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.

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…

There is a popular saying “Don’t hate the player hate the game,” and for the most part we agree when you apply it to the small selections of hand our reader sent to us–maybe he should just hate the game. When he is busy playing bwin poker he’s doing a lot of things right. We haven’t examined game selection because he didn’t give us much insight into that, he only gave us his hands and from that he’s run into a mixture of bad luck and bad timing.

The worst two hands was when he unfortunately got no value from his AA vs. his opponents KK. Scare cards killed his action and that happens. He also ran into pocket AA with Kings of his own and the way the betting progressed he had no choice but to shove and hope he wouldn’t be called by the better hand. He did shove, and the better hand announced itself pretty quickly. Even worse for our reader it held.

It was all about getting into bad spots because of the randomness of poker and the luck of the draw so to speak. In a couple of hands it was clear that he played based on external factors rather than the game just in front of him. He flopped second pair against a player that only bets big when she has the nuts. She bet small and he opted for a passive check call strategy. A reraise or check-raise whatever the position was, would have been very effective on the flop.

Instead he watched his hand improve from second pair to two pair on the river, only to have the lady bet large. Now, he was in a spot where he almost forced himself to call. He could have folded preflop to the lady’s Under The Gun raise (huge strength, even six handed for someone as tight as her) and that would have been a solid play. He could have looked her up on the flop and discarded on the turn. He could have played the hand a myriad of ways most styles more effective than the way he did play.

Since he had the players fairly well sussed out and he acted opposite of optimal you have to figure mentally he was either fatigued for a bout of losing or he was simply playing bad. Was the game causing it or was the player causing it? In this case, superficially it was all about the player.

On the last hand of the night of any importance he was gun-shy and stopped thinking about the best play in the moment. Sure overriding bankroll concerns might have hindered his decision making process but still his failure to call after getting pot-tied to the hand is definitely leak. Not only was it a leak but it was an exploitbable one at that. His oppoenent was on an all out bluff and likely sensed the frustration in our reader and knew that he could bluff in a situation successfully that might look hopeless otherwise.

The game forces obviously put our reader on his heels but the fact other players knew he was there meant trouble for him. Not only was he enduring bad luck, not getting value for big starting hands, and getting coolered with others, he also started to let it effect his play and even worse others picked up on it. The player taking a month off, may be a little bit excessive but some time away from the game could be exactly what the doctor ordered.

Then I rebuy, because I’m a slave to the action, I can’t stop but reload and fight these ingrates around me. I have the grandmother in one corner looking to pay her mortgage with change from under the seats, Keeno22, whose had my number for years, and some maniacs that must be from lower (slower) Cantstandtofoldistan. Unfortunately, I hover around even, which is like being in your car at make-out point all by yourself. Then my luck changes a bit. I get it up to $250 with a medium sized pot. Then that chips away like sands in an hour glass. Blind here, blind there, autofold, concede the pot her and have about $205 in one of the last hands of the night.

Raise to $8 UTG, two callers, I have AQ off in the SB. I call (awful, just awful).

Yes, probably raise here 9 times out of 10.

4 ways, flop is A, 10, 2 rainbow. I lead $30, 2 callers. AK for UTG? Possible cooler?

You are in trouble when you start giving the only hands that can beat you to your opponents. This is a bad place to be. You don’t want to play poker any time you think you are beat every time. Already we don’t like where this is going.

Turn is 9d, making 2 diamonds on board but still no straight possibilities and only a remote diamond draw. I bet $50, leaving $115 behind. UTG goes all in (you are 84 in…). Other guy in the hand tanks (WTF?) before reluctantly folding. I tank for almost the full clock because I have been so out of sorts I no longer have any idea where I am in almost any hand, even the ones I lead, because cases like these make me feel like I’m way ahead to way behind.

Only one play, and even with your bad evening of second best you have to reluctantly call there. Probably, you folded because of your losses but in that spot there are forces for you to call. One you are about to end your session. This is as good a hand as any to close out on. The texture of the board is strange but remember you didn’t reraise. The others in the hand know this and are discounting the strength of your ace. Not reraising preflop actually masks your hand and the action you are getting is because it’s well disguised. So you mistake is working to your benefit.

Also, you know that if you lose the hand you are ending the session. You’ve comitted almost half your stack to it and are a call away from being even. Your discipline in the face of your exasperation with the night ironically cost you. That’s when you know you are running bad.

Anyway, I finally fold. He claimed 10,2 which I believe b/c he’s a friend of mine from live poker and knew I was really pissed at myself. Anyway, another instance where I win that pot, probably against the third player, if I make a re-raise preflop like I should. Yes, I’ll have some cheese with this whine. Thus, no poker for 30 days. I can’t afford it anymore.

In our next post we’ll take all the hands together and decide if our reader is the victim of circumstance of the victim of his own doing.

We paused as we were responding to his question where his A9 ran into AA after he made two pair on the river and his opponent made a set of Aces.  See Ask Bet & Win Part Three for the full question and the start of our response.

On top of she is not exactly the player you want to start calling down with second pair.  The image of her paying for her early bird dinner specials with pennys is all we need to know about that.  Therefore this is a case of your starting hand selection being off and calling a turn bet with little more than hope.  You hit payday on the river but even then you could have been chasing AJ the entire time (though it sounds like that is too little of a starting hand for her). 

So now the only hands you beat are pocket Kings or Queens and neither of those hands does your second pair have much chance to beat.  Granted you could make a couple of hero calls with second pair and be right, but her large river bet indicates she’s not sitting on a busted draw or AK.  Granted you painted yourself into a corner and had to call.

Then, this hand that makes me loathe Satan all the more for creating this infernal game in the first place. Preflop action goes as follows: UTG raises to $7. He’s super aggressive and the best player at the table by far, well present company excluded, so it doesn’t mean a ton, especially 6-handed. Keeno22 calls, a player I’ve played with a lot, and another guy calls.   The button raises to $40. I have $90 in front of me and I look at KK. It goes in. BB folds. UTG goes all in without any hesitation. Fold, fold, button flips 1010 and folds. UTG has AA. Why do the people in the sky hate me so much.  Zeus or Ra or God or Thor should just toss a lightening bolt at my head, which is supposed to happen as in-often as pocket kings run into pocket aces and put me out of my misery.

Quite frankly you did get coolered this hand.  This is the preflop-cooler by definition.  You did everything right.  You shoved when you were supposed to and you got looked up by the one hand you didn’t want to see.  It’s a shame.  Truly it is.  But it happens and more frequently than you think.  You play a lot of poker hands quickly, and they add up.  Thus, the “rare” things feel like they happen more frequently than they should, but they don’t. 

It’s part and parcel of the game and you should stop praying for lightening to hit you, and kings run into aces far more often than people get struck by lightening.  You likely, if you are lucky, which you may not be, will never get struck by lightening, but you will have a long, long poker career of running kings into aces and not being in a spot to get away from it.  This is not reflective of any bad play on your part but is just bad timing and bad luck.

We’ll return with more from this email in our next post.

For now either play them for a set and limp with them (a very limited part of the time don’t want to get the online poker players started on losing value by not raising with them) or just play them straight forward and raise them. This isn’t your basic poker tournament strategy because so much of that depends on the size of the blinds and the room you have to play, but in cash games don’t be afraid to fold jacks and don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

hatever you do, don’t start becoming one of those bad players who doesn’t want to play jacks and makes a raise only a better preflop hand can call. No wonder that hand kills them. Don’t be that guy! Any time you scoop a pot when you raise with Jack Jack is a good thing, so thank them, make friends with them and be happy.

I get QQ the very next hand, same player as the AA/KK hand (who I also just 3 bet with my JJ). We go heads up again, flop is 10 high or something, he check folds, I win about $15.

Again. I say fine. Remember AA, KK, QQ aren’t going to win you the bulk of your money in cash games. You are looking for situations where you can stack somebody that has them, not get stacked with them. Those hands are great late in tournament poker, or early in them for that matter, and can be lucrative in cash games, but as Dan Harrington says in Cash Game book series you want your opponent to be the one who can’t get off the big pocket pair when he is beat not you.

I get A9 in the BB. UTG raises to $9, one caller. I call. Flop is something like J,9,x with two of one suit. She is super tight and milks her big hands.  I envision her to be an old lady who keeps her loose change organized in perfect little stacks and pays with pennys when she can for any menu item under $5.  She bets $10. Either I’m being milked or she has AK and is playing her reputation. Again, based on how I envision her it’s safe to say on most counts her reputation is tight.  I call. Turn is a brick. She bets $10 again. Very suspicious but again she could be masking a flush draw and trying to semi-bluff cheaply (she doesn’t like big pots without the nuts and she tends to bet big to get paid on her big hands) and I call again. I should raise here to see where I am and/or semi-bluff myself, which was a mistake. Anyway, river is a A giving me 2 pair. She now bets $30, about half pot. I call, she has AA, set. Awesome.

First off, good call instead of raising on the river.  That’s an indication you are not playing bad.  I’d like to call this hand a cooler because the finale had you showing down two pair on a non-threatening board and losing to a set.  But let’s look over the hand.  Possible that you had the best hand going into it (we’ll ignore the fact we now know she had aces) with A9 in a six hand game.  BUT… the UTG raiser is super-tight so A9 doesn’t play too well against many of those hands.

To be continued…

-Continued

The next hand from my online poker games is a bit of a doozy. I hate Jacks. Can’t win with them no matter how I play them. It’s the worst hand in poker. I hate red jacks, black jacks, any kind of jacks,  but I know what I’m supposed to do with them and that’s raise. I also know the outcome when i do it’ll be a bad beat of some sort or another or I’ll just collect the blinds.  It’s gotten to the point where I hate people named Jack.  I hate Jack Links Beef Jerkey, I hate Jack and Jill going up their hill incessantly, I hate Jack and his Beanstalk, Jumpin Jack Flash, Jack ‘0 Lanterns, Jack-0, Jackie O.  

I didn’t need any encouragement to know Jack Abramoff was guilty.  Jack Black and his short lived time at the top of the comedy food chain was unbearable for me.  Jack the Ripper, he’s the worst.  Jack Kevorkian, Jack Klugman, Jack Hanna and his animals, Jack Lemon, Jack London, and don’t even get me started on Jack Nicholson at his Laker games with his throaty voice or Jack Palance.  Jack Kerouac can keep it too.

Okay we get it.  You hate jacks.  You are not alone. Who’s Jack Hanna anyway?  Oh, okay this is Jack Hanna.   Jacks are one of the hardest hands in poker but the best advice we can give you about jacks is to make you reevaluate them as a hand.  You sound like you overvalue them as many people do.  Do you struggle with pocket 10s?  How about pocket 9s or pocket 8s?  Find the pair below jacks that you have the most ease playing in terms of not winning too much or not losing too much.  Then play jacks and all pocket pairs in between just like them. 

That’s our advice to start, as you get better you’ll need to start playing those hands different from one another and many online pros know to almost the exact percentage when they play those differences but for now you can limit your losses and frustrations by playing jacks like 10s or 9s.   

On the contrary if it sounded like you undervalued jacks we’d probably ask you if  you struggle with Queens as well?  If not, play your jacks like queens.  If so, we wouldn’t really advise you to play your jacks like kings or aces unless you were playing those hands way too undervalued.  Then we’d need to work on sliding your scale up.  

So of course it’s not too long until I get JJ, win $7 with a preflop 3 bet 6-handed. A measley $7 for a pocket face pair.  That’s redonkulous.

(Real quickly, think you meant a 3x bet. A 3bet usually means the third bet in the hand.  The blinds are considered the auto bet, the raise the second bet, and the 3bet is the reraise).

I know I should be getting more value for these hands.  In poker it is hard to get a pair much less a face pair.

What’s wrong with winning the blinds.  Wouldn’t you be happy if 99 or 88 took down the blinds with no play back at you, and to a lesser extent if 1010 did too.  Let’s change your mindset winning the blinds are just fine for JJ.  Right? Being positive here, and you shouldn’t play poker unless you have a positive (albeit realistic mindset), they have some value obviously but they are so tricky to play postflop.   So take the win and move on to the next hand.

–More to come

Dear Bet & Win:

Recently I’ve been betting but I haven’t been winning. Need some help with my Play Texas Hold’em game. Whether it’s live poker or online I’ve been struggling. Truth of the matter I have been running/playing so poorly right now. Please give me some tips on my bad play from the following hands from last nights cash game session.  I’m at my wit’s end. I’m not going to play for a month at least, it’s making my life miserable.

First thing we have to determine is if you are just running bad or compounding you bad stretch of luck with poor play. Maybe a trip to bwin poker school is in the cards. Maybe it’s not and you are just running bad. Even the greatest players can’t beat the inevitability of variance. Poker is one game where you can do everything right and still lose. That’s the frustrating part, continuing to do everything right despite losing while doing it is one of the hardest things to sustain in a poker career. A couple of named pros have different attitudes toward “run-bad.” Some suggest you do exactly what you are planning on (especially if your bankroll also needs a trip to the poker hospital) and take some time off.

There is another mindset, endorsed by Gabe Thaler which we are starting to come around on. Just keep playing (again this is bankroll dependent, if you can’t afford it wait til you can, if you suspect you are playing bad don’t start borrowing money to play bad either). Gabe’s belief is that you are due bad luck. He’d rather play through it and get it out of his system so he can start running good again. He has impeccable bankroll management skills so surely this doesn’t force him into too many spots where the losses are starting to eat as his mental well-being and effect his play on the felt

At some point in your poker career you need to develop the mental and emotional ability to overcome wide swings in variance. Winning at a clip your skill level can’t sustain because you are running good can damage your game just as bad as losing when you are playing it right. Both reinforce the wrong results for specific play.  As you grow as a player you’ll learn it’s only about making the right decision for a particular hand.  Until you develop the will and levelheadedness between the ears to not get too high or too low, you might do well to reevaluate your game after every session. 

Sample of poor play/runbad:

I have AA v. KK 6 handed (2 tables going). He raises unopened pot to $10 from the button, I figure it’s a steal so slow play from the small blind and call. BB folds. Flop is queen high, all spades. I have no spade. I’m still good here but vulnerable. I bet $25, he calls (also vulnerable). Turn is non-spade A. I bet $30, he grumbles about how he had me on AQ and folds KK face up. No spade for him either. So I win $35, where I realistically should stack him 98% of the time.

Brutal. A Question if you min-raise preflop would the button call even if just  on a steal? Many would. If he (or they in this shorthanded game) wouldn’t because they know you, then mix in some small reraises from the blinds when you put buttons on a steal with bad hands. If he would call you or play back at you that’s sweet because sometimes big hands collide and you want that chedder in the middle pre flop.

–to be continued

One current strategy that is fairly old but being reapplied is checking to induce. Used to be that some friendly games frowned on check-raising but that mentality went out long ago. Nowadays, check raising is old hat, in fact, it’s so prevalent that tactics have been modified to counter them. So many people lead out with a donk bet that it is standard fair to check-raise with nothing too. Of course the reaction to that is to bet back at the check-raise. Well, simply put to counter the players check raising dry, when you hit your hand check to appear to check raise dry.

The method is best applied on the flop when out of position. In ultra aggressive tables or formats like a Sit’n go. As players have long done, when you believe your hand is the best, you check. The risk is that you allow your opponents to catch up. Of course if you chose wisely, you’ll likely check to players that you feel will fire away at you. Even better they may be loose and wild enough to fire back at your check raise, and you can play a big hand with what you feel is the best hand. This assumes deep stacks for both of you. Or most of the time you check raise and the weaker hand gives up.

This strategy allows you to extract more value from the flop than simply betting it. Perchance, the weak hands can’t call a bet or refuse to mix it up with you when you show strength. However, you show a little weakness they’ll come at you full bore. Those bets simply won’t be made or be money put into the pot in the form of calls any other way. Thus, checking to induce a bet is effective.

When in position, sometimes you might check behind on the flop, with the intent to induce a turn bet. Again, your hand is in danger of being caught up to or passed by weaker holdings seeing free cards, but if you know your opponent can’t stand for two streets to be reached without a bet, you’ll also get a lot of his weak hands to do the betting for you. Thus, long run against particular opponents you can win more than you’ll lose when they do catch up.

The tricky aspect is recognizing when they have turned rags into a hand or when they are just trying to exploit weakness. The finesse required for the check in position on the flop to induce with a good hand but not a great hand is high. Sometimes the check can simply be to pot control. If you are fearful your good but not great hand can hold up to a donk bet smashing raise from behind it may be a better course of action to take away that type of bet by simply checking.

Course this play means you have to respect the post flop check a little more than you used to. A check might just be a trap to check raise you off a hand when you bet into the perceived weakness. You check behind them, they bet the turn, and bet the river they might have been stringing you along since the flop. Course if you check the flop out of position and they check behind the same is also true. They could be hoping to induce a turn or river bet.

Let’s say your opponent is a call station.  Indeed, the flop bet is an insta-call almost like he clicked the box “call anything.”  If you have the nuts you can make this play on the turn because he’s already indicated he’s married to the hand.  Before he unclicks the box you might have all his chips.  Most times this bet is best employed on the river.  Waiting until fifth street isn’t that hard to do especially because your hands will be a lot better defined.  If you don’t have the nuts, you might have a good indication you still have the best hand and can employ this best.

It is most easily done against a player that can’t help himself from calling.  Those curiousity filled foes that have to see what you got.  Overbet on these donators as often as possible.  Case in point, you flop a set.  The board comes ace high.  You lead out into three postflop players and BadKarmaChamelon calls you.  She only calls on an Ace high board if she has one.  If she has something better she raises right then and there.

The good thing about BadKarmaChamelon and her like is she also will call you down with top pair of aces regardless of her kicker.  Here’s somebody you should be setting up for the River Overbet.  Knowing she’ll call a hefty bet be prepared to go deep into her stack for that last bet.  She may be good enough to not get stacked but sometimes saving her just a piece of her stack can induce a call.

The best case scenario of course of the River Overbet is when your opponent holds a really strong hand say a full house to your quads.  You get it all in there but then again you’d probably get it all in there anyway.  However, if he’s the type that hedges just a bit when the river comes by merely calling instead of pushing make him call for everything.  It’s not difficult to see if a guy is one a massive hand–sometimes, but then again sometimes it is.

The overbet also disguises your hand to lesser hands.  They will ask themselves why would he bet everything instead of guaranteeing himself some more money.  Long run, if they thought about the math, you might make more if you are deep enough, getting called every one out of five hands, then betting small more easily called bets in all five hands.  Course your opponents don’t need to know that, only you do.

This is one of those fool me once kind of bets but it needs to be part of every poker player’s arsenal.  Once applied to a player they’ll be cautious when you overbet a pot, no longer are they thinking you are looking to buy it, now you are trying to fool them again.  If you can stay one level ahead of their thinking it allows you to River Overbet Bluff more freely, and the bet size is no longer an indicator of weakness but an obstacle for them to call you down again.

This is a good move because it works on both sophisticated and unsophisticated players, the only problem is it doesn’t work that often.  If your opponent is a passive weak player this should never be a part of your arsenal as he’ll never call bets that big.  For more tips like this or just to learn the basics of poker head over to
bwin poker school.