The Story So Far (Part 2)

   I started writing this blog about five years ago, in May of 2012. At that time I'd already been running a poker 'log book' for a while, keeping records of my games and results. My live tournaments had dried up and I was basically just playing one online session a week. Since then, things have changed a lot.
    I think the watershed moment in my poker journey over the last five years was my discovery of the Onehunga Workingmen's Club Friday night tournament. I stumbled across this game in June of 2013 and have been playing in it pretty much every week since. Previously I'd been playing only in online games and it was great to get back into the live poker scene. This is a $20 to $25 'freeze-out' tournament and it has been pretty profitable for me over the years (although things have slowed down a bit in recent months). Not only does this give me a regular weekly tournament to play in, but it has opened up a variety of other club games to me. So I now play in the monthly 'Interclub' Tournament and have also attended the annual Clubs Championship for the last three years. In addition, I am now aware of a number of other regular club games and play in some of these from time to time.
   As for other live games, the only others available five years ago were the National Pub Poker League (NPPL) games held in various bars around Auckland. For reasons detailed in previous posts, I just don't play in these. However, about a year ago some ex NPPL players started up the Avengers Poker League. They started running games in a number of venues and these games are pretty good. I've played in a couple of them and would make them regular games if they were played at a convenient time and location for me. Unfortunately most of them fall outside of my 'optimal range' so I'm not playing in them, but it's nice to know that there are some alternatives to the NPPL available.
   A couple of years ago I discovered another pub game, not affiliated to any league, that is played just down the road from where I live. This Wednesday night game at the Landmark Bar has become my second weekly live poker game, and this game has also been pretty consistently profitable for me. However, at the end of last year the organizer decided he didn't want to run it anymore. Then at the start of this year I found that none of the people who'd volunteered to take over had done anything, so in the end I took it over myself. I'd much rather just be a player than a Tournament Director/player but this game was just to good for me to let it fade away. So now I'm back to playing in this game as well as running it. The downside is that it's harder to concentrate on my hands when I'm also running the game (especially in the first hour when late entries are available). The upside is that I've been able to make a few changes that make it an even more attractive game for me to play in.
   The Landmark game is not the only one that I've ended up running this year. Last year the Onehunga Workies was running a monthly $50 deep stack tournament that I really enjoyed playing. However, the organizer decided not to run it anymore, so I stepped up and volunteered. So once again I've ended up being a TD when I'd much rather just play, but when a game is good you've got to do whatever it takes to make sure it keeps running. Fortunately this game is not a rebuy and has a slow structure, so it's less distracting being the TD as well as a player. This tournament started out fairly slowly, with only a handful of players turning up, but it seems to be gaining momentum and I'm pretty happy with the way it's going now.
   During the last five years I've played a handful of games at Auckland's Sky City Casino, but mainly just casual 'non-bankroll' games. When I first played in ring games at the casino the blinds were $1/$2, making for a maximum buy-in of $200. Since then they have steadily increased and are now at $2/$5. This is way beyond my bankroll's buy-in range. However, I did manage to win a Satellite that got me into a big buy-in tournament a couple of years ago. I only managed to get halfway through the field but I've always wanted to play in a big buy-in tournament and it was a great experience.
   As for online games, I've spent the last five years playing in a variety of different poker games on both 888poker and Pokerstars. The online games I've played include pot limit Omaha ring games, both fixed limit and no-limit Texas Holdem ring games, 9 player Sit N Gos, 27 player Sit N Gos, freeze-out Tournaments and seven card stud ring games. This was all part of my mission to try every possible poker game type. Fortunately I came to my senses and abandoned this project a couple of years ago. It turned out that trying a new form of poker is actually pretty hard and all I was doing was throwing money away. That's one thing that I've learned the hard way: stick to what you know.
   These days I play almost exclusively on 888poker. Some of the other game types I tried were on Pokerstars because they were more readily available on that site. But since returning to my core games I've found that I prefer 888. Pokerstars has a lot more ring games available, but there are a lot of 'grinders' on this site, leaving very little room for an amateur player like me to move. The Sit and Go games on both sites are okay, but I prefer the blind structure that's used on 888. My other core game is freeze-out tournaments; I've tried these on both sites but I think that the play is generally looser and more passive on 888 so that's where I'm playing my tournaments.
   I've played a lot of Sit and Go tournaments (SNGs) over the last few years. Sometimes I've played these as my main game and at other times they've been 'fillers' that I've played when I only had an hour or two to spare. Playing in SNGs has been a real rollercoaster ride. For a few years my results were pretty good and I was slowly moving up the buy-in levels. Then it all turned around and I had a year when I just didn't seem to be able to do anything right in this game type. I now play SNGs only occasionally, at a very low buy-in, and I'm struggling to find a strategy that works. This is perplexing to me. I do reasonably well in multi-table tournaments and can't understand why my results are so bad in single table tournaments. At the moment it's a work in progress.
   My preferred online games now are multi-table freeze-out tournaments (no rebuys or add-ons). There's one on 888poker during the middle of the day that I sometimes play on the weekend. I did well enough last year that I thought I could move up a level and have been playing at this new level for the last few months. However, because of the number of live games I'm now playing, I only play in this online tournament a couple of times a month. I try to play in at least 3 poker session a week. I already play in two weekly pub/club games. Then I also have two monthly live games I play; the Interclub game and the $50 Deep Stack Tournament. So I usually end up playing online on the weekends when I don't have a live game. But that's fine with me. It's nice to have so many live tournaments available.
     For most of the last five years I've been maintaining a graph of my total profit/loss from playing poker, which I update every second month. It was around the time I first starting writing this blog that my bankroll started taking its first stuttering steps over the break-even line. All through 2012 my graph flirted with the base line but then in 2013 it started to move up and it's been trending upwards ever since. Of course there have been periods when the line has dipped down but it always recovers eventually and starts to climb again. The worst of these dips lasted almost a year; I started losing money in late 2014, hitting a low point about four months later, climbed a little, then levelled out for nearly six months before returning to a positive trend late in 2015. I am currently in another levelled out phase but I'm confident that the upwards trend will return in time. Being able to look at a graphic depiction of my poker results is a very useful thing and shows me that I'm on the right track regarding my poker play and game selection.
    I've also been doing a fair bit of study of poker theory in an effort to improve my game over the last few years. I've read a few poker books, including a couple of classics and found them reasonably helpful. But most of my information has come from websites and video clips. I found Poker School Online to be particularly useful and also School of Cards on YouTube. There is a huge amount of information on poker available online but not all of it is worthwhile. Googling a particular topic brings up a huge variety of links and the trick is to sort through it all and find the good stuff.
   I think my game has developed pretty well over the last five years. Some of this is due to the study I've been doing but I think a lot of it is due to just putting in the game time. There's really no substitute for experience. I've worked out a basic game plan for poker tournaments based on my stack size compared to the blinds; ie, the number of big blinds I have.. As my stack size changes, my playing style changes. I go from the green zone where I basically play it like a cashie, to the much tighter yellow zone, to the 'push the action and steal the blinds' orange zone and then finally the red zone; the all-in or fold level. This basic plan seems to work pretty well for me for most games. However, the one exception is the Friday night tournament.
   The Workies tournament has always been a very loose game but lately it seems to have become ridiculously loose. I'm not sure why this is, but it has become a major preoccupation of mine over the last year or so to find a way of beating this game. Raising with decent starting hands pre-flop becomes completely pointless because massive raises will still get called by at least half the table, significantly reducing the chance of your one pair hand being the winner after the flop. And then the pot odds are so huge that it's impossible to bet enough to stop the chasers from drawing to the next card. I'm still trying to work this one out. I'm sure there's an answer somewhere, but I'm yet to find it.
   So five years on, that's where I'm at now; playing three poker sessions a week, most of them live games, building my bankroll and constantly looking for an edge. As for the next five years, who knows, but I did at least set myself some goals to achieve for this year. I've already achieved a couple of these, having revived the Landmark game and also got the $50 game moving in the right direction. But I've had to rethink a couple of the other goals that I set for myself in February. I no longer think that it's practical to play 4 poker sessions per week. I do have a life beyond poker and I just don't think I have the spare time available for that 4th session. So I no longer need to try all the other available games in order to find the right one to play. I'm just sticking to my current regular tourneys for now. Even though the Friday-nighter is no longer an optimal game for me there are other factors that come into play. Most importantly, this is the weekly night out for my wife and I, so it's not just about the poker any more.
   That leaves two more goals for me to achieve this year. One is to read 'Harrington on Holdem, Volume Two' which I haven't done yet but will be doing soon. The other is to play in the Sky City Casino $1/$3 ring game (a new turbo-style cashie that started recently). I'm actually getting very close to having enough in my bankroll to be able to afford to play in this game. Another couple of hundred dollars in the kitty and I'll be off to try my luck in the 'Poker Zone'. Once that happens, well I'll just have to set some more goals won't I? Maybe I'll try to figure out how to win at Omaha. No, just kidding.


  
  

2017

   Last year I played in the Waitangi Weekend Deep Stack Tournament at the Sky City Casino after winning a couple of satellite events. I was hoping to play my way into this $1100 buy-in tournament again this year. However, the casino have changed the schedule so there are no longer any low buy-in 2-stage satellites to the main event. But there is a regular $80 tournament with multiple prizes of $550 each.  And there's also a $220 satellite to the main event. So I headed up to the casino in mid-January, hoping to win a prize in the first game, which would have given me me two shots at the Deep Stack Tournament. But it wasn't to be. I played for about 2 hours in a field of 43 players but got knocked out in 22nd place, having gone all-in with AQ and coming up against AK. That's poker.
   Getting into the Waitangi Weekend Tournament was the first of my goals for 2017. I have a few others for this year and hopefully I'll be able to actually achieve these ones. As it's mid-February already, I thought I'd better list them now:

   Try all available games. In my unending quest for the perfect game I have decided to try out all the available local live games (except the  NPPL craps-shoots) to see if I can find a good one to add to my poker schedule. There are a lot more pub games available now than there used to be and I intend to check them all out. I've already tried the Saturday game at Maverick's Bar, the Tuesday game at the F Bar and the Thursday game at Ye Olde Bailey. Each of these venues hold games on several days of the week and there are plenty of other pubs and clubs to try out. I figure that if I try one game per week then I might have tried them all by mid-winter. Then all I have to do is decide which one I want to play regularly.
   Promote the $50 game. The monthly $50 tournament at my local club has struggled along for a few months now. Each time we've had barely enough entrants to play a single table game. But I really like this tournament because it's the sort of game I want to play in. It's played on a Sunday afternoon at a very convenient location and the buy-in is just right. So I'm determined to do everything I can to make it work. I was able to persuade the organiser to make a few changes for the January event that I thought would make it more attractive. I also advertised it as much as I could. In the end we got 15 players; our best result yet. So I'm pushing the advertising for the upcoming game this weekend. Our organiser won't be able to play this time so it's going to be down to me to run the game on the day. Hopefully we'll get at least two tables and then I can continue working on making it an attractive game that lots of people want to participate in.
   Revive the Landmark game. I've really enjoyed playing in the Wednesday night re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. It is played at a convenient time and place for me and I've also had a lot of success playing in this game. But at the end of last year the game organiser announced that he didn't want to do it anymore. A couple of the regulars put their hands up and volunteered to take over but I haven't seen any action yet. I've been down to the Landmark a couple of times but no-one seems to know anything. I also met one of the volunteers on Friday but he was rather vague about what was happening. So I'm headed back to the pub on Wednesday in an effort to get some answers. Having found a game that ticks all the boxes, I don't want to lose it. I'm going to do everything I can to get this tournament running again, even if I have to run it myself.
   Play in optimal games. Once I've tried out all the available games I have to pick the one that I want to play on a regular basis. Assuming I can get the Wednesday game back, I'll be playing in two live tournaments a week; Wednesday and Friday nights. I'll also be playing in an online tourney once a week. My goal is to play in 4 poker games a week. As I'm also playing in the monthly Interclub tournament and the monthly $50 game, that leaves 2 games a month that I have to find. Once I've decided on my optimal 4th game, I'll start playing it twice a month. That's the plan anyway.
   Read Harrington, Volume 2. During the holidays I bought myself a Christmas present: Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 1. This is one of the titles on my list of the ten best poker books. I've been reading it over the last month or so and it's absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the 'problems' section at the end of each chapter where you get to test yourself on what you've learned. So I'll be ordering volume 2 soon and working my way through it.
   Play in Sky City Cashies. I would very much like to have a go at the ring games at the Auckland Casino. The problem is, they're a bit too expensive for my bankroll. I don't want to play in a cash game that costs more than 5 percent of my bankroll. Last year I figured that, with the blinds at $2/$4, if I bought in for 50 big blinds it would cost me $200. This meant that I'd have to come close to doubling my bankroll to be able to afford it. I thought that might be possible, but then I discovered this year that the blinds had gone up to $2/$5. That put the Sky City cashies further out of reach. But  I learned recently that there is now a lower level 'turbo' game available. This game has blinds of  $2/$3 and a 15 second time limit on all action. I've spoken to a couple of people who've played in this game and they both say that the time clock is not really a problem. So I only have to increase my bankroll by about 30 %, something that is definitely achievable. So I'll be keeping one eye on my poker bankroll and if I can hit that magic number then I'll be headed up to Sky City to try my hand at the turbo ring game.

   Looking back at my previous posts, I see that it's five years since I set myself some goals for the year. That time I failed to achieve the last two. This time around I'm reasonably confident that I can tick off all of these goals. I'm certainly going to give it my best shot.

  

2016

   Last year was a busy year for me poker-wise, so here are some edited highlights.

   JANUARY. At the start of 2016 I decided that my primary online game would be Texas Holdem tournaments. The year before I'd performed poorly in ring games so I figured it was time to try something different. However, while I was still on holiday I decided to try a Sit and Go marathon session. I spent about 6 hours playing in a total of nine $3.50 games. I managed one second place and two thirds in this session, coming out with a loss of US$13.20. This served to confirm that my Sit and Go mojo was well and truly lost.
   FEBRUARY. As chronicled elsewhere ('The Deep Stack Tournament', 26/02/16) I played in the Sky City Casino Waitangi Day Tournament. I played for 6 1/2 hours on day 1A, then managed another 2 hours on day two before being eliminated, finishing in 53rd place out of 105 players. Getting knocked out halfway through was disappointing but I was very happy with the fact that I managed to finish well enough in two satellite events to get a ticket to the main event. It was great to just be involved in a $1,100 buy-in event and I'd love to play again this year. Unfortunately, they seem to be running things differently this year and there don't seem to be any reasonably cheap satellites that I could afford to play in.
   MARCH. This was a very good month in terms of results. I had a couple of good cashes in the micro stakes online tournaments. I came in 1st out of 85 and 2nd out of 76, collecting US$145 in total. There were also a couple of good live tournament finishes: 2/23 for +$85 and 1/18 for +$230. I also won a bit in two ring games this month. So I was able to make a withdrawal from my 888 Poker account and I was able to deposit some more into my bankroll bank account.
   APRIL. A ring game usually starts up towards the end of my regular Wednesday night tournament. This is usually a limited dealer's choice game, the choice being between Holdem, Omaha and Crazy Pineapple. On the 13th I played in this game and lost $20. The loss itself was no big deal but it got me thinking about the nature of these kinds of post-tournament ring games. They are usually structured in such a way that you don't have enough time or a deep enough stack to play a proper ring game strategy. In the end I decided that, despite a couple of wins the previous month, the variance was just too high. So that was the last time I played in a short-stack ring game.
   MAY. This is the month when I decided to look back at the last 12 months of live tournament results. I was interested to find out how often I actually cash in live tournaments. It turns out I'd played in 71 tournaments over the last year. I cashed in 24 of these, or one in every 3. Of these, 6 were wins, giving me a win rate of 1/12. I was pretty happy with a 1 in 3 rate for cashes but figured that I need to do some work on getting more first places. That is still an ongoing project.
   JUNE. Early in June I went to the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championships in Hastings (see 'The Big Weekend', 12/07/16). After 11 hours of play I came in 14/155, just off the money. I was pretty happy with this result. Two years previously I finished 9th, and the year after I made it about halfway through the field. So I'm usually in the hunt. It's also great to get out of Auckland and meet some new people and see some new places.
   JULY. I'd been going through a bit of a slow patch in terms of results over the last few weeks. On Friday 29th I broke the drought and cashed in a live tournament profiting by $30. My last live cash had been on the 20th May, when I'd picked up +$170.  As it happens, both of these were re-buy tournaments. Maybe re-buys are my best game?
   AUGUST. The winter season (June, July, August) didn't go well overall. My ROI (return on investment) for this 3 month period was -25%. I was looking at overall losses for all my regular live tournaments and a miniscule +US$13 overall for online tourneys. My best result for the winter period was a $70 profit in live ring games; this was the result of a single game played during the Queen's Birthday weekend trip. Winter seems to be my worst season. I don't know why.
   SEPTEMBER. The Onehunga Workingmen's Club held the first of a series of monthly deep stack tournaments with a $50 entry fee. Although we only had enough players for a single table, it was an enjoyable event, especially as I came in second and pocketed an $80 profit. Subsequent games also ended up being single table events and I continued to cash on a regular basis. These games were played on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, which was very convenient for me.
   OCTOBER. I started playing in the occasional micro stakes big field tournament on Poker Stars in the previous month. I had my first cash in this type of game this month, coming in 127th place out of 5093 players. As the buy-in is only US$2.20, I didn't make much, but it was an encouraging start. I've continued playing in these big field events from time to time, but haven't had any more cashes yet.
   NOVEMBER. One Friday night the regular tournament at the OWMC was cancelled as the organiser had a prior engagement. So some of the regulars played a ring game instead. I ended up running it as everyone knows I'm 'the cashie guy'. So I did blinds of 25c/50c, Texas Holdem only, with buy-ins up to $50. A good time was had by all. Although I came out of the game with only a small profit it was great to be able to play in a proper ring game for a change.
   DECEMBER. I came 5th on the overall points table for the Auckland Inter-club Poker this year. Although only the top 3 players win cash prizes I was looking forward to the prize-giving day at Tuakau because the poker tournament on that day had no rake taken out of the prize-pool; it was all paid out. But in their infinite wisdom the organisers decided to pay out the top 18 finishers, rather than the usual top 9. So even though I came in 7/54 I only collected $40 for my troubles, a measly $20 profit. Oh well. Thems the breaks.

Sticky Fingers

   The basic principal that is at the heart of poker theory, the point at which all poker primers start, is the two types of poker hands: made hands and drawing hands. Pre-flop, any big pair is a made hand and I would also include any two big cards, although some might argue that these are only drawing hands. I include them because hands like AQ and AK are probably the best hand pre-flop and have the potential to make top pair on the flop. You should always raise hands like these for two reasons: for value and to isolate your opponents. So you are raising to get more chips in the pot while you are ahead and also to reduce the number of callers.
   The reason you want to reduce the number of callers is because these sorts of big pair hands are vulnerable to being drawn out on by players holding drawing hands. For example, if you have pocket aces and are up against one other player, the probability of having the winning hand on the river (against any random hand) is 85%. But against 8 other players, your aces have only a 35% chance of winning at showdown. This principal applies to any big hand and that is why it is vitally important to protect your big hands by raising pre-flop.
   Conversely, if you have a drawing hand (suited connectors, medium connectors, small pairs, small suited aces), you want to play in a  multi-way pot. This is because most of the time you are going to miss your straight, flush or 3 of a kind and end up folding. So when you do hit your monster hand you want a big pot with plenty of players involved so you can extract maximum value and recoup all those previous losses and then some. This is the basic strategy that is at the heart of every poker game. Players with big starting hands are trying to make it too expensive for others to chase their draws. And players with drawing hands are trying to get in as cheaply as possible so they can hit their monster hands.
     The live games that I play in are typically very very loose. Most players will call a pre-flop raise with a ridiculously wide range of hands and if they hit any kind of draw, or any part of the flop they will hang on like grim death and call all the way to the river. This makes it extremely difficult to protect big pair type hands, as many of these players will only be deterred from calling by an enormous raise. I'm now used to this kind of play and have resigned myself to the fact that I'll be sucked out on a lot. The thing is, the play at my Friday game seems to be getting even looser than usual. Maybe it's because some of the tighter players are no longer coming to the game, or maybe it's just my perception of the games, but those calling hands just seem to be getting more and more absurd. This has led me to take another look at my basic strategy to see if I can find a better way.
   I don't play ring games much these days but I have a basic pre-flop strategy for these games that is based on principals taught by Poker School Online. If I have a hand that's playable from early position I open raise to five times the big blind (5x BB). If I have a hand that I think is playable from middle position I raise 3x BB plus 1 BB for every player who has limped in to the pot. If I have a playable hand in late position I raise 2x BB plus 1 BB for every limper. This is a simple enough system that seems to work well enough in most situations, although it can always be modified to suit particular circumstances.
   In a ring game, if I was faced with a table full of  'no-foldem' players, I would adjust by increasing the size of my raises for premium hands. And in a situation like this, if I had top pair or an over-pair on the flop, I would bet half the pot or more to ensure that anyone with a draw didn't have the correct odds to call, even if that meant pushing most of my stack into the middle. The way I see it, in a cash game you make what you think is the correct move, even if it involves risking most or all of your stack. If you get drawn out on, then so be it; you either reload or go home in the knowledge that in the long term that was a profitable move and the next time, or the time after that, you will drag in all of some-ones chips. As long as you play the odds you will win in the long run, regardless of the results in one particular game.
   Maybe it's a mistake on my part, but I think of tournaments differently. To me, tournaments are all about survival. My strategy is to try and pick up enough chips in the early stages to keep ahead of the increasing blinds and then get more active and aggressive in the later stages to put myself in a position to make the money. Maybe this is the wrong approach, but it seems to work reasonably well so I'm sticking to it for now. The only time I'm willing to risk most or all of my chips is where I know I have a significant edge (for example pocket aces or kings pre-flop). I don't usually want to risk my tournament life on a move that has a  small positive expected value long term. In short, I'm much less inclined to risk my chips in a tournament than I would be in a ring game.
   In the early stages of a tournament, when the stacks are reasonably deep, I play a basic ring game strategy but with one exception; I don't  increase my bet sizing to compensate for the super-loose calling crew. So if I raise 5x BB in early position with KK and get 5 callers, then so be it. Or if 6 players limp in when I have AJ on the button, I raise to 8x BB and usually end up watching 3 or 4 people call. As a result, it's not unusual to see me raising pre-flop them checking or folding on the flop if my Ax misses or my medium pair is facing a flop full of big cards. And a continuation bet in a no-foldem game like this is just pointless; you're always going to get called, usually by multiple players.
   In the middle stages when the blinds are getting bigger I reduce the size of my pre-flop raises. I usually just bet a standard 3x BB regardless of position. As the blinds increase further I'll drop down to 2.5x BB raises or less. Even although this size raise is likely to be a significant proportion of a caller's stack at this point, I still find that there are multiple players who are apparently unable to let go of their hands. It's not until the final stages of the tournament when the blinds are really big and most of the players with sticky fingers have been eliminated that I start seeing folds to raises. However, there are usually a couple of 'loosies' who have amassed huge stacks and are happy to keep on calling with rags.

   The thing about playing in these super-loose tournaments is that one of the essential elements of the no limit game is diminished. The power of the pre-flop raise is severely compromised and post-flop play becomes much more important. The way that these games end up being played remind me of fixed limit games. I played in fixed limit ring games a few years back and found that I wasn't very good at them. It was virtually impossible to protect a big starting hand as it was so cheap to call a raise. These games were very much about what came on the flop and it took considerable skill to negotiate the intricacies of post-flop play where pushing an opponent off a hand was not an option.
   So why bother with pre-flop raises at all? There are a couple of players in the Friday game who are incredibly passive pre-flop and yet they have both done very well over-all, coming first and second on the yearly points table. In a game where pre-flop raises do not achieve the aim of isolating opponents, why bother with them? Well, the thing is, pre-flop raises still achieve the aim of getting chips in the middle. The way I see it, although all those callers greatly reduce my chances of winning the pot, big pairs still sometimes hold up against multiple callers, and they sometimes improve. And when they do, they win monster pots. So I still figure that all those times I end up raising pre-flop and then folding the flop are compensated for by the times when I rake in a huge pot that sets me up for the rest of the tournament.
   I guess you could say that the live tournaments I play in are hybrid games. Pre-flop play is much more like fixed limit than it is no limit; you just have to accept that you're going to have a lot of callers no matter what you do. However, you still have the ability to bet enough post-flop  to ensure that at least the first couple of players won't have the correct odds to call with their drawing cards. And when you reach the turn? Well, the pot will be so big that you'll probably end up all-in just to protect your hand. Then again, play is usually so passive that you could probably just check to the river and hope that no-one hits. But of course the problem with this is that you're probably already pot committed. At this point you have to just play the hand correctly and take your chances.
   One of the great things about poker is that there are so many different types of game and so many different playing styles within each game type. The most important thing is being able to adjust to these different styles. No-foldem games are no different. On balance, I think my strategy for these super-loose games makes some sort of sense.
   Playing no limit no-foldem is kind of like dancing your way through a minefield. On a roller coaster. Blindfolded. What fun.




  

Playing by the Rules, Part 2

   I play in two or three live poker tournaments every week. These games are played at pubs or clubs and all are run by amateurs who are usually also playing in the tournament themselves. In the last post I detailed how this situation can lead to controversies over the rules and the way that they are applied. And because these are amateur-run games there are often no actual written rules to refer to. In the end it comes down to common or accepted practice. And common practice in these situations can deviate a lot from what is considered to be standard practice in more formal games.
    The organisers of some of the games I regularly play in have recently adopted the Tournament Directors Association Rules as their standard, which is a step in the right direction. However, adopting these rules wholesale is not necessarily a good idea for relatively informal games, and there is a tendency to enforce some rules and not others. In other words, we are still essentially operating by the principal of: 'the rules are what the Tournament Director says they are'.
   In addition, because they are designed for use in tournaments that have professional dealers, the TDA rules don't cover the procedures for dealing or the responsibilities of dealers. For example, some of the clubs I play at have now introduced a 'no poking' rule. The normal procedure for player-dealt games is for the deck to be passed to the player on the dealer's right, and that person then cuts the cards, leaving  the cut card at the bottom. Up until recently what happened was that the dealer held out the deck, the other player then poked the cut card into the deck and the dealer then moved the top half to the bottom and proceeded to deal. Now we've been told that we have to place the deck and the cut card on the table and the 'cutter' then moves the top section of the deck onto the cut card, then the remainder of the deck, then passes the deck back to the dealer. Personally, I don't have a problem with poking, but if that's the way they want it done, that's okay. The only problem is, poking is standard practice at my Wednesday night game and if I place the deck on the table the cutter wonders what the hell I'm doing. I guess I just have to remember which game I'm at and whether it's okay to poke or not to poke.
   Another thing I occasionally come across that would never happen in a game with a professional dealer is the 'pot counter'. On my Wednesday night game there's a particular player who sometimes counts out the chips in the pot to see how much is in there. Presumably he does this to help him decide how much to bet. Now, the dealer (not the player) is actually allowed to do this in a pot limit game, but it's definitely not allowed in a no limit game. The most a dealer is allowed to do in no limit is to spread the chips out a bit so you can get a better view, but that's all. But the person who habitually does this also happens to be the game organiser, so there's not much point in complaining about it.
   Because of the informal nature of these games you tend to get a lot of hands in the pot. People usually take change out of the pot themselves, usually before the betting round is completed, which tends to lead to a certain amount of confusion when someone then raises. Then there's the 'pot tidier'; the player who just can't stand to see an untidy pile of chips and has to put them all into neat stacks. And of course, on the other end of the spectrum there's the 'pot splasher'; the player who, instead of placing his bet in front of him just chucks the chips in the general direction of the pot, leaving the other players to guess at how much has been bet.
   But the one thing that really gets to me in these types of games is the table talk. The rules of tournament poker are that you cannot say anything about a hand in progress, whether you are in the hand or not. You can't tell anyone what you folded, you can't suggest what the best hand might be, you can't make guesses about what another player is holding; you can't do anything that might influence the actions of another player. This rule is regularly and consistently flouted in the games I attend, and it can get pretty annoying. I have spoken up about it a few times when it's been particularly bad, but my complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Just last week I had a little hissy fit when someone insisted on pointing out that a player holding a 6 would have the nut straight. When I complained, the person involved couldn't understand why I should care about someone suggesting what I might be holding in my hand. So, the constant babble about the possibilities presented by the flop, or the hand someone would have had if they hadn't folded, goes on, and on, and on.
   Some of the irregular rules in these tournaments are the result of ignorance of the standard procedure that is followed elsewhere. For instance, in any professionally run tournament if a player has to be moved to a new table it is the player 'under the gun' (sitting to the left of the big blind) who is moved and they are then dealt in at the new table and take on whatever responsibilities their new seat carries, including paying the big blind. This is a very sensible system as it means that it is usually an advantage to be moved to another table and no-one has to sit out any hands.
   For some reason, all the local games run a different system. When someone needs to be moved, it is the player one position behind the dealer (or in some cases, two behind the dealer). But if they move into the blinds or the dealer position they have to sit out until the button passes them. So this sometimes means sitting out three hands. I ended up in this position once, coming into the big blind and having to sit out until the button passed. One of the other players was loudly complaining about how this gave me an unfair advantage. I was more of the opinion that sitting out a number of hands is a disadvantage. But either way, it's rather an odd way to do things. I suspect that this method originally comes from the National Pub Poker League games, as I know that they do things this way. But wherever it comes from, I'm going to try and get the Interclub competition to change to the 'under the gun' system and with a bit of luck it might spread to other games from there.
   Another example of ignorance of normal procedure is the raising rule. This is one that doesn't come up very often and when it does, it doesn't make an awful lot of difference to the game, but it illustrates how easy it is to end up following procedures that are not actually correct. All poker rules state that if you raise, it should be a minimum of twice the previous bet or raise. So if there is a bet of 200 and someone raises 200 to make it 400, then a re-raise would have to be to a minimum of 600; the previous player raised 200 on top of the original bet, so the new raise has to be 400 plus the original 200. Nobody does it this way in my local games. They always say that a raise has to be twice the total previous bet, so in this case it would be to 800. I've argued the point on this a couple of times but got no traction whatsoever, so now I just go with the flow and play by the 'double the last bet' rule.
   Another rule that I think comes from the NPPL is the forced check. If a player bets or raises out of turn, the players who had yet to act get their turn, then when the out of turn player's turn comes they cannot take aggressive action; they can only check or call. The standard rule is that the 'OOT' player's bet is binding unless the action has changed, in which case they can reconsider their original bet. This is completely different to the forced check rule. In one case the offending player cannot take the action they intended, in the other case they must take the action they intended. It's kind of like an instant penalty for acting out of turn, which seems unfair to me, especially in what is an otherwise pretty informal game structure.
   There are a couple of local rules that I've come across that I think are grossly unfair. One of these involves 'blinding out' an absent player. Normally if a player is not at the table their cards are folded and if they are in the blinds then those blinds are paid and go into the pot. But one of the clubs that I play at also rules that if a player is absent for one full circuit of the button, then they have to start paying the big blind  every hand. This seems very unfair to me. The absent player has paid the entry fee like everyone else and shouldn't be penalised any more than the normal payment of the blinds in turn. Even if someone leaves the tournament, then putting their big blind into the pot every hand gives that particular table an advantage over other tables. Even though it doesn't come into play that often, I really don't like seeing this rule being used.
   The worst of the lot is Bill's 'Big Blind Check' rule. This rule is only played at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and although it only comes up rarely, it's just plain ridiculous. According to this rule, if a player in the big blind says, 'check' when there is a bet in front of them, it is ruled to be a call. So if you are in the big blind and you miss the fact that someone has raised and you check your option, you just called that raise. I cannot imagine any reasonable justification for having a rule like this. It just seems like a deliberate attempt to trap players into losing their chips.
   The creator of this rule, Bill, says that this very thing happened to him one night at the Auckland Casino, and that's why he uses it. All I can say is, if that did happen, then either the casino has a really stupid rule or one of the dealers made a stupid mistake. Either way, there's no good reason to adopt a game rule that is clearly unfair and could result in someone losing their entire stack because of a moment of inattention. Without exception, when visiting players are told about the BBC rule they are astonished. However, Bill refuses to give it up because 'they play it at the casino'.
   One of the most important things I've learned as a poker player is that you must be able to adapt. You have to adapt to the stack sizes, the number of players at the table, the betting limits, the type of players and a bunch of other thing. Adapting to the local rules is part of this process. You just have to check out what the local practices are and, like them or not, adapt your play to suit those conditions. So that's what I do. Occasionally I can get the locals to conform more to standard poker procedures but the rest of the time it's just a matter of being aware of what the unusual practices are and adapting to them.
   Just remember, if you ever play poker at the OWMC, pay attention when you're in the big blind.



 

Playing by the Rules, Part 1

   When I play poker online it's all very simple: no-one has to actually shuffle or deal cards, there can be no mistake about how much you are trying to bet, showdowns, folds and the awarding of the pot are all done automatically. But when I'm playing live games (which is most of the time) and dealing with real cards and real chips, things can sometimes get tricky. Even when playing at the casino, where the play is according to a standard set of rules and the cards are dealt by a professional dealer, there can be occasional disputes (see 'The Deep Stack Tournament', 26 Feb). And in the games I play most often, pub or club games where the players do the dealing and there is often no set rules other than a few that have been verbally stated, things can get very tricky indeed. Here are a few examples of what I mean:
The Missed Split
   A while back I was at a table where the dealer missed the fact that the best hand was actually 'on the board'. There had been substantial betting by two players and player 'A'  showed two pair versus the other player's lesser hand, and started raking in the pot. Then an observer who was watching the game pointed out that there was a straight on the board and it should be a split pot. An argument broke out which was fuelled by the fact that player A was also the tournament director. He was saying that the observer had no right to interfere in the hand as he wasn't involved and wasn't even sitting at the table. I think player A accepted that the pot should be split but he had a lot to say about players 'interfering' in the game, and even threatened to penalise the observer if he did it again.
   I had to put my 2 cents worth in here and point out that standard poker rules declare that players are obliged to point out errors in reading hands or in the awarding of a pot. I neglected to mention that the rules are referring to dealers and other players, and don't actually mention bystanders. But I figured that the intent of the rules is clear: any mistake in the awarding of a pot needs to be corrected, and if that correction comes from a 'railbird' then so be it. Strangely enough, a similar situation happened a few months later, involving both the same people. This time around 'player A' didn't complain so much, so I guess he had a change of heart.

The Muck Shuffler
   I was the dealer in this hand but, because of the situation, was unwilling to take control and ended up being an observer. I was playing in a tournament that was part of a poker league that I wasn't usually involved with. So I was playing in a room full of strangers and I wasn't aware of the usual procedures followed by this group. I was at an oblong table, sitting in the middle and I'd folded along with a number of other players. There were still two people in the hand and as I was dealing out the board cards the player opposite me pulled in all the folded cards and starting 'washing them' (moving them around) face down on the table. I thought this was an odd thing to do but, given the unfamiliar situation, I let it go. As the hand drew to a close one player threw his cards forward, thinking the other player had folded, only to find that he still had live cards. Then some of the muck cards, which were still being shuffled around on the table, touched the two folded cards. That's when the argument broke out.
   Most of the players at the table knew each other and were arguing back and forth about whether the folded cards were still live. Eventually they called over the tournament director (TD) who asked a number of people what happened and decided that the folded cards were dead because they'd touched the muck. The verdict seemed to be that he could still have played them if they hadn't touched the muck. No mention was made of the fact that it was actually the 'moving muck' that touched the folded cards. This was a very odd incident and my unwillingness to take control when the muck shuffling started only made it worse. The question of whether folded cards can be retrieved in some circumstances comes up quite often, as can be seen from the next two examples.
The Showdown Fold
   This incident happened when I was getting short-stacked in a tournament and pushed all-in. The player across the table from me was thinking of calling and all my attention was on him. Eventually he folded and, thinking I'd won the hand, I threw my cards into the muck. Someone called out that there was another player in the hand who was yet to act and, realising my mistake, I immediately grabbed my cards back. That's when the argument started. The discussion went on for some time before the TD was called over to make a ruling. After consulting another neutral player he finally ruled that my hand was dead and the last player in the hand was awarded all my chips, eliminating me from the tournament. I was not happy.

   I spent some time after this going through the Tournament Directors Association Rules to see what they had to say, but it seems to be a bit of  a grey area that is covered by several different contradictory rules. I did find a YouTube clip of a similar incident at the WSOP. In this case the TD ruled that the second player hadn't called the original bet so the all-in player got their stack back. However there seemed to be a lot of negative online feedback from players about this decision. I think that if I was the TD in this situation I would probably invoke rule 1 and make a decision based on the 'best interests of the game and fairness'. Provided that the mucked cards were '100% identifiable' (which they were), I would have allowed the all-in player to retrieve the cards and given the second player the option of calling or folding. But then again, maybe I'm biased.
The Face-up Fold
   One of our regular Friday night players got very upset when the decision went against him in a similar situation. I wasn't present but I heard about it later, at great length. Apparently 'S' was involved in a big pot and at showdown he misread his hand and, thinking he had lost, threw his cards face-up into the muck. Then someone pointed out that he had a bigger hand than he'd realised (I think it was a back-door straight). Now I didn't see what actually happened, so I don't know whether he initially tabled his cards or not, but I suspect that he didn't. So the question is, if the cards have gone into the muck, even though they are still clearly identifiable, can they still be played? Myself, I'd tend to go with the 'fairness' principle and allow the best hand to win the pot. But the TD ruled that once the cards were in the muck they were no longer live. The player involved didn't take it well and was vocal in his disagreement. In fact, he was still going on about it several weeks later.
The Premature Show
   A few weeks ago at my regular Wednesday night game there was a controversy over an all-in hand that occurred just before the break. There were 4 players in the hand when one went all-in. 'E' had a big stack and she now pushed all-in over the top. Then she flipped her cards over, even though there were two players yet to act. Apparently she was very keen to go outside and have a smoke, and didn't seem too concerned about giving the other two players free information about her hand (she had flopped a flush). Some people were saying that her hand should be ruled dead, as you are not allowed to show your cards while a hand is still active.
   This situation was made worse because our TD had gone home early, leaving one of the regulars in charge. He didn't really know what should be done and in the end he said the hand was still live. The other two players promptly folded. If she hadn't shown then maybe one or both of those players would have called and then been knocked out. If the hand had been ruled dead then one of the other players would have won the pot and who knows who would have been eliminated, if anyone. After the hand one of the other players asked me what I thought and I said that E's hand should have been declared dead. Later on, after consulting the rules, I realised that the hand should probably have been live, but that E should have been penalised. The problem with that is that you just don't see penalties being applied in these pub games. It just doesn't happen. So there's really nothing you can do about this sort of situation.
The Vague Bet
   Playing in a tournament a few months ago I saw a hand where the TD did actually consult the rules to decide what to do. Player 1, who was short-stacked, pushed all-in, then 'J' said 'I call you all-in'. The other players who were yet to act wanted to know if he was calling the relatively small all-in bet or putting his big stack all-in. J said his intention was to go all-in, but some of the others said it should be only a call. The TD was called over and he consulted the Tournament Directors Association Rules, which stated that non-standard bets that could have two possible meanings should be be interpreted as the lower amount. So J's bet was ruled to be a call, and play carried on.
   It just goes to show how simple things can be if you actually have a set of rules to play by. Of course, some of the earlier examples are actually a bit harder to resolve, even with a set of rules. But in my opinion, the most important rule is rule number 1: 'The best interests of the game and fairness are top priorities in decision making.' Sometimes you can get bogged down in technicalities and forget that the most important thing is fairness. But having a set of rules to settle issues in the first instance would certainly help.

 

  

A Week of It

   In a typical week I play in three live poker tournaments and one online tournament. Last week was a typical week. Here's how it went...
Wednesday
   I took my regular trip to the Landmark Bar for their Turbo Rebuy Poker Tournament. There are usually 15 to 20 players in this $20 buy-in event, but this time there were only 10 of us. At first there were just 9 players and we all squeezed onto a single table, then a late-comer turned up and we made two 5-player tables. I was playing the odd drawing hand at first but hitting nothing. I finally started hitting the odd decent hand towards the end of the first period.
   My first decent hand was K J which I raised pre-flop and immediately got re-raised. I had to bite the bullet and fold and was happy to see the 3-bettor show his pocket Kings at the end of the hand.
   Next up came A K, and another pre-flop raise, which was called by 'D'. I completely missed the flop but bet at it anyway. D thought about it for a while, but eventually folded. But D was to get his chips back, and then some...
   I had A 8 in the blind and the flop came 7 8 T. I bet the flop with my middle pair and D called. We both checked the turn. Then a 6 came on the river and I bet at it, trying to represent the straight. But D was the one with the straight (T 9) and he called and pulled in a decent proportion of my chip stack.
   After the break I was getting short-stacked. By this stage one player had been knocked out and had declined to re-buy, so we were back to one full table. I had T 6 in the small blind and, as there were lots of callers, I decided to take a punt on it. There were 3 clubs on the flop and everyone checked. The turn was another club and I held the 6 of clubs. When 'E' bet at it I decided that my 6 high flush was probably no good and folded. 'W' called and at the end I saw that he had a 4 of clubs and E had a 9. Good fold.
   My last hand of the night came when I was down to 15 big blinds. I raised with my pocket tens and got called by D. The flop came A x x and, knowing that D was likely to have called with a wide range of hands, I pushed all-in. 'D' insta-called and slammed his pocket aces down on the table. Oh well, another early night. I never re-buy in this game so I wandered over to the bar and watched the Karaoke for a bit before heading home. I'd played for about one hour and fifteen minutes.
Friday
   My wife and I set off to the $25 Tournament at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club. There was a typical turnout of eighteen players sitting around three tables. My table ended up being short-handed with just five players because one of the players booked his name down but didn't turn up.
   My biggest chip loss in the early stages came when I had A K. I put in a decent-sized raise and got three callers. The flop was A 2 7. I bet the flop and was called by 'J'. The turn was a 5: I bet and was called by J. When another 2 came on the river I bet my top pair again and J 3-bet me. After I reluctantly folded he showed his 5 2. Nice call mate.
   J and I had another interesting hand a little later. I had 8 3 in the big blind and, as usual, there were a lot of limpers. The flop was 5 6 7. J bet at it and I called with my straight draw. The turn was a 4. I realised that the 3 gave me a 7 high straight but completely missed the fact that my straight was actually 8 high. J bet some more and I called. The river was a 9. J bet again and I reluctantly called with what I thought was the 'idiot end ' of the straight. J showed K 8 for the 9 high straight. It took a moment. but I finally realised I also had an 8, so the pot was split.
   A little later the rag hands came through again when I limped into a 'family pot' with 7 4 in the small blind and flopped two pair. That chipped me up a bit.
   I got a chance to split another pot with J when I picked up A Q with about 10 BBs left. J raised and I pushed all-in. He called with A Q. Three diamonds on the flop gave J a flush draw but he missed it and it was another split.
   After the break I was living on the edge of the red zone (my push-or-fold level) most of the time. By the time we made the final table (the last 10 players) I had about 8 BBs left.
   With T T I went all-in and was called by K J. There was a King on the flop and another on the turn. That left me with a pitiful stack as we went into the second break.
   When I returned to the table I had 6,000 in chips with the blinds at 2,000/4,000. I was getting a succession of rag hands with the big blind rapidly approaching. So I shoved my 8 7 and got called by J T. Guess what? A Jack on the flop, a Jack on the turn. At least I got three hours of game time, and a few more 'Ten Week Challenge' points.
   Meanwhile, my wife was still in the game. In the end she got down to the final three and they split the prize pool. Nice effort.
Saturday
   The next day we were back at the OWMC for the $50 Tournament. My wife had won enough on Friday to be able to afford to play on the Saturday. The turnout was the same as the last time we played this game; we had ten players so we used the big table.
   I guess it was the mix of players involved, but the play was ridiculously loose, with an incredible amount of calling. We were starting with 250 BBs, so I was playing my standard cash game strategy. This involved putting in a substantial raise when there were multiple limpers, but this seemed to make no difference. Obviously the others saw the deep stack as a licence to call any-sized bet.
   One of my first pre-flop raising hands was K J. My darling wife then 3-bet me. Knowing my wife's normally passive playing style I figured it must be K K or A A, so I folded. She obligingly showed her pocket Kings. Strangely familiar.
   Next up I raised with A 9 and got several callers. The flop was T 2 x. I checked and 'R' put in a huge bet. Everyone folded, as did I. R then showed T 2. Nice call buddy. At least my table mates were saving me chips by telegraphing their big hands.
   My best pre-flop hand up to this point was A Q. I put in a decent raise and got five callers (that's right; five). The flop was all low cards, so I put in a continuation bet. 'K' called and everyone else folded. The turn was also a low card; I double-barrelled it with a decent-sized bet and K called again. On the river I checked and so did K. She turned over 5 2 for a rivered straight (kind of strange that she didn't bet it). Nice call sister. This hand made a big dent in my chip stack.
   The timing of this game was unfortunate, as it was played on the same evening as the Super rugby final between The Hurricanes and The Lions. This game got under way as we were playing and the organiser set up the TV screen to show the rugby, leaving the tournament clock on the small computer screen. As it happens, I'd drawn a seat that was facing away from the TV, so I couldn't see it, but I could hear what was going on. In any case, I was more interested in concentrating on the poker and winning some money.
   By the mid stages I was getting short stacked and getting very few playable hands. Much to my surprise, when I raised with K K and then saw a pretty safe-looking flop, I actually managed to win a few chips to keep me going.
   I was now in the push-or-fold stage of the tournament and was managing to survive with the occasional all-in bet. I was hovering at around 10 BBs but actually managed to knock out a couple of players with my all-ins.
   K had been running good with her rag hand calls but she was finally undone when she called my   A 8 push with 7 5.  She hit a 5 on the flop; I missed the turn but it gave me a flush draw; the third heart on the river gave me an Ace high flush.
   My wife had already been eliminated by this stage and we were down to four players, and in the money. Although my stack wasn't that big, it was big enough to allow me to play a little more freely. The two smaller stacks didn't last long and in the end it was just 'Z' and me. I'm pretty comfortable with heads-up play and we both had reasonable-sized stacks, so I was settling in for the long haul. Z and I discussed a deal, but we figured we'd keep playing at least to the end of the rugby match, and then reconsider.
   But then, a few hands later, Z decided that she wanted to watch the game, so I said 'What the hell' and we split the prizepool, getting $185 each. A good enough result. Not only that, but the Hurricanes won, the last of the five New Zealand franchises to win the Super Rugby title. Nice one.
Sunday
   My current favourite online tournament is the 888 poker $1200 Guaranteed Tournament that runs at 10.30 am each day. This costs $US8.00 to play and I logged in on Sunday to give it another shot. This tournament has a starting stack and blinds at 3,000/20, so there's no need to hurry early on.
   With Q J in middle position I put in a raise pre-flop and got called by the player on the button. I missed the flop but hit a Queen on the turn. My opposition called my bets all the way to the river and then showed K 8, having hit his King on the river. I lost about 500 chips on this one.
   But pocket Aces came to my rescue. Two players called my pre-flop raise and they both called my bets to the river before finally giving up, leaving me with 3,700 (90 BBs)
   With A 6 on the button I called a min-raise. The flop was K K 5. The opposition checked and I bet my A high, as is my habit these days; they called. A Queen on the turn and they checked, I bet and then they re-raised. Uh oh! Time to fold. Back down to 2,200 (22 BBs).
   Not long after this I crossed into the push-or-fold zone, but then 3 good hands in a row (K Q, A T, K Js)  got me back into the game. Then someone called my A A all-in push, and I was up to 7,300.
   Some time later, with a couple more all-ins I was up around 11,000 chips, which sounds good, but with the blinds up around 700, it's only about 15 BBs. It was around this point, after a couple of hours' play that I crossed the money bubble (27 players paid).
   When I pushed again with A 9s it looked like my tournament was over when I got called by A K. I needed a 9 or a diamond to fall on the river to stay alive. It was the 9 of diamonds. Sometimes you've just got to get lucky.
   With 18 BBs left I got to see a flop with J 5 in the big blind. I hit bottom pair on the flop, two pair on the turn and a flush on the river. My opponent had top pair on the flop, but hadn't bet enough to push me out, and I was up to 26,000 (26 BBs).
   Nearly three hours in, with two tables left, and I shot myself in the foot. In the big blind with T 6s, I got to see a flop with two others. The flop gave me a straight draw and I called a small bet. I hit my straight on the turn and put in a min-raise, which both players called. With a third diamond on the river, I checked and one player put in a pot-sized bet. Even though this bet was just screaming 'flush!', I called and they showed the Ace high flush. 7,400 chips left with the blinds at 600/1200.
   With about 6-8 BBs left, I managed to stay afloat with a couple of all-in bets. My last hand came when I shoved again with A 6 and got called by A 9. There was a 6 on the flop, but a 9 came on the river, and that was it. 12th out of 163 players. $US13.00 profit. Not bad.

So that was my week. Another seven days, another four poker tournaments. A few more dollars in the bank and, hopefully, a few more lessons learned. My plans for next week? I think I'll play some more poker.