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i haven’t looked at the espn poker club “blog” lately, mostly because i once found an egregious error in andrew feldman’s math and wrote him about it (anyone who can’t add up the chips to determine some simple pot odds really shouldn’t be telling people how to play poker). he wrote back saying, “ah thanks! i kenw i did something wrong there.” for some reason i went there today and read the ‘back-and-forth’ debate between feldman and some guy named Cosmo. you can read the hand here: espn poker club

i found myself gasping at the lines written by the two authors. amazingly, in a two-sided debate, they manage to BOTH screw up several streets in a SINGLE hand. now that is talent.

PRE-FLOP: raising to about $300 is correct here. given a tight limper UTG and a tight player min-raising to 100, you really have to define your hand here clearly. you could be facing two marginal hands and you could be facing one or more monsters. raising to 300, 350, or more is standard. raising to $250 or $275 as feldman suggests? pretty silly. you want to try to price people into the hand as much as possible?

POST-FLOP: honestly, calling is the most reasonable option here. it’s bizarre that neither cosmo nor feldman note this simple fact, but simply calling this bet should be a fairly strong signal of strength to the UTG player. that being said, the UTG player is either WAY ahead (K or 5), or WAY behind (smaller pocket pair). why exactly would you want to willingly stack off all your chips to “protect” your hand when your opponent is either crushing you or completely crushed? lifetime, you gain much more EV by calling here and getting more calls from a player who is very behind. think about it: if your opponent has TT, you want him to call with the pot odds that are there. why would you want to force him out? i think this idiotic comment by cosmo is particularly telling:

His hand ranges increase now [note: your opponent's hand ranges shouldn't be INCREASING during a hand. if it is, you're in trouble], and I still have him on a small pocket, or suited ace. With his smooth call, I know he’s weak. If he’s the chip leader, he can bully and take down this pot. He’s the only one who can bully here, and if he was huge, he would’ve done it [by the way, I don't think this is universally true. if i'm the limper and i have AA. i consider just smooth-calling here. the min-raiser's stack is going into the middle regardless. not a terrible idea to trap our Hero]…. The hero’s play postflop is to also push all-in. Squeeze out the limper and isolate the short stack.

what?! you’ve put him on a smaller pair or a suited ace, so you want to push him out of the hand? the pot is laying him something like 3.5 to 1. the chances of him hitting an A or a set on the turn is somewhere in the vicinity of 9 to 1. calling allows you options to induce a bet, bluff, or call on a later street. pushing leaves money on the table.

cosmo goes on to astutely say, “Calling here does nothing but invite another call.” yes cosmo, you are right. and that is what you want.

POST-TURN: checking behind is just fine here. you can be fairly certain that most any K would have bet the turn. given the size of your remaining stack, you’ll be able to get it all in on the river if you can induce a bluff/bet. you can check and hope he bets if you’d like. if this was a cash game, you might check behind on the turn here also, but for a different reason: to keep the pot small when you don’t have a monster.

RIVER: now here’s where i think both of these espn guys are absolutely nuts. fold on the river? to be honest, this is a dream double-up situation. you’ve played the hand very well so that a smaller pair will fire on the river at you. sure he could have a K, thought unlikely given the play. sure he could have pocket 9’s. sure he could have limped with 56 suited, though unlikely given his style. sure he could have aces even. but with the pot laying you 2.5 to 1, you have to be very sure he doesnt’ have JJ, TT, 88, 77 (all of which are extremely likely in this hand), Ax, or a straight bluff to lay this down. it is a sin to not at least THINK about this before making a decision. i would very rarely lay this hand down here unless i’m against a completely rock.

—————-

i think feldman and cosmo go wrong at several points in this analysis, but the largest problem is this: don’t try to over-protect a hand. if you’re pushing in on this flop because you’re protecting your hand against a draw, there’s just no justification for that. anyone who is trailing you is WAY behind. sure it’ll be scary if an A falls on the turn. but that’s going to happen well less than 10% of the time. the rest of the time you’re going to be picking up nice EV by inducing a call from the limper. sometimes having guts at a poker table doesn’t mean the balls to go all-in. sometimes it means being able to stomach the possibility of a bad beat when the math is in your favor.

got back from an interesting weekend in vegas on sunday night. some interesting things:

BEST QUOTE: sitting at a no limit table on friday nigh-, er, saturday morning was a drunk guy who looked like a cross between dane cook and an alcoholic. he was actually a pretty good player, but he was hammered, which made him hilarious. every time any player at the table bet or raised against him, he would shout out:

hey… what would you do if i made it $650?

the pot was usually around $30.

BEST BET: thank you to the colts for coming through in a big way for me on sunday. i parlayed the colts to win with the o/u on the game (47) for a tidy sum of money. the joy of winning sports bets in the last minute of the game can never be overstated. if you don’t believe me, go sit in a sportsbook during a big game just once…

WORST DAY: on saturday, i was stuck for a non-trivial amount of money, playing in a few different games. early in the day in a no limit cash game, i raised under-the-gun with 4h6h (don’t ask why i did that, i was just doing those types of things this weekend). when the flop came 8h6s3h, i bet a healthy amount, a late position player raised me, and i immediately moved in on him. i figured i was probably in good shape, given the action and the player, until he called quickly with 5h7h, crushing my heart draw. when he spiked a heart on the river. fun times. the day was fairly enjoyable though, as i played in a mixed game (omaha-8, badugi, stud hi, razz, 2-7 triple draw, and stud-8) at the venetian. honestly, the real shame of the poker boom is that all of these other games get no exposure, which is unfortunate because they can be so much more interesting and fun than boring old hold’em.

BEST DAY: i had my biggest tournament cash ever this weekend on sunday, getting down to heads up and making a deal with a 3:1 chip disadvantage. it wasn’t a TON of money, but i felt like i played really well and overcame several cold decks, battling back from being the short stack with 12 players left. in general i played a very aggressive and loose game for the tournament, which matched up really well with my tables, as i was able to take down 2 or 3 pots every orbit uncontested. position is awesome. i also had an interesting insight this weekend: if you play as many pots as i was trying to play, you sure do have to make a lot of difficult decisions. on a couple of hands, i had to call opponents’ pre-flop all-ins with 2d2c, Kh6h, Jc8s, and 6s8c, just because the math was right. i also had to lay down JJ, 88, and AQ pre-flop multiple times. by the way, calling someone with 68 offsuit, having him turn over KT, and spiking an 8 on the river against him? hilarious.

MOST FUN HAND: on one particular hand in the tournament, i raised in late position with AQ, four people called me (this is what happens when you’re an “action” player), and the flop came 633. everyone checked, i bet 700 into a 1550 pot. this guy on the button, who was audibly frustrated, raised all-in for 2000, making the pot 4200. 1300 to call. i thought for a while and then called him, getting more than 3:1 from the pot with two overcards and a possibility that he was bluffing. anyhow, i obviously spiked queens on both the turn and river, beating his 77. anyhow, that wasn’t the fun part. the FUN part was when he came back to the tournament a few hours later, telling his friends, “hey, that’s the guy that beat me in that race in the tournament.” he was generally being an ass, talking about how bad i played, but he was also getting it wrong: we weren’t racing, he was way ahead of me at that point. so anyhow, i got to say the not often-heard line: “oh no, we weren’t racing. i put a bad beat on you. you were ahead 3:1, but i thought it’d be a lot of fun.” his buddy, still playing at the final table, nearly choked on his water laughing. now that is fun stuff.

MOST INTERESTING HAND: with around 9 players left in the tournament, i played a big pot against the guy who i was most worried about at the final table. i had around 12000 chips and he had around 22000, with the blinds at 200-400 with a 50 ante. he limped in late position and i called out of the small blind with 7hTh. the pot had 1950 on the flop, with four players. the flop came 7dQdQs. we checked around to him and he bet 1100 into the pot. i called, not quite believing him and wanting to slow him down (he’d have to be worried about a Q from me if he didn’t have one). i also figured i could probably bluff hard if a diamond fell. the turn came with a 5s. i checked and he checked behind. now to me, that felt like he didn’t have a Q. when the 3d came on the river, i made a play at the pot of 4150 by betting 3000. he proceeded to think for a long time and i didn’t have a good read on him. he then raised me to 7000. i thought for a long while, finally deciding that i wouldn’t be able to move him off the hand, and folded.

as i thought about the hand more later though, i’m now fairly sure that he bluffed me out of the pot. he was a very good player. i spent about 20 minutes talking to him after the tournament. he mentioned off-hand, in a very humble way, that he used to play professionally in vegas until he had kids, at which point he moved to montana with his wife to raise them (montana?!). since his kids were grown, he was now spending lots of time back in vegas, playing tournaments. he noted that he was surprised i took the deal, since he felt i could outplay the other guy. anyway, as we chatted, i realized that he thought i was very capable of moving at that pot.

i arrived at this conclusion: if he had a bare Q or a flush, he really wouldn’t have raised on the river, as he had to be aware of being beat by a full house. if he had a hand of that sort of value, he’d almost have to just call on the end, as he would only get called by a big big hand (since i had to also be scared of the full house), and i had played the hand like i could have a monster.

really the only reason to raise on the river was to either make a bluff look believable or get value out of his full house. but he was not the kind of player who would have been playing a hand that made a full house there, save for 33. i realized this as i was talking to him, thinking that i probably should have pushed all-in. as we finished talking, i asked him a parting question: “hey, on that QQ7 hand, did you hit a flush or a boat?” he looked at me and warmly smiled: “i’m sorry, i can’t remember.”

damn it.

for those of you that don’t know, neteller is a company that deals with the electronic transfer of funds from financial institutions to third parties. sounds innocuous enough, right? you use the company to transfer money from your bank account to some other organization. doesn’t sound particularly useful.

but for those of you that don’t know, neteller has become a huge company in the past few years because of one specific reason: online poker. poker players use neteller to transfer money back and forth from their checking accounts to the various poker sites. that is, we DID use neteller for this purpose, until this happened :

Effective Immediately

Due to recent US legislative changes and events, effectiveimmediately, US members are no longer able to transfer funds to or from any online gambling sites.

and so it begins. thanks, republicans.

taking a short weekend trip to vegas on friday to play poker for a few days. back in the day (read: 2005 or so), this type of trip was a common part of my weekend schedule. i used to spend entire weekends parked at tables, writing elaborate trip reports upon my return. weren’t those the days? in fact, one year i even spent new year’s eve sitting at a poker table at the bellagio, surrounded by seven other degenerates. that sparked this great conversation that i’ll never forget:

player 1: hey, it just hit midnight!

player 2: hey, happy new year guys…

[voiceless shuffling of poker chips]

player 3: i’m all-in

i’ll never forget THAT choice exchange. don’t worry, we recovered and ordered a round of patron shots to celebrate. even the dealer faked taking his shot.

anyhow, these days? poker trips like those are few and far between. i don’t do those detailed trip reports anymore, mostly because i realize in reading them years later that i sound like a jackass*, but it should be a fun weekend. maybe if i learn a thing or two over the course of the weekend, i’ll jot them down and write them here for old times.

i’d like to play in a tournament this weekend (maybe over at the venetian or caesar’s) and hopefully some good mixed game action (if it’s going at the venetian). other than that, just good old-fashioned gambling fun…

*= invariably i ALWAYS realize years later that i knew NOTHING about poker when i thought i did. it’s part of playing an incredibly complex game and constantly trying to improve. and then every now and then you start reading a new book that absolutely humbles your knowledge (like The Mathematics of Poker, right now for me). at this point it’d be like a guy cooking himself canned spaghetti and talking about being a great italian chef.

we went through a team training today at work where we had some discussions about business consciousness, and how to be an active and positive teammate in the workplace. surprisingly interesting stuff. but i won’t go too much into it except to mention one of the bizarre insights i pulled from it.

one of the themes of the workshop was how to stop being a ‘Victim’ and start being a ‘Player’. not to try to recreate the whole discussion, but a victim is someone who is always making excuses by blaming factors outside of his control, while a player is someone who is active and responsible for his actions.

as i was sitting there listening to this seminar/session, i started thinking: ‘that sounds EXACTLY like poker players that cry about bad beats all the time.’ everyone has a friend like that:

man, this guy was calling EVERYTHING. i finally called his all-in and he only had a stupid draw and i had a big pair. and he hit it on the river! he gets so lucky ALL of the time!

you know that guy. i’ve been that guy before.

a few weeks ago, i actually had someone ask me, “hey, i don’t know much about poker, but my friends say they don’t play in the casinos because people always get lucky on them. what do you think?”

what do i think? i think his friends, just like your buddy who cries about his bad beats are what the Axialent training program would call “Victims.” and while it can feel good to blame your whole lost stack on a bad beat, it’s not very productive and it’s almost never all right.

9 times out of 10, the reason you lost your whole stack is because you played the hand wrong, or you could have played the hand differently, or you played some previous hand wrong to lose most of your chips.

one of my worst feelings as a poker player was getting knocked out of this little $200 buy-in tournament at venetian last summer, right at the end of my week-long poker trip. on the last hand, i got knocked out when my AK was called by another guy’s AQ on a A79 board and didn’t hold up. sounds like somewhat of a bad beat, but i didn’t begrudge the other guy at all. after a few minutes though, i started feeling sick, but not from that hand.

i was sick because of a hand i had played earlier in the tournament, when i was actually the chipleader. i had AQ from the SB and just called the late-position raise by a tricky player. on a flop of A62, i checked and he checked. on the blank turn i bet out, he raised me, and i went nuts and re-raised. he called. i went more crazy and bet the blank river, he moved in on me. i ended up doubling up the other big stack at the table, after playing horrifically. he ended up winning the whole thing. that’s what got me knocked out and it was no one’s fault but my own.

i think that’s the kinds of self-reflection you have to have in poker (or even in the working world, i guess). i was not the victim of a bad beat, i was the criminal (of bad play). i just had to go back and think about it a bit. it takes some honesty and some humility to blame yourself, even in poker.

so next time you hear someone crying about a bad beat, tell them to stop being such a Victim. and if you’re the “victim” of the bad beat, stop and ask yourself a few questions: could i have played that hand better? could i have played that hand differently? what other hands did i play badly? i think you’ll find that if you ask yourself those questions, you’ll always end up taking responsibility of your own mistakes and you’ll be less likely to bitch about bad beats. and you’ll be more enjoyable to be around too.

so i went down to the cardroom yesterday, excited to get some table time in. i haven’t played live in a few weeks, but i’ve been thinking about the game a lot lately. i felt pretty ready to play well.

one thing that you like to tell yourself is that you’ve played enough where there’s nothing that will surprise you. after all, i once flopped quad Q’s and ended up with the third best hand. i mean, once you’ve seen THAT, what else is there?

well, how about getting cheated in a poker game and getting the two colluders thrown out of the casino? yeah, that would be pretty new.

i had been playing in the 8-16 limit hold’em game, with a 1/2 kill. it was a pretty great game. lots of loose-passive players, giving action on every hand. a few hours in, two buddies sat down on either side of me. they were both relatively young, were both pretty loud, and they were clearly loose players. a few hands after they had chopped an enormous pot by both flopping a straight with 46 offsuit, they tried to cheat me out of a pot by putting me in the middle. they were both vietnamese and celebrated by speaking quickly in their native tongue (which is a big no-no at the table).

what does it mean to get ‘put in the middle’. well, in limit hold’em, oftentimes you’ll sit in a hand with a marginal strength and need to make a careful decision about how to proceed based on the actions of others. getting ‘put in the middle’ means getting stuck between two or more other players, who both show strength and perhaps raise/re-raise each other. cheaters will often get together with a buddy to specifically put a player in the middle of the two of them, raising and re-raising so that the player becomes convinced his hand can’t be good. still unclear what this means? read on:

i was under-the-gun with Ah6h. not exactly a strong hand, but the table had started to slow down since these two sat down. i raised to mix it up. buddy #2 to my left immediately called two bets, and buddy #1 was the only other caller from the big blind. fine. i figured i probably had a better hand than both anyway. the flop came Ts6c3d. no draws. buddy #1 immediately bet and i immediately raised. it was a ragged flop, and i wanted to know where i was right away. to my surprise, buddy #2 re-raised to three bets and buddy #1 capped it at four bets without hesitating. at this point i paused. i glanced over at both and saw them glancing at each other. huh? something was fishy. what hands could you possibly cap with here and not have re-raised before the flop (especially these two)? i called and buddy #2 called also. the turn came 4c and buddy #1 bet out. now at this point i was sure i was done, so i mucked and watched these two closely. something was very fishy. after some hemming and hawing, buddy #2 called.

the river came 3s, putting Ts6c3d4c3s on the board. at this point, to my amazement, both players checked and buddy #1 showed A2, an ace-high with no draw on the flop. i stood up quickly as buddy #2 started to put his cards into the muck. i said quickly to the dealer, “stop. i want to see both hands.” in a panic, buddy #2 tried to throw his cards into the muck, but the dealer grabbed them and turned them over: Qs8d.

so let’s recap: these two assholes clearly cheated me by teaming up to push me out of the pot. furious, i called the floorperson over. while buddies #1 and #2 tried to claim that they just “outplayed me”, their cards lay on the table face-up for everyone to see. the floorperson listened briefly to the recounting of the action and, to my surprise, immediately threw both of the buddies out.

crazy? yes. definitely.