Trying Out A New Strategy

The World Series of Poker has started … I am heading out on Friday to play the $1000 event.  Because of my work schedule, it may be the only event I play this year.  I hope that it isn’t!  That would really bum me out.  But at least I am starting to allow myself to get excited about it.  I am staying at the Rio this year, which (in addition to the tournaments) will have some really good cash games throughout the tournament.  Unlike the Pendleton tournament side games, the cash game competition during the WSOP will undoubtedly be comparatively lame, so I am thinking I will have better results playing those games than I do in Pendleton.

I have begun to introduce a new strategic idea into my pre-flop poker game, and so far it’s working out pretty well.  As it happens, I play really tight pre-flop.  Sometimes I fold fifty or sixty hands in a row, and folding seventy (or more) isn’t even all that uncommon.  It does sometimes get frustrating … folding Ace/Nine suited on the button after two limpers enter the pot, for instance.  If I didn’t enjoy poker so much, I might even call it boring.  It is, however, a lucrative and money-making strategy that has served me well.  No matter how tight I play, it always seems as though I can pick up a caller or two whenever I open-raise preflop.  Sometimes my opponents will tease me for how tight I play – while they are calling my preflop raise!  (I, on the other hand, have even folded Queens preflop when I come across a player as tight as I am who opens the pot for a raise.)

I have begun to wonder, as successful as this strategy is, am I leaving some money on the table?  I don’t really want to play any looser, and I’m not a good enough player to make the best post-flop decisions when I have marginal hands.  But … maybe I don’t have to play consistently loose … maybe I can just play loose once in a while and pick up some cheap pots?

So I’ve been trying out a new preflop strategy:  I count how many pots I open-raise.  After I have opened ten pots, the very next time I have the chance to open-raise again, I will – regardless of position; regardless of my hand.  This doesn’t mean limping (I don’t count those), nor does it count the big blind when I am in a hand already.  It doesn’t even mean calling somebody else’s preflop raise, or re-raising preflop like I would with pocket Aces or Kings.  It means open-raise.

So every eleventh preflop opening hand, I’ll come in for a raise with (generally) garbage.  In a way, the strategy is self-protecting:  If the table is really loose, I won’t be open-raising many pots, so my bluffs will be very rare.  At a tight table, however, I am more likely to play this extra garbage hand.

Once the flop comes, I go back to playing regular poker.  If it doesn’t help me, I am done with the hand.  If somehow it hits me square on, then I’ll play it.  If I am lucky enough to take a winning hand to showdown and table something like an Eight/Five from early position for a straight, I will end up confusing the heck out of my observant opponents.  They won’t know what I am up to next time I open-raise!

Since I starting this play, I find I am playing garbage no more than two times a session, so it’s still pretty rare.  Usually, I just steal the blinds, which is fine with me.  Once, my eleventh hand was pocket Jacks – but I had to let it go after I got two callers and two overcards came on the flop.  And one time, I got one caller.  We checked the hand all the way to showdown … and my high-card ten won the pot.  Sweet!

I’m even wondering whether once every eleven hands is still too infrequent … maybe I should bump it up to once every six hands?  I will play with this concept a bit more and see where it takes me.  But I think I’m on to something here.  At a minimum, it should shake up people’s evaluation of the type of player I am.

In the meantime, I played a hand recently that showed just how to misplay aces.  Whenever I have aces, I always raise pre-flop, and I’m quite happy just to take the blinds.  If I get one or two callers, that’s okay too … it just requires me to play the later streets very carefully and be prepared to lay it down if I can see that I am beat.

In a $2/$5 game, it was folded around to me in the cutoff.  I had the K¨8¨ and raised it to $15.  A little loose for me, but sometimes I will walk on the wild side.  Actually, I’d been playing rather passive all night, so I thought I would exercise just a bit with this hand.  The button and small blind folded, but the big blind min-raised $10 to $25.  Given the pot odds, my position, and a hand that can be very creative, I decided to call.

The flop was pretty much perfect: Q§10©K§.  I flopped top pair on a draw-heavy board.  My opponent bet $30 into a $50 pot, and I called with what I thought of as the best hand.

The turn made it even better:  The K©.  Now my opponent checked, and I made a huge nearly pot-sized $100 bet.  After a long pause, my opponent called.

This call surprised me and worried me.  What could he have that was better than three Kings?  A draw?  Not with that size of a turn bet.  A flopped straight?  A full house?

The river was a meaningless 6ª.  My opponent checked, and I was more than happy to check behind.  He showed me his pocket Aces, I showed my turned trips, and I won a $300 pot.

I really think my opponent misplayed this hand.  His preflop bet was too low, and let me into a pot I had no business being in.  His flop bet was okay, but still I think too small given all the possible draws out there.  I think I would have bet $40 or even $50 there, to chase folks away (or at least define their hands better).  But his turn call was a complete disaster.  How could he think his hand was still good, given the board and my strong bets?  All too often, players get married to pocket Aces (or Kings or Queens or …) and are just not able to lay them down when it’s clear they’ve been cracked.  And yes, it still happens to me too on occasion.

Can’t Find A Coach … Oh Well!

I was reading Your Worst Poker Enemy by Alan Schoonmaker and in it he makes the point that having a poker coach is a really terrific idea, and every serious poker player should have one.  A poker coach can be a friend you can bounce poker ideas off of and who can critique your play, or somebody you hire who does that kind of stuff as a living.

 

I thought about this and saw how it makes sense.  I mean, I don’t know what I don’t know, and I’m sure that I could always benefit from having another pair of eyes watch my play and share their conclusions with me.  I have a couple of friends who are into the poker scene, but I don’t have much of an opportunity to spend enough time around them to actually critique certain plays or provide advice on how to do things better.  And although there are plenty of coaches out there who do this for a living, almost all of them live in faraway places like Las Vegas or L.A. or Michigan.  Their business model is, “Pay me $200 for an hour’s work, then send me a bunch of hand histories of your play, and I’ll email you back some advice.  I’ll let you know when your hour’s up.”  I’m sure this can be valuable, but it also seems coldly impersonal.  If I hire one of these e-coaches and do a session with him, then later follow-up with him on some other stuff, is he even going to remember who I am?  “Let’s see, is this the maniac who cold-calls preflop three-bets with seven/deuce offsuit, or is he the tight rock who only places Aces and Kings?”  I honestly don’t know if I’d get my money’s worth.

 

Fortunately for me, I found a local guy who does poker coaching for a living. He’s been playing poker for over thirty years and coaching for over ten years.  In my discussions with him, he has a very clear strategy and approach to the game that I’m certain could benefit me.  We spent some time talking with each other – I guess I should say, interviewing each other.  He spent as much time asking me questions about my playing style, strategy, poker philosophy, etc. as I did with him.

 

Ultimately, he said, “You know, I don’t think I can be very much help to you.  You seem to have a very successful style and good results, and your approach to the game doesn’t show very many weaknesses.  I’d be happy to take your money if you’d like, but I don’t think I’d be able to give you much useful advice.”

 

I was pretty surprised to hear this and actually more disappointed than flattered, but I guess I’ll take my kudos where I can get them.

 

But this may be why I blog so much; or at least, try to.  If I put some hand information and thoughts down on paper, it helps me consider strategy and ways to do things better.  It’s also useful when I look at older posts and re-learn stuff I knew before and forgot.  So maybe my blog is a coach of sorts.

 

 

I am surprised to see that the World Series is nearly upon us.  I’ve only identified one event that I am going to be sure to play; that’s the $1000 buy-in NLHE tournament that starts on May 30.  That is, two weeks from yesterday!  I’m hoping to play some more events too, or at least hang out at the truly lucrative cash games nearby, but between a huge workload in my real life and the fact that I’ve pretty much used up all my vacation days, I really don’t know if I’m going to be able to do much more.  I know that the Main Event is out; I have something else already scheduled that week that I couldn’t move even if I won a free seat.  *sigh*

 

I will post a hand I played recently in a $2/$5 game.  I haven’t done that for awhile!  The point of this particular hand is to show that sometimes Ace/King actually is successful.  I’ve heard Ace/King called “Walking Back to Houston”, which goes back to the days when the Texas rounders would overplay the hand and then, well, have to walk back to Houston without any bankroll left.  People still overplay the hand today, as if they’re holding pocket Aces.  The fact of the matter is Ace/King is a drawing hand.  I’ll raise with it pre-flop, but if I don’t flop a pair I’m gone.  And if the pre-flop action gets too heated, I don’t have any problem folding it preflop.

 

I hadn’t been at this table very long at all.  I’d only played a few hands since sitting down, and hadn’t shown down a single one of them.  In this hand, I was in the cutoff seat with A©K©.  Everyone folded to me, so I raised it $10 to $15.  The button called and the blinds folded.  I had never played with this opponent before and I didn’t have any kind of read on him, so basically I could only play my cards.  I was totally preparing to fold on the flop if it missed me (which a flop will do two out of three times).

 

The flop was Aª K¨ J§.  At first glance, it looked gorgeous (two pair!) but upon further examination, it looked more troubling, with all kinds of looming straight possibilities.  I didn’t really think it likely that my opponent had flopped a straight (Queen/Ten usually can’t stand a preflop raise; at least I wouldn’t think so).  But it’s very possible it was on the way for him.  I decided to check, looking for a check/raise.  I thought that would be the best way to define his hand.  If he re-raised me, I would start to worry.  My opponent bet $15 – rather a small bet – so I raised it to $60 to make drawing a very poor decision, odds-wise.  I would have been happy to take the pot there … but he called the raise.

 

The turn was the 7¨.  If my hand was good on the flop, it was almost certainly still good.  I put out $100 – again, with an eye toward making a drawing hand pay too much to make it worthwhile.  Again, he called.  There’s no way he could have me beat … is there?

 

The river was the 8¨.  This put a backdoor diamond flush on the board, and some less-likely straights as well.  I ignored those, and value-bet a smallish $150.  I was confused at what my opponent was calling with (a smaller two pair maybe?) and my bet was meant to block anything he might choose to bet.  He called; I showed my hand, he mucked, and I dragged a $600 pot.  If he was drawing, he played very poorly.  If he had an Ace, he should have let it go after all the strength I was showing.  But it is the mistakes of our opponents that build our bankrolls.

A Disgusting Job

I can think of few jobs more distasteful than that of a poker room masseuse.  To have to put your hands all over a sweaty, stinking, unshaven, fat old man should justify one for combat pay.

Worst of all is the scalp massage.  Running your fingers across some guy’s greasy hair and zitty scalp makes me want to reach for the barf bag.

At Pendleton last week, I saw one intrepid soul working on a guy who was sitting backwards in his chair.  His tee shirt had ridden up from his saggy pants, revealing a most unappetizing butt cleavage.  I immediately had two thoughts:  (1) Say no to crack (but unfortunately too late for that); and (2) I was reminded that I need to have somebody move my refrigerator.

Poker Roundup, Days 4 and 5

I played the Saturday tournament (the Main Event) which was a $500 buy-in.  There were 417 total players and 45 were paid.  I ended up finishing around 80^th.  They played down to the final three tables, then broke for the day and met again Sunday morning to finish up.  That part of the event was broadcast live on “Holdem” radio, some Internet station.

Sunday was the “last chance” tournament, which I skipped.  I decided to play the cash games instead.  It really is some of the toughest poker that I will probably see, so I wanted to put myself to the test.  I played super-tight.  It was the kind of game where one or two hands will probably define the entire session in terms of coming out ahead or behind.  Unfortunately for me, these two hands came down like this:  First, I had Aces cracked; and then I was bluffed out of a huge pot when I had two pair (and position) but the fourth diamond came on the river and my opponent pushed all-in.  After I folded, he showed me his six-high garbage hand (a good play I have to say).  So bottom line, I came out loser from that session.

One other really interesting hand was played where the dealer made a mistake that I had never seen before.  The short stack pushed all-in from middle position.  Everybody folded to the small blind, who said “call”.  He didn’t touch his chips at all, he just said “call”.  Then he turned over his hand – pocket Queens.  The short stack had pocket Jacks.

At this point, the dealer mucked both hands, washed the deck, and pushed the pot to the short-stack (the one with Jacks).  Seems the Wildhorse Casino has a house rule that any hand that gets shown is immediately declared dead.  The dealer didn’t hear the player say “call”, and the player didn’t push his chips in, so he just assumed that the guy with Queens had folded face-up.

The guy with the Queens went ballistic.  Both the guy sitting next to him and the kid on the short stack said that they had heard him say “call” – it’s just that the dealer did not.  They called the floor man over, and the result was that the pot was split between them (the short stack had not touched the chips that were pushed to him, so the pot was easy to rebuild).  So that was that.  Very odd error I think.

As I evaluate my tournament play, I really think that I did very well, at least for this point in my poker career.  I played three tournaments; cashed in one of them; and finished in the top 20% in the other two.  And in all of the tournaments I managed to outlast all of the pros, with one exception (Marsha Waggoner lasted longer than me in the Main Event).  So I guess that’s something.  You can bet that I will be back at future roundups!

Poker Round-Up, Day 3

I decided to go introduce myself to Linda Johnson.  I had heard that she is very friendly and approachable as pros go, so I decided to find out.  And she was!  We actually chatted for several minutes.  If you don’t recognize her, she is one of the personalities connected with the World Poker Tour.  I asked her to tell me a funny story or two about the WPT, and she had some cued up and ready to tell (she must get asked that question a lot).

It seems that there was a WPT final table at Foxwoods that had Phil Hellmuth, Jr. as one of the participants.  Now, whenever Phil is on camera, the viewing audience is in for a treat.  Although he is one of the best tournament players around, he tends to become explosively emotional very easily.  Sometimes other players will exploit that weakness.  One of the best ways to light the fuse is to check-raise or re-raise him.  He never expects that and it drives him crazy.

At this particular WPT final table, Phil was playing against Hoyt Corkins.  A big pot was developing between the two of them, and so the cameras were really closing in on Phil, waiting to see what was going to happen.  When Hoyt suddenly re-raised Phil all-in, Phil leapt out of his seat, all six-foot-four of him going airborne like Michael Jordan going in for a layup with the Chicago Bulls.  Unfortunately, one of the television cameras was suspended on a dolly directly over Phil’s head, so when he popped up out of his chair, he bonked his head against the camera like a car hitting a brick wall.  He flopped back into his chair just as suddenly and nearly passed out from the pain.  But since he realized that he was on camera, he tried to be very cool and nonchalant about it all.  However, nobody was fooled, and while Phil was trying to keep his composure (not to mention his consciousness), the entire room roared with laughter.

I also asked Linda some questions about a theory I have concerning how to play pre-flop in a tournament once the antes start up.  I had some ideas about this that I hadn’t ever heard anybody else talk (or write) about, so I wanted to run them past her to see what her opinion was.  She thought I had come up with a decent strategy about pre-flop play with antes, so that made me feel pretty good.

Back to poker:  Trying to piggyback on the previous day’s success, I bought into the $300 tournament along with 398 others.  As the tournament began, they started a fundraiser for a charity fund that assists casino employees who need small-scale financial assistance (trip money to Portland for medical treatment; flowers for the death of a family member, that sort of thing).  I gave them $10, got a cheap plastic lei as a reward, and hoped that the added karma would get me deeper into the cash.

Unfortunately, karma notwithstanding, I only lasted until around 7pm, where I went out in 70^th place, out of the money.  Back to the cash games I went, where I played another two hours without winning even a single pot!  That may be a new record for me.  At least I didn’t lose much money at it.

There was one very interesting hand that came up at my table during the tournament.  I wasn’t in it, but it was pretty incredible to watch unfold.  It was around the fifth or sixth round; antes had just started to kick in so there was a lot of dead money pre-flop.

I was in the small blind for this hand.  The player under the gun was the short-stack, and he raised a decent amount.  It was folded around to the cutoff, who raised all-in.  (This player had the first one covered. ) The next player – the one on the button – then re-raised all-in!  He had them both covered.  I folded, as did the big blind, and it was back to the original raiser.

This guy hemmed and hawed and thought for about five minutes.  He obviously had a big decision to make.  The longer he thought, the more agitated he became.  He started to talk, ask questions, get a bit louder, become more agitated, then basically he admitted that he had pocket Kings!  What would you do in a situation like this??  I mean, you have to believe that at least one of your raisers has pocket Aces, right?  Well, that’s the conclusion he reached, so ultimately he folded his Kings, face-up.

So there were two players in the pot, all-in preflop.  The cut-off had Ace-King.  The button had pocket Queens!   The flop came Four-King-Nine, the turn was another Nine, and the river another Four.  The guy with Ace/King won the pot and more than doubled-up; the button was the new short-stack, and the guy who folded his Kings face-up (and would have ended up with not one but two full houses) went into orbit he was so upset.  Obviously, he didn’t last much longer, but the button didn’t either.  We were talking about that hand at the table until it broke and we all moved away.  I’m sure the kid who folded the Kings is going to lose sleep over that hand.  I know I certainly would!

The only other interesting thing about the tournament has to do with the bracelet I won at the DevCon Poker tournament.  I was wearing it of course.  One of the dealers asked me about it (I was sitting in seat nine, next to the dealer, so he could easily see it).  He thought I had won it in one of the preliminary Pendleton tournaments this year!  It looks very much like the bracelets they are giving away to the winner of this year’s Roundup tournaments (a bit smaller though).  I started laughing because I was a bit embarrassed, and when I explained what it was and how I got it other folks got to chuckling about it too.