From Mike:
I have recently talked my parents into bankrolling me $500 a month here soon, and they are looking at it like a business investment to help me try and start a bankroll. I have been playing poker for 2 1/2 years. I am always trying to learn and improve my game, and am trying to follow the advice of using 5-10% of my bankroll. So to start, in a given month I will be playing 4 $55 MTT’s on PS and 10 $22 SNG’s. I will be setting aside certain %’s of my winnings towards attending the WSOP in 2009, college funds, and general pullout for other investments (stocks,bonds,investments) My parents don’t know the game but have discipline and will be helping me track the business aspect of it. I just opened my account on PS at the beginning of October. I have had pretty good success thus far. Any advice would be greatly appreciated so that I can attain my athletic, educational, and business goals. Read the rest of this entry »
7:56 - Alright, time to relive some memories. Hevad Khan is going to be at the featured table for some of the telecast, and that’s where I was as well. We should see some big hands tonight and I’ll try and fill you in on what ESPN didn’t show and what might have influenced some moves. Stay tuned while the show goes on.
8:00 - Do you think the guy who shouted “This is the greatest tournament in the world!” expected to hear his voice every episode now?
8:01 - Imagine sitting with Gavin, Gus Hansen, and Carlos Mortensen all at the same table. How would you play with three maniacs? How would you adjust? My adjustment: Table change.
8:05 - Robert Varkonyi’s comment of “I saw Chris yesterday, he seemed pretty alive” was pretty amusing considering Robert had taken a nice chunk of Jesus’s stack previously.
8:08 - If you would have told me that Gus Hansen and Gavin smith checked down a hand, I would have told you to your face that you were a liar. You could say it happened because they’re close to the money, but the odds that either of these guys care = close to zero.
8:11 - Jon Moonves makes his first appearance. Jon was up amongst the leaders for a good portion of the tournament, but never made much noise.
8:14 - You know how you always see Olga Varkonyi sweating Robert every time he’s playing? It’s not selective editing. She is *always* there, except when she’s also playing. I never saw her more than a few feet away. Very sweet lady.
8:20 - Norm Chad on Khan: “This guy needs a Red Bull the way Paris Hilton needs another credit card.” Ain’t that the truth. Probably had about 4 a day.
8:25 - Chris Ferguson’s exit is notable for two reasons: First, because it was against Lee Childs, who eventually makes the final table, and because Childs did it with QQ, which is going to be a hand Childs is going to be infamous for once they show the final table. Childs laid down QQ face up against Jerry Yang, it was analyzed for weeks afterwards. (In fact, guys on 2+2 probably still are.)
8:31 - Notice Sully Erna is wearing the 1% pin for Phil and Rafe’s Bad Beat on Cancer charity.
8:39 - The guy that doubled up Gavin Smith with AQ is textbook on how you should conduct yourself on how to act when your dominating hand gets cracked. Composed, friendly, sends over his chips with a smile. I’m not saying you have to smile, but at least take some notes. Well done.
8:51 - “That’s why I love this game!” I wish you could get a better idea of just how crowded around the media was during the set/straight/boat hand. It was three deep and if you didn’t hear “all in and a call!” quick enough, you couldn’t see what was going on. You were getting information from someone on the outside of the dogpile, who was getting information from someone closer, who was…. you get the idea.
8:56 - From everything I’ve seen heard, I put John Duthie as the best player at the featured table.
Stevo da Great asks:
All the information I’ve learned throughout my studies are great tells for playing strangers, however, so many of these tells are completely off when playing my friends and especially when drinking and smoking. I do exceptionally well against my buddies and a few of them put me at the best in our game, but most of the time when I’m making an action I do not know the reasons why I am doing it and only am doing it because of a gut feeling. 70% of the time I am making a right decision, 20% unknown, 10% wrong action. Its a good thing to have, but I need to know the link between my actions and the situation. Is there anything you can suggest, or discuss regarding this issue?
The books on tells are generalizations and averages based on observing many different people and are therefore going to be less accurate than an intimate knowledge of your opponents (like you have in your home game).
The implication in your question above is that you don’t do as well against strangers and that you don’t get any overwhelming gut feelings to guide your actions against them. So you must be using some deductive logic to arrive at your decisions. I would suggest that you think about hands you play against your buddies after the fact and try to deconstruct the hand, including your actions, their reactions, etc, as if it were someone else playing the hand (not you). Try to apply the same sort of deductive reasoning you would in a game full of strangers to see if you can come to the same decisions you made in the hand but with hard evidence to back up your reasoning. You may first start to realize that what you are picking up unconsciously is a general sense of weakness in your opponent, so you instinctively raise. Later on, you may notice that your buddy is leaning back and has a subtle expression of unease or disappointment, or gives off other physical or verbal signs that are signaling weakness to you.
It’s especially important to pay attention to the hands you are not involved in, and it is almost always easier to make a good read (because you are objective) when you are not in the hand. Thus, you may find it easier to break down the hand logically (as opposed to by intuition) when you are on the sidelines.
If you really want to improve your game though, you will have to be willing to give up your edge against your buddies and start talking to them about the hands and analyzing them together. Ask them what they were thinking when you raised and they folded. Warning: it won’t be the same old fun home game, and you might decide it’s not worth ruining that camaraderie. You might instead get a game together with other friends who are serious about improving their play and commit to talking about significant hands that come up and what everyone was thinking. Play for low enough stakes that nobody will mind losing as long as they something that will help them in other settings.
I got the following email on MySpace, and even though it isn’t a question, I thought I’d share it since I think there are some common “leaks” that it illustrates:
I play a lot and mostly low level SnGs on FTP. I have had moderated success. I play to learn and to hopefully get better. I notice that I starting to put opponents on hands and having success with that however, my need to know if I right is costing me chips. really stupid stuff like I have a small pair and its heads up. I’m out of position (first problem) and raise a to pot size after the flop to find out where I am. he smooth calls (Second alert for me). so instead of checking I fire a second bullet this time pot size number 2. now he rasies all in and I know I beat. yet I call 80-90% of the time. I recognize my mistakes yet I donk them most times.
If I see this, is it because I can afford the mistakes a this low level and If I more at risk I would not be so damn curious it see his cards or is just been a stupid donkey!
My biggest leak in NL holdem is insisting on playing a style that the current table conditions either are not conducive too, or that is not optimal. Usually, this is playing too too many hands aggressively and allowing myself to get trapped, but sometimes it it’s just the opposite and I’m not playing aggressive enough pre-flop in a limp-fest game.
What are your biggest leaks?
A few weeks ago I posted a seeming paradox, but I had a math error in my example. Fellow Tiltboy, Lennie Augustine, chastised me and made me admit to the error by offering to take the “losing” side of the proposition for as much as I wanted to wager. The situation I was trying to describe was one in which you are ahead of two opponents on the flop who you know will both call no matter how how much you bet. Under certain circumstances, it is incorrect to bet in this spot, which seemingly violates the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Of course, Sklansky is too smart not to caveat the FToP by saying that it does not apply universally to all multiway pots. Here are the examples Lennie came up with to illustrate the point:
As Jd (YOU)
Qh Th (OPPONENT 1)
6c 5c (OPPONENT 2)
with a board of Jc 9c 4h.
In a 3-way showdown, you have only 32% pot equity, so any bet that will be called by both opponents is a losing proposition.
If you could get heads-up with the straight draw, you’ve got 53% pot equity.
It’s even better if you can get heads-up with the flush draw: now you’ve got 58% of the pot equity.
Here’s a pre-flop example:
9s 9c (YOU)
As Kc (OPPONENT 1)
Jc Tc (OPPONENT 2)Three way you have 31% pot equity (and are actually in last place).
Heads up against AK you are now a 55% favorite.
Heads up against JT you are still a favorite, but less so.
In reality, you are never going to be in a situation where you “know for certain” that two or more players are going to call you no matter what. And since the equity you are losing by betting in these situations is only a couple percent at most, you shouldn’t really be considering not betting. On the contrary, the reward for getting one (or both) drawing opponents to fold is actually quite high. It’s telling to note that if you get JT to fold in the pre-flop example, you’ve all of a sudden taken AK from a favorite three-way to an underdog heads-up, and you’ve gone from last place into the lead. Yet another example of how aggression is rewarded in poker.
All this week, we’ll be giving EI readers directions to some of the best poker bloggers around: those doing fantastic writing about the game of poker and how the perceive it. If our job is to connect you with those who can make you a better player, we would be remiss to show you what’s already out there and who’s doing the talking.
Today’s pick is Absinthe, who has taken down large field tournaments live and online, and has some spectacular writeups - not just on tournament play, but also on his experiences as a limit player. Our favorite post is a gem called “Sixty Minutes”, where Absinthe talks about the first hour of every tournament he plays and how much control we have over it:
My whole tourney strategy is designed around staying alive until the final table. Just get me there. Put me there with three par stacks, three short stacks, and two stacks that have me covered 9:1 and I’ll be happy. I can work with that. If you don’t make the final table you have no chance to win.
But the final table doesn’t come in the first sixty minutes.
Read the rest of Absinthe’s post and get some excellent thoughts on how to tread when you enter your next tournament.
This week’s Poker Edge features the man at the top of the poker world: 2007 Main Event winner Jerry Yang, who talks with Phil about his WSOP experience and confirms for those that followed along that Lee Child’s much debated fold of QQ was definitely not the right move. Listen to what Jerry had here.
After 55 events and two months of nonstop poker, I’m exhausted, and in all honesty, I’m glad the World Series of Poker is over. I’m still on the bracelet schneid, of course, but that isn’t surprising. I didn’t play well when it mattered and didn’t deserve to put some bling on my wrist when it was all said and done. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights, and random thoughts from the Rio:
No peek
Bicycle playing cards and the “poker peek” style were introduced at the first event, and they did not go over well. With the new design, the poker peek style allowed players to simply look at the corners of the cards to see what they were holding instead of lifting the entire card off the felt. However, with massive confusion between the sixes and nines, the cards were troublesome and pulled out of play. Fortunately, USPCC owns the KEM brand — the absolute best playing card in the world — and they immediately shipped out tens of thousands of decks for use in the WSOP. Without a doubt, having KEM on the table made a big difference this year. I’m sure the Bicycle pro and poker peek style will be back after the Players Council and USPCC have had some more time to get it right.
So close …
I made it deep in the first tournament, the $5,000 mixed no-limit/limit event. We were down to about 65 people and nearly in the money when I picked up 5-6 offsuit in the big blind. Tony Ma limped in under the gun and everyone folded to me. Of course, I checked, and saw the flop: 5-5-A with two spades. My first thought was, “I’m not going broke if he limped in with A-A.” My second thought was, “I don’t see how I’m not going to go broke if he limped in with A-A.”
I had an above-average stack and Tony did as well. I checked to him and he bet about half the pot. I raised, but intentionally didn’t pot-commit myself. He called. The turn was a spade and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t raise enough to get him off a flush draw. In this precarious spot, I decided I had to bet in case he had a hand like A-K with the king of spades. I bet about two thirds of the pot and he immediately moved me all-in. Reluctantly, I called and he turned over 10-7 of spades. Brilliant. A great way to end my first tournament at the WSOP. It’s two months later and I still don’t know how to play this hand.
Full house
The fields were absolutely massive, especially in the smaller buy-in events. Two thousand or more players were commonplace. For overflow players, the WSOP created a big tent behind the Amazon room with about 50-60 tables. When the air conditioning was working, it was barely passable as a playing space. When it wasn’t working, it was 110 degrees in the tent and I’ve got no idea how people withstood the heat. I’m against capping the fields, but Harrah’s will have to do better next year with the tent. With the fees we’re paying for this series of tournaments, they should be able to afford better playing conditions for the overflow players.
Every single event was up in attendance, except for the championship event. The Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act obviously didn’t affect the appetite for the bracelet too much. In truth, a case can be made that the $10,000 main event was actually up this year, despite having only 6,358 entrants. The UIGEA made it impossible for the online sites to preregister satellite winners into the tournament. Essentially, if you won a seat online, the site would deposit $12,000 into your online account and trust that you’d take that payment and head to the WSOP. About 75 percent (a consensus estimate) of the people that won their seats online stayed at home and fixed up their deck instead. I know that at least 4,000 seats were awarded and unclaimed from the major sites. So we’re up this year, at over 10,000 by my calculation.
Rebuy fun
Here’s another gem from the $1,000 no-limit hold ‘em with rebuys event. I drew a tough table, with noted pro Daniel Alaei on my left and Antonio Esfandiari across the table. Alaei and a Frenchman at my table were going nuts with the rebuys and were in at least $25,000 combined. I had managed to work my stack up to about $17,000 with only a single rebuy. I was in second place in chips in the tournament after the break and rebuys concluded, only behind Alaei, who had about $18,000.
Play tightened up considerably. With the blinds at $100-$200, a good player with $6,000 raised under the gun to $600. I was in the cutoff with K-K and reraised to $1,800. Alaei went into the tank for about two minutes before re-reraising to $3,900. The under-the-gun guy folded and it was decision time. Can I get away from K-K here? Is it that obvious that he has A-A? Think about that bet size for just an extra minute or two.
Why $3,900? He’s raised me exactly $2,100 and he’s given the under-the-gun guy a chance to re-re-reraise to $6,000 and trap me in the middle. Alaei is an excellent, top-rate player. Would he make that play with Q-Q? A-K? If he’s trying to isolate me with a sub-premium hand, why give the first raiser a chance to get involved? I’d love to say I laid this hand down. But I didn’t. My pre-all-in-move logic consisted of, “I have K-K, I’m only in the tournament for two grand, I’m all-in.” He, of course, had A-A, and I had a hand that taught me something about the game. An expensive lesson, yes, but one that I’m happy I learned. As I left the table, I said to Esfandiari, “I’m not good enough to lay that hand down.” He said, “I am, and you are too, Phil.” In retrospect, I think it’s an easy laydown, or preflop call and postflop fold if I don’t flop a set.
Bad bubbles
The bubble play in almost every tournament I cashed in was absolutely atrocious. I was second in chips with just over 200 people to go in the $1,500 event when the bubble approached. I raised 2 to 2.5 times the big blind about five hands in a row and stole six sets of blinds. On the sixth hand, I’m under the gun and decide, “What the hell,” and raise double the big blind without even looking at my cards. There is one player left to go out before we’re in the money. Everyone quickly folds to the guy on my right in the big blind. “I don’t want to go broke on the bubble,” he says, and flips up A-K suited and folded. I kid you not. Folks, it’s really difficult to play that badly.
Hellmuth won the race
Hellmuth won No. 11. Blah blah blah. What else could I write that hasn’t already been written about the self-proclaimed “Poker Brat”? All I know is this: Phil is without question the best no-limit hold ‘em player in the world against weak fields.
Heads-up
The $5,000 heads-up event was a tremendous success. I had an easy run to the round of 32 and then ran into a buzz saw. My first-round match I received a bye, as did about one third of the players. In Round 2, I faced Eric Cajelais, and boy did I want to win that match (we’ve had some fun at the tables before). Fortunately, I held the deck over him for most of the match and it was over in about 45 minutes. After winning that match, I was assured of having a great WSOP no matter what happened the rest of the series.
In Round 3, I faced a 65-year-old European woman that actually folded three of the first four hands she had on the button. She was so bad heads-up that when I had her down 7-3 in chips and raised on the button with A-K suited and she moved all-in, I folded. The only way she could win the match would be to win big pots. That one took about 90 minutes, but she eventually blinded her way out. My fourth-round match lasted 12 minutes. My unknown opponent limped in and I held 2-3 offsuit in the big blind. The flop was 9-2-2 and I check-raised him. He called. A three hit the turn and I bet. He moved all-in and I called. His hand? Q-9. Yummy. Moral of this story: There is still plenty of dead money in these new, specialized events.
Thanks Tom
Tom Schneider, winner of two WSOP bracelets this year, cost me $10,000. I bet Bill Gazes and Chip Jett that there would not be a two-bracelet winner this year. Of course, Tom follows a long line of multi-bracelet winners — in fact, it has happened every year for the past five years in a row. That is an amazing feat. Congrats to Tom, and Bill and Chip as well.
I got my $10,000 back from Mike Matusow taking the over on 6,200 players for the main event. It was looking very grim for me, but a last-minute crunch of players on Day 1D helped me hit the over.
So, those are some random thoughts and stories from the 2007 WSOP. In my next column, I’ll break down the final table of the championship event and give you my view of our new champion, Jerry Yang.
The only thing better than winning? Winning in style. Jim Furyk did just that in the Canadian Open this weekend, nailing a hole-in-one on Sunday to take the lead against Vijay Singh and never look back. Vijay missed a birdie putt on the final hole to force a playoff, and Jim had successfully defended his title, taking the trophy and $900,000 cash prize along with it. Congrats, Jim!
Link - [PGATour.com - Furyk’s prowess on the par-3 fourth makes all the difference]
A reader, Mandy, writes:
there is a bit of debate on a poker forum i belong too about AA, i said that at the start of a deep stack tourney, if UTG went all in and i was next to act, that i would fold AA, people have called me weak and scared and many other things, but first hand in a big tourney with so many people to act behind me, AA doesn’t look so good against 5 people, not with online flops anyways lol i was just wondering if you have ever folded AA online or if u ever would????? thanx for your time Mandy
I never have folded AA pre-flop, and the only time I would is in a severe bubble situation, for instance, in a super satellite to the WSOP Main Event. Let’s say you have a short stack with AA and the next person eliminated gets nothing and the rest of you all get seats. Now let’s say that several big stacks go all-in in front of you. Here it may very well be correct to fold your AA because the amount of equity you gain by winning the hand isn’t enough to compensate for the equity you gain by folding and surviving the hand while you allow a larger stack to bust out and secure your seat for you. You should be fairly certain though that somebody is going to bust on that very hand and end the satellite, since it’s too easy for an all-in player to double up, in which case you’ve missed a golden opportunity to get out of the short-stack hot seat. Thus, I would have to see two players or more at risk of going broke against a third opponent with a larger stack before I would muck my AA. To be clear, if you were heads up against another player, you shouldn’t be folding your AA no matter what as the short stack.
If instead of being the short stack you had a huge stack, you might be better off folding every hand without looking, which includes folding AA. You are not trying to accumulate chips, just survive until someone busts and you get your seat. But you have to have such a big stack that there’s no way you can be blinded down before someone else busts. The reason you are folding without looking is you don’t want to be tempted to play any hands and needlessly double anyone up. Folding without looking will also make it clear to the others at the table that they are going to have to play a bit more aggressively since all your chips are out of play and there is effectively one fewer hand to compete with. The more aggressively your opponents play as you sit on the sidelines the better off you are because aggression leads to higher variance which leads to increased chance of someone busting sooner.
If I had a medium stack, rather than fold AA, I would simply smooth call assuming at least one person who was already all-in had a shorter stack than me. Here I would like to encourage as many players after me to to flat-call as possible and check it down so that we have the greatest chance of eliminating the short stack as possible. This is known as “implicit collusion”, and it’s legal as long as you don’t say anything indicating what you are doing. Simply by smooth calling and not trying to isolate an all-in player you are signaling to the other players what you are doing, and the astute ones will follow your lead. The reason I stipulated that a shorter stack had to be all-in is because if both of us bust on the hand, it’s the shorter stack that is considered to have busted first by tournament rules, and I still get my seat.
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Early on in a tournament, folding AA under any circumstances pre-flop is probably a mistake. Remember, AA is a 4-1 favorite or better over most hands you will be up against heads-up, and it’s very rare that you are going to end up with more than one or two opponents if you are able to get all your chips in pre-flop. Even if you do end up against 5 opponents, AA is 50% to win the hand against random hands, 36% against five different pairs, and 33% against a reasonable combination of pairs and suited connectors. If you and your five opponents are each all-in with $10K in chips, you are expected to win about one third of the $60K pot, or $20K. That’s even better than being all-in against a single opponent who has KK, in which case your EV is about $16K (80% of a $20K pot).
Theoretically, if you had a huge skill advantage over every opponent at your table (and in the field at large), you could make the argument that you are so good at picking up loose chips in small pots that you are better off mucking AA if someone goes all-in in front of you and has you covered. Phil Hellmuth has made this claim before and certainly his results are hard to argue with. Having played in a number of tournaments at his table, I can see his rationale. He is extremely good at picking on weak players, he’s very aggressive about getting involved in many hands, and he keeps the pots small and his bet size to a minimum to assure he’s rarely at risk for his whole stack. Other top pros have disagreed with Hellmuth’s assessment of his own skill advantage and think he’s fooling himself if he’s willing to lay down AA pre-flop. The other thing to consider is that most people (in my opinion) play better poker with a large stack than with an average or short stack. Thus, it’s worth it for them to take some chances early on in order to build a big stack; yes, they will go broke quicker and more often that way, but if you are trying to win the tournament or maximize your return, you shouldn’t care about how long you last. In fact, if you bust out quickly, there’s more time for you to enter another tournament. For a pro, the worst thing that can happen is that you bust short of the money while wasting a lot of time that could otherwise be used making money.
My personal belief is that there are very few, if any, players who have such an advantage over the field as to make laying down AA pre-flop a good play. And for you personally, unless your game resembles Phil Hellmuth’s in both style and skill, you shouldn’t even be thinking about it.