If I know, he/she also knows...

A theory has been rattling around my head for dealing with the varied types of players players at the cash tables. For every piece of information I know about an opponent's tendencies and playing statistics, they also know a comparable amount about mine. This sounds like a truism but from this I can modify my game play, stay aware of my table image and make the occasional play against regulars that I would not make against most fish. I was raised by a regular opponent in position recently, so I popped a 3 bet preflop with rags and was able to 2 barrel an ace high board to take it down. This move worked because I know enough about my opponent to know that he would likely be getting out of line in late position, therefore he knows enough about me to know that I would only ever 3 bet good aces and medium pairs+ so the flop probably helped me. This sort of move does not give me license to spew chips, but demonstrates a point where a small edge in a game can be ground out.

The further conclusion of this theory is that if I know nothing about an opponent, all they know about me is my actions in a hand or two. If I decide to call a hand down, it looks weak, if I decide to bet it looks strong. It is for this reason that if unknown fish are still on the line and you have shown aggression twice then it is quite often correct to check-fold. It is horrible weak-tight poker, but time and time again the third bet is just spew. Our approach to continuing with aggression should be to look at the flop, decide whether to bet 1,2, or 3 times and then plan a line based on the passivity/activity of the fish in question. This morning I played a slight losing session where I tried to isolation raise an aggrodonk when I was in position, so I could skin him before he went broke. The trouble was I had was a passive fish in the big blind that kept calling my raises with 45% of hands. In one pot I ended up heads up in position to the fish, with a small pair that missed the board. The board read K89 two hearts. Here my line is to decline to c-bet, check back the flop, and check fold the turn all day of the week. The reason for this weak play is what hand can my opponent call with preflop that will not also call a bet post flop that I am still ahead of by the turn? Only small pairs and weak aces. Since I am behind most of his small pairs ( I had 44) and having watched this fish for a few rounds of the table I know he would check down a missed ace all the way. That leaves Kx, Qx, Jx 109,108, 98, 97 etc. all of which are happy with the flop, will certainly call and will likely improve on the turn. Furthermore this fish had also ran a check trap play since sitting down at the table and so would likely check all his kings+ hands on flop for sure.I was happy that I had shown aggression, backed off at the right time and made the right play for this particular opponent in this particular spot.

Home game report: caught between a rock and a hard place

Last night we played a super tight 4 handed sit and go home game. Small pairs were being played cautiously and weak aces were hitting the muck. When the cd player stopped you could hear a pin drop as we sat statuesque like deer hunters 4ft from their prey. I have never felt such a tense poker atmosphere and my emotions were a mixture of doom and elation when I was dealt QQ early in the game and got reraised by Hitman preflop.  Following Hitman's raise Pokerhontasz and TheConge called in the other two spots and I repopped the hand with some trepidation. To cut a long story short I lost half my stack on this stupid hand and Hitman would go on to ride my chips to heads-up later on. At one stage Pokerhontasz got coolered with trips undeneath TheConge's turned full house and never really recovered fully, so she was first out in the shove/fold stage. I was out shortly after and head's up was a very short affair because Hitman was tired and zombie re-shoved Q6 into The Conge's aces preflop.  The real story of the match though was TheConge's relentless button raising strategy.  Time and time again I had to look down at Q4o, J6o etc in the small blind hoping for a glimmer of a hand to 3bet with but none came. He played great last night, and more so when he didn't really have much of a hand to start with, because he played his position. By acting last after other player's decisions TheConge could wait to judge tells/range/action/board texture etc. and make some good post flop moves. I wish I could play this well when on the button but I am so rooted in 'level one' poker because of playing gutter stakes online that I cannot make the leap, or do so at the wrong times against the wrong players. TheConge and I have had our higher level battles in the past, but last night I was sandwiched between his button and the big stack's big blind.

Insta actions in nano stakes cash games

As far as I am concerned, an insta bet or insta check in online poker can only be one where the pre-emptive button has been pressed and the betting action happens the instant play gets around to the villain. Some poker information websites will have you believe that a super-fast bet is an insta-bet but this is not so. A super -fast bet or check may well contain loaded information and act as a tell, but it is not to be confused with the instantaneous (or near-instantaneous) action. At nano stakes cash full ring,and in order of frequency seen instantaneous actions can be:

1. The insta-check or insta call

Rarely in full ring is this anything other than weakness or a drawing hand. A player may preselect check/fold or check/call. The surest time when you can take down the pot in these situations are when a player who multitables has used the insta check button out of the blinds. The texture of the flop will tell you if you should bet or not in position, and if you are insta called on a wet board a dry turn card and bet should finish the job off.

2. The insta min-bet

This is most often ace-high, two overcards or a weak pair in the pocket. Many players will preselect insta min bet all 3 streets with these kinds of holdings. The insta min bet is a hand they perceive to be o.k but not worth betting properly with. The only time you should fold is if you have 1. terrible position and a weak hand multiway 2. Worse than ace high heads up or 3. They change the bet sizing on the river to HUUUUGE! It doesn't take a genius to work out their hand has been the nuts all along, or miraculously came good by the river.  It is also important to spot any timing delay on the turn. Calling stations who insta-min bet the flop and think before min betting or 2xing the turn are often trapping, with the intention of blasting the river with a pot bet. More aggressive donkey players perform all these moves with 2X or 3X size bets (which can be pre-selected) as well, so be on the look out for this high level and cunning bluffing tactic.

3. The insta click raise

I cannot think of a situation where this would be anything other than a monster hand. Unless you are playing against a super aggressive moron who has a sizing tell where he bets instantly most of the time and also bets proportionally to the strength of his hand.

4. The insta river shove

Foldfoldfoldfoldfoldfoldfold....... Or risk going down the road of "he cannot have it this time I call oh shit its the mortal nuts, dammit I wish I had folded!" The thing to remember here is that this move was pre-planned. The villain had to know on the turn that he was shoving the river so ignore the river card and fold your unimproved pocket jacks, again.


5. The insta pot bet

This is the only insta action with any ambiguity as far as I am concerned and it is player dependent. It screams strength but you often see players betting like this if they are scared. AK is a hand that gets some players into trouble this way. They know it is supposed to be a good hand, but cannot believe it when then the flop comes down ragged time and time again. In response to this cycle of disappointment they formulate a plan: to pot the hand regardless and show super strength. If they bet this way then only players with a really strong hand can call down, which is unlikely because they have a top 5 starting hand. This donk logic is doomed to fail and all the showdown value of AK vanishes when weaker aces may have stuck around for smaller bets, or weak pairs may have called and been outdrawn by you on the turn or river. The only time you get action you are crushed and these sorts of players have a hard time folding AK once they have invested a chunk of cash into the hand. More often than not an insta pot bet is a decent pair hand though, so look out for players who mostly check/fold and then suddenly insta-pot the flop when they 'have it.'

What happens when I am losing

This is one of those stream of conscious semi-tilted posts I sometimes write to rationalise losing money and recover from it. Losing is painful for me no matter how small the event or stake. If it is a game of pool, darts, cards, monopoly etc. the feeling is still the same. In other words the monetary loss is not really the source of the pain. I have had problems in the past being a very 'bad loser' and I am not sure of the origins of this behaviour as it dates back as long as I can remember. I spent a long time away from pool tables because of this attitude problem, but have since managed to partly exorcise these demons. For me, losing prompts an adreneline rush and this is the trigger for foggy thinking and bad decision making. Sometimes I will complain, blame others, beat myself up etc but on the poker table bad decision making quickly leads to loose play and loss of money.

I just left a ridculous, cheap and donkey filled poker table after 40 mins because I was losing. If I had stayed longer I was a big favourite to win back my losses and more but I still left the table for several reasons. Firstly I analysed the optimum session length of my most consistent winnning sessions and found that 15-40 mins is optimal and any more or less is linked to more losses. Secondly I have decided to put some balance back into my life and play a little less poker in my leisure time. Thirdly, when you sit and lose for 40mins at a poker table even the biggest drooler on the planet will gain confidence in your losses, notice that you usually bet but this time checked a street and use that as a cue to experiment with bluffing. The donkey in question has probably played 100% fit/fold up to that point and many donks accidentally bluff with the best hand, so it is not worth looking them up with a marginal hand when you can return another day to flop the nuts and stack off with a different donkey who has stubbornly held on with 2nd pair Ace kicker to your set.

Finally another statistic hit me today: I was running a hud and my preflop play stats matched exactly another player on the table sat to my left, and he too was having a losing session of similar proportions. The super tight style was clearly not working at this moment in time on this table, with this group of players for what ever reason. The one thing I have learned not to do in this situation though, is start playing crappy hands. If 3 donks limp and I look at QJo and think 'If I raise the btn I'll have pos'n, the blinds will fold and .....' I know it is time to leave the table and let the adreneline leave my system. Even though isolating in position or going multiway in position can be profitable you are working marginal edges and must accept bigger swings. There is also more multistreet guesswork against groups of players with super wide hand ranges as you rarely get heads up when you raise from any position.  The only way to beat the donkeys is to raise massively preflop with good hands (for your position), flop well and then get it in fast on a wet board or build a pot over 3 streets on a dry board. This is how I built my cash game profit, and this is how I intend to keep it.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

I don't know what it is about Sundays and online poker but I should routinely take a day of rest instead of playing. My best and most consistent tournament finishes have been on a Sunday because there are so many monkeys playing the big fields, but my worst overall cash/sit and go losing days have been on a Sunday. I think I develop some kind of false invincibility shield by wading through 500 players in a tournament, and then wear my new shield to the cash tables where I am of course totally vincible, as it were. I performed a classic donkey move yesterday, taking all my lovely tournament profit and losing it in a slightly higher stake cash game. At first I told myself that it would be a learning experience, to improve my game. At first I told myself I would drop out when half stacked and accept the loss for experience's sake. Unfortunately I made the classic mistake of dumping loads and then trying to get even before quitting. DONG!

I descended into some kind of gambler's distorted mind set, I got tilted in a subtle way and began to play HORRIBLY. I flatted weak aces aout of position, I stopped hand reading and played on whims and at one stage I stubbornly called down with an underpair to the board. In short I turned into a total weak-tight calling station idiot. In the cold light of day I am through the self loathing period of this disastrous session and in truth my roll is still plenty intact. I am not like the sad blackjack players on Louie Theroux's special programme on gambling, but I experienced a little of what they must go through. Mike Caro calls it the 'threshold of misery,' when you have lost an amount by which any further losses are inconsequential to you compared to what you have lost already in emotional terms. Next Sunday however, if I play and if I cash in anything I am going to do what all the weak tight nitty Sunday cash game players do: I am going to hit..... and run.
;)

To value bet or to bluff? That is the question

I have made two large post it notes, one says 'value bet' and one says 'bluff.' All bets in poker are one or the other and I have had some problems automatically betting without a good reason either way. My polarised post it notes are helping me to keep a check on my reasoning. I should also be able to isolate problem situations where it is not clear cut either way. For those who are not clear on the definitions a value bet is a bet which stands to be called by a range of worse hands eg you bet AK on a KJ8 board into a passive player who will chase draws and peel with middle or bottom pair eg JQ, J10, J9, A8 etc. Some of these hands will be superior hands, such as 88 but it is still a value bet when you make it, since there are fewer monster hands that are potentially ahead of you. A bluff is a bet that will fold out a range of better hands such as a donk lead on a A72 board with 64. Your hand is worthless and you do not want to go to the river only to be beaten by 9 high, so you bluff and your opponent will likely fold KQ,KJ,QJ,J10 etc to a bet thinking that you hold an ace in your hand. To make these bets you need to know your opponent's playing style and mood, since a tight aggressive player will pay off obvious value bets less often than a calling station and a tight-passive player will often fold to bluffs.  The psychology of betting in poker fascinates me and I think the reason why calling stations call with such a wide range of hands is that they fear being bullied and they are also eternally hopeful about the hands they might make if they get lucky 'this time'. This is why you should rarely bluff at nanostakes poker, because you are playing against people gambling for fun with very little money. They are happy to splash about their chips and so you should value bet the living daylights out of them every chance you get.

Turbo booster

Quick blind levels in microstakes heads up turbos creates an interesting set of challenges for the thinking/improving poker player. You are forced to observe frequencies of player actions within a few hands and make decisions based on these observations with the ticking time bomb of 3 minute blind levels. When you factor in the aggressiveness of many heads up players this makes some matches like a game of chicken. Your initial impressions of a player can be mistaken though, and if you do not keep reevaluating their playing style then you miss it when the swingometer moves in the other direction. This is not to say that players are varying their style to confuse and disorientate, they are simply not that sophisticated at my level of play.  What players are doing though is hitting or missing hands and any change in consistency is likely to reveal a hit rather than a miss since they will rarely have a strong hand.  My strategy is based around exploiting the following general player characteristics:

1. They call and slow play too much
2. They bet more with better hands and less with bluffs (unless they are an aggro donk)
3. They are impatient
4. They do not read the board to assess your hand strength, only their own
5. They are happy to get all the chips in early to feel the rush of the board running out yeah! Bizarrely though, they often tighten up when they have less than 7-8bb.

So to counter these general characteristics I try to:

1. Bet more for value and bluff less
2. Avoid overthinking their overbets, but stamp on min bets
3. If they think for a long time, they are likely in a marginal spot, not super strong or super weak (unless preflop with high blinds when you sometimes see a tank min raise or tank min 3bet with AA/KK which is surprisingly common amongst calling stations or weak tight players)
4. Look at the board and announce how well it fits their likely hands and compare their strength to mine
5. Try to avoid giving them the perfect reshove at around 15bb, but shove wide myself at -10bb

I am on a mission to remove fancy play from my game. It is a long road ahead but these simple rules should help to keep me in check. I have stopped playing full ring SNGs because everyone has tightened up way too much so the value vs the time it takes has vanished from them. I am too busy for cash games so heads up is the way to go with a busy lifestyle. A HU Turbo only takes 20mins max to complete. Current roi 6% and counting....