Poker
Posted by: matthewr on 13 January 2004
As you may or may not be aware online Texas Hold 'Em has been booming for a number of years and is rapidly becoming the fashionable way to squander money you should be spending on new shoes for your children. It is a fascinating game and I can highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in cards and/or gambling.
Anyway, as part of my New Year's Resolution to do more drinking and gambling I have decided to get serious about my Poker and set myself a challenge for 2004 designed to force me to improve my game.
Specfically I have a $200 buy-in at partypoker.com which I aim to make into $5000 dollars by the end of 2004 (at the latest). The plan is basically to start at $.50/$1 until I get to $300 (ie 300BB) then move to $1/$2 until $1000, then $2/$4 to £2,500, the $3/$6 to $5k, falling back a level at 50BB below the amounts at which I go up a level.
Over the weekend however I got off to an inauspicous start and quickly turned my $200 into $140. Most of this was down to three hands where where my brilliant play (naturally) was beaten by horrible fishy luck. Since then however I have clawed my way back and currently stand at $205. Woo yay!
Anyone else interested even remotely interested in Poker?
Matthew
Anyway, as part of my New Year's Resolution to do more drinking and gambling I have decided to get serious about my Poker and set myself a challenge for 2004 designed to force me to improve my game.
Specfically I have a $200 buy-in at partypoker.com which I aim to make into $5000 dollars by the end of 2004 (at the latest). The plan is basically to start at $.50/$1 until I get to $300 (ie 300BB) then move to $1/$2 until $1000, then $2/$4 to £2,500, the $3/$6 to $5k, falling back a level at 50BB below the amounts at which I go up a level.
Over the weekend however I got off to an inauspicous start and quickly turned my $200 into $140. Most of this was down to three hands where where my brilliant play (naturally) was beaten by horrible fishy luck. Since then however I have clawed my way back and currently stand at $205. Woo yay!
Anyone else interested even remotely interested in Poker?
Matthew
An important concept in Poker is that of Pot Odds. Simply put this is the effective odds you are offered by a pot of a certain size compared to the amount required to call a bet or raise. The following hand illustrates this very well.
I am sitting in a late middle position with two players to my left -- the Cutoff (CO) and the button -- and am dealt QQ which is a very strong hand in a good position. So strong in fact that even though the first player to act (EP) bets and it folds around to me, I can raise. CO cold calls my raise, button folds, Small Blind (SB) calls, Big Blind (BB) calls. EP now re-raises which means either he has a big pair or AKs (ie Ace, King, Suited) or that he is not very good at Poker. I'm betting the latter plus I only have one player behind me (ie good position) and so re-raise to cap the pot. Everybody calls.
Flop comes: 3
5 Q
Which is good for me as it gives me a set of Queens. However, its also bad as anyone with spades either has a made flush or else 2 cards to come to make their flush at odds of roughly 1/4 per card. SB, BB and EP all check and the action is on me. Thinking about the situation here I am probably going to lose this hand. There are four other players and the odds are someone already has or will make a flush (which obviously beats my Queens).
Therefore, one might think the correct decision here is to fold. Not so. The correct move here is to bet and the reason (mostly) is pot odds. In order to win I need to improve my three queens to either four-of-a-kind or else a full house. The cards that can make this happen are therefore the one remaining Q, one of the three 3s, one of the three 5s (we'll ignore the possiblity turn and rier being another pair now for the sake of simplicity). This means I have 7 "outs" or 7 cards that give me a hand that is very likely to win.
7 outs with 2 cards to come means I will make my hand 27.84% of the time. This is odds of 2.59/1. However the pot is currently $10.00 and the bet is only $0.50 giving me huge pot odds of 20/1 and a bet that potentially pays 20/1 at real odds of <3/1 is obviously a very good deal. I am therefore getting the correct pot pdds to bet.
In this situation since nobody has bet yet I could also check. The reason I don't illustrates another important principle of Hold Em -- it is rarely correct to check-call since if you have enough strength to call you have enough to bet (this is not always true but usually is) and its generally better to be aggressive than passive.
By betting here though I am being aggressive and might get some people off their draws (ie to fold) and so further increase my chances of winning. In this case for example if someone holding KK can be driven out you are denying him a chance to improve to three Kings on the turn. By checking you would be giving him a "free card" which is a mistake and when someone can outdraw you like this its important to make them pay for it.
So I bet. The CO calls, SB raises, BB calls, EP re-raises, I cap it, CO folds, everybody else calls.
Turn comes: A
This is the same situation as before except that my three reminaing opponents have now almost certainly made flushes. Check, bet, call, call. I don't raise here as the A means I am no longer drawing to the nuts.
The river comes 3
I have made my full house Qs over 5s and win unless one of the others has something truly improbably like As over 3s.
Bet, call, raise, call, call.
SB shows A
J for 2 pair and should have bailed out at the flop.
BB shows J T for a Ten flush and EP shows K and J for a Jack flush. Both these players should have folded to my pre-flop raise.
"Lucky river" said my opponent which is the traditional insult to fling out at an opponent you think has beat you through luck rather than skill. "I just had a feeling" I replied. (Although it's tempting to deliver a lecture at this point its important to maintain the idea that you are the one playing badly as much as possible).
A couple more things worthy of note about pot odds:
Firstly in online play you can see the size of the pot without having to count how many bets are made as one has to in live play. The poker software displays the amount of the pot as the hand progresses. You can also make a little chart that shows the size of the pot required to make a call at the appropriate bet levels for each number of outs. This makes it very easy to work out if you
have the odds to call while you are playing.
Secondly, in typical low limit games where everyone is very loose you frequently get 5 or 6 or more callers plus the blinds. Often this means the pots gets so large relative to the bet size that you are almost always getting good odds to make most calls no matter how improbable. The classic exmaple is the inside striaght draw (e.g. you have QJ, the board is 789 and you need T for a straight) which is normally a bad draw since the odds are 11/1 and in tougher games you will very rarely get such good odds. In loose games though, especially when there has been a pre-flop raise and still everyone calls, you will often have such a large pot that you are justified in chasing these draws.
The downside to this is that by raising pre-flop and and generally driving up the pot (which is normally good tactics with a strong hand) you might inadvertantly make the bad play of your opponents accidently correct. That is if you have, say, top pair top kicker and your opponents have some unlikely straight draw you would normally be delighted if they call your bets. If however the pot is very large these calls might be actually be correct becuase each opponent is getting enough pot odds to call.
Finally, if you have a lot of these callers then although each individually is unlikely to make his/her hand, collectively its much more likely that one of them will. This effect is called Implicit Collusion as it's like all the other players are playing against you as the aggressor. This is the main reason why hands that play well in multi-way hands (Big suited cards, suited connectors, etc) tend to increase in value in loose games and big pairs and non-suited big card hands that don't imporve tend to play worse.
Matthew
[This message was edited by Matthew Robinson on THURSDAY 29 January 2004 at 09:52.]
I am sitting in a late middle position with two players to my left -- the Cutoff (CO) and the button -- and am dealt QQ which is a very strong hand in a good position. So strong in fact that even though the first player to act (EP) bets and it folds around to me, I can raise. CO cold calls my raise, button folds, Small Blind (SB) calls, Big Blind (BB) calls. EP now re-raises which means either he has a big pair or AKs (ie Ace, King, Suited) or that he is not very good at Poker. I'm betting the latter plus I only have one player behind me (ie good position) and so re-raise to cap the pot. Everybody calls.
Flop comes: 3
5 Q Which is good for me as it gives me a set of Queens. However, its also bad as anyone with spades either has a made flush or else 2 cards to come to make their flush at odds of roughly 1/4 per card. SB, BB and EP all check and the action is on me. Thinking about the situation here I am probably going to lose this hand. There are four other players and the odds are someone already has or will make a flush (which obviously beats my Queens).
Therefore, one might think the correct decision here is to fold. Not so. The correct move here is to bet and the reason (mostly) is pot odds. In order to win I need to improve my three queens to either four-of-a-kind or else a full house. The cards that can make this happen are therefore the one remaining Q, one of the three 3s, one of the three 5s (we'll ignore the possiblity turn and rier being another pair now for the sake of simplicity). This means I have 7 "outs" or 7 cards that give me a hand that is very likely to win.
7 outs with 2 cards to come means I will make my hand 27.84% of the time. This is odds of 2.59/1. However the pot is currently $10.00 and the bet is only $0.50 giving me huge pot odds of 20/1 and a bet that potentially pays 20/1 at real odds of <3/1 is obviously a very good deal. I am therefore getting the correct pot pdds to bet.
In this situation since nobody has bet yet I could also check. The reason I don't illustrates another important principle of Hold Em -- it is rarely correct to check-call since if you have enough strength to call you have enough to bet (this is not always true but usually is) and its generally better to be aggressive than passive.
By betting here though I am being aggressive and might get some people off their draws (ie to fold) and so further increase my chances of winning. In this case for example if someone holding KK can be driven out you are denying him a chance to improve to three Kings on the turn. By checking you would be giving him a "free card" which is a mistake and when someone can outdraw you like this its important to make them pay for it.
So I bet. The CO calls, SB raises, BB calls, EP re-raises, I cap it, CO folds, everybody else calls.
Turn comes: A
This is the same situation as before except that my three reminaing opponents have now almost certainly made flushes. Check, bet, call, call. I don't raise here as the A means I am no longer drawing to the nuts.
The river comes 3
I have made my full house Qs over 5s and win unless one of the others has something truly improbably like As over 3s.
Bet, call, raise, call, call.
SB shows A
J for 2 pair and should have bailed out at the flop. BB shows J
T for a Ten flush and EP shows K and J for a Jack flush. Both these players should have folded to my pre-flop raise."Lucky river" said my opponent which is the traditional insult to fling out at an opponent you think has beat you through luck rather than skill. "I just had a feeling" I replied. (Although it's tempting to deliver a lecture at this point its important to maintain the idea that you are the one playing badly as much as possible).
A couple more things worthy of note about pot odds:
Firstly in online play you can see the size of the pot without having to count how many bets are made as one has to in live play. The poker software displays the amount of the pot as the hand progresses. You can also make a little chart that shows the size of the pot required to make a call at the appropriate bet levels for each number of outs. This makes it very easy to work out if you
have the odds to call while you are playing.
Secondly, in typical low limit games where everyone is very loose you frequently get 5 or 6 or more callers plus the blinds. Often this means the pots gets so large relative to the bet size that you are almost always getting good odds to make most calls no matter how improbable. The classic exmaple is the inside striaght draw (e.g. you have QJ, the board is 789 and you need T for a straight) which is normally a bad draw since the odds are 11/1 and in tougher games you will very rarely get such good odds. In loose games though, especially when there has been a pre-flop raise and still everyone calls, you will often have such a large pot that you are justified in chasing these draws.
The downside to this is that by raising pre-flop and and generally driving up the pot (which is normally good tactics with a strong hand) you might inadvertantly make the bad play of your opponents accidently correct. That is if you have, say, top pair top kicker and your opponents have some unlikely straight draw you would normally be delighted if they call your bets. If however the pot is very large these calls might be actually be correct becuase each opponent is getting enough pot odds to call.
Finally, if you have a lot of these callers then although each individually is unlikely to make his/her hand, collectively its much more likely that one of them will. This effect is called Implicit Collusion as it's like all the other players are playing against you as the aggressor. This is the main reason why hands that play well in multi-way hands (Big suited cards, suited connectors, etc) tend to increase in value in loose games and big pairs and non-suited big card hands that don't imporve tend to play worse.
Matthew
[This message was edited by Matthew Robinson on THURSDAY 29 January 2004 at 09:52.]
Last night about 2am, despite several pints of Old Speckled Hen and a bottle of Sauv Blanc, my total* Poker profits edge passed £500. The key hand was a late position JTs which flopped a made straight and won me a $43.50 pot.
My current numbers are as follows:
Which means my hobby currently pays about £5.91 per hour. Although one should note that BB/Hr numbers are not considered 100% reliable until you get to about 10,000 hands of data.
My bestselling book "How to Win Small Amounts of Money Playing Low Limits Online Poker For Hours and Hours and Hours" will be available in the Summer.
Matthew
* This is from mid-Feb. I have no figures for prior to that although I took £600 profit out of my bankroll just before Xmas.
My current numbers are as follows:
Which means my hobby currently pays about £5.91 per hour. Although one should note that BB/Hr numbers are not considered 100% reliable until you get to about 10,000 hands of data.
My bestselling book "How to Win Small Amounts of Money Playing Low Limits Online Poker For Hours and Hours and Hours" will be available in the Summer.
Matthew
* This is from mid-Feb. I have no figures for prior to that although I took £600 profit out of my bankroll just before Xmas.
As a general rule I am hopeless at card games (kalookie is about my limit) but I used to enjoy watching the late-night TV poker games they used to show on Channel 4 featuring, I believe, the so-called "Texas Hold 'Em" version of the game. It was a nice way to wind down the day. I've even seen Victoria Coren play!
I'll happily admit though that I had not a sodding clue what was going on!
Presumably Matthew, this is all for the purpose of upgrading which bit of your system.....?
Regards,
JonR
I'll happily admit though that I had not a sodding clue what was going on!
Presumably Matthew, this is all for the purpose of upgrading which bit of your system.....?
Regards,
JonR