Archive for category Poker strategy

1-2 Cash Game Texas Holdem Hand Review II

Jan 2

Posted by bill in Hand Review, Poker strategy

A few more hands from our up and coming friend. This game is from a No limit Texas Hold’em casino game and he’s been running bad. The first hand is an illustration of that and is basically a cooler but coolers happen and you have to be able to handle them. Last post was all about K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid) this one is about A.R.M. (Absorbing, Recovering and Moving On) and flexing it. It’s one of the most important things you can learn when you really learn how to play poker.

Flop: 2,2,7. Jackpot, except that the pot is $6. I check, BB checks, cut off bets $5. I call, BB folds. Turn is a 3. I check, cut off again bets $5, I call. River is a Q. Board is 2,2,7,3,Q no flush on board. I bet $15 into $26. He thinks, then raises to $40. I think of his possible hands: QQ is out. 7,7 is probably out, he would not bet that flop. Q2 is a possibility but would he call even the $2 with it preflop? I don’t think so, so I rule it out. I have 2,3 beat. 33? He could have it but really am I giving him credit for it? I just can’t do it and so I min raise to $65. He tanks for a bit, asks me what I have, I tell him I think I have the best hand and I must say it with total confidence, because he miraculously doesn’t re-raise me (must give me credit for perhaps Q2?) and calls. He of course has 33, two-outer better boat and I only drop $77 on the hand, where I clearly would have stacked off if he raised all in.

Pure and simple you got coolered or bad-beated or whatever. The A.R.M. principle is what you need to hold fast two in the face of such a hand.

Absorb – You flopped the world and then got two-outed. You took a kick to the stomach and you are are still breathing. Unbelievably, you didn’t get felted.

Recover – What did the hand teach you? One, when you have it, you probably look like you have it. Either your tight play was picked up on by an observant opponent or you were displaying supreme confidence. Try and replicate that when you don’t have it. Two, this guy can lay down a big hand. Don’t be afraid to bluff him or to mix it up with him.

Move on – After you process the hand, go to the next one and forget about it. If you have a hard time doing such things, then remind yourself how lucky you were to not get stacked. Somehow you got coolered and didn’t get felted. Anytime you want to dwell on being unlucky remember in a way you got lucky. Successful players, or players on hot streaks, are often times far more optimistic than losing players, and players on a downswing.

There is a reason for this, because positivity breeds confidence and confidence instills bravery. You need confidence for the hands that you don’t have that you want to represent that you do and you’ll need bravery to take the chances you must to be profitable in poker.

There are other ways to look at your arm that just got stung when your hand got bad beated. A – can stand for Air it out. Walk around the casino, spill your bad beat on a friend that is kind enough to listen. R – can stand for Rebuy. Most times you get bad-beated you either get felted or you doubled somebody up. Don’t be afraid to put some more chips in front of you to… M – MonsterTilt. Okay, don’t want that, M – Maintain or Motivate yourself to play through this. In poker playing on tilt is an every day occurence, nothing can be more tilting than getting bad-beated so use this experience to learn how to improve and how to play when you are tilted.

If you are a tournament player, don’t miss out on what cash games can teach you. Lots of times you Tilt in a tournament and it’s over, so you have little experience over-coming it. You’ll need it though. Learning how to deal with Tilt can take you far, late in the tournaments when chance becomes more a factor and the stakes are upped.

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1-2 Cash Game No Limit Texas Holdem Hand review:

Dec 30

Posted by bill in Hand Review, Poker strategy

For those of you following along we’ve had some periodic requests for hand reviews. Like most of poker these days, despite the ever present threat of Pot Limit Omaha taking over the world it’s mostly Texas Hold’em poker requests. Which is good because there are probably better places to seek counsel for other versions of the game. Though if you really want to try us with Omaha go ahead we’ll give it a go.

First hand of the day, I pick up AhJh, call a raise to 10. 3 players, I’m in middle position. Flop is J77, one heart. Original raiser bets $12, I call, other guy calls. Turn is a blank, he bets again, we both call again. River he bets 25. I’m kind of in a bind because of the caller behind me, so I can either make a play at the pot by raising (I’m 99% sure I have the bettor beat but no idea what the caller behind me has). I decide to call, hope for a call behind and try to win at showdown. Unfortunately, guy behind me pops it to $75. Bettor folds. I fold. I could have given myself a chance to win the pot or find out where late position guy was at at any time with a raise but first hand of the day I was gunshy. Poor decision.

Would be nice to know who raised, guy in early position or after you. We’ll assume it was early position because you didn’t mention limping and getting raised and the action indicates that. Was the early position player tight? We can tell you are tight. Raising early is a good idea in this situation for a lot of reasons.

1. You want to find out if the guy behind you might have a hand, if you don’t you should, 78 suited seems perfectly fine for most players to call with. Also, players sometimes play strange hands and trips is always a possibility. Or he could think his pocket pair say sixes is ahead. Then, you are in a spot where you have to start conceding the blanks on the turn or river could have made his pocket pair a boat.

2. Your hand is vulnerable, and when you hit top pair on the flop you didn’t hit it hard enough to start building a pot. The first guy has c-bet, you need to pop him back a little bit to “c” what happens. You don’t want two opponents and it’s possible any K or Q could come and beat you. Or a gut shot could get there if the price is right.

3. Calling on three streets is weak. A good player could enter a pot with you two with the intention of putting the squeeze on late, especially if he knows you can lay down good hands. You are exploitable. Or a guy can miss the world and fire on the river to try and salvage the hand. Or does he have it? You repop the first guy on the flop, and you probably aren’t going to get a guy floating you to the river to make a move. You also are less likely to get a guy trying to make a move on a board that has already initiated strength from his opponents. Thus, his river raise is narrowed.

4. K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid. Unless you are in a long session with a guy and all this meta game and leveling is going on, don’t stray from the principles of poker. Yes, in a cash game it’s obvious you are defining a hand by raising the flop (a 7 is not going to raise). If you think they are smart enough to catch on, wait til the turn to pop it and then cut bait if the guy behind you sticks around.

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First Impressions in Poker… part three

Sep 7

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

Continued from previous post… Bare with us here we are talking about rats but it does tie into Texas Hold’em poker and we’ll get there. Read the previous posts to catch up…

Even worse for the rats were if the lever offered a haphazard reward. The first pull brought food. A couple of pulls later a shock. If the food never came again, the rat would give up on the lever in short order, but if it brought the reward just a few more times in the successive pulls the rat would pull the lever for life. Even worse, if the lever never offered a reward again, the rat would still pursue the reward and pull the lever until it was shocked to death. In essence, the rat might have had a winning first session of poker, sure he lost some pots, but right before he cashed out he won enough to convince him that poker was the game for him.

This primacy effect can be debilitating. So obviously, Wray is right in saying the best thing for a poker career is not haphazard beginners luck, but maybe to learn how to play poker best isn enough success and failure to develop an interest in the game, but not enough to think the game is already solved. The primacy effect doesn’t only apply to the poker career is also applies to singular sessions and can be used to your advantage.

Let’s say over a particular session with an opponent you start the night off witnessing him making a horrible play, that’s going to create a first impression in you, and leave a lasting image of him as a player. It’s hard to override the first impression of his skill level. In fact, sometimes you’ll talk to skilled players sitting at the same table but joining it at different times over a limited time period with vastly different opinions about the ability of somebody there.

This effect provides a factual basis for why it’s good to advertise early that you are the opposite player of how you intend to play. The benefit of this is you can use it to your advantage. Show a way too tight lay down early and your opponents will be giving you plenty of room when you enter pots later. The money you might lose in laying the hand down, you might be able to quickly recoup by hitting the accelerator and betting like a maniac with the entire table giving you credit for hands.

The opposite strategy is also true. You can come out firing like a madman. Show a couple of garbage hands that you invested a lot of chips on and watch the table pay you off when you hit something. The beauty of the effect is that the first impression, even in the face of far more contradictory evidence, lingers in your opponents mind.

The recency effect won’t necessarily override the primacy effect but you need to be careful when you just show down a hand portraying you opposite to that first impression. If you advertised you were a tight player and then you got called making a bluff, you made need to hide out for a little bit, or quickly get involved in a hand which will reconfirm that first impression, and offer more recent data for the player to process.

Table changes in a multi-table tournament can be terrible for players that make a living conditioning their opponents into believing they are certain types of players. Suddenly, all that ground work is shot and a whole new set of players with no opinion whatsoever are sitting in judgment of a player’s first move. There is no opportunity to switch gears because the first impression or the first gear hasn’t been made or sighted yet.

These two effects also have to be weighted when reviewing you game or your session. Did you outplay your opponent early or did you just get lucky and think you were a better player. Did your opponent over time outplay you only for you to hit a late hand and think you were better? Be careful that you don’t let your own mind steer you to conclusions with only part of the data.

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First Impressions in a Poker Game Part I

Sep 5

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

There is a reason sayings become cliches because most of the time they are true. If you wait long enough somebody will come along and research it to discover the word of mouth wisdom is in fact verifiable. Not wanting to merely confirm something everybody already knew, the researchers will rename it as though they discovered something new. That happened in psychology a while ago when they basically proved the truth behind sayings like “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” or “First impressions last a lifetime.” They renamed the lasting, inedible image of a first impression as the primacy effect.

Recently, John Wray has written an article making its way around the internet in regard to poker expounding on the primacy effect in relation to Texas Holdem poker. In it he glosses over what the primacy effect is… and that is essentially that first impressions, first interactions, or first things listed often time have a more lasting effect on the observer than much of the data that comes later. He doesn’t delve into it too much, but there is also a sister act to the primacy effect and that’s the recency effect. The recency effect is that events that happen most recently, color the opinion of somebody even more profoundly than the primacy effect.

Wait, that sounds like the recency effect kind of invalidates the primacy effect especially if they show opposing results. That’s kind of true but not necessarily. The truth is the bulk of the evidence between the two is what’s forgotten. You give a list of things to people they’ll most likely remember what you started off saying and what you finished saying. Ever get a confirmation number from a business before you got a pen and try to write down what was said? Invariably, you’ll get the first few numbers right, finish up with the last few numbers but miss out on some numbers in between. Primacy and Recency for differing reasons last longer in the memory.

Let’s apply this to poker. One of the ways John Wray applied it was to ask a hypothetical of a new player out there eager to learn how to play poker, what is the worst thing that can happen to him in his first session ever? Surprisingly, winning big is probably the worst thing that can happen, because it creates a lasting impression that particular event is the norm. Here, the recency effect does not counter the primacy effect as easily.

The reason is the primacy effect is so profound, especially with all the positive neural transmitters going off in the first-timers brain, that the belief is built wrongly that the player is good at poker and should win every time at poker. They also walk away from that first time with a core belief their conclusion is true. The recency effect at the end of the session might be cashing out with a pile of winnings further supporting the primacy effect of winning hands. That would override any lost hands in between.

Phil Hellmuth is famous for saying if luck weren’t involved he’d win every time. Maybe, but he’d also have a lot fewer opponents. In fact, none of the bad players who because of luck were under the wrong impression that they can play the game would ever be back. There are countless horror stories of players that get lucky in a rich vein of run-good in a multi-table poker tournament, win a huge pile of money, than piss it and more away. Because they got lucky early in their careers they never devoted the time to the game they needed to to improve.

To be continued…

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Response to Bet & Win Follow up… Part III

Aug 6

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

Wrapping up our examination of the second hand our email-er asked us about let’s continue to examine what the small blind’s best choices were and were not. There are differences between live poker games and online ones but they are some solid thoughts these actions elicit that players would be wise to pay attention to, just as you can learn many things from a Sit’n go that will help you in cash games with weird stack sizes or in multi-table tournaments.

Since the early players are both good, arguments could simply be made for a flat call here, which the reader seems to like best. It seems he is advocating not building a big pot because of the positional disadvantage and that makes some sense. Of course, then there is some danger in catching an Ace and having to tread carefully vs. AK or any of a number of possible made hands. AQ does not play that great against multiple players in a pot preflop calling an early position raise, so a fold is not out of the question either, though probably is the worst choice but marginally better than raising to an amount everybody is going to call.

The rank of possible actions here are thus: often the best bet is probably a stiff bet (and $40 wasn’t stiff enough). Second choice a call. Third choice a fold but usually determined by just how tight and good the two or three early position players are. Last choice is what the small blind actually did and that was build a big pot with a tough to play hand like AQ against multiple opponents out of position. There are some spots you want to avoid and that one fits the bill to a tee.

The next question the reader asks is maybe UTG should have repopped to ~$100 after the small blind made it $40. Agreed that’s an excellent choice, probably he let his hand dictate too much of his action rather than letting the table dynamics initiate a bet. He probably saw a marginal-esque middle pair and got scared. He should know calling will set off the waterfall effect and force him to also play a big pot out of position too.

However, he should have capitalized on the small blind’s bet-sizing mistake and juiced it a little bit–maybe with any two cards even if he got out of line to start out the better. The same logic is true for UTG as it was for the SB in regards to this. Also, the bet for UTG, represents a commitment to the hand. Now the action is bet, raise, re-raise and the other players will likely get out of the way to let him duke it out with the small blind.

The small blind then will need a really big hand to come back over the top. We know he didn’t have it, but that’s because we know all the facts in retrospect. However, if we are paying attention to the play, we can assume either the small blind is a bad bet sizer or has exactly the type of hand he has because his pot-sized bet is weakish. Here, UTG should have picked up on the fact a bigger hand might have more confidence and reason to fire out a bigger bet to trim the field. Course, the UTG might be aware the small blind has a bet sizing leak (if that is the case) and not count too heavily on that information. Still, a repop here makes sense in most cases.

As the reader points out likely only the small blind will call and the UTG will have position on him for the duration of the hand. That’s exactly the kind of spots you want to be in with a big hand. On top of that say he did have a middle pair, that’s a dream flop for him. Small blind checks and he should c-bet any hand and likely take the pot. That takes courage but is probably the optimal play for the UTG in this situation.

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Response To Ask Bet & Win Follow Up… part II

Aug 6

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

We are continuing with our look at the hands our reader submitted in a follow up to an “Ask Bet and Win” Post. The reader is a solid home game player and local poker room rounder. Thankfully his questions have not been about a poker bad beat where the advice is simply get used to them.

In our last hand we looked at the hand of drunk “donk” who misplayed multiple streets and made the cardinal mistake of putting all his chips at risk where the only hand that can call him is the winning hand. This is terrible because you cost yourself money both ways. You are never going to get called by the hands that you can beat so you lose a ton of money from eliminating those hands from play (unless the opponent is a call station or hero bluff catcher but thats understood before making the statement in regard to this situation). Plus, you put all of your chips at risk to find out you are beat. Clearly there are better choices.

The next hand he mentions there is a raise from the UTG player, a call by the second to act, third to act, 4th to act and fifth to act. He also attributes the first two players to act as very good, the third player to act, is his nemesis and also a capable player. The SB decided to trim the field by making a pot sized bet. He eliminates only one player and suddenly the pot is $200.

With a 762 rainbow flop, the Re-raiser in the small blind checks. UTG checks too. UTG + 1 makes a slightly bigger than half the pot bet of $115. The reader’s nemesis makes that bet $250. The next player folds, the small blind folds so too UTG, so too UTG+1 and the Nemesis scoops a big pot showing 1010. SB suggested he had AQ.

First question is AQ right to raise to $40 out of position preflop? The reader hates the play. Probably, a pot sized bet in this situation in a live game is the wrong bet. If he feels AQ is the best hand, or if he wants to see if AK or a better hand is out there, a strong raise is not a bad idea. In live games, when the pot tends to swell like this, late position fireouts are often called in the waterfall effect. If UTG is strong enough to come out raising, he’s probably going to at least call a few bets depending on the size. Once he calls players behind are seeing a big pot building and are motivated to try and hit the mother lode and enter the fray.

Here, AQ can raise bigger than the pot. A reraise from UTG probably induces a shut-down on his part, but the price is big enough that players don’t feel as compelled to play bingo. Perhaps $70 is a good number and probably wins him the pot. In the SB he’s going to be out of position in the hand so he wants to trim the field so betting merely pot-sized here is probably a bad idea.

So yes, in a way he’s right to raise out of position, because he’s going to be out of position on every street through the hand. Even if he checks in the dark he’s still at the mercy of a lot of people to act behind him. The check in the dark is an overrated play because it usually only indicates weakness–though it’s fun to do with a big hand sometimes against good players that always perceive it as thus.

We’ll wrap up our thoughts in our next post…

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Response To Ask Bet & Win Follow Up…

Aug 5

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

Dear Reader,
It’s hard to ever truly give up the game of Play Texas Hold’em, even for a short, self-imposed while. Perhaps, we should have given you a little better advice to help ween you off the game like playing some sort of low buy-in Online Sit and go poker tournaments, for fun and to stay sharp when you do make your comeback.

You have to be commended for you tremenduous discipline in merely watching the games and not participating. It can be hard to see a fish explode, especially a drunk fish and donk off money before your very eyes and not want to jump into the game immediately. Very hard. Also, it might not be a bad eye to jump into those games and forsake your ban on poker because those are situations you want to play in. When the fish isn’t at your game the same group of good players are trading money back and forth (and paying a rake?) and of course your win rate will suffer.

What may be good for your game is simply playing with the fish again. Still, a promise is a promise even if it’s one made to yourself, so kudos on keeping it. As for the poker hands in question let’s examine from the top (see our previous post).

You mention the donk shoving all in with second nuts follow action that would indicate only the nuts should shove. Flop is AAK. Good player checks. Donk bets, Good player calls. If you were in that situation that would probably throw up a red flag. Maybe it does for the donk too as he checks the turn after a meaningless card. River is another king, again the good player has the discipline to check and let the donk hang himself. The Donk fires out a $25 bet, which sounds like it was may 2/3rds the pot, maybe half.

The good player min-raises. Anytime you are in a cash game (especially a live cash game) and a player (who isn’t terrible) min-raises you be very, very scared. Check-calling on one or multiple streets followed by a min-raise is even more alarming. Usually if you have a good hand to great hand you have to pay him off but whatever you do, don’t reraise! The donk doesn’t know this… hence he is a donk and hence he reraises.

Not only does he re-raise he makes the classic bet size gaffe of shoving all in. Trying to give him credit for being more than a donk, perhaps he’s decided the good player has a queen and thanks the pot is going to be chopped, but that is the only hand that MIGHT be able to call the donk’s shove the donk can beat. A king might fold here and perhaps the donk was trying to get a chopped pot hand out of his pot… but would a king minraise and not call, or make a bigger play? Probably not.

Thus, you can start to make compelling arguments for the donk to outright fold to the min-raise. Considering he has an angry approach to keeping money, especially when drunk, he’s not adverse to calling thin, so at the very least he should know to simply call, control the pot, and lose the minimum.

Obviously, the donk could have simply checked behind on the river. You could argue a decent player would have only called the flop with a hand that was as good or better than the donk’s. Therefore the donk is building a pot for somebody else by leading out. Gross. Clearly, you want to be in the game with this guy and you should seek out the game he has moved to.

In our next post we’ll tackle the second hand you mentioned…

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Ask Bet & Win Poker… A follow up with our last to ask…

Aug 4

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

In our last Ask Bet & Win segment we had a good chat about an email from one of our readers who is an avid online poker and live player.  He’s taken a self inflicted break from the game to regather himself before tackling it anew.  As these things tend to work the break isn’t complete abstinence and he corresponds about some of his latest adventures and asks for some Texas Holdem poker tips.  He writes:
“I’m breaking my month long poker ban after 17 days but only to play the a  tourney tonight since I know how much I can lose before going in and if it is a good turnout the upside is high. Plus, it is kind of just for fun more than anything else and if I want, I can just buy in once. Cash game ban is still in effect for another two and a half weeks, until mid-August.

I went to a live game on Tuesday, anyway, didn’t play, but I walked up to watch afterward and there was also another 2/5 game going, guys from another private club who play there when their club is closed for a week during the summer. They hire a dealer and so forth but they also stole the biggest fish from our old 1/2 game, the really rich guy who gets loaded and donks off his money.

 Sure enough, he donked off a bunch, then joined the 1/2 game and donked off $300, losing about $200 on this hand:
Heads up (I missed preflop action, wasn’t huge):
Flop: AAK rainbow. Good player checks, donk bets, good player calls.
Turn: low brick, no draw. Good player checks, donk checks.
River: K, making board AAKxK. Good player checks, Donk bets $25, good player min-raises to $50, Donk shoves all in for $135 more. Good player calls.
Good player has the A, donk has the K.
Those are the kinds of hands I was winning from him all the time but he hasn’t played in awhile. The game plays pretty big these days, there was a 5-way hand that went like this the other night:
UTG (very good player): Raise to $8
UTG +1 (best player there): Call
Player 2 (my nemesis, let’s just call him nemesis from here on out): Call
Player 4: Call
Player 5: Call
SB: Raise to $40
UTG: Call
UTG +1: Call
Nemesis: Call
Player 4: Fold
Player 5: Call
Five handed to a 7,6,2 rainbow flop. SB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $115. Nemesis raises to $250. Player 5 folds, SB folds, UTG tanks and then folds, not realizing he wasn’t heads up, shows 9,9. UTG+1 now tanks but eventually folds. Nemesis wins ($574 pot). He had 10,10. SB had AQ suited, I hate the raise to $40 preflop out of position from the SB against 5 players, including an UTG preflop raiser. UTG+1 didn’t show or say but I think he had something like JJ or 88, probably the latter.  
I thought UTG should have re-popped to ~$100 preflop (though watching is easier than actually playing) because it probably eliminates everyone between him and the SB, who, if he has anything from AK or JJ down, really has to think about getting 4 bet from a guy who is showing big strength with his second preflop raise (which is why I think everyone else probably folds in between too especially b/c they each only had $8 in the pot at that point). It’s a tough play though because if anyone else 5 bets the pot, you have to fold and give away $100. But no one else is likely to since they all merely called the $8 and would have raised previously to thin the field with better hands. Even with a call preflop by the SB you are still in position the rest of the hand. What do you think?”
We’ll follow up with our thoughts in our next post…

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What Your Poker Bust Out Hands Might Mean Part II

Jul 30

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

Continued from Part I…

Sometimes one of the easiest ways to self reflect is to focus on a few key hands from your tournaments. Luckily enough they are likely easy to remember. As we stated you want to look at the hands that set-up or influenced your knock-out hands and to track the specifics of those knock out hands because you can glean a lot from just a little information tracked over time. Just put a notepad next to your computer the next time you decided to play Texas Hold’em poker online or throw one into your pocket when you head into the casino and track a few important details.

It’s so little, it won’t even feel like work, and we know poker players hate to work. If only homework in high-school was tracking three or four pieces of information–everybody would have gotten straight As. So don’t be shy we aren’t sending you to bwin poker school yet.

You want to determine if your playing strategy is correct by comparing a wide range of knockout hands and the hands that set up those knock-out hands. Are you playing too loose, too tight, too passive, or too aggressive? You’d be surprised that just by tracking one or two hands from a tournament but from every tournament you play how much you can learn.

Mapping out you hands let your chip stack be your guide. How many big blinds did you have in it? If you are in the critical zone less than 10 big blinds (meaning can your stack can buy less than 10 big blinds)ask how did you get there? Did you suffer a brutal beat a few hands before? Did you blind down to 10 big blinds just waiting for a big hand that never came?

If you have a history of getting into big pots with a big stack and then getting it in when you are short, that’s entirely different than just waiting for hands. The first could be a sign of playing too loose the second means you are too tight. You need to also track at what stage of the tournament you are busting out. If it keeps happening early you are definitely playing too loose. If you are mixing it up in the middle to late stages of the tournament than perhaps you are just taking your licks. Somebody has to win the tournament and unfortunately that means everybody else has to get clobbered some way or another.

Next, you want to take into account the hand strengths of all the hands you hit busto with. There are a lot of players who think they play better than all their opponents simply because they always get it in with the best hand. And while, it’s good to know when you are ahead it’s also bad to only take risks and bet when you are sure you are best. Of course, the best hand doesn’t always win, and even if you are holding it you better be prepared to absorb some blows. If you haven’t accumulated enough chips to do so, shame on you.

The converse is also true and a learning opportunity if you notice a consistent pattern of getting sent to the rail with the second best hand, you are playing too loose. You want to be aggressive and win hands when you don’t have the goods, but don’t think you have to win every hand. Bluffs and bold plays are part of poker but not the only part of poker. Sure poker is often times about courage and bravery but never forget sometimes the better part of valour is discretion.

Anyway, that’s a quick and easy guide to track your success or lack of it in tournament poker. How many chips did you have right before you had none, how did you get to that size stack, and what’s the quality of your bust-out hands (and/or hands that contributed to your bust out hands).

Good luck on the felt.

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What Your Poker Bust-Out Hands Might Mean Part I

Jul 29

Posted by bill in Poker strategy

Want a quick way to evaluate your poker skills in multi-table Texas Holdem poker tournament play?  The surefire way to draw some conclusions is to analyze two things.  What’s your chip total when you busted out and why was your chip stack that size?   Here’s the good thing about this little bit of data tracking, the last hand you played is the first hand you analyse–so it should be fresh in your mind.  If you are playing online poker and multiple tournaments at once it’s not as easy as after busting out of a casino tournament and walking back to your hotel or worse driving home, but you should still reflect on those hands and take notes even if you are still alive in other tournaments.

Rack your short term memory, and if it was a good (but obviously not great) tournament, delve into your long term memory too, to come up with some crucial hands.  You are trying to figure out your subconscious online poker strategy because even if you consciously think you are doing one thing, in reality you may be doing something else entirely.

The purpose of the exercise, for now, isn’t to berate yourself because of a slip-up that sent you home or to whine to the poker gods about the bad beat you absorbed it’s to get some critical information for future tournaments.  In reality, you should never indulge in those exercises. In poker you have to accept you’ll make mistakes and work to limit them, and you have to understand luck is twofold you are going to get some bad luck whether you want it or not. In case you have noticed, the alleged poker gods don’t do much listening to the whiners out there. Make your own luck.

Besides, who cares if your opponent made a terrible play or if you suffered another dose from your unlimited bad luck medicine. You want your opponent to make a terrible play and even if it ends your day it merely means there are still players you can exploit and dominate in the long run. Better to ask yourself did you play the hand right, because after that what else it there that you want to consider? Well, you are also trying to track some raw data that on its own may not mean much. However, when plugged into a longer run of tournaments you can track and trace where your subconscious mind is guiding you in places you may not think you are at.

Every poker player knows that aggression is part of the game, so is hand selection, and picking your fights astutely. With each hand you still want to mull over what could you have done differently and would it have changed the outcome?  You don’t want to monitor which opponents you mixed it up–if you had a choice in the matter. If you were short and looked at AK probably not a consideration same with Aces at any point, but sometimes there might be a choice there. When there is a choice there could be a pattern of leaks.

Lets say you think you could have bet different, acted different, or approach the hand from a different stance, it’s possible it wouldn’t have changed the outcome on that hand but ask yourself would it positively change the outcome in future hands.  Did you find yourself falling further and further into a trap? Do you consistently double and triple barrel when you opponents are simply not the guys you can bluff? Or worse, does their first call indicate they have a hand you’ll neither be able to get them off of and one you won’t be able to catch up too. So why are you betting into them?

To be continued…

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