Entropically Driven

Giving Up

2010-03-30T14:20:00.001+08:00

No, I’m not giving up poker. Quite the opposite. What I am learning to give up however, are two things during the game of poker, made hands, and bluffs. I wrote the above 2 months ago as an opener for an article I had in mind, then forgot all about it. Not too long ago though, there was this hand I was involved in that reminded me of why I wanted to write about this again. This happened in a live

Avoid Building Pots…

2010-02-24T09:17:00.001+08:00

With small holdings. I was tilting again 3 days ago (and I thought I’d kicked the habit) and this friend told me, “stop building big pots with your small hands”, or something to that effect, and that phrase registered with me like it hadn’t before. We need to first define what is meant by a small hand/holding. Based on personal experience, this would mean a pair or smaller. This includes

On Coolers & Scare Cards

2010-02-05T10:58:00.001+08:00

Live games are always very different from online games. Online games takes advantage of the fact that you can manage multiple tables at the same time, increasing your win rate through data-mining and pushing your edges. With live games, you rarely have that luxury, seeing much lesser hands than when online, and thus making it necessary for you to loosen up and play more hands than you would

A Touch of Class

2010-02-04T15:26:00.008+08:00

Greetings.. Readers of Entropically Driven...We Come in Peace ... but may take your chips :PWeird Alien Greetings Aside... :)This is the first official post by @thepokerempire to welcome you to THE POKER EMIPRE, a new room set up for you and your buddies to enjoy playing and learning about the finer points of poker...as well as other things in life.Sure, there are a couple of places to choose

Affiliations

2010-02-03T11:06:00.001+08:00

I’ve been really busy with live poker lately and haven’t had the time to blog like I used to. I’ve been working on getting partners to keep this blog updated with content, and the result of that is… Entropically Driven is proud to announce that we are now affiliated with The Poker Empire! This is a group of poker players that meet up regularly in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They have a very active

Bluffing for Value

2010-01-06T09:41:00.000+08:00

Bluffing is an integral part of poker, and something a lot of players either over-do, or do too little. What exactly constitutes as “bluffing”? Simply put, bluffing in poker is to try and make your opponent believe that you have a better hand than he does. This is usually done in the form of bets, or the not-so-usual verbal connotations. Let’s face it, the number of times you actually make a

Play Like You’re Winning

2010-01-04T09:37:00.001+08:00

I’ve been having a good run lately. Single buy-ins last me the night in live games, cashing out highly positive. Something that hasn’t been happening too often for the past couple of months. Sometimes, when you start running really bad, you question your plays, and that’s when you spot the leaks in your game, and if you have the discipline, fix them. I’d like to think that’s what’s happening with

Making Hands

2009-12-17T10:29:00.000+08:00

I just had a discussion with a friend yesterday on the subject of playing to make hands in poker. This friend plays a lot of online poker, and is a profitable player. There are a lot of poker players who just sit and wait around for hands like AJ or KQ, and then raise or call, see the flop and then depending on how well their hand hits, make further decisions from there. These players might turn

Stayin' Alive

2009-12-11T10:59:00.003+08:00

We’ve often heard people say tournament play is different from cash games, but what exactly does that mean? How much different can cash games get, when you’re playing the exact same game? The cards don’t change. Your odds and outs in a particular hand don’t change. What changes is the fact that blinds played are progressively increased. Imagine playing cash games with progressively increasing

Bets

2009-12-01T09:20:00.000+08:00

Making bets is pretty much what you do when you play poker. Big bets, small bets, pot-sized bets. The general mistake a lot of people make with bets is that they don’t size their bets correctly. Bets that are too large overly expose your stack, and increases risks. Bets that are too small don’t extract enough value. When playing poker, its easy to get carried away betting into a pot in the hopes

Comfort Zones

2009-11-24T09:40:00.000+08:00

Winning a major pot in poker is the ultimate high of the game, especially when you’ve outplayed your opponent to do it. I’m not talking about cooler hands, where you have set over sets, or *gasp* straight flush over quads! This actually happened in a live game played in the poker room I frequent. Check out a shot of it I managed to capture… Have you ever noticed how some players manage to

Burn Out

2009-11-19T15:13:00.000+08:00

Can’t bring myself to go play poker for some reason. I’ve not played at all for almost 6 days now! That’s something new for me since I started the poker craze this year. Kind of weird feeling this way after playing so intensively for months. It feels exactly like when you’re at a job and you take a break to go on vacation, and when you get back, you just don’t feel like working. Poker is a grind

Reflections…

2009-11-16T09:48:00.001+08:00

Took a short break from poker over the weekend. Reasons being, a night out clubbing resulting in a significant hangover the next day, and… some losses the day before due to inconsistent and just overall bad play. Gave me time to do stuff I’ve not been doing for a while, and of course, some time to reflect on my play. I’ve always played a loose aggressive style of poker. So much so that almost

On and Off

2009-11-10T05:06:00.001+08:00

Just finished a very mixed session of poker. Mixed in that I played both online and offline, both using the same strategies (at least initially for the offline play) and ended up with extremely different results, the strategy used being BSS. I made a significant loss in the live games, while enjoying a significant profit in the online counterpart. Lesson learnt (that I realized much earlier,

Migrating from SSS

2009-11-08T23:25:00.000+08:00

Moving on from the SSS (Short Stack Strategy) to the BSS (Big Stack Strategy) officially just yesterday. Reasons for moving being that the SSS is just too robotic, and while profitable, just doesn’t teach you very much, and soon gets extremely dreary. Kept a steady BB/100 of 1.37 while playing SSS and found it hard to move any higher, but my initial attempt at BSS was pretty decent, holding on

Plugging away…

2009-11-07T23:27:00.000+08:00

Couldn’t join a big local tourney that’s on going right now due to a player cap the organizers imposed on the event, so am entertaining myself joining online tournaments on PokerStars and Fulltilt. Got a whole bunch of friends playing at the event though, hope they do well… It’s a good time to reflect a bit on my tourney play though. In a $26 tournament on Fulltilt, I was doing pretty well with

Justifying the 50/50

2009-11-03T15:12:00.001+08:00

Poker has always been linked with gambling. It’s ingrained in the perception of the general public that any game of chance, no matter the skill required, that involves placing wagers on outcomes of luck is gambling. Fact is, most poker players do gamble. They’d like to tell you otherwise, but when you look at the number of times players have to make critical decisions based on odds of 50/50 (or

Vegas!

2009-10-14T10:18:00.002+08:00

I’ve finally played poker in Vegas. Yeah! Sin City, gambling capital of the world, etc etc. There’s something about all that glitz and glamour that just makes it different from playing anywhere else in the world. Check out some of the scenes I managed to capture on cam. View Full Album The thing about playing in Vegas though, is the sheer variety of players you meet.

Limit Games

2009-10-03T06:03:00.000+08:00

A couple of nights ago, a colleague of mine that played poker (found that out recently!) took me to a local card room to check out the games there. We were talking about the games he used to play all afternoon, so I was really looking forward to playing there. When we got there in the evening, the place was packed. More than 20 tables, with 7 or 8 people waiting lists. It was great. At least

Fit or Fold: Pt III - Avoid

2009-09-25T08:57:00.003+08:00

In this final installment of the Fit or Fold series, we will discuss the various pitfalls that the average FoF player will encounter, and how to avoid being a FoF player yourself. If you've not read the previous two installments, you can find the first and second one on this blog.The average FoF player would always run into scenarios where he has to make tough decisions, simply based on the fact

When You're Meant To Lose

2009-09-24T07:23:00.005+08:00

Have you ever been dealt a hand when you're predestined to lose from the get go? How do you cut or avoid losses in hands like that? The worst thing is when it happens when you're already down. It feels like a punch to the gut, and you're left wondering when it will end.I play very regularly in a live game at a poker room where I live. Games there are generally very loose and aggressive, usually

Knowing You're Ahead, but...

2009-09-14T13:55:00.006+08:00

How often have you had a hand where you know you're ahead, pushed all-in and your opponent calls with a draw, and gets there? So many hands of poker come down to a face-off between a pair and two over cards, or even a pair and one over card. The former is a coin toss, and the latter the pair being the 2 to 1 favorite. In both situations, the pair is always the better hand, or as they say, ahead,

Overview to Playing Multi Tables Online

2009-09-10T07:50:00.009+08:00

Online play is measured by a statistic called BB/100, or Big Bets per 100 hands. The two major tracking software, Poker Tracker and Hold'em Manager measure Big Bets as twice the big blind. So if your BB/100 is 5, you essentially make 5 x 2 x Big Blind every one hundred hands you play, e.g. if you're playing at $1/$2 stakes and your BB/100 is 5, you would be making $20 every one hundred hands.In

APT Macau 09: Making Effective Bluffs

2009-09-09T08:17:00.006+08:00

Bluffing is an integral part of poker, since you can't get premium hands all the time, and you can't always hit the flop even with your premium hands. I'm not going to even attempt to tell you how to bluff, seeing as its an art all by itself, and I'm still trying to master the art! I will, however, try to surmise what I can on the subject based on personal experience.Playing in the APT Macau 2009

APT Macau 09: Fine Line Between Good Reads and Bad Play

2009-09-02T07:13:00.005+08:00

Haven't written much at all last month, and that was because I attended the APT Macau 2009, made day one chip lead, and lost it all in a span of two hours out of the money. Enough to drive anyone to quit poker, well, at least for a while. Not to say that it wasn't a fantastic experience. Grinding out the cash games, meeting great players and interesting people, and of course, playing to qualify