When driving to Foxwoods Casino from I-95, after exiting the freeway you have to drive for about 8 miles along a state road prior to arriving at the casino. Not once when making that 8 mile drive have I failed to see a police car, and I have made that drive many times. You have been warned.

Illegitimi Non Carborundum.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 12:34 PM PDT

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OK, this happened at the same 1/2 NLHE Foxwoods session as I mentioned in the previous post.

The player on my left [POML] open raised UTG +1 to $20 and was called in 4 places (it was one of those kinds of games) including the BB on my right. POML bet $30 on the flop and was called in two places, again including the BB. On the turn, the BB pushed all-in for $125, and POML now went into the tank.

So far, an interesting if unexceptional hand. Then the player in the big blind started talking and offered to show a card. POML spoke up before he could turn over a card saying, “I don’t need to see your cards.” Yes, the guy voluntarily declined free information. He then explained that he was open-ended and just had to work out the pot odds. That’s no excuse for declining free information.

POML then asked the dealer to spread the pot so he could try to count it. It’s a day after the hand was played, but I still remember the amount that was in the pot. $20 X 5 + $30 X 3 + $125. It’s NOT THAT HARD. And yet he had no idea how much was in the pot. Finally, he declared, “I need three-to-one odds and the pot is just a little light. I have to fold.”

No flush draw was possible, so he was just talking about the 8 outs to a straight. And on the turn, he believed himself to only need 3:1 pot odds to justify a call. Time to order another jack and coke pal.

Unsurprisingly he lost $600 in 3 hours.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 11:16 AM PDT

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I had a very good session at Foxwoods yesterday at the $1/$2 NLHE tables, though I should have won less than half of what I did. Why? I got lucky on one hand. I made a bad call when I should have folded, but what’s worse, my instincts told me to fold and I ignored them.

The longer you play poker, the more you’ll build up your poker instinct. It’s like exercising any other muscle–the more you exercise, the stronger you get. The hard part though is listening to those instincts. I’ve run into this problem before on numerous occasions, and it has cost me plenty. You have to trust your reads, your first impressions, in short, trust your instincts.

Here was the situation from last night: an average player open raised in early position to $12 and I re-raised to $35 with AKs. It folded around to the open raiser who thought about it for a bit then pushed all-in. If he had pocket queens or worse, i was priced in to call, so I set about trying to get a read.

I asked him questions. Talked at him. Couldn’t get anything out of him. So I took the next step of tabling my cards (i.e. turning them face up) and simply stating, “I would really like to know if I’ve got two live cards or just one.” He glanced over at my cards, and that’s when it happened. He smirked. Just a slight, brief instant, but it was a definite, genuine smirk. He was happy to see my cards. But the moment passed, and he didn’t give up anything else.

My instincts were telling me that he had kings. He didn’t seem to have the confident self-assurance which comes with holding aces, but he liked the cards I had, and that was my read. Kings. I should fold. But then I started thinking about it, and I out thought myself. He seemed a little uncertain when pushing all-in. He seemed frustrated after losing several pots recently. I had seen him go all-in pre-flop with pocket jacks about an hour earlier. That last bit was very big in my mind. Finally, I convinced myself to call, essentially talking myself out of my read.

Naturally, he turned up pocket kings. The ace on the turn was good to drag a pot of over $400, but I couldn’t feel very good about it, as making a bad play and getting lucky is the defining feature of Donkey Poker. Still, I learned something on the hand, I developed greater trust in my instincts, and winning the pot didn’t hurt. Most lessons in poker tend to be expensive ones. I got off easy this time.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 2:11 PM PDT

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First of all, remind me never to fail to pay a poker debt lest I one day step out my front door and into a box full of rattlesnakes. Second, no, I am not the “Beck” referred to in the article:

Steelman was charged Tuesday with one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, one count of conspiracy to kidnap, and extortion, while Beck was arrested in New Mexico and is awaiting extradition to Colorado.

Or am I?

Posted by Beck as Life, Poker at 1:14 PM PDT

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Playing in an online NLHE game, I saw this incredible play:

The UTG player, a multi-tabler working 8 tables, open limps. It folds around to a middle position player who raises the minimum. I fold, the big blind calls, and now UTG raises to 9BB.

Immediately, I make a note on UTG that he uses the limp-re-raise strategy, and I expect the hand to end right there. My expectations were to prove grossly mistaken.

The player who raised the minimum called, and the flop came out ten high with two spades. And then… the UTG player… CHECKED. Yes folks, that’s right, he checked the flop after pulling a big limp-reraise. The player who had min-raised then called? He bet the pot. And UTG folded.

Worst play of the week, easily. The same player who made that play had earlier called an all-in bet on the river with AQo on a board of 9s 9d 5s Js Th. That’s right, on a paired board featuring a 3 straight and a 3 flush he called all in (the bettor had pocket Jacks for big full). And yet that wasn’t his worst play of the session.

And this guy plays 8 tables at once. Incredible.

Posted by Beck as Poker, Poker Strategy at 4:51 PM PDT

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Watching the WSOP pot limit hold ‘em event on ESPN just now, I had an epiphany during a moment of clarity. Humberto Brenes was up to his usual antics, and Allen Cunningham, commenting on the toy shark props that Humberto uses, asked, “Where’s my prop?” That’s when it came to me. Some people love Humberto. Some people absolutely can’t stand Humberto. Humberto uses props and routinely engages in antics designed to annoy and goad his opponents into mistakes…

And there it was:

Humberto Brenes is the Carrot Top of poker.

Update: I posted this during a commercial break. As soon as the tournament coverage resumed, Norman Chad (who seems to really detest Brenes) made a Carrot Top comparison. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is that I WAS THE FIRST ONE!!!

Posted by Beck as Poker at 8:11 PM PDT

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Alternate post title: How to Play a Hand Really Badly for Foolish Reasons

Remember Jerky from this post? Remember how he berated my flop all-in raise on the grounds that I should have just called him down and let him blast all his money off to me? Remember how I criticized him for teaching at the table? I decided to teach him a lesson of my own, and played a very weird hand in the process.

The really interesting bit was the river, so I’ll get there quickly, pausing only to note that I’m not even remotely suggesting that my play before the river was in any way worthy of emulation.

In a $1-$2 NLHE game, I had roughly $450, covering all of the people in this hand. Jerky, with about $350, open raised UTG to $17, which I hadn’t seen him do before (he usually open raised to $12-$15). I looked down at pocket Jacks and smooth called. 4 (!!!) more people behind me called, including both blinds.

The flop was J-T-6 with two diamonds. Jerky bet $50 into the $102 pot, I called, and everyone else folded, with the big blind commenting, “I’ll let you two go at it.” The turn was an offsuit King, and Jerky, who clearly liked that card, bet $75. I called. The river was an offsuit queen. Apart from the queen of diamonds, that was the last card I wanted to see, leaving a final board of:

J-T-6-K-Q. No flush possible, but any Ace or 9 made a straight. Jerky then bet $50.

I had completely failed to protect my hand on a seriously draw-heavy board throughout the hand, and I now had what looked to me like a suck bet [a small bet with a nut or near-nut hand designed to suck a little last money out of an opponent] from a guy that I had put on A-K. Yes, on the turn, I had narrowed his hand down to A-A or A-K. There was $402 in the pot and it cost me $50 to call. 8:1 pot odds. And I was highly certain that I was beat. You can only imagine the nasty things I was saying to myself in my head.

I wasn’t ready to give up though. I determined to try to get a read, whatever it took. So I started talking.

“I think you’ve got a straight, which is too bad because I have a really good hand.”

“…”

So I tabled my cards. Turned them face up.

“You see. Strong hand. Hard to lay that down.”

“Yup.”

I had gotten Jerky talking, which was a good thing.

“And I’m getting great pot-odds. There’s like 400 bucks in there.”

“Yeah, you pretty much have to call.”

The conversation went on, and twice more he concurred with me that I had to call there. That had me thinking that Jerky did not, in fact, have an ace. When an opponent seems to be encouraging you to do one thing, you should usually look to do the other. Here he seemed to be encouraging me to fold (think about it: poker players are always assumed to be lying, so telling me to call was really telling me to fold–that’s the surface layer. The reverse psychology then is to actually call. It’d be a double-reverse except that your null assumption is that he’s lying, not that he’s being truthful as you would assume in a non-poker interaction).

I counted out $50 in chips and picked it up, and Jerky went to turn his cards over. Picked them up and was actually about to flip them. That stopped me from putting my chips into the pot. He was way too confident. He stopped himself from flipping the cards over (which is good–my goal wasn’t an angle shoot here, but that’s nearly how it turned out). It really bothered me that he was so eager to turn his cards up. Everything else told me to call but that last item. Finally I sucked it up. The telling me to call, and the 8-to-1 pot odds made the call necessary. I only had to be right 1 time in 9 to justify the call, though the 8 in 9 times I would lose would be painful.

That was definitely the toughest call I ever made. Toughest in terms of the mental effort to force myself to put chips in the pot.

Jerky turned up his own cards. K-Q offsuit. Two pair. The $50 river bet had been a blocking bet. I won, despite having done everything possible to give myself a chance to lose.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 11:03 AM PDT

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Folks, at least give yourself a chance. When stealing or making a move, your actual cards matter less than just about anything else. But that doesn’t mean they don’t matter at all. Sometimes opportunity and timing will dictate everything, but for routine plays in a cash game (say stealing the blinds from late position), you always have to be prepared for the potential that you’re going to get called. That’s why you want to use the best cards that you wouldn’t ordinarily have played. If jack-nine suited is the worst hand you would open with from 2 off the button, and you’ve decided to steal about a fifth of the time from that position, then use the best fifth of cards remaining below jack-nine suited to steal with. A lot of people are of the mindset that they should use their very worst hands to make plays with, but that only holds true from an unraised big blind: the one place where 100% of hands are “playable” is the one place where the very worst hands are the ones for getting goofy.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 4:17 PM PDT

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While I’ve been criticized, insulted, and cursed at the poker table before, up until today it had all been online. I’ve gotten some mild anger directed my way before at the poker table, but today was something of a first. Considering the typical standard of player behavior, I suppose it’s actually kind of shocking I wen this long with hearing something of the sort.

The situation: in a 1/2 NLHE cash game that I’d recently moved to (I had only played 3 hands at this table so far and had no read on anyone), 8(!) players limped to see a flop of 9h-Qd-Kd. I was holding the 10c-Jc in the big blind, and had flopped the nuts. The small blind checked, I underbet $6 into the $16 pot hoping to induce a raise. After 6(!) callers, the small blind raised to $40, and I re-raised all-in into the now $88 pot. Everyone folded. NOT end of story.

It was at that point that the small blind, whom I shall refer to as “Jerky” from this point, loudly declared, “Whatever you had, you just made the dumbest play possible.” Jerky then went on to explain, contempt dripping from his voice that he was guaranteed to bet the turn, so I would have been better off calling his raise and then calling him down from there.

I could have pointed out that with 7 other people in the hand, flush draws, redraws to a higher straight, and full houses galore were all possible. I didn’t though. I never like to explain or justify my play at the table, as I don’t want people to know how I play. Instead, I decided to hit Jerky over the head with logic and complex sentence structure in the distant hope he wouldn’t go on to criticize other players’ play at some future point. My exact quote:

“Are you customarily in the habit of criticizing others for what you perceive to be bad play? That would seem to be a pretty bad play in and of itself.”

Jerky responded, “No, I’m not criticizing your play,” spoken without a hint of irony, “I’m just saying–”

At which point I interrupted with, “You most certainly were criticizing my play, doing so without considering for a moment whether I had the nuts, a draw, or a complete bluff. So stow it until you have something friendly or polite to say.”

Amazingly, it worked. Then later that night I took all of Jerky’s money. God I love poker.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 11:34 PM PDT

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I played this hand this past Saturday at the Borgata in the $1-$2 NL game. I had about $350 in chips, and had everyone else in the hand covered.

Two people limped in front of me and I limped from the cut-off with Jc 8c. The blinds joined in, and with $10 in the pot, we took a flop of Tc 9s 6c, giving me an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw.

The first limper bet $10, the second limper called, and I raised to $50. Everyone folded to the first caller [The Russian] who now raised to $100, leaving $120 behind. Concluding that I was a favorite in the hand with two cards to come, I pushed all in. The Russian called, saying, “I have striaght,” and turning over 7d 8d.

He had one of my outs, but I was still a roughly 52% favorite in the hand.

The turn was the ace of diamonds, and the river was the 6 of diamonds.

They can’t all be winners.

Update: What’s interesting is to consider alternate ways of playing this hand. You have to consider this with all their potential ramifications though. You can’t just say, “Check-call until your hand improves, and fold on the river if you still have nothing but jack-high,” because that ignores the possibility that The Russian pushes all-in on the turn. It also ignores the possibility that you make your hand and don’t get any action on it. Just something else to think about.

Posted by Beck as Poker at 12:10 PM PDT

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