The hand I hate most?

A9o.

For the uninitiated–who don’t know the notation–that’s Ace-Nine of different suits, such as Ace of spades and Nine of hearts.

Now, I don’t hate A9o all the time. Short-handed, or heads-up, i.e., mano a mano, or even from late position–when I’m trying to steal the blinds–it can be a real powerhouse. (When I’m trying to steal the blinds and one or both of the blinds call, at least I have something to play if they disappoint me and call. But I’m still hoping they don’t call.)

72o is reputed to be the worst hand in hold’em, at least in a ring game. (A ring game is a game with a full table. In heads-up play, 32o is actually the worst.) However, though it may be annoying to get dealt 72o, I know what to almost always do with that hand: Fold. And, if I happen to play it (yeah, there are times I play it, but that’s fodder for another post), it’s not that bad because on the rare times it hits it can do two things:

• 1) It can score a large pot.
• 2) If the hand makes it to a showdown, it leaves my opponents wondering, "Just what it is that he plays?"

How can it score a big pot? I’ve had flops of 72x and 227 fall and no one believed I hit. Made a lot of money each time.

However, that said, I still don’t play 72o much at all.

But, when A9o falls in my hole cards…

It looks so tempting. But what are its strengths?

• It has an Ace.

One the other hand, what drawbacks does it have?

• If you hit an Ace, you have a middling kicker. What can you do with it? Any kind of betting means you’re probably beaten.
• If a Nine falls, you have to worry about higher cards falling (other than another Ace) that can make a better pair.
• It takes four cards on the board to make either a straight or a flush.

The only time you can feel comfortable is if an Ace and Nine fall together on the flop giving you two pairs, or a pair of Nines fall giving you trips with best kicker. And, if two Aces fall, good. But if someone else is holding an Ace with a better kicker…

I hate it more than I hate K9o. K9o isn’t as tempting as A9o. It’s easier for me to fold. And, if I do play it, the flop can make me a miracle straight.

So, from most positions, I’d rather be dealt 72o than A9o. As I said, at least I know what to do with 72o.

Being dealt A9s (that’s Ace-Nine of the same suit) is another story. I can play that like any Axs, where "x" is a low-card kicker, and, with enough callers I’m hoping to hit the flush or the flush draw with the added benefit of hitting two pairs or trips.

As I learn more about no-limit hold’em, my least favorite hand may change. But this is it, for now.

What’s the hand you hate most?

I’m still going to finish my post about sleep and poker, but I wanted to talk about something else, first.

Here’s what it is: My poker playing sucks. Yeah, it out-and-out sucks like a tornado going through a trailer park.

Here’s why I say so.

I played several heads-up matches over the last few days day. I won all but one of them, but that’s not what’s important. (Remember, I keep saying, “It’s not about the money–yet,” because it’s not about winning, yet, it’s about learning.) What is important is my play and, given what happened in one of those matches, I hope I’ve learned something because, after analyzing my play, I’m not proud of what I did.

The match only lasted two deals, and here’s what happened:

On the first deal I was dealt 9c4h. I was the small blind. If you’ve been reading my posts, you know I come out swinging to see if my opponent is going to let me push him around.

With the blinds at 10/20, I made it 40 to go. He called.

The flop was Ac 4s Td.

Now, if you’ve been reading my stuff, in heads-up play if I raise preflop I usually (not always) make continuation bets, and I also usually (not always) bet out if I catch a piece of the flop. Here, both had happened, i.e., I’d raised preflop and I’d made bottom pair.

The pot was 80, so I made it 60 more to go. He folded.

Good start. Is he going to succumb to my bullying?

The next deal, I received TcTs. He was the small blind. He made it 40 to go. I reraised another 20, making it 60. He reraised all-in.

All-in? With my Tens, I called.

The computer revealed our hands. He held 9s9d.

I’m starting to say, “No Nine, no Nine, no Nine…”

The flop came 4s 8d 8c.

“…no nine…”

The turn was 5h.

“…no nine…”

The river was Th.

I won with trip Tens.

But was my call correct?

No. (If your answer was “yes,” go to your room. And especially if you said it was the right play just because I won, go to you room and quit playing poker.)

My call was wrong. Here’s why it was incorrect–actually, why it was stupid, stupid, stupid–even though I’d won:

What could he have gone all-in with?

AA
KK
QQ
JJ

Against each of these I’m about a a 4 to 1 dog.

AK
AQ
AJ
KQ

Against hands like these, I’m a marginal favorite.

Other hands he may have gone all-in with include lower pairs (including the Nines he did go in with), and against those I’m about a 4 to 1 favorite.

Against a hand with one card higher than my Tens and one lower, like A9, I’m about a 2.6 to one favorite. But how likely is he to have gone all-in with hands like those?

Against two unpaired cards lower than my Tens, I’m usually a better than 5 to 1 favorite. And with hands like those, he’s wildly unlikely to have gone all-in.

Okay, he could have held TT, too. Not likely, but, barring a four-flush or five-flush on the board, it would have been a split pot.

Now, here’s my point: against most of the hands he was likely to have gone all-in with, I was either a heavy underdog or a slight favorite.

Me calling an all-in bet. preflop, was just plain wrong.

And I can’t be giving my opponents breaks like that. Here’s why: I’ve been winning about five out of six of my heads-up matches, lately. Whether that’s the trend or not, I don’t know. But it’s the data I have to go on. So, the question is, why would I want to give an opponent something even as close aa a coin-flip early in the match when, in all likelihood, I could grind him up with my superior play, as I’ve been doing since soon after I started playing heads-up?

The correct play? I should have folded.

Would it have been correct for me to call and early preflop all-in bet with any other pair? Yeah, either Aces or Kings. Queens? I’m not sure, yet.

Though the poker gods were kind to me, even though my play sucked, there is a two-part moral here: Keep the money I won, but don’t kid myself into believing I won that match with sparkling play–I just got lucky. And don’t slip up like that, ever again. (It makes me wonder what greater sins my opponent must have committed to have had to suffer the fate the poker gods had in store for him.)

Post script:
I’ve since told myself that he may not have made the all-in play with pocket rockets (AA) or a pair of cowboys (KK), in an attempt to squeeze some chips out of me. That, of course, would reduce the peril I’d subjected myself to. Nevertheless, unless he was a great player and I had to get my licks in before he ground me up the way I’ve ground up players weaker than I, the proper play for me was to fold.

Having analyzed this hand, my play will suck a little less in the future.

I want to post something about sleep and how it relates to poker–at least the way I play poker. But that post is still in the works.

However, having said that, I want to talk, now, about how the lack of sleep and some of the stuff I’ve been taking to improve my sleep have resulted in some terrible play.

To start this out, let me say I’d been in southern California for three weeks and, though I played for a while while I was there, I finally stopped because I had so many things to do. As I’ve said, I need focus to play poker.

I still read about the game, thought about it, and even did some analysis. Otherwise, poker was on the back burner my last week there.

Now, I’m back in Oregon. After a long road-trip I arrived yesterday and I’m finally getting back into playing. So yesterday, in my first heads-up session of the day (if you’ll recall, I’m playing match play, just now) I lost. I didn’t start out losing. I had my opponent on the ropes, but I just couldn’t put him away. Eventually, he put me away.

How’d I lose? Well, I knew what my problem was: I didn’t have a plan. I mean, I had one, but I couldn’t implement it.

There’s an ebb and flow to any poker game. At least there is for me. I play a very aggressive game, but I watch how my opponents react to my play and, in heads-up play, I have only one opponent to watch. So I study his betting patterns while also trying to figure out how my betting patterns are affecting him. For example, if he lets me push him around, I keep pushing him around, stealing pots here and stealing pots there. If he takes a stand, which usually means he either starts calling or raising my bets, I start playing stronger hands and making value bets in the first case or raising back in the second case–unless I discover he’s only calling or raising because he’s caught a few good hands. but “good” is relative in poker and, if that’s the only time he’s going to take a stand, i.e., when he catches good hands, I’m going to keep running him over.

But, let’s say he catches on to me and he starts playing back at me. As I said, I begin value betting and/or raising. What I’m doing is what the poker players call “changing gears.”

Another way of saying it is to paraphrase the poker writer, Mike Caro, and say, I try to figure out what my opponent expects me to do, then I do everything in my power to disappoint him.

But to do this, I need to be acutely aware of how my opponent is reacting to my play. Then, as I see my opponent change his play, I have to devise my traps. This is how I had previously embarked on the long string of heads-up wins I’d previously written about.

The problem, yesterday, seemed to be that I was having trouble remembering how my opponent was reacting and trouble devising ploys to trap him, when I did. In fact, my play became almost entirely unimaginative. The result was that I ceased to be pushing him around and he began pushing me around. And he did it very well and I lost. I was pissed, mostly at myself.

So, I played again. Once again, I had problems remembering much of how my opponent was reacting and, even when I did, I had trouble setting traps.

Setting traps in poker is sort of like playing chess: you have to be able to see a few moves ahead. I couldn’t set a trap if I couldn’t see more than one move ahead.

I won that second match, anyway. How’d I win it? I won because my opponent was so bad. Yeah, I was playing bad, but he was playing terrible.

Even though I’d won, I was beginning to panic. I was wondering if I’d lost my edge or something.

So, I played again, to see. It was another rough match because I was having trouble thinking. I won again, but there was nothing to be proud of. My victory was, once again, simply the result of my opponent’s incompetence and not my own brilliance and craftiness.

Hey, if you want to get good at this game, you have to be honest with yourself. At least that’s the way I feel. And when I suck, I tell myself that I suck. Just because you’re winning doesn’t mean you can’t be doing better. And, just because you won doesn’t mean you didn’t suck.

Let me digress:

Some thirty-plus years ago, I watched the former heavyweight champion, Joe Frazier, fighting a guy, I think it was Terry Daniels. As far as I could see, Frazier was winning the fight. But, at the end of the third round, Frazier went back to his stool and his corner guy was screaming at him. “What are you trying to do, lose this?” Still yelling, he started telling Frazier what he had to do. He had to go to the body, he had to do this, he had to do that, he had to do blah, blah, blah. Frazier didn’t even try to look up at the guy screaming at him. I wasn’t sure he was even listening. But the bell rang and he went out for the fourth round and suddenly he was fighting a new fight. Where previously he was just beating the guy up, he was now destroying him by fighting him the way he’d been told and, before the round was out, the fight was stopped.

Here’s my point–in fact, it was apparently that cornerman’s point, too: You may be able to beat the suckers with your B game, but don’t get into the habit of playing your B game just because it seems easy. When you finally run into someone good, you’re going to have some bad habits and he’s going to pick you apart. Always play your A game. Or at least try to. If you find yourself playing your B game, find out why. Find out how to get back to your A game, whether you’re playing against your grandmother for paper clips, you’re at the final table of the WSOP, or you’re fighting for the heavyweight championship.

But, here was my problem: With my brain not functioning right, I couldn’t find my A game.

Here’s where it gets crazy. Yeah, I’d won, again. But I was still overlooking something. I just didn’t realize it, yet.

I got up from my computer and went into the other room to talk with my friend, Diana. Then I went to the bathroom. Then I went to the kitchen and got a glass of water. I was thinking of playing, again. I wanted to play to see if I could fix my game.

I came back to my room. There was something funny on my monitor. I sat down to the computer and read the message. The game wasn’t over. I almost did a double take. Gradually, I realized I hadn’t signed up for a heads-up match, I’d mistakenly signed up for a four-man “shootout.” The format of this shootout was that there’d be two pairings of heads-up matches and the winners of those matches would then meet each other to play for the whole enchilada.

I almost crapped my pants. My brain was so out of it that I didn’t even know what I’d signed up for. And, because I’d been wandering around the house, had the other match ended, I’d have been getting blinded away. In fact, I may have wound up losing the shootout this way if I hadn’t luckily come back to the computer.

Once I realized what was going on, I also realized I could go watch the other match, which was still in progress.

I did.

It didn’t take long for me to realize both players were tentative and that, if I were on my A game, either one would be easy pickings. But I wasn’t on my A game and, now realizing I not only wasn’t playing well, and that I wasn’t even capable of signing up for the right game to boot, I couldn’t just walk away without losing. Under the terms for which I’d signed up, I was being forced to play, else I lost everything.

So, I watched and waited.

Here’s where it gets anticlimactic. Because the other two players were so tentative, their match was a long, grueling one. But, because the blinds were escalating, it had to end and it finally did. Then, without even giving the winner a one-minute break, our match began. (Thank the poker gods I had gotten back to my computer in time.)

On the first deal, I was the big blind and I was dealt Js5s. My opponent just completed the blind and I checked. I immediately realized that was a mistake. The right play–for me, anyway–was to raise, no matter what I had, to come out swinging on that first hand, to see what kind of crap my opponent would let me get away with. That’s the way I play. The right way to start was to be aggressive. I had to try to take control and see how he’d react, and here I was, checking in the big blind on the first hand. I never do that. But, now, with my addled brain, I did.

I didn’t deserve to win. And, if I kept playing that way and, if the other player was any good, I wouldn’t win.

The flop was 2s 5c 5h.

I’d made trips on the flop.

I checked immediately. Now was the time to see if he’d try to buy what looked like an orphan flop (a flop that didn’t look like it helped anyone). Sometimes, being aggressive means setting a trap.

But he just checked. I mumbled some expletive to myself.

The turn was 2d.

I now had a full house, fives full of deuces. I wanted to make something with this hand and get on to the next one. I bet 40. He called. Good. But I couldn’t figure out what he might have as hole cards. (That’s another danger of checking. At least if he has to call or reraise, I can start putting him on some kind of hand.) Now I had to wonder what kind of hand he would he have called my turn bet with? I was pretty sure that, since he was last to act on each betting round, he’d have bet a Five or a Deuce on the flop if he held either. Could he be holding a Three and a Four so he now had an open-ended straight draw? Was he holding an Ace? If neither one of us held a Five, a Deuce, or a higher pair, the best hole card to have in your hand would be an Ace.

I also tried to figure out what he thought I was holding that he’d thought my bet was worth a call. Did he think I was on a bluff? Of course, I’d checked when the pair of Fives fell, so he probably didn’t think I held a Five or even a Deuce.

But my brain was still too addled to trust any of my guesses. All I was sure of…pretty sure of…was that my Fives full were likely to be good. In fact, at this point, the only hand he could have me beaten with would have been quad Deuces.

The river card was 6d.

So, here we had a possible straight, a possible full house, even possible quads. Of course, as we know, I already had a full house.

I bet 120 hoping he’d pay me off. I was still sure I was ahead and I wanted to make something.

He made it 240 to go.

He raised? With what?

I almost called, but, after thinking a second, I decided to raise and I made it 520 to go.

He made it 800 to go. Was he sitting on a pair of Sixes and had the river given him a higher full house?

I thought a few seconds.

My stack was going to be severely crippled if I called and lost.

I asked myself: Would he have bet a pair of Sixes earlier? I think he would have.

Would he have bet a Five in his hand after making trips on the flop? Probably, since he was last to act.

Would he have bet a Deuce then if he’d held one? Probably.

With that analysis, I finally decided: He must have been holding a Three and a Four and the Six on the river straightened him out–and he didn’t believe I’d filled.

Knowing I still wasn’t thinking straight, I went all in anyway, hoping I was right, and, after a hesitation, he called.

The computer turned our hands up. He held Jc6s. He had two pairs.

What the hell was going on in his head? Had his first match been so long that he wasn’t thinking straight? Did he somehow convince himself that I was initiating all my bets with nothing but what was on the board? Or because he thought I was holding no more than an Ace that I believed was good?

Whatever it was, he deserved to lose, but I didn’t deserve to win. But I did win because he deserved it even less. (Hey, like I said, I’d watched him win his own match and he didn’t deserve winning.)

So ended my match with him in just one crazy deal.

But I quit play for the day. If I could beat the first guy–but lost, and if I couldn’t even tell what I was signing up for, I had to quit. Then I had to figure out why I was behaving the way I was. And I think I know why. And that will be the subject of my next post. And that’s where I’ll talk about my efforts to get a handle on my sleep.

I haven’t played poker in eight days. Right now, playing is not about money; it’s about learning. But to learn anything from play, and improve my game, I need to focus, and that hasn’t been possible for the last week-plus.

That said, the last two heads-up matches I played, before my hiatus, were bizarre. The next to last one was a Friday-night match played nine days ago. It was to be my last match before I went to bed that night. I had a lot to do over the next few days and I knew I wasn’t likely to get much time in.

On the first hand, I was the big blind. I was dealt QhQc. I was trying to make a quick decision as to how I’d play the pair when my opponent went all-in.

All-in?

I hadn’t been confronted with this kind of decision, before. But here’s what I figured:

I was a dog to a pair of Aces or Kings. I was a coin-flip to AK (slight edge to me), and I was a pretty decent favorite to everything else–other than dead-even if he held QsQd. The only question I had was, given my newly-acquired hubris and the confidence I have in my play, was I better of nibbling him away than giving him an all-in-one-hand shot?

I really didn’t know. But there was no time to really do a complete analysis. So, after a few seconds…

…I called.

The computer revealed he had JhTs. I was a heavy favorite over that hand. (Later, using the free software, PokerStove, I would discover I was 85% to win, about 5.7 to 1.)

The board came up Ac Js 5h Ad As. I won–the hand and the match. I thought about all the things I had planned for the next few days and, after a few seconds, I went to bed instead of starting a new match.

I got up Saturday morning and decided I’d play again, though I had other things to do.

The first hand of that match I was the small blind and dealt 5d4c. I made it 40 to go. No, that’s not usually a raising hand, but I always come out strong early in these matches. I’m trying to discover what my opponents will let me get away with. My opponent went all-in. This was two times in a row that the guy I was pitting myself against had gone all-in on the first hand.

I folded.

Ironically, the next deal, second hand of the match, I was dealt a pair of Queens–the same hand that had made up my one and only holding of the previous night’s one-deal match. My opponent completed the small blind and I raised to 40. The flop put an Ace on the board and I made it 60 to go. He folded.

I remember at the time I was thinking, I’m still tired (having just woken up), I’m distracted because of all the things I had to do, and I wasn’t actually in the mood to play. What I hadn’t noticed was that my play had changed.

Though I was still pressing, to see what this guy would let me get away with, I also found myself making the wrong plays. In the sixth hand I called a raise trying to trap with AK from the big blind. That wasn’t the way to be playing at that moment. When the flop put an orphan (nondescript cards that probably helped no one, in this case, T 6 T), I took a stab at the pot with a bet of 80 and, apparently, didn’t think about what it meant when he called. Somehow, I convinced myself my AK were probably still good. It’s something I’ve seen many of the fish do, with similar hands, after the flop in .

The turn brought a third Ten. Not thnking about his previous call, I bet 180. He called. The riven brought a Queen; I checked. Okay, with his flop play and turn play, he was telling me something. But I wasn’t lisening.

The river card was a Queen. I checked, he bet 220, I called, still pretty much convinced an Ace, but especially an Ace with a King, were going to take this pot down.

He had pocket Fours. I lost.

I was down to 910 chips and I’d like to say that I finally learned something and turned my play around. But I hadn’t; and i didn’t.

Either he was beginning to oputplay me or, more likely, I was beginning to outplay myself.

Two hands later, I lost when he flopped a straight. He sent me signals through his betting saying I was a loser, but I didn’t listen.

In subsequent hands, he didn’t even have to bet. I was doing most of the betting. Instead of being the cool, calculating monster I usually am, I was getting overly aggressive. All he had to do was to set traps for me, and I was willing to obligeingly step into them. Finally, after a long string of well-fought matches, I was the fish. I don’t know if you can call this going on tilt. But if it wasn’t “tilt,” it was a first cousin.

On hand nine I poked my nose up over 1,000 chips when I made top pair and he made bottom pair and he played me to the end.

After this, I started playing passively. I wasn’t playing the smart, aggressive poker I’d been winning with for weeks. I was checking, then calling big bets when all I had were hopes and prayers. I’d already given up. Had this be a table I could have just walked away from, i would have. But it was a match where one of us had to lose everything.

On hand fifteen, I lost with trips to a flush and I was back under 900.

On hand nineteen, the blinds were still at 10/20 and I was dealt AhTh. I made it 40 to go. He made it 160 to go. I called.

The flop was 8c 7h 9s, giving me an 8-way straight draw. He bet 160. I went all-in. It was a semi-bluff. I was hoping to buy it then and there and still have a draw if he called. He called with QsQc. I was about 44% to win, something less than a coin-toss.

The 5d and Qh fell on the turn and the river, respectively. I lost the hand and the match.

What I discovered was that I am still entirely capable of playing badly, and to keep playing badly even when I realized I was doing it.

Ironically, the last hand I played, the one that busted me, was probably one of the few I played well. I was aggressive with my AT suited and I made a decent semi-bluff after the flop when the board looked dangerous. That, it seems to me, is the right time to make that kind of a play when I was outchipped more than 2 to 1. Otherwise, I played the match like a fish.

I lasted a mere nineteen hands. Just seven minutes. but it wasn’t in vain–I learned something: Don’t be an ass.

I’m still in southern California. I’m still playing on line, but things are changing. One of my reasons for coming down here was to see a poker coach, Tony Guerrera. I’m beginning to think I may not do that this trip.

The reason I may skip him, at least until January, when I come down, again, is that I’ve been compiling a list of questions, that’s now five pages long. But even though I keep adding questions to the list, it doesn’t get any longer. The reason is that I keep taking earlier questions off the list because I’m discovering the answers myself.

I think answering questions myself is better than having someone else provide them. For one thing, I’m more apt to remember the answers when I’ve put work into deriving them, but more important is that the revelations I discover, when doing the work myself, provide illumination on other parts of the game.

One of the things I was going to ask Guerrera to address was the problem I was having with my endgame during the sit ‘n gos. I knew the bulk of the problem was that I wasn’t entirely sure how to play the shorthanded games.

The ultimate shorthanded game, of course, is heads up play, sometimes called match play, which is just two players. I said in the last posting that I’ve been reading John Vorhaus’ book, Killer Poker Online 2. In particular, I read Part II: Sitngos. (Notice, he spells it “sitngos” while I spell it “sit ‘n gos”. There’s no standardization of the spelling of many poker terms, yet.)

After a string of stinging sit ‘n go losses, where I was coming up short in the late stages, I knew it was time to get to the root of my problem. So, I decided to work backwards, from the ultimate shorthanded game–match play, to shorthanded games with two to five opponents, and then to full tables.

After I read chapter 6, Single Combat, in Vorhaus’ book, which is the third chapter of the section titled Part II: Sitngos, I took to playing in the online heads-up games. I got crushed in the first four matches I played. The funny thing was, it was clear to me why I was being handed my liver on a platter: I was not playing the way Vorhaus recommend. Why had I not been heeding his advice? Because I didn’t think it applied to me.

Really. I just didn’t think it applied to me because, in the past, I had always done well when playing heads-up poker. But what I failed to take into consideration is that it was almost always heads-up limit poker I’d been playing, and the few times I ventured to play no-limit heads-up, it was against other inexperienced players. Now, I was in against people, many of whom played a lot of it.

Once I began to heed Vorhaus’ advice, my fortunes were dramatically reversed.

My plan, now, is to play these heads-up matches until I feel I’ve mastered them, then go to shorthanded play, master that, then go back to full-blown sit ‘n gos. Once I’m comfortable with that, I’m going to begin playing multitable sit ‘m gos, the kinds of tournaments that are going to be like the multitable tournaments I want to play in next summer at the WSOP.

If you want to improve your ability to play heads-up, I can’t do better than recommend Vorhaus’ book.

• What’s he going to tell you? Briefly, he’s going to tell you arrogance helps. Really.
• The most exciting play in no-limit poker may be the all-in move, but it’s a tool you should rarely use.
• Small bets don’t matter much as far as the ultimate outcome goes, but the are very important for use in gathering information as you try to figure out what’s going on in your opponent’s head.
• He talks about how to wear your opponent down: “Build the pot, then take it away.”
• He says that unless you’re raising, you rarely have a reason to be in the pot.
• He also talks about what hands to raise with and which hands are worthless.

And there’s more.

If you’re serious about match play, this is a book to read. And if you crazy enough to think that the way to the WSOP is to work your game backwards, as I am, going from match play, to shorthanded play, to a full table, then to multitables, this is the book to start with.

I’m learning fast, but I have a long way to go.

At this very moment I’m in southern California, at my daughter’s, waiting for Thanksgiving dinner.

I’m still playing in the online sit ‘n gos, but I’m on a short hiatus because my return on investment (ROI) has plunged from over 20% to just 5% with a stinging string of losses. I’ve concluded that it’s part bad luck, part dumb plays.

I’m not discouraged because, at the moment, it’s not about the money, it’s about learning to play the game right. I stop playing when I don’t know what’s going on and spend time figuring it out. Figuring it out is work.

Just after I got here, I began reading a book my friend, Mike, gave me. It’s titled Killer Poker Online 2, and it’s by John Vorhaus. It’s lit a dim light in the tunnel of ignorance I’m still in. Using Vorhaus’ book, I’m illuminating the subtleties of this game. I’m confronting and answering my questions that arise, sometimes one question at a time, other times in groups, but it’s all happening in record time.

Now, keep in mind that no strategic or tactical plan in poker is a one-size-fits-all panacea for any of the situations I’m confronted with. But having a baseline strategy does give me an idea of what’s usually right, and I can use it or refuse it according to my current situation. Here’s some stuff I found useful in his book. It has to do with how to size my bets according to what stage of the sit ‘n go I’m in.

Early rounds (levels 1 to 3):
Play squeaky tight. Play only premium hands or premium positions.
In general, I want to be the one betting, not the one calling.
Record my opponent’s proclivities such as their betting patterns, what kinds of hands they’re likely to bet, call, or raise with, and what kinds of hands they’re likely to lay down.
Bring it in for for three times the big blind (3xBB).
Continuation bets (CBs) should be 2/3 the size of the pot. (You’re trying to, in the parlance of poker, give your opponents a “bad price” to play speculative hands while, at the same time, risking as few chips as possible.) Up until I read Vorhaus’ book, I’d been sizing my continuation bets to be 40% to 50% the size of the pot.

Middle rounds (levels 4 to 6):
Go into blind-stealing mode.
But still be careful. If someone plays back, give him the benefit of the doubt.
Bring it in for 2xBB instead of 3xBB.
CB should still be 2/3 pot.

Late rounds:
In general, don’t play unless I’m willing to go all-in.
But watch for opponents who will let me nibble them to death. (I’ve run into quite a few of those. They don’t last.)
Bring it in for at least 3xBB, but more often I should push.
CB should be at least 2/3 BB, but more often, if the hand’s worth playing, I should push.

When Mike called me, I thanked him for the book. It’ll help me settle my game. And vorhaus, by the way, is an excellent write.

I’m thinking of meeting with a poker coach named Tony Guerrera. It turns out he knows Vorhaus and has even collaborated with him on some books.
The trouble is, as I write down questions for him, I find myself answering them myself.
Still, I have five pages of questions, so far. It’s going to get longer.
If I opt not to see him this trip to southern California, I’ll see him when i come back down in January or February.

So, I’m still playing on line to get experience, but, as you can see, it’s also worth reading the books to:
1) Learn new things.
2a) Challenge your own knowledge when you discover what’s “wrong” in the books.
2b) Sometimes, you learn things that, though they’re valid, you can’t use because they don’t fit your style of play. So, they may be right for some people, but they’re wrong for you.

I’m still bent on playing at least one of the preliminary events in the WSOP in 2008 barring two things:
1) I can’t get my insomnia under control–and I seem to successfully be doing that, at the moment, so that problem may be solved.
2) I feel as though I’ve really missed the subtleties of the game and I feel as though discretion is the much better part of valor, and I decide to pass on it. But that doesn’t seem to be likely.

I had to take a few weeks off from online poker because…well, I have trouble multitasking. So, I had to decide whether to work on some things that are going to help me feed myself, keep a roof over my head, make my car payments, etc., or if I was going to choose to keep playing poker on line with the hopes of being in Las Vegas next summer for the 2008 WSOP, and to hell with eating, staying warm, and having wheels.

But, since next summer doesn’t happen until…well…next summer, I foolishly opted for the former and stopped playing poker for three weeks. But, I’m back at it.

And what was nice was that I seem to have come back refreshed.

All I’m playing, at the moment, are sit ‘n gos. What I’m trying to do is get over 20% Return on Investment (ROI) at a given buy-in, keep it for ten sessions, then move up. I figure ROI is the only way for me to truly measure my progress. Right now, my ROI is about 15.5%.

I can’t say I played error-free poker. I made a few egregious mistakes, the worst of which were that I made a “good” call on a bet when I was drawing to a straight on the river. I was getting good pot odds of about 4.5-1–plus some implied pot odds since I expected to get called if I made the straight and bet. But, as soon as I hit the “call” button, I realized, “It’s an INSIDE straight.” So my odds weren’t there. The river card came and I missed, and I had to fold when my loose opponent bet out. (That was where I knew my implied odds were.) Crap.

My last mistake was when I was heads-up at the end of my second sit ‘n go and I correctly read my opponent for not having two pairs, as I had, and got him all-in. If I’d read the board correctly, I’d have realized there was a possible straight and I’d have survived that hand. As it was, I misread the board, didn’t realize the straight could already be there, and it was, and I went broke. But, if I’m going to make mistakes, now’s the time to be making them. I’m still playing small stakes, and I’m making fewer and fewer blunders all the time.

Anyway, so far today, I’ve only played twice and I have a 1st and 2nd place. I may play once more.

I’m going down south for Thanksgiving to spend time with my youngest daughter, Monster. She’s been trying to get me to come down for months and only succeeded in extracting a promise, recently. But, while I’m down there, I’m thinking of seeing a poker coach. His name is Tony Guerrera. He’s written and collaborated on several poker books and has his own website. My friend Mike talked to him about me and told him I might want some sit ‘n go coaching. He also mentioned I want to play in at least one 2008 WSOP event.

Tony suggested I do the sit ‘n gos ,then learn to play the multi-table online tournaments. That was my plan from the start. apparently, he’s willing to do the coaching on both.

He also told Mike he thought the real online money was in short-handed, no-limit cash games. That’s no-limit cash games where there will be no more than six players at the table.

I read before that other players think that’s the game to play on line. But I’ve got to admit, I’m not sure how to play them. tony suggested I might want to learn how to play that, too.

I’m not sure how much money I’m going to spend on coaching lessons, but I expect it to be well-spent.

I said early on that I used to play a lot of poker. I don’t want to go into just how much. But it was all dealer’s choice limit games. And most of it was home games, lodge games, and the like. But I also played in the cardrooms of Gardena, California, where I did okay. However, poker has changed and, if I want to go back to it, I’ve got to change with it.

So, I am.

I’m learning how to play tournament no-limit hold’em because that seems to be what appeals to players nowadays. I realize it’s the result of hold’em tournaments shown on TV, but the whole poker explosion can be attributed to the same thing. So, tournament no-limit hold’em is what I’ll focus on.

Then, while getting back into the game, I also decided, a month or so ago, I’m going to enter at least one event in the 2008 WSOP. Most likely one of the $1500-buy-in no-limit hold’em events. Looking at the results of some of the 2007 events, they apparently pay about the top 9% of the finishers. By next summer I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think I have a chance of finishing in the dough. Most certainly I’ll have a better chance of finishing in the money if I enter than if I don’t.

And, if I finish well into the money, I’ll not only try a few other of the early events, I’d even consider putting some of the money aside to enter the $10,000-buy-in Main Event. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. My primary goals are to prepare myself and to get to Las Vegas and enter a tournament.

There’s be a four-stage learning process to getting ready to enter anything:
1. I’ve already started this step–playing in one-table sit ‘n gos on line–as well as some local sit ‘n gos I’ve found being played locally.
2. Once I feel comfortable with the one-table events, I’ll move on to online multi-table sit ‘n gos.
3. After I feel comfortable with those I’ll go to full-blown online tournamnets.
4. Last, I’ll play in some casino tournaments in California and Las Vegas.

I’m also reading. So far, the most important books have been:
Sit ‘n go Strategy by Collin Moshman
Harrington on Hold’em Vols. I, II, and III by Dan Harrington
Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide edited by Michael Craig
Read ‘em and Reap by Joe Navarro

Those are just the first books I’m using. There will be other ones. My friend, Mike, seems to have a penchant for finding interesting poker books long before I do. As he told me in a recent phone conversation, “I’m at the office,” meaning he was calling on his cell phone from a Border’s in southern California. He often follows this with: “I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” which means he’s found another useful book for me and he’s spending some of my money to buy it.

But besides reading what others have to say, I’m analyzing hands as I go along. That’s part of the reason for this blog: Going over the hands I play whether I win or lose them. Almost all situations I run into are going to recur again and again. I don’t want to have to be analyzing them, again and again, from scratch at the table.

Sometimes I’m going to lose a hand simply because a player has successfully sucked out. But other times it’s going to be because I play the hand wrong. I can’t do anything about the former, but I can about the latter.

For example, in my last post I described how I held pocket Nines and A K 9 fell on the flop. I’d never had that come up before, so I had to deduce how I should play them from scratch, right then and there. Similar situations are going come up in the future and I want to know how to think about them. The next time I see a situation like that I’ll know what I want to do. (That doesn’t mean I won’t get sucked out, it just means I’ll have made the right decision.)

In the meantime, my online play is going to be mostly at PokerStars. But, though I’m ahead, it’s not as far ahead as I’d like to be. And that’s because I have a lot more to learn. Later I’ll play on some of the other sites.

If you see a player named OEMac at PokerStars, hey, that’s me.

Here’s a hand from a tournament I played in in Medford, Oregon, this past Tuesday.

I was dealt 99 in the small blind. There were so many callers following me that I just decided to call when the betting came around. I hoped to hit a set. The flop came A K 9, rainbow, so I knew there was no chance I was facing a flush draw (except runner-runner) though there was the possibility of a 4-way inside-straight draw .

I checked, hoping someone following me would bet. The Big Blind, who had checked preflop, now bet out $200 in tournament chips. I hoped she’d made either a pair of Aces or a pair of Kings. Because of the way she plays, I was all but absolutely sure she couldn’t have made Aces and Kings; she would have raised with AK before the flop, and I knew she hadn’t made three Aces or three Kings because she’d have raised with those, preflop, also. But there was a chance she’d made two pairs, either Aces and Nines or Kings and Nines. But it didn’t matter because she’d have only two outs from the remaining forty-five cards to beat me, either one of the two remaining Aces or one of the two remaining Kings. (If the case Nine fell, she’d make a full house but I’d make quads.)

I reraised her $410. That’s right, $410. I often make odd-sized bets because the players find it disconcerting. Night after night they speculate on what it means. If the truth must be known, it doesn’t mean anything. I just do it because it changes what they should focus on (like looking for a legitimate tell on me or estimating the chances their holdings have against me.) But she was sure I had something good because I’m the tight-aggressive in this game and no one thinks I make bets like this without the god-awfuls. (And, usually, they’re right. But that misperception allows me to make some outrageous bluffs–and I never reveal my bluffs if they work.)

She called.

The turn put a second Ace on the board. The bet’s to me.

Here’s my question: What’s my play, and why.

Okay. It’s been a while. I’ve probably lost my entire blog audience, especially the audience for my poker blog. But, I’m back, and I’m going to keep a pretty regular update on poker entries, from here on out, because I’m now really getting into playing on line.

I’ll still be posting other stuff: political commentary, some ramblings, and, when I move into a place that’s bigger than the one where I am currently living, I’ll start posting on my drawings and paintings. Hey, you’re going to like them. There are going to be some nudes. But that won’t happen until I’m out of where I’m living and into a bigger place.

My first real poker post was titled A hand to consider: #1. The problem is that, after reading Collin Moshman’s book, Sit ‘n go Strategy, I still haven’t made up my mind whether I made the right play.

The best analysis of what I should have done, so far, came from whomever it is who has the site http://www.sitngotraining.com/. His insightful comments suggested I play a more conservative strategy than I did. But I’m still not sure.

And it doesn’t matter how the hand actually turns out. I want to make “correct” plays. A post I’m going to put up, later, will feature a hand where I made a call I probably shouldn’t have. But I made a miracle catch because I had only two outs to make my hand. The fact I won the hand is really irrelevant. I made a bad call. I don’t want to base my poker career on depending on the poker gods to create miracles for me.

However, let me tell you what happened in A Hand to consider #1 and what was going through my head when I did it.

When the bet reached me, I had to think fast and I was on unfamiliar territory since sit ‘n gos were new to me. But I figured since the big stack hadn’t raised, I wouldn’t put him on Aces. I also figured that if I went all-in he might fold, isolating me against the two who were already all-in. On the other hand, if he called, there’d be a side pot and my action was really against him, not the other two.

I say that because, if there were no one else in the pot, I’d be happy to put him all in playing heads-up with my Kings. And that became a major factor in my thinking.

I also figured that, if I win the side pot, it’s going to be about three times what I lose to one of the other two all-in players if I didn’t win the main pot. So, my real play was against the big stack and, unless he had a pair of Aces, I was a huge favorite to make money on this hand. I raised all in.

The big blind folded and we all turned up our cards.

Here were the hands:

The UTG had Jack of diamonds, ten of diamonds. Using the site http://twodimes.net/poker/ I later determine my Expected Value against him (without taking into account the cards in other hands) was 79.7%.

The first caller had Ace of diamonds, Ten of hearts and my EV against him was 71.4 %.

The Big stack had Five of hearts, Five of diamonds for a pair and my EV against him, my major opponent, was a whopping 80.5%.

Against the whole field my King of spades, King of hearts had an EV (and this does take into account all the cards was) 47.1% .

Mind you, I can lose to either of the small stacks (the chance I’d lose to one or the other of them was about 40%) and still make gobs of chips as long as I beat the pair of Fives, against which I was the biggest favorite.

I don’t recall the exact flop, but it was a nightmare. I didn’t exactly crap my pants, but it tripped the big stack’s Fives. I needed a King on the turn or the river, but it never came and the three fives stood up. He busted me and the other two players to win everything.

My night was over. I’d just finished fourth, one spot out of the money. Hello macaroni and cheese.

Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but I’ve rolled that hand over in my mind ever since. If you include the fold equity I had against the pair of Fives, along with the huge advantage I had over him unless he held anything but AA, I still think I made the right play. But maybe not.

Other opinions?

Mind you, I may have looked at this differently had he pushed, first, because I then had no fold equity. I may have concluded a fold on my part was in order.