Believe in Lucky Cards

For me it’s the two of hearts. You can see how a hand like two of hearts, seven of clubs instantly looks so much more powerful. I'd certainly not pass up the chance of betting on it. Raising... well, not so much really.

Let's get more sensible. Such cards may act as random signals to bluff and as such should not be pooh-poohed. Players use combinations too. Any five and ten is a popular one on the basis that all straights contain one of these cards. So, you're going to hit your opponents with a not-so-well disguised straight.

And then there's that old perennial favourite: ace and... ace. Ha! Don’t make me laugh. The number of times that's failed?

Call a LAG Only with a Great Hand

Despite your lack of notes, you’ve identified the guy who’s in every hand and who bets every flop. Time at least mentally to give him the LAG label. Loose-aggressive. You’ve got his number. And you’ve finally got a good hand, better than top pair anyway. Call him all the way to the river, or the end of your stack, whichever is sooner. He'll not beat you this time.

Trouble is: LAGs have a tendency only to stick around when they do have a chance of winning or if they can bully you out of the pot. If you start picking and choosing the hands to stand on, they'll out-guess you every time.

THEY'RE NOT STUPID.

But it’s so much easier to believe that they are.

Call a LAG Only with a Great Hand

You’ve identified the guy who’s in every hand and who bets every flop. Time to give him the LAG label. Loose-aggressive. You’ve got his number. And you’ve finally got a good hand, better than top pair anyway. Call him all the way to the river, or the end of your stack, whichever is sooner. They'll not beat you this time.

Trouble is: they have a tendency only to stick around when they do have a chance of winning or if they can bully you out of the pot. If you start picking and choosing the hands to stand on, they'll out-guess you every time.

THEY'RE NOT STUPID.

But it’s so much easier to believe that they are.

How To Be a Bad Poker Player

With apologies to Simon Barnes, but this does not even intend to turn you into any sort of poker player. It should warn you off by listing all the traps I've fallen into on my way to becoming a poor poker player. If it doesn't, then follow my advice to play a worse game than I do. And, please, end up playing on my table. Please.

OK, so you're not listening and the first mistake you must make is your choice of poker room. Or even whether to play live or online.

Play live. It’s so much more expensive and you can lose far more than you ever could online, quite apart from having to spend on travel, drinks and food. Still, for a night out with the lads, it beats a strip club. And if you're a girl – yes, even girls get tempted by poker – it definitely beats a strip club.

Now we're sitting nice and comfortable at home in front of the Web, still reading this, I hope. And I’m going to make you wait for the next nugget. And the next. And so on.

Watch this space.

Semi-Bluff Reraising: A Winning Poker Play?

For fun, I've incorporated strict suited connectors (down to 54s) to my starting repertoire, which has increased the flops giving me four to a flush or straight. I have no problem semi-bluff betting them when I’m first to act, even if I've been sucked into calling a pre-flop raise. As far as I know, the board hasn't hit my opponents and I may as well bet for information at least or to steal the pot at best.

It’s less fun responding to another player’s post-flop bet. I’m not sure that reraising is working. For a start, I already have information: that my oppo likes his hand, unless he's continuation betting. So, the only motivation for reraising must be to steal the pot. And players are fighting back by re-reraising, damn their eyes. Then not only have I failed in my steal but I’m getting shite odds to call. And to call with a fair proportion of my remaining stack, indeed maybe committing all of it to the hand – not what I had in mind with marginal starting cards.

What if my opponent merely calls my raise? Do I continue the semi-bluff on the turn? Again at far greater cost than my budget for the hand? Basically, I’m getting into scary territory.

I think that floating is the answer. Call the bettor despite the lousy odds, even the implied odds, on the draw. There's still a chance to win the pot on the turn if he gives up the lead. I don't have to worry about distinguishing continuation bets either; I can treat them all the same.

The float doesn't work well against serial bettors, so it’s important to read them. It’s not good against multiple opponents either although, with a draw, they may generate good pot odds by calling. Really, it’s just any old excuse to stay in the hand and chase down a beautiful thing. The hard maths would determine the effectiveness of reraising versus floating but for now I’m going on instinct.

So much for a cash game. The situation in a tournament is different. In the name of pushing on, fast, early doors I'd reraise, even put my entire stack at jeopardy. A 2-1 chance to double up? Ease the next few levels? Be the table bully? Against spending an hour or two struggling to some grisly end, probably against the same odds?

In fact, I’m tending also to play one-gap suited connectors early in tournaments, which increases the reraising dilemma. But it’s a damn sight more fun than waiting for monster hole cards, especially when they’re overtaken to knock you out anyway.

Protecting Poker Hands on the Turn

An earlier post offered some suggestions on playing a vulnerable poker hand, like top pair, on the flop. What about protecting it on the turn?

In other words this card has not completed any obvious flush or straight and you reckon still to be ahead. Standard wisdom has it that a bet of half the pot here will price any opponent out of the hand but implied odds suggest this is not so.

To keep the maths relatively simple, suppose there had been 4 big blinds (BB) in the pot on the flop and one opponent remained. This seems like a pretty average scenario. Now, on the turn, there are 12 BBs: the original pot; your bet; and the opponent’s call. If you bet half of this (6BB) and your opponent calls again, the pot will have 24BB on the river.

Then, disaster. The river card hits: it seems to complete a flush or an obvious straight. Your opponent bets to represent this. Do you call or fold? It depends on how much he bets.

Assume that he was drawing to a flush and so had a 4-1 chance of completing on the river. Four times out of five he will lose his turn bet of 6BB for a net deficit of 24BB. The fifth time needs to more than compensate for this. It’s not hard: 18BB already come from the pot and your bet on the turn. Your opponent only needs 6 more to break even. This is a quarter of the pot at the river.

If he bets this or less, you should call. He’ll never make any money that way, which implies that you'll never lose any. In fact, you'll come out ahead by occasionally calling pure bluffs or hands where the bettor genuinely thinks he is ahead but you have him beat.

Unfortunately the river bet is rarely this small. You then have to apply a sliding scale to decide whether to call or not. The bigger the bet, the less inclined you should be and the better hand you will need. It gets a little complicated.

Matters are so much simpler if you bet around the pot on the turn. Yes, we've gone back there with 12BB in the pot. You bet around 12 yourself and your opponent calls. This makes 36BB at the river, when the same disaster strikes. But now your opponent needs to make 48BB to justify losing 12BB four times. 24BB come from the pot and your bet at the turn, so he needs to get another 24BB.

This is a much bigger gamble on the river, fully 2/3 of the pot. Now you can call any bet smaller than this and come out ahead. In fact, again taking bluffs and misjudgements into account, you could probably call near pot-size bets most of the time.

If your opponent were drawing to an open-ended straight, at slightly better than 5-1 odds, he would need nearly 60BB, which is a pot-sized bet. And with any kind of hand (say you’d improved to two pair or a set) you could probably call any bet – with your entire stack if necessary.

Betting aggressively raises the bar, quite a lot, at which you have to make calling decisions. Note that if you’ve identified an opponent who never bluffs, you simply don't call apparent made hands, thereby removing any possible gain he could make from this play. And don't forget to bet for value yourself against a known fish but beware of likely slow-players.

But they're a whole article to themselves.

Playing the Perfect Poker Path

Only one player wins a tournament.

So, everyone else is on a path leading to their elimination. Even if they play correctly all the way through, the rest of the entrants will not win the main prize. Their final correct play will fail when the inevitable call or all-in push hits a bad beat or a monster. That's the nature of the game: it’s a gamble.

Playing correctly is supposed to work over the long run. Such a player will win more than his fair share of tournaments and come out ahead. But consider the problem of one tournament in isolation. Could some incorrect strategy increase the chance of winning it, and increase it enough to swamp the maths of the long run?

Consider the simple case of a tournament where everyone, including you, is playing correctly. You'll most likely lose. Unless you play incorrectly somewhere to change the perfect path. And play incorrectly often enough to put yourself on the perfect path, if at all possible. The trick is knowing where.

You can't know, of course, and in reality incorrect plays elsewhere move the perfect path. So, it may be more useful to view this path as a ridge above the surrounding landscape of the other player’s ridges. The higher your ridge, the less likely it will be terminated by contributing to some bigger ridge. This is called insurance. And you need it early. That is the time to play incorrectly.

I've seen it so often. The idiots, who double and treble up within minutes by throwing everything into seven-two offsuit, are maybe not such idiots. I’m not advocating this extreme an approach but, even as early as the first few hands, the surrounding ridges are growing. Fast. You need to grow with them. Play those marginal hands, bet those draws and call those bluffs – more so than my earlier thoughts on tournament poker strategy. Hard to be so reckless? Not if the entry fee for the tournament is an amount you could risk for just a few hands of poker. Plenty of players do it; you'll have more success than you think.

Or you'll go out. But you were going out anyway.

Holdem Poker Strategy: Protecting Top Pair

When playing poker, top pair on the flop is not enough to win the hand. For a start you must bet to protect it. At this stage in no-limit hold ’em it’s the accepted philosophy to bet around the size of the pot. This offers any opponent odds of 2-1. If he is drawing to a flush, he has a worse than 4-1 chance of hitting it on the turn. This is a good deal for you, ignoring the added complexities of later rounds of betting and cards. The bet also prices out opponents who are drawing to a flush with an overcard, when they have a 3-1 chance of making the flush or a pair better than yours.

If the flop has cards of three different suits, no flush is yet possible. Now an open-ended straight is the only danger and you don't need to commit so many chips. A bet of half the pot offers an opponent 3-1 against his slightly better than 5-1 chance of completing the straight. Again, it also prices out a hand drawing with an overcard.

Why would you want to bet less? Well, every bet is risky. You may be facing a hand with two pair or a set, both very hard to see but your opponent will probably raise you. Now you have to judge how full of shit he is. Does he really have the goods? Remember: you only have top pair, a hand unlikely to improve, and the default course must be to let it and your chips go. So, it’s as well to be efficient with bet sizing. Over the course of time it all adds up.

Note that a flop with two suited cards matching one of the suits in your hand reduces the chance of an opponent completing a possible flush. In fact it too becomes a slightly better than 5-1 chance and you can bet half the pot. The great thing here is that you know it and your opponent doesn’t! Now your efficient bet sizing can suck him in to a gamble that is not profitable for him and this translates into profits for you.

Incidentally, betting more than the pot becomes a game of diminishing returns. You can never put enough money in to offer evens and betting twice the pot only offers 3-2. If an opponent has a hand strong enough to call 2-1, 3-2 isn't going to make a huge difference, especially when the implied odds of future betting rounds swamp this small margin.

Hopeless Poker Strategy: Shoving Under the Gun

I think I've answered my dilemma about being the poker tournament short stack.

Wait. Bleed to death if necessary. Just don't blow all the hard work by shoving any two the hand before the blinds hit, where you need either everyone to fold, or luck. Given the loose tables I play, the former is unlikely, so why not trust to the luck of cards to come? I did just this in my latest tournament.

I was down to three big blinds but, under the gun, let a trash hand go. My reward? AQ as the big blind with one raiser and a caller. I couldn't have been happier. My hand made, I trebled up and kept the same policy right into second place. I know this is just one instance but I've done it before and seen others do it often enough that it looks almost +EV (i.e. in the long run it will win money).

I'd got to this parlous state after breaking one of my cardinal rules. I'd hit the ignorant end of a straight on the flop and bet out. I got one caller. An innocuous card on the turn prompted another bet and another call. Then, disaster. The river made possible a higher straight.

I'd worked out a while back that it always pays either to bet on or check and call. An opponent chasing that straight could never make it pay long-term, even if they took all your chips on the river. The stacks in a tournament aren’t big enough. Therefore, if you’ve not given them the odds each time, you're +EV to commit everything on the river. And when you add the possibility of a bluff into the equation, you're well quids in.

I checked. He shoved. I folded. He showed AK and my straight had been good. I felt sick. He may truly have thought he had the better hand but basically I'd been suckered. The only reason I'd folded was my previous dismal run. I didn't want yet another early loss. That's the way fear works in this game.

Tournament Poker Doldrums

Since the previous euphoria at changing my sit’n’go poker strategy along the lines of Mr Moshman, my bankroll is now only recovering by degrees. In fact, another recent run of six losses has left me pretty much at the level of my last post. Along the way I did manage another milestone – two first places on the bounce. The game truly is a yo-yo.

I’m running some post-game analysis with a thirty-day free trial of SitNGo Wizard. It’s told me two things. Shoving under-the-gun, even when about to be blinded out (as both Moshman and Snyder advise), is a money-loser. Of course, I understand that bleeding slowly to death is also a money-loser. Perhaps the message here is that you're truly fucked with a stack of only five or six big blinds. Exit in a blaze of glory; or drag your bloody corpse the closest you can to the bubble? It’s all the same.

Second, I don't push enough heads-up from the small blind or when I have the big stack. Well, at least I can cure these. It just takes a little more balls.

Balls? Yo-yos? What game am I playing here?

June Birding Doldrums

Migrants migrated and singers mated, things go quiet this month, so a quick day in Brum to seek out Moshman's sit'n'go book. Before I went to Oz, a splendid male wood duck lived at Brindley Wharf and I believe the smaller smudge in this picture is he, but in eclipse plumage. Not a true wild bird of course but only a couple of centuries less so than the Canada geese also in shot.

Being Unreasonable

My bad-beat rant reminded me of a guiding principle. Sir Winston Churchill, as ever, expressed it perfectly: success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. I have also heard of how to get a “yes”: go for as many “no”s as possible – the world record if necessary.

Failure is more of a fear than an actuality. You can't point to it; you can't see it. Just like success, it doesn't really exist. It’s what we make of a situation. In my case it’s all grist to the blog mill. What would I write if I didn't fail? Who wants to read yet another success story?

Bring it on! I’m going back to the tables. (And the twitching.)

To Play or not to Play

This morning I broke a 32-game losing streak (punctuated only by three trivial gains).

I had expected downswings to last maybe a dozen games. Indeed the longest stretch with no return at all amounted to thirteen. However, I've been having the sort of sequence that forces a re-evaluation of strategy.

OK, so I was basically playing multi-table tournaments with upwards of a hundred players, sometimes nearly a thousand. The odds of hitting even the final table, let alone the big money positions, were contributing to the persistent failure. This is not good for building a bankroll, which is what I need now. I can gun for the big prizes later.

Despite that, I have identified most of my exits as being down to running out of stack in the face of rising blinds. I’m fine for the first hour and on into the second but, as the bubble approaches, I have to shove with increasingly desperate hands to stay in. And of course I don't survive. This is symptomatic of playing too tightly. According to PokerStove, not even 7% of my hands. Given that, playing randomly, I should win 10%, I clearly wasn't giving myself much chance.

It is a balancing act. Play too much and your stack disappears in false starts; play too little and the blinds catch up with you. There's a happy medium somewhere. I’m still working on finding it.

50 Ways to Leave a Tourney, Part 2

So, you’ve flopped a straight or flush. This hasn't happened since Canute was a boy. Relax, for the first time in recent memory you can slowplay it, extract the maximum from the fish who have been swimming all the way to the river and sucking out on you there.

Wrong. Just as top pair is frequently beaten by an overlooked set, here the flop could be hiding seven outs to a full house – one to convert the set into quads and two apiece for the other board cards, just sitting there all innocuous, like, at the moment. You need to bet at least half the pot. And again on the turn because now there are ten outs, worse than facing a flush draw.

I’m talking to myself, of course. Myself of a few hours ago. Too late, again.

Top Pair is Rarely Enough

I have to keep reminding myself of this, especially against a player I've already identified as solid. I guess I'll keep on going out of tournaments because of it, though. When to call? When not to? Is your kicker good? Did they flop a set, always so hard to see? The irritating part is that by not calling you never know but by calling you do know, often to your detriment.

And is that solid player as solid as he looks? These rocks tend to melt as the blinds rise, as we all should. Some of them get tricky too, calling the flop, raising the turn. Did that innocuous deuce hit them? Had they just been reeling you in? More fool them for that in a fast tournament where free cards are worth much more than their weight in chips.

Ah, the uncertainty. That's poker, I guess.