Darkened Poker

Long time ago a friend sent me 20$ on PokerStars and I started playing 1$ buy in cash games.   Using good bankroll management I managed to not go broke and work it up to 200$ so I was playing 10$ NL cash games and 2$ tournaments.  By a good amount of luck I managed to win a tournament and got an extra 575$ dropped in my bankroll.   Normally this is a good thing but in this case it gave me a chance to make a really stupid mistake.

Since I was playing 1-2$ NL live games and had worked my way through the micro limit levels online so quickly with only my bankroll management requirements holding me back I assumed I could jump to the bigger games.  Given my bankroll was not big enough to match my live game limits I just jumped up to the 40$  NL cash games.  Well I quickly learned that at the higher levels online games are about 10X harder than live games.  I quickly lost the bankroll to play at that level and stepped down to the 20$ NL games.  After a week or so at that level I no longer had the bankroll to play and had to move back to the 10$ level.

Even though I was back at the same level before all this started I was on super tilt for having lost all my tournament gains.   So before long I am all the way back down to 5$ games and I finally realize I need to take some time off from the game to get my head reset.

What I should have done is taken that tournament win money and cashed it out.  There was no reason to keep it on there as I was steadily working my way through the levels and everything was going as planned.  A second best plan would have been to separate my cash game & tournament money and just used that 575$ to only play 5$ tournaments.

Painful lesson to have to learned but I am glad I learned it with a small tournament win rather than big one.

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Darkened Poker

I can not wait to play in a decent sized local tournament, the cash games at this place are usually very good so I imagine that a good player should have a decent overlay at tournaments here as well.

First watch the first 1/2 of the video to be amazed at what looked like poker amateur hour except it was online pro “Pokernoob” and live pro “Roland de Wolfe” in a large buy-in tournament over in Europe.

The good:

• What a call by Pokernoob, he put Roland on a busted flush draw and made a risky but normally +EV call which in this case turned out to be wrong.

The Bad:

• Roland de Wolfe does not turn over his hand when called, he tries some amateur move of just turning over one card to see if he is beat.  As I have discussed here before this form of angling at the showdown has to stop.
• Roland then further compounds his mistake by actively trying to avoid showing his full hand and pushing his cards into the muck.
• The dealer tries to stop Roland from mucking his hand, they should only do that if someone in the hand explicitly asks to see both show down hands.
• Pokernoob then turns up his hand to rub it in Roland’s face that he just folded the best hand.  Why is he trying to stop Roland from making great big mistakes like mucking the best hand.  Why not just take the pot and see if Roland will do it several more times in the tournament so he can make more money.
• Roland then try’s to get his hand back so he can win the hand by saying he showed a higher card.  Wow what a weasel move that was, he was happy to muck his hand to avoid giving away info earlier when he thought he was beat.  But as soon as realized he made a mistake he wants to get his hand back so he can win the pot.  Seriously WTF, pro’s should know better than that.

The Ugly:

Sure Pokernoob just proved that he can angle better than Roland at that moment in time, but he has now taught Roland to be a slightly better player.  Why do these kids always have to trade educating their poker competition of all their mistakes for a mere 2 seconds of “in your face” glory.  Not a long term +EV play.

PokerNews has a slightly different take on the hand which I fully disagree with.  I think Matt Savage saying that he would have pulled Rolands hand from the muck and awarded the pot to Roland would be a terrible mistake.  Just because he thinks Pokernoob did not play in a “Gentleman” manner does not mean you can go and change the rules of the game on the fly.

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Darkened Poker

Coming from cash games I use to play small pair primarily for set value or late position raises against the blinds.  Playing more tournaments recently I have been forcing to take more small pairs in heads up situations not for set value but just to snap off c-bets.

Lots of people in the lower buy in tournaments have fairly strong betting patterns when they miss the flop.  The will put in a 2/3 pot size bet when they hit and a 1/2 pot size bet when they miss.  So now I am taking every small pair I can and check raising them when they hesitate a little and then do their smallish bet at the pot.

If your read is right most to the time they fold and the pot is yours right away.   If they do call your re-raise they are generally 3-1 to catch up to you which is not a bad stop to be  in with our money.

Another great side benefit to this play is people see it and get a little scared, call some people down with small pairs and suddenly they are no longer attacking your blinds and you can check on your draws.

It can be a very profitable play, in this hand the guy did call my re-raise so I was 60-40 to win.  Normally you have a lot of fold equity in this play so it becomes even stronger, but in this case he did not want to fold even though he could have been drawing to as little as 4 real outs.   His pause before betting on the flop and then only betting 250 into a 475 pot was the big tell that he had whiffed.

Poker Stars $2.00+$0.20 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t25/t50 Blinds

Hero (UTG+1): t1180 M = 15.73

MP1: t1875 M = 25

Pre Flop: (t75) Hero is UTG+1 with 2 2

1 fold, Hero calls t50, 1 fold, MP1 raises to t200, 5 folds, Hero calls t150

Flop: (t475) Q K 5 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP1 bets t250, Hero raises to t980 all in, MP1 calls t730

Turn: (t2435) 8 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: (t2435) Q (2 players – 1 is all in)

MP1 mucks AJ

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