Noted Poker Authority

Are You Paying Off Too Much?

Ed Miller — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:18:49 +0000

Whenever I have a bad session, I spend the next hour or two doing a post-mortem in my head. What went wrong? Could I have done something different to play better and (presumably) lose less money? I go through all the significant hands and analyze my play. Should I have raised there instead of called? Did I lose more on that hand than I had to?

I think it’s natural to go through this process, and I bet most players do something similar. It’s tempting to focus most on the biggest pots. After all, if that one huge pot had gone a different way, the result at the end of the session would have been much more palatable. Focusing on the big pots isn’t always best, though, because often it’s all the little things we do wrong here and there that set us up for failure.

But it’s certainly smart to review all the big pots for any obvious mistakes. One mistake I see players make frequently in big pots is that they pay off too much. It’s a tricky problem to solve because just because you lose a pot doesn’t necessarily mean that you should have folded. To distinguish bad calls from good calls that didn’t work out, you have to think about the particulars of the hand.

Most bad calls fall into two rough categories. First, people call to try to catch a bluff when a bluff is very unlikely. Second, people call with a hand that looks good, but that is almost always worse than the hands their opponents might be betting. (These categories are not rigid, and they can overlap a lot.) Here’s an example of a call in the first category.

It’s a $2-$5 game. A loose and aggressive player opens for $20 from the second seat. Everyone folds to the button, a tough player, who calls. Both players have roughly $500.

The flop comes Q 6 3 . The loose-aggressive bets $40, and the button raises to $90. The loose-aggressive calls.

The turn is the T . The loose-aggressive player checks and calls a $150 bet.

The river is the 4 . The loose-aggressive player checks and calls an all-in $240 bet with Q J .

This is a bad call. The button has shown immense strength throughout the hand, raising the flop and continuing to bet all streets. Almost no one in the button’s position would be so foolish as to bet this strongly with a hand beaten by Q-J. The most reasonable chance that Q-J might be good is if the button is on a stone bluff. While not impossible, it’s a long shot. The flop is dry, so the button couldn’t have flopped a draw he elected to play hard. It’s not clear exactly what the button might have, but it’s clear enough that Q-J isn’t strong enough to pay off correctly.

Here’s an example of a bad call in the second category.

It’s a $2-$5 game. A player four off the button opens for $20, two players call behind him, and the big blind calls. The flop comes A 9 7 . The blind checks, and the preflop raiser bets $60. Only the button calls.

The turn is the 3 . The preflop raiser bets $100, and the button calls. Both players started the hand with about $1,000.

The river is the T . The preflop raiser bets $100 again, and the button raises makes it $400 to go. The preflop raiser calls with A Q .

While it can be tempting to pay off with the second-best flush, this is likely a bad call. The button has played the entire hand in a way consistent with holding the K , and most players at the $2-$5 level would not make this river raise (particularly with money still behind) without the nut card.

Few players would raise the river for value with a weaker flush, so we’re counting on the button to be either crazy or bluffing to justify a call. Since there’s no evidence to support either possibility, laying down is the right play.

If you were to make a big call like one of these examples and lose, you’d be right to blame your bad session on that one hand. Making big bad calls like these, even occasionally, is a very expensive habit. But it can be easy to beat yourself up after the fact about “bad” calls that weren’t in fact really bad. A call isn’t bad just because you lost the pot. It’s bad because you had little hope to win, and you could have known that from the information available to you at the time.

Here’s an example of another big river call.

It’s a $2-$5 game. A player opens from five off the button for $20. Two players call, and both blinds call. The flop comes J T 6 . The blinds check, and so does the preflop raiser. The next player bets $100. Everyone folds to the small blind, who calls. Both players have about $900 remaining.

The turn is the 4 . The small blind checks and calls $250.

The river is the A . The small blind bets $300, and his opponent thinks for a while and calls.

The small blind shows K Q for the nuts, and his opponent complains about losing with a set, 6 6 .

Even though he lost, the player with the set made a good call. Yes, he should know that K-Q is a real possibility when his opponent bets the river ace. But there are plenty of reasonable alternative hands that his set can still beat. J-T is an example, for flopped top two. Or the small blind could have a hand like A 6 for the flopped nut flush draw and bottom pair. The small blind could also be bluffing. Perhaps he holds a hand like Q 9 or 9 8 . His once-promising draw busted on the river, he decides to take one last shot at winning the pot. In this example, the player with the set knows that he could be beaten, but he also holds out justifiable hope that his set is still tops.

The trick to becoming a better player is to be able to look back on your bad sessions and figure out correctly if you made a big mistake, or if you played fine and the breaks just didn’t go your way. You may be paying off too much. But don’t jump to conclusions. Thinking clearly about the big pots you lose will make you a better player.

[This article appeared in the October 7, 2009 issue (Vol. 22, No. 20) of Card Player.]

Alas, An Overcard

Ed Miller — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:42:26 +0000

One common scenario confounds nearly every beginning hold’em player. People ask me about it time and time again. If they hold a big pocket pair, and an overcard comes on the flop, they are lost. They are doubly lost if they have to navigate the minefield of an overcard from out of position.

People dread a flop overcard for good reason. When you hold a pocket pair it seems like that overcard is always bound to come, and when it does it is a big favorite to stir up some trouble.

One of my readers recently asked about a hand he played where an overcard flopped. And then another overcard came on the turn.

Here’s how it went. It was a $0.25-$0.50 online shorthanded game. My reader had about $50, and so did everyone else except for the button who had about $20.

My reader was first to act with J J and raised to $1.50. The next player called, and so did the button. The blinds folded.

The flop came K T 5 . He checked, and the next player bet $2.50 into the $5.25 pot. The button folded, and he called.

The turn was the Q . My reader checked, his opponent bet $2 into the $10.25 pot, and he called.

The river was the 5 . My reader checked again, and his opponent bet $6 into $14.25 pot. My reader was wondering what to do at this point.

Starting on the flop this is a tricky situation any way you slice it. There are merits to starting off aggressively, and there are merits to the passive approach my reader took. First I’ll talk about the upsides of leading the flop and going from there, an aggressive approach:

Less likely to lose the pot to a weaker hand by getting bluffed out
Reasonable chance to get value for your hand from a draw or weaker made hand

The downsides of being aggressive are:

Little chance to get a better hand to fold
Vulnerable to an aggressive player floating or bluff-raising
Limited information coming to you due to being out of position and driving the betting

Most of these points should be fairly straightforward. The last point, that betting out limits the information that comes to you, is a fairly universal aspect of being aggressive from out of position. When you bet, a wide range of hands will call you: draws, floats, top pair, weaker pairs, and some monster hands. Getting called doesn’t really narrow your opponents’ ranges so much. So being aggressive from out of position often comes at the expense of defining your opponents’ ranges better.

The upsides and downsides of a passive approach roughly mirror those of the aggressive approach. The upsides:

Put less money at risk with a marginal hand
Gather more information about your opponents’ hands by their betting decisions and bet sizes

And some downsides:

Get no value from your still decently-strong hand and give free cards to weak draws to beat you
Give good hand readers an accurate picture of your holding, allowing them to play nearly perfectly against you (including squeezing value from you sometimes and pushing you off the hand other times)

Let’s talk about how some of these advantages and disadvantages to the passive line played out this time around.

A main advantage of playing passively is that you get more information. In this hand, you definitely get plenty of information about your opponents’ hands. This betting line — 1/2 pot on the flop, 1/5 pot on the turn, and roughly 2/5 pot on the river — it’s a weak one. That turn bet, especially, reeks of weakness. This hand comes from a microstakes game where it would be rare for an opponent to make a small bet with a strong hand hoping you’ll raise. So you can be quite fairly sure that this guy is futzing around with nothing too wonderful. (Against a tough opponent that small turn bet could be designed to elicit action. But that’s not what’s going on here.)

But what is “nothing too wonderful”? Well, it could be a busted flush draw. It possibly could be a five that spiked on the river and now our adversary is going for a fairly wimpy value bet. It could be a king, almost certainly with no kicker. It could be a hand like T-9. Or it could be a hand like Q-9 that spiked on the turn.

Bottom line is that I think my reader is ahead a decent percentage of the time here, and I think he’s behind something like a K or a Q or even possibly a 5 fairly often also. That river bet is just small enough and the opponent has shown just enough weakness (and propensity to make peculiar plays) that I don’t like folding the river.

[This article appeared in the September 25, 2009 issue (Vol. 22, No. 19) of Card Player.]

Bluffing And Moving Up

Ed Miller — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:02:02 +0000

In my last article, I discussed how the relative strength of your hand reading skills versus your opponents’ can help determine whether you’re ready to move up to higher stakes games. The river betting round is the one that allows you to benefit most from sharp hand reading, so it’s ...

Hand Reading And Moving Up

Ed Miller — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:19:28 +0000

In my last article, I claimed that the two factors most cited in discussions of moving up, winrate and bankroll, don’t tell the whole story. If you’re thinking about moving up to a higher stakes game, you should also consider some other factors.

The consideration is your overall comfort level at ...

Assessing Your Comfort Level

Ed Miller — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 18:22:57 +0000

Are you ready to move up to higher stakes? How can you know when you are?

These questions are on the minds of most serious players at least some of the time. Conquering your current game and moving on to bigger and better things is the goal of most players.

Most discussion ...

Taking An All-In Risk

Ed Miller — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:00:11 +0000

In tournament play, you make decision after decision that could result in risking all your chips. You’ll make at least one decision for all your chips in virtually every tournament you play. And in most tournaments you’ll make multiple all-in decisions.

Whenever you choose to go for it, and you lose, ...

Fighting Back

Ed Miller — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:16:08 +0000

If you’ve played much no-limit, you’ve no doubt at some point run into a hyper-aggressive player. This player is constantly betting and raising with little pretense of actually holding strong hands each time. In many games, a hyper-aggressive player will thrive because no one has the guts to fight back. ...

Does Short-Handed Play Affect Blind Defense?

Ed Miller — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:05:25 +0000

Blind stealing and blind defense. What hands should I do it with? Should I do it more short-handed? What factors affect whether I try a blind steal or whether I defend my blind. These questions are extremely common. I get asked them in many forms. Unfortunately, a complete answer could ...

Another Good Review

Ed Miller — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:39:57 +0000

We’re extremely flattered by all the great reviews coming in for Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em. Today we found one from ML4L who is a long-time respected high stakes no-limit poster on 2+2. Here’s what he had to say about the book:

[Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em] is the best NL book ...
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Thanks For Making Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em #1!

Ed Miller — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:02:57 +0000

Our new e-book Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em has been out for a month, and I wanted to thank all of you for the incredible month it has been. The response to the ...