Texas Hold'em Course

[casinopete]

made me think of this.

[Antrax]

http://www.onlinepokerbible.com/
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[tigerbalm]

This thread... is spectacular.

Borodog, you are a superb teacher.

[tigerbalm]

The only way I can see myself adding anything worthwhile to this thread is to revisit position. Borodog's mention of it (post 4, and reference in many others), is perfectly accurate, but I think perhaps there's not quite enough emphasis.

So I will get specific.

It's that joyous 1/221 event! You've got AA! You own this hand... but how much is it really worth? It depends mightily on position.

Let's talk about a loose game. Criminally loose, really, 6-7 people in for the flop, but you get that a lot in low limit or home games, from people who want to play.

To keep things simple, let's temporarily overlook the blinds as special cases... you are first to act. Let's say you smooth call the blinds, and no one else is interested in raising (lotsa loose-passives at low limit). Six more people will call you. Your pot is 7 Big Blinds (BB), and you have, say, a 40% chance of winning the hand. Your expected return, then, is 2.8BB.

But you have AA! You can't just smooth call! So you bet, and it pays off for you. Only 3 people call, but they put in twice the amount, so you have an 8BB pot (or maybe 8.5, since the small blind may be one of the non-callers), and 55% or so chance at it. Expected return: 4.4BB.

Fast forward seven hands, when, miracle of miracles! you get AA again! Now you are in late position.

This time, five people call the blind before action makes it around to you. You bet, and all of them call (as does the big blind, they all have better odds for their hands)! This time you have 14BB in the pot, and the old 40% chance. Your expected return is 5.6BB!

"But wait," you may interject. That's only 1.2BB more. Certainly it makes a difference, but only about 27%. I'll take this info into consideration, but I'm not sure why it affects my play...

But we are still only at the flop. The extra information you gathered preflop yielded about a 27% gain, but it becomes even more valuable as the hand continues. How do people react to that Queen in the flop? The King? Suited cards? Rainbow? I guarantee you that the extra information is even more valuable post-flop than pre-flop.

Taking this into account (roughly/brutally/clumsily, but still), you get the 27% bonus preflop, postflop, postturn, and maybe even a little bit postriver. Just multiply the numbers! Your position more than doubled the value of your hand.

Borodog said the magic number for the tight/learner is 1/10 of hands in early position, and 2/10 in late. This is why. All of your hands (and especially drawing hands) are twice as valuable. That's as big a difference as between AA and 99 or between KQs and 65s. Position is not an additional bit of info to mix into your game, it is just as much a key to playing poker as your starting hand chart.

[RequiemEternam]

I've been looking at eBay for poker tables, table tops, and table covers, just to see what setting up a fun little weekly home game would run me.

Does anyone have any experience with what is billed on eBay as "ultra suede fabric" which allegedly is better than felt because it doesn't wear quickly? It's wicked expensive for real tables and tops, and while I want to add to the gaming experience, I don't love my friends THAT much.

Thanks in advance. Also, sorry if this seems to stray off topic.

[Doc Borodog]

Step 1) Go to your local Jo-Ann's Fabrics
Step 2) Buy something called "moleskin" (which, I am told, is not actually made of the pelts of thousands of subterrainian mammals).
Step 3) Try not to cream your shorts.

Moleskin is by far the best table surface I've found. Many people swear buy velveteen, but the quality and type of can very greatly, and your poker table will look like a cheap prom dress anyway.

There is a slightly higher end product than moleskin called micro-suede; it actually feels a bit nicer, but is more expensive with little difference.

Do NOT get "felt" as this will be exactly what it says, felt, which is a crappy material. Poker and billiard felt are not actually felt. Usually they are a material called speed cloth, which is INCREDIBLY expensive, and in my opinion not superior to the stuff I've recommended.

If you want some tips on building your own table, check out www.scottkeen.com. It's an invaluable resource. I've been moderating over there under the name Swing Dr.

[GH]

Micro-suede is the hot thing on furniture right now. It feels like suede, but it's extremely durable. The downside of micro-suede is that it really shows the "grain" when you rub it one way versus the other, if you know what I mean. Our couch has the butt prints of every person who sits down. It also creates a lot of static. I wouldn't want it on a poker table.

P.S. That link doesn't work for me.

[Doc Borodog]

www.scottkeen.com

The period at the end got linked somehow.

[Samadhi]

2.5 hours for the tourney
Average rank of hand dealt (based on standard ev) 114
I had to pull the hand history just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. I suppose I should be happy I lasted 2.5 hours.

[CrystyB]

[Highest Prime]

[Samadhi]

Thanks, that explains some of the behaviour I've seen when playing sets. I would vary whether I would bet depending on position and my read of the players and I couldn't figure out why they were doing what they were doing in response. Now I get it.

[Highest Prime]

[Samadhi]

If I'm at a table of 10 and 5 people fold before me, I adjust my mindset to that of a 5 person table. I.E. I give my hand the strength it would have on a five person table. Or in the most extreme if I'm SB and everyone folds before me, I equate my hand to a head to head hand. Should I or should I not be doing this?

[Antrax]

Wrong. If 4 people already folded, that means 4 bad hands are out of the pack, which means it's more likely the guy you're against has a good hand.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[tigerbalm]

If you were certain there were two "playable hands" each round, then this would be identical in nature to a Monty Hall Problem, and Antrax would be correct. But it's not, and therefore neither is he.

Looking at the extreme case, 8 folded of 10, you in the small blind, I think you will find that experts almost overwhelmingly agree you raise with nearly anything. The odds wouldn't quite equate to head-to-head (there is some small effect, say, likelihood of face card presence), but it's actually pretty close.

[Samadhi]

[Antrax]

I disagree with you both, I'm afraid. In low-limit games, the variety of hands considered playable is very high, and the more people fold, the more people are tempted to play marginal hands. So, if everyone fold to you, they must really have shit, which means it's very unlikely people will fold to your raise, both psychologically (he's stealing!) and both from hand quality considerations. You can assume with a high probability if you deal 10 hold'em hands, one of them will be playable.
It doesn't matter what happens on the river, it matters what he'll do if you raise preflop. IMO it's a toss between reraising you and calling you, and then on the flop you know nothing.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Samadhi]

I realize I misstated myself. I give it the weight it would have at the newly sized table, but I am not so dim witted as to ignore psychology.

[Highest Prime]

My thinking on the matter (not that anyone asked) is probably closer to Antrax's than Samadhi's, but that's because most of my experience is with games that are exceptionally loose, 60% or 70% of people seeing the flop on average. In such games, if you're one off the button and six people - most of whom will play any Ace, any two suited, any two face cards, etc. - have folded to you, their hands had to have been so bad that it's very likely there are better hands in front of you, and playing it as though you were up front at a 4-handed table (e.g. limping in with Q9o) will get you crucified.

The tighter the table gets, the less I fear running into a monster hand behind me in middle or late position, because it's certainly possible that some halfway decent cards are already in the muck. At a very loose table such as the one above, I can no longer assume that's the case.

On the other hand, where "loose" equals "clueless", psychology isn't even a consideration - the blinds will probably play their hands just as they always would, not even pondering that your raise from one off the button might indicate a steal. (Of course, players of this ilk tend to defend their blinds too aggressively, which probably cancels out any psychological advantage from a steal-raise anyway.)

H'

[casinopete]

[Highest Prime]

[Doc Borodog]

Had an amazing (and bad) experience last night. I've been playing 4 tables simultaneously of $2-$4 limit at Party Poker lately, and just been crushing the game for around 4BB/100 hands played, 2.9BB/hour/table.

But last night I played for 1 hour and 12 minutes on one table (a good table, loose, bad players), and dragged exactly 1 pot in 81 hands (a $12 pot that didn't see a showdown)! My VP$IP (Voluntarily Put Money In Pot) was 9.9% over those 81 hands. Yet the few hands I was in always seemed to hit me hard and cost be big. I dropped 40 big bets at that table in 72 minutes playing something like 8 hands + blinds. I got flushed several times, out-boated, ambushed by some weird stuff (23o), two and three outed (outkicked guy hits kicker, etc), you name it.

[Doc Borodog]

Damn. Crushed again tonight. Another 40 big bets. My ass is sore.

[Highest Prime]

Boro, when last your exploits were catalogued in this thread, you were working on building up a bankroll at $.50-$1 before moving up (and cursing the swings, too, IIRC). Curious minds want to know: Have you really gone from (presumably single-table) $.50-$1 to 4-tabling $2-$4 in four or five months? And are you still on your "plan" laid out last year? Because I can only assume that you've done *really* well in the interim if you've built up the stack to be comfortable with playing 4x 2-4 regularly - congratulations!

More importantly, what's the wife currently think about all this?

H'

[Doc Borodog]

Well, first of all, my crushingly suck-ass card run continued today. Total down from my peak on Party: 140 big bets, or $560. Actually, that was $8 (or two big bets) more than what I had made on Party since moving there a week ago, so I'm officially down 8 bucks since moving to Party (except for the $100 deposit bonus).

I suppose it does take some explanation. What I was doing before was playing a single table, for 8 hours a day, trying my damndest. This wore me out. Not to mention I've come to believe that no matter how well you play, it's almost impossible to beat the rake at $1-$2 (possibly even $2-$4, it's certainly close). I had a VP$IP (Voluntarily Put $ In Pot) of close to 20%, was defending my big blind a lot, and completing the small blind something like 40% of the time. I was playing suited connectors and small pairs, etc. While I'm sure that each play I made was profitable, the variance you get trying to squeeze every last bet of profit it significant.

Now my strategy for online limit play is totally different. I make up for in volume for what I am leaving on the table in terms of skill. I'm playing super-cruncy-mofo tight (VP$IP < 14%), completing the SB less than 25%, folding the big blind to a raise much more. I wait for premium hands, get my money in, and let yahoos call me down. I don't bother chasing with overcards. I'm much more comfortable throwing away a hand on the flop than I was before.

I also use Poker Tracker and an add-on called GameTime+, which you have to see to believe. Party Poker now saves hand histories on your hard drive on the fly, no more annoying emails or missed hands in my database. Every hand I play is autoimported by the minute. The GameTime+ links to the Poker Tracker database and superimposes player statistics onto your Party Poker tables. You can see exactly who the fish and the sharks are without even paying attention.

Now, supposedly my variance should be very low playing this way, even if I'm not making the maximum I could. Until day before yesterday, it was like free money. I was literrally destroying the game. Then the cards turned sour. In truth, if it weren't for the rake, I'd still be up $300. This is certainly the worst run of bad cards I've ever had. I have 5000 hands in my Party Poker $2-$4 database now and I'm almost dead even (because of the rake), well, -$8.

The size of this downswing is pretty insignificant to me though. I've played my bankroll up to something around $5000). My plan was (and still is) to just play $2-$4 until the $900 I moved over to Party was doubled, then move to 4 tables of $3-$6. The 3-6 tables do not play significantly different from the 2-4 tables. After that, I'd have to run an experiment to see whether moving up to 5-10 produced more profit. 5-10 has noticeably players than 3-6, so the volume strategy may not work so well (if at all).

If you can make 2BB/hour/table (not difficult with the speed of online play and the quality of many of the players), that would be 8BB/hour for 4 tables, or almost $50/hour at $3-$6. Playing 4 hours a day would net you $200/day, $1,000/week, $50,000/year without burning you out. That's on a bankroll of not more than $2k.

So I'm not worked about a 140 big bet downswing. The reason you need a bankroll of 300 big bets is that sometime during your poker playing life, you're not unlikely to have a 300 big bet downswing.

Grrrrl is leary of the whole idea. But I have to face the fact that I've hated every job I've ever had. Maybe, just maybe, the jobs aren't the problem. I'm just not cut out to get up at 7am and work for The Man.

[Doc Borodog]

Well, I haven't had a lot of time to play, but I broke through my first 10,000 hands playing $2-$4, and thought I'd post an update.

I'm up $967 over 10,169 hands, which doesn't represent a tremendous amount of time played (about 40 hours total). That's including a the monstrous $600 downswing I mentioned before. That represents about 2.4 BB/100 hands played, not spectacular.

I noticed a few things that I thought I would mention in reviewing my stats. Like my biggest losers. The biggest losers, as you probably suspect are the mediocre hands. You don't lose a lot with 32o because you never play it. You don't lose a lot with AA because . . . you figure it out. But my biggest losers are mediocre hands, usually dealt in the blinds, that flop a mediocre hand that doesn't play well. These include offsuit pseudo-high hands like QJo, KTo, T9o. The chance that these hands are dominated, especially by a tight player who limped, is tremendous I've found. Other costly hands, surprisingly, are the suited aces, like ATs, A8s, etc. The problem is that you are more likely to hit top pair and get outkicked, or top pair top kicker but lose to over cards than you are to make the nut flush. These hands should be making me a tidy profit on the flushes, not losing big bets to higher kickers and over cards. The suited "pseudo-connectors" like Q9s suffer from the same problems.

So some recommendations on you limit play. Don't overplay hands that are likely to be dominated. In a loose game, you are looking to make a flush with A8s, not a pair of aces or eights.

[Eykir]

Super Bowl Poker Party report:

A bunch of people gathered to do our semi-annual tradition of a super bowl poker party. 8 People ended up playing, although we were supposed to have more, and the buy in was $30. There were eventually 3 rebuys, which were allowed when you lost in the first hour, or at the hour break. So, $330 pot, $300 for first, $30 for second.

We were also playing for possession of the travelling trophy: an orange pool ball, taken from some bar by someone a while ago.

Game started out slowly at .25/.50 blinds, one guy gets out in the first 30 minutes, and that's when they decided to let rebuys happen. My ride also was knocked out, but rebought in after an agonizing moment thinking.

One early hand that put me up quite a bit was I stayed in two to dealer's right with 78s. flop came 356. I stayed in on a small bet from SB. Next card comes 9. a larger bet from SB, and I called. Last card was an A. I bet first, was raised by SB, I reraised, and he called. He had the 7 high straight and was slow-playing it. I had the 9 high straight.

Later, right before the break, I knocked someone out who went all-in ($6) before the flop. I had 10Js. Two of my suit came up on the flop, mostly middle cards, nothing straightworthy. Only two of us remaining and we both checked. Next card was nothing. He bet $4, I called. Last card, Ace of my suit, giving me the flush. I bet $10, he folded, and I was now chip leader.

Last year's champion rebought at this point. so there are 7 people left playing for $300. Nothing really spectacular happened until it got down to 4 people, me, my ride, last year's winner, and some wild guy who manages to stay in.

The hand of the night: 4 People remaining. I'm lowest stack, so I'm hoping for some okay hand to go in on. Blinds were up to $4/$8. I (me, $45) get dealt KK. I'm first to act, so I call $8 and raise $8. dealer folds. SB (crazy guy, $118) calls $12 and raises $8 more. BB (my ride, $114) thinks for a second, and pushes all-in. I go all-in as well. So does SB.

The hands turn up: I have KK, SB has 99, BB has.. AA. The flop comes with an Ace and the rest is history. There were about 90% of the chips in on that hand, and took about 10 minutes to straighten out, but it was wild.

My ride easily goes on to win the whole thing, having that much of the chips, and the other two so low.

[Antrax]

I threw all theory out of the window, and am now playing a lot on party. They have very few blind levels, you only get 800 chips, but the players are so unbelievably poor it's still very profitable, and the sheer speed of its tournaments makes for the best hourly rate around. In an average session I play one $20-2 on Paradise and six $10-1s in party while it finishes.
Also, I'm playing in my very first home game tomorrow night. I'll let you know how it went
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Samadhi]

Yeah, I win, place or show on the $10 tourney's about 90% of the time on PP. And they take about an hour to an hour and a half.

Not bad cash. And yeah, the players are schmucks. I find $5 too easy and the variance because of wild players hurts so the the time isn't worth it. The $20 level is one I only do when I'm fresh and feeling froggy. Too often there is some guy slumming it who kicks my ass if I'm not on the top of my game, and maybe even then.

[Samadhi]

PP = paradise poker not party poker

Honestly, i'm a little disturbed by what boro described is going on there.

[Antrax]

Well, it's easy to focus on the negative. Last night on Paradise I managed to end up fourth when I had 3000 chips and 4 players were left, due to an extraordinarily bad run of all-ins (from other players and myself). However, I also don't forget that last week I made a very poor call and beat KT with my K9, or that on the same tournament I limped with 67 and hit a straight on the flop, which is what got me to 3000 chips in the first place. Luck swings both ways, and it's a mistake to focus only on the bad things.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Samadhi]

Thanks for mentioning that. Not sure why you did though.
But the least I can do is return the favor. 1 +1 = 2
Put it to good use.

[Antrax]

You're upset about what Borodog said about Paradise. Borodog went through a bad run. However, there are two funny things about bad runs:
a) They depend on perspective and
b) They are statistically bound to happen eventually.
So, I wouldn't worry about Paradise if I were you.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Samadhi]

Just realized you may have been responding to my nebulous "Honestly, i'm a little disturbed by what boro described is going on there" remark.

What actually disturbs me is the ease with which computer add on programs can be utilized to help you play your game. It seems so unsavory.

[Samadhi]

Yup, we misunderstood.

[Samadhi]

And honestly, I thought it was that very factor that was influencing his losses on Party Poker.

[Antrax]

Party or Paradise? Because Party has 50000 users on at times, and I think someone with a good software will put it to use on the higher tables. Add to that the fact it's not that simple to program a computer to do it (I couldn't find something that does it, and I'm at least as good as the average user), and you'll see why I'm not worried.
_________________
After years of disappointment with get rich quick schemes, I know I'm gonna get rich with this scheme. And quick!

[Doc Borodog]

First of all, the software I use doesn't do any playing for me. It simply connects to my database and lets me know who's playing 14% of the pots versus 20%, or 35% or 70%. It basically allows me to avoid tight players. For example, when a guy who has only raised 2% over 240 hands raises under the gun, you can safely throw away your AQs.

Second, my "losses" were due to a variance downswing. It totalled 150 big bets, and then it was over. I'm currently up $1650. Something like $970 of that was 10,000 hands of $2-$4. The other $700 or so is 3800 hands of $3-$6.

Third, the same software can be used, and I'm sure is being used, at any number of different sites, including Paradise Poker. My advice is to not worry that someone has a software edge which they are only using to avoid you, the good player, but rather to get a copy of Poker Tracker and GameTime+ start avoiding them, too.

[Samadhi]

Noted.