» Poker strategy

• Poker Players Who Think They Are Anonymous Are Less Trusthworthy…

  A study on dim lights, and identity concealing clothing, reveal some interesting real-life patterns that translate well into poker.  This has far more applications for live poker strategy than online poker strategy because it involves being able to see your opponent.  Poker is a game of theft, of deceit, misdirection, anticipation, patience, and guile there is little moral ambiguity in the game.  Angle shooting and cheating are no-nos but anything short of that represents the very point of the game itself.  Life, and those governed by moral rectitude, has a different set of rules.  Deceit and misdirection are two things that represent angle shooting in real life. 

  In poker you are not supposed to talk truthfully about your hand while in life you are supposed to talk truthfully regardless.  Recently, a study was done that showed people in dim lighting and dark places are far more willing to commit moral transgressions than people in well lit places.  In a study that placed college students in well lit and darkly lit rooms with an envelope, $10, and a test they graded themselves to win some of the $10, the students were more likely to cheat in the darkly lit room than in the well lit room.

  Scientists believe the darkness liberates the person to be bad, one because it’s less likely they’ll be seen and two the feeling they have from not being seen.  It encourages feelings of anonymity, like a member of a mob feels less like an individual and more an anonymous member of a group, which in turn encourages behavior that would never be done alone.  They came to this anonymity conclusion by testing the generosity of students wearing sunglasses.

  In the second study, students wearing sunglasses were less likely to share as big a  portions of real money with a random stranger if they were protected by sunglasses than if they had clear glasses.  Here being able to hide behind the shades encourage misbehavior.  Carnival revelers and mask party invitees can attest to how costumes up the ante so to speak and lower the morality of events.  Apparently, sunglasses are masks enough.

  How does this fit into poker?  All players conceal the strength of their hands but it stands to reason players in sunglasses will bluff more often and lie more casually than other players.  Immediately, you can widen their ranges when making a decision knowing they feel safer misdirecting their opponents behind the comfort of their sunglasses than a player without them.

  As with all rules in pokers, the overriding rule is there are no rules, but generally with less information at your disposal you can be on the look out more for players that are slightly concealed.  In the past, research has shown people wearing hoods are more likely to commit crimes and engage in other bad behaviors, so this extends to the poker table too.

  Wearing a hoodie and concealing a player’s face, means they are to be trusted even less than if they are just wearing sunglasses.  The unabomber look is encouraging the player behind the hood to act a little more aggressively in thievery on the poker table too.  These players need to be called more often.

  Think back to when you’ve sat down at a table and worn sunglasses or a hoodie, did you feel more confident bluffing or c-betting?  Some pros sneer at this garb as hiding and that is a successful viewpoint that encourages those pros to look up the other guy in semi-disguise.  The better players will play back at the guy under wraps more because they think they are weak, and while that might not be the correct rationale, playing back is successful because those players are betting with less more often than others.

• The NFL and Poker, The Element of Luck in Skill Games Part IV

  In football, there is a similar phenomenon of a swing play which is just like the swing hand in Texas Hold ’Em poker.  Let’s say, your QB makes a perfect pass to your tight end in the end-zone, but he trips, the ball hits him on the helmet and flies into a defensive players hands who takes it all the way back for a touchdown (a pick six as they call it).  Instead of scoring 7 points, you give up 7 points.  That pivotal swing could be the difference in the game.  That one play has far more importance than any other play in the game.  At a minimum the other team wouldn’t have scored and most likely you were going to get at least 3 points out it. 

  So instead of adding three points to your total or seven if your tight end didn’t trip, all of sudden the other team has added seven of their own.  This is a terrible and unlucky outcome.  It would be far better if the interception took place when you weren’t in position to score.  That way it’s only half as costly, the return for the touchdown doesn’t negate any assumed points of your own.  Though, a football coach would remind you, that usually turnovers in your own defensive half are far worse than in your offensive half–and that is true as long as they are not returned for touchdowns.

  The worse part about that decisive play is every decision afterward is predicated on the results of that play, just as the first hand you held aces (see part iii of this article) effects every following hand.  Now, you are down 7 instead of up 7.  Perhaps, it’s late in the game.  Now you have to take risks to try and make up the touchdown instead of playing conservative to protect a lead.   Those risks can lead to more turnovers and to a bigger deficit in a hurry.

  In football, it’s not unusual to see the lesser team, simply by virtue of winning the turnover margin prevail in the game.  Super Bowls have been built on bad offenses with great defenses who are capable of scoring off the other team’s misfortune and their ability to create turnovers.  In poker, unfortunately it’s harder to create turnovers though what is comparable is some player’s ability to induce bluffs from their opponents.

  So, perhaps the most important element of luck in a skill game is timing.  It matters when you get lucky and when you get unlucky.  The same is true in soccer.  If Thierry Henry’s lucky handball did not set up a goal and happened at the middle of the field in the middle of the first half, it’s a meaningless play, the fact that it happened when and where it did meant everything to France and to Ireland in World Cup qualifying.

  Unfortunately, there is no magic way to control the timing of when good luck hits you and bad luck runs you over.  You must be able to deal with it, recover, move on, and play your best.  If you can’t, you should step away from the cash game, if in a tournament consider a two minute walk to the bathroom and back. 

   One of the highest compliments of a quarterback in the NFL is that he has a short memory.  He is able to shake off the interceptions and those critical swing plays and not be tilted to perform them again.  That should be you goal in poker, forget the results of every hand but the one you are involved in.  Remember every detail that is pertinent to you exploiting your opponents’ hands but forget everything else.

• The NFL and Poker, The Element of Luck in Skill Games Part III

  There is another similarity between Poker and the NFL.  This has more to do with cash games, though it has a role in tournament play also.  It’s critical hands or critical downs.  And in these key hands or plays if luck is on your side you’ll be a bigger winner than a loser.  Whether you play online poker on a pc or play poker online on a mac there are always memorable hands that you can probably recite action by action, bet by bet, raise by reraise, or check by check.  Using our memories are a little clearer on the ones that got away than the hands we scooped.

  In tournament play, the short run luck is on a double up hand at a final table is far more significant than an hand in the first level.  Sure you bust out with both, but you don’t get many opportunities at a final table and you have plenty of chances to play the first level of a tournament.  Also, the final table has huge swings in the money awarded for each spot higher you finish.  There are competing dynamics at play… you want to win all the chips but you also want to survive elimination.

  The better players will tell you the bold get rewarded with more first places than the passive, and that’s true to extent but any time you are risking something you are playing with your tournament life.  How many times have you seen a player with half the stack of another double up through him and a couple of hands later eliminate the formerly big stack.  Oftentimes, the big stack had the best of it the first time but his hand didn’t hold.  You could point to the aggressiveness of the short stack for his advancement, but at the same time the big stack’s aggressiveness caused his elimination. 

  In cash games the critical hands are a little different.  Let’s say you have 500 in poker chips in front of you and your opponent has 250, another opponent has 300, and they both call all in preflop.  You have aces.  You of course call, with the potential to add another 550 to your stack and only have to risk 300 to do so, AND you have the best possible starting hand.  You face pocket KK and AK–couldn’t ask for a better spot.  You are a huge favorite.   The flop comes out AQ8.  Turn a jack and river a 10.  Your opponents chop the pot and win part of your 300.  Now you are left with 200 in chips.  Instead of having 1150 you have 200.

  Before you can reload,  the very next hand you get AA again.  Before the action gets you two players shove, one with 750 and the other with 1200.  You call and this time you triple your money to 600.  Above where you started from.  Later that night you cash out a modest winner but then you think back to that swing hand.  Had the river not been a 10, how much could you have won? 

  Well, if your hand held you would have entered the second hand with 1150.  You won have won 750 from one opponent and 1150 from the other: so + 1900.  In total, you would have had 3050 in poker chips.  The 600 you cashed out for a modest winner, suddenly doesn’t feel so significant  because you lost that one big wing hand, you ended up not taking down an additional 2400.

  In part iv, we’ll examine the similarity to this in football.

• The NFL and Poker, The Element of Luck in Skill Games Part II

  In Poker there are numerous examples of online poker players who captured the industry’s imagination with meteoric rises and then in an instant they are gone.  Smarter bloggers than I have demonstrated that these flashes of brilliance are part and parcel of the game.  Slow, steady improvement from a player in online poker should be a goal, not being an overnight sensation who rode luck to the mountaintop and then bad luck caused him to fall off the cliff.

  Currently the poker world is aflutter with the rise to prominence of Isildur (to catch up read this great post at Cardrunners) but just as quickly as he tore up the nosebleed games he’s gone on a downturn.  Is he one of those crazy outliers of luck, bursting with confidence that ran good until he didn’t, or some new superstar.  As always with poker only time will tell.   When you play poker online you must understand that time is the only thing that can show you to be a great player or a poor one.  Anybody can play online poker and win a tournament or two in the short run but how well do you do in the long run.

  When a game like the NFL, where video montages are made in lightening fashion to celebrate teams of dominance, dynasties of excellence, and coaches are revered for great runs and run out the league for bad runs, it can be shown that luck is such a strong element what does it say for poker, even worse for the assertion that poker is a skill game.  Take two big NFL games, the Immaculate Reception, where a fluke incomplete pass landed in the hands of a Steeler and a dynasty was created with a Steeler SuperBowl win, and the Tuck rule game, where a fumble was not a fumble and the Patriots were off and running into a dynasty of their own. 

  Had either play gone against them, would the Steelers be so revered or their players so exalted?  Would Tom Brady even be Tom Brady and would Bill Belicheck be the new genius of the moment.  When you can showcase these teams of greatness, as beneficiaries of luck, what does that say about your poker game?

  Well, first off, it further cements the value of patience.  If you are not willing to wait for your streak or your rush, and you can’t shake off hiccups of bad luck and second best-it is you shouldn’t be playing.  It is impossible to always win at poker no matter who you are.  Just as it is almost impossible to always win in football no matter how good you are. 

   And take heart, the great thing about luck is it doesn’t discriminate.  The good teams in the NFL get lucky just as often as the bad ones.  In poker, good players get lucky just as often as bad players.  If you play enough hands theoretically you’ll be on the other side of any possible outcome.

  It also teaches you the importance of luck in any particular moment.    Joe Cada doesn’t become the Main Event champion if he doesn’t hit one of his sets.  In that case, since Main Event final tables are so hard to make, you better run good when you get to one, or have enough chips to weather the bad beats.  

   Sure over a long run, skill will win out, but how many times do the Steelers get that moment to catch an Immaculate Reception and how many times will Phil Ivey sit at that final table to overcome that bad beat with AK vs. AQ?   That may make a pivitol hand more bitter to swallow but it is something you have to prepare yourself to take if it does.  Players that agonize how they could have done something different when they were basically coolered will only suffer the next time they play.

  To me it’s easier to understand the importance of luck in the moment when you compare poker to a game that is a skill game like the NFL.  Obviously, by the nature of poker there is more luck involved in the game than there is in football, but what that study shows is there is a lot of luck involved in most any contest.  

  As an optimist, this only proves that you should be more patient and more understanding when luck is not going your way.  It also should teach you not to put your entire bankroll or too big a portion that you can’t afford to lose into any one game and especially into any one hand.

  Poker has shown me just how often a 1 out of 20 hits the river, and if you play enough you’ll see it all.   Which is a valuable life skill to understand, chance is a far more important factor than people give credit to.  Those 5 per cent-ers happen, and  just because it’s 95% unlikely to happen doesn’t mean it won’t.  So when you weather man says a one per cent chance of snow, realize it could snow.

• The NFL and Poker, The Element of Luck in Skill Games Part I

  I recently read an interesting analysis of the NFL that basically established  NFL games were determined 50% of the time by skill and 50% of the time by luck.   The way that statistician came to the conclusion was somewhat just comparing graphs and while that works in showing how females’ hemlines go up and down with the economic well being of a country… it also may just be two graphs that look alike…  kind of like how female hemlines go up and down with the economic well being of a country. 

   Still,  the author is the statistician and I’m just a guy who struggled in stats, so I’m the wrong one to question the data and the analysis, but most of it sounds right even if I’m little skeptical of the methodology.  Which I have no right to be (as we’ve established).

  Here’s some highlights…  the best any picker of games should be is a little over 75% accurate.  If you can do better you should think about sports betting as a career.  The fact that the best computer models are near that number again, implies, there may be some truth behind it his analysis or some coincidence.   How doe 75% prove 50%?  Well if luck is a factor half the time the favored team would benefit from it just as the underdog would. 

   Thus, in the 50% of the games not determined by skill  half of the 50% the favorite benefits from it and half the time the dog does.   ( He hasn’t done the study to see if fortune favors the bold yet).  Therefore you get the 75% number, 50% of the time skill prevails, 25% of the time the better skilled team gets the bounces and the other 25% team the less skilled team does…  50%+25%= 75/25.  Do see it explained far better than I just did go here for part I of his article.

  What is interesting is if luck determined the outcomes of games solely, there would be very few 0-16 teams and very few 16-0 teams.  Parity reigning supreme could easily confuse people into believing a team is good rather than lucky, because gaudy records and long winning streaks fit into the data even if there is little separation between the teams.

  This is intriguing from a poker perspective in evaluating how good a poker tournament player you are.  It’s possible to run good for a career, with some hiccups obviously, and simply be an outlier.  Top online poker players have such graphs at their disposal any time they analysis their play.  It may be possible to run pretty bad for a career, with some modest successes in between, but it’s impossible to always be unlucky.  There are better graphs that prove just that, as related to poker, however, this NFL analysis is useful because it demonstrates how easily it is to misperceive skill and luck.

  Even a favored team needs luck, happenstance, strange bounces and twists of fate to win half the time.  Hell, they probably need it to counter the other team’s healthy dose of it another 25% of the time… so that skill can win out.  As applied to poker this elucidates the maxim you are never as good you think you are when you are running good, and you are never as bad as you think you are when you are running bad.

  More to come in part two of the post:

• How to Win Millions in Poker and Still Go Broke Part IV

  There are nine new poker millionaires about to gather at the WSOP to see how much more money they are going to win. Some were already rich, some are barely 21. Those guys want to be a cautionary tale, they should be reading these posts on how to blow through all their money.

  8. Gold Diggers. Find a girl you couldn’t normally marry or date, woo her with your new zeros in your bank account. She’ll do the trick for you. Best case scenario is to meet the love of your life before you got your money so you know she’s with you for you, but since you don’t want to keep your money, get the girl the furthest out of your league as possible.

  Take it a step further and marry her. Suddenly, everything you have is half hers…

  9. Divorce. After you pay the taxman and then your woman there isn’t much left. Suddenly, you live the degenerative lifestyle and even the sweet wives that knew you when want out. The Gold Diggers had been eyeing the exit since you said I do. Pay a herd of lawyers, and then pay her a ton. You’ll be surprised just how fast that money will go.

  10. Keep playing poker. There are some guys that hit it big, Jerry Yang, and basically stashed most of the money under a matress and in some bank accounts, but there are others that just can’t get away. Some players play better chasing the cash and just become fish when the cash means less to them. Won it all in a huge WSOP tournament?

  A few poorly chosen cash games can turn all those extra zeros into one big zero. Or stop playing online poker satellites and just buy in directly to 10k events. Suffer a run of bad variance and you’d be surprised how quickly those buy-ins add up. 20 later with no cashes and your short 200k not even counting your travel and life expenses. Maybe you are stud in Hold ‘Em but a fish in Stud or Omaha.

• How to Win Millions in Poker and Still Go Broke Part II

  As previously stated the first part was the hard part, but now you’ve won millions at poker. Let’s get back to the easy part… going broke in hurry.

  Some other quick ways to lighten your wallet.

  3. Become a dengenerate sports bettor. There is nothing wrong with betting on sports for fun. There is nothing wrong with betting on sports to make a living. There are some handicappers who do just that, but then there are poker players who are focused on everything but picking the best possible games. Become one of those and you can burn through your bankroll quicker than storing it in a fireplace.

  Betting on sports is like an unrequited love for poker players. Trying to turn the millions you earned in poker into billions is a dead end street. This is the paramount reason players go broke.

  4. The Pits. Not the tarpits of L.A. but the sidegames. Like sports betting, in moderation they can be fun, some players discover edges and can make a living do that. M.I.T. blackjack team ring a bell? However, for most poker players who sole focus is on the edges they can win with in poker, this counts as the biggest leak of all. There are no tells given off by a craps dice or roulette ball, the win-rate is always the same and for the poker player with money to spend in his pocket this can make quick work of them.

  It’s important to remember craps, roulette, and casino games are good releases, but proper bankroll management of those releases is even more vital to a poker than bankroll management in terms of poker buy-ins. There is a famous story of one Vegas pro who millions in a poker tournament, we want out him, but for a time he was as good as they come in poker.

  The old rounder collected his check, paid off some debts in the poker room, with eager backers huddled by the pay out cage, and walked out. He didn’t make it past a craps table and nor did his money. The casino took a rake in the poker tournament and first prize that day.

• How To Win Millions at Poker and Still Go Broke Part 1

  The first part is the hard part. Win millions at poker, though it happens every couple of weeks these days. Perhaps you win a tournament like the Aussie Millions. Maybe ride an online qualifer all the way to a 10k buy-in event and take that down. Now the easy part blowing all that new green.

  Surely, this is hard to do, and very few have done it, we’d like to think so, but that’s not the case. Many of the top players that have a huge score to their name also have an embarrassing ability to not keep that cash. For every TV pro that still is a millionaire there are probably three or four who are merely living an illusion. Some are even up to their eyes in debts to backers and lenders.

  Here are the ways you go bust through your new found fortune:

  1. You were staked in the first place. Chop up those winnings with your pal or pals who bought you in. Then pay the tax man, preferably before you chop it, but sometimes not. Then treat the actual $250,000 you won like it’s the million dollars all the magazines suggest you have in your bank account. Maybe you were shady and backed by multiple people. Say you overbacked, you could start off owing money by just winning.

  2. Back your friends. There is no worse an investment than one than the one that is more truly charity than savvy money management. Your best buds always seem to run bad, are that one critical hand away from being a millionaire, every time out, and can’t keep their own poker career afloat, but you want to back them.

  If you don’t recognize this as charity and budget as such you can go broke quickly dealing with the variances of live and online multi-table tournaments trying to manage mulitple entrants. Sure, plenty of guys have gotten rich doing this, but they treat backing as a business.

  They don’t employ their friends to win them money and poker if those guys can’t even win themselves money at poker. But if your goal is to go broke quickly, sign up every one of your friends to the next big buy-in event and watch those winnings evaporate before your eyes.

  The good thing is, every one of your horses will have a mythical bad beat story of epic proportions in the hope you back them again. However, if you don’t care that your horses are more unicorns than horses, and when’s the last time you heard of a unicorn winning a race, this is a quick way to blow a ton of money.

• A Jerk Works…

  Being a jerk at the poker table sometimes is a profitable  tounament poker strategy.  And no, we are not advocating being a jerk, but there are some good reasons to do so.  The most obvious reasons are to tilt your opponents and get them off their game. 

  Getting into an argument or playing obtrusively, pausing on every action, needling or harrassing players, can all heighten the pressure on those waiting to play after you.  When you play poker tournaments  it is a pressure cooker already adding a little more heat to the stove can get some guys to implode.  Again, it’s a strategy, but do you really want to be the jerk.

  Another aspect of using the jerk strategy, is not to be a jerk toward the other players.  Why not focus on pissing off the floor people or the dealer.  Invariably somebody will take up for them and want to bust you.  That’s not really too much better, as instead of being a jerk to your peers you are inflaming the guys who serve you the cards and staff the card room.

  You might not win too much long run from this ploy as it could lead to you getting kicked out, serving a penalty, or getting a crucial ruling to go against you.  Still, when things are tight, sometimes it’s better to get enraged with an outsider rather than a player.

  Say you are on a final table.  You be a jerk to another player and instead of him folding all those big pots of blinds and antes it motivates him to play back at you.  Sure, the other guys at the table may want to stay clear of you, because of the fear you’ll be a loose cannon, but that guy won’t in fact you’ve only created a loose cannon. 

  However, you attack the dealers by being a pain in the but, and all of sudden everybody views you as the loose cannon and now nobody wants to enter a pot with you.  Steal at your hearts content, you’ve just reworked your table image from a steady, final table worthy player, to a live wire and a borderline maniac. 

  Yes, being a jerk works, but don’t forget you still have to be a jerk to pull it off.

• Improve your Poker Game

  So where exactly is your poker game? How much have you improved? If so, what did you do to improve your game and can you carry it over to the next level? All of these questions are relevant questions that we need to be asking ourselves as we continue on our journey in the poker world.

  Poker has always been a game about knowledge and self-improvement. It used to be that you could literally play thousands of hands over a number of hours and eventually you would gain the requisite experience necessary to have a solid grasp of the game. Today, in the computer age of instant access and online poker, just about anyone with an internet connection can gain years of knowledge and experience with the click of a button. All of that knowledge can be picked up in a relatively short period of time.

  True, there is no substitute for experience but the learning curve is a lot shorter than it used to be and if you are not on top of your game and working to constantly evolve your game you will find yourself left behind. Players today simply are hungry for knowledge. They are talking, reading, writing and even watching video in order to gain any and every edge they can to compete in both low and high stakes poker tournaments and cash games. Poker strategy from pros and internet poker pros is readily available if one seeks it out.

  So how do you improve your game?

  I believe the first thing that anyone that plays live or online poker needs to do is to be brutally honest with yourself. This is not always an easy thing to do but it is certainly a necessary thing to do if you intend to keep up. Poker is a lot like many other sports in that the game has evolved. For instance: As little as six years ago almost no one even knew the game existed other than hard core poker players that grew up with the game in their homes playing with family and eventually continued to play as adults. The game also had many middle aged and older players that simply sat and socialized as they earned a few bucks over a beer. Yes, tournaments were being played and you definitely had your regular gamblers and pros that played the game as well.

  Also, the game was more of a small pot game that was played to the River. Today, the game is much younger with players like Peter Eastgate, Annette Obrestad and many others that have had major successes in live poker tournaments translating their games from the internet to brick and mortar poker rooms. The play also has become increasingly more aggressive pre-flop as the years have passed by. No one is afraid to get their chips in the middle on a flush draw early in a poker tournament anymore where as back in the day that was something that was a major no no.

  I believe video has also been a major tool in helping new players to learn the game so quickly. Obviously, if you are multi-tabling you are going to see a lot more hands a lot faster than if you are playing live. The more experience the better the player, if you have the talent that is. Also, I noticed that the number of poker strategy books available is completely off the charts today whereas only a few years ago you had to dig and beg the clerk to find anything outside of Super System. As the public has become more aware of Texas Hold’em the curiosity and banter about the game has leaked into the work place where hands are being discussed constantly among co-workers and friends alike.

  Simply put there are so many more avenues to obtain knowledge about the game. So, there are no excuses for anyone that really wants to work at it and become a good poker player. If you prefer learning via reading – it’s there for you. If you prefer videos – it’s there for you too. Talking about the game with poker players that you respect will always be a tool utilized by those players in the know. I do it almost each and every day. So don’t be afraid to reach out and grab the information that is available to you. It doesn’t cost you much more than a little bit of your time. Trust me, it’s time well spent.

  Curtis Mayfield III
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