
My behaviour at these live tournaments was unusual; most of the other players weren't pushing pre-flop unless their stacks were very small. So most of the time they would get a lot of callers and get knocked out, or occasionally they'd get lucky and suddenly become the big stack. Online tournaments were and are somewhat different. Although I haven't played in multi-table tournaments much online, I've played in plenty of single-table tournaments (STTs). Even at the micro stakes level, the awareness of fold equity is considerably higher than in casual live tourneys. Players are far more inclined to push all-in with a decent sized stack in the later stages of the tournament. You still get some players who let their chips dribble away until they're almost down to nothing, but the majority have at least some idea of more aggressive short stack play. So, on the one hand it's trickier to negotiate the later stages of an online tourney, with more all-in shoves by the shorter stacks. On the other hand, I've found that these players are far more inclined to fold to an all-in bet and there are fewer 'hero calls' going on. So there are pros and cons to the different style of play found online.
I now play regularly in a number of live tournaments, but it's important to remember that these are essentially 'pub tournaments' where most of the players are not particularly skilled and some of them are absolute beginners or gamblers, or drunk, or all of the above. There is not much knowledge of poker strategy to be found at these games, and this is particularly evident when it comes to the end game. I am constantly amazed at the number of players who will continue to limp in and call with very short stacks. If you have 10,000 in chips in front of you, it might sound a lot, but not if the big blind is 2,000. And yet I frequently see exactly this situation. By this stage I'm already either out of the tournament or a decent-sized stack. And this is because I don't wait around to get blinded out. Once I reach what I call the 'red zone' it's push or fold. If I push, there are three possible outcomes: everyone folds and I pick up enough chips to keep me going a little longer; I get called and win, which usually at least doubles my stack size; I get called and lose, which usually means I'm eliminated. Either one of these results is better than limping along with a micro stack and going out with a whimper.
My current push-or-fold level is 12BB. I increased it from 10BB quite some time ago because I felt that trying to play a stack of 12 BB is pretty tricky, so I erred on the side of caution and expanded my red zone. My recent reading at www.pokerschoolonline.com has confirmed this for me. They recommend at least a 4X raise with premium hands and also say that if you're betting 1/3 of your stack you are pot committed and might as well go all-in. So if you have 12BB left, that's an automatic push. I've also tightened up the range of hands that I'm willing to push with. If there's a raise in front of me, all other things being equal, I'm probably folding everything but AK, AA, KK, QQ and JJ. With no raise I'm usually pushing with any Ace and any pair, and maybe KQ or KJ if the circumstances are right. This is not a hard and fast range of hands; the hands I'll play depend on a number of other factors. In fact, in recent months, I've become much more flexible on the boundaries of the red zone. Whether or not I push all-in now depends on my stack size, other players' stack sizes, my position and the number of callers in the pot.
These days I am far less likely to push with A5 or 66 from middle or early position. It's become increasingly apparent to me that if I get called with this sort of hand, I'll usually be facing a better hand. So position has become much more important. I'll push from early with the raise-calling hands mentioned above (and maybe a few others) and then progressively widen my range as my position approaches the button. The ideal place for me to push from is the big blind. If there has been no raise, then I'm definitely shoving with any Ace, any pair, KQ, KJ, and maybe a few others.
The other factor that I take into consideration these days is the number of chips in the pot. The more chips there are to win, the more likely I am to push all-in, especially in position. So if I'm sitting on the button, small blind or big blind, and a number of players limp in, then my all-in range suddenly becomes much wider. And conversely, if there are only a few chips in the middle, then I'm not so inclined to risk my stack for such a small reward.
All this is based on the assumption that I have a reasonable sized stack; say 12BB-10BB. If I'm unfortunate enough for my stack size to drop below this, then my pushing range gets progressively wider. If at all possible, I never want to get below 5BB. I consider this to be my desperation level. If I have 4BB or less then, if I don't get a pushing hand by the time the big blind hits me, I'm almost certainly going all-in with any two cards. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't, but it's better to do something than just get blinded out. I was in a situation like this a few weeks ago and went all-in from the big blind with T6. When I was called by three other players, I thought it was all over. But I hit a 6 and no-one else hit anything. The look on the other players' faces: priceless. The only thing that may make me think twice about pushing in this situation is if one player has raised and one or more has called; in that case I'm only going in with something decent.
So nowadays there are a lot of considerations that determine whether or not I push my chips into the middle. I am constantly re-evaluating my position as the stack sizes, the size of the pot, and my position changes. When I first started playing I had a fairly straightforward plan for playing a short stack in tournaments. But now it is much more subtle and when I'm at the table (or screen) my mind is a whirlpool of constantly changing scenarios.
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Last Year
The calendar on your wall is ticking the days off,
You've been reading some old letters,
You smile to think how much you've changed The The
JANUARY. The year started off with me opening up a bank account specifically for my poker stake. Just to keep everything separate from my regular accounts, I went to a different bank. I'd been hoping to be able to do this for quite a while, and my bankroll had reached a point where I didn't want that amount of money lying around the house. Over the course of the year I've deposited a few times and never had to withdraw anything; so far so good.
FEBRUARY. This month I had my third cash and my second first place in the Friday night tournament. At this point, things were looking very good, and these sorts of results continued through most of the year. In the end I was looking at about a 90% Return On Investment for this game type. I also won first place in one of the four 'ten week challenge' prize pools and I had more first placings than anyone else. I like the Friday night game.
MARCH. With the start of the Autumn season I started playing online no-limit cash games. They started out very well with me winning a fair bit in the first couple of months, but after that my win rate slowed down dramatically. By the end of the year I was still ahead in this game type even though the Winter and Spring results were negative. I've decided to continue playing online cashies this year, although I'm prepared to drop down a level if the results continue on their downward trend.
APRIL. Even this early in the year it was becoming apparent that I'd lost my SitNGo mojo. My ROI in this game type was -19% for the Autumn season, my worst result ever. By the end of the year I was sitting at around -17% over-all for online SitNGos. I really don't know why I've been doing so badly in a game type in which I've had reasonable success in the past. But I'm going to keep plugging away at them and searching for the secret to SitNGo success.
MAY. I attended my first Clubs NZ North Island tournament at the end of this month. This was a terrific event that I thoroughly enjoyed playing in. And actually making the main tournament final table was the icing on the cake. It's great fun being part of a big poker event that involves a lot of players. This event is being held down in Wellington this year and my wife and I have been invited to play for the OWMC team. Can't wait.
JUNE. Six months in and I'd played in six Inter-club poker events. My wife and I both play in these tournaments, held on the second Sunday of every month at various different Auckland clubs. This is strictly a fun game for me as I don't use my poker bankroll to play. It's nice to go to different venues and play in a game with fifty or more players. I cashed once last year, coming in second, which isn't bad considering there are only ten games in the year.
JULY. I started playing in satellite games to live events this month. These games are available on Pokerstars and are satellites to Australia New Zealand Poker Tour events. I've played in satellites to games in Melbourne and Auckland, generally playing one each month. These are turbo events, often with multiple re-buys, so a big change in game strategy is required. I haven't got past the first level yet (there are usually three levels). Although it's a big long shot, I'll keep playing these games, although I'll have to give the ones in Perth a miss; it's too expensive to fly to the other side of Australia.
AUGUST. This is the month when I started running occasional Saturday afternoon tournaments at my local club. They were not a raging success. I just couldn't get enough people interested and by the end of the year the games had fizzled out. In fact we only had five players for the December game, so we played a cash game instead. This turned out to be good for me, as I did very well in the cashie. Although the poker organiser has made some noises about playing again this year, I think she'd be flogging a dead horse. Oh well. It was worth a try.
SEPTEMBER. This is when I decided I needed to find a 'fishier' poker site than the ones I was playing on. I actually had a lot of trouble trying to see the games on offer on the different sites I tried. I didn't figure out that it had to do with the lobby view that I was using until after I'd registered with Bet365. But all I was able to find on Bet365 was 6 max games (short-handed tables). I couldn't find any 9-player cash games at the level I wanted to play. So in the end, I just went back to 888poker.
OCTOBER. This is the month of the TV coverage of the World Series of Poker main event. In previous years ESPN has shown delayed coverage of this event leading up to the final table in November. This time, it was a bit patchy. They didn't start showing the early stages until quite late, skipping the first couple of days altogether. Then coverage jumped from the final 18 to the final 6. Then when it got down to the last three players, they showed it live, but there was no edited highlights. So the whole thing was a bit of a shambles as far as TV coverage goes. Thank God for YouTube.
NOVEMBER. As this is the end of Autumn, it marks the last month of my poker year. I played nearly 600 hours of poker over the year and showed a 16% ROI overall. My best profits were from live tournaments, then online cash games, then live cash games. The 27-player online tournies I played last Summer were bad for my bottom line, and the SitNGos have been very disappointing. I'm going to keep playing these SitNGos but I'll also be looking for more live tournaments to play in this year. The idea is to play to my strengths.
DECEMBER. Looking back over the year two things stand out: my continuing good form in the Friday night tournament and the decline in form for online SitNGos. Obviously, I need to do something about the SitNGos and I am intending to gather more information about the games I play in and start reviewing some of my poker sessions. But the year overall has been pretty good both in terms of results and the satisfaction I get from playing poker. So now I am looking forward to another year and whatever challenges it may bring. Meanwhile, it's damn hot outside, so I think I'll have a beer...
You've been reading some old letters,
You smile to think how much you've changed The The
JANUARY. The year started off with me opening up a bank account specifically for my poker stake. Just to keep everything separate from my regular accounts, I went to a different bank. I'd been hoping to be able to do this for quite a while, and my bankroll had reached a point where I didn't want that amount of money lying around the house. Over the course of the year I've deposited a few times and never had to withdraw anything; so far so good.
FEBRUARY. This month I had my third cash and my second first place in the Friday night tournament. At this point, things were looking very good, and these sorts of results continued through most of the year. In the end I was looking at about a 90% Return On Investment for this game type. I also won first place in one of the four 'ten week challenge' prize pools and I had more first placings than anyone else. I like the Friday night game.
MARCH. With the start of the Autumn season I started playing online no-limit cash games. They started out very well with me winning a fair bit in the first couple of months, but after that my win rate slowed down dramatically. By the end of the year I was still ahead in this game type even though the Winter and Spring results were negative. I've decided to continue playing online cashies this year, although I'm prepared to drop down a level if the results continue on their downward trend.
APRIL. Even this early in the year it was becoming apparent that I'd lost my SitNGo mojo. My ROI in this game type was -19% for the Autumn season, my worst result ever. By the end of the year I was sitting at around -17% over-all for online SitNGos. I really don't know why I've been doing so badly in a game type in which I've had reasonable success in the past. But I'm going to keep plugging away at them and searching for the secret to SitNGo success.
MAY. I attended my first Clubs NZ North Island tournament at the end of this month. This was a terrific event that I thoroughly enjoyed playing in. And actually making the main tournament final table was the icing on the cake. It's great fun being part of a big poker event that involves a lot of players. This event is being held down in Wellington this year and my wife and I have been invited to play for the OWMC team. Can't wait.
JUNE. Six months in and I'd played in six Inter-club poker events. My wife and I both play in these tournaments, held on the second Sunday of every month at various different Auckland clubs. This is strictly a fun game for me as I don't use my poker bankroll to play. It's nice to go to different venues and play in a game with fifty or more players. I cashed once last year, coming in second, which isn't bad considering there are only ten games in the year.
JULY. I started playing in satellite games to live events this month. These games are available on Pokerstars and are satellites to Australia New Zealand Poker Tour events. I've played in satellites to games in Melbourne and Auckland, generally playing one each month. These are turbo events, often with multiple re-buys, so a big change in game strategy is required. I haven't got past the first level yet (there are usually three levels). Although it's a big long shot, I'll keep playing these games, although I'll have to give the ones in Perth a miss; it's too expensive to fly to the other side of Australia.
AUGUST. This is the month when I started running occasional Saturday afternoon tournaments at my local club. They were not a raging success. I just couldn't get enough people interested and by the end of the year the games had fizzled out. In fact we only had five players for the December game, so we played a cash game instead. This turned out to be good for me, as I did very well in the cashie. Although the poker organiser has made some noises about playing again this year, I think she'd be flogging a dead horse. Oh well. It was worth a try.
SEPTEMBER. This is when I decided I needed to find a 'fishier' poker site than the ones I was playing on. I actually had a lot of trouble trying to see the games on offer on the different sites I tried. I didn't figure out that it had to do with the lobby view that I was using until after I'd registered with Bet365. But all I was able to find on Bet365 was 6 max games (short-handed tables). I couldn't find any 9-player cash games at the level I wanted to play. So in the end, I just went back to 888poker.
OCTOBER. This is the month of the TV coverage of the World Series of Poker main event. In previous years ESPN has shown delayed coverage of this event leading up to the final table in November. This time, it was a bit patchy. They didn't start showing the early stages until quite late, skipping the first couple of days altogether. Then coverage jumped from the final 18 to the final 6. Then when it got down to the last three players, they showed it live, but there was no edited highlights. So the whole thing was a bit of a shambles as far as TV coverage goes. Thank God for YouTube.
NOVEMBER. As this is the end of Autumn, it marks the last month of my poker year. I played nearly 600 hours of poker over the year and showed a 16% ROI overall. My best profits were from live tournaments, then online cash games, then live cash games. The 27-player online tournies I played last Summer were bad for my bottom line, and the SitNGos have been very disappointing. I'm going to keep playing these SitNGos but I'll also be looking for more live tournaments to play in this year. The idea is to play to my strengths.
DECEMBER. Looking back over the year two things stand out: my continuing good form in the Friday night tournament and the decline in form for online SitNGos. Obviously, I need to do something about the SitNGos and I am intending to gather more information about the games I play in and start reviewing some of my poker sessions. But the year overall has been pretty good both in terms of results and the satisfaction I get from playing poker. So now I am looking forward to another year and whatever challenges it may bring. Meanwhile, it's damn hot outside, so I think I'll have a beer...
Saturday, 27 December 2014
The Blinds
We had one million bales of the best Sligo rags,
We had two million barrels of stones,
We had three million sides of old blind horses hides,
We had four million barrels of bones. The Pogues
Since I started playing tournament poker I've had a passing interest in different blind structures, but it's only recently, when I've been running a tournament of my own, that I've looked deeper into the way that poker tournaments are structured. When I started seriously considering the idea of running a tournament at my local club I started thinking about the way that the blinds worked in different games that I've been involved in over the years. I also spent some time looking at a number of websites that suggested various ways of structuring the blinds, usually for those intending to run home games. But in the end my conclusions on the perfect tournament structure were irrelevant as the final decision was based on practical considerations such as what the potential players were used to and the types of chips that were available.
Nevertheless, for what it's worth, here are my conclusions about blind structures. As a general principal, the blinds should be going up by between 30% and 50% . This results in a reasonable amount of pressure on players' stacks without making thing move too quickly. So where do you start? Obviously, if you start with 1/2 (small blind 1/big blind 2) then you immediately run into trouble at the next level. Is it 1.5/3? You can't have half a chip. So what is the lowest level you can start on without running into this problem? It turns out to be 10/20. Then you can go to 15/30, 25/50. This is the way all 888 Poker tournaments and Pokerstars SitnGos start. Other online tourneys are similar to this, although Fulltilt has a more gentle progression.
The next couple of levels usually pose a problem. If you go to 40/80 then the next logical step would be 60/120. While Fulltilt does this, most other sites can't resist having a 50/100 level. They achieve this by going from 25/50 to 50/100, a level where the blinds double. The result is that the blinds increase by about 50% for the first three levels, then double in the fourth level. So players need to adjust to the fact that their stacks are halved in value at this point in the tournament. Personally, I don't have a problem with a blind structure that maintains a consistent rate of increase by missing the 50/100 level but, on the other hand, I can live with a single double up every once in a while, as long as know it's coming.
When it comes to the live tournaments I've played in, things are a bit different. For some reason, local tournaments start their blinds at 100/200. There are the occasional exceptions that start at 50/100, but they are in the minority. And I've never seen one that starts at 10/20. I have no idea why local organisers feel the need to add that extra zero. Possibly it has something to do with the type of chips that are available, or maybe someone started out that way and everyone has since followed their example. But this doesn't actually affect the blind/stack ratio because the stack sizes are also larger. So while an online tourney might have a starting stack of between 1500 and 3000, a local tourney might start out with 15,000 to 25,000 chips. So the end result is the same.
Every Friday night I play in a live tournament that has the following blind structure:
100/200, 200/400, 300/600, 400/800, 500/1000, 600/1200, 800/1600, 1k/2k, 2k/4k, 3k/6k...
The organiser tinkered with the blinds for a while and finally stuck with the above structure. It works pretty well except for one thing. The first double-up happens in the first level. So if you start with 20,000 chips, you initially have 100 big blinds. But after the first increase your effective stack size is 50 big blinds. I would avoid having such a sudden change in the early stages if it was up to me, but I've learned to adapt to this structure over time. Occasionally the organiser will set up a tournament where the starting stack is 15,000 and the blinds go 50/100, 100/200, 200/400... This starts out as a deep stack tournament, but then the blinds double twice in a row, making for a very interesting first three levels. Fortunately, we play the standard structure most of the time.
An even more challenging blind structure was the one used in the North Island Clubs NZ Tournament (see 'Club Champs', 11/06/14). This one started out the same as the weekly tournament but after the 500/1000 level went: 1k/2k, 2k/4k, 3k/6k... Not only did it start with a double-up, but there were two consecutive double-ups in the 6th and 7th levels. Tough. My Poker DIY software also has a number of blind formats pre-loaded, one of which is the WSOP 2010 structure, which goes like this: 25/25, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200... This one starts with two consecutive double-ups then settles down a bit. There are also a number of tournaments that add antes in the later stages, but that's another story altogether.
Having looked at all these possible blind structures I finally decided that my ideal set of blinds would like like this:
100/200, 150/300, 250/500, 400/800, 600/1200, 1000/2000, 1500/3000, 2500/5000...
In this structure the big blind increases by around 50% each time, with the largest increase being 67% at the 1k/2k level. I've used the 100/200 format here rather than the 10/20 simply because it suits the available chips. But it would work just as well if you knocked a zero off every number. I've omitted the 500/1000 level in order to keep the increases fairly uniform from level to level and thus avoid double-ups. However, the best theoretical blind structure is not necessarily the best blind structure in a particular situation, and I never got to trial this structure, although I did get close.
The tournament that I ran this year was set up by a committee, and the structure we used was based on the chip set that was available and the type of format that the committee members and the players were used to playing in. In the end we decided to use the same format as the Friday night tournament mentioned above as it was familiar to many of the potential players. I still held out hope of trialling different structures, provided that the tournament was successful enough to continue through the year. As it happens, this was not the case; I struggled to get enough players and by the end of the year I was ready to give the whole thing up. But for the last game I decided to do something a little different.
Up to this point the tournament had been a standard buy-in event so I decided to try a re-buy and add-on format with a lower entry fee. And I figured that the blinds would need adjusting for the new format. If there were re-buys allowed during the first few periods and add-ons during the first break the blinds would have to be structured accordingly. I decided to start with a relatively short stack and to have a reasonably slow increase in the blinds until the first break. Then there would be a double-up after the break. That way the short stack would encourage more aggressive play and therefore re-buys, especially in the stages just before the break and the approach of the double-up stage would encourage players to add-on during the break. That was the theory anyway. So the blind structure I used went like this:
100/200, 150/300, 250/500, 400/800, 500/1000, (break) 1000/2000, 1500/3000, 2500/5000...
This was as close as I was ever going to get to my ideal structure. I had to insert the 500/1000 level to make it work, even though this slows down the rate of increase, and then make the next level a double-up, but I was pretty happy about the final format. Once the players adjusted to the different blind structure it all went quite well. Unfortunately, that was the last game because we just weren't getting the numbers but at least I got to try something a little different.
Looking closely at blind structures has focused my attention on how tournaments work and how important it is to be aware of where you stand in relation to the blinds. I'm certainly very wary of playing in a tournament where there is inadequate information about the blind structure. I would rather play in a game that has a steady increase in the blinds rather than one with sudden increases at intervals, but the important thing is the ability to adjust to the structure of the tournament you are playing in. So although I'm not running tournaments anymore, I'm certainly playing in them and I think this diversion into blinds management has helped me in my overall game strategy. And maybe one day I'll get to run my perfect tourney.
We had two million barrels of stones,
We had three million sides of old blind horses hides,
We had four million barrels of bones. The Pogues
Since I started playing tournament poker I've had a passing interest in different blind structures, but it's only recently, when I've been running a tournament of my own, that I've looked deeper into the way that poker tournaments are structured. When I started seriously considering the idea of running a tournament at my local club I started thinking about the way that the blinds worked in different games that I've been involved in over the years. I also spent some time looking at a number of websites that suggested various ways of structuring the blinds, usually for those intending to run home games. But in the end my conclusions on the perfect tournament structure were irrelevant as the final decision was based on practical considerations such as what the potential players were used to and the types of chips that were available.
Nevertheless, for what it's worth, here are my conclusions about blind structures. As a general principal, the blinds should be going up by between 30% and 50% . This results in a reasonable amount of pressure on players' stacks without making thing move too quickly. So where do you start? Obviously, if you start with 1/2 (small blind 1/big blind 2) then you immediately run into trouble at the next level. Is it 1.5/3? You can't have half a chip. So what is the lowest level you can start on without running into this problem? It turns out to be 10/20. Then you can go to 15/30, 25/50. This is the way all 888 Poker tournaments and Pokerstars SitnGos start. Other online tourneys are similar to this, although Fulltilt has a more gentle progression.
When it comes to the live tournaments I've played in, things are a bit different. For some reason, local tournaments start their blinds at 100/200. There are the occasional exceptions that start at 50/100, but they are in the minority. And I've never seen one that starts at 10/20. I have no idea why local organisers feel the need to add that extra zero. Possibly it has something to do with the type of chips that are available, or maybe someone started out that way and everyone has since followed their example. But this doesn't actually affect the blind/stack ratio because the stack sizes are also larger. So while an online tourney might have a starting stack of between 1500 and 3000, a local tourney might start out with 15,000 to 25,000 chips. So the end result is the same.
Every Friday night I play in a live tournament that has the following blind structure:
100/200, 200/400, 300/600, 400/800, 500/1000, 600/1200, 800/1600, 1k/2k, 2k/4k, 3k/6k...
The organiser tinkered with the blinds for a while and finally stuck with the above structure. It works pretty well except for one thing. The first double-up happens in the first level. So if you start with 20,000 chips, you initially have 100 big blinds. But after the first increase your effective stack size is 50 big blinds. I would avoid having such a sudden change in the early stages if it was up to me, but I've learned to adapt to this structure over time. Occasionally the organiser will set up a tournament where the starting stack is 15,000 and the blinds go 50/100, 100/200, 200/400... This starts out as a deep stack tournament, but then the blinds double twice in a row, making for a very interesting first three levels. Fortunately, we play the standard structure most of the time.
An even more challenging blind structure was the one used in the North Island Clubs NZ Tournament (see 'Club Champs', 11/06/14). This one started out the same as the weekly tournament but after the 500/1000 level went: 1k/2k, 2k/4k, 3k/6k... Not only did it start with a double-up, but there were two consecutive double-ups in the 6th and 7th levels. Tough. My Poker DIY software also has a number of blind formats pre-loaded, one of which is the WSOP 2010 structure, which goes like this: 25/25, 25/50, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200... This one starts with two consecutive double-ups then settles down a bit. There are also a number of tournaments that add antes in the later stages, but that's another story altogether.
Having looked at all these possible blind structures I finally decided that my ideal set of blinds would like like this:
100/200, 150/300, 250/500, 400/800, 600/1200, 1000/2000, 1500/3000, 2500/5000...
In this structure the big blind increases by around 50% each time, with the largest increase being 67% at the 1k/2k level. I've used the 100/200 format here rather than the 10/20 simply because it suits the available chips. But it would work just as well if you knocked a zero off every number. I've omitted the 500/1000 level in order to keep the increases fairly uniform from level to level and thus avoid double-ups. However, the best theoretical blind structure is not necessarily the best blind structure in a particular situation, and I never got to trial this structure, although I did get close.
Up to this point the tournament had been a standard buy-in event so I decided to try a re-buy and add-on format with a lower entry fee. And I figured that the blinds would need adjusting for the new format. If there were re-buys allowed during the first few periods and add-ons during the first break the blinds would have to be structured accordingly. I decided to start with a relatively short stack and to have a reasonably slow increase in the blinds until the first break. Then there would be a double-up after the break. That way the short stack would encourage more aggressive play and therefore re-buys, especially in the stages just before the break and the approach of the double-up stage would encourage players to add-on during the break. That was the theory anyway. So the blind structure I used went like this:
100/200, 150/300, 250/500, 400/800, 500/1000, (break) 1000/2000, 1500/3000, 2500/5000...
This was as close as I was ever going to get to my ideal structure. I had to insert the 500/1000 level to make it work, even though this slows down the rate of increase, and then make the next level a double-up, but I was pretty happy about the final format. Once the players adjusted to the different blind structure it all went quite well. Unfortunately, that was the last game because we just weren't getting the numbers but at least I got to try something a little different.
Looking closely at blind structures has focused my attention on how tournaments work and how important it is to be aware of where you stand in relation to the blinds. I'm certainly very wary of playing in a tournament where there is inadequate information about the blind structure. I would rather play in a game that has a steady increase in the blinds rather than one with sudden increases at intervals, but the important thing is the ability to adjust to the structure of the tournament you are playing in. So although I'm not running tournaments anymore, I'm certainly playing in them and I think this diversion into blinds management has helped me in my overall game strategy. And maybe one day I'll get to run my perfect tourney.
Monday, 8 December 2014
Decisions, decisions
Well a house of cards
Was never built for shock,
You could blow it down in any kind of weather Dire Straits
Now that we're into December I've had a chance to take a look at my poker stats for the past year, and it makes interesting reading. Without going into too much detail, what it boils down to is this:
I've had a profitable year over-all, clocking up a 16% return on investment (ROI);
I've done very well in live games, and especially in live tournaments where I've come close to doubling my money;
despite having a poor few months recently, online Texas Holdem ring games are showing a decent profit;
other online games continue to be a problem, with the biggest loss coming from 9 player SitnGos.
So in line with my recent decision to concentrate my efforts on one game type (see 'Fish finder', 29th September) I've been weighing up my options for the coming year. Live games are not a problem; I'll just keep playing in my current games and keep looking for more of the same. You don't fix it if it ain't broke.
As for online poker, it should be blindingly obvious that I need to concentrate on my most successful game: No limit Texas Holdem ring games. But I've been having some doubts about this. For starters, although I'm in profit over-all, my recent results in this game type have been pretty poor. I've only come out ahead in two of the last six sessions and my ROI has gone from positive in the first quarter to slightly negative in the second quarter to a significant loss in the third. In other words, my results in this game type have been getting worse. The problem is I haven't played enough sessions to know whether my early good results were a lucky streak or whether the over-all profit is a true measure of my ability in this game.
On the other hand, SitNGos have been pretty consistently bad, although I almost scraped into positive territory in the last three months. The thing is, I really enjoy playing in this game type and I can't help the feeling that I'm on the edge of figuring out how to play them successfully. What's more, I've had reasonable success with these games in the past but somehow I've lost my SitNGo mojo in the last year or so. The other favourable aspect of these games is that they are so convenient. They are available at almost any time and typically take an hour to play if you make it to the end.
The other online game type that I might consider pursuing is multi-table tournaments. Although I haven't played these much recently, I have had moderate success in past seasons. Unfortunately I've had some pretty bad results playing in on-demand (27 player) tournaments, which are the most convenient type to play. So if I did play tournaments this year it would have to be the regular multi-table tourneys, which are not necessarily available at the most convenient times. But I can't really justify playing in a game type that I've hardly played in and not done well in recently.
In the final analysis, I need to play to my strengths. This means persevering with the online ring games. But I only want to play in 'cashies' if I have a reasonable amount of time available. I wouldn't normally play in one of these games unless I was able to play for at least four hours, preferably five. The whole point of ring games is that you have time to wait for the good spots, so playing them for an hour two defeats the purpose. I guess that means that I'll be continuing to play in at least one ring game session each week, on my regular poker night. I'll keep plugging away at the same level and I guess by this time next year I'll have a pretty good idea of my ability in online cashies.
Meanwhile, I'll continue playing SitNGos when I have a few hours to spare here and there. I think I need to stick to one site and stay at the same level all year. If at the end of the year I'm still in the red, then I'll know for sure that my SitNGo mojo has gone forever. So it's goodbye to my mission to try every possible poker variant and back to the basics. It's time to stick to the KISS principal: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Was never built for shock,
You could blow it down in any kind of weather Dire Straits
Now that we're into December I've had a chance to take a look at my poker stats for the past year, and it makes interesting reading. Without going into too much detail, what it boils down to is this:
I've had a profitable year over-all, clocking up a 16% return on investment (ROI);
I've done very well in live games, and especially in live tournaments where I've come close to doubling my money;
despite having a poor few months recently, online Texas Holdem ring games are showing a decent profit;
other online games continue to be a problem, with the biggest loss coming from 9 player SitnGos.
So in line with my recent decision to concentrate my efforts on one game type (see 'Fish finder', 29th September) I've been weighing up my options for the coming year. Live games are not a problem; I'll just keep playing in my current games and keep looking for more of the same. You don't fix it if it ain't broke.
As for online poker, it should be blindingly obvious that I need to concentrate on my most successful game: No limit Texas Holdem ring games. But I've been having some doubts about this. For starters, although I'm in profit over-all, my recent results in this game type have been pretty poor. I've only come out ahead in two of the last six sessions and my ROI has gone from positive in the first quarter to slightly negative in the second quarter to a significant loss in the third. In other words, my results in this game type have been getting worse. The problem is I haven't played enough sessions to know whether my early good results were a lucky streak or whether the over-all profit is a true measure of my ability in this game.
On the other hand, SitNGos have been pretty consistently bad, although I almost scraped into positive territory in the last three months. The thing is, I really enjoy playing in this game type and I can't help the feeling that I'm on the edge of figuring out how to play them successfully. What's more, I've had reasonable success with these games in the past but somehow I've lost my SitNGo mojo in the last year or so. The other favourable aspect of these games is that they are so convenient. They are available at almost any time and typically take an hour to play if you make it to the end. The other online game type that I might consider pursuing is multi-table tournaments. Although I haven't played these much recently, I have had moderate success in past seasons. Unfortunately I've had some pretty bad results playing in on-demand (27 player) tournaments, which are the most convenient type to play. So if I did play tournaments this year it would have to be the regular multi-table tourneys, which are not necessarily available at the most convenient times. But I can't really justify playing in a game type that I've hardly played in and not done well in recently.
In the final analysis, I need to play to my strengths. This means persevering with the online ring games. But I only want to play in 'cashies' if I have a reasonable amount of time available. I wouldn't normally play in one of these games unless I was able to play for at least four hours, preferably five. The whole point of ring games is that you have time to wait for the good spots, so playing them for an hour two defeats the purpose. I guess that means that I'll be continuing to play in at least one ring game session each week, on my regular poker night. I'll keep plugging away at the same level and I guess by this time next year I'll have a pretty good idea of my ability in online cashies.
Meanwhile, I'll continue playing SitNGos when I have a few hours to spare here and there. I think I need to stick to one site and stay at the same level all year. If at the end of the year I'm still in the red, then I'll know for sure that my SitNGo mojo has gone forever. So it's goodbye to my mission to try every possible poker variant and back to the basics. It's time to stick to the KISS principal: Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
Decisions
The pleasure is to play,
Makes no difference what you say,
I don't share your greed,
The only card I need is the Ace of Spades Motorhead
It's often been said that the way to win at poker is to make correct decisions. Every time that you play you are exposed to the element of chance and even the best hand can get busted. But if you consistently make good decisions then you will come out ahead in the long run. A good player makes money off the mistakes of others. So the goal in any game is to be the player who makes the fewest mistakes. I've been aware of this principal for a long time but I played in a hand recently that really got me thinking about how correct some of my decisions are. It's important to remember that the most useful question to ask yourself after a hand, win or lose, is 'did I make the right decision?' Of course we are far more likely to ask ourselves this question after a losing hand rather than a winning one, which is why I've recently been thinking about this whole issue.
The hand in question has led me to think about some of the other hands I've been involved in recently. So what follows is my analysis of some big hands that had a major influence on my progress in particular games.
First up comes a hand I played a couple of weeks ago in my regular Friday night live tournament. This was actually the very first hand of the tournament. There were a couple of players limping in, as per usual and I had A T. I put in my standard 3xBB raise and got two callers. This was pretty much standard play for this tournament. People don't fold much. I have to say it was a dream flop for me. Laid out on the table was (something like) T 7 4, giving me top pair, top kicker. Player one checked to me and, after doing a quick assessment of the size of the pot, I put in a decent sized bet, around 2/3 of the pot. Player two called and player one folded. At this point I figured player two (B) had hit a piece of the flop or had a flush draw, as there were two suited cards out there. The turn was an Ace. Now I had top two pair; a very nice hand. I was first to act, so I put in another bet, about 1/2 the value of the pot. B then pushed all-in. After a brief pause, I called.
I turned over my cards and B showed A 2. I was somewhat surprised. The river made no difference to B's hand (nothing could have) and I doubled my stack in the first hand of the tournament. Looking at it from B's perspective, he could have thought I was betting on the Ten and his Ace was good, except for one thing. He's played with me enough to know that I routinely raise with big hands pre-flop. So, if I had a Ten, what was my other card? A T and T T were both very bad for him. Was I raising with K T? I don't think so. So it was his mistake and a good call from me. But even if the turn and river had been 2 2 or 3 5 it would still have been a good call.
Next comes a hand that I played a few hours later, in fact my last hand of the same tournament. With just six players at the table, the player to my right, who had more chips than me, pushed all-in. I was looking at A A, so I called. The other player turned over J J, which means that I was an 80% favourite to win and become the monster stack at the table. A Jack came on the flop, giving my opponent trips. No Ace came on later streets so I was eliminated. On the face of it this call was an absolute no-brainer and it was just bad luck that the other hand improved. However, I've left out a few important details that make this situation a little trickier than it might otherwise seem.
This was the final table and I was on the bubble: the top five were in the money and there were six players left. The lowest payouts were two or three times the buy-in, but first and second prizes were significantly higher, with first being nearly twice as high as second. I had the second highest stack at the table and there were several quite small stacks there, some with as few as five or six big blinds left. So if I'd wanted to I probably could have folded my way into third or fourth place.
I've come across discussions of situations where it makes sense to fold pocket Aces. This is usually a scenario where a big stack has Aces on the bubble and three other smaller stacks are already all-in. So the big stack is guaranteed to make the money by folding and might even jump two places up the prize ladder. But this is a bit different to the situation I found myself in. However, if the circumstances were slightly different, I could see myself folding. For instance, if this was a big money tournament, let's say one where I'd gained a seat by winning a satellite tournament, and I was on the edge of a big boost to my bankroll, I would almost certainly have folded. But this was just my weekly $20 tourney. Limping across the bubble would have got me $30. But doubling my stack would have put me in pole position to take out first place. And even before I saw those Jacks I knew I had about a 4-1 chance of doubling up.
Of course, if I'd won that hand, I wouldn't be writing this. It was losing on the bubble that really kept bugging me and had me questioning the wisdom of my call. But after a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that it was indeed the right decision, and if the same situation arose again, I'd still do the same thing. For most of the 18 months or so that I've been playing in this tournament I've had one goal: to win. Not to come second, not to make the money, but to win first prize. If this means getting busted out early sometimes, or even getting busted on the bubble, then so be it. This strategy has served me well so far in this tournament, and there's really no reason to change. So, good call, bad luck.
This next hand also took place in a live tournament. This was in the monthly Sunday game that I play in, where the standard of play is generally a bit better than in the Friday nighter. Once again, I had A T. I put in my standard raise and got two callers. Deja vu. The flop comes A J J, giving me two pair. It looked pretty good to me, as long as no-one had a Jack in their hand. I put in a bet of about 1/2 the pot. Player 1 then put in a raise and player 2 called. Now this was a definite problem. I'd played enough with player 1 (L) to know that she was a pretty solid player and I also knew that player 2 (M) was a notoriously passive calling station. So M could be calling with any Ace, or a small pocket pair, or could even have called with a Jack in hand. And I figured that L must have at least an Ace to have raised it. Even though most players will check or call if they hit trips on the flop, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that L must have a Jack. If she had A J that would be a monster and she'd be sure to just call, so I was thinking maybe K J. So I folded.
Of course, an Ace hit the flop, which would have given me full on Aces. I resisted the urge to moan out loud and bang my head on the table and watched the action. L bet the turn and M called. Then L bet the river and M called again. At showdown L turned over K J and then M showed... A T! So M and I had the same hand but played it rather differently. Seeing L's K J was a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because I realised that I folded what was ultimately the winning hand. Good because I'd made a good read of L's likely hand on the flop and had make the right decision to fold. The fact that the Ace came on the turn is beside the point. Folding was the right decision at the time. So I made a good fold and missed out on a big pot, and M made a bad call with the same hand and raked in a lot of chips. That's the way it works.
The last hand to consider was played online and was over pretty quickly. This also involved A A vs J J but with a different twist. This was in an online SitNGo tournament in the very early stages. With the blinds at 10/20 I was on the button With J J. There were five players limping in before it was my turn to act. With more than 100 in the pot I raised to 100 with the aim of narrowing down the number of callers to go up against my big pocket pair. Much to my surprise, one of the early limpers then re-raised all-in. I certainly didn't expect that. The obvious question was, if they had a better hand than mine, why hadn't they raised, rather than just limping in? It didn't make any sense to me, and it was way too early in the game for me to pick up any clues about this player's style of play.
I know that players will sometimes put in a big raise when there are a lot of limpers in the pot in order to steal their blinds. But this almost always happens from the button or the blinds. I've never seen someone do that after first limping in from early position. I had to figure that they had some sort of hand, but what? What do you limp in with and then re-raise all-in with? A small pocket pair? A K? I also know that you sometimes come across players who limp in with monster hands like A A. But only rarely. In the end I refused to believe that someone had done something like that. So even though I had only committed a fraction of my stack and the tournament was in its early stages, I called. The raiser then showed A A and I was eliminated.
In this case, I never should have called. A A, K K and Q Q were always a possibility and I had only about a 50/50 chance against A K, A Q or even K Q. More importantly, it was far too early in the tournament to be risking my entire stack on a mediocre hand. I definitely should have folded. Bad call, bad result.
I've found this sort of hand analysis to be very useful. Having my Aces cracked has been good for me in this case. Just as long as it doesn't happen too often. But why would it? As long as I can manage to make the right decisions the odds are in my favour. In the long run.
Makes no difference what you say,
I don't share your greed,
The only card I need is the Ace of Spades Motorhead
It's often been said that the way to win at poker is to make correct decisions. Every time that you play you are exposed to the element of chance and even the best hand can get busted. But if you consistently make good decisions then you will come out ahead in the long run. A good player makes money off the mistakes of others. So the goal in any game is to be the player who makes the fewest mistakes. I've been aware of this principal for a long time but I played in a hand recently that really got me thinking about how correct some of my decisions are. It's important to remember that the most useful question to ask yourself after a hand, win or lose, is 'did I make the right decision?' Of course we are far more likely to ask ourselves this question after a losing hand rather than a winning one, which is why I've recently been thinking about this whole issue.
The hand in question has led me to think about some of the other hands I've been involved in recently. So what follows is my analysis of some big hands that had a major influence on my progress in particular games.
First up comes a hand I played a couple of weeks ago in my regular Friday night live tournament. This was actually the very first hand of the tournament. There were a couple of players limping in, as per usual and I had A T. I put in my standard 3xBB raise and got two callers. This was pretty much standard play for this tournament. People don't fold much. I have to say it was a dream flop for me. Laid out on the table was (something like) T 7 4, giving me top pair, top kicker. Player one checked to me and, after doing a quick assessment of the size of the pot, I put in a decent sized bet, around 2/3 of the pot. Player two called and player one folded. At this point I figured player two (B) had hit a piece of the flop or had a flush draw, as there were two suited cards out there. The turn was an Ace. Now I had top two pair; a very nice hand. I was first to act, so I put in another bet, about 1/2 the value of the pot. B then pushed all-in. After a brief pause, I called.
It's not unusual for this particular player to push all-in in the face of a raise. I've seen him do it a number of times, although I haven't seen what cards he was playing very often. I have the impression that he usually does it with a reasonably strong hand. Initially I thought he'd called my flop bet with a flush draw, but the possible flush didn't come on the turn, so that now seemed unlikely. So I figured he must have something like A 7 or A 4, maybe even A T. To be fair, my call was more gut feeling
than in-depth analysis. It just felt like I had the best hand.I turned over my cards and B showed A 2. I was somewhat surprised. The river made no difference to B's hand (nothing could have) and I doubled my stack in the first hand of the tournament. Looking at it from B's perspective, he could have thought I was betting on the Ten and his Ace was good, except for one thing. He's played with me enough to know that I routinely raise with big hands pre-flop. So, if I had a Ten, what was my other card? A T and T T were both very bad for him. Was I raising with K T? I don't think so. So it was his mistake and a good call from me. But even if the turn and river had been 2 2 or 3 5 it would still have been a good call.
Next comes a hand that I played a few hours later, in fact my last hand of the same tournament. With just six players at the table, the player to my right, who had more chips than me, pushed all-in. I was looking at A A, so I called. The other player turned over J J, which means that I was an 80% favourite to win and become the monster stack at the table. A Jack came on the flop, giving my opponent trips. No Ace came on later streets so I was eliminated. On the face of it this call was an absolute no-brainer and it was just bad luck that the other hand improved. However, I've left out a few important details that make this situation a little trickier than it might otherwise seem.
I've come across discussions of situations where it makes sense to fold pocket Aces. This is usually a scenario where a big stack has Aces on the bubble and three other smaller stacks are already all-in. So the big stack is guaranteed to make the money by folding and might even jump two places up the prize ladder. But this is a bit different to the situation I found myself in. However, if the circumstances were slightly different, I could see myself folding. For instance, if this was a big money tournament, let's say one where I'd gained a seat by winning a satellite tournament, and I was on the edge of a big boost to my bankroll, I would almost certainly have folded. But this was just my weekly $20 tourney. Limping across the bubble would have got me $30. But doubling my stack would have put me in pole position to take out first place. And even before I saw those Jacks I knew I had about a 4-1 chance of doubling up.
Of course, if I'd won that hand, I wouldn't be writing this. It was losing on the bubble that really kept bugging me and had me questioning the wisdom of my call. But after a lot of thought I came to the conclusion that it was indeed the right decision, and if the same situation arose again, I'd still do the same thing. For most of the 18 months or so that I've been playing in this tournament I've had one goal: to win. Not to come second, not to make the money, but to win first prize. If this means getting busted out early sometimes, or even getting busted on the bubble, then so be it. This strategy has served me well so far in this tournament, and there's really no reason to change. So, good call, bad luck.
This next hand also took place in a live tournament. This was in the monthly Sunday game that I play in, where the standard of play is generally a bit better than in the Friday nighter. Once again, I had A T. I put in my standard raise and got two callers. Deja vu. The flop comes A J J, giving me two pair. It looked pretty good to me, as long as no-one had a Jack in their hand. I put in a bet of about 1/2 the pot. Player 1 then put in a raise and player 2 called. Now this was a definite problem. I'd played enough with player 1 (L) to know that she was a pretty solid player and I also knew that player 2 (M) was a notoriously passive calling station. So M could be calling with any Ace, or a small pocket pair, or could even have called with a Jack in hand. And I figured that L must have at least an Ace to have raised it. Even though most players will check or call if they hit trips on the flop, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that L must have a Jack. If she had A J that would be a monster and she'd be sure to just call, so I was thinking maybe K J. So I folded.
Of course, an Ace hit the flop, which would have given me full on Aces. I resisted the urge to moan out loud and bang my head on the table and watched the action. L bet the turn and M called. Then L bet the river and M called again. At showdown L turned over K J and then M showed... A T! So M and I had the same hand but played it rather differently. Seeing L's K J was a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because I realised that I folded what was ultimately the winning hand. Good because I'd made a good read of L's likely hand on the flop and had make the right decision to fold. The fact that the Ace came on the turn is beside the point. Folding was the right decision at the time. So I made a good fold and missed out on a big pot, and M made a bad call with the same hand and raked in a lot of chips. That's the way it works.The last hand to consider was played online and was over pretty quickly. This also involved A A vs J J but with a different twist. This was in an online SitNGo tournament in the very early stages. With the blinds at 10/20 I was on the button With J J. There were five players limping in before it was my turn to act. With more than 100 in the pot I raised to 100 with the aim of narrowing down the number of callers to go up against my big pocket pair. Much to my surprise, one of the early limpers then re-raised all-in. I certainly didn't expect that. The obvious question was, if they had a better hand than mine, why hadn't they raised, rather than just limping in? It didn't make any sense to me, and it was way too early in the game for me to pick up any clues about this player's style of play.
I know that players will sometimes put in a big raise when there are a lot of limpers in the pot in order to steal their blinds. But this almost always happens from the button or the blinds. I've never seen someone do that after first limping in from early position. I had to figure that they had some sort of hand, but what? What do you limp in with and then re-raise all-in with? A small pocket pair? A K? I also know that you sometimes come across players who limp in with monster hands like A A. But only rarely. In the end I refused to believe that someone had done something like that. So even though I had only committed a fraction of my stack and the tournament was in its early stages, I called. The raiser then showed A A and I was eliminated.
In this case, I never should have called. A A, K K and Q Q were always a possibility and I had only about a 50/50 chance against A K, A Q or even K Q. More importantly, it was far too early in the tournament to be risking my entire stack on a mediocre hand. I definitely should have folded. Bad call, bad result.
I've found this sort of hand analysis to be very useful. Having my Aces cracked has been good for me in this case. Just as long as it doesn't happen too often. But why would it? As long as I can manage to make the right decisions the odds are in my favour. In the long run.
Monday, 29 September 2014
Fish Finder
The winner takes it all,
The loser has to fall,
It's simple and it's plain,
Why should I complain? Abba
They say that the three most important things in poker are position, position and position. If that's true then the fourth thing must be game selection. Most of the time when I play I remember the first three things, but I think I've forgotten about the importance of game selection in recent times.
Ever since I started playing online games I've had a basic plan that dictated the types of games I played in. Live games are reasonably simple because there aren't many suitable ones available. So I just play in any live games that I can find. On the other hand online games are far more numerous, so I can pick and choose. During the main part of each year I've played in two online game types: my most successful game from the previous year, and a new game type that I haven't tried before. Then in the summer season I play in a third game type, usually something that I've played in before, in previous years. But my recent results have made me reconsider my 'game plan'.
It's really my appallingly bad Sit'n'Go results that have led me to this point. I'm playing online Sit'n'Gos this year because they were my best game last year, and I played them last year for the same reason. But over the years my results in this game have been a bit of roller-coaster ride. I've played this game type mainly on 888poker and if I do well for a while I'll move up to a higher level, and if I do poorly I'll drop a level. I started out playing in $3 games and eventually moved up to the $8.80 level. Then I went into a bit of a decline and ended up back down at the lower levels. Then things got better again and I rose back up to $8.80 games again before this years' downturn, which has bought me back down to the $3 level again. Looking back at my recent results, I haven't had a positive result in any Sit'n'Go season since February 2013.
Since dropping down to the lower levels on 888 I've discovered that the $3 games are often slow to fill up. So I've been playing a lot more in the Pokerstars $3.50 games, which are generally a bit tougher to play in. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying to play these games in accordance with the Poker School Online guidelines in a desperate attempt to stop the rot. So the plan is to keep playing this way until the end of November, and then to reconsider my options.
Meanwhile, the other online game I've been playing in this year has been Texas Holdem cash games. I was employing game selection principles when I started out in this game type. I spent a month playing on Pokerstars, then a month on 888 to see which site had the easier games. 888 was the obvious choice so I've been playing cash games on this site ever since. I started out pretty well but my results have dropped off a bit in the last couple of months. I'm still ahead overall, but a few bad sessions recently have made me start thinking about the nature of these games.
888 is generally considered to be one of the easiest or 'fishiest' sites to play on, but after playing cash games on 888 for a while I'm not so sure that this is true. Most of the players that I've encountered so far have been pretty tight and it's unusual to see players limping in before the flop, or to see more than three players seeing the flop. It seems the days of finding tables full of loose, inexperienced poker players are in the past. This state of affairs concerned me so much that I went looking for a fishier poker site. After checking out some site comparisons I decided that Titan Poker, Bet365 and Party Poker were worth a look. Unfortunately, my fish-finder mission didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (more on this later) and although I'm now registered with Bet365, I'm not holding out much hope of finding a loose online cash game.
I've played in enough of these new game types over the years to know how important it is to start at low buy-in levels to minimise any losses. Having started at the 10c/20c level, my patchy results have not led me to consider moving up a level, although I might consider playing two tables at this level if my results improve significantly. Meanwhile I'll keep plugging away until the end of November.
The one game type that I'm really happy with at the moment is live tournaments. These are the games that have been keeping my poker bankroll balance moving forward. It's hardly surprising that these club tournaments are typically incredibly loose and passive. Pre-flop raising is pretty rare, pre-flop calling is standard practice and minimum betting into large pots goes on all the time. These are exactly the sorts of games that I've been looking for online, and I'm always on the look-out for similar games.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I'm spreading myself too thin. It's all very well trying different poker variants, but this makes it harder to concentrate on optimal strategies, and harder to shift gears when changing from one game to another. I haven't had much success in playing new game types over the years and I'm beginning to think that doing this is only diverting my attention away from the profitable game types. So I've decided that my mission to try every possible poker variant is ultimately counterproductive. I think I'm much better off
concentrating on a single online game type, and it's probably best to do it over a reasonably extended time period, to smooth out the bumps.
With all this in mind, I have a new poker plan. I'll keep playing in the usual way until the start of the summer season. Then I'll take a good long look at my game results and decide which game type I want to pursue. From there on I'll be concentrating on one game type and working on becoming the best possible player I can be in that particular version of poker. That's not to say that I wont be changing my preferred online game at some point, but I'm going to give one game a good long trial first. Being a profitable player is all about finding some sort of edge, and I'm determined to find one in my online games.
The loser has to fall,
It's simple and it's plain,
Why should I complain? Abba
They say that the three most important things in poker are position, position and position. If that's true then the fourth thing must be game selection. Most of the time when I play I remember the first three things, but I think I've forgotten about the importance of game selection in recent times.
Ever since I started playing online games I've had a basic plan that dictated the types of games I played in. Live games are reasonably simple because there aren't many suitable ones available. So I just play in any live games that I can find. On the other hand online games are far more numerous, so I can pick and choose. During the main part of each year I've played in two online game types: my most successful game from the previous year, and a new game type that I haven't tried before. Then in the summer season I play in a third game type, usually something that I've played in before, in previous years. But my recent results have made me reconsider my 'game plan'.
Since dropping down to the lower levels on 888 I've discovered that the $3 games are often slow to fill up. So I've been playing a lot more in the Pokerstars $3.50 games, which are generally a bit tougher to play in. As mentioned in a previous post, I'm trying to play these games in accordance with the Poker School Online guidelines in a desperate attempt to stop the rot. So the plan is to keep playing this way until the end of November, and then to reconsider my options.
888 is generally considered to be one of the easiest or 'fishiest' sites to play on, but after playing cash games on 888 for a while I'm not so sure that this is true. Most of the players that I've encountered so far have been pretty tight and it's unusual to see players limping in before the flop, or to see more than three players seeing the flop. It seems the days of finding tables full of loose, inexperienced poker players are in the past. This state of affairs concerned me so much that I went looking for a fishier poker site. After checking out some site comparisons I decided that Titan Poker, Bet365 and Party Poker were worth a look. Unfortunately, my fish-finder mission didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (more on this later) and although I'm now registered with Bet365, I'm not holding out much hope of finding a loose online cash game.
The one game type that I'm really happy with at the moment is live tournaments. These are the games that have been keeping my poker bankroll balance moving forward. It's hardly surprising that these club tournaments are typically incredibly loose and passive. Pre-flop raising is pretty rare, pre-flop calling is standard practice and minimum betting into large pots goes on all the time. These are exactly the sorts of games that I've been looking for online, and I'm always on the look-out for similar games.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I'm spreading myself too thin. It's all very well trying different poker variants, but this makes it harder to concentrate on optimal strategies, and harder to shift gears when changing from one game to another. I haven't had much success in playing new game types over the years and I'm beginning to think that doing this is only diverting my attention away from the profitable game types. So I've decided that my mission to try every possible poker variant is ultimately counterproductive. I think I'm much better off
With all this in mind, I have a new poker plan. I'll keep playing in the usual way until the start of the summer season. Then I'll take a good long look at my game results and decide which game type I want to pursue. From there on I'll be concentrating on one game type and working on becoming the best possible player I can be in that particular version of poker. That's not to say that I wont be changing my preferred online game at some point, but I'm going to give one game a good long trial first. Being a profitable player is all about finding some sort of edge, and I'm determined to find one in my online games.
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