Zero To Sixty

Okay, I’m incrementally getting better at taking calculated risks that return big investments. The trouble is that I’m still making mistakes. Some are little mistakes that have big consequences, while others are just bone-headed moves that have disastrous consequences. Today’s Absolute Poker freeroll had a good example of a small mistake and a good example of small risk with big payoff. First the small mistake.

I’ll cut to the chase: I faced these hold cards.

Formerly, I would muck this hand. But I had a big stack, and the blinds were small enough that I was playing a little more loose. Here’s the flop:

Having a big stack and the flexibility it brings is nice! Here I am flopping a set. Very nice.

My only concern was the flush draw. Without thinking I put in a half pot raise. The exact moment I put it in, I was cursing myself. A good player would see the potential of nabbing my stack with a flush and would call a small raise. The upside was just too juicy. The person behind me called instantly, and the turn fell:

I can’t believe it. I simply forgot everything I had been studying the past two days and it immediately comes back to haunt me! I made a big bet as a feeler (he could have been bluffing!), which was mistake number two, and he instacalled. The next card was another spade, so even if he didn’t hit the flush on the turn, he definitely had it on the river. Ugh.

Now let’s go back to a good hand.

Tenth hand of the tournament. Binds are 25/50. I face a preflop raise holding this:

It was a decent raise, but not extravagant. With two high cards and a flush draw, I decided to call. The flop came:

Pre-flop raiser raised double the pot, which was significant, but I had a flush draw and a backdoor straight possibility, so there was no way I was folding with the potential of pulling in his whole stack. Here’s what fell:

No flush, but now I had four more outs for a gutshot straight with the higher card. My opponent raised again, but with the all the outs I now faced, I was fairly certain I would nab his stack if I hit the 9 or the flush. I was thinking that my opponent had something strong, perhaps pocket kings, but not enough to confidently go all-in. I totally felt the risk was worth it. The river fell:

I had the nuts unless my opponent was holding KQ, which I considered highly unlikely considering I had a Q. My opponent went all-in, which was my goal all along, and I quickly called. He turned over:

I’m not sure why he went all-in with a straight on the board. My best guess is that he was trying to bluff me off the pot, making it look like he held a Q or even KQ. Unfortunately, he was facing someone… with the Q!

If you can’t really begin to learn until you realize just how much you don’t know then I’m hitting that point with poker. I’ve memorized opening hole cards. I understand the concepts of pot odds and outs. I’ve mastered my emotions so that I have the discipline and patience to pick my spots, but after reading through Matthew Hilger’s Texas Holdem: Odds And Probabilities I feel like I’m still a rank amateur.

Looking over the concept of stack sizes, assessing effective implied pot odds, and the winning odds of things like backdoor straights and belly buster straights just adds a whole level of complexity that I didn’t even consider. I mentioned this in my “donk” post earlier, but it bears repeating: In no-limit, it sometimes makes sense to make plays that you normally wouldn’t.

This is going to be a real challenge for me, as it adds quite a bit of mathematical complexity. Imagine figuring out the odds of hitting a two gapped straight draw from the flop to the river with one overcard, while also assessing the implied odds of a stack going all-in including what the turn bet will be. Not easy.

One change for me is that I’m much more likely to play low pairs, especially against significant raises, as the odds of hitting a set, while low, can pay off huge in no-limit tourneys. In fact, this happened to me tonight, and while the result wasn’t what I hoped, the actual play was pitch perfect to my mind:

It’s early in an Absolute Poker Freeroll. I’m in late position with a bunch of typical loose freeroll players. Blinds are only $25/50 and the key players have early stacks in the $1500 to $2500 range. My stack sits at $1420. I’m dealt:

A loose player raises to $250. In the past I would fold 55 immediately. But it’s clear that I could easily win this guy’s whole stack if I hit a set and take him to the river. So even though the odds of me hitting a set are low with the pot size, the effective odds with me nabbing his whole stack (something like 25 to 1) are too good to pass up. I figure I’ll hit the flop, miss the set and fold. A player behind me also calls, and three of us go to the flop. The flop comes:

And just like that I hit my set. My next worry is to make sure it will hold. At this point I have two thoughts: Are there any traps for me and how can I extricate two full stacks with this?

I was relatively unconcerned about the flop. There are no flush dangers yet, and the only straight possibility is 34. While 34 is a possible holding I found it highly unlikely. Of course, there is always the possibility that he or the other person were holding 66 and have me beat with a higher set, but I found it more likely that I was facing something from AA to even JT from the maniac.

The answer to my second question came quickly: Loose player in early position went all-in. I pushed, and late position player also went all-in. Loose player showed:

Loose player went all in with top pair and mediocre kicker. His only hope is to hit the hail mary straight with an 89, 34, or 48 dropping. Possible, but a pretty big long shot. I, of course, showed my triple 5s, but then late player showed his hand:

Another favorable holding for me! Even if he hits a set I beat him. His only hope is drawing a 3 on the turn or river, which is around 4.5 to 1 against. I have a 70% chance of winning both stacks, and it happened because I called with this scenario entirely in mind! Unfortunately for me, here is what the turn and river delivered:

And late caller hits his hail mary straight on the river! I have to admit that it didn’t really bring me down. If I’m in that position 7 out of 10 times I’m walking away with two big stacks.

I need to do a lot more analysis and study of how various holdings can play out to the river with the effective implied odds, but my rudimentary knowledge has already improved my game, if not my results… yet.

We’ve all experienced it: A lousy player (a donk) makes stupid bets that go against all odds, and then hit their set, their straight, or their flush on the river, winning a huge pot. It is frustrating, and I have even written about these bad beats in earlier posts. But in reading over Matthew Hilger’s fantastic Texas Hold’em Odds And Probabilities you start to see why this works. The answer is effective implied odds.

The nuance that many people miss (including myself) is that betting down someone using pot odds is wrong. If the player is reasonably confident of pulling you into an all-in scenario, the odds aren’t pegged to the pot, but to your stack. Look at it this way: If my stack is $1,000 and I have a hand that I’m confident is the best, and I’m playing against a typical freeroll maniac, even pot-sized bets of $100 or more may not get them off drawing to a flush or straight. Why? Because if they hit, they will possible get my whole stack. This puts their implied odds much higher than the 2:1 odds that the pot shows. They are closer to 10:1, which is well worth drawing into for many big hands, from a set to a flush.

This is one of the reasons that freerolls are so hard to play. The implied pot odds can become staggeringly complex. Whether you can you draw this player into an all-in is actually in important question you need to answer when assessing preflop, as well as post-flop decisions. It also makes it quite lucrative to play much looser than you normally would, especially in early play.

Generally speaking I’m a tight player. But in early freeroll play, the implied odds are off the scale with players willing to go all-in at the drop of a hat. I would normally fold 22 or 33, but I’ve started playing those solely for the possibility of hitting a set. Why? The odds of hitting the set are 7.5 to 1, which is generally stupid for most pots pre-flop. But when you do hit the set, if you can ambush someone into an all-in, your odds are very much in your favor. I never thought of this until I read Hilger’s book.

What’s quite interesting is that last night I played 33 and hit a set on the flop. I called some big bets and called an all-in push on the turn. I ended winning his whole stack. These opportunities were completely lost to me before I started thinking this way.

The downside is that you can use the concept of effective implied odds to justify playing practically any hand at any time, which is a pretty big mistake. First of all, you aren’t going to get everyone to stumble into an all-in when you hit a set. Post-flop play thus becomes key. If a player bets high enough, you may have some very difficult decisions: It is quite possible that calling makes sense if he is going to risk his stack but doesn’t make sense if he gets out against a big raise. Secondly, stack size is also important. Taking a flyer on hitting a set is not the best way to use your chips if you’re stack is dwindling. Thirdly, position is important. Leading into someone is not as good as having position on them. You want them to feel like they are the aggressor and setting the tone. Otherwise, it will be harder to trap them into an all-in.

But let’s go back to those maniac donks who appear with massive stacks early in freerolls. Is that a good strategy? Well, it is in early rounds. When you consider practically any hand can win with significant (although not always good) odds, a donk only needs to catch 2 or 3 all ins in a row before they start rolling. If they hit 3 all ins, bet through and miss on 3 large (but not full stack) donk bets in a row, and then catch another all in, pretty soon they are making significant progress based solely on their stack size and the massive effective implied odds of people willing to go all-in.

Ironically, the best friend of donks are 1) other donks and 2) tight players who don’t appreciate the effective implied odds of a freeroll. It’s the second category that can really fuel a donk through the middle of a tournament. Powering through long odd bets after long odd bets against good players for the payoff of one all-in win is a strategy that can work.

Many decent players won’t respect the power of a draw and will just assume the donk is playing a middle pair or top pair with weak kicker. They are foolishly hoping for an all-in, thinking that when the river finally comes they can earn their payoff. When that third suit hits the table or a potential straight draw card falls, they convince themselves that this couldn’t possible be what the donk was aiming for. After all, the odds were soooooo long against it. So they go all-in and find that, indeed, the long draw was exactly what the donk was hoping for.

I did this a lot over the past few weeks, so I’ve experienced it firsthand.

What stops a donk? Well, when all the other donks start falling out of the tournament, the donk all-in bets will start to go against real hands and their stacks start to collapse. Also, when you get toward the mid to late part of a tourney those all-in bets with flush draws and straight draws on the board start to go away. As a result, the effective implied odds of a donk strategy plummet, and they start bleeding chips.

How about starting out with a totally donk strategy for the first 30 minutes or hour of a tournament and then converting to a tight solid play strategy? Well, there are places where I’ve seen this actually recommended. This is actually a decent idea for beginners, but a much better play is to use actual strategy and probability to guide your decisions. Make each decision tactical and dependent on the situation.

But that’s not easy to do.

I feel pretty good despite the fact that my bankroll is still pathetically low. The reason is that I can see some real growth in my play. All of these grind-it-out tourneys against maniacs and loose players seem to be a pretty good training ground.

On example of progress is in the Carbon Poker Funstep sit’n'go tourneys. These are play money sit’n'gos where when you get past the first two rounds, you actually play for $1 in real money in the third round. In the past I’ve had to play about 4 times or more in round 1 tourneys to win and move on to a round 2 one. Now I’m pretty much a lock to move on to round 2.

One of the differences is that I’m getting better at heads up play. Playing heads up over and over again is grueling, but I’m starting to see some real patterns develop and an underlying key strategy. It’s obvious but not easy: Minimize your losses from middling and poor hands and maximize your profits from big hands.

To my mind this often means folding against early raises. I guess if I think about it, favorable pot odds in heads up are hard, if not impossible. So playing for any kind of draw is dubious unless you have an extraordinary number of outs.

One side effect of this is that if I have a much bigger stack it can be incredibly demoralizing playing against me heads up. I just don’t call a lot of bets unless I have a good hand, and them I’d most likely re-raise. As a result, it takes someone a LONG time to make progress against me. I like that.

Anyway, I feel good. I’m getting better, and it’s starting to show in my results.

I was doing very well in the Absolute Poker $50 nightly Freeroll when I got kicked going all in with AA. It was me against two other players and the one had 85 (can you believe it?) and the other had K5. Guess what flopped? Yes, TWO fives! My AA not only didn’t hold up, they came in last in a three way pot!

It’s quite disheartening, let me tell you. I’m really feeling that I’m dong better now, too. So when I get into the top 200 heading into the home stretch and then lose to a total long shot. Ugh. It is just so frustrating.

Oh well, at least it wasn’t real money!

Hit the flop with multiple players holding QQ in my hand and in last position. With all three flop cards below 10, the player under the gun went all in. Seeing nothing other than trips and AA or KK as beating me, I figured that I had a good chance on the all-in. Trouble was that I had no bead on the player who went all-in, so I had to basically play the odds.

He turned over KK. Rats!

So I got kicked out with a good stack and in a solid top 200 position (400 people left in the tournament) in a $1K freeroll. Oh well, next time!

Binds were $200, and I folded KJ suited to a $725 raise. If it was a loose player I had a handle on I would have called, but at a new table and an unknown entity… I folded.

After a few days of just drifting for one reason or another, I’m back in the swing of things with the Players Only Monday Night Football Freeroll. It’s a big money freeroll–$1000 with an extra $100 for every point scored during MNF. At first break I’m in 394th place out of 948 remaining players (3,000 players started).

I’m playing incredibly tight, sticking directly to card groups 1-6. So far I’ve won two all-ins with a triple and a full house and lost $500 to a bad beat where I had top pair (kings) and lost to pocket aces. That I didn’t lose all-in is the good message there and indicative of my pretty good play.  We’ll see how it goes.

One of the key elements of poker is knowing your “outs,” which is to say how many cards can improve your hand. This is generally looked at in terms of calculating your own odds to win, but I hit a situation today where knowing the outs on the board would have prevented a mistake by myself.

The situation was that there was a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw in the flop. I had top pair and top kicker. Normally, this is enough to win, and with a big enough bet, this would be enough to weed out most draws. The problem is that with the flush/straight draw possibilities, even a big bet may not scare some people off. That was the case tonight.

I knew that the outs would create very positive pot odds unless I did something drastic, so I went all-in. The trouble is that there were just so many outs available that two other people went all-in with me. At that moment I knew I was lost. This was an important lesson–with so many outs on the board, risking an all-in is very unwise.

I generally use a reference of starting hands so that I don’t get too loose on my opening bets. I misplaced it and found myself just playing “off the cuff.” The result has been some pretty poor poker by me. I got very undisciplined and lazy. I was playing hands I never should be playing like Q8 and I was betting aggressively with middle pair in poor position.

The good news is that I quickly realized this was an issue and got back on track. I did break one of my rules and immediately got burned for it. I generally will never go all-in with unpaired cards unless one is an ace. A very loose player went all-in, and I had KQ. His range of hands could have gone everywhere from AA to T9. I put him on a mediocre hand and went all-in. He had A9, but it was the A that killed me… he won with A high, and my rule proved to be there for a reason: Ace high on all ins is a fairly common winning hand when pairs aren’t in the pockets.