Darkened Poker

Until recently I had been a believer of betting your hands and building the pot you want for a couple of reasons:

• People use to shut down quickly if you acted weak and then started showing strength later in the hand.
• People use to just check their medium hands down and see if they could win a showdown so if you did not bet it you got nothing.

But now I have become a big fan of checking my good hands and going for a check raise on multiple streets even:

• Aggressive play has been beaten into everyone’s head so now everyone is betting mid, bottom and underpairs or even ace high.
• Everyone is floating the flop to take hands away on the turn so no one notices takes of you going from weak to strong as a warning sign any more.
• People are getting really stubborn about releasing hands once they have put money in the pot.  People do not protect their stacks like they use to.

So now I check almost every time I hit.  If the board is ugly or there is a good chance I could be outdrawn I check raise right away.  If not I will just call and go for a check raise on the turn just to mess with peoples heads.  Since a lot of aggressive people are also stubborn I find I get a lot more money in the pot this way.

Sometimes you even get to check raise on multiple street like in this example and people still call your all in with underpairs to the board.

Poker Stars $3.00+$0.30 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t25/t50 Blinds

MP2: t5835 M = 77.80
Hero (SB): t2965 M = 39.53

Pre Flop: (t75) Hero is SB with K A

3 folds, MP1 calls t50, MP2 calls t50, 2 folds, Hero raises to t250, 2 folds, MP2 calls t200

Flop: (t600) A 3 5 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets t250, Hero raises to t800, MP2 calls t550

Turn: (t2200) 3 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets t1150, Hero raises to t1915 all in, MP2 calls t765

River: (t6030) 9 (2 players – 1 is all in)

MP2 mucks [2s 2c]

Interesting points about this hand:

• Given that he called my pre-flop raise I checked it thinking there was lots of draws he would bet.
• He did so I check raised him to really charge for the draw if that was what he had.
• Now my chip stack is almost the size of the pot so I either want to go all in or not get pot committed until the river is a safe card.  Since most of the time a pot size bet here will only get called when I am crushed I really do not want to be the one moving all in.
• I checked again thinking he might believe I was fooling around and bet again, if not and he just checked I was fine with that as I could get away on the river if it got ugly.
• He bets 1/2 the pot, kind of weak , so I move all as I think I am in the lead.

He got aggressive and stubborn with an under pair, let me check raise him two streets in a row and get all my money in with him drawing almost dead.  I love this game…

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There is one player on PokerStars that every time I see her play she has ends up leaving the game just after getting felted.  She plays a little overly aggressive game for the most part, but the big leak in her game is her poorly executed bluffing given her table image.

She always seems to end up pushes all in when she has little to no fold equity for the situation so she often gets a lot of crying calls that bust her out.

Consider all the variables that factor into fold equity:

• Table image, the more aggressive your table images is the more you will have to bluff
• How much strength they have shown, if they have already lead out at the pot, most likely a min raise will not take it down.
• The board, the less hands you could legitimately represent vs draws and pure air the more you would have to bluff.
• What could they likely holding, the better the hand they could have the more you would have to bluff to move them off it.

Before this particular hand with her I have seen her stack off enough times that I now look for reasons play hands with her and double up.  She c-bets almost 100% of the time although usually only for 1 street.

Poker Stars $0.02/$0.05 No Limit Hold’em

Hero (BB): $7.38
MP2: $2.51

Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero is BB with 8 T

4 folds, MP2 raises to $0.20, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.15

Flop: ($0.42) 3 3 8 (2 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets $0.30, Hero raises to $0.90, MP2 raises to $2.31 all in, Hero calls $1.41

Turn: ($5.04) 7 (2 players – 1 is all in)

River: ($5.04) 2 (2 players – 1 is all in)

MP2 mucks A2

Interesting points:

• I check to her on the flop hoping to snap off a c-bet which she goes ahead and does.
• I check raise her 3x showing a lot of strength
• She all in raises for only 2.5 more than my check raise which is not a lot given my already aggressive play
• Given her aggressive image I can put her on flush draw, overs and complete air so I call.

If I hand not seen her stack off before, had a less aggressive image and there was not a flush draw on the board it might have been enough of an all in to work.  But given that it was only 1/3 my stack she had no fold equity at all.

Poker Stars $0.02/$0.05 No Limit Hold’em

Hero (UTG+2): $5.11
MP2: $4.52
CO: $6.61
BTN: $7.53

Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero is UTG+2 with 8 9

2 folds, Hero calls $0.05, 1 fold, MP2 calls $0.05, CO calls $0.05, BTN calls $0.05, 1 fold, BB checks

Flop: ($0.27) J 3 T (5 players)

BB checks, Hero bets $0.15, MP2 raises to $0.30, CO calls $0.30, BTN calls $0.30, BB folds, Hero calls $0.15

Turn: ($1.47) A (4 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets $0.35, CO raises to $0.70, BTN calls $0.70, Hero calls $0.70, MP2 calls $0.35

River: ($4.27) 7 (4 players)

Hero checks, MP2 bets $0.30, CO raises to $1.20, BTN raises to $2.95, Hero raises to $4.06 all in, MP2 calls $3.17 all in, CO raises to $5.56 all in, BTN calls $2.61

CO & BTN have KQ and split the pot with the nut str8.

I have noticed a lot of posts on other blogs and forums like 2+2 where people are getting down and giving up after just playing poker for a few years.  They say things like “I am still making mistakes and if I meant to be a poker player I should be getting it by now”.   I feel for these guys as the learning process can be brutal and the set backs many, but they are giving up for the wrong reasons way to early.

There has been a lot of research into the learning process as everyone has been trying to figure out if there is such a thing as natural talent or is everything a learned skill.  After years of tracking kids progress from all ranges of IQ’s, incomes, ages and genes through a lot of different disciplines ( chess, music, sports, engineering).  They are coming to a consensus that what really matters is time, in general an expert level in most anything can be reached by someone of an average IQ in about 10,000 hour of practice.  An excellent read on this subject is “Talent Is Overrated”.

So our parent were right, it does just take a lot of hard work and practice.  The hard part is getting that much practice as 10,000 hours is quite a bit of time.

10,000 / 12 hour days / 6 days a week = 2.67 years of nothing but poker

10,000 /  8 hour days / 6 days a week = 4.0 years of full time poker

10,000 /  3 hour days / 6 days a week = 10.6 years of working + poker

These numbers are kind of interesting because they closely follow what we have seen in poker thus far.  After the money maker affect of 2003 poker was dominated by nothing but amateurs.  These guys had been playing for years and started coming out of the home games and into the casino’s, tournaments and WSOP.  Very few of them were really great so the pro’s were sharing the spot light with a bunch of random different amateur at the final table of every event.

2-3 years later we saw the rise of retired or independently wealthy people that started to make more than their fair share of final tables.  Right after poker got popular these guys had been playing a little all their lives but now had all the time in the world to devote to it and were the first ones to really get good and consistently run up against the pro’s.  Watch all the early WPT final table interviews, its always some retire or rich guy that got hit with the poker bug.

4.0 years later we saw the rise of the young guns in poker that through numbers and skill in  new style of play started dominating the poker events.  These kids that start playing online poker right after 2003 in high school almost full time and then dropped out of college 4 years later when they realize how good they had got and how much money they could make.  Watch the 2005 -2006 WSOP and WPT events, these kids replaced the retired and wealthy people as the challengers to the pro’s.

The 10.6 years is the rest of us poor saps, we get sucked into poker but already have life full of responsibilities and can only devout a small amount of time to its study.  Like it or not this groups progress will be at least twice as long as everyone else.  It is 10,000 hour of good practice so staying up till 4 am just to compensate and get more hours in is not going to work.  After a full day of work and putting the kids down a 4 am study session is going to be minimal gain at best and more than likely you will be so mentally numb that your just dumping your bankroll.

And this longer learning curve is were the trouble starts, they see all these young kids in high school getting really good really quick and passing them.  They start to think there is something wrong with themselves as they are older, wiser, have more patients but are suddenly getting their butts kicked.  They ask these young guns how long they have been playing and the answer is just a couple of years so they think they must be to old to learn or something like that and give up.

Don’t give up, it is just a matter of time.  The games are not going anywhere and if you keep practicing you will get just a good as everyone else.  It is kind of a downer that we were not born in 1982 and was just hitting 21 in 2003 after playing online poker full time for 3 years while living at home.  We would all be very rich right now.  But the great thing about poker is once you learn you can play for the rest of your life so there is no real hurry to get to the finish line.

If you fall into the last group you just need to re-adjust your expectations and realize that you may still have a few years of practice left before winning your WSOP bracelet.  Mark my words though in 2013 we will have gotten our 10 years of practice and the internet kids, retired, independently wealthy and the pro’s will have to share the WSOP with us again.

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