But, I had to share:

Posted by Jaxia as Life, Movies at 3:20 PM PDT

3 Comments »

I’m heading out for a (completely non-poker related) road trip for the next couple weeks. But fear not, I’ll be back in August, and better than ever.

Or something like that.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 4:12 PM PDT

1 Comment »

Last Thursday I played in the daily NLHE tournament at Foxwoods, and a very strange hand played out.

In the third hand of the tournament, an overweight middle aged woman who looked very out of place at the table open raised from 4th position to T150 (blinds were 25 and 50, starting stacks were T5000). One person called, and I looked down on the button to see pocket 10s. There are a number of ways to play this hand in this spot, and for various reasons I decided to reraise, making it T500 to go. It folded around to the woman who hadn’t noticed the re-raise and had to be prompted by the dealer. She called. The other person in the hand folded, and we took the flop heads up.

The flop: 5s 6s 8c

The woman bet out T150. That’s right. She bet 150 into a 1225 pot. At that point I had to decide if this woman thought she had the best hand and was value betting while ignorant of the general rules of bet sizing or if she was a stronger player than I gave her credit for and she was making a blocking bet. I decided in that instant that my stereotype of her was probably mistaken, that she was probably a decent player, and that as such she was most likely making a blocking bet with a hand like As-Xs. I raised to T1000, and she called.

The turn was the 7h, putting a 4 card straight on the board. And now, into a T3225 pot, the woman bet… 150.

I was baffled. I was stumped. Was she hoping I’d raise again? Was she still blocking? Did she have me beat already? Getting 20.5:1 pot odds, I felt obligated to at least call, and call I did.

The river was the Ace of Spades, which was just about the worst card I could have seen at that point. The woman now chose to bet… 200.

I was 95% sure I was beaten. And yet I was getting the right pot odds to call if I was only winning 5% of the time. None of that mattered though. There was a 100% chance I was calling at that point, because I was dying of curiosity to see her cards. So I called.

Any guesses as to what she had? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments. I’ll leave a comment as well revealing with that hand was, so don’t look at the comments until you’ve made up your mind.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 3:07 PM PDT

1 Comment »

Like anyone else, I try to pick out online tables with a high percentage of players seeing the flop and a high average pot size. If a table looks particularly juicy, I’ll hop on the waiting list. But could someone please explain to me what the people who are number 7 on a waiting list are thinking? By the time they get to the top of the list, there’s basically no chance that the players giving all the action will remain. In fact, the only people at the table will be those smart enough to only sit down at loose tables. This phenomenon–long wait lists at tables–has always gotten on my nerves a bit. But today I saw a waiting list that was 17 people long. I almost have to wonder if it didn’t become a joke at some point with people getting on the list just for laughs. At least I hope that’s all it was.

Oh, and as for the movie quote in the previous post? There wasn’t one.

I was bluffing.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 1:36 PM PDT

2 Comments »

I randomly stumbled across a hand at PokerNews.com’s live reporting of the final table of the $10k PLO event which really made me shake my head in awe. It’s a final table of an expensive and difficult event, so you know that all of the players involved are masters of the art. This hand really blows the mind… and it was all over pre-flop.

The action was simple. Player A open limped for 30k on the button. Player B called from the small blind. Player C raised the pot from the big blind, making it 120k to go. Player A calls. Player B re-raises the pot to 480k. Player C folds. Player A folds.

What sort of hand to you put Player B on? This is Omaha, so obviously it’s hard to be too specific, but do you think it was a top 1% hand? Top 5%? Top 10%? Any 4 random cards? Just thinking about this hand reveals all sorts of levels of potential holdings.

Here’s how I read the hand on the surface. Player B had a monster, and was confident enough of its strength and his post-flop ability that he wanted to see a flop to increase the chance of either winning a huge pot or getting away cheaply if he’s outflopped. Once the big blind raised and the button called, however, he now had the big pot he wanted and decided to take it down right away rather than waiting any longer.

But here’s another interpretation which could just as easily be accurate: Player B had a virtually mandatory call from the small blind (very few hands are a major dog pre-flop in Omaha). Player C saw weakness all around and decided he had an easy steal opportunity. Player A didn’t have a strong hand, but didn’t really read strength in Player C’s raise either, and decided he had a pretty easy call. Player B, deciding that A was weak and C was on a steal, went for the re-steal, making the hand so expensive that it now threatened the other two players with serious damage to their chip stacks. At that point, they both gave up.

It could, of course, have been a combination. The first interpretation I give could be the reality of player B’s holdings, but he could have been hoping that his limp-re-raise would look like a re-steal and would get called. The bad news is I doubt we will ever know what cards the three players held. But just thinking about how this hand played yields valuable insight into deep thinking poker play.

So who were the three players, you wonder?

Player A was Robert Mizrachi

Player C was Patrik Antonius.

Player B, naturally, was Doyle Brunson.

He’s making a try for his 11th WSOP bracelet. I’ll be watching this one closely. Live updates are here; the hand I cited was hand #9.

OK Mike, now try to find the movie reference you punk!

Posted by Beck as Poker at 5:36 PM PDT

1 Comment »

You know the type. His VP$IP is in the teens, her PFR% somewhere around half that. He plays anywhere from 6 to 12 tables at once. And she is incredibly easy to beat. All you have to do is identify him.

First off, you’ll see this guy around all the time. He plays so many tables that you’ll get used to seeing his name and/or player icon. His Poker Tracker stats never waver. She never seems to tilt or change his strategy. These are good players, and one assumes they’re making money, or they wouldn’t be able to play a half-dozen tables at once for very long without going broke.

Once you’ve spotted this player, all it takes to beat him or her is to attack, attack, attack. Attack their blinds. Attack when they check. If they always make continuation bets after raising, attack those as well. Their hands are easy to read, their bets typically mean what they say, and their play is A-B-C straightforward. You see, their great weakness is that they’re too distracted to do anything tricky or complicated, they’re moving too fast between tables to give more than an instants thought to every decision, and their overall strategy relies too heavily on value betting weak players to extract money from observant, intelligent players sitting at a (relatively) small number of tables.

The typical assumption by poker players is that the money flows towards the stronger players. Generally this assumption is correct, but while it takes enormous skill and concentration to play 12 no-limit tables at once, it’s entirely possible for a technically weaker opponent to outplay that superior player because the superior player has divided his concentration too thin, like butter scraped over too much bread.

Bonus points to anyone spotting the movie quote.

Posted by Beck as Poker Strategy at 12:58 PM PDT

4 Comments »

I was thinking about odds the other day, and I was wondering: if you’re behind on the turn, what is the maximum number of outs you can have to win?

I can think of a situation where I’d have 25 outs on fourth street, making me about a 57/43 favorite.

So, a two-part brainteaser: first, what kind of hand would I be holding in order to have 25 outs? Remember, you must be behind in the hand on fourth street, and all your outs must be to win. Second, is there a way to have more than 25 outs?

Posted by Mike as Gambling, Poker, Poker Strategy at 3:52 PM PDT

3 Comments »