Starting Hands Against X Opponents - December 12, 2005

Lesson/Topic: Starting Hands

I was asked the following question: How does your preflop card selection change based on the number of players at the table?

This is an interesting question and very relevant to a beginning poker player. It is also relevant to a more experienced player, but starting hands always seem to be the first lesson of a beginning poker player's learning curve. When people start playing poker they don't understand the complexity of the game. If people have never played poker they simplify it to 100% luck. They theorize that poker is gambling and is equivalent to playing the lottery. However, as a new player begins to play he/she begins to realize that he/she plays much different starting hands than all of the other players. Or some online idiot curses him out for playing an A6o and beating his AKo which gets the new player to begin to think about his starting hand selection.

(Side note rant: My biggest pet peeve is people yelling at others online. If you haven't played before, it usually starts like this. A player with a superior starting hand loses a big hand to an inferior starting hand. A reoccuring event online is for the losing player to blast the winning player and tell him how bad he is at playing poker. Usually they curse and often times they begin to talk strategy. I always hate this because there is no point for the losing player to gripe or talk strategy. There are a few advantageous reasons for talking online, but I think talking online is an overall negative proposition. Here are some reasons why you shouldn't gripe or talk startegy at a hand. #1 - You lost the hand and are not going to get your money back. #2 - You are probably showing everyone else at the table that you are on tilt. #3 - The griping ends in two scenarios, neither of which are good for the player who lost. Scenario 1 - Either the losing player is a great player and will win in the long run and therefore is only teaching the long run bad players how to play better poker. Scenario 2 - The losing player is wrong that it was a bad play by the winning player and looks like an idiot, thus making it apparent to good players at the table that they do not know what they are talking about. It is possible that the winning player indeed started with a worse starting hand, but was able to outplay the losing player after the cards came on the flop, turn and river. The winning player was getting pot odds or implied pot odds to call. If someone would like me to post on pot odds and implied pot odds, I would be happy to oblige in a later post, but for now I digress)

The poker player's metemorphosis begins with starting hands. They learn that it is better to play tight poker and to play less than 25% of their starting hands. Most poker books assume you are playing at a full table, meaning there are 9-11 players playing hold em including you. In order to appease my biology science friends I will classify this stage as the larva stage of the poker player life cycle. The larva poker player now realizes that poker is not all luck, and theorizes that skill is determined exclusively based on your starting hand selection (Hmmm...If I play better starting hands than other players, I will win more often). Indeed, starting hands is an enormous component of poker and deciding what starting hands to play is integral to your success. A player may begin to realize that they should only play pocket pairs, AK-AT, KQ-KT and QJ. This might even be a little loose, but I will use it as an assumption. Notice anything peculiar about my starting hand selections? I never mentioned the fact that some of these card combinations may be suited and some may not. If you are playing at a full table game, the strength of your hand changes drastically whether the cards are suited or not. I can't overemphasize this point enough. Playing suited cards will increase your expected value considerably at a low limit full table hold em game. Overplaying non-suited cards will cause you to lose money at a low limit full table hold em game.

I was asked to discuss starting hand selection for someone playing at a 10 person table vs someone playing at a 5 person table. As with most poker solutions, the answer is always "it depends". I don't want to simplify this post too much by saying you should always play a certain way. Depending on your opponent's tendencies, you may want to open your game up and play more starting hands or tighten up and play less starting hands. However, in general you need to consider what the final average winning hand will be.

If there are 10 people at a table and you have AA, how often will you win a hand if you raise and one person calls vs. when you raise and all 9 other opponents at the table call? What will the winning hand be? If you are playing against one or two other opponents, your AA will probably win. After the river card has been turned over, the chance that your one or two opponents will catch a better hand (two pair, three of a kind, a straight, a flush, or a full house) is very low. A single pair will likely win the hand. However, if you are playing against ten people, what is the likely winning hand? The chances are low that one individual will hold a straight or flush. However the chances that one of the ten will catch a straight or flush are much better. It you are playing in a loose game that has 8-10 players seeing every flop, it is likely that the winning hand will be two pair or better. What does this mean for your hand selection?

Most low stakes games will involve many loose players. Therefore, if you are at a full table you will need to play more suited cards. If you are playing at a table with only 5 people, then top pair will be a great hand and the value of suited cards decrease. To summarize, the value of suited and connector cards are considerable at a loose full table game and their value decreases as you have less people at your table. On the other hand, high cards are more valuable against 5 opponents and less valuable against 10 opponents.

(This was a long post which caused me to start and stop before posting to my blog. If I was not clear, please post follow up questions below and I will respond and hopefully provide a better explanation)

Steve K's Current Progress/Emotion:

I'm feeling pretty good right now. I went on a bad losing streak during the last week or two of November. I believe the losing streak was based on three factors. (1) I was trying to play away from home and therefore without Poker Tracker. This was more difficult to do and negated my advantage of reading my opponents correctly.
(2) Variance. I wasn't getting great cards as I was earlier in the month.
(3) Poor play. I was loosening up and playing more weak. I was not taking advantage of a value bet that is essential in the lower stakes games.

Since the start of December though, I have been making very good decisions and seem to be back in the zone.

When to Leave the Table - November 23, 2005

Lesson: When to leave the table

Poker Players are infamous for "what if" questions. What if I would have raised. I wish I would have folded. If only the river card hand't been an ace. Another popular question that poker players ask themselves, is when is it the right time to leave the table? For example, a player plays for four hours. After two hours the player is up $50. However, during the last two hours he loses $80 and ends up down $30 for the night. He may be kicking himself saying, I should have left the table after two hours. When someone asks me, "When is the right time to leave a table?", my response is typical of any other poker response, "it depends".

Do you play better when you are ahead or behind? Have you been playing a long time and are starting to get tired and therefore making poor decisions? What is the table's emotion level? Are players on tilt (both positive and negative) or has the well run dry and players are now making good poker decisions? Often times, beginning poker players think they should leave the table when they are ahead. In actuality, they may be right. If they are a poor player, they are up because they have received better cards than the competition. In actuality, they should leave not because they are ahead but because they should have never sat down to play at all.

I have been thinking about this recently as I have been playing limit poker. I only like to play when I'm really excited about playing. Part of the reason I switched to Limit poker is because I had played so many SNG tournament poker that it was starting to get repetitive. Playing a new game, even if it was still Hold Em made me more attentive. Playing poker usually gets my adrenaline flowing so I don't have too much problem with being too tired to play. So being tired is less of an issue for me. I think for me, it comes down to two factors: Table selection and My performance.

First I'll address table selection. Say you are down $40 after playing for an hour. It is important to ask yourself, why am I down $40? Is it because I have been getting a bad run of cards? Is it that players at the table are better than I am? With Poker Tracker I am able to see what type of players are at my table. If I lost $40 because a guy called two bets preflop with J7 and then called to the river and caught an inside straight draw to beat my AA, I shouldn't want to leave the table. Are players reading my bets correctly to the point where I'm not making extra bets or I'm not able to protect my hand and players are correctly drawing out on me? Than maybe I should leave the table. In the long run, if you play at a certain place with the same group of guys and you always lose, than maybe you should consider quitting. Maybe they are cheating, maybe they are better than you, but simply play a different style. However, if it is one or two occasions and you feel you have an edge in the game, then you should definitely continue to play.

Another question you have to ask yourself is "How am I playing today". When you answer, be sure to be as honest as possible. This is not the time to bluff. As you are playing you should be questioning your play after each hand. Did I miss out on a raise somewhere? Should I have clearly folded earlier? If you find yourself answering yes to some of these questions, maybe it is time to quit. Take a break for the day and wait until you are more refreshed to come back to the table. You may have a decent table selection and will make some money by sticking around, however good games come all the time (especially on the internet) so wait until you can get more out of the game the next time around.

Steve K's progress/Current Emotion

I have been losing a bit lately, but I still feel I have put myself in the right situation to win. I am getting killed playing SNGs. I think I am in such a limit mode that I am struggling making correct tournament decisions. I am still playing good limit poker, but have not seen the great results over the last week. I spent a couple days playing away from home and I felt like I was playing blind without Poker Tracker and GameTime +. I was unable to identify the poor players quick enough and since I had to pay more attention I could only play 2 tables at a time. Party came out with a deposit bonus, which I am working on right now. Stars also created a November bonus. I'm not sure if I will try this out or not. I'm going to look into it a bit more. It will probably depend on whether I can figure out how to utilize Poker Tracker while playing on Poker Stars.

Empire Bonus: November 14, 2005

Empire was advertising a deposit bonus. The bonus paid 100% up to $100. I deposited $400 so I could maintain my normal 4 table 2/4 routine. The bonus was released after you played raked hands equaling ten times the bonus amount in ten days or less. My bonus was $100, so I had to play 1000 hands before Nov 20. Since I have been 4 tabling, this would be no problem. My only hesitation revolved around having to play at Empire instead of Party Poker.

If you read my blog below, Party Poker became their own entity recently. Therefore, if I am playing at Empire, I am only playing against other Empire players instead of the party network. Party Poker was the overwhelming leader for number of players before they broke away from the party skins network. Now, they are probably slightly ahead of Poker Stars. So by playing at Empire instead of Party, I was worried about being forced to play against better players instead of the typical party fish.

I finally concluded that the guaranteed $100 bonus would be greater than the difference in winnings I would be giving up by playing against slightly better competition at Empire. End result? I will have to check my poker tracker database, but I believe I made about $120 over 1000 hands playing at Empire. There were not as many open tables at Empire so I ended up playing some 0.50/1.00 tables as well so I could clear my bonus. Let's assume I played 700 hands of 2/4 and 300 hands of 0.50/1.00. I think I made about $100 playing 2/4. So 100 is 25 BB. I played 700 hands so my bb/100 ratio is 3.57. Not bad, but I felt like I had been running a bit better at Party (closer to 4BB/100). All of this is speculation on my part, so I will need to check my poker tracker database to be sure.

The point of this post is to serve as a reminder for future bonus opportunities. I played anywhere from 5-7 hours of poker from Friday night until Sunday evening. I won $120 + the $100 bonus. If I could have made over $220 during that time by continuing to play at Party Poker, I should not have deposited money at Empire.

Current Emotion: Extremely happy and confident. I am slightly in shock to realize that I can play well enough to make some good money by playing poker. I keep waiting for the bubble to burst. Am I getting lucky and this is just short term experience? The more success I have seen playing limit poker is only verifying that I am playing well. I have played nearly 10,000 hands of limit poker and my bb/100 is around 3.8. I am crushing the 2/4 game and at some point before the end of the year, if this streak continues I will need to move up to 3/6.

Live Poker - November 10, 2005

This past Sunday I headed to Canterbury card club to play some 3/6 with a friend who came into town for the weekend. As I was driving to the card club I realized that I had a confidence that was contrary to the hope that I felt when I have visited in the past. I have played at Canterbury a handful of times back when I was in college and during the first year or two after college. Thinking back I'm amazed I had a winning session. I lost nearly every time I went. Granted, I was there for the entertainment so I wasn't bummed about it, but I always thought it was because I was up against these great players or "regulars" who knew the dealers by name and spent a lot of time there.

After playing considerably more poker I felt better equipped when I played once this summer. I ended up breaking even which was probably about right for my experience at the time. When I visited this time I had an entirely new perspective. I was expecting to win. The truth is I probably could have made more money playing at home on Party Poker, but playing live is a lot of fun and slightly more enjoyable. The downfall to playing live?

(1) You can only play one game at a time. I have been regularly playing four 2/4 games at a time on party recently. I can handle the speed. I feel I can make solid decisions and might make one bad decision or so every hour. But for every one bad decision I miss on one table, I make up for it by still being a positive expected player on the other three.

(2) It is slower. The number of hands you can play in an hour is considerably less. On the computer hands are dealt instantly, while at the casino you need to wait for the dealer to actually deal the cards. I know, bizarre. People tend to play slower at the casino as well. Some people don't want to give any tells so they play it like the World Series of Poker. Online, there are buttons that you can click (fold, check, raise) so your turn lasts less than a half second.

(3) You might give tells you never knew you had. Do I look a certain way when I'm strong or glance to my left when I'm bluffing? By playing online the only thing you have to be careful about is the speed of your bet (Some players online will bet quickly when they have a hand and slow down when they don't). The most obvious online tell is when someone is chasing a flush. Often times they will quickly call. If you get a very quick call, your opponent is probably on a flush or straight draw.

(4) Waiting. Sometimes you have to wait for a seat to open up. You might wait 2 hours if it a busy time. Online you can fire up a game within seconds.

(5) Tipping. No need to tip online. At the casino you are expected to give a portion of your winnings to the dealer as thanks for him dealing you great cards. Even if he didn't give you great cards at all but you were savvy enough to play them better than your opponents.

(6) Better players. Theoretically, more experienced players come to the casino. They are not as intimidated. Anyone can put money into an account and play online.

However, it is much more fun to play live. Maybe not more profitable, but definitely more fun. You get personal interaction. You can possibly read your opponents based on the way they act or look. It's fun just holding the cards or saying check or raise.

So back to my Canterbury experience. I was surprised to see what I found. 1 - I can only play one game at a time, Check. 2 - It is slower, Check. Although I was happy to see that they have automatic shufflers so the dealers don't have to reshuffle after each hand. This speeded things up a bit. 3 - I might have given tells. Not sure. I didn't pick anything up on anyone else though. More on this later. 4 - Waiting. We went on Sunday night and caught the tale end of the peak time, so we were able to sit down at a 3/6 table immediately. 5 - Tipping. Check. 6 - Better players. No check here. I was surprised to see how bad these players were.

As I was buying chips I see the 18-21 year old to my left catch an inside straight draw on the river to beat a set of aces. I sit down and he is talking junk. Singing at the table, talking about how good he is. He has a friend with him and someone his age at the opposite end of the table. This kid obviously is annoying everyone else at the table and I was happy to sit down while everyone was on tilt. So I pick up AK in the first round and raise from the CO (cut off, one to the right of the button). I notice as I'm betting that my hand is shaking. Wow. Obviously I don't play live much at a casino. I think there is a bid difference playing at home with your friends and playing at a casino with strangers. It is nerve racking. It was so bad that I even had to say something to the guy next to me. That obvious.

So I pick up my first pot and get talking a bit. Talking to the other players always makes me feel more comfortable. I start to settle down a bit and didn't have a problem with shaking for the rest of the night. I was just surprised that I was shaking at all. I was confident that I was a better poker player than 7 of the other 8 guys at my table. One solid player I would consider myself as good as. So back to my list. 3 - tells. Well, I was shaking so I gave a tell. Not sure if I gave any tells to anyone else. For one I think tells are overrated. For example, I pick up 77 in the bb and there are 6 players in the pot. This seems a lot for the 9 person table but it was actually common at this table.

Flop comes 732 rainbow. I would have checked it but I knew that no one at this table is folding so I bet instead. I figured that a check raise would slow people down more than a bet. Crazy young guy to my left raises and 3 players call. We end up capping the flop. Two bets get in on the turn and finally one on the river. I took down a big pot. Now, did I pick up a tell that everyone was going to come along. Did they show strength. No. 90% of reading a player is just paying attention to his style of play. Does he play a lot of hands preflop? Is he aggressive preflop? How about postflop? Will he call the river all the time? Is he a tricky player raising on the river to see if you will fold?

After about ten minutes I saw the crazy kid to my left win two pots. One with 23o and the other with J7o. Must be crazy right? Everyone else thought so. They refused to fold and would even raise on the turn and river. This kid just played a different style. He played nearly every hand and then he was aggressive post flop. However, if he was beat, he wouldn't put extra bets in on the turn and river when the cost was $6 instead of $3. But when he did pick up a pot he definitely got paid. I saw someone cap the river with him with A high. The kid had three of a kind with K8s.

Now to number 6 - skill level of live players. I was shocked at how many hands people played. I was also shocked at how little raising there was to protect a hand. The only guys raising were me, the crazy kid next to me and the tricky guy to the left of him. I would bet or raise when I had something or was making a continuation bet (bet preflop and then make a continuation bet postflop even if you didn't pick up a pair). The kid would bet constantly in the first two rounds or when he had something in the later rounds or could buy a pot. The tricky guy would only raise preflop and postflop. I found this out after I bet to the river with my AK without catching anything. Crazy kid called, tricky guy raised, I folded and crazy kid called. Tricky guy flips over Ace high with Q kicker. Crazy kid takes the pot down with a pair of threes. I made the correct fold because I knew someone had me beat, but I remembered that play for later. One more hand to talk about.

I pick up AJ on the button. I raise and tricky bb reraises. I reraise when it gets back to me and there is one player who comes along with us. Flop is J83 with two diamonds. I have the J of diamonds so I have top pair with top kicker. Tricky BB player bets and the MP player folds. I raise and he reraises. I reraise and as he is stacking chips the dealer is leaning over so I can't see the BB player who is sitting in seat 1. I ask, "Are you capping it" and I learned lesson one. There is no cap in heads up play at Canterbury. If you are only with one other player they will let you raise and reraise eachother until someone has all there money in the pot. Why? Because at any point someone can just call to stop the betting. So he reraises and I just call. I wanted to prevent my opponent for picking up a free card if he had a Queen or King but I didn't want to risk too much considering he could be sitting with QQ, KK, AA or a flopped set.

The turn card was a non diamond 3 and he checks. I look at him and said, "well you might be slow playing me here, but I'm going to bet anyway". Why wouldn't he bet there if he had me beat? I've already showed I am willing to cap it. He just called and I knew I had the best hand. The turn was an Ace of diamonds. Okay, I just picked up two pair in a big pot, but do I really like this river card? He could have a flush now and I could be in trouble. He checks and I decide to bet. Why? Because this guy had been loose and I think he could have been calling with an AK or AQ. I wanted to make a value bet. He thought about it and raised.

Now if this was a solid player that didn't like to be tricky I would have simply called and paid the flush or set off. But this guy had seen me fold AK when he raised with his AQ before. Better yet, he didn't know I had AK so he probably assumed I was willing to fold a good hand. So instead of just calling, I wanted to value bet again. I don't think he would have capped the betting on a draw because he hadn't been that aggressive chasing earlier, so I couldn't put him on a flush. I still had him on an Ace with a high kicker or a pocket pair. Maybe QQ or maybe TT or 99. QQ because it makes sense from a betting standpoint. I capped the J high flop and 3 bet the preflop so he might think I have AA or KK. Or he might think I have AK so he wants to see if his TT or 99 is good. When the A came I think it was the perfect card for me. It scared me and the tricky player knew it. So he decided to check raise to see if I would fold my big hand to a potential flush. He also could have put me on a KK or QQ and thought I might fold when the A came on the river.

I raised and he called. I had to show my hand and I flipped over AJ and won the pot. I didn't get to see his hand because he mucked them after seeing mine. The great thing about online play is that you can utilize the hand history. Not only can you analyze your play, but if there are two players or more who call a river bet you can see what both of them held as their pocket cards. Therefore, you can see what style of player your opponent is. I will never know what my opponent had, but I was able to make three big bets on him or $18 more dollars because I had paid attention and knew what type of player he was.

All in all it was a fun time.

Dealing with Success - Nov 1, 2005

Just wanted to give a quick status report and talk a little about positive tilt. I had a very good October. If you read below you will see that I have had success playing multis. After my big multi win I have decided to play a couple others.

Last Friday I finished 15th out of about 700 in a $30 Multi. Unfortunately, this only nets out at around $100. I have played a couple others where I have been bounced out without cards or got in a coinflip early because I wanted to accumulate chips. My strategy for multis is to try to play a lot of suited connectors and pocket pairs from late position against a lot of players or against aggressive players early in the tournament. The idea is to double up and accumulate chips. Two things happen. Either you never hit your flop and you slowly lose chips or you hit your flop and double up and become the chip leader.

If you become the chip leader, then it is time to find out who is scared of getting knocked out of the tournament. Pick on them and put them to the test. You can buy a lot of pots off these guys. Also, you can buy a lot of small pots because no one wants to mess with you. However, if you are not lucky and end up being mid stacked, it is time to slow down. At this point, I try to wait for a good hand to get all in against one person. I am okay with a coinflip at this point because it is so valuable to accumulate chips before the blinds increase. Basically I wait for a pocket pair or AK, AQ and I reraise all in and isolate against one player. If you win your coinflip, then you are back to able to play more prospective hands and are looking to double up again. If not, you are out of the tourney.

My biggest dissapointment was a multi I was playing this weekend. There were 1100 players that started the tournament and 300 remained. Top 120 made money and I was sitting on 5000 chips. Average stack was 3500 and there was a lot of money at my table which is ideal. The blinds were 75/150 and there were a few guy at the table with around 1000 chips. I pick up KK in EP (early position) and limp in. I am hoping for either an all in raise from someone or a big enough raise that I can move them all in. I don't 6-7 players playing this hand, but I want the opportunity to double up or take someone's stack. Unfortunately, I didn't get a raise from a 1000-2000 chip stack. Everyone folds to the big blind who raises to 300. Only 150 more to call, but I think I can raise the stakes against this guy.

I raise it to 1200 and the bb calls. He had me covered barely so this is an opportunity to double up with only 300 to go and take the tourney chip lead. Flop comes KQ4 with two hearts. As I'm thinking about how I can get more chips out of this guy he moves all in. Wow! I call instantly because not only do I have top set, but I also have the K of hearts. He turns over AA and I'm sitting pretty. Turn is a heart and River is another heart giving me a King high flush and giving my opponent an Ace high flush. Devastating because I would have been able to run over my table for a while and build my stack before the bubble. Oh well, I put myself in a great position so I can't complain. I just understand why my opponent didn't reraise all in before the flop. The result would have been the same however.

The month of October was great to me. I had my big multi win which always helps the bankroll. But even if you take that big win away, my monthly profit was over double any other month's results this year. I should be excited, but I'm a bit worried. I am glad I'm having these feelings because I don't want to experience positive tilt. We all have heard of tilt which is an expression in poker when someone goes off the deep end and starts making very bad decisions. The idea behind the word is that they tilt over and money comes pouring out of them. Usually people suffer a bad beat and they get really really frustrated. They just lost a big hand as a favorite, so instead of congratulating themselves on playing the hand well, they look at the short term results of losing the big hand and panic. They get ultra aggressive and start raising with hands they shouldn't and calling with hands they shouldn't. All of a sudden their $50 loss turns into $400 and they don't know what hit them.

I am thankful that I feel I can control my emotions. I seem to bear down when things are bad and battle back up. I also don't like losing money so if I feel I'm not keeping my composure, I usually quit. The game isn't as fun for me if I'm not winning so I usually play a lot less and thus avoid the negative tilt. However, I have the opposite problem. When I win, I sometimes go on positive tilt. Not during the course of an evening or a week, but if I have had great success over a course of a couple weeks or months, I usually struggle soon thereafter. Last year, I had two months where I felt unstoppable and couldn't lose playing $30 and $50 SNGs. I was in a zone. Lucky for me, when I go on these runs I usually cash some of my winnings out. This is great advice for someone starting out at poker. I get arrogant during my streak and start daydreaming and calculating what I would need to win per day to make it as a poker professional. After my zone ends, I wonder why I'm not winning every game I play, then I start questioning my decisions and changing my game.

This past weekend I noticed that I was playing way too many hands in Limit Hold Em. Maybe it was because I was still in Multi strategy mode and hadn't changed to Limit mode. However, as I was entering my losses into my spreadsheet that tracks all my results, I thought about last year. I had a huge run last year and slowly thereafter lost a lot of my winnings back. I probably had two or three straight losing months after the winning month. I think this was a case of positive tilt, playing differently because I had won money and just getting off my rhythm. Luckily for me it didn't turn into negative tilt where I would be susceptable to a huge losing day. I lost a little over a long period of time and still came out ahead, but it is something I need to realize as it is happening and make my adjustment.

My advice for someone with similar issues? 1) take money out after a big win. It will make you think before you deposit more money. 2) Keep detailed records so you realize how you are playing in the short run. I keep statistics by month, type of game (limit, SNGs, Multis) and where I play (Party Poker, Poker Stars, Pacific Poker, House Games, etc.). 3) Keep short term records. I think I am going to add a results over the past week function to my spreadsheet. Then I can realize if I am on positive tilt after a big score in the middle of the month.

Thankfully I noticed that I was playing looser. I made some adjustments and had some very good Halloween Limit success to end the month. Hopefully, by writing this down and following the three rules above, I will remember this post the next time I feel positive tilt coming.