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The Poker Table is No Place for Hope or Faith

By Tony Guerrera

Situation 1: Joe Schmoe is playing in a fullhanded no-limit hold’em ring game. Action folds to Joe, and he raises with A Spades 9 Spades from the cutoff. The button and the blinds call, and the flop is A Diamonds A Clubs 9 Hearts. The blinds check to Joe, and he makes a pot-sized bet fueled by two hopes:

1.) One of his opponents has the case ace and will go over the top.
2.) An opponent with a pocket pair will call on the flop
3.) An opponent with a flush draw will call or semibluff

All three of Joe’s opponents dash Joe’s hopes and quickly fold.

Situation 2: Joe Schmoe is playing shorthanded no-limit hold’em. In 100 hands of play there has only been one reraise preflop. Joe raised from the button, the small blind reraised, and Joe folded. This happened around hand #50 of Joe’s session.

During hands #101 and #102, Joe (who has been playing somewhat aggressively but far from manically) opens from the button and the cutoff with raises. Both times, the same player reraises. After not doing much for 8 hands, Joe opens for a raise with JJ. Joe is reraised again - this time by a different player who has never reraised preflop. Being that this is the third time in the span of about 10 hands that he has been reraised preflop, Joe has faith in his JJ, goes over the top, and ends up losing 100 big blinds versus his opponent’s AA.

Hope and faith adversely affect our poker playing. In situation #1, Joe needs to think about his opponents. Instead of betting pot and hoping, he should think realistically about his opponents distributions. In many - but not all - games, a half-pot bet (or even something slightly less) will be ideal. A pot-sized bet might actually force a player with the case ace out of the pot if he has a bad kicker to accompany it. And anyone who mucks an ace with a bad kicker here will do the same with a pocket pair. Instead of betting big and hoping for a monster confrontation, Joe should bet smaller and get value from his hand.

In situation #2, a lot of things happen within a short span of time, and Joe makes a common mistake. At a table where no preflop reraising is happening, the reality of the game is that players are waiting for cards. The player who reraised Joe twice in a row probably had big hands both times. It could be possible that the different player who reraises him the third time observed Joe’s reaction to the prior two reraises, but the texture of the table dictates that Joe probably ran into another big hand. If preflop reraises begins happening regularly, on the order of once every two orbits or so, Joe can reason that the dynamic of the game has changed. But by letting faith replace reason with a hand like JJ and a random short spurt of events, Joe got himself into a lot of trouble.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers and coauthor of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus). Visit him at www.killerev.com.

The G-Spot: Same Situation - Different Game Format

Same Situation; Different Game Format; Different Decision

Texas Hold’em, seven card stud, Omaha, razz, Mexican poker, blind maniac’s bluff - the list of playable poker variants extends pretty much as far as your imagination can take you with a deck of cards. And the same can be said for the number of ways each poker variant can be played: cash games and several different tournament formats.

When playing in a cash game, the chips on the table are directly equivalent to cash (a $1 chip represents $1), and you may cash out or add more chips at any time. Generally, chips are not directly equivalent to cash in a tournament. You can not just take the payout for first place and divide by the number of chips in play to find out how much each chip is worth (the exception being if you are playing a winner-take-all tournament). When playing in a tournament, your goal is to maximize your monetary expected value.

At a given time in a tournament, your probability of finishing in each place will be a strong function of the relative stack sizes. And the monetary expected value associated with each stack distribution is a function of the payout structure. When evaluating the monetary expected value of a tournament decision, you need to evaluate the distribution of possible stack distributions that will result from a particular move.

For some payout structures (particularly top-heavy ones) you won’t mind taking risks that are just barely above neutral chip expected value. For other payout structures (like the relatively flat ones found in satellites and many single table tournaments) you will prefer to avoid big confrontations with marginal edges, looking to keep pots small in such situations and folding if action gets too heavy.

Poker is a game of situations, but those situations are not just defined by the cards and how your opponents play. They are also defined by the structure of the game you are playing in. You can have the same cards and be playing against an opponent who plays identically regardless of format, and optimal play can dictate taking completely different lines of play depending on the format. Those who say that it’s tough to be good at cash games, single table tournaments, and multi-table tournaments tend to be those who play the same regardless of the poker format they are playing. Account for the game format, and you will be able to succeed in whatever form of poker you’re playing.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers and coauthor of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus). Visit him at www.killerev.com.

The G-Spot: Pleasure Your Poker Playing Profits

By By Tony Guerrera

Focus and Discipline

When asked about the philosophy I take to the tables, I recently put forth the following two distinctions:

1.) Embrace the process and have no attachment to outcomes
2.) In general, do not generalize

I did not put focus and discipline on this list because they didn’t even cross my mind. I have always assumed that focus and discipline are part of who I am. But after a recent edition of Killer Poker Analysis (in which Todd Brunson emphasized the importance of focus and discipline) and a careful look at my own game, I realize that focus and discipline can never be taken for granted.

Since landing my deal for Killer Poker By The Numbers back in the fall of 2005, I’ve been a writing machine. Add coaching and some random consulting here and there, and well, 2006 and 2007 were not exactly spent playing a lot of poker. Now we’re in 2008. I am still writing, coaching, and consulting, but I’m also putting in some serious online playing time.

My old stomping ground, Party Poker, is no longer a possibility for me. After some serious scouting, I decided to adopt Cake Poker as my new home. Their rakeback deal is excellent, and the competition on Cake is easier than average. I don’t know exactly why it’s easier, but one hunch of mine is that it’s because they do not allow the use of player tracking software and heads-up displays (HUDs); the hoards of HUD-using multitablers on Poker Stars and Full Tilt are not at Cake.

 

 

 

Of course, this means that I myself can no longer be a HUD-using multitabler. Luckily for me, I was multitabling before HUDs. But in those days, I was playing 4 tables at most. The beginning of 2008 has been all about honing my 6-max no-limit hold ‘em multitabling chops to where I can play 8-10 tables without a HUD. 6-tabling seems quite comfortable. 8- and 10-tabling territory has been tough. Observing opponents when not involved in a hand is difficult, as is typing player notes (I am currently working on a system of note-taking acronyms to help in this department). Fatigue is also a factor (both mentally and physically). And leaving tough games can be a hassle especially when it comes to navigating through the lobby to find a new game to sit in.

Unfortunately, the difference between success and disaster is slight. If you have KK preflop, and you’re facing a preflop reraise from a very tight reraiser, is he on {AA, KK, AK} or {AA,KK}? Is a suspicious looking bet on the river coming from a known floater or a straightforward, hit-to-win player? The difference between my big wins and my big losses at Cake (well, big in terms of big blinds anyway) has been subtle, almost undetectable shifts in judgment. Focus and discipline are the keys to reigning in these shifts.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers and coauthor of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus). Visit him at www.killerev.com.

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