A hand came up recently at the end of a long night of poker that I found myself explaining my actions to my opponent after all was said and done. Let me set up the scenario.

Blinds are ten cents and twenty cents. I have about $78 dollars, most of which was mine when we sat down. I got fifty dollars deep at this structure, but that goes back to the old adage, "Never quit when you have the best of it." To be fair to myself, I added the last twenty all at once after some of my opponents started to grow very large stacks. In any case, it's down to myself and one other player, and has about $22 in front of him. We've been jabbing at each other for the last twenty minutes or so after breaking the last of the others trying to catch each other in a mistake. He's playing a bit timid and tight for a two-man game, and he isn't taking too many chances. That being said, we've more or less dispensed with the blind structure as being meaningful, and every played pot has at least a couple dollars in it before the flop.

He's the dealer when we reach the final hand of the night. I'm dealt 2-3 offsuit, and he opens for a buck. I decide his timidity may prove strong enough for me to pick up the hand after the flop with anything, so I call. The flop comes A 4 J, rainbow. I bet two dollars representing Jacks, and get called. Before he called he seemed to contemplate his action. I assumed he was debating whether to fold, so when an 8 fell on the turn I took the opportunity to re-bet the two dollars, as a bit of a pre-river value bet bluff. Again he called, a bit faster this time. After the fact I decided h was going to let me dig my own grave, he'd called to the river with some of his best hands of the night letting me make his action for him. It didn't matter much to me in any case, since I decided two barrels was enough and I was going to check and fold on the river if my five didn't come. But come it did, as it will almost nine percent of the time. I bet four dollars, this time representing a last ditch, third barrel attempt to win the pot without a hand. He raised all-in. With only the six-seven out there to beat me, and finding it unlikely he'd have called my flop bet with raggedy cards and three to an inside straight, I called immediately. He showed me his ace, and I showed him my straight, ending the evening's game.

He found my calling his pre-flop bet, and my betting on the flop and turn bizarre. I explained my logic to him pretty much the same way I just explained it above, adding that that play and plays a lot like it will only work about one in twenty times. However when you factor in the money I make when he folds on the flop and the turn instead of calling, its profitability goes way up. Stack size also figured heavily into it. Would he made an all in bet with $100 in front of him rather than $18? Would he have even come close to betting $18? Would it still be profitable to me if he'd only had five dollars left by the river? Probably not. I had plenty of money in my stack to not worrying about going broke too easily chasing that occasional inside straight, from the position of aggressor, while he had just enough money left to both make it worth my effort to go for it, and little enough money that he'd commit it.

I still wasn't sure about my logic, and if it all made sense. Maybe I was guilty of rationalizing bad decisions after everything turned out okay. I'm getting ready for a trip to the casino in March, so I thought while I was in the bathroom I'd re-read Brunson's advice on No-Limit Holdem. I didn't have to wait for the appendix, Doyle laid out pretty much my whole strategy within the first five pages. I felt vindicated. To paraphrase Doyle's philosophy, never bet without some kind of out, some kind of escape hatch. You may have a lot of money invested with the worst hand by being aggressive, but sometimes you get the card you need. When you add that to the times your opponent folds because your bet intimidates him, it makes the times when your cards don't come well worth it.

One additional thought on the last item discussed below. My chances of getting him to fold wih two pair were so slim anyway that might ought to have tried making a little speech. I think something akin to scoffing at him fr considering a fold had the highest chance of success (maybe 5 or 10 percent). I might have said, "You have two pair? You have to call." Showing my disappointment just enough to make him think it was an act might be enough to convince him I really wanted him to call because I had him beaten. Still, like I said, very small chance.

If you haven't read the August 19th post please read it before the August 20th post.

Having thought so much about the game last Saturday night, and wanting to get some discussion going here again, I wanted to talk about a couple more hands, one of which I won and one I lost. Together I hope they will represent a deeper discussion of a concept I talked about a couple posts ago, the value bet bluff. I found another interesting way to use the value bet bluff as a sort of stop-loss on the river with a sub-premium hand. Two different times I held a hand that might win in a showdown if my value bet was called, but would certainly have to fold to a substantial bet, and certainly fold to a raise of my initial bet. It’s a situation that comes up more often if I’ve been semi-bluffing with that same category of hands all the way through so that I’m controlling the action. The value bet bluff on the end not only might win the pot from a slightly better hand that is folded, but it might also keep a slightly worse hand from making a bet that I can’t call. I was thinking much more clearly in the first hand and the value bet bluff won me a substantial pot. In the second hand the value bet bluff was probably the wrong move, or rather the right move would have come on the turn, and by the river was too little, too late, except that it still fulfilled a slightly different mission. I might have foreseen that if it hadn’t been 4:30 in the morning.

The first hand was against an extremely experienced player who was capable of folding a decent hand if he thought he was beaten, and who was certainly capable of making a bluff at the pot that would push me into the muck. I held an ace and another card that made a straight and a flush draw from the flop. I bet aggressively throughout the hand, expecting to make something or else to force everyone else to fold. One player stuck around to the river, and to my horror it was just another blank. I didn’t have very long to consider my action, because any hesitation would be seen as a sign of weakness. I’d been betting the entire hand, after all, and the pot was sized at around one hundred fifty dollars. I thought of making a big bet at the pot, trying to buy it right there, but he was a player who could smell a rat in a big bet, and was capable of calling with a small pair if he thought I was weak. I thought of just letting the hand go, throwing no more good money after bad. He had called so far so I had reason to expect he had a hand that he would call whatever with. Still, I thought he was a little weak, and maybe on one of the same draws that I had been on, so I thought that just perhaps this was the wrong time to back down. The amount I bet had to be significant enough so that he would care whether he called or not, and it had to be small enough that I could lose it and shake it off, and also small enough that it was not an obvious attempt to “fire the last barrel,” so to speak. I decided on sixty dollars. I thought that two-fifths of the pot was enough to show him that I still thought I had a good hand, and also small enough that I should normally expect a call from the kind of hand he was likely to have, having called me all the way down and not raised. Also sixty dollars is made up of two green chips and two red chips. I hate to admit that I think this deeply about things like this, but the action of taking two green chips and two red chips from my stack and betting them seemed to be a very deliberate thing to do, while not being overly theatrical. I wanted to appear that I was betting the exact amount that I thought he would call, when what I was really doing was betting the exact amount to which I thought he would fold. He thought about it a moment and then folded.

The other hand in which I attempted largely the same thing happened much farther along in the night and I was probably not thinking altogether clearly. I held pocket eights and the board by the river contained three over-cards, the last one a queen. I had bet aggressively all the way through, and my opponent kept calling. The straddle was ten dollars, which got raised to thirty dollars, and three of us (by that point all of us) saw the flop. I bet out fifty on the flop and was called by one player, who was behind me in the action. This particular player admits to having a thing for calling me, hoping to beat me. I’m not sure why, other than that I’ve put some merciless beats on him with legitimate hands over the last couple years, and perhaps once I showed him a bluff that won me a large pot. Showing him put him on tilt like I thought it would, and I probably did it partly out of aggravation with the way he had been pushing the table around. Maybe it is my fault he’s always trying to beat me. It’s usually profitable, but not this particular time. The turn was another blank and then I made my big mistake. I think I was a little fuzzy-headed and hoping to make it out of this extremely high action game with my shirt. I’d just lost a huge pot a couple hands before that turned my seven hundred dollar stack into about five hundred. I bet fifty again, thinking, “I’ll just let him know I’m serious and he’ll probably get out. I doubt if he has anything anyway, and he’s just still in because this is the last hand” (it was supposed to be). He called again. The river was a queen and I still hadn’t improved. At this point my thinking changed a little. I still wasn’t convinced he had much of a hand, because he had acted weak all the way through, but I thought perhaps he had hit the second pair on the flop, a ten, and I decided to deploy the value bet bluff once again to try to take down the pot, again without losing my shirt, and it occurred to me that by continuing to bet it would keep him from betting hard into me and forcing me to fold, or rather betting just enough that I had to call, which I might have done for twice the size of my own bet. I bet fifty again, and he called. He’d hit the river queen. After consideration, which came after some sleep, I realized that my mistake had been trying to soft-play the hand just because it was close to the end of the night and I wanted to be assured a profit, while still being a little greedy for the pot. In betting fifty on the turn, I laid nearly four-to-one in just pot odds, and taking the implied odds into consideration (we both still had large stacks) he was correct to call to see the river with almost anything that he felt could draw out and beat me. As it turned out he had a straight draw and over cards, and was almost certainly correct to call. If I had bet one hundred on the turn his odds would have been decreased dramatically and he probably would have folded, and if he hadn’t I’d have still lost no more money. If I’d simply given up after he called my flop bet I’d have lost one hundred less. I think it shows what muddled thinking can do for you at the table. I still defend the river value bet bluff of fifty though. It was probably enough to prevent a stab at the pot if he hadn’t hit, and in fact it prevented a larger bet or a raise when he did hit.

One more brief note about the session which exposed a possible path toward improvement. I held AJ off-suit on the button and flopped a jack. The first position player (the super-aggressive one) bet one hundred, and the second player hesitantly called. It was folded around to me and I decided it was time for a big play. I had the first player slightly out-stacked (though more slightly than I realized). I moved all in for about one hundred sixty more. He’d flopped two pair, but nearly folded his hand thinking I’d made a better two pair or a set. Calling one hundred fifty with three hundred fifty in the pot with two pair on the flop seems like a no-brainer to me, but he seemed concerned. While I was mulling over my disappointment and waiting for his obvious call, I was also wondering what kind of show I might be able to put on to convince him I really did have the better hand. I’m not sure Marlon Brando could have pulled that one off, but he seemed to be a willing audience if I’d had the ability. I’ll have to think that over.

I know it’s been a while since I posted any updates here, but I finally had something happen to me that I thought was memorable. Over the weekend I participated in a very wild game. The table kept from seven to nine players almost the whole night. A new player from Lexington was behaving very aggressively, which I found irksome since I’d more or less been table captain up until the time that he arrived, but a couple of bad beats, both of me and of some other players who helped chip up my competition, more or less pushed me to the sideline of the action on most of the hands. I had to tighten up considerably after the flop, and that isn’t particularly in line with my new style. Lately I’ve loosened up my post flop game to pick up a few extra pots and also to help cultivate an action image, which is helpful if you frequently go twenty minutes between playing hands. I like to push other players around, and these guys just weren’t being pushed. I just mention that to set the stage, and it really has not much to do with the story except for the new player’s aggression. A particular hand came up where I was in next-to-last position with AK offsuit. I don’t remember how the action developed pre-flop, but four players went to the flop with nearly three hundred dollars in the pot. I still had three hundred or so, and as I said I’d been getting my head knocked around by the aggressive player on my left all night, so I wasn’t betting if I didn’t hit. After all, what does a three hundred dollar pot cost to buy? Betting a lot in that position might just be asking for a raise from the two players in front of me. I hit nothing on the flop and it was checked around, and the turn was checked around as well. I’d more or less given up the pot, because I was sure if I bet here I’d get a slow-player. When the two in front of me checked on the river, I nearly bet my ace high, but decided to check instead. If their hands were really that bad I might even take it down without a contest. Betting on the river with a hand that might just win at a showdown but certainly can’t stand a raise seems unduly risky in my mind anyway. After I checked the aggressive player to my left bet all-in for his last eighty dollars. The players in front of me folded after some hesitation by the player on my immediate right. While this was transpiring a few things occurred to me. First of all, in my decision making process to check and not to be on the river, I thought I might just win with AK, because it had caused me to think of what the player to my left might be holding that he would call or bet into the pot pre-flop and then check all the way down. I thought two over-cards was his likely hand. The flop had mostly been small cards, with a jack being the highest. The river had been another small card, I think a four. I put him on either AK as I had, AQ, my hopeful choice obviously, or else the four made him trips on the river or a straight. I didn’t think my AK was the likely winner, but with the pot odds being so high and my own stack still being plentiful if I called and lost I decided to call with AK. While I was making my decision, I had looked over at Anthony (I had been taking a little while making up my mind) and said, “Man, I don’t have a pair.” He said, “Well, I guess you’ve got a difficult decision then.” I agreed, and finally called. When I did, the other player said, “You got me, all I have is ace king.” He thought I’d told Anthony that I had a pair. I showed him my ace king. I never wished anyone had foolishly mucked their cards so much. After he saw what I called him down with he declared it the stupidest call ever. How could I call eighty dollars with no pair? He finally told me he thought it was a brilliant call, but I’m not sure he was serious. In my mind though, I was foolish to consider folding. If my read is right in that situation one out of three times I’m making money, not to mention that calling someone with that kind of hand doesn’t encourage people to try to buy pots from you, and that also fits well with my style, since when I don’t have what I think is the best hand or at least proper odds to find out, I have no problem letting them go.

It’s been a while since I’ve written an update here, since my play has been limited exclusively to playing for futures and micro stakes cash games and tournaments, plus about fifty dollars worth of online play. It just seems like it’s tough to get a good game together without a week after week presence and a large tournament to draw people in. I’ve been doing well at the games I have been playing, whether through good play or excellent luck I’ll leave that for any potential commenters to decide. It’s just that for one reason or another I’ve chosen not to share any observations I might have made. Fortunately I finally found one that I will share.

There is a long held belief in no-limit holdem tournament play that it jinxes a player to refuse to negotiate a deal when it gets down to the last two or three people, especially when, as in the case I’ll describe here, it’s a winner-take-all tournament, where in the absence of a deal one player gets all the money. I’ve never believed in jinxes, but one player did indeed cost himself in a small stakes tournament I participated in Saturday night by refusing to make a deal. As these stories usually go, the player who would not make a deal was the next out, and the remaining players (myself and one other) split up the money. His reason for not making a deal was that he was too tired to play another tournament anyway, so he might as well finish the one he was in all the way to the end. I found that to be honorable enough, but I could tell by his indecision on the matter that he also really wanted to take down the whole pot, and was very interested in the way the tournament might play out. He had a pretty good stack of chips, about three quarters as many as I did, enough that the blinds weren’t starting to hurt yet at any rate. The deal I proposed was justly weighted in my direction with me taking sixty dollars of the one hundred forty dollar pot leaving the other eighty for him and the third player to divide however they saw fit. Considering that I had him out-stacked about four to three and the other player about three to one, it seemed pretty reasonable. On the next few hands I took a few chips from him. The critical moment came when I held A5 of spades and opened for two big blinds. He called. The flop was KJx, maybe a 7 or an 8. I can’t remember. I bluffed at the pot, and after a split second of hesitation he called. At this point I put him on a jack, and I knew he’d be difficult to force out of the pot. The turn was another K though. He checked it to me. After seeing the second K fall I thought, “I believe I can sell him that I just tripped up, so what is my best bluffing strategy?” I bet about half the pot, which was about what I thought he might think I was betting my three kings to stop a draw at a flush. Unfortunately, he called again. I knew the only way that I could win was to get him out on the river. I was convinced he had a jack in his hand, and was going to call me again if I bluffed again. The river was a blank, not making the possible flush. After he checked, I thought about it a moment, and realized that with the chips he had remaining he would still have a chance to win the tournament if he folded now. Of course if he had to call for all his chips he would be out and on his way home. After a moment’s thought about his demeanor and the fact that he REALLY wanted to win the tournament, I decided to fire the last barrel. I bet all-in. He thought about it for a while, but I knew that he couldn’t call what should have looked like trip kings with nothing but a jack. I knew from the way he refused to make a deal that he really wanted to win, and that he felt that he was confident that he could win. He finally folded. The decision to make the big bluff on the river is one that I rarely make. There’s just so little chance of success after being called all the way down. Had I been in his position I might have called, because after all, there’s always another tournament if I lose, but he was going home after this one was over, and I just didn’t think he was ready to quit yet.

I felt bad about showing him the bluff after he folded, but it was just a few hands later that he got all his chips in against a legitimate hand and that was that.

I haven't enjoyed any particular success or failure at the poker table lately. I did have a moment worht mentioning not too long ago, however. It was a comedy of errors where I emerged victorious through a series of mistakes of my own and of the other players. It was a game of No-Limit Holdem, 2-5. I'd played for a little over an hour and had lost sixteen dollars of my initial buy-in of one hundred (admittedly a very small buy-in at this level, but I was just looking for a little quicklightning to strike before I had to be home. I planned on heading home after one more hand, escaping just before the big blind naturally. I'd already announced ro the table that it was my last hand. The hand I was dealt was A9 suited. Four players saw the flop, 9Kx rainbow. I was in second position after the flop and bet twenty-five. I was called by two other players, and the big blind folded. The turn was another rag and I bet another twenty-five, which was obviously foolish, because it wasn't enough in relation to the pot to scare anyone off if they had any kind of a hand, but I figured there weren't any draws so it might work. The same two players called again and I knew I was in trouble. I figured someone had to have a king. The river was more trash, with still no flushes and no likely straights, though of course it was possible. I checked, expecting to take my last twenty-nine dollars and head home with my tal between my legs. The player to my left, who I'd developed a fairly decent read on in only two sessions of play, bet fifty. The player behind him began to visibly debate calling. As he was thinking I realized that the way I read it there was a decent chance that the bettor was attemtping to buy the pot. My specific hope was that he had a nine with a small kicker. I didn;t believe it likely but I was definitely getting pot odds for the call if the other player folded his hand. After some debate he finally did fold, and I called all-in with my twenty-nine. I showed my pair of 9s and my opponent showed down a pair of 7s. If he hadn't bet fifty, which was a mistake since I had pot odds to call with many hands that would beat him since I was short-stacked, the second player would not have folded. It turned out the other player had two small pair and was extremely upset that he hadn't called. Because it was my last hand and because it was a huge reversal of fortune for me, I lost my composure and actually talked a little trash. I pointed out that he should have known the other bettor was bluffing, and I told him I knew it right when he made the bet and I'd just been sitting there the whole time praying for him to fold. I got my comeuppance later on when I lost my profit plus a little in an incident unrelated to poker.

We play some interesting dealer’s choice games, but the one that’s getting the most action lately is five-card stud low. It’s a high action game because it’s so often to correct by pot odds to call when you’re behind. This can produce some dramatic results in a table stakes game. As plain as the game sounds, and as closely related to regular razz as it is, you’d not expect it to be quite so volatile. What makes it volatile is that it’s almost impossible to feel comfortable going into the river with an opponent who isn’t holding a pair. The reason for this should be obvious. Holding four cards it’s quite easy to make a pair yourself while your opponent does not. Of course played with more than two players it’s foolish to make big calls unless you really do have a premium hand, but head’s up you’re never more than 81.5% loser when you haven’t paired. That’s the equivalent of about eight outs in Holdem. Sure the pot has to offer you pretty good odds to call with worse than a four to one shot, but that’s the worst possible case scenario. By the way, the scenario in question, and it’s at least the worst I can think of, is A23K vs. A234. Of course the individual ranks don’t matter as much as how they relate to each other. Matched perfectly for three ranks, and then the king. In this scenario your opponent must draw an Ace, Deuce, Trey, or Four to pair while you must not catch a larger pair than he catches. Perhaps there are worse scenarios, but taking the general concept of having different cards to an extreme, I did the math for four overs (A234 vs. TJQK) and actually came out a little better, at over 19.6%. Of course we’re talking about hands that do not hold a pair. It’s possible to be much farther behind, but probably not with any kind of brain. Obviously AAAA is a 100% lock vs. 2222. The only way you’re taking worse than 18% is if you’re bluffing, and then you’re laying odds, not taking them. Of course, most bluffing is done early with a high card in the hole or after the last draw, so this article doesn’t really address that part of it.

Discovering the odds of a particular play with two cards to remain is much more difficult, at least for me since the only way I know to calculate odds is to find all possible outcomes and add the good ones together. But I can find the odds for being ahead after the fourth card is dealt. In a recent hand against a friend of mine in which he found my call to be foolish, I was about thirty percent to be ahead after the fourth card was dealt. Depending on how far ahead I was at that point, I was about seventy-five percent to stay ahead after the last card, about fifteen percent (allowing that I could have paired) to get ahead if I was still behind. So with approximations we can see that I was the victor about (30% X 75%) + (70% X 15%) of the time, which comes out to about 33%. Of course that leaves a large margin of error, since I don’t have the patience to figure it out exactly. At the time in question there was a pot of about $15 into which my opponent bet his last $22. The pot was seven dollars short of offering me the odds to call. Since he was all-in there were no implied odds, so mathematically it was an incorrect call.

So why did I call? Was it just a foolish mistake? There were a couple intangibles that I valued that caused me to call. Before I am shouted down and certain folks say I made this up after the fact, I want to say that these factors were the main things I was thinking about before I made the call, and I had no idea that the pot odds were even as close as they were. First of all, I was up, and not just up, but had been pushing my opponents mercilessly since the beginning of the game. I could tell that this particular opponent was starting to get a little uncomfortable with my constant aggression and that he was one or two bad beats away from full tilt. To put a bad beat on him that would felt him was likely to do the job. Because of my stack size the loss of the twenty-two dollars wasn’t such a big deal, but getting him into a place from which he couldn’t fight back was a big deal. I was right, got a little bit lucky, and he did go on tilt from that moment forward.

Here's the anatomy of a real bad night. This article is mostly to answer my wife's question, though not in the terms she asked it, of "Are you screwing around on me or are you just so addicted to poker you can't come home?"

I went to the game expecting to deal and arrived at ten o'clock. The other guy that deals was going to take care of things until then and then play on his tips. Unfortunately, there had been a low turnout and when I arrived there was a four way tournament going on that was only in its second blind level. Two players had already been eliminated but the other four had tightened up. I watched for a little while, but then started dealing just to pass the time until they were ready to play cash again. Finally about 11:15 they chopped the tournament up three ways, and I got a chance to make a few dollars in tips. The other dealer was among the players. He went broke at around 11:45 and I felt bad about taking his action, and had amassed about thirty-four dollars. I let him deal and started playing, taking twenty out of my wallet. I didn't want to take it out but thirty-four was not enough for this game.

I won a few and lost a few but at 12:30 when I thought of going home I thought how disapoointed my wife would be with my earnings. I was up about ten dollars at the time, counting what I'd made dealing, and didn't want to hear the standard, "It just isn't worth it." I decided to play a little longer. Along about 1:30 I was up about eighty dollars and feeling much better about things, but then got second bested on two hands very close together and suddenly I was broke. I'd been planning on playing before class on Thursday, so it was very tempting to get back in this game for that money now, if someone would extend it to me until Friday. I hated to ask someone for a loan they might not collect on until three days later, but after a few minutes of watching, the words just spilled out of my mouth almost by themselves, much like when finally working up the nerve to approach a crush in high school. I knew that the problem I faced was that the guys I could count on to come across were almost as broke as I was, and the other guy was the one player who was determined to be my nemesis, trying to outplay me every pot, primarily by having me out-bankrolled. I'd asked for a hundred but he came back with "Would fifty do you any good?" Immediately I saw that with fifty it would be back to the same old getting pushed around, and that was probably his plan, but I countered with, "Sixty might," and he three me two green chips and two red chips. I figured I'd get an extra couple rounds of biding my time with sixty.

I finally started catching cards and was feeling pretty good about going home up eighty or ninety at 2:15 in the morning. Finally I got my chance to break my nemesis's, or at this point my creditor's, aggressiveness. I caught pocket eights, and called a straddle and then a raise from the straddle. The raise from the straddle was his favorite move, especially with the continuation bet on the flop. The flop was 299. I'm a little fuzzy on the exact order of things here, but I believe I bet out fifteen, and then he raised fifty. "Here we go again," I thought, and debated just folding right there, even though I knew he might be, even probably was, bluffing. "He might have an overpair," I thought. A nine was unlikely, but a pair of tens or up had me killed. I knew that he would represent a monster by putting me all in on the turn if I did call, so instead of doing that, I decided that I would raise all-in, which was an additional fifty-one, and represent trips for myself. I might get him off at least half the hands that had me beaten, and if he was just bluffing it might make him think twice about it the next time. Sure enough, he folded.

At this point I was up a lot, and really wanted to just jump up and head out, but I felt guilty that I'd come back in on a loan and then proceeded to win close to two hundred dollars very quickly, and I knew I'd just stir this guy up even more the next time we played if I did that. I figured why not play a little while. There was still a calling station with a healthy stack throwing chips around so I figured to improve. Instead, the calling station managed to outdraw my nemesis, and finally nearly felted him. He politely asked for his sixty back. "Good," I thought, "I can just slip this checkbook back into my pocket." I still had about two hundred dollars at this point. When the calling station went broke on a nearly undending series of calls at about 2:45, I thought, "This is it. I have an out. This game is over." Then he slapped leather for another go, and his money was there for the taking. I decided to stay just a little longer.

Unfortunately it was my turn to get bad cards and play them loosely. I was way up so I thought to catch a few more hands I could use to trap Mr. Agressive or Mr. Any Flop Is A Good Flop. This strategy proved disastrous as I chipped away about one hudred sixty dollars over the next hour to hands that hit just enough to get me hurt. It finally came down to Mr. Agressive raising his straddle by ten and me re-rasing to twenty-five and all-in with ATo hoping to catch him in one of what had to be a large number of bluffs. He called me with 66. A 6 came on the door and it was over by the turn with me drawing dead.

Like I said, I lost the twenty dollars I grudgingly drug out of my wallet, but more imprtantly I got home at 4:30, at which point I had to make sure the kids had clean clothes for school. It was after five when I crawled into the bed, and shortly after seven when my wife firt got awake enough to tell me how extremely pissed she was at me for coming in so late. In other words, it was a real bad night.

Rather than discussing another hand where I lost, let me show you where I made a mistake and did not maximize my profit on a superior hand. This occurred on Tuesday night, and against a guy who had loaned me enough money to get back in the game when I'd been busted out, so maybe it's better that I didn't maximize from a spiritual standpoint.

It's late and I've been down and finally started to make a comeback. I was catching the deck. I'd had AA and AKs in the last four hands when I looked down to AKo in the big blind. I thought I was under the gun and reached for chips, and then realized it wasn't my turn. I played it off like I was just preventing a raise with a marginal hand with my misplay, as if it were just a ruse and actually just checked to the flop. The flop was QJT rainbow. The small blind bet out six, and I just hesitatingly called, hoping for callers after me, and hoping to let the small blind think he was in command of the hand. The turn made two of a suit, and the small blind bet another six. I wasn't worried since I didn't put him on a flush draw since he bet out on the turn, so I called again. The river was a blank give me the nuts, and the small blind bet again. Earlier in the game I'd changed a green chip saying they were bad luck for me since every time I'd had one previously in the night I'd lost. When this situation came up I had a green chip I'd won in a previous pot, so I threw in the six and the green chip, making a little speech about how they were bad luck for me, so I might as well throw it in. I was raising twenty-five into a thirty-four dollar pot. I should leave the speech-making to Anthony. Rather than indicating the nonchalance about the amount that I bet that I hoped it would, I think my speech communicated my cheerfullness, and to my opponent cheerfulness was probably coming from the strength of my hand. My opponent folded his top pair. With the nuts in this position the minimum raise should have been a no-brainer. Let him re-raise me if he has a strong hand, and let him pay me off if he only has a medium hand. Any hand that he can call a twenty-fiove dollar raise with he has a fair chance of raising a six dollar re-raise with, and if he doesn't have a hand that good, he might still pay me off for six more dollars. I got greedy, and it probably cost me that last bet. Analyzed more deeply, a twelve dollar raise might have been optimum, so as to disguise the value bet but still offer him 4 to 1 odds while making him think I was trying to force him out.

By the way, the post below is also new, so don't ignore it if you've been here recently.

First of all, I want to apologize about last week's post. There were so many typos and it wasn't until today that I figured out why. Apparently there's some kind of conflict between Firefox text boxes and Windows Vista. Some of the characters I type just don't appear and sometimes they appear out of order. I thought I was going crazy but then I really got to watching and it isn't just sloppy typing.

Staying with the losing hand posts, here's one from tournament play. It's not so much a hand analysis as it is just a small scenario. I had 4500 in chips, never having had more than five thousand. Through auspicious folding and timely betting, I'd managed to hang around all the way up to 500 and 1000 dollar blinds, and survived one round. I was looking hard for another good Degree All-In Moment, but got 72 on the big blind, leaving me with 3500. I posted the small blind and then looked down at A8 offsuit. It was the best thing I had seen in several hands and I decided the small blind was a good place to go. The action made it all the way around to the chip leader who was right in front of me. He bet 5000 puttinng me all in if I chose to call. This is where I made a logical error. Somewhat earlier the big blind had been short-stacked, almost as severely as I was. Through a couple steals and a winning hand she'd gotten quite a few chips in comparison, about fifteen to twenty thousand. With my own short stack and the short stack I had it in my mind my opponent had behind me, his 3500 raise was likely just to push us around a little and steal the blinds if we didn't have premium hands. I called with my A8. When the big blind folded behind me I looked and saw her fairly large stack, I realized he probably had a legitimate hand to bet five thousand into her when she was in the big blind. I also failed to realize that there were still people playing poker at this blind level. With my own measley stack I was down to so few options it wasn't really poker, but for him 5000 was just a good opener. Sure enough, he turned over pocket nines. Five quick cards later and I'm out of the tournament in 8th place and, as it turns out, just out of the money since they all took a hundred off the top before I'd made it past the end of the table. Oh well, I'd have had to double up at least once to even think of suggesting a deal. In hindsight I pulled the trigger too quick. The gap concept seems to dictate an all-in bet with A8 offsuit in that situation, but the call was careless when I had at least nine more hands to hit something legitimate. There were two other things that caused me to call. The first thing is that with all that folding around almost to me, I'd had time to fall in love with my hand. I knew I was going to push as soon as it got to me and take my chances. When I got bet into I was already ready to leave the tournament with that hand. The other thing was that the player betting into me is a pretty pretty good player, and I knew for a fact that he was aware of the gap concept and would have expected me to fold anything but a very good hand to his bet, and he wouldn't expect a call with a middling ace. With that in mind I thought it was possible I might be ahead.

For The Greek, I'm glad to have you visit. I wasn't offended by anything you said in your comment, except maybe the snide bit about the rare occasion. I was under the impression that The Greek was Anthony, but maybe I was wrong. There are reasons why the losing hands are not as detailed, though I really hope the above hand satisfies you a little more. A losing hand often means a drop in my level of concentration and when I really screw up I'm often a deer in the headlights, and don't have a clue how I could have been so foolish. That really doesn't happen that often though. Most of the time when I lose money it's the simple things. Calling a raise pre-flop with a hand that I shouldn't have and not hitting. Calling the blinds with a hand I shouldn't have and hitting just enough to hurt me. Getting second-bested sometimes happens. Being outdrawn sometimes happens. I have a sense of pride in my ability to lay down a hand if I'm not getting the situational odds I need to call. That being the case, sometimes I'll call when I know I'm behind because the money makes it worth it, but I really don't get suckered in too often. The hand you mentioned was an exception since I'd have been better to fold but didn't and lost my stack, and the reasons for it were many. I was tired and not playing my A game. Our respective table images would indicate he was likely to bluff and I was likely to fold a sub-premium hand. Also I really just wanted that money. I hope all this explains why there aren't as many detailed losing hands. The hands I lose on aren't that interesting, and a lot of the time that they are I'm not even sure what happened after it's over since I've folded and my opponent has mucked. Where possible though I'll do my best to add more detail to the losers.

People say I never write about hands that I lose. Maybe that's because it's usually kinda of a letdown when superior play does not win out in the end. I'm mostly just kidding of course. I do get outplayed fairly often, but I like to keep the amounts small. Being pushed out of a small win by someone's auspicious bet always stings, but being drawn into a real train wreck thankfully doesn't happen too often. Since I lost what would have been a big pot to a possible outplay last week, I feel compelled to mention it, besides, I did tell the guy it was going in the blog.

I was significantly up in the Tuesday night game. Someone else wanted to deal so I decided to play a little while and see how things went. Daylan was to my left, and even though he was down some, he still had a fairly large stack as he was starting to make a comeback. He had $157. I had around four hundred. I get J8 diamonds, and being up I was being a little loose. I was in the small blind, and when Daylan raised five and got a couple callers around the table, I threw my five in too. The flop comes QT9. I've flopped a straight. Being first to act, I checked my straight, which is something I second guessed almost immediately because all three cards were clubs. I would have wanted to put in a significant raise to make letting opponents draw out a fourth club worth. When Daylan bet ten behind me I assumed he was making a bluff because of the three clubs on the board, possibly a semi-bluff if he did have a high club. After all, he had raised pre-flop. The others players folded around to me, so I raised twenty-five to get more value if if he was drawing or to force him out if it was a complete bluff. In my mind I was representing a made flush. He paused for just a second, and then went all-in. Obviously he was representing a flush. I started to call, just to see if was bluffing at me, thinking he had about seventy or eighty dollars left. I asked for a count. He had one hundred fifteen dollars left. It was just too much. I was considering call 115 to try to in a little less than 190 and there lots and lots of hands that could beat me. I just didn't think Daylan could bluff for that amount of money knowing that I had a pretty good hand, or at least having been given every reason to think I had a pretty good hand. I asked him if he would show me if I folded. He said that he would. Some might call just for that reason, but I knew my curiosity would be satisfied, and I really expected my fold to be vindicated. I threw away my straight. Daylan flips over two aces, neither of which was a club. Needless to say, I was still going over it in my mind many hands later. I've finally concluded that Daylan thought I was semi-bluff check-raising, which is an odd thing to put a man on, and he wanted to eliminate my draw to beat what he thought was his superior hand. Still, you never know, he might have put me on the better hand and just decided his aces would stand up, even if they had to stand up and go home. If that's the case, it was a brilliant play, and one that cost me.

Altogether last week I won $634, but in Thursday, the last day I played, I dealt with considerable disappointment. I played in the early game and through stealing some early pots and then getting some terrifically bad calls from one particular callign station, I was up exactly $260 for the night. Class let out early, so I was able to make it back for the late session. Almost immediately my cards did not look so good. I began chipping off quickly, even re-buying once, but then finally hit a big hand and got up about one hundred twenty on the session. At that point I'd made over 1100 for the week. Unfortunately it was all down hill from there. I chipped away some more not hitting flops with decent hands, or worse yet, hitting flops with second rate hands. On a couple occasions I made huge calls with big hands after the blind was straddled and multiple players went all-in and I didn;t hit anything. The last hand of the night for me was pocket kings. I called all-in. An ace fell on the flop, and there was a big bet, after which everyone folded. I said, "Well, I guess I need to see a king, if you got an ace." He turned over J9, for which he'd risked fifty dollars before the flop. The flop had contained a 9 and the turn was a 9, so I went away. Oh well, they were suited.

I've made two great plays in the last two weeks. They were both moves that I'm glad to have in my arsenal but are what I would consider special plays. I used to get a lot of mileage out of the first one, the check-raise bluff, but its usefulness has been limited by the high-action games that I've been involved with lately. The second, the value bet bluff has never been anything but a specialist play for me, only useful in extremely specific circumstances, but I happened to find one of those circumstances on Saturday night.

The check-raise bluff at High on Main is almost an insane play. Most any player in attendance will protect his raise with an automatic call. I was able to take one of those action players out of the action with it. There were a few factors involved. First, it helps to have a reputation as a tight player, at least in that particular venue. That reputation hurts a legitimate tight player because he doesn't get a lot of action on his legitimate hands when he finally makes his moves. The reason that I play so tightly there is that my bankroll is more limited than most of the players I play with. They can make big wins by not being afraid of some really terrible losses, losses that might make me quit poker for good if I had to bear them. I play carefully, trying to get what bankroll I have in on premium hands, hoping to make big scoops once an hour or so. On this hand I was dealt 87 suited in the small blind. The flop came 853. Being in first position, I checked the flop prepared to let the hand go unless some special circumstances go. After all I'd missed completely on my straight and flush draws and though I had top pair, it was weak top pair and from first position I would find it difficult to capitalize. The action checked around to a fairly decent player who plays extremely aggressively. He bet twelve, into about a twelve dollar pot. There were two more players between us, and at some point while these two were deciding they were going to muck, a plan entered my mind. If they both mucked, I would raise an amount that I thought would be called. I chose to fill in to twenty-five, making a check raise in hopes that he would fold a weak hand. That got his attention in a way that it might not have if made from another player, or if made to some of the other players at the table. He thought about it but then called. The flop was a 9 and I immediately bet thirty dollars. He thought about calling but elected to fold, voicing his thought process about the check raise that had been put on him, and about my reputation for playing tightly. I think he put me on 89 possibly, so the 9 could have helped a lot more than I realized. I showed him my 8 and he winced and said he thought he had me out-kicked. I told him he probably did.

The value bet bluff came in a hand of five stud low. That particular game probably presents an opportunity to do that more than any other. In this game I was ahead all the way, with my opponent dominated, though he couldn't know that from the boars we were both showing, and he hung around all the way to the river, calling increasing bests so that around one hundred thirty dollars were in the pot when we received our last cards. My opponent received a king, and I received a five, pairing my hole card. He looked pretty disappointed to see the king and checked it. I considered for a couple seconds. I knew I couldn't possibly just forfeit the hand by just checking, because I was sure the king had not paired him. On the other hand, I didn't want to bet so much that he perceived I wanted him to fold. I managed to come down to twenty dollars. I think it was enough that he would think that I thought he might call it in hopes that I had paired. He thought about it a long time. I was wondering to myself how deeply he would read me, and what kind of act I was best to put on. Obviously I shouldn't care too much what he did if I knew I had the lock, but on the other hand I didn't want to act too much like I was begging for a call because after all it was just a little more gravy for me. I decided perfect calm and a healthy interest in his own play would be just the right method. Apparently it was. He decided not to throw good money after bad. I debated whether to show, but he seemed to want to know, so I showed him. His tilt got a little worse I think.

I tried a temporary return to drinking while playing poker on Saturday night. The game came at me unawares, and I’d already decided it was a great night for tying one on, as I’d had a miserable day. The only poker that had been mentioned were a few mini-tournaments that the wives and girlfriends were welcome in, so being drunk shouldn’t have been too big a deal. As a surprise to me, all the women folks left to go watch a wedding video and grab more supplies, so I was left in a three-handed game with Aaron and Anthony until they returned, and my buzz was coming on fast. It worked out okay though as I took a quick lead and built on it, only starting to fizzle a little right before the game turned coed.

A couple hands stood out, one during the cash game and one later in the tournaments. Actually in the tournaments it was a two-hand combo.

In the cash game, we were playing a bit of five-card stud low. As always we play every game except 7-27 for table stakes, and I had about a one-ten, Anthony about seventy-five, and Aaron around fifty-five. I drew a 5 down and an 8 up. Anthony was showing a Ten, and Aaron had a 9. I bet six, Anthony called, and then Aaron raised ten dollars. I was a little drunk by this point in the game, but it suddenly occurred to me that I was a favorite to win and should bet all-in, especially since it would likely push Anthony out, and might just win right there. Anthony thought about it for longer than I was comfortable with, but then decided to fold. Aaron thought about it for a long while, and even though I was drunk I knew that I wanted him to fold. I also realized that with a pot effectively containing the amount of his call, around 40 to 45, plus an extra 41, he was getting about two to one on his money. He also had to consider the possibility that I might just be bluffing, and have a face card in the hole. He would be a fool to fold! I debated the wisdom of placing fifty dollars at stake on what would almost certainly be a near coin-flip, and realized that five card stud low for no limit is a tough game. I think I ade the right decision in doing so, since I was calling and raising a total of 51 with the potential to win 72, only 7 of which started out as mine. The effective money odds for the whole hand were 65 to 58, and the playing odds had to be in my favor, since no hand he held was better than mine when the bets were made. Finally he did call, making the right decision, but, fortunately for me, paired on fourth-street, granting me a commanding chip lead.

The other interesting little scenario played out during the tournament, after I’d been drinking a bit more. The game was No-Limit Holdem and I drew an AQ. I made the announcement, being drunk and knowing my near-lie might pass for truth, that I held the “Doyle Brunson,” and called a bet larger than anyone should with a Ten-2. The AQ off-suit is supposedly referred to among Doyle’s friends as the Doyle Brunson because he refuses to play it. This predates the Ten-2 having that nickname, which became the Doyle Brunson in the late 70’s when he won back to back main events holding that hand. The flop contained an ace, and I took down fair change after forcing a fold from Mona after the turn. The very next hand I got a Ten-2. I was privately amused, and called the flop for the hell of it, since winning with both in back to back hands might make an interesting story. Sure enough, the flop came T-2-9. When I saw the flop I snickered, and Anthony picked up on it. He asked if I was laughing at him, since he bumbled some chips or something. The drunk me stated, “Ah, no, it was something else. I’ll tell you after the hand.” The turn contained trash and was met with more betting and calling. I was puzzled by what Anthony might have, but I was keeping it light, sine there were no flush possibilities. I put him on AT, or maybe an AK bluff. I should have assumed a medium pair, but the possibility was concealed by the alcohol, I guess. The river was a two and I doubled my bet in the previous round now holding the full house and expecting to complete my little yarn about the back-to-back Doyles. Anthony pushed. I had a full house. This was great. Except after I called, he showed me the two nines he’d been holding, being ahead of me all the way. He said after my little snicker he was 99% sure I was holding the Ten-2 and was just waiting for the right time to strike. That second 2, giving him the bigger boat, sure worked out well for him.

I learned a valuable lesson Friday night, and a costly one. I am fascinated with tells and reads. There's a guy I've been playing with that's a fantastic reader of hands. I happened to be involved in a hand where I had QJ, and faced a middling raise pre-flop from a guy who is notorious for his tells. There were other callers so I called. The flop came Qxx. The bettor came out with 10 in early position. There were no other callers, so I raised 25. He thinks about it a moment and re-raises 75. At this point, I am trying to get some kind of read on him. He has a couple well-defined tells when he has a big hand, and he wasn't showing them at all. I really wanted to fold. Everything in me told me he had one of three hands, AQ, KK, or AA. There was at that point $162 in the pot and he only had five left. What would amount to $80 to win $167, I only had to be better than 2-1, but if I lost it would mean my large stack would be crippled and my opponent would be established as dominant chip leader. It wasn't really even that close a call for someone who plays like I do. Retreat and fight another day. His tells never even showed a hint of being there though. It was amazing. I was lulled into calling by the fact that he never exhibited the slightest trace of them. He turned over AA. It seems that a good read isn't always very valuable when it makes you go against what you know you ought to do.

A few notes:

I placed in the money at High on Main the first time a couple weeks ago. It was during my vacation, so I entered the tournament in a very relaxed mood. I had already won about $140 before it began, so I was bankrolled to re-buy if I chose. I ended up going out twice, the second time just three or four minutes before the break. I started to call it quits and sit down in the cash game for a bit, but I’d told a friend of mine that at ten or so I’d come by his house if I was done playing the poker tournament. I knew that if I sat to play cash that would be a tough promise to keep, so I cast thirty more dollars into playing the tournament. From there, I tripled up before the break, added on, and then it was smooth sailing all the way to the end, never really facing a challenge until I was tied for the chip lead with only two of us remaining. Bob C. and I made a nice deal and then played for the last 224 or so, but he eventually emerged victorious. For me, most of the final table was just stealing blinds when I could, and then playing stack and position to move up the ladder.

After the tournament I was up significantly, having come in with nothing and now with 600 and change in my pocket. I sat to play cash and managed to get up over 200, before I ran into a flopped boat. The flop was 722, and I had K7. I bet, got raised a lot by an aggressive player. We had played a large raise pre-flop, so I called. He had played 7-2, not off-suit at least.

That trend continued the next week, when despite doing poorly in the tournament I was up about sixty and decided to play a good seat in a crazy game for a while to see what would happen. I got up a little. I was just getting ready to leave and got AK suited. I raised 15 from the small blind, and got five callers. The flop was A-6-7. I bet fifty, half my stack, and got four callers. The turn was and 8 and I winced but put the last fifty in. There were two folds and then a raise of 200. The last player folded, and I asked the raiser if he’d made his straight. He showed me his 4-5 off-suit. I can’t blame the solid player who did it, because the insane action that the weak left side of the table was giving made both calls worth it to him. In hindsight maybe I ought to have bet 100, but with the stack the player in question had he likely would have made an incorrect call anyway, if the callers in front had folded.

I’ve noticed most of my profit in poker comes with big hands and not with hammering out a lead by stealing blinds and blowing people off hands, etc. Anthony tends to get much of his profit like that. Maybe I’m just too lazy for it, and maybe it’s a weakness. He once told me that I play my good hands very well but my mediocre hands could be played better. I’m sure he’s right about that, but to each his own. It isn’t as if I don’t ever try to eek out a little extra profit from position and pushing people around. I try to win as many pots as I can by default, it’s just that I don’t usually try too hard when I’m WAY behind. When I’m on a draw from early position, I semi-bluff, but when I’m on a draw from last position I take a free card. Sometimes I reverse it just t mix things up. Sometimes I even play hands in ways that are statistically a mess, just to try to work a new angle in and take down a big pot when someone reads me wrong. As an example, I limped with aces the other night, and then check-called. I got them killed by the turn and knew it and had to let them go, but I did it just to see if I could outplay a tough player on the end and take him down if the board had come differently. The same scenario occurred with a straight draw. I used to laugh at people with gut-shot draws, but when you KNOW another player has made a small straight and the price is right, it’s often correct to draw to a bigger one. I’ve tried to incorporate a few of those things into my style of play, and I think it’s worked out very well for me. I chip off a lot of chips but not too many, and when the cards start to come, I can take down monstrous pots. I suppose that has a lot to do with why I enjoy Omaha. Because there are so many ways to outdraw your opponent, and there is often dead money in there from players who are drawing to hands that will go from good draws to worthless when three high cards fall, it makes a good hand to poke around with til the river and see what happens. Of course hand awareness is very important when you’re poking around. Its important to know when you’re drawing dead and what you might win with even if you don’t hit. There have been lots of hands where my second option for money paid off while my confident winner was beaten.

This weekend one player to whom I had shown some of my hands remarked that his respect for me had increased a great deal by watching my play on that night. At the time I was down significantly, so I wasn’t sure what he meant. This particular player is known as a superior reader of hands, and he was starting to get pretty close to what I was holding. I started having second thought about showing him my hands. I mix it up as much as I can to throw him and others off, so I knew that in the past he had a hard time reading me. I think perhaps he thought the reason he couldn’t read me well was that my play was weak and random, so it was a double compliment that he was correcting himself. Of course, it was also scary, because that lets him figure my hands a little closer.

A hand came up the other evening where I held three kings in five card draw, and was bet all-in by Anthony. I called to discover that he already had a pat hand. I elected to draw two, throwing away a seven and four and drawing a deuce, and then another deuce to win. Naturally he was devastated by what he considered a fluke of good luck. A couple days afterward, Anthony said he had discussed it with Aaron and they agreed that statistically I had made the wrong move by drawing two instead of holding one. I couldn’t quite follow the logic involved in why they thought I should have held on to one card or the other, but I can show that statistically speaking, I made the right decision, not knowing what pat hand he held. I think their argument was based on the idea that taking the extra draw at the king wasn’t worth the risk that I would draw a seven or four and then have to match it or still get the king, because anecdotally speaking people don’t draw the quads that often. I can break it down mathematically, and hopefully my technical writing is good enough that everyone can follow along. I should stipulate that when trying to do this in my head I got utterly confused, and I could only work it out when I sat down with paper and a calculator.

When holding KKK74, and discarding the 4, there are four outs left in the deck to improve the hand. There are three sevens and one king. This gives the hand an 8.51% to improve on the draw (4/47).

When holding the same hand and discarding both the seven or the four, there is a 1/47 chance of drawing the last king on the first draw, or 2.13% chance. That 2.13% chance is the first piece of the possible positive outcomes.

There is a 12.77% chance, or six cards in 47, that the first draw will be a seven or a four. When this occurs, there are three cards left in the deck that will improve the hand on the second draw. There are the remaining two sevens or fours and the last king. Three in forty-six times 12.77% equals .83%. That .83% is the second piece of the positive outcome.

On the first draw there are forty cards that are not a seven and not a four and not a king, or 85.1%. When one draws one of these forty cards, which I did when I drew that first deuce, there are four cards remaining in the deck that will improve the hand on the second draw, the last king, and the other three of the rank drawn, in my case the three deuces. Four in 46 times 85.1% equals 7.40%. This is the last piece of the positive outcomes when drawing two.

Notice that all the positive outcomes are mutually exclusive, and they cover all the ways it is possible to improve the hand. We can therefore add them together to get the total chance to improve. It is 2.13% plus .83% plus 7.40% equals a total of 10.36% chance, which is an improvement of 1.85% over only drawing one. Of course this isn’t much, and I might even be accused of splitting hairs, but its actually more than twenty percent better than only drawing one (1.85/8.51). When facing a pat hand with a draw left, I want the best chance I can get.

I would like to note that a lot of the debate was over the decreased percentage of getting the boat when you threw both cards away because what if they matched one you already had!?! Was it worth it to get that extra ultra slim chance at the king? Well, with 2.13 % chance of drawing that long-shot king, and we see it makes me 1.85% better to try, it would seem logical that what we give up on the boat likelihood is the difference, about .28%, and THAT is pretty negligible.

The question remains, "What made me do it right at the time, when it was difficult to figure it out when pondering on it?" I guess I just looked at that extra shot at the quads. Four of a kind didn't seem so remote to ME when I already had three of them.

Disclaimer: There are certainly very good reasons for only drawing one when the situation is changed somewhat, for instance when you suspect the card you hold is not in the other person's hand, or when you wish to create the illusion that your hand is weaker than it actually is. This particular scenario occurred during a game of three draw, and I think I had already seen a seven. It didn't occur to me to hold the four because I had not seen one. I knew when I drew the first deuce that I had NOT seen a deuce before, so I was pretty happy about my chances at another one at that point. Also, facing a player who was all-in and with a pat hand, the only illusion I was worried about was the one in my own head right before I called that said my three kings were so good.

I’ve had a pretty good week at the poker table. I managed to make 306 dollars Thursday night, and then another 206 dollars on Saturday. Saturday’s win would have been better but for not coming in the money in any of four ten dollar tournaments before the cash game began. When it finally did begin, I managed to lose fifty dollars on the first hand. I can’t even remember how that hand went or even what cards I held or was beaten by. Perhaps what they say about how I remember the high points and forget the low points is a valid criticism. I bought in again and began rebuilding. I was facing only two opponents in Saturday night’s game, so I got the chance to see a lot of hands. We were playing dealer’s choice and my outs just kept hitting at Omaha so I established a large lead fairly early. As I told one of my opponents, it sure helps a lot when you get lucky. After a while we switched to playing only “crazy games” like Crazy 8, five card stud low, low in the hole, and Cincinnati. My luck didn’t run quite as well with these, but I was able to hold on to the majority of my chips to cash out far ahead. We even played two rounds of put and take, which isn’t really a poker game at all, but more just a complicated version of high card. I lost about twenty-five dollars on that. I think it was the first time I’d ever played it for one dollar, two dollar, four dollar, and eight dollar stakes.

I also managed to get a fair share of luck to produce Thursday’s large win. Though in general my cards were fairly poor, I managed to get in a pot for only two dollars when on the button with a T7 off-suit. There were already six callers behind me not counting the blinds, so I decided to take a chance, especially since the blinds were a little bit short stacked. Also the big blind was passive and the small blind seemed to be off his normally aggressive game. I guess I still feel like I have to justify calling the two dollars with that hand, but I did have a lot of reasons to call. In any case, the small blind called the dollar and the big blind checked. The flop came 689 rainbow. I was already thinking about how much money I could eek out of this unlikely flopped straight when the fairly solid player to the left of the BB bet out fifteen dollars. The extremely loose somewhat passive player to his left called, and then one other player at the far end of the table called. I decided a call was my best option at this point with my made hand. The small blind called behind me. The four of hearts made the turn making two hearts. The small blind checked into the bettor who obliged me with a twenty-five dollar bet. The loose player to his left called, the second caller opted to fold, and I hesitated over the amount I should raise. I wanted to trap the loose player into calling, but I didn’t want to lose all my chips when she hit her heart flush on the river. The contract with the devil she seems to have apparently stipulates that should happen a certain number of times per night. I decided on a twenty-five dollar raise, because that should price her in while not hurting too bad if the river makes her jump in her seat when it’s a heart. The small blind folds, and the bettor and the loose player both call. The river is a second nine, and not a heart, so I am immediately worried that the bettor might have filled up, but he checks into me, as does the loose player behind him. I bet fifty, and the bettor calls and the other player folds. I’m almost disappointed that he can call because if this solid player calls it seems to me it’s likely I’m beaten, but he shows me a pocket pair of aces. I’m a little dumbfounded, but more than happy to take the pot. His play indicated a pair of aces after I looked back on it, except for the smooth call under the gun with the aces. This was a fairly loose table, and he was likely to get some action with a bet large enough to force out the unlikely hands. As the player to my left commented, if he’d only raised ten dollars, he’d have won the pot. I corrected him. If he had only raised two dollars he certainly would not have lost the pot to me. My ten and seven would have been early in the muck.

The other hand that I made a fairly large amount of money on started out as a pocket pair of fours. My cards had turned ugly, and I was starting to get that feeling that I wasn’t going to get to play anymore. I hadn’t started keeping track of the time yet, but I would soon enough. I looked at a four, which isn’t a card one wants to see when he receives his first card in hold’em, because there are only three cards left in the deck that will justify seeing the flop, and then only for cheap. Lucky for me it was another of the fours, so I called the two blind. I might have even called a five dollar straddle, but I can’t remember for sure. I feel like the implied odds one gets when he flops a set in no-limit make the small pairs worth playing. That’s exactly what happened to me. The flop contained another four and a couple of large cards. I can’t remember how the betting went, but I was fairly aggressive, a little afraid of the straight draws, and then after the turn when a flush was possible, I decided I’d better do something to get all the draws out. I still faced two players in poor position, so I bet out fifty against them. The first player folded, but the second player called, announcing he only had fifteen of it. I immediately felt that I had overbet. Anything that would have kept the first player in for his draw would have been a better bet, because I knew I was going to have to survive the river one way or the other. With my caller being so short-stacked there was no way he wasn’t getting pot odds to call, and he could still take away everything in the middle, which was a pretty good little pot. The river was a blank and I won, but I think I would have won if I’d given exactly those same odds to the first opponent, and had fifteen more dollars to show for it, maybe even twenty-five if I’d bet that instead. In fairness to me, my caller was the only player whose stack was concealed from me on the other side of the dealer.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Here's a little something I posted to the 2+2 forum, and I thought it would save time if I just copied and pasted it. It's essentially just a hand analysis, and a question at the end. I'd welcome any input here too.

1-2 NL with minimum buy-in 50, average buy in 100-150. Average stack is about 200, I have about 250.

I'm in Big Blind with 79o. Four limpers including SB, I check.

Flop is 793 rainbow. I bet 50, two callers, incl. SB, and both have me covered.

Turn is 8. I bet 50, and both callers call again. River is T, still no flushes, but 789T on the board. First caller bets 100. SB calls. I fold.

SB shows J5, bettor mucks.

This is the first hand I ever put $100 into and then folded. I think it's obvious that the SB sucked out in a big way and he had -EV for his first two calls. The question I have is this. Should I have bet all in on the turn when the 8 fell taking the chance someone already had TJ and would call, just to make sure these highly courageous guys would fold something like J5 or Tx?

Now I've speculated quite a bit as to what that other bettor had that he could throw in a hundred and then fold. My guess is he had either 78, or A9, or Tx, maybe T8. He's a pretty good player though. I think from his position, being a fairly good player, he'd have had a hard time calling 50 with a 78 and only 60 in the pot. Middle pair and a back-door straight draw doesn't seem like enough. That pretty much eliminates everything but T8 and A9. Even though he isn't bad, it's a loose table and I could see him calling the blinds with a T8 in early position. If I had raised all in on the turn, I think he would have folded with third pair and open-ended, but I'm not sure. When I add in the possibility I was betting into a pat hand, I have to think I made the correct play, even though it turned out to be a big loser for me. What do you think?

The 2+2 guys seem to think I overbet the flop too severely, but with the table I had, I was likely to get a call from almost any 9 with a J or better kicker. They think that betting 5X pot on the flop and then only .3125X the flop on the turn was a critical error, but as I said, not going all-in on the turn was the debatable play. I certainly can't check the turn, for fear of giving the free card. I bet for value, and what I wanted to invest. Should I have doubled my bet and made it a hundred to go? That would have been .625X pot. I think if J5 finds it necessary to call 50, he'll call 100 as well. If I had it to do over, I'd have bet 100.

I did get to play in the Thursday night game last week. I almost wish that I had been banned. Not only did I manage to not win the tournament (or come in the money), but because my table was playing so loosely, I felt compelled to buy in a second time after my AQ suited flopped a queen, and someone called with a flush draw and hit. That certainly was not the worst of the night, however. I lost $60 before the tournament in the cash game, partly by failing to call when I should have, and partly by failing to fold when I should have against the same player. In the cash game afterwards, I sat down to find a lot of players who could play fairly well and who had deep pockets. They were giving a lot of loose calls, however, and it looked like it might be promising. There were two high quality players at the table, and one of them caught the deck for the first three hours, amassing a huge stack of chips and proceeded to play them pretty well. I helped out a lot in his stack building when we both flopped a set (mine were only twos, his were fives) and I lost about $180. Rough going for the casual no-limit player. After that I dropped into my super tight-aggressive game, hoping for good cards since I knew I would still get action from these call happy fools (they weren’t really playing foolish, as all their action more or less cancelled each other out). The cards just never came. At one point I took the opportunity to tell about the time I pulled the lever one hundred times on a slot machine without a single pay and described my run of cards as something akin to that. After all, I didn’t want them to think too much when I finally did raise. By 3 a.m. I was busted out when I went over top (about $60) with a pair of sixes with K88 on the flop, when the blind stealing player to my left bet $20 after limping pre-flop. He had an 8. What can you do? Altogether I was down $330 for the night, which was all but a hundred of what I’d won the weekend before. I was a little humiliated, and I say that in the strictest literal sense.

One notable event did occur that should have made me go home and lick my wounds when I was only about a hundred down. The loosest player at the table, the one who was keeping it a profitable situation for me, got mad at the dealer and left. He must have been on tilt pretty badly at that point, since he got hopelessly confused about how much money was to be in a side pot in a hand in which he didn’t win a piece, and then wanted to argue about it. The dealer wouldn’t hear it. I think in the dealer’s position I would have just apologized and let everyone else at the table think the offender foolish behind his back. In any case, the player left in a huff. I was actually going to switch to a different table right then, after having a good look around at who was left, but unluckily for me, the other table broke up at that very moment. If that dealer happens to be reading this, I hope he understand that I wasnt upset with him when I got up to go to the other table, I just felt like the guy who left might have been all that was giving me the best of it.

The next night was our comfortable little home game and I won $125. It was enough that I didn’t leave the weekend with a sour taste in my mouth. It would have been more but I made a terrible mistake in reading the board. I started with KQ suited and flopped a four-flush of diamonds. It had been a lot of hands since I had such a good draw. On the river the deuce of diamonds fell, and I’d made my near nut flush. I checked, was bet into $25, and then I raised $50. We both had much larger stacks than that but Anthony announced as he called that he figured unless I had 2-2 we were going to split anyway. You know that reaction you get sometimes when you try to lift something you didn’t know was heavy, or when you think you’re drinking Coke but it’s really Doctor Pepper? That was how I took those words. I had failed to see that the deuce didn’t just make a pair on the board; it made two pair. Anthony showed his five for the full, and with resignation, I announced that I just had the king-high flush. Reminds me of the guy who lost the back forty betting inside straight draws, and then lost the rest of the farm when he finally hit one.

I want to record the second memorable hand as promised, but first I want to tell about something I did tht made me feel terrible on Thursday night. It was completely innocent, but if anyone caught it, they probably now think that I am a terrible cheat. I was sitting directly to the right of a fairly good player who plays very tightly. I believe I was in the big blind and therefore the last to act. As soon as the cards were dealt, the player to my left raised all-in. He had been blinding down for hours and he had only thirty-three or four dollars left. This got everyone out of the hand all the way around the table. As soon as he had made the bet, two thing happened. First I decided that I was definitely folding my hand. It was one middle card and one low card that didn't reach and they weren't even suited. I'd have been foolish to call. The other thing that happened was thet the player to my left who had made the bet held his cards up edgewise in front of him, with the bottom against the edge of the table, staring at them while everyone else folded. Seeing that, and being very tired from hours of play and not really thinking properly, I leaned over a few inches to my left in an attempt to see if he really had a hand or if he was just stealing the blinds. I had forgotten that I was still in the hand! The dealer reminded me, "Brinton, are you out?" I was shocked and immediately felt terrible. I hadn't yet thrown in my hand. I immediately apologized and grabbed my cards and tossed them in. Hopefully if I go back this Thursday they won't meet me at the door and invite me to find some place else to play.

Now, on to the other interesting hand.

After the departure of a couple players who abhor the sight of any poker hand where they have to touch more than two cards, the rest of us decided to mix it up a little. One of the games we played was seven card stud. It's a weakness of mine, as I like to see fourth and fifth street too much to be healthy. I remember being much younger and thinking that any first three cards where one had two to a straight or two to a flush was worth a call, and this was when we were playing limit! Hell, I still almost play that way, I just can't get over it. In this particular hand, it started just a little better that that, with the only reason to stay being that I had not two, but three cards to a straight, and two of them were even suited. The bet was minimal if there was a bet at all. By fourth street things weren't looking too bad, as I had a small pair, three to a flush and three to a straight. The player to my right, who had an ace and a face card showing, bet ten dollars. I wanted to call. I probably shouldn't have called, but given who it was, and given my stack size, I just couldn't help it. On fifth street, I had four to a flush, and four to a straight, although the straight needed only a seven, and I think one may have been already dead. There was another ten dollar bet, and I called again, all by myself this time. The bettor's hand had gathered a second face card and was looking rather dire. Sixth street didn't help me at all. It was a ten. The bettor bet ten, having I think a ten of his own, needing only a queen in the hole to make his straight. On seventh street, I received my second eight, giving me two not very good pair. The bettor bet ten once again. Not having made my straight, flush, or even trips, any of which I really felt would have been enough, I was forced to settle with two pair. I thought about it. I had the bettor on two high pair. I felt like he had been betting aces up or aces and then aces up the whole hand. Still, there was a lot of money in the pot, about seventy dollars or so. I rated the chances that my had was the best at no more than twenty percent, but even at that, I was getting excellent pot odds to call, seven to one money for four to one risk. I probably on rated my hand chances this well because I never believed the straight. I would have been more suprised to have been beaten by a straight than what actually did happen. As with all bets on the end due to nothign but the odds, I tossed in the ten dollars not expecting to get it back, but I did. My hand was just fine. He'd been betting on aces the whole time.

Another little something that might have subconciously helped was that last ten dollar bet. It looked like a value bet if ever there was one. He bet where I'd have to call. Where this would look like a sensible play from some players, this player isn't known for making good value bets on the end when he has the hand locked up. He did, however, finally cnvince me that I was going to have to start making value bets to him on the river, because he just isn't going to throw all his chips away anymore trying to prove I am a liar.

My run continued last week. I won a little over four hundred dollars between Thursday and Friday night. Before Friday night's game I was told by one player that I was going to be taken down. Indeed, he and another player had a side bet going on who was going to take away my stack first. Anthony won, but more on that in a moment. Fortunately with my second stack of chips I was more successful. With thirty dollars left I was forced to call Anthony's all-in bluff. I did and I never looked back.

There were a few interesting scenarios throughout the night. Let me say to begin I was intentionally put in the bad position of being directly to Anthony's right. This means I had to mentally stiffen my play a bit, and be very careful with marginal hands, especially from the small blind and no other callers. Anthony knows that I will call with almost anything in that situation. He was happy to take my loose calls with a raise. Finally, I caught ace-jack in the small and limped in hoping to trap him, even though there was another player left in the pot, and sure enough, he raised ten dollars. The player to my right was a little slow in deciding what he wanted to do. Also, there was some story being told while everyone was looking at their cards. Anthony had been speaking as he looked at his cards, and his tempo and his coherence never changed the smallest bit. I put him on nothing special. I took the delay as an opportunity to grab a Diet Pepsi out of the refrigerator, and then returning to the table, made it a point to have one more look at my cards. I then raise all-in. I had over thirty dollars left. I worry about what he has, but having what I think is dead read on his hand as nothing particularly great, I'm not sweating it. Imagine my surprise when he flips over ace-ace. I did manage to get a gut-shot straight draw on the flop, but the final card never came and I found myself reaching for more cash. It was the first time I ever remember being so incredibly sure about the strength of an opponent's hand and yet being so incredibly wrong.

The above hand has been altered to fit memories of the hand that Anthony is apparently sure of, by his comments, but that I am not entirely sure of. Still, I admit, he could have been right. To respond to this new information, I embellished a bit of the rest, and it's based partly on what I must have been thinking, rather than what I actually remember thinking. The basic point is still the same.

I didn't make it back to finish this on Tuesday, so I'll put the rest in a new post.

Luck is the occurrence of improbable events. It exists in the past as a finite thing, but only exists in the present and in the future as a concept. This is a corollary to the law of probability. There can be bad luck and good luck, though the type of luck it is depends on the point of view. For instance, when I’m holding a 2 and a 5 of spades, and the flop is As3s4d, and the turn is J, it is great luck for me, and bad luck for my opponent, whose originally semi-premium hand AJ is about to cost him a large amount of money. The existence of luck is undeniable.

My opponents in a recent game of poker, a game touched on in the previous post, accused me of being completely lucky, and incapable of winning had I not been so lucky. At first I denied that I was lucky. I was simply playing my cards in the best way that I could, and when I hit a few lucky hands I tried to make sure I was paid off, and when my hands did not receive good fortune, I tried to get out as cheaply as possible. There were a lot of angles in play, and I tried to maximize profit in every way that I could. Sometimes I made terrible mistakes, and sometimes these mistakes cost me. Sometimes, however, I got lucky.

I didn’t realize how lucky I had been until late, or early in the morning if we’re getting technical, when I got 82 in the small blind. It had already been a long night and I was really getting fairly sloppy. I had been playing rags from the small blind all night because the player to my left had been raising from the big blind only very rarely. The flop was 873 rainbow. I bet six dollars, the big blind folded, the next player folded, and then the dealer (we were playing four handed most of the night) doubled my bet. Somewhere in my mind I recognized that to play from the position he was in and the style he played with, the dealer would have had to have face cards to be in the hand at that point. Excluding unlikely trips, the best hand he could have therefore was either an over-pair, which he normally would have protected pre-flop with a bet, or top pair with a better kicker. I put him on A8. Here’s where I got sloppy. I should have folded. He was not likely to have raised without a hand that would beat the hand I had, but I still thought that he only marginally had me beaten. All of this, admittedly rushed, consideration occurred within about a second, before I announced all-in. My move was to get him off his top pair better kicker and force him to give up the hand. From his position it was just too likely that I had flopped two pair. 87 had been a favorite hand all night, and I had won money by limping into the flop with it three or four times already. I intended to make him think that I was confidently coming back over the top of him because I KNEW that he couldn’t possible have my two pair beaten (even though I didn’t really have them). I had him significantly out-chipped, maybe 140 or 150 to 60. There was $26 in the pot, so I figured him for a fold. As soon as I did it however, I thought, “Oh no, I think he might call.” Three and a half minutes later he finally did call, and I think that at some point he must have sensed my fear, or I don’t think he would have done it. He was holding J8, which eliminated almost all hope. I was going to lose a third of my stack. The turn was a 7, which gave us both two pair, but of course he still had 8877J, while I had 88773. The river, however, was yet another 7. It tied up the hand. Our kickers became meaningless and I got half my money back. After trying all night to convince me I was just lucky, the runner-runner sevens finally convinced me I was having an unusually good night. They saved me $76.

The next hand, when I was dealt AhTh, and the flop was all hearts it almost made me giggle, and then it almost made me feel ashamed when Aaron hit a straight on the turn. I remember it didn’t cost him too much, but if I’d known he had the straight it probably would have. At that point I had to just laugh and agree that I had hit a great run of luck.

Still, it wasn’t all luck, though great luck did help me get through that late period when I was too sleepy to concentrate on the game. A lot of what my opponents thought was astounding luck was actually just position and stack play. The week before I made the mistake of walking into the room and sitting down to Anthony’s right. If I hadn’t made an early profit, the later game would have been very risky. Anthony raised behind my weak calls consistently. I had to mentally prepare myself for the fact that every $2 call was an invitation for a $6 or $8 raise, and therefore only play premium hands. In contrast, the next week I sat on his left. I sat on Aaron’s right who is not nearly so aggressive. This allowed me to dictate the pace of the game. I got to see a lot of flops I’d never have dared to see had the positions been different. Naturally when you see more flops, you win with more hands that appear to be lucky. For instance, I called with that 25s in the small blind and when that miracle flop made my straight it looked like outstanding luck. It was luck of course, but not so incredible when you consider that I paid two dollars to see that straight. One other factor that made it valuable to hit that straight was the factor of deception. When you see QJT fall on the board, you know you don’t want to count too much on your top two pair. When A-3-4 falls, nobody notices, because who plays 2-5? The deception would mean nothing in limit, and there’s no way that 2-5 could be a good call from any position. In no-limit however, the amount won on a hand can be tens of times larger than the cost of seeing the flop.

In closing, there are lots of reasons that certain series of hands appear to be luck, and a lot of times they are lucky, but there’s still an element of control involved. If a player thinks of himself as very tight aggressive, chances are he’s playing too tight for a four handed game. It appears to tight players who are used to playing with large tables that looser players “suck out’ and beat them with pure luck, and of course looser players do win on the river more often, and bad players win on the river the most of anybody. But the concept of playing progressively looser as the number of players decreases seems to escape some players. While they inherently understand they can get away with fantastically loose calls and insane bluffs when heads up, the middle ground between heads up and a full table seems to cause some confusion. I’m not criticizing my opponents for their play. They actually play very well. I just think they missed this angle, at least a little.

DISCLAIMER: I was fantastically lucky, and might have lost money had it not been for it. I don’t deny that. If I had been playing the game in hours five through eight that I played in one through five and nine, I’d have been fine without all those lucky deals, though.

It’s been a long time since I updated Poker Notes, but I may have to officially bring it out of retirement. As I said elsewhere I suffered a crushing loss that made me think I had no business giving anyone any advice about how to play poker. I had been on a winning streak, despite what Mr. Gabbard would have you believe, but was still playing with limited cash. As such, and since my friends agreed we should play on credit, all of us, I didn’t feel too bad about the first re-buy. Unfortunately I got drunk. I wasn’t drunk enough to be unable to think about the game, just drunk enough not to realize exactly what effect it was having on me. I began to feel hopeless. Many re-buys later I found myself with a huge gambling debt (maybe not huge by some people’s standards, but huge by my own).

Of course it was understood that I could take as long as needed to cover this debt. It certainly wasn’t the first time we had come to such an arrangement, one of us owing the other a couple hundred this way or that, while occasionally uncomfortable, was fairly common. This amount was large enough that I didn’t feel capable of gradually winning it back over time, as I had done in the past. Therefore on a couple occasions, I took the opportunity to pass a couple twenties or to help out in a pinch with an odd job here or there, and probably paid back about a hundred dollars or so of it in that fashion.

After a while, I began to get impatient, and wanted to play again. I insisted on playing for cash, and it was understood that when we played for cash, part of my winnings would go toward paying off the debt and part would go in my pocket. It was understood by me, anyway. It was necessary to keep my head in the game; otherwise I would lose money when I lost, and psychologically break even when I won, and it’s hard to enjoy poker that way. Over the next three or four months (this last three or four months) I proceeded to win significantly every time I sat in a game. Each time I won, I thought to myself, “Well, I can pay back this amount, and that will be that much I won’t have to pay in cash later.” At first I won about three hundred and paid back two, then won a hundred and fifty and paid back another hundred, then I’d win forty or fifty a few times and pay back twenty.

This continued until about a month ago, but then the next time we played we switched venues. At that first game at the new place I made quite a nice win, going on two separate runs of moderate to good cards, from which I profited mightily. I walked away up two hundred thirty dollars. I meant to pay down the debt, even pay it off, but I got stingy and took it all home, where my wife, my children, and I promptly spent it. I may have given myself permission to do this because my creditor recently told me how well he had been doing poker-wise lately, which was even better than I had been doing by a factor of about three. In any case, I went to the next game with the intention of paying some back if I won.

The creditor got in some early trouble and asked me if I could cover his next buy-in, which I did. I didn’t worry much. He was taking my second and only remaining buy-in out of my wallet but I was up enough by that point that I would have preferred to pay on the debt than re-buy anyway, had I lost my whole stack. I had almost two hundred in front of me. He went broke again and pulled fifty out of his own wallet. This was a message that he either sensed that I was out of cash, or else that he had taken the fifty dollars from me to make sure part of the debt did get paid off by the run I was on. The next time he went broke, before he mentioned it I requested the other players let me give him fifty in chips, to which they agreed. For some reason this made it very hard for me to calculate my ups and downs, but at the end of the night I was handed 180 dollars from the cashbox, and was thus able to calculate very easily that I had already paid off one hundred dollars of debt, with forty left to go. I handed him two twenties, stuck a forty dollar profit in my pocket, and smiled all the way home.

More about the particulars of that game and the one before very soon.