Wading In Concrete

Paul’s success at our table has continued unabated; “Passive-Tight” is the terminology used to describe this waiting and playing only premium cards style that has been so successful early this year. While this isn’t usually a winning strategy in poker circles it is the perfect answer to the 3 Amigos Loose-Aggressive. The key really is that Passive-Tight tends to win small pots played with conservative Tight-Aggressive players but when played against players who start overcommitting to see the flop or paying excessive amounts to see the turn or the river.

Let's take a quick look at Paul vs The 3 Amigos when they shouldn't be playing and Paul finally gets a hand that fits his range.

Paul Ah, Qh Excellent Hand

Mike As, 4h Mike will usually play almost any ace

Dean 7c, 4c Dean will actually call with any 2 cards that can be connected in some way

Jaimie Js, 8s Jaimie is usually up for any suited 2 cards

Blinds are 800/400 and Paul raises to 2500, We will assume that 2 of the Amigos are BB and LB.

They all call, The Pot is now 10,000 what is the expected return for all the members on a 2500 bet? The Percentages include the chance of tieing and winning half the pot

Paul is 38.7% he will win 3900 on average

Mike is 9.50% he will lose 1500 on average

Dean is 21% he will lose 400 on average

Jaimie is 31% he will win 600 on average

Typically the situation listed will result in one Amigo hitting the flop and in this case Dean and Jaimie are the threat because of the flush or straight potentials. However unless they get all 3 cards on the flop what happens when Paul hits the Queen or the Ace, he makes a huge raise and they can't afford to call because then they send good money after bad. Lets see what happens.

FLOP Qs – 3s – 5h

Jaimie gets excited to see 2 more cards, any spade.

The right move for Paul is to bet the Pot 10,000. Dean and Mike fold, and Jaimie calls.

Paul is 60.6% on average he will win 18,200 for a 10,000 bet, nice profit

Jaimie is 37.8% on average he will win 11,400 for a 10,000 bet.

The real problem for Jaimie is that win is based on either of the last 2 cards. There is a 50% chance it won't be the first and at that point Paul should raise him All In and make the flush play far too expensive.

In a nutshell this is the key to Paul's play, while he won't win all hands he plays he will be playing cards that yield a strong positive return against Loose-Aggressive players. What if they played tighter? His return would drop, but as it stands there is a lot of money going into the pot without the cards to back them up.

Sorry this was so long in coming,

The Three Amigos

The three amigos are three players at our table with a very loose aggressive style that has had a big impact on our game. Why did this style hit critical mass with the addition of a third member and how do you play against it?

Basically the strategy is to see as many hands as possible and then capitalize on ones you flop. The real problem with 3 players is inevitably one of them hits. 

A good example is the following;

Versus 2 players with weak hands it looks like this;

A Hearts K Spades 46.74%

8 Clubs 5 Hearts 24.03%

10 Spades 6 Spades 28.98%

AK is very dominant in this scenario and played with caution is a very powerful hand.

Versus 3 players there is a huge shift;

A Hearts K Spades 34.08%

8 Clubs 5 Hearts 18.41%

10 Spades 6 Spades 23.67%

Q Hearts 3 Hearts 22.94%

AK is now a 34% hand, not very good odds for one the best hands in poker. Also if he is in trouble on the flop as he will have no ability to assess his opponents fit when they could be on any cards.

This is why adding a third wild card has had such a big impact to our game, it causes the tipping point that makes previously strong pre-flop hands very precarious after a poor flop. You can very easily end up betting into someone with 2 pair when they hit a flop like 5,8,K and losing your stack.

How do we play against this? 

Combating this kind of loose play is what the tight aggressive strategy is all about. It’s why good players usually raise 3x the Big Blind pre-flop and raise again after the flop when they hold strong cards. You need to make it expense to see cards. If even one person folds before the flop you are back in the driver seat and with a bigger pot to win. Letting loose players see cards cheaply devalues strong hands. Ideally when the blinds get higher your raise should be able to get your opponents down to two (46% favorite) or one player (61%+ favorite) with a larger pot at win. The loose players can’t play all those hands if they are playing 3x the blinds on a consistent basis and you’re winning more chips.  What happens with friendly games is we get sloppy. We like to see the flop as cheaply as possible but what we were really doing was allow the 3 amigos to take advantage of our passive betting.  The third member skewed the odds enough that the conventionally strong hands had their value greatly reduced. 

Tight aggressive play was designed to stop this strategy and if you examine the games of our players that are doing well against the amigos you will see that is exactly how they are playing.

Good Luck tonight!

Revenge of the Nerds

Pot odds are the mathematics of poker and while a lot of players have a good instinct for the probability of a particular situation there are great opportunities at the table to make better plays when you know the real numbers. Most top poker players are also incredible mathematicians and revalue their hands after every card. We have three questions; How do you calculate it? How do you use it? When doesn’t it apply?

How do you calculate the odds?

First you need to know how many “outs” you have, this is the number of cards to give you a winning hand. A good example is an open ended straight, you go into the hand with 7,9 and the flop comes 6, 8, A. You have 8 outs, 4-5s, and 4-10s there are 47 cards left and you have 2 draws make your hand. 8/47, this is about 1/6 (I round off) per draw so basically you have about 1/3 after the flop to make your hand, if you miss on the turn it will be 1/6 for the river. It’s very important to recalculate on the turn, for example what if the turn is a 9? I would add the 2-9s left and the 3-7s, as they will give you 3 of a kind or 2 pair. That makes 13 outs of the 46 cards left, now your odds are almost 30% to win on the last card. What if your cards were suited and you have a flush draw now you 6 outs for the straight ( the suited ones are now on the flush possibility) , 5 for 2 pair and 3 of kind, and 9 for the flush. This gives you a total of 20 outs out of 47 cards on the river this is over 40%.

How do you use these numbers?

As in most things in life it’s all about risk versus reward. As businessmen, investors and gamblers the world over will tell you if the payout of the reward is greater than the risk you should proceed. Very simply if you have a 1/3 risk to win and the payoff is greater than 1/3 it works. A risk of 1 in 3 versus a payoff of 4 to 1 would mean if you bet $1.00 - 3 times you would win $4.00 once.  This is a 33% return on your investment. At the poker table the payoff is based on what is in the pot versus the bet required to call.

We will go back to our previous example. The straight draw after the flop has given us a 1/3 chance to make our hand on the turn or the river, we are at 1/3. Dean raised the 4000 preflop and 3 players called, the pot is now 16,000. Now Mr. Bigstack raises 4000 again; the pot is now 20,000 versus a calling bet of 4000 – we are getting 5 to 1 on our money versus a 1 in 3 bet it’s an easy call. What if he raised the pot, 16,000? Now we have to call 16,000 to a pot of 32,000. We get 2 to 1 on our money for a 1/3 risk. This would be a smart bet by Dean and we must fold. That’s how pot odds work both defensively and offensively, Deans bet of 16,000 is based on making sure that he gets a return on his money if we call. On average he will win out; For us it’s 1 in 3 we win a payout of 2 to 1. If this played out 6 times we would bet 6 x 16,000 = 96,000 to win twice for a total of 64,000. Dean would come out ahead 32,000 for his 4 wins on average and we would come out less that amount.

Using this you can force someone on a flush draw ( aprox. 1 in 5 – 9 cards of the 47 ) to fold by betting so that the pot odds don’t pay more than 4 to 1. If they do call they have put you in a situation to win even more money. If the bettor has bet a small amount and it gives you a pay off of 5+ to 1 then you can confidently call knowing you are in the right place.

It isn’t all that easy, if it was computers would play poker. There is also “Implied Odds” that is based on money that isn’t in the pot but you are confident you can get. In the above example if you did hit your straight on the river can you get another bet out of Dean? If you are confident he will bet another 4000 you can include that into your calculations when the numbers are quite close.

When doesn’t pot odds work? 

Short stacked players quite often don’t have the luxury of folding. Forcing them to fold rarely works, they can easily end up in a situation where they have to run a bad risk / reward scenario. After 9:00 if you can’t buy in you have to think in terms of risking your stack. While a particular play will win out over time you don’t have the luxury of averaging out to win in the long run. Pot Odds are just a tool to use, there are lots of variables that can interfere with these calculations. You need to have a good read on your opponent’s hand. If you think they are on a open ended straight draw but actually they are sitting on 3 of a kind your calculations are meaningless.

Just something to ponder, pot odds can go much deeper and can really enhance your game. After awhile it becomes second nature to count your outs and roughly estimate your odds before betting. Measure twice, cut once, is it any wonder our carpenter Kevin is one of the best at using this tool at our table? 

 

See you tonight,

        

Deano's Big Stack

The overly aggressive style of using a large chip stack to bully the small stacks is a time honoured tradition of poker. At our table I think we would all agree Dean does it best. However in spite of going into the after 9:00 game with huge stacks of chips somehow it seems to falter. This leads to three questions; Why does it work? How do you defend against it? Why does it stop working?

When Dean starts on one of his rampages it usually begins with 3000-4000 raises on cards with even the remotest of chances. Cards as bad as 8,3 suited get played because it really isn’t about the cards. He basically is daring you to play for 10% (let’s say of 30,000) of your worth versus 2% of his (stack of 150,000). He bets this on the first round to reduce the number of opponents to we shall say 2. He then follows up after the flop with another monster raise 5000+. Each of the 2 opponents has a 30% chance of hitting the flop and this gives Dean a 40%(aprox) chance they will both fold against his bet just because there is no fit. If they hit the flop they have the other problem, there is a 30% Dean hit as well and a 50/50 chance he hit better. At this point any player left who connected with 2^nd pair. a straight or flush draw folds as well. Dean is very effective at using pot odds to push players on a draw out. We will tackle pot odds next week but suffice to say Dean has a strong instinctive grasp of odds as most businessmen do. Calling in this situation with those draws if he has made a sufficient raise is foolish.

How do you combat this? Don’t attempt the same play style. One problem with competitive men is the desire to push back when pushed. If Mike Tyson walks by and gives Pee Wee Herman a shove, he doesn’t push back and when you have 30k to his 150k you’re Pee Wee. The big stack can go all in with you and still have over 100k and that’s the problem, he has no fear. Play tight, don’t give him any free chips, forget about mediocre cards, stick with premium hands, high pairs, AK to A10, don’t play suited connectors if you have a small stack. When you get a strong hand re-raise the bully 3x his bet before the flop and see just how much he likes his cards. It’s very unlikely he will have a better hand at this point. If he calls, you are in the driver seat now. At the very least you are going into the hand with better cards and a nice pot. Consider going all in if you miss the flop but you are sure he did as well, this uses his tactics against him. A good example would be the following A,K with a 2,3,7 flop. What could he have called your 9k raise with? Other than a pair of 7s the pot should be yours. Don’t try to compete with his big bets, be a sniper when the odds are with you.

Why does this strategy stop working after 9:00pm? The secret is in the definition of the “Big Stack”. A Big Stack really is about how many big blinds you have. As our blinds increase two things happen ; first our bullying friend dean now only has 20+ big blinds not 50, second the big blind and the small blind can end up pot committed because of the chips they have been forced to play. If you are short stacked at 30,000 and you are the big blind at 8000 you have to put the rest of your chips in a lot of situations. You can’t be bullied off, and Dean at the same time needs to risk far too many chips to push you. At this point going all in with small stacks against a raise by Dean can force him off his hand. If you watch these scenarios play out at our table you will see this pattern again and again.

Next week we will talk about Pot Odds.

See you next Tuesday!

Passing of a Comrade

Brujah my big tabby passed away today in the sun in the backyard. I left him with a woman and her daughter who took him into their home in Powell River initially on a temporary basis. He was near the end and it seemed wrong to move him again with me to Nanaimo and then to Victoria at his advanced age. Brujah had lived me with me longer than anyone, longer than my parents and either of my wives. He demanded I pick him at the SPCA when he was a kitten in about 1992. In 1998 he taught me a very important lesson.

Up until then I valued my possessions more than more than anything else in my life, fine art, paintings, electronic toys, more money, these were the things I valued.

In 1998 he got Feline Hepatic Lipidosis; fatty liver disease a frequent killer of large cats. I had just bought the auction, I had no spare money, I wasn't going to be able to draw a real paycheck for sometime. The vet said that if we put in a feeding shunt and we fed him every 4 hours through it for a few weeks he might recover. However it would probably reoccur but he might last a couple more years. The choice was obvious expensive medical care for a chance at giving him a little more time.

I went home that night to make the "smart" choice and looked around my place. I had a French Bronze on my mantel that was worth about $ 3,000.00 that caught my eye. Brujah was worth far more to me than some trinket, and yes I would trade that willingly for a little while longer. That was my budget if it became necessary; I went ahead and sweated through 4 hour feedings blending water with cat food and putting it into a large syringe to pour down the feeding tube for 30 days . He finally stopped struggling after the 2nd week after I had redecorated my living room with liquified cat food 3 times.

He lived 13 more cantankerous years and I shared a bond with him unlike any other pet I have ever know. Sometimes it's like that, John's cats Fred and Peaches took to me immediately and while I like the other dogs and cats those two were special. I'm not used to Peaches being gone yet, I still look for her sometimes.

How does this relate to poker? It's because life is about the company we keep, our families and friends both human and otherwise. We don't go to poker night on Tuesday to win or to make money. With 52 pieces of paper coated in plastic we share friendship and comradery. Its been a great boon to me over the last few years when life hasn't been easy. We compete hard but winning or losing never sours the experience. I look forward to it every week, the needling is never malicious and the rampant insults are good-hearted. There is no price on friendship.

See you Tuesday night ,

Bernard

Return of the King

Last blog entry I talked about our story of the year “Paul” but really it was the tale of the first quarter of our poker season. He was the surprise upstart and Jim was in my opinion our best player during that period. Since then all 3 frontrunners have struggled and failed to maintain their momentum. Who is playing the best poker now?

Last week pulled this previous “King” of our table out of the shadows. In the past his very aggressive play style that had worked in our earlier games had become something we could anticipate and take advantage of; at times he would pay the price of his full stack for rash bluffs and raises. While always being a very tough opponent with the best reading skills at our table he was no longer the undisputed best player as he had been earlier. 2010 saw him win the title of “Most Buy-ins”, a testament to his gambling nature.

This week’s game really highlighted how much his game has changed. I was on his right in a perfect position to take advantage of overplayed hands, position has been a huge factor between John, Jim, and I in predicting the outcome of the night between us.

Not once did I catch him, he never over-committed to a pot where I could take advantage and he evaded traps at every turn. His bluffs were precise and in proportion to the pot. In spite of being card dead and taking some tough hits early he never wavered from a very aggressive game tempered with caution or gave in to wild betting as he had done in the past.

When it came down to John, Dean, and myself I automatically assumed it would be Dean or I who would play John heads up. That speaks for itself, he had played the strongest game, was being very careful with his stack and very selective of the hands he played. The heads up between John and I was very tight, neither of us were able to steal pots and it was much like the Canucks and Bruins last night, excellent goal tending and nobody was giving anything away. There was lots of tension while we circled each other looking for weakness unsuccessfully. I’m sure if the cards had been reversed John would have taken the win.

So in my opinion, John is back at the top! Always an excellent player but now he is even better. In Poker “speak” he has plugged his “leaks”.

Observation: Dean is getting more dangerous every week, he is one to watch.

Concrete Rising

The story of the year in our poker game has to be the ascension of Paul to the top of our pool. No one saw this coming. Is it luck? has Hell frozen over? Is he taking some sort of "Brain Steroid" pill? Replaced by Aliens? the theories are numerous. How did this perennial pinyata rise to the top of the heap. I will attempt to address this in a logical fashion.

At first yes I wrote it off as luck like getting Double Aces twice in a row the statistical probability of winning is always there. The first time Paul took me out to win the night I was convinced it was cards. I ignored the evidence, you don't get to heads up on luck, you have to beat some very tough players.

The second time was the kicker. I went at Paul in my usual style supremely confident I would take all his chips easily in spite of his chip lead. I would force him to fold when I had bad cards and get him to call me when I had good cards, this worked extremely well for me in 2010. Instead when I bet to push him off he would re-raise and force me to fold! I felt like I was in a Rocky movie but I was Apollo Creed - over-confident and unprepared; and Balboa just kept throwing punches, my confidence was shattered. Yes it came down to an all in that went his way but really I was beat on every level, both mentally and strategically.

I studied Paul's play for the next few weeks, much the same as I do with our best players which I had to admit he now was. The best poker players have different play styles at different points in a tournament and up until now I would have said Jim and I were the players who really changed our style of play in response to the stages of the game. Paul's success is based on post 9:00 play. Before 9:00 his game has improved but still has some of the old mistakes, that can be seen by his number of buy-ins. After 9:00 is where he shines, his style becomes super-tight but very aggressive with the few hands he plays; this is exactly how most poker books tell you to play at that stage of a tournament. He plays to survive first and foremost and make players pay when he does get powerful cards. Jim and myself have been doing it that way for quite sometime.

Paul has another advantage, nobody saw him coming. Watch John, Jim or myself when any two of us are in a hand. We are completely focused on our opponent we study their play styles, note their habits and look for errors and hints. Hence the 60-40 rule, we think every hand about Jim's ability to bluff with garbage. When Kevin checks on flop but bets the turn I know he hit the flop hard, 3 of a kind or a straight. When John pushes hard on every betting round I know he is capable of doing it with absolutely nothing. Every bet I open 3000+ a number of players at our table are try to fit that into my style and predict what I'm holding. Nobody does that with Paul . . . . yet. Well I am now, he is a proven winner and I won't underestimate him again.

This is what makes our Wednesday nights so much fun, admittedly I am in 3rd rather than 1st as I was in the fall but the game is more exciting; Paul is making me work hard at my game. Who will be the story of the 2nd part of the year?

Good luck on Wednesday everyone,

B