The Long Long Layoff
           by John Vorhaus

In a perfect world, we’d get to play poker as much as we want. In a perfect world, the game would always be on and the game would always be soft. In a perfect world, there would never be family obligations or work-related travel or gridlocky traffic jams to block the straight line between poker desire and poker bliss. In a perfect world…

Well, last time I checked this wasn’t a perfect world, and, for most of us at least, there’s inevitably a gap between the amount of poker we want to play and the amount of poker we get to play. To quote the phrase, the problem is not: playing poker; the problem is: not playing poker. This problem amplifies after a long layoff, when, amateur and pro alike, we’re particularly at risk for bad play. It’s this risk that I’d like to analyze now.

Put yourself in my shoes: I’ve been traveling overseas for the better part of a month. Nothing wrong with traveling overseas, it’s just that all the places I’ve visited lately view poker as foreign exotica at best or the devil’s playground at worst. And the internet connections sucked, so I couldn’t even play online. Hence, no poker for poor, put-upon, not-living-in-a-perfect-world JV. Now I come home, unpack, wade through the junk mail (and the junk email; good lord, how many male-member enlargements does one man need?) and even before I’ve had a chance to sleep the jet lag out of my system, I’m off to the club for a little long-overdue and well-deserved hold’em.

I storm into the club with a “Look who’s home from the wars, boys!” attitude, ready to take no prisoners in pursuit of the poker buzz I’ve missed lo these many weeks. Can you name five mistakes I’m likely to make in this frame of mind? I can… easy.

1. In the name of making up for lost time, I’ll play way too many hands.

2. A feeling of entitlement (it’s been so long since I’ve dragged a pot) will cause me to overplay those hands.

3. If I suffer early setbacks, I’ll try to get well quick because, gosh, losing’s not the feeling I sought to have when I rushed here so.

4. If I get ahead early, I’ll push my rush too far and break it, as the euphoria of winning after so long a layoff overwhelms my common sense.

5. Win or lose, I’ll play too long. In the name of making up for lost time.

Can you think of other mistakes that I (or you) might make in this circumstance? It wouldn’t hurt to write ’em down; at least you’ll know what they are.

Undoubtedly the biggest mistake I can make is going to the club in the first place. Tired from long travel, with my body clock out of whack, and my motivation for playing torqued from profit to buzz, I have no hope of bringing my A game (or even my C- game) to the table. And this is the big pitfall of layoff poker or delayed gratification poker: The very moment when we should exercise restraint is the exact moment we’re least likely to do so.

You know it’s true. You’ve seen it in yourself. You’ve seen you arrive in Las Vegas or Aruba or Atlantic City absolutely wiped out by the trip you took to get there. You know you’re wiped out, and you don’t care. You came here to play poker, and by gum you’re not gonna waste another minute before you do. Charged by adrenaline, you jump into the first available game (not even the best available game, not by a long shot.) Carried by adrenaline, you’re maybe even sharp for a while, but soon the sharpness fades, and all that’s left is the weariness of travel, polluting your system, just waiting to degrade your decision-making ability and melt your stack.

Am I wrong? Okay, then I’m wrong: You’re one of those sensible blessed few who can travel to Las Vegas or Aruba or Atlantic City, check into your hotel room, chill out over a meal or a refreshing beverage, get some sleep, and attack the game with all the clear-eyed patience and keen awareness that you’d attack the game back home. You’re immune to the layoff, and I commend you for your strength.

But be honest: Are you really immune to the layoff, or do you just think you are? Do you find some excuse to play before you’re really mentally ready? What form do your excuses take?

• I only have so many hours to play while I’m here. I know I’m not completely sharp, but I can’t afford to wait.
• I have a strategy for jumping in after a layoff: I play super-tight and play only premium hands (even though every fiber of my being shouts “Get in there and mix it up!”)
• Probably I’ll play even better than usual because I haven’t had a chance to reinforce all my old bad habits lately.

That last one’s a corker, huh? The “long layoff equals new leaf” theory of playing bad poker. With this thought in place, you can rationalize almost any foolhardy behavior, telling yourself (as one will) that, “Rationalization is the act of a rational man.”

Don’t do it! Just don’t. Try a different rationalization instead. Rationalize a decent excuse for not playing poker, not playing at all, not until you’re good and ready to give it your best effort. Remind yourself that the game will be there tomorrow, and the game will be better because you will be better. Tell yourself to consider the bottom line, and measure the desire to just play poker against the desire to be the winning player you generally try to be. Cook up any excuse to delay your play until you’ve recovered from your journey or your layoff or your other obligations or whatever has taken you away from the game you love. I know it’s the game you love; I love it too, and I can’t wait to get back in there and mix it up again. But I must wait; you must too. It’s the only way we can keep the layoff from kicking us in the ass.

So the next time you’re thinking of rushing off to play a session you know you’re not quite ready for, ask yourself this simple question: “What would JV do?” Well, he’d probably rush right off and play, and since my favorite piece of poker advice is, “Don’t play like I play,” I urge you to profit from my mistakes. At least one of us should.

Tuning your Raise
           by John Vorhaus

In tournament poker the question often arises, and must be contemplated, “What is a standard raise?” Conventional wisdom suggests a standard raise of three times the big blind or, if there are antes involved, the exact sum of the antes and blinds. Rather than yield to conventional wisdom (a product of conventional minds) I would ask instead two questions: “What are you trying to do with your raise?” and “What bet gets that job done?”

Assuming you want to pick up the blinds and antes without a fight, you need to tune your raise to the amount of fight you find at the table. Let’s say the blinds are 400 and 800 with a 100 ante. Only at a fiercely timid table would a bet of, say, 1600 fold the field, because with 2200 in the pot that weenie 1600 would just be offering tasty odds for all sorts of wacky draws. On the other hand, if you bet twice the total ticket, say 4400, in that situation, you’d be overbetting the pot, at the risk of overcommitting your stack. You’d happily make that bet with A-A, but would you get a call? The standard raise, then, is anything but standard.

I remember when I first started playing no-limit hold’em, I made it my practice to make the same size raise as everyone else, just because I didn’t know better. A lot of new NL players have this practice. And a lot of players take their cue from the table as a whole in establishing their own standard raise. Depending on the table, sometimes a small bet will fold the field. Other times, a big bet just seems to be a red flag waved before many snorting bulls. It’s kind of a cop-out to say, “It depends,” but, well, it does.

It depends on the tournament stage. Or even if you’re in a tournament at all. Depends on the size of your stack. Their stacks. Position. Relative position of dominating and dominated stacks in relation to your own. Table image. Time till the next blind increase. And on and on and on.

But the common denominator is clear: Whatever opening raise you care to make, make sure you make it for a reason you know. Are you trying to fold the field or looking for a call? Are you inviting weak players in because you feel you can outplay them on the flop? Are you scaring strong players out because you fear being outplayed? Are you trying to pick off short stacks? Go to war with big ones? Put pressure on other players as the money bubble looms? All of these considerations go into the shaping of the bet you make.

Conventional wisdom often tells us to make the same size raise every time we raise, so that savvy opponents can’t correlate between our raise size and our hand strength. I’m not sure I agree with this wisdom. If you’re in late position and everyone has folded around to you, then your opening raise is much less about what cards you hold than about what outcome you want. In simplest terms, a small raise invites calls and a big raise invites folds. Therefore shape your raise according to the invitation you wish to extend. If your image is right — if you have sufficiently trained your opponents to take your bets at face value — you should get the result you want. The standard raise is simply not always “the right tool for the right job.” Further to this, by showing some flexibility in your opening moves (and by randomizing that flexibility) you can make your opponents uncertain about your intent. Does a small raise mean weakness or hidden strength? Does a big raise suggest that you’re bluffing or sitting on a monster? They won’t know, and since they don’t know you enjoy a measure of control you wouldn’t otherwise have.

Naturally, you don’t want to veer too far from the norm, either by betting so small as to give favorable odds to call or betting so large as to imperil yourself heedlessly, but within a certain range, it seems to me, there’s nothing much standard about the standard raise at all.

Button, Button, Who needs the Button?
           by John Vorhaus

“The second liar never has a chance”

Conventional wisdom has it that position is critically important in no limit hold’em, and that the later your position is, the better off you are. While I always say that conventional wisdom is for conventional thinkers, for the most part this insight is right on. There are times, however, that position is irrelevant — times, in fact, that early position can come to your aid in stealing pots that would not otherwise be yours.

Consider this example: In a typical low buy-in, capped buy-in ($100 or $200 maximum, say) no-limit hold’em game, you find yourself in the big blind holding… well, for this play it really doesn’t matter what you hold. For the sake of conversation, we’ll give you the Hammer, 2-7 offsuit, if only to demonstrate that sometimes the cards you hold matter as little as the position you’re in.

It’s folded around to the button. You’d expect him to raise, wouldn’t you? And he does. Why not? He’s only got to get through the small blind and you, and you’re both on random hands. From his point of view if you fold that’s fine, but then again he wouldn’t mind inducing action from your random hands, because he thinks he can take the pot away from you on most flops. He’s right on the first point, but wrong on the second, as he’s about to find out.

The small blind, a conventional thinker if ever there was one, folds, leaving it up to you to decide how to play your Hammer. Remember, your foe puts you on a random hand. In other words, he doesn’t have a clue what you’ve got! What do you think he has? He raised from the button, the precious button, where any half-assed hand is good for a raise if no one has already entered the pot. So let’s put him on exactly that: a half-assed hand. Maybe K-T. Maybe 6-6. Maybe some real egregious cheese like 6-9 suited, but probably something a little more coordinated than that. He wants to have at least a little something-something to go to war with on the flop, should you call. Which you do.

Now here’s the cool part: No matter how the flop comes, he’s an odds-on favorite to miss it. Do you know this? Are you aware of it? Any time a player holds two unpaired cards, he’ll pair the board only roughly one-third of the time. Fully two-thirds of the time, then, any given player will whiff the flop, completely swing and miss it. This is crucial to our understanding of what comes next, because while it’s true that you, too, are likely to miss most flops, your position gives you first crack at this one!

What you’re specifically looking for here is a certain variety of orphan flop, the sort of flop that’s unlikely for your foe to have hit, and one that doesn’t offer much in the way of attractive draws. 8-8-3 is an orphan flop; so is 6-T-2 rainbow. T? 9? 8? is not an orphan flop, because a preflop raiser could easily be in there with A-8 or A-9, even 8-9 or a suited or unsuited jack. If you bet into that scary flop, or one like it, you’re just asking to get played with, and you don’t want that.

What you want is to bet into any non-scary flop, and bet it like you own it. Remember, your foe puts you on a random hand. And what kind of flops do random hands hit? Why, random ones, of course. You, meanwhile, can put him on a slightly less random hand. You can give him credit for having some sort of coordinated holding, and coordinated holdings hate uncoordinated flops, especially when they miss them completely — as your foe will two times out of three!

So go ahead and bet. Bet about 2/3 the size of the pot. This is a large enough bet to be taken seriously, and not look like a weak steal attempt. It’s also big enough to preclude his having favorable odds for any draw that might be out there. Yet it’s small enough that if he comes over the top with a big bet you can get away from your hand fairly cheaply. Go to school on this 2/3-pot sized bet. It’s a real workhorse, and should be a standard weapon in your arsenal.

Could you check-raise bluff here? Sure, why not? Many players are strong believers in the continuation bet, and feel a moral obligation to bet at any pot they’ve raised preflop. You check, he bets, you raise, he folds, next case. But I like my way better, for several reasons. First, you minimize your financial risk, getting the most bluff-bang for your buck. Second, he might check behind you, which gives him a free chance to hit his hand. Third, if it’s check-check and you then bet the turn, he can more reliably read your bet as a bluff.

Fourth, most important, your goal here is to win the money that’s already in the pot. Be satisfied to do that. Go ahead and bet into that ragged flop, knowing that most of the time your conventionally-minded foe won’t be able to call, and that the times he does call, you can confidently put him on a hand and back off your steal attempt. Plus, if you show a player on the button that not only will you call from the big blind but also bet out on the flop, it won’t take him too long to conclude that there are better players to attack than you. This leaves you unmolested in the big blind when he’s got the button, and what’s not to like about that?

One last thing: Though you might be tempted to show him that you stole a pot with the Hammer, please resist that urge. You might want to use the tool again sometime. Let your foes think you’re always lucky enough to pick up a big hand in the big blind and their precious button will become utterly useless to them.

Target Practice
           by John Vorhaus

In today’s capped buy-in no-limit hold’em games, the name of the game is taking your opponent off his whole stack. Tiny pots come and go… they don’t matter so much. But get yourself consistently on the right side of big confrontations and you can rack up some serious coin. Fortunately, today’s exploding population of not-so-experienced and not-so-skilled poker players affords you a host of tasty targets to shoot at. The practice off picking off these targets — knowing that they’re there, and knowing how to set them up and take them down — is what separates the wheat from the chaff (and the chaff from their coin) in hold’em.

Target practice as we’re speaking of it here requires three things: awareness, planning, and execution. Let’s look at each in turn.

AWARENESS: By now it should be your second nature to watch what’s going on around you at the poker table, and to be highly sensitive to such fundamental matters as which players are strong, which are weak, who bets without the best hand, who gives off reliable tells and so on. If you find you yet lack a riveted understanding of who’s doing what at the table, the problem lies within… within your own awareness.

Heightening awareness is not really a matter of concentrating harder, though concentration doesn’t hurt. Rather, it’s a matter of being open and receptive to what’s happening at the poker table. In the best of circumstances, you’re acquiring meaningful information without conscious thought. There just comes a time when you know (because you have acquired understanding through awareness) that seat one will make early raises with bad aces, for example, and will then get hooked on the hand.

PLANNING: Once you’ve acquired key information, like the fact that seat one bets bad aces, you enter the planning phase of your target practice. You ask yourself, What conditions am I looking for? What specific circumstances will allow me to take this guy off his whole stack? You already know what he needs: a bad ace in early position. What, then, do you need? Yep… a good ace in a better position. You also need to know what you intend to do with that good ace when you get it.

Most of the time, of course, you’d be in there raising, but in this situation you’re hoping not to have to. You’re looking for the specific harmonic convergence of a targetable foe with a weak ace, you with a strong ace, and no one else in the pot. This last part is hard to contrive, especially without raising, but the circumstances will arise from time to time, and you want to be ready when they do.

Why not, you may wonder, go ahead and raise with your good ace here? Is it not the best hand, and won’t it serve to shut out the rest of the field? Yes and yes, but it may also scare off your prey, before he’s had a chance to trap himself fully with his bad ace. Stick to the path of your planning, even at the risk of having the plan go awry through the unwanted involvement of others. (Though you’re still in there with an undisclosed good ace so you’re not in terrible shape.) You flat-call his raise with your good ace and hope that you get him heads up. If everything breaks your way, you’re ready to take a flop against a single foe with all this going for you: cards, position, awareness, and planning.

EXECUTION: Here comes the flop. Ideally, it’s something like A-4-4, the sort of flop that will embolden your foe’s bad ace while also reducing the risk that he hit his kicker. If you have your foe measured correctly, it won’t surprise you when he bets out. You also know such crucial things as how deep his money is, how you’re your money is, how willing he is to cling to a bad ace, how wary he is of you, etc. All these factors taken together will tell you how to execute your plan. Will you flat-call now and raise on the turn? Should you make a modest raise here and hope he raises back? Go all-in and tempt him to do likewise? Your specific actions will depend on the specific circumstances. Just make sure they don’t depend on fear.

Fear, you see, will cause a lot of players who feel they have the best hand to raise all in, hoping to drive their foe off his hand and take what the pot has to offer. I am not of that mind. I’m out to win his whole stack, and I’m willing to accept a little risk (the risk that he’ll hit his kicker on the turn) in the name of grabbing that stack.

Of course, if your foe is truly glued to his bad ace, you can go ahead and put his feet to the fire right now. Part of your awareness and planning, after all, was to contrive a confrontation against just such a foe who will make just such a mistake. So you may be able to make a huge reraise here and be confident of getting the call you want. Contrarily, if the flop offers some sort of secondary threat, like suited or straighted cards, you might want to protect your investment with a big bet here.

In all events, the key to execution is, well, executing. There’s no point in planning for a situation like this if you fail to follow through. In other words, why pick a target if you can’t pull the trigger? There will be times when you’ll back off because some sixth sense (actually your simple awareness) alerts you that your foe is stronger than he seems. That’s okay — so long as your decision is informed by a clear perception of the situation and not colored by fear of negative outcomes.

—

There’s a secondary benefit to this triptych of awareness, planning and execution: It puts your poker game into a global frame of mind. Instead of just lurching from hand to hand, betting with the best of it and hoping your cards hold up, you find yourself strategically engaged in the game from the moment you sit down till the moment you cash out. Instead of reacting to situations, you’re creating them, and since they’re creatures of your own creation, you’ll be much better equipped to handle them — and profit from them — than anybody else.

Antonio Esfandiari Tells All
           by Antonio Esfandiari

Antonio “Magic” Esfandiari was good enough to share some of his poker insights with us. It may be magic to us, but Antonio makes it look easy. Enjoy!

CAN YOU TELL AT A GLANCE WHETHER A GAME IS “GOOD?” HOW?

It depends. Most of the times yes and sometimes not right away. I would say about 80 percent of the time I can tell at a glance whether the game is good or bad. If I glance over and see familiar faces that I know are action players or bad players, then I know the game is good. If I look over and see unfamiliar faces, then most of the time that qualifies as a good game, too.   I love playing with people I have never played before because chances are they are not that good. After a couple of years you tend to get to know who the good players are. There are times however you look over and it’s half pros and a couple of unknowns with the minimum buy-in in front of them, and you cannot tell right away whether the game is good or not. For the most part, though, yeah, I can tell at a glance.

HOW DO YOUR LIMIT AND NO-LIMIT TOURNAMENT STRATEGIES DIFFER?

I play very solid, tight poker in limit and crazy, loose, aggressive in no-limit. I would say I play six times as many hands in no-limit than I do in limit. In no-limit, once the antes kick in if I have a big stack I am in every single pot.

HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE PLAY OF THOSE PROBLEMATIC POCKET JACKS?

Don’t ever go broke with two jacks!!! If there is preflop craziness, you have to think to yourself what does this person have that he is willing to put all this money in? He either has you completely dominated or it’s a coin flip. Either way, it’s not worth it. I play jacks almost like a pair of threes. Obviously the nature of the game and the amount of people in the game have a lot to do with it, but in general you should play jacks slowly and very carefully.

DO YOU HAVE ANY GAMBITS – SITUATION-SPECIFIC PLAYS – THAT YOU’RE WILLING TO SHARE WITH US?

Here is an interesting hand. We are down to about 120 people. I have a tough table. I am playing a lot of pots. I bring it in for a raise. The player two to my left calls, the player next to him calls and, next to him, the button calls, too. All three of my opponents are VERY good players. This is important, because the play I am about to explain would never work on an average player.   I have the 4d -5d . The flop comes K-K-7 with two spades. Chances are (as always) that no one connected. I bet right out. The player two to my left and the player behind him are probably not going to mess with it because if they call or raise me they have to worry about the player behind them. They both fold. Thank you lord! So far so good. One more to go. He announces “I call.” Oops. Not good right? I know that he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he knows that I know… Got it?! I know he is calling just to take it away. In that situation if I do not have a king I have to shut down on the turn and just give up the pot right? Well the only problem for him is that I knew that.   The turn brings the 7d . Board is K-K-7-7. Now, if I had a king I would probably check it, so I have to play as if I have a king. I go ahead and check. He bets. If I had a king I would probably just call right? If I raise it might send him a signal that I was bluffing because he too knows that I would probably just call with a king. So I call. Yes, I call with 5 high because I KNOW that I can win the pot on the river with a bet.   River comes a blank card and I bet. Without hesitation he folds. What can he do? He can’t possibly take it to the next level and raise me again. If he had a king, well, then that was that, but it worked out just fine. Everything went as planned.

IS TILT A FACTOR IN YOUR PLAY? WHAT SPECIFIC STEPS DO YOU TAKE TO TAKE YOURSELF OFF TILT?

I almost NEVER tilt. I tend to tilt very little and when I do I usually catch myself and put an end to it right away. A break to walk around the casino usually works.

WHAT SORT OF IMAGE DO YOU LIKE TO PROJECT AND WHAT DO YOU SEEK TO ACCOMPLISH WITH IT?

I play A LOT of hands. Sometimes I play every hand. People often think I am nuts. I use that image to get action when I get a hand. If a squeezer (tightass) who has been sitting there for two hours and hasn’t played a pot makes a huge bet, is anyone in their right mind going to call them? I hope not! Whereas the guy who has been in the last 10 pots betting and raising will get a little more action than the squeezer.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO DEFENSE OF BLINDS?

Definitely not. I do not really defend my blinds. Anytime I think I can reraise somebody and take the pot then I will. It doesn’t matter if I am in the blinds or not.

WHAT LEAKS DO YOU MOST FREQUENTLY SEE IN OTHER PLAYERS (OR EVEN YOURSELF!)?

Most people get married to their hands. They do not know when to let go of their hands. They know they are beat yet they still pay their opponents off.

IF YOU COULD IMPROVE ONE ASPECT OF YOUR GAME, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Patience. Sometimes I could use more patience in a poker game.

HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO ONLINE PLAY DIFFER FROM YOUR APPROACH TO LIVE ACTION?

A lot more psychology in live poker than on the net. As far as the actual hands, about the same. Maybe a little more tight on the internet before the flop. You see so many hands you can really utilize hand selection.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC STRATEGY FOR SHORT-HANDED PLAY?

Play lots of hands. Get in there and gamble. The value of hands go up dramatically short-handed. Any ace is huge. Aggressive. Aggressive. Aggressive.

DURING YOUR “LEARNING PHASE,” WHAT EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS HELPED YOU THE MOST?

Reading books and watching good players at the table.

WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER AN ADEQUATE BANKROLL FOR A WORKING PRO?

50 thousand or so is comfortable.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE TERRIFIC STRENGTHS OF YOUR GAME?

Reading my opponents. Putting the pressure on and aggressive play.

Phil Hellmuth Tells All
           by Phil Hellmuth

Phil Hellmuth was kind enough to fill out our “Team UB” questionnaire. Study his answers carefully: The wisdom of the ages they contain.

CAN YOU TELL AT A GLANCE WHETHER A GAME IS “GOOD?” HOW?

Not at a glance unless you know some of the players. At my level I can tell at a glance because I know all of the great players, and if none are in the game, then it is a good game. But in general, you have to watch for at least five or ten minutes to judge a game. If the players are playing too many hands, then I LOVE this.

WHAT SPECIFIC METHODS DO YOU USE TO EVALUATE THE STRENGTH OF YOUR COMPETITION?

Are they aggressive, and how many hands do they play? Do they call too much or fold too much?

HOW DO YOUR LIMIT AND NO-LIMIT TOURNAMENT STRATEGIES DIFFER?

I play both very tight for the first few levels, in limit I can keep on playing tight, in NL, I can go either way…

HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE PLAY OF THOSE PROBLEMATIC POCKET JACKS?

I LOVE jacks…I play small pots in NL, and big ones in limit…

IS TILT A FACTOR IN YOUR PLAY? WHAT SPECIFIC STEPS DO YOU TAKE TO TAKE YOURSELF OFF TILT?

I used to tilt way too much, but I’ve grown up a lot just from being a father and husband, and having financial swings in life…

WHAT SORT OF IMAGE DO YOU LIKE TO PROJECT AND WHAT DO YOU SEEK TO ACCOMPLISH WITH IT?

Sometimes tight, then I play loose; sometimes loose, then I play tight.

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC APPROACH TO DEFENSE OF BLINDS?

Not really. Whatever feels right…

WHAT LEAKS DO YOU MOST FREQUENTLY SEE IN OTHER PLAYERS?

Gambling at craps, blackjack, slots, horse races, or sports betting… alcohol or drug use, bad investments…

IF YOU COULD IMPROVE ONE ASPECT OF YOUR GAME, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Consistency…

HOW DOES YOUR APPROACH TO ONLINE PLAY DIFFER FROM YOUR APPROACH TO LIVE ACTION?

Online play is all about playing really tight, live is about the same, but you need to be able to adjust in both situations…

DO YOU HAVE A SPECIFIC STRATEGY FOR SHORT-HANDED PLAY?

Yes, I play hands like A-rag hard, whereas I might fold them otherwise…

DURING YOUR “LEARNING PHASE,” WHAT EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS HELPED YOU THE MOST?

Studying the greatest players of the era, like the late Jack Keller….

CONVENTIIONAL WISDOM SAYS THAT A TOP PLAYER CAN WIN “1.5 BIG BETS PER HOUR.” IN YOUR OPINION, IS THAT ASSESSMENT ACCURATE OR JUST A LOAD OF HOOEY DISGUISED AS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM?

You’ll do better than that in tourneys, and online if your good… But remember that only 15% of the people consistently win in poker…

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ARE THE TERRIFIC STRENGTHS OF YOUR GAME?

Reading people, understanding the flow of the game…

Learn Omaha: Understanding the Value of Connecting High Cards
           by Annie Duke

The final mistake I will discuss is the underestimation of the value of connecting high cards. Many players think that hands like KsQdJsTh are quite weak when, in fact, they are quite strong. This is due several factors. First, when you flop this hand well there is almost never a possibility of a low being available. Hands that kill the low are always more valuable because when you win with the hand you will win the whole pot. The strongest hands in Omaha 8/b are hands that having scooping potential. There are two types of scooping hands: ones that have two way potential like AA23 and ones that have only high potential like AAKQ. Hands that have only high potential are, for this reason, strong.

The second factor that makes high straight cards so valuable is that it is a hand that you rarely get trapped with. Either you flop the hand well (as when the board comes T93, QQ9, or AQT for example) or you flop it very poorly (23Q, 578, K52 for example). Unlike with low straight cards where you can have the idiot end of the straight with a bad low that you have to pay off with high straight cards you either flop the nut draw or you don’t. There is really just no gray area with hands like these-as long as you are capable of throwing away your one pair flops when there are dangerous low cards out there. Because there is no gray area these hands are very easy to get away from on the flop. And since you will almost exclusively be gunning for the whole pot when you make these hands, thus scooping, these hands are very valuable and can be played from any position for a raise-particularly when you have suited features with them.

I hope that these mistakes have given you something to think about. The main lesson about hand selection in Omaha eight-or-better you should take away with you is that the fact that everyone gets four hole cards means that you have to be pickier about what you play. It is much more important than in any other game that has no wild cards that your hand be one that can easily make the nuts. The strength of the winning hand as compared to stud or hold’em in always much greater. In stud two pair will generally win the pot. In hold’em one pair will generally win. In Omaha 8/b both these hands will generally lose. Because your opponents have four cards the strength of the winning hand is greatly increased so you, as a player, need to play hands that are likely to make the nuts when you make your hand. If you always keep this in mind you will be well on your way to becoming a winning Omaha 8/b player.

Learn Omaha: Overstimating The Value of Low Connecting Cards
           by Annie Duke

Another big mistake players make is overestimating the strength of connecting low cards that contain no ace. A hand like 2s3h4c5c might look very strong because of all the wheel possibilities but in reality it is not at all strong. Your flush feature is only 5-high. In order to flop the nut low or the wheel wrap you need an Ace to fall. And as I’ve said above it is never a good idea to wholly rely on exactly one card to fall when the flop hits. When your hand contains an A2 it is very easy to flop the nut low draw. Without that all-important ace you are most likely to flop the third best low draw when the low draw hits. For example, when any two low cards 3 and higher hit (34, 35, 36, 37or 38) A2 and A4 or A5 will be drawing better than you. You can only have the third best draw by definition and it is never a good idea to chase a draw when you can only make third best.

When you make a straight with this hand, your best high feature, unless it is exactly a wheel, it will generally not be the nut straight. So if the board is 456KQ you have the bottom straight and the third nut low. You will have to pay it off because your hand could win both ways will but you will often be scooped, particularly if the pot is multi-way. So the negative implied odds of this hand are substantial. It is important in Omaha 8/b to always consider the probability that your hand can make the nuts. Unlike in hold’em where one pair is the most likely hand to win a pot in Omaha 8/b the nuts is the most likely hand to win. So it is important to try to always put yourself in the position where that is what you are drawing for.

Learn Omaha: Overstimating The Value of A2
           by Annie Duke

Speaking of A2, although you can always play a hand containing these cards don’t overestimate the value of having them in your hand. Remember that everyone plays A2 and it happens quite often that when you have these two cards someone else does too, leaving you drawing at a half of the low side of the pot. So if A2 is the only feature to your hand, remember to always play with some caution. As2d9h6c is a hand like this. Limping in rather than raising would probably be the preferred play with a hand like this-waiting to see what hits the board. You have no strong high features to the hand and your back up low features (if an A or a 2 hits the board) are quite weak by virtue of containing a 6. This hand is weak enough that I would not call a double raise from an early position player with this hand, despite the A2 feature. It is too likely that either the first or second raiser or both also has the A2 feature and you have nothing else really working in the hand.

In reality, I would much rather have a hand like As3c4s5c than A296 no suits. With the first hand you have two suits, one to the Ace and 4 wheel cards. Even if a deuce doesn’t hit the board you still have a good chance at the low side. You have lots of straight and wheel possibilities in the hand and all your back up lows are strong. Therefore this hand is much stronger than a hand that just contains a stranded A2.

Learn Omaha: Overstimating The Value of Baby Pairs
           by Annie Duke

One of the biggest mistakes many players make is overestimating the value of their small pairs. Small pairs (22 thru 88) really don’t have a lot of value in Omaha 8/b. This is for two main reasons. First, when you flop a set the likelihood of there being an overset is greatly increased by the mere fact that your opponents have four cards in their hand instead of two. Set under set is always a situation to be avoided. Second, and more importantly, is the fact that when you flop a set you are putting one piece to a low on the board. By this I mean that, by definition, if you flop a set of deuces thru eights there is necessarily at least one low card on the board. Why is this so bad? Because it greatly increases the likely the board will qualify for low and that you will be getting half of the pot only. Necessarily, if you get half of the pot instead of the whole pot you are reducing the odds the pot is laying you by half. Compare this situation to flopping a set of nines thru Kings. Then just the opposite happens: you are removing a spot for a low card to hit, thus increasing the likelihood that no low will qualify. This is why high pairs are so much more powerful than baby pairs.

Because of this difference between high and low pairs, low pairs actually weaken your hand rather than strengthen it. Even if your cards are strongly related to the pair, you cannot play. So hands like 8s8d7d6s are completely unplayable. This is despite having lots of straight possibilities, a possible set and two possible flushes. When you make a straight there is almost always a low qualified (e.g. the board is 456). When you make a flush it is never the nut flush. And when you flop a set there is a likely low available and it is rarely the top set. This is a hand you could fold in the big blind to a raise. You would certainly fold it in the small blind.

To play a small pair, the other two cards must have very strong low features and you must realize that the addition of the pair only marginally improves the quality of your hand. As an example, As3s3c6d is playable because of the strong low features (A36) with the pair. Also, you have an ace high suit. But it is important to understand that this hand is not much better than having just As3s6d with no fourth card! In contrast As4c4s9h is only marginally playable because the low feature A4, is very weak. The 9 is totally unrelated. The only thing really going for this hand is the Ace-high suit. Because of this, this is a hand you can call a raise with in the big blind. You can call a raise out of the small blind if the raise has come from a steal position. You can limp in late or in the small blind. And you can raise from late when no one has entered in front of you. But you should not otherwise enter the pot.

Hands like 2h2s3h4c and 6c6s2c3d are even worse than the above example. Even though you have lots of low cards working, you will only flop the nut low draw when an Ace hits and it is never a good idea to be relying on exactly one card to hit the board. When you make flushes with these hands they are never the nuts, unlike with the As4s4c9h example. Your sets will always be weak and when you hit them there is a likelihood of a low qualifying. These are hands with huge negative implied odds. You will often end up chasing half the pot with the second best hand and just paying off to the nuts, as when the board is 4c5hkh7hQd. Even with the 2h2s3h4c you still only have the third best low (A2 and A3 beat you) and you have very far from the nut flush. You will often be scooped in this pot yet you really have to pay it off even so because you hand is a two-way hand-it could be best for high or low. Therefore, these hands should only be played from steal position or in the big blind. You should never call a raise with these hands unless you are in the big blind. This is particularly important since hands that raise in Omaha 8/b almost always contain an Ace and this, by definition, takes away one of the four aces you desperately need to flop!

Hands with small pairs and very weak low features are always unplayable unless you are in the blind or in steal position. So 8s8cAh5d is absolutely terrible. You have no suit, a small pair and a terrible low possibility. 6s6c5dAs is similarly bad even with the ace-high suit. Don’t be fooled into playing these hands just because you have two wheel cards or an Ace high flush possibility. You are essentially playing with only two useful cards in your hand, which is almost never a good idea unless you have exactly A2.

Learn Omaha: Playing Stranded Big Pairs
           by Annie Duke

One of the key issues in Omaha 8/b is that you always want to have more than two cards working. In fact, the only hand you could justify playing out of any position where you only know two of your cards would be one that contains A2. When your hand is not playing at all for low this becomes more important. When you are playing a hand with only high features all four of your cards need to be working. What I mean by this is that all four of your cards have to be related to each other in some way.

If you are playing big pairs (by this I mean any pair 99 and above) the other two cards need to be strongly related to the pair. So, KsKdTh3c is a completely unplayable hand. You have exactly two kings, a hanging three unrelated to any of the other cards and no suited cards that would give you a flush feature. The only flop you would truly be happy with is one that gives you Kings full. This is a hand that if you were raised in the big blind you could throw it away. Certainly you would never call a raise with this hand in the small blind.

As a contrast consider KsKd2s3d. This is an incredibly powerful hand, one that you could play out of any position at the table. You have two suits, spades and diamonds, you have a big pair, kings, and you have two relatively strong low cards, 23. You are playing for high and low and have multiple high features to your hand. Plus, when an ace hits the board, you will often still have the nut low draw (as in a board of As4hTd) and you might often have the nut flush draw also (AsTs4d). You can flop many powerful hands with this and it is a hand that is easy to get away from. If the board is 2h5c6d for example you have an easy fold.

As another contrast, consider hands like QcQhJcTh and JhTdTh9d. Again these two hands are eminently playable because all four of your cards are strongly related. Further, when you make your hand you will almost always be getting the whole pot as flopping these hands well generally means high cards will hit the board. You have lots of straight possibilities. It is easy to flop a high wrap-a very powerful Omaha hand. If the board hits with a 98K, for example, and you have QQJT you can make a straight with a 7, T, J or Q. This is called a total wrap, when any of four possible cards makes your straight. Further, when you make your hand with the Q this also gives you a set so that when the board pairs you still have a very powerful hand.

So big pairs can be very powerful starting hands but only if you have two strongly related other cards in your hand as well.

Learn Omaha from a Pro
           by Annie Duke

Because each player is dealt four cards in Omaha eight-or-better players often make the mistake of thinking this game can be played quite loose. They are fooled into playing a lot of hands that are, in fact, quite unplayable. Omaha eight-or-better is actually a game that in many ways plays tighter than hold’em. For example, it is much less correct to call weak in the blinds in Omaha than in hold’em where merely the price that the pot offers is often enough to call.

The reason for Omaha playing so tight is ironically the same reason people think they can play so many hands: because each player is dealt four hole cards. Just this fact greatly increases the likelihood that someone has a huge starting hand or flops the nuts once the board is down. As an example, if the board in hold’em is 678KQ and you have a set of kings you have a huge hand. The likelihood of someone having the straight against you is very, very small. If you have the same set of kings in Omaha eight-or-better your hand is actually quite weak. This is because there are three possible straights out against you (the 45,59, and 9T) and because everyone has four hole cards the likelihood of someone having one of these combinations is greatly increased. Add to that the fact that you are likely only getting half the pot as there is a possible low available and your hand really loses strength.

Starting hand selection, as in any poker game, is the most important aspect of playing winning Omaha. Whether or not to enter a pot is the biggest decision you will make during any hand. Here are the top mistakes players tend to make when selecting starting hands in Omaha 8/b.

Learn Omaha: Overstimating The Value of AA
           by Annie Duke

Perhaps because the best hand in Omaha 8/b is AA23 double suited most players greatly overestimate the value of having AA in their hand. AA can make top set but Aces also play for low meaning that you are guaranteeing one piece to a low board when you flop a set. Because of this the aces have some of the same drawbacks as deuces through eights. Of course, being able to flop top set mitigates these drawbacks, but this still needs to be taken into account. Because of this, when you play AA you need to have some other feature to your hand-suited cards, other connecting low cards (AA34) or connecting high cards (AAKQ). AsAd7c8h is actually a hand that you can throw away from early position and you should never call a raise with unless you are in the big blind. With this hand you have no good low features and no suits. The only feature is AA so really you are either hoping that your one pair will stand up, which rarely happens in Omaha 8/b, or that you will flop a set, which is a) less likely to stand up in Omaha 8/b than hold’em and b) increasing the likelihood that you are only gunning for half the pot by putting an Ace out there. Unless you are raising out of steal position, limping in in the small blind or playing out of the big blind you should never play this hand.

The Dead Money Doesn’t Last Long
           by John Vorhaus

The many different kinds of dead money in the first stages of a full field online tournament all share a common lack of commitment, or ability, to play perfect poker. Absent a remarkable skein of luck, these players stand to give all their chips away, and it’s incumbent upon you to gather your share before those chips find their way into tougher, more competent hands. Let’s label some of the dead money types, and plan our attacks against them.

KAMIKAZE. Some players are of the opinion that an average stack is no stack at all. These double-or-done desperados are willing to risk their tournament life, and tournament buy in, for a favorable chip position. They figure that if they get lucky and double or triple through early on, they can then wield their big stack like a big stick and take command of the table. This strategy is fraught with obvious holes, not the least of which is that most people play tight to start, so a big all in move is likely only to get called by a premium hand. While it can be argued that there’s theft equity in going all in with ruthless abandon, the risk/reward ratio is all out of whack. It only takes one opponent waking up with pocket aces or pocket kings to send this kamikaze pilot spinning into the sea.

But that’s his problem, not ours. Ours is just to figure out who these crash-and-burners are, and to make sure they don’t take us down with them. One hint to their character is the number of games they play. Someone who double (or quintuple!) dips is a lot less likely to have much investment in any one tournament, including the one he’s playing against you. He figures to make money by going deep into big fields with large stacks, and considers lots of false starts to be the price of doing business. Even without such corroborating evidence, you need only watch his actions at the table. The first time he goes all in, credit him with a real, albeit overplayed, hand. The second time he goes all in, suspect him of seppuku tendencies. The third time he pushes, be ready to push back if you have a hand. Of course, there’s no harm in just staying out of his way, because to call is to put your own risk/reward ratio in jeopardy. On the other hand, “fortune favors the bold,” and if you know a player to be wildly out of line and you have a big pocket pair, you do have the option of taking a stab at his stack.

THE ILL PREPARED. It’s hard to know why these players are so ill prepared — maybe they didn’t realize how long the tournament would take, or maybe they’re tired or just befuddled — but they’re out there, and you should be willing to go after them. You’ll recognize them by their promiscuous calls with hands of indifferent value. See someone getting involved in a raised pot with K-8 offsuit and you can be pretty confident that he either doesn’t know better (see below: Training Wheels) or just doesn’t care about his tournament results. Should you be fortunate enough to have one of these players on your right, you can reraise, kick sensible players out of the hand, and then bet for value when you hit. About the only way these ill prepared players can really hurt you is if they get lucky, hitting a flop like K-8-x, for example, when you’re holding A-K and they’re on K-8.

The other danger is playing down to their level. If you know that your foes have soft starting requirements, you’ll be tempted to soften your own. This is a good time to remember that patience is precious when chips are cheap. Just because the ill prepared are offering you their chips doesn’t mean that you have to go after them. If their loose calls engender loose calls of your own, you run the risk of being played with by other strong players, whether they have a hand or not. In general, you don’t want to get involved in reckless adventures early in a tournament, but if the ill prepared cast their chips in your path, you should be ready to scoop them up.

TRAINING WHEELS. As you know, some players use tournaments, especially online ones, as a means of learning poker and honing their skills. This isn’t a bad notion, for they do get to see a lot of hands, and make a lot of decisions, at a fixed price. And no matter how badly they play, they can’t lose more than their buy in. They will, however, likely lose their buy in precisely because they lack the experience to play well, or even remotely correctly. They’ll make predictable blunders like calling raises with hands like A-3 and Q-J, pushing little pairs, neglecting to make continuation bets or, conversely, getting out ahead of their hands with bets too big for the situation. Use these flaws as a marker map. Note, for example, a player who takes draws when the odds don’t warrant. If he’ll make this rookie mistake, he’ll make a whole host of related gaffes as well.

Tyro money is easy money, and it’s crucial that you identify it and grab it while you can. Bluff them, trap them, attack their blinds, and just generally try to destabilize their play. If they’re too tight, encourage them to play tighter still. If they’re too loose, do what you can to loosen them up even more. Don’t be shy about throwing some chat their way. It’s amazing how willing new players are to reveal their lack of tournament experience. Be friendly… then strip mine their stacks.

THE MEEK. Since it’s considered appropriate full field tournament strategy to lay out for the first few levels and get involved with only premium hands, you’ll see plenty of players at your table who seem not to be doing much of anything at all. It could be that they’re distracted by some rerun of Friends, but it’s more likely that they’ve made the conscious decision to sit on their hands unless something really stellar comes along. It’s hard to get chips from such players because they so rarely willingly put them in a pot. Then again, it’s easy to avoid paying them off, for they telegraph their strength through their tightness, and you can freely throw away most hands you hold when they raise.

Of, if they come in for a raise, you might decide to mix it up with them, for their snugness creates an opportunity for you to do battle. Yes, you’ll be waging war against a hand that’s stronger than yours, but you’ll likely know what type of hand it is. Avoid calling with hands like A-Q or A-J because the preternaturally tight player will most likely be raising with big pairs or Big Slick, hands that dominate and crush your second-rate aces. But if you call with a junk hand like 8-7 suited, a flop like 8-7-3 puts you in position to take someone with pocket aces off his whole stack. This ruse does require luck, but we’re talking about applied luck not random luck; a plan, in other words, looking for a place to execute. It also assumes that you’re savvy enough to get away from your hand if you miss. If you lack this knack, then just play tight, patient poker like everyone else.

SPECULATORS. A certain brand of tournament player considers the road to heaven to be paved with speculative hands. He loves to limp into volume pots and try to flop a monster, especially early in the tournament when he feels that such speculation is within his budget. This approach has some merit, but only if the rest of the table cooperates. If the speculator limps too frequently, savvy opponents such as yourself will come to recognize this and punish him with big raises he has neither the hand nor the stomach to call. Sometimes — it’s not all that uncommon, really — you’ll find yourself at a table filled with such flop seekers. Let them have their multi-way pots a couple of times, just to make sure that you’re reading them correctly, and then plan on making a big raise, either from late position or from the blinds, and sweep all those loose limp bets into your stack.

Should you happen to get called, beware of flops that come highly coordinated to straight draws or flush draws, because these are just the sort of flops that the speculators are fishing for. If you encounter such a flop, you’ll have to decide whether to drive at it and make the speculator pay or back off, hoping to check it down but prepared to surrender if need be. On the other hand, if the board comes scary high, such as A-K-J or K-K-Q, go ahead and bet it like you own it. Speculators will have a hard time calling unless they’re speculating with a hand that exactly fits the promise of the flop. In any case, speculative callers are just another brand of weak/loose player, and you should consider it your duty to take their chips away.

These are not the only kinds of bad players you’ll find in an online poker tournament. There are others, and they are legion. But remember that dead money, like water, finds its level, so make sure that your share of it finds its way to you before it all flows away.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 1: Luck Sucks
           by John Vorhaus

I don’t like luck. I don’t like it when the other guy gets it, but then again, I don’t much like having to rely on it myself. Poker, it’s always seemed to me, would be pure bliss if only luck didn’t enter into it at all. Of course we know that this can never be because it’s luck that keeps the, uhm… “weaker-minded enthusiasts” coming back for more. Still, I could never help thinking that poker would be perfect if I could take the luck out of it, while leaving the appearance of luck in place.

Then I discovered one-on-one online Texas hold’em tournaments, and I’m here to tell you that these sitngo beauties are a skilled player’s paradise. They don’t utterly remove luck from the equation, but they minimize it greatly, and if you follow the steps I outline in this series of articles, you can minimize it even more.

It’s gonna be a long series, and I’ll tell you why: because playing one-on-one requires a retooling and a rethinking of many or most of your basic poker strategies. It requires that you think of the contest more like a chess match than a poker game, and appreciate that, like chess, heads-up tournaments have levels and layers of thought which will take some time to sort through, analyze, and understand.

But that’s okay, ’cause I’m on a year’s contract and you, well, you’ve got all the time in the world.

Let me start you off with a couple of shocking revelations:

• YOU’RE AFRAID TO PLAY HEADS UP
• YOU SHOULDN’T BE

WHY YOU’RE AFRAID: Your fear of playing one-on-one goes back to your earliest days in poker when most of the people you played against were, in fact, a whole lot better than you. Being less skilled than your foes, you found safety in numbers. You played hit-to-win poker, looking to call along into volume pots and win lots of chips when the cards made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.

Maybe you dabbled in short-handed games or one-on-one contests and found that the other guy – that rapscallion! – always seemed to have you leaning the wrong way, calling when you should raise, folding when you should call, what-have-you. So you retreated to the safety of your ten-handed ring game, your volume pots, and what you hoped would be your fair share of the luck. And there you’ve stayed, stuck. Stuck in luck.

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID: Your rookie days were a long time ago. You’ve played about six zillion hands of online poker since then. You’ve stopped fretting over raises and reraises, wins and losses. You’ve got your feet under you and your head in the game. Now you find the thing that frustrates you most is when the luck goes against you… when you pick up pocket aces in a ten-handed ring game, go to war against a full complement of Cally Wallies, and get called down (and beaten) by some ridiculous cheese.

Leave the cheese! Go play one-on-one. In that circumstance you don’t have to beat a whole table full of foes. You only have to beat one guy, and guess what?

He’s not as smart as you!

How do I know? Simple deduction: The fact that you found your way to this site and this article self-selects you as being more educated, and more dedicated to your education, than your average Joe foe. Even among the universe of online poker players (a generally smarter universe than the common population) there are people who don’t really know what they’re doing and never bother to learn.

If you can get heads-up against one of these under-prepared knuckleheads, he’s practically a lock to give his money to you.

And you can! You can get heads-up against bad players a lot in one-on-one sitngos because the very format of the thing appeals greatly to a certain type of undereducated poker player: the action junkie who wants to be involved in every single hand.

Is every one-on-one player a bad player? Of course not. But if more than half of them are (and I contend that many more than half of them are) you should be able to win more than your share of one-on-one clashes, just by dint of your superior knowledge and skill.

But let’s not stop there. Let’s not content ourselves with beating bad players heads up. Let’s have strategies for beating the good ones too. And let’s go into the exercise with an air of supreme arrogance! Let’s take it as given that we’re going to dominate and crush every single foe who dares to take us on.

If you feel that this sort of arrogance is unwarranted, don’t worry; you’ll soon have the tools to back up your superiority complex. You’ll soon have everything you need to sit down opposite anyone and by degrees strip his luck away.

And then he’ll be standing there naked, with nothing but inferior skill on his side.

And then you’re gonna pick him clean.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 2: Patience
           by John Vorhaus

You have been challenged.

The gauntlet is down.

I have confronted you with the question, “Just how good do you think you are?” If you think you’re smarter, more disciplined, better informed, better looking than your average online foe, then you have, it seems to me, a moral obligation to engage him in one-on-one combat and take his cash.

The game we’re talking about is heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em, tournament style, as played on this site for buy-ins from $5 up to $1000.

Our area of interest right now is the mindset you’ll need to win this very specialized clash.

We start by contemplating the phenomenon of heads-up play.

Were it not for online poker, you’d be terribly hard pressed to find an opportunity to match wits with another player in single combat. Most brick and mortar players abhor even short-handed play, and wouldn’t play heads-up to save their lives. On the internet, though, the idea really appeals.

Why? Because many internet players are, fundamentally, action junkies, and even though the pace of play is accelerated to warp speed online, countless players still find a full ring game to be too slow for their ADD-addled brains. They want a hand and they want it now! With heads-up action, they’re either in the hand or about to be in the hand, a situation they find deeply satisfying.

So know this about your heads-up foe: He wants action. Patience is a problem for him.

Why, you may be wondering, may the same not be said for you?

Know what? Maybe it can.

Maybe your need to be involved in each and every hand is what drew you to this surprising profit opportunity in the first place. That doesn’t make it any less an opportunity – just one that suits your nature.

But I need you to recognize that there are several different types of impatience in poker. Some types will hurt your cause severely in no-limit heads-up hold’em.

Other types… not so much.

It’s a form of impatience, for example, to want to play a wide range of hands. For reasons we’ll discuss, there’s really nothing wrong with playing a wide range of hands heads-up. Most hands, in fact, present you with some kind of opportunity to win (or steal or adopt) the pot regardless of the cards you hold.

It’s a different sort of impatience, however, to be in a hurry to win. Your impatience to defeat your foe may cause you to put yourself in coin-flip (or worse!) situations for all the marbles. As you’ll see in this series, there’s only infrequently a sound strategic reason for pushing in your whole stack. It’s usually raw impatience that makes us make that move.

A third type of impatience is the impatience to hit a hand. You might, for example, persuade yourself to take a slim draw against your single opponent just to scratch the itch to win a hand. This type of impatience is particularly toxic in heads-up play. It’s well known that draws are death in no-limit; for reasons we’ll explore at length, they’re double-death heads up.

Impatience, then, need not be a problem for you when you play heads-up, so long as you know what sort of impatience you’re dealing with, and how to deal with it effectively:

• Impatience to be involved can be served.
• Impatience to win should be tempered.
• Impatience to hit your hand must be avoided at all cost.

And what combats impatience?

Goals.

A clear sense of your purpose in playing.

• You’re not there to have fun.
• You’re not there to kill time.
• You’re not there to be tricky.
• You’re not there to get lucky.
• You’re not there to prove how clever you are.

You’re there to win the match, and you will do whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, to achieve that goal, without a single shred of self-indulgence.

That’s the mindset I’m talking about, and if that’s a mindset you’re prepared to embrace, then you’re ready to move on.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 3: The Risk/Reward Ratio
           by John Vorhaus

The first thing you need to do when you start getting serious about no-limit heads-up tournaments is forget everything you know about conventional ring games. The strategies that serve you well among the multitudes – notably your canny hand selection and your standard attacker-aggressor approach – require not just a major revision but a general chucking-out-the-window when you start to go one-on-one on a regular basis. Likewise, you have to rethink what you think you mean by discipline.

In a ring game, and especially in fixed-limit hold’em, discipline is mostly about deciding not to chase when pot odds don’t warrant, or deciding not to enter a hand in the first place. In heads-up no-limit hold’em, discipline is almost always about deciding not to make or not to call a big bet late in the hand when your tournament life is on the line.

Discipline, in other words, is more about thinking ahead and considering the consequences of being right or wrong in a certain situation. This kind of decision-making is all about risk versus reward, and not at all about who’s got the best hand.

Let me see if I can illustrate my point.

Before I try, though, I confess that I have become weary of writing no-limit heads-up Texas hold’em tournaments and its various variations. For this reason, I have declared match play to be the official shorthand of choice in describing this sort of clash. Any time you see the words match play on these pages, you will know that I’m referring to single-combat, winner-take-all no-limit hold’em tournaments as played on UltimateBet.com and elsewhere in the real and virtual poker worlds. Okay? Great. Glad we got that out of the way.

In limit ring games (hereinafter referred to as live play because why the hell not?), it’s well-known that the price of being wrong is fairly small. Say you’re holding a hand like 8? – 7? and looking at a board like T? – 9? – 3? . The turn is the 2?. You can count maybe 15 outs off the top of your head (9 hearts and 6 non-heart straight cards), plus, if you’re feeling frisky, you might even count 3 sevens and 3 eights as outs as well, and who knows? You might even be right. In any case, any decent-sized pot will be giving you correct odds to call. And if you call and miss, heck, that’s just one less bet in your stack.

Now let’s look at the same holding and the same board in match play. Let’s assume it’s the first hand of the match, so that you and your foe have the standard 1000 chips apiece and the blinds are 5 and 10. You raised to 20 preflop and he called, putting a total of 40 in the pot. He checked the flop and you bet 60, hoping to win the hand right there. But he called the 60, bringing the pot total to 160.

On the turn the 2? comes down and your opponent goes all-in. There’s 1080 in the pot, and it’ll cost you another 920 to call. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you know your foe’s hand: He’s holding A? – K? , and his all-in bet is a bald-faced attempt to drive you off your draw. The question is: should you let him?

All your outs are clean outs, including the eights and sevens, giving you 21 out of 44 cards that’ll win you this pot (remember, you know what your foe holds). You have a 48% chance of winning, and with 920 calling 1080, the pot is offering you a 54-46 return on your investment. The odds, however slightly, are in your favor. So you should call, right?

Not so fast. Thinking strategically, we realize that there are three possible outcomes here, two that end the match and one that keeps it going.

• You could call and win, eliminating your foe and ending the match.
• You could call and lose, eliminating yourself and ending the match.
• Or you could fold, maintaining your stack at 920 and keeping the tournament going.

You want to win the tournament, right? But you’re patient. You know you don’t have to win on this hand. If you’re smarter than the other guy (and, remember, we assume that you are) you want to keep the tournament going until your long-term edge in strategy and skills can wear him down and defeat him.

If you call this bet, you’re gonna need luck to win the match.

You don’t ever want to need luck to win the match. You want the other guy to need luck to win.

So the next time you’re confronted with a coin-flip situation, remember your risk/reward ratio.

• The risk is that you could lose the match. That’s not a catastrophe, but it’s certainly not the outcome you want.
• The reward is that you could win the match, but you’re probably gonna do that anyhow!

If you don’t call, you keep alive the prospect of winning without ever having to risk losing at all. That’s putting the risk/reward ratio in your favor, and that’s what you should be thinking about here.

Don’t bet a lot of chips with slightly the best of it. Save your chips for when you have much the best of it. In the next article we’ll start looking at techniques for acquiring that significant edge.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 4: Three Playing Zones
           by John Vorhaus

In match play, chip count is everything. The number of chips you have, relative to the size of your foe’s stack, will influence your betting options and decisions almost as much as the cards you hold.

Recall that on UB, heads-up matches begin with each player holding 1000 in chips, with the blinds at 5 and 10, and with the small blind on the button. Chip counts rise and fall in exactly see-saw fashion: What I win you lose, and vice versa. With this in mind, I’d like to introduce you to three stack-related playing zones, and discuss how the zone you’re in impacts the way bet.

• The most prevalent playing zone is between 500 and 1500 chips, what I call the BFM or Big Fat Middle. While it’s possible to get lucky and win the match from the BFM, your real objective here is just to gather enough chips to get up over 1500.
• If you have more than 1500 chips, you’re in the DP or Dominant Position. In this situation, you have two goals: to maintain your DP; and to win the match.
• With less than 500 chips, you are said to be IP or In Peril. An IP player must strive to survive, escape the IP zone, return to the BFM, and get back into contention in the match.

Most players don’t realize it, but match play is much less about winning all your foe’s chips than it is about moving him into an imperiled position, while staying out of such a position yourself.

I figure if I can get any foe down below 500 in chips, I should be able to finish him off. Likewise, I recognize that if I’m below 500 in chips, I’m gonna need both boldness and good fortune to get out of that hole.

So it’s a hole I try to stay out of at all cost!

This changes how I think about making or calling bets. If a bet doesn’t put either me or my foe into the IP, I don’t really care about it one way or another. It’s just another stop along the long road to victory. Simply put, no single bet matters – ever – if it doesn’t move you or your foe from one zone to another.

Say you’re holding 940 in chips and your foe bets 60 into a 60-chip pot on the river. Whether you call that bet or not, you’ll still conclude the hand in the BFM, and begin the next hand in the BFM, with no material shift in the balance of power.

But if you’re holding 940 in chips and your foe bets 600, it’s a totally different situation. Calling that bet will result in a change of state for both of you. If you win, you’ll be DP and he’ll be IP. If you lose, it’s the other way around. Either way, you’ll both be moved out of the BFM. Unless you’re quite confident that you’re going to win that bet, there is simply no reason to call. You don’t want to risk shifting states, ever, if there’s a reasonable chance that you’ll end up in the IP zone.

Remember, your ace in the hole in this match is your superior understanding and skill. You’re not afraid of throwing away hand after hand, so long as it keeps you in contention. You know that your foe will eventually give you an opening you can exploit. You want to be in the BFM when that happens, so that you can move into DP, and win the match from there.

This understanding creates a marvelous betting opportunity for you if you’re savvy enough to see it and seize it. Seek those circumstances where you can make a bet which, if successful, will move you into DP, but if not successful will still leave you in the BFM.

Suppose, for example, that you have something like 1300 chips to your foe’s 700. In that circumstance, if you bet 250 and win, you move your foe into the IP, but if you bet 250 and lose, you’re still in the BFM. This is a strong move that you can afford to make.

If the situation is reversed, and you hold 700, you want to be much more certain of success before making this big bet. If you’re wrong – if your foe calls when you figured he would fold, or if he calls with a better hand than you expected – you move yourself into the IP state.

Never willfully move yourself into the IP state.

If you do just this one thing right, you should have a better-than-average chance of winning most matches.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 5: A Bit About the Blinds
           by John Vorhaus

It’s well known that the relationship between the blinds and the buy-in has a major impact on the way a tournament plays out. If the blinds are small, relative to the size of the buy-in, then good players can take their time in eking out their edge. If the blinds are relatively high, or if they go up fast, then the thing becomes much more of a crapshoot.

Here’s what you need to know about the blind structure of sitngo match play on UB: It favors the skilled player to an extreme degree.

First of all, the blinds start out at 5 and 10, a very generous 100-1 ratio between the big blind and the buy-in. Second, they rise quite slowly, just every eight minutes, which might seem like a furious pace until you remember to measure time in internet terms, where hands take only seconds to play out, especially heads-up. Thus, it’s not uncommon to see something on the order of a hundred hands during each round.

That’s plenty of time for a mistake-prone foe to shoot himself in the foot. Recalling the immortal words of Mike Caro, “Everyone takes turns making mistakes in poker. The trick is to skip your turn.” This wisdom is doubly wise in match play. Simply make fewer mistakes than your foe and the generous structure of the match will give you plenty of edge to exploit.

Not only are the rounds relatively long, the blinds climb slowly; they only double fully between the first and second round and then never again throughout the match. Here’s the blind structure for the first eight rounds.

I haven’t bothered to list the blinds beyond this point because it’s highly unlikely that any heads-up match you play in will last longer. In fact, in the hundreds of matches I’ve entered, I don’t think I’ve seen even level six more than once or twice. By the time you reach that point, of course, the blinds are so high relative to chip counts that it won’t take much of a hand to get your money in the middle.

But between the generous first round and the draconian later rounds there’s a gentle rise in the blinds, and therefore just a gentle acceleration in the pace of play. I bring this to your attention to reinforce the idea that you can afford to be very patient in match play. There’s no hurry! You have the luxury of time. You can wait and wait and wait, until the time comes to snap your trap.

Further to this, remember that both players are taking blinds on every hand. If they fold with roughly equal frequency, their relative stack sizes won’t shift much at all. And you see this sort of parry and thrust a lot in match play, where players trade blinds that are either unraised or raised a minimum amount. As a consequence, it’s possible for players to achieve a certain equilibrium, where dozens of hands pass without either player gaining much of a chip lead.

But it’s in this equilibrium that matches are eventually won and lost. Not because someone has gotten impatient and gone all in for most of 1000 chips – among savvy match players that rarely happens in a tournament’s early stage – but because one player manages to push the other into a position of disadvantage, like a sumo wrestler pushing his foe toward the edge of the ring.

When a player manages to achieve chip dominance over his foe, he creates an opportunity for himself to win the match. The later in the match, and the higher the blinds, the greater this opportunity becomes, and the more deeply imperiled the short stack is. In the next article we’ll discuss the imperiled player’s defensive stance, and note how, in the main, it boils down to just two words: all in.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 6: All-In Play in the IP Zone
           by John Vorhaus

Recall our discussion about the three playing zones of match play, the BFM (Big Fat Middle), DP (Dominant Position) and IP (In Peril). Recall that any time your stack falls below 500 in chips, you’re in peril and at risk for busting out. While a short stack is always in a tough spot, being IP during the first level of play is much different from being (or putting your foe in) the IP during, say, the fourth level of play.

At level one, with blinds of 5 and 10, if you’ve got 500 in chips, you’ve still got plenty to work with. You have the luxury of folding many blinds and yielding many flops. At level four, where the blinds are 20-40, your chips have been greatly devalued. You can’t afford to be so tight.

Any time you’re in the IP zone, then, but especially as the blinds start to climb your tournament life is on the line, and you’ve got to be prepared to make a move.

And what is that move?

A big push to the center.

Go all in.

Whenever your stack falls below 500, especially when the blinds have started to rise, you should be looking for a good opportunity to get your money in the middle. Why? Because you need to get out of the IP, and you can’t afford to be too cute.

Suppose it’s the third round (blinds 15 and 30), you have 450 in chips and you pick up something like A-9 suited. If you make a pot-sized bet and get called, you probably need an ace to win. Should the flop come paint and your foe attacks, you’ll have to fold, leaving your stack further imperiled and verging on useless.

It’s okay to fold this hand pre-flop, and wait for something stronger, but keep in mind that how long you can wait is determined by A) the size of the blinds and B) your opponent’s aggressiveness in attacking them. What’s not okay are a lot of loose calls and small raises. Being short-stacked, you won’t be able to play creatively after the flop. You have to hit to win. Since you have to hit to win anyhow, it might as well be on your terms, with a hand of your choosing.

How big a hand do you need to go all in? This depends on your stack size, the tournament stage, and your read on your foe and on his willingness to call with inferior hands. Favor pairs and aces with at least medium kickers, but be prepared to “go” with K-Q and K-J as well. These are desperate times, and desperate times as we know call for desperate measures.

So you push all-in, knowing that there are a number of possible outcomes:

• Your foe folds, giving you the blind, but still leaving you in the IP zone, and still leaving you looking for a place to move in your stack.
• Your foe calls with a worse hand. This is what you really want. You want him to reason that you’re short-stacked and desperate, causing him to get out of line with a worse ace or a couple of paint cards.
• Your foe calls with a better hand, in which case you’re going to need to get lucky, but if you do get lucky, you’ll be right back in the BFM and right back in the hunt.

This last point is the key consideration of this discussion: When you’re short-stacked and imperiled, and you have to get lucky to stay alive, you want to make sure that it’s worth getting lucky if you do.

Suppose that you played that same A-9 for no raise, your foe limped as well, and for some reason you both checked it all the way down. If your hand holds up, you’re lucky, but your luck only earned you the measly blinds!

Now look, this business of getting short and going all-in is not a hard-and-fast rule. There are times when you want to take free flops with good hands, and times when you’ll want to slow-play big pairs. But peeing away the last of your stack is a recipe for slow – but sure – match play death.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 7: When You Dominate
           by John Vorhaus

Recall our discussion about the three playing zones of match play, the BFM (Big Fat Middle), DP (Dominant Position) and IP (In Peril). Recall that any time your stack climbs above 1500 in chips, you’re in a dominant position, and ready to put your opponent away. In this article, we’ll talk about strategic adjustments you should make in order to bring about that happy happenstance.

First of all, recognize that your foe is unlikely to let himself be blinded off, or even blinded down to the point where he can no longer make a meaningful bet. (He certainly won’t do that if he’s been reading this series!) He’s looking for a place to put his money in with the best of it, and he’s hoping that you’ll be kind enough to oblige him with a call.

So you get cagey. You avoid letting him double up, especially if that will move him out of the IP and back into the BFM. You control the action by being aggressive with your quality hands and staying out of the way of his. Remember, when you have him dominated, it’s your job to finish him off. Get your foot on his neck and don’t let up. To accomplish this, do these things:

• Make frequent pot-size raises pre-flop from the small-blind button, and also from the big blind if he makes the mistake of just completing the small blind.
• Drive into many flops with pot-size bets, recognizing that your short-stacked foe can’t make speculative calls for the last of his chips.
• Avoid confrontations that you don’t initiate. Remember that your foe is looking to get his money in with the best of it. An aggressive move from an IP player is much more likely to be a real hand than a stone bluff.

You’re bobbing and weaving, ducking and diving, making jabs to keep your opponent off balance while he’s weak, all the while looking for a chance to deliver the knock-out blow: a confrontation of all-in hands when you’re holding the best one.

You can easily give yourself the advantage in this confrontation, because you have the luxury of time. You have plenty of chips, and you can avoid getting frisky with second-rate holdings. Your foe doesn’t have that luxury (and your consistent pre-flop pressure is giving him less and less room to move). He needs to get his money in sooner rather than later. He’s looking for any pair, any good ace, any fair ace, or any two unpaired paint cards.

Let him make his promiscuous all-in moves. Willingly sacrifice your blind every time you don’t have a premium hand. He’ll never get out of the hole that way, and if he comes over the top often enough, eventually you’ll find yourself holding a premium hand when he does. He’s counting on you becoming impatient or annoyed, to lose your discipline or get greedy. Don’t give him the satisfaction. Attack when he seems weak, retreat when he seems strong, and look for a chance to call with a superior hand. That’s how you’ll finish him off.

You know, upon reflection, I realize that in part 6 of this series, I gave you a short-stack strategy designed to get you out of the IP zone, while in this article I’ve given you a big-stack counter-strategy. Which strategy works best? Answer: they both work… sometimes. But the specific strategy is less important than the underlying fact of having one. If you get up against an opponent who doesn’t know to adjust to the realities of playing a big stack or a small stack, you should be able to outthink him every time, because he’s clearly not thinking enough, or possibly at all.

Next time we’ll discuss some situational moves you can make in match play, and, of course, counter-strategies to those moves.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 8: Some Things You May Not Have Thought About
           by John Vorhaus

I kinda figure if you’ve come this far in this series, you’ve probably played your fair share of heads-up matches already. You’ve probably made some very exciting discoveries about your play, your foes’ play, your respective patterns of behavior, etc. Over the next couple or three articles, I’m going to present some things you may or may not have thought about – either strategic opportunities to be exploited, pitfalls to avoid, intrinsic facts of heads-up play or other observations that fit into no neat categories.

Let’s get started, shall we?

AVOID LOOSE CALLS AT ALL COST. Look at it this way: Either the other guy has a hand or he doesn’t. When you make loose calls, you’re investing your whole hope for the match on guessing right or drawing out. Make a couple of loose pot-size calls and your stack will be crippled, possibly beyond recovery.

Say you’ve got T-9, looking at a flop of K-Q-9, when your foe makes a pot-size bet. What are you hoping for when you call? Either that your nine is good or that you’ll improve. Hey, maybe you’re right on one count or the other. Maybe you’re right on both counts. You still don’t need to call. Why? Because match play offers many, many opportunities to win chips when you don’t have to hope at all; when you know you’re ahead in the hand.

I’m not saying play tight. I’m saying play cozy, play deftly. The structure of the tournament is such that you can win without ever making a call on a guess. Be patient. Never make a loose call and you need never imperil your stack.

Related to that…

YOU DON’T HAVE ODDS FOR ANY DRAW. How could you? You’re heads up all the time. The best you can usually hope for is a 2-1 return on your investment, and no straight or flush draw is that likely to hit. We know that draws are death in no-limit hold’em; doubly so in match play.

Suppose you flop a straight draw and your opponent bets $40 into a $40 pot. It’s early in the tournament, so you figure, what the hell, I’ll try to catch lucky. But the turn is a brick, and your opponent now bets $120. You’ve put yourself in a lose-lose situation. If you call, you’re throwing good money after bad, and if you fold, you’ve peed away chips you didn’t have to lose. Just don’t chase! What could be simpler than that?

Now, occasionally you’ll find a foe who does you the favor of underbetting the pot and pricing you in. If that’s the case, by all means call. Someone who bets the minimum, say $20 into a $100 pot, is offering you correct odds for your call and just begging to get drawn out on. He’s making a mistake. And what do we do with mistakes? Why, punish them, of course.

BUT THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH DRIVING DRAWS. Let’s imagine that two match-play foes are both drawing to the same hand. The one who’s calling shouldn’t be. He doesn’t have odds to chase. But the one who’s betting is not out of line. If the draw gets there, he’s gravy. If it doesn’t – and he has the fortitude to continue betting – he can get his foe, who also missed, to lay down. As you already know, it’s much better to be the bettor than the caller, because you can win without a fight. In this instance, if you’re driving a draw, what you’re really driving is your willingness to bet. The draw, in a sense, is gravy.

So be on the lookout for opponents who will chase when they shouldn’t. Unless they’re craftily setting you up for a reraise bluff – and you should, of course, be on the lookout for that sort of foe, too – you can deal yourself marvelous semi-bluff opportunities with your drawing hands.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 9: More Match Play Grabs
           by John Vorhaus

“Grabs” is the word for distilled poker wisdom that we use to organize our thoughts and remind ourselves of what’s important in match play and elsewhere in the poker universe. In the last column, for instance, I gave you the grab that “everybody’s too something.” This instructs us to recognize and exploit our foe’s errors: If he’s too loose, bet for value; if he’s too tight, bluff more often.

Here are some more match play grabs for y’all.

NEVER SHOW CARDS. Some players insist on showing the cards they’ve folded, or showing their winners after you fold. I suppose they do this either to demonstrate how smart they are or, in the case of showing a bluff, to induce you to play incorrectly against them later. To me, showing cards only shows one thing: that you’re a doofus who shows cards.

Never show cards. Never. If you have to show what a good laydown you made, then your ego is running the game and you have no business playing at all. If you think you’re being tricky, you’re not. You’re just giving your foe hard evidence about the way you play, and hard evidence about how you think he plays.

DON’T BLUFF RIVERS. This is especially true in no-limit match play, where a bet on the river is usually big enough to put a dent in your stack if you lose, or else too small to be significant and thus a credible bluff.

Why not bluff rivers? Isn’t it worth something to get a foe to lay down the best hand? Well, sure, but that’s only of several possible outcomes. He could lay down the best hand. Or lay down a worse hand. Or call with the best hand. Or raise with the best hand. Or raise on a bluff. Of all those outcomes, the only one you want is the first one. All the others are disasters. Why risk them?

Early in our poker careers we learn not to bet on the river when the only hands that can call us can beat us. This wisdom is especially apt in no-limit match play, where loose calls are rare (especially on the river) but trap plays are common. Don’t open the betting on the river unless you’re certain you have the best hand or damn certain your foe can’t call.

TRAPS ARE MORE COMMON THAN BLUFFS. Bluffing with bad hands and trapping with good ones are two sides of the same deceptive coin. But there’s a big difference. When you trap, you trap with confidence, knowing that your deception is backed by a solid hand. When you bluff, you know that you’re running the risk of getting caught, and that getting caught may imperil your stack or your future in the match.

With this in mind, expect your deceptive foes to be more likely to trap than to bluff. It’s simple human nature. Trapping offers great reward for little risk, whereas bluffing offers great risk for maybe no reward.

Suppose you’re on the button with A-K, looking at a flop of 7-7-8. Your foe checks, so you try to adopt this orphan pot by making a pot-size bet. Now he comes back over the top for all his chips. Is he trapping, or is he on a naked re-steal bluff? All other things being equal, put him on a trap – the safer sort of deception – than on a bluff. Among other things, if you’re wrong, you’re wrong for all your chips.

Which brings us to this…

BE THE ONE WHO KNOWS, NOT THE ONE WHO GUESSES. Poker is a game of incomplete information. Heads up against an unseen foe, you’re both sort of stumbling through the dark. If there are tough decisions to be made, let your foe make them. Don’t chase. Don’t make loose calls. Don’t call big bets for all your chips. The structure of match play is such that you’ll have plenty of opportunities to make bets with the best hand, but only if you’re patient.

The guy who bets has two edges: He can win without a fight, and he can force his foe to make a wrong choice. This may be stating it too strongly (but then again it may not so I’ll go ahead and state it anyway): If you’re not the one making the bet, you shouldn’t be in the pot.

Match Play for Fun and Profit – Part 10: The Last Word on Match Play
           by John Vorhaus

The last word on match play has not been written. It cannot be written, of course. Every opponent you face heads-up presents you with opportunities and perils not presented in these pages. Nevertheless, this series should give you a good grounding for match play, especially if you pause to consider the following wrap-up grabs:

MAKE BOOK ON EVERYONE. Since you’re only facing one foe at a time, it’s vital that you know what he’s capable of and where his strengths and weaknesses lie. Take extensive notes. At minimum, keep track of your wins and losses against a given foe. Have you beaten him more than he’s beaten you, or the other way around? Also note his tendencies: Does he drive-bluff? Does he yield orphan flops, or will he play back at you? Can he make a big call with less than the best hand?

The universe of online players is quite large. You might go a long time between bouts with a known foe. But when you do face a known foe, you need to know your history against him; if he’s smart and conscientious, he certainly knows his against you.

HEADS UP, MOST HANDS MISS. If you’ve been playing a lot of full-table poker, you’re used to seeing someone catch something on the flop. Heads up, most flops fail to connect with most hands. The simple math of this instructs us to bet into unpromising boards – orphan flops such as 4-4-7 or mixed bags like T-6-3 – since the odds are that the flop hasn’t helped our foe in any meaningful way. This is especially true if we’ve been keeping good book on our adversaries and know them to be “true value” players who will only bet or call with decent holdings.

Sure, occasionally you’ll get trapped. You’ll bet into an orphan flop and your opponent will bet back. At that point, just credit him with a big hit or a big overpair and let your hand go. Remember, match play offers you the big luxury of time. If your steal attempts encounter resistance, just let them go and wait for better times. Don’t assume that your foe is putting a re-steal move on you. He may be, but most foes aren’t that frisky. Treat everyone as straightforward until proven tricky. You won’t go too far wrong with that approach.

DON’T GIVE MORE ACTION THAN YOU GET. I first learned this lesson back in the old days of $1-3 seven-card stud in Las Vegas, where I discovered the peril of squandering chips on calls against ultra-tight players who wouldn’t return the favor. I’m not saying that your match play foes are ultra-tight, but the match is a delicate balance. If you consistently pay off on second-best hands, or pay off real hands that you believe to be bluffs, your record in match play will suffer accordingly. If a foe is pushing you around… let him! Get out of his way. Credit him for real hands, even if you think he’s bluffing. Remember that everyone does too much of something. If he pushes too hard, eventually you’ll get the chance to trap him with a real hand and push back in a big way.

In a similar vein, if you’re drive-bluffing into a foe who’s too willing to call, break off your drive. Bet the flop, sure, but if you get called, think long and hard about betting the turn. In other words, don’t double-drive into foes who stubbornly cling to their hands. Fruitless bluffs are as bad as overly-optimistic calls in the sense of giving more action than you get.

TAKE YOUR TIME. Never bet in haste. In match play, it’s easy to get involved in raising wars for all your chips. Bet. Raise! Oh, yeah? Take that! Don’t let bet fever get to you or you’ll find yourself raising your whole stack into someone holding the nuts. It happens every day to players who rush their actions.

In no-limit hold’em, your whole stack is potentially on the line in every hand. In match play, your stake in the match rests on every decision. If you can’t take your time and weigh your choices, you can’t hope to have success in this area.

But you can, though. You know? You can have great success in match play if you take the time, and invest the skull sweat, in doing the thing right. After all, you’re only up against one foe.

And what are the chances that he’s smarter than you?

A-K in No-limit Texas Hold’em Tournaments
           by Phil Hellmuth

Since this is my first article for UltimateBet, I thought that I would tackle one of the most important hands in hold’em – A-K. In most small buy-in no-limit hold’em tournaments ($300 or less), you almost never throw away A-K before the flop, but that doesn’t mean that within most no-limit hold’em events there won’t be a time in which you would want to throw this hand away.

Confused yet? I contend that if you are an average to pretty good no-limit hold’em player, then you should almost never throw A-K away before the flop. It’s just not worth it. Your opponent could have A-Q, A-J or a bluff? In that case you are a pretty big favorite over him, at most about 5 to 2. Even if he has a pair other then A-A or K-K, then you are only a 12 to 10 underdog, and with the extra chips already in the pot, you are about even money.

If you are a champion player some situations may come up where you know that you are supposed to throw this hand away. For example, player 1 raises and then player 2 moves all-in for a lot of chips late in a tournament. You know that player 2 is playing extremely tight, and that he most likely has your hand at least tied and maybe even badly beat with K-K or A-A. So you throw away your hand and wait for a better spot to put your chips into the pot. However, if you are an average player this is a good place to put your chips in. You are probably against a pair of queens or jacks, in which case you are about a 12 to 10 underdog with your hand. Occasionally, of course, you find out that player 2 has only A-Q which makes you a 5 to 2 favorite. Even if you are a 12 to 10 underdog, the extra money in the pot often makes the call here right for you.

A champion knows something that the average person doesn’t. He knows that a favorable situation will come up for him soon enough and he knows when he is in that situation. Of course, when player 1 raises, player 2 moves all-in and then player 3 calls, it is time for everyone to throw away their A-K, whether they are average, bad or a champion player!

What a Long Strange Trip its Being: The Story So Far
           by James Worth

What’s the first thing you need for success in online tournament poker? It’s love of the game,whatever your game is–Texas Hold’em, Omaha, all the poker games. And not just love of the game, but love of the game in the face of cruelty and frustration. Many is the time I’ve wanted to break my keyboard over my knee. And I know I’m not alone.

You know how it goes: You play your best poker game, make the right judgment calls and plays, and get run over by someone or some hand that just sends you reeling. You walk away from your computer mumbling to yourself for hours afterwards. Well, we all take those beats. The thing is to keep your head on straight and keep playing through those beats and making as few mistakes possible. You need to maximize your wins, and minimize your losses. Simple lessons, huh? Yup. Simple lessons learned through long experience.

Online poker was my revelation because it provided me with a mountain of experience I could never have obtained in live play. With online tournaments available virtually every hour in every buy range, I could practice my game and temper my character, racking up a ton of crucial experience with no real risk to my bankroll. So, the first advice I give to anyone who asks is just this: Play more poker tournaments online, and don’t be afraid to start small.

You can hone your game strategy, work on your moves and try new things, all for as little as $5.00 or even nothing at all. True, the quality of your opponents might be softer in the smaller online games, but even when you find yourself in big buy-in tournaments, you’ll face a huge variance of skill levels on your way to that final table. So, the small online tournament scene is not completely irrelevant. Far from it!

Next, be prepared to move up. When I really started playing a lot online I found out very quickly that not only did I love the tournaments but also had a knack for them. I started playing every small buy-in tournament I could and really took each one seriously in trying to improve my game. Then, while I was at the US Poker Championships in Atlantic City a year and a half ago, I had a revelation.

A player that I met there, someone I’d played poker against a lot online, told me I was one of the most intimidating tournament players he’d ever faced in the lower buy-in tournaments online. But, he said, I didn’t play nearly the same game in the higher buy-in tournaments. If I did, he offered, I’d be a force to be reckoned with. That really got me thinking, and wondering what was holding me back. The answer of course was fear. The fear of losing big money.

I started playing more and more Texas Hold’em and poker tournaments online, trying to get rid of that fear. I continued to play the smaller buy-in ones, but I played them aggressively and gradually opened my game. When I started playing the bigger buy-in tournaments the same way, some great things began to happen for me.

So that’s what I mean by starting small but having a strategy to move up. Give this strategy to yourself. Don’t wait for some stranger in a poker room in Atlantic City to wise you up.

Now let’s talk about sit-and-go single table tournaments. They have to be the single most important tool that I’ve found and used online to improve my game, primarily because they give me a precious commodity: endgame experience.

To get final table experience in big poker tournaments, you have to make it through large fields–a rarity–and on the off chance you do, you’ll likely get run over by players who have been there and done that many times before. That’s why the sit-n-gos are a godsend. They give you short-handed and heads-up experience that you’d otherwise almost never get.

A ten-handed single table tournament is like starting your tournament at the final table. It gives you great experience at working through a diminishing field as people are eliminated. The six-handed sit-n-gos are even better, as they demand that you work on your short-handed skills from the very start. And the heads-up tables are priceless if you want to become a very strong player, since you’ll eventually have to go one-on-one against somebody for the top prize.

Does this kind of practice really pay off? It sure did for me. Thanks to all my small buy-in and sit-n-go experience, when I finally found myself at the final table of a bigger buy-in tournament (the $1000 pot-limit Texas Hold’em event at Bellagio last summer) I wasn’t really the rookie that everyone else sitting there thought I was.

What a tough situation! There I was, short-stacked and plenty intimidated, facing the likes of Mark Seif, Men “the Master” Nguyen, and TJ Cloutier. But my online Texas Hold’em experience helped me keep my cool. I managed to play well, and pick my spots well, and eventually got heads up against TJ – at a 6-1 chip disadvantage. Good times, huh? Spotting a huge chip lead to just about the best endgame player in the world.

Fifteen minutes later, TJ had me over an even bigger barrel, having pushed his chip advantage to about 8-1. I was intimidated, shell-shocked and playing poorly… just about to give up and go under. At that point, though, another UB online player, TXBANDIT, tapped me on the shoulder and said something like “Kanuck, close your eyes, relax, pretend you’re sitting in front of your computer, forget who your playing, and just play your game.”

Well, simple advice, but I took it and started playing my game. About 45 minutes later I found myself actually leading in chips and playing very well. All was going well until I fell in love with top pair and overplayed a hand, crippling myself. I ended up finishing second to TJ, but not without giving him a proper Texas Hold’em fight to remember. I felt that I had played as well as I was able, and was very happy with the result.

The bottom line: Online you can play more tournaments in a day than you could play live in a week. This makes for a steep learning curve–if you let it. Use the tools provided for you online to try new things, open up your game, and work on key situations like short-handed and heads-up confrontations. Online experience made it possible for me to compete with the big boys when it mattered most.

Knock ’em dead!

KrazyKanuck

Making the transition from online tournaments to brick and mortar
           by Jack McClelland

There are many rules that apply to tournaments in a brick and mortar casino that don’t apply to online tournaments simply because of the interface online. It is important for any online player to be aware of the rules and guidelines for brick and mortar tournaments in order to avoid costly errors.

• Players must act in turn. Action out of turn is not binding but you may receive a penalty if you consistently act out of turn.
• Verbal bets are binding. If you say check, bet, raise, fold, etc. you will be obligated to you verbal declaration.
• To be a raise, you must at least double the last bet or raise. If you commit chips to the pot that equal at least 50% of the amount needed to raise you will be obligated to a minimum raise.
• When raising a pot you should announce the amount of your raise. If not you may only be able to raise the minimum amount.
• Please keep you larger denomination chips in plain view so that other players can make an accurate assessment of your chip count.
• As the tournament progresses an ante for all players will be mandatory along with the normal blinds. The ante is used to take some pressure off the blinds.
• When at least one player is all-in and the action is complete the players must turn up their hands. If there are more cards to come the hand will then be completed.
• If you throw in a large denomination chip before the flop without announcing your bet or raise the oversize chip will count as a call only. After the flop if you throw in a large denomination chip that will be the size of your bet unless you make a verbal declaration otherwise before the chip hits the felt.
• Abusive language or behavior is unacceptable and penalties may be imposed if a player engages in such behavior.

Penalties are imposed in the following manner:

• First offense: minimum of 20 minutes away from the table with antes and blinds forfeited.
• Second offense: minimum 40 minutes away from the table with antes and blinds forfeited
• Third offense: disqualification

Please be considerate of other players. It is our goal to offer an enjoyable tournament for everyone. Good Luck at the UltimateBet.com Poker Classic II!

Shuffle Up and Deal!

Jack McClelland