Learn to size your bets correctly in poker

The reason I decided to write this little piece about correct bet sizing is a simple one. Making incorrectly sized bets is quite probably one of the most frequent mistakes poker players make, and yes, it is more frequent than the playing of too many starting hands, and the chasing of draws way too far. The way to tell the difference between a good player and someone who is a decent TAG but not quite there yet is through the size of their bets. Beware of the player who always seems to make the right size bet in every hand in which he’s involved.

Now that you know what a plague incorrect bet sizing is: don’t fall into the same trap yourself. Here are a few tips to help you avoid losing money on incorrect bet-sizing, as well as ending up looking like a donk.

The most important thing when you’re about to make a bet is to know thy goal. That’s correct. You need to know exactly what you’re looking to achieve with that bet. Are you making a value bet or are you trying to make your opponent(s) fold. Sometimes a bet can be a probing move too, one meant to make your opponent reveal his true colors through his reaction. Weird as it may sound, most players think little in terms of goals when it comes to betting. Online poker interfaces make all those half-pot and ¾-pot buttons handily available, so all players have to do is to mash some buttons, which is exactly what most of them do indeed do.
Once you set your goals and establish the bet sizes you deem correct in certain situations, it is time to spare a thought or two on mixing up your game. Don’t focus so much on your bet sizing that you forget to mix things up a little. That’ll only make you easy to read and in the end: quite predictable.
Suppose your goal is to make your opponent fold. While you aim to be as intimidating as possible through your bet, you need to keep other things in sight too, like potential damage control. Your opponent may have a hand, in which case you will not be able to intimidate him regardless of the size of your bet. Therefore, the rule of thumb here is to bet as little as possible to get the job done. How much is just enough to result in a fold from your opponent? That’s your task to determine. Mind you, I’m not urging you to min bet every single time you intend to make someone fold. That would be the surest way of turning you into a fish. What I am saying though is that no matter how enticing that “bet pot” button looks, you may want to tone it down a little and hit the ½ pot button instead. More often than not, opponents who can be persuaded to fold will do so when faced with a smaller than full pot size bet just as well as they do when faced with a full pot-size one. By showing a little bit of restraint, you’ll save money when you do get called.
The other scenario is when you make a value bet: you aim to persuade your opponent call. This one’s a little more sensitive matter. Your goal here is to make the largest possible bet that your opponent will call. How exactly does this translate strategy-wise? In the long-run, you’ll be better off making bigger bets that get called less often than you are making smaller bets with a higher probability of yielding a call.

Your reading skills will be extremely important in this case. Some players find the pot odds offered by smaller bets impossible to resist. Others will always regard a large bet as a sign that the bettor has the nuts. Again, you are directly responsible for determining how your opponents will react to differently sized bets that you fire their way, and for making the right move based on your reads.
The weird thing about proper bet-sizing is that pretty much everyone knows the theory around it – which is far from rocket science anyway – yet people fail to put that knowledge to use time and time again. Knowing something is one thing, putting that knowledge to use is different. Think about it like this: all it takes to take your game to the next level is to spare a couple of extra thoughts on each bet that you make. That’s really not a whole lot of effort and it does indeed pay great dividends.

Poker trash talk – How far is too far?

Since poker is a competitive game, bullying is never a stranger on the green felt. People bully their opponents by putting pressure on them through aggressive bets. People gang up on their opponents when there’s a short-stack at the table. In a word: it ain’t pretty. If you’re looking for compassion and the better side of human nature, you shouldn’t look for it at the poker table. People know all this and they know all too well what they can expect. Still, there are people out there who push the boundaries of what’s decent and what’s not. Since online contact is less direct and by simply turning the chat feature off, one can pretty much plug up a discontent opponent’s piehole, online confrontations rarely appear to be stretching the above said boundaries. Live poker events though, especially televised ones often offer an entirely different view of the scenery. Basically, there are two categories of “loose cannons” in live poker. Those who commit their verbal assaulting under the influence, and those who do it in a level-headed and premeditated way.

An obvious example for the first type would be Scotty Nguyen’s drunken rampage at the 2008 WSOP’s HORSE event. The guy obviously had a few too many beers and he let his guard down completely, simply spitting out everything that crossed his mind. While regrettable, his behavior could at least be explained through his intoxication, and while I’m not trying to use that as an excuse for the Prince of Poker, I understand it much better than the bullying some of the other highly successful and respected poker players resort to.
Without further ado though here’s the case in point:

Now then, if you watch that video, one thing strikes you from the very beginning: Tony G says to Robl: “…see if you’re a real man”. That short phrase there tells the entire story of the incident that follows. Tony G is perfectly aware of the type of opposition he’s facing, and make no mistake about that: the man knows he’ll escalate the situation further when he says that. He wasn’t about to cut Robl any slack from that moment on and sure enough – with support from Daniel Negreanu – it worked well. Posturing and macho chest-beating shoved aside, there are few people in the poker world today who would not be psychologically unsettled by the hellraising done by Guoga and Negreanu in the above bit.
There’s nothing spontaneous about it, it’s all premeditated and executed according to a shrewd battle plan. Sure, Tony G expressed regret over the incident later in his blog, and he’s apparently made peace with Robl since. If a court were to look at the above video as evidence though, I seriously doubt his apology would be accepted as a sign of true regret. This guy is a calculated, cool-headed monster at the table. He doesn’t “lose it” like Scotty does after a couple of beers. He knows what he’s doing and given the proper chance he’d do it all over again any day. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that he verbally pressures his opponent. Throw out those couple of F-bombs and there’s nothing even offensive about anything he says. What really surprised me was the way he and Negreanu ganged up on the kid. Through his pissing and moaning, Tony G obviously created an advantage for Negreanu, who welcomed it all with open arms and even said thanks to Guoga for it. The assist may not have been intentional, but what gives?

Some thoughts on the WSOP’s $1,000 Ladies’ Event

The $1,000 NL Holdem Ladies’ Championship event of the 2010 WSOP may not have been the biggest buy-in one and it may not have attracted the largest starting field either, but it has definitely generated the most buzz of all WSOP events by far. This event is slowly but surely becoming a source of perpetual conflict as more and more people set about creating havoc in it for whatever reason each year. Now, I’ll put this forth from the start: I’m not about to take sides in this conflict, because it’s way too awkward and weird for me to do that.

Here are the facts: several male poker players, including Shaun Deeb and David Sesso, registered to play in the Ladies’ event. One may ask: well, what were these guys doing registering for a ladies’ event? I know…It pretty much left me puzzled as well. Why on earth would any guy want to play in a ladies event of anything? I mean there’s women’s basketball and it would obviously not be proper for a guy to take part in that…Since we all like to consider poker a sport, why would one of us want to participate in the ladies’ event? I know some folks are going to say that gender segregation in this case is bad because it conveys the wrong message. While on the basketball court women may not be able to keep up physically with the male athletes, that is certainly not the case at the poker table, where all one has to do is to sit around and to get a massage every now and then when the going becomes taxing and uncomfortable. Other than that, poker only requires thought and in that respect, women are obviously quite equal to men.

In a statement released on YouTube:

Shaun Deeb says among other things that the very reason they decided to register for the event was to protest gender segregation as a means of belittling women’s intellectual capabilities. While apparently it does make sense, that assertion is a rather leaky one from several angles. I mean if you’re going out there with the risk of making a fool of yourself to show respect for poker playing women, why on earth would you go in drag? I don’t care if Shaun lost a prop bet regarding the drag thing or not, it’s just not done. It smells of mockery and of juvenile hot-headedness. It’s a gesture far more suited for a frat party than for a WSOP event, especially one where the author intends to show respect for women.

Sure, some folks may have supported Deeb and his peers, but the fact that the majority of the women applauded whenever a male player was eliminated says quite a lot about how those players felt about the issue. Deeb says all he did was to engage into friendly table chatter with the women at his table to assure them of his support. Has it ever occurred to him that maybe those women never felt the need for anyone to support them? Maybe they just wanted a friendly game of poker in an all-female environment, without any cross-dressed male supporters cheering them on from across the table. Why on earth would they ever need any kind of support? They are full-fledged and fully capable poker players, aren’t they? Would Shaun Deeb like some guy in drag to continuously assure him of his support from the next seat in the events in which he plays?

Was it right on the part of the security to harass these guys for being there? No. They should never have harassed them. They should never have allowed them to enter the tournament area in the first place since it was obvious they were up to no good. Want to voice your opinion on the matter? Want to protest gender segregation in poker? By all means, do it. Just don’t mess up other people’s game while at it.
Does it feel awkward to have embarrassed yourself in public? It should. Swallow the pill and don’t go on the air depicting yourself as a victim. It’s the only decent thing to do after a stunt like that.

Phil Hellmuth on his hands and knees

Now here’s something I never thought I’d see. After having been out of the top tournament spotlight for a while, and only really making news through his various entrance gimmicks (dressed at Caesar at the WSOP Europe – give me a break…), and after throwing tantrums and bashing players left and right in various televised events, Phil Hellmuth has finally crumbled under the weight of his own expectations.

Day 3 of the WPT’s bay 101 Shooting Star event saw Hellmuth put in a more than solid performance. He came into the day 1st in chips, and he only got overtaken in the final stretch, but he’d still secured a more than comfortable cushion going into the final table action. As fellow Shooting Stars were relieved of their $5k bounties all around him, Phil stood like a rock, upon which no tide could inflict any kind of damage. He came into Day 4 second in chips, and viewed as probably the most likely to end up with the title.
Phil did well too. He had solid reads on his opponents, and got his money into the middle in the best possible spot. There was just one thing wrong though: Lady Luck decided to have some fun with him, to teach him a lesson on why poker was a mere game, subject to her caprices at every turn.

He picked up pocket queens in the small blind and decided to trap someone with them. He limped along as Andy Seth decided to make a move from the BB. Seth had Ac,Jc and he fired out a 80,000 bet to mount a defense. Hellmuth would have none of that though. He raised to 280,000 and eventually got Seth all-in. The flop fell Kd,6s,5s and Phil was well on his way to reap the rewards of his sneaky preflop tactics. The 10h fell on the turn, giving Seth a straight draw, but Hellmuth was still well ahead. Then disaster struck. An A hit the board on the river, giving Seth a superior pair and sending Hellmuth to the payout booth, before everyone else from the final table. Phil just stood there dazed and battered, like someone living out a bad dream, but here’s a video worth more than a thousand words:

After he shook all the other player’s hands, Hellmuth walked to the sidelines and collapsed in a heap holding his head. He curled up in the fetal position and stayed there for several minutes, leaving the audience to ponder whether the presence of a paramedic crew was called for or not. Eventually he pulled himself together and came back to settle the issue of the bounty and even to sign a T-shirt for a fan. The way he handled the bad beat though, raised quite a few waves in the poker world.

Tony G, fresh Party Poker professional and owner of PokerNews.com (among several other online poker related operations) has written an open letter to Hellmuth in the wake of the incident in which he expressed his concern regarding Hellmuth’s mental health. Half jokingly, the Aussie pro made a few good points in the letter (which has been uploaded to his personal blog) and he even had a few words of encouragement for Phil asserting that the WPT final table was obviously a sign of an imminent comeback on the part of the Poker Brat.

What do I think about it all? Some people hate Hellmuth on account of the way he addresses other players, and on account of being conceited. Others pity him because he’s never managed to add a WPT title to his more than impressive trophy case, and attribute his meltdown to having come so tantalizingly close to breaking the WPT curse.
I just think he’s a guy who takes the game way too seriously. Sure, the best of the best play this game for millions of dollars, and they make more money in a single week (often in a single day) than I’ll ever make in my life, but there’s one thing these nosebleed stakes protagonists all have in common: they have a blatant disregard for the value of money, viewing it simply as chips to play poker with. They can weather huge swings without cracking, and I suppose if one can’t handle that, he shouldn’t be playing at that level. They see poker for what it is: a game, granted one that turns around millions of dollars, but still just a game. Maybe Sam Chauhan, his mindset coach, can hammer a bit of sense into him and get him back on the right track.

Who is Isildur1?

Nobody knows who Isildur1 is. What everyone knows though, is that this guy is the poker gods’ gift to the game. Before he came along and took the nosebleed stakes tables by assault, what railbirds did for fun was to hang around the durrrr challenge tables, looking for Dwan and Antonius to put in a few hands, though the suffering that the series has become lately, took the fun right out of that one and railbirds slowly began to look for their online kicks elsewhere.

September 16th, 2009: enter Isildur1. A faceless player from Sweden, with a Lord of the Rings inspired nickname, Isildur1 meant serious business straight out of the gates. In the beginning, he didn’t look like much of a menace for Full Tilt Poker’s regulars. He spent about two weeks on the $25/$50 tables, where he was considered a fish ripe for the taking. A fish he wasn’t though. Even back then he must’ve been doing something right as he proved more than ready for his first real test: a match against Haseeb Qureshi, known online as INTERNETPOKERS. The two of them traded punches for a while on the $25/$50 tables, then moved to the $100/$200 ones (as one of them was probably eager to do some catching up). Eventually, the end of that session saw Isildur1 finish with a half a million dollars profit. That was his first truly significant move up the ranks and limits, and his first massive addition to a stack which would prove quite impossible to wreck later on.

Seeing one of their own fall victim to a newcomer, Full Tilt’s regulars jumped all over Isildur1, looking to exact some revenge. Isildur1 couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity though, to turn the drop he’d wringed out of the Qureshi session into a trickle and then into a full fledged flow.
UhotaBanana was among the first to tackle the unknown player. That match-up turned into a slaughter too, at the end of which Isildur1 walked away with $300k of his opponent’s money. That gave him enough of a boost to break into the $200/$400 and S300/$600 NL Holdem and PL Omaha tables, where the big boys played.
He did drop a little money to Hastings and Townsend on those limits, but he took Cole South for more than $700k which meant another huge boost for the Swede. That was the moment that Isildur1 finally established himself as a respect worthy presence at the highest stakes. Tom Dwan, everyone’s favorite Wonderkid and high stakes maniac came forth to teach the Swede a lesson. And what a lesson it turned out to be. The two of them put in almost as many hands in a few days’ time as Dwan and Antonius had at their durrrr challenge tables in over half a year. At the end of it all, despite a few downswings, it was Isildur1 who was around 3 million above the red line. This move opened up a world of possibilities for the Swede.
Dwan did try to get his money back, and he even challenged Isildur1 to a live encounter in London, however the illusive Swede didn’t take him up on that offer and he took a further $100k and some from Dwan in a re-match.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for him though. The past weeks have been pretty rough for him, as he dropped around $3 million to Antonius, Phil Ivey, Ilari Sahamies and Brian Townsend. He managed to bounce back though, and in the process, he blew away several online poker records. He beat the biggest ever online poker pot record twice within a week’s time. The second time he dropped a $1.3 million pot to Patrick Antonius.

Watch the video here, complete with commentary and odds calculus

Whether or not Isiladur1 played that one right is debatable, but he sure did play another similarly sized pot well a couple of days later against Phil Ivey. That time, it was a $1.1 million whooper that he won from Ivey, the second biggest online poker pot ever played.
That made Isildur1 the only player who’s ever won and lost an online pot larger than $1 million.
He, Antonius and Ivey combined for 7 of the 10 largest pots in the history of online poker, all within the same week. Never has anything as big is Isildur1 hit the online poker world (in a good way of course) and I reckon it’s only fitting that he should be an anonymous online player: an exponent of the masses. Whoever he is, he sure revels in his anonymity. While others would’ve long stepped forward to claim the benefits of their fame, Isildur1 is happy to hide behind the stage and to do his work from obscurity. Some speculate that he is in fact Victor Blom, a young Swedish player who had had an Isiladur1-like incursion into the high stakes online territory months ago and who pretty much vanished with the loot following a successful run.

Another Swedish mystery man, “martonas” is also a suspect in the case, but some say Swedish soccer player Henrik Larsson may be the one behind the Isildur1 account. Still others have come up with the hypothesis that Isildur1 is in fact a conglomerate of Swedish players aiming to storm the online poker world and t make money off those who really have loads. A theory linking Isildur1 to Todd Brunson has also surfaced.
Whatever the case, one thing is certain: that fact that Isildur1 remains unknown only adds to the intrigue, and therefore I would personally prefer never to find out his true identity.

The durrrr challenge and the most successful cash player of the year

It is official now: Patrik Antonius is among the most successful high stakes cash game players of the year, if not the most successful.

The Finn has been taking the durrrr challenge one step at a time and he has managed to improve his game on the go. Take a look at the following YouTube clip:

See and hear Patrik talk about the 50,000 hand PLO challenge he’s currently involved in with Tom Dwan (known online as durrrr).

The interview was apparently taken right after Antonius got ousted from the EPT’s San Remo event, and the interviewer didn’t miss the opportunity to get some inside scoop on the durrrr challenge. There were rumors in the beginning that Dwan, whose bankroll had been dealt a few 6-figure blows this year wasn’t all that keen on pushing forth with the challenge and that he was taking his time, logging a brief session every now and then just to keep the subject atop the headlines. Word even had it for a while that Antonius was displeased with the tactics and he had in fact intended to put a wrap on the affair by the time the WSOP kicked off. Apparently that had indeed been the case. Antonius confesses that in the beginning of the challenge (of which the two have completed only around 15,000 hands now) he was indeed keen on pushing things forward and he did on occasion get frustrated by his opponent’s stalling tactics.

What’s interesting to hear though is that Antonius hadn’t really had any multi table heads-up experience before the start of the challenge. He says he started playing 3 tables in January, in preparation for the challenge and that in the beginning he had trouble adapting to the 4 challenge tables. What’s interesting about this fact is that in the beginning of the durrrr challenge I had the distinct feeling that it was Dwan in the driver seat and Antonius trying to keep up – which apparently might’ve been the case indeed. One could actually feel the momentum shift as Antonius got more and more comfortable with the 4-table action and as he gradually learned the ways of his adversary.

For a while there, the two looked intent on wrapping the challenge up before the start of the WSOP. They convened more often at the four challenge tables and their sessions were longer. Just as soon as Antonius began building up a sizeable lead though, the determination seemed to have cooled off again. It is now obvious that they won’t even reach the 20,000 hands mark by the time the WSOP kicks off, and that they will probably not see any sort of action while the WSOP lasts.
Antonius says that while this far the slow pace of the challenge action was mainly durrrr’s fault, he too will slow down and take things easier. Did he just grow tired of all the pushing and prodding or does he really feel he needs to take a break from the hectic online schedule he’s imposed on himself lately?
I can’t help but ponder what Dwan’s motives are to show so little interest in getting the challenge done and over with. Some say he’s nothing but a gambler, and now that he feels he’s gotten in way over his head with Antonius.
The fact that – according to Antonius – Dwan is trying to keep pots as small as possible would fit nicely into that picture. One needs to keep in mind that this interview was probably taken before Antonius managed to build up the over 400k lead he’s got over Dwan now. Back then the swings from one session to another were extremely small indeed, nothing that either of the two players could not have covered over a single hand.
Antonius says he lost more money in the challenge when he played from Thailand on account of the passive stance he’d adopted. He says he’s learned a thing or two since and that he’s become much more efficient playing at four tables.

The most successful cash game player of the year makes it clear that his focus will remain on the cash tables. While he does intend to take part in 5-6 WSOP events (where he may even play against Dwan on occasion) he’s aware that the online cash approach is working just fine for him now and he doesn’t intend to switch gears any time soon.

WSOP 2009 preview

With the WSOP’s start just two days away, the question on every poker enthusiast’s mind is whether it will exceed last year’s series, attendance as well as prize-pool wise. Take a look at the following YouTube vid:

Get a scoop on the predictions first hand from WSOP commissioner Jeffrey Pollack.
The interview in the flick happened two weeks before the start of the event, and according to Pollack, based on the actual event pre-registrations and the WSOP-related hotel bookings, the turnout had already been shaping up nicely then.

The recession and probably the UIGEA as well, will make their effects felt though. While he doesn’t openly admit it, Pollack hints at the fact that the organizers would be happy to have as many players show up as last year (the exact number was 58,720 I believe) which means that he doesn’t exactly expect a year like 2006 when all previous records were shattered.
In the interview, he also talks about the $1,000 Stimulus Special, an event which is a first timer on the WSOP schedule, and the fact that the final table will again be delayed till November, like last year.

Even if increases in participant numbers and prize-pool sizes are not likely, the World Series of Poker is considered a recession-proof event by many. How can something like the WSOP withstand recession while another – previously recession-proof considered – industry, gambling is struggling? The answer to that is simple: poker is not gambling. Like it or not, because of the skill element involved, poker can be considered a sport rather than a game of chance. Pollack says that it’s considered the “Stanley Cup of poker”, and that’s exactly the reason why the recession will fail to put a dent into its popularity.
Gambling is a different matter altogether. While there are some beginners who fail to grasp the basic concepts that make casino games tick, the vast majority of the players are well aware that they’re going up against adverse odds.

Most people are even well aware that the house edge is the least of their worries: it’s the house drop they’re going to deal with, and while the house edge is often a minuscule 1-2% quantity, the house drop is a much heftier, approximately 30% one. This is why gamblers usually take their disposable funds to the gambling tables. Sure, you can get lucky and hit a big-time jackpot, but it’s much more likely that you’ll just end up losing your money. Money that you spend in a casino is basically money invested into fun. That’s the way most players view it and that’s how you too should consider it too.

Poker on the other hand, is a game where it is possible to secure positive expected value (EV) and where the house doesn’t play a role: people go up against other players just like themselves. While it’s true that the majority of players play with negative EV, as long as they consider they’re playing with EV+ they won’t think twice about viewing the whole thing as an investment. Whether or not one is able to secure EV+ depends solely on his/her talent, skills and time spent studying the game, so even those who play on EV- have none else to blame but themselves for the outcome.

The problem with gambling is, disposable income is among the first victims of recession, and while poker players don’t bring their disposable money to the WSOP tables (well, at least those who play in the WSOP don’t) recession won’t really affect attendance.
Another interesting note that Pollack strikes in the interview is about the TV popularity of the event. Televised WSOP bits don’t just provide a great action-filled storyline for the viewers, they possess a lot of re-run value because they can be used for education too by those interested in taking up the game or in improving their game.

About the WSOP Main Event prize pool, Pollack didn’t venture into stating anything concrete. He basically ducked the question by going into how the prize-pool was dependant on the attendance, however, if one pays attention to the 2006, 2007 and 2008 prize-pools a trend will become apparent: while the drop from the $12.1 million first prize that Jamie Gold pocketed in 2006 to the $8.3 million that Jerry Yang took home in 2007 is obvious, one cannot help noticing that in 2008 the first prize rebounded to $9.2 million. If that trend holds out, we’re likely to see the winner take home around $10.1 this year.

Tony G’s poker school

You can watch poker pros in action all the time on TV, and if you’re patient enough, you can even railbird matches between professional players online. Watching these guys play can be a lesson in itself, however nothing is quite like a professional playing heads-up online and commentating his actions in real time. Now that’s one poker lesson that’s likely to stick with you for the rest of your online career, regardless of how long or short it may turn out to be.
I suppose you all know Tony G. The Lithuanian-born Aussie professional is much more than just a successful and skilled player: he’s a brilliant business mind as well. He is behind some of the most successful online poker websites and as such, he is probably one of the poker personalities who’d deserve an award for doing as much as he did for the promotion of the game of poker.

Every successful poker player has to pay his/her “tuition” as a beginner. In this case, this may not be true. Take a look at the following video:

See and hear Tony G dispensing heads-up online knowledge free of charge. Now, this video is just a segment of a larger piece in which Tony G pretty much covers all aspects of online NL Hold’em Heads-up play.

He begins by detailing why it is important to be aggressive in a heads-up game. By being aggressive, you’ll establish control and you’ll be the one dictating the pace of the action. Tony G sums it all by stating that in heads-up everything comes down to control.
In the video, Tony G constantly pressures his opponent and a as result of that, not many hands go to showdown. The match-up between Guoga and his opponent is like a heavy weight boxing bout, in which Guoga obviously holds an advantage and is constantly on the attack. He keeps probing his opponent’s defenses not to damage him but to get him all-in and to land that knockout blow. The guy he’s facing is skilled enough to avoid these blows, but he’s being worn down in the process as he’s fighting an uphill battle.

Another brief lesson that you’ll learn by watching this video is about starting hand selection and position. In a heads-up game, your starting hand selection should be a loose one, but you should never lose sight of the importance of position. At one point Guoga decides to fold a J,5 on account of being out of position, and immediately after, he plays the same hand because he’s on the button. Starting hand selection should always be dependent on your position.
All through the match, Tony G has control over what’s going on at the table. Obviously, in order to assert control, you need to read your opponent. It doesn’t take Guoga long to figure out the ways of his adversary, and therefore he settles into the driver seat from the get go. There’s no better way to illustrate his authority than through the pocket rockets he milks so nicely. He puts his opponent on a K so he lets him take over the hand and attempt to push him out, all in the name of having the pot stuffed for him. He knows on the flop that he’s going to go all-in in the end, and even though he fails to get the call on the river from his opponent he makes nice money on this one.

Every now and then, you need to make a stand and defend your BB. Guoga points it out that you’re likely to lose money on these hands. He calls his opponent’s preflop raise and he misses the flop, after which he’s forced to fold to his opponent’s pressure. Everybody loses money in the blinds, how much money one loses is where the difference is made though.

Tony G also makes a point of mixing his game up. Sometimes he’ll just call in order to maintain his unpredictability. He does play a 7d,9d (a suited one-gapper) because he feels he can take his opponent’s stack on that hand. Those are the direct implied odds that Tony G is counting on there, unfortunately he misses the flop. Riding the momentum of the game is also important. When the momentum is on your side, you can pull off moves you wouldn’t otherwise attempt.
Take a look at the video and the complete 3-part series if you can: there’s no better way to get inside the head of a successful pro.

Going up against the big-stack

A player in possession of a large stack is always an intimidating presence at a tournament table as well as at a cash one.
The player with the large stack holds a set of advantages over the other guys. He can attempt to bust them without putting himself in a do or die situation, he can put pressure on them, he can afford to make a mistake, whilst you, the short-stack, can’t. The big stack can afford to play optimally. Think about it: in a tournament, he can continue exploiting his implied odds hands (like his small pocket pairs, his suited connectors and his suited one gappers), which gives him the possibility to knock other players out without risking his stack and thus to further increase his advantage.
If you want to see the power of the big stack in action, take a peek at this video:

You’ll probably be surprised to see Phil Ivey, the player considered the best in the world by most experts, fold the best hand, yielding to the pressure generated by Brad Booth and his large stack.
The hand begins with David Williams making a preflop raise, and all the other guys folding around to Yukon Brad. At this stage, Brad already knows that he’s going to play his suited one gapper (4s, 2s) and he also knows how he’s going to play it. Ivey holds a pair of Ks which obviously prompts him to raise Yukon’s re-raise. David Williams gets out of the way and Yukon Brad makes the call, fairly certain of the kind of hand Ivey might hold. I’m quit sure that by this stage, Brad already knows what he’s going to do against Ivey, regardless of the flop, and Ivey looks like he knows what’s about to befall him too.

The flop misses both players (Booth does land a gutshot straight draw though) but that doesn’t really change anything. Ivey fires out a $23,000 bet, and Booth goes all-in in response. Ivey contemplates the situation for a while, but he knows from the get-go he won’t be able to make the call, and thus his short stack gets even shorter without an actual showdown.
That there is a calculated second bullet on Yukon Brad’s part, one that not even the great Phil Ivey can stand up to. What gives Brad Booth the edge in this hand? His stack size.
Though this example shows extremely well how the big stack can use the situation to his advantage, there are actually few players out there who can exploit their big stack the way Yukon Brad does in the vid.

Most players find it difficult to handle a big stack. One type of player (often called the “farmer” by strategy experts) tightens up. Once he sees himself in possession of a big stack, the farmer considers he has just booked a ticket to the money. He’ll therefore protect his stack to the best of his abilities, until he makes it past the money bubble, after which he’ll open up to try to get as far ahead as possible.

The other type of player called the “fox”, is all about winning the tournament. The fox won’t tighten up: he’ll try to play aggressively in order to advance up through the ranks continuously. Many of these foxes loosen up too much.
Both player types are exploitable. The farmer, because of his excessive tightness, will give up edges and will thus commit many mistakes. He’ll be forced to fold the best hand easily. The fox is much more likely to tilt, as he’ll be riding an emotional high and will let emotions play a big part in his game.

Passive big stacks will often stick around to defend their blinds. Against these players, a skilled competitor will be able to play many nicely-sized pots, while holding position over an opponent who is not exactly eager to commit a large part of his stack.
The task of the player squaring up to attack the big stack is made even easier by the fact that most of the other guys will be keen to get out of the way of the big stack. This way, he’ll be able to tackle big guy free of outside interference.

Poker tells

You’ll often hear that whenever good poker players (those who master the third and fourth levels of poker thought) play each other, they play the player rather than their cards. Past a certain level, poker becomes a game in which psychology takes front seat, ahead of mathematics which is the leading play-guiding factor on lower levels. Poker psychology is based on reads and tells, and on players’ abilities to read the tells their opponents drop while disguising their own hands and if possible, misleading their opponents. As far as tells and reads go, the fundamental concept guiding players’ actions is that keeping their opponents in the mist is not enough: they need to actually mislead them, to cause them to become certain of the wrong thing.

You probably all know Daniel Negreanu and his uncanny ability to read his opponents’ pocket cards. If you take a look at the following video:

You’ll see Negreanu in action against fellow Canadian Brad Booth also known as “Yukon” Brad.
The interesting thing in this hand is how Booth manages to jam Negreanu’s otherwise infallible radar and to cause him to hesitate a bit before making the big laydown. Negreanu does manage to evade the trap, after all, his instincts are among the best if they’re not THE best in poker, but still, Booth’s tactics cause him to hesitate a little before doing the right thing, and making Negreanu actually attempt to talk himself into a call is by no means and everyday achievement.

Many people don’t realize this, but this hand is probably the best illustration of how one should disguise his/her hand and how much potential there is in the mind games behind all the reads and tells.
Brad Booth turns a straight flush, calls Negreanu all the way to the river where he raises him just as the latter rivers a straight. This is when the mind games begin: what Booth is trying to achieve here is to make it look like he’s bluffing to steal Negreanu’s river bet. The circumstances are right, and sets up the trap perfectly: he actually tells Negreanu the hand he’s got, knowing that his opponent will not only not believe him, but might be mislead to think that he is desperate to make it look like he has a true monster in the pocket. What do you know? For a second there it actually seems to work. The play-bluff is so well portrayed by “Yukon” Brad, that Negreanu begins to talk himself into calling him down. He is way too experienced to act on emotion alone though. One can literally feel how his heart tells him to call Booth’s raise, but his mind calls for a time out and begins a cold analysis of the situation. At the end of the analysis, Kid Poker concludes that he could only possibly beat a bluff there, and even though it looks like that’s exactly what Booth has against him, the odds are unfavorable for a call as a flush may well be in the books.
Of course, just to keep his opponents guessing, Booth never shows his hand. Just to add to the confusion, a female voice at the end of the hand claims that she in fact had the nine of diamonds, which sows further confusion at the table. Nobody really knows what to make of it, and Esfandiari’s remarks make it quite clear that he appreciates the way Booth played that hand.
Some people will say that Booth didn’t exactly accomplish anything impressive in this hand. After all, he won with a straight flush, how hard can that be, right? And he did fail to get Negreanu to call him in the end. What these people fail to realize though is that out of God knows how many possible ways, Booth played this hand in the most optimal manner. He singled out a weakness and he exploited it in such a psychologically complex manner (see his “Canadian” comments which were probably intended to re-enforce his play-bluff) that he is worthy of all respect for it. At the end of the day, how many people can boast that they had the great Daniel Negreanu on the ropes like that, even if it was only for a brief moment.

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