Mad Man Poker

I would like to talk about some poker mishaps and mantras that frustrate or intrigue a lot of people. Some loose bits and pieces, that fit in nowhere else, and can never hurt to read and take in once more.

The donkey: fishes have more luck than I do! Why?

The answer is actually extremely simple. This one bugged me for months before it all fell into place.

The bad player (fish) is known to play more hands, when you play more hands, you catch more miracles. Since those hands are more likely to stay in your memory, fishes are more likely to look lucky, while all they do is catch more cards, because they play more. Fortunately there is an easy cure for this and it is called math. When you make bad players pay for every draw and pick up your odds when they wrongfully bet into you, in the end you’re mathematically supposed to come out on top in the long run. Add to the mix that most fishes can be read like a book if you only make a small effort to watch them and this “mantra” will bug you no longer. In the end, these are the players that will also pay you off when you’re nut flush beats their top pair top kicker when a decent player would have folded when the third card of your suit hit.

Draws and me are no friends, I play them, but usually miss out anyway! What am I doing wrong?

You’re counting wrong. A standard open ended straight draw nowadays is played like the stone cold nuts in Hold’em. But let’s count together, shall we? An open ender gives you 8 outs with 2 streets to come. That roughly comes down to 32 to 33 procent chance of hitting your open ender. Newsflash kid, your draws usually do miss. About 2 out of every 3 times! The ultimate solution is realising that if you play big on a draw you do NOT want your opponent to call. It’s a bluff. A semi-bluff, but still, a bluff. Don’t play your hands hoping the other guy calls. 2 out of every 3 times you’ll loose! And bluffing is an art, it should be handled with care. The only time you can start wondering if your draws are the best hand here is when you combine an open ended straight draw with a very strong flush draw. Also, your outs are always taken out of the best possible scenario. Chances are in a full ring game that a lot of your outs are gone already or in the hands of one of your opponents.

The guy next to me must have found a way to see my cards! He lays down when I’m strong, he raises when I’m bluffing. How does this guy do it?

This one is funny, because it happens almost everywhere and mostly online. When coming across this one in a live game it’s usually a concern for the internet kids. The reason why this is happening has nothing to do with magic or cheating. You’re simply not varying your play enough. I wish I could say that the guy next to you is probably an amazing player and just picks up a lot of tells on you, which, of course, is also always a possibility, but the truth is mostly a lot more plain than that. You become predictable and need to change gears more often. Any decent player heeding betting patterns, usually looks right through obvious bluffs and value betting monsters.

This one is extremely important to keep in mind, since apart from having a predictable style most players end up in a group of players that is pretty much fixed and a lot of the time you run head first into this problem because your tablemates start to know you a little bit too well.

When I raise, people tend to call me more easily than they do the rest of the table.

Actually they don’t! It just seems this way, since it is easier to end up with “I always get called” than it is to figure out “this guy always calls”. When playing a full ring game, pots nowadays are rarely won preflop in a cashgame. Of your 8 opponents, somebody is bound to have a hand. The only way of being sure that someone is being put on a decision is letting him face a reraise. In all other cases we probably get to a flop. It could of course be that you have a loose image, in which case you should adapt your style, not your expectations, but this one is too widely spread to just be limited to us aggressors. Everyone sometimes feels like he’s not able to simply make a steal. Truth is, this is not a stealing environment anymore when you’re not prepared to make a big steal.

Heads up play is such a lottery. You just push hyper aggressive bets and then see who has the best cards. Why would I want to play it?

First of all, because heads up play is the new ring game. About 70% of all action out there nowadays is at least short handed and a lot of it heads up.

Let me assure you, by the way that it is hardly a lottery. Even more, if you play too aggressive in a one-on-one match you will be amazed to all of a sudden notice that all small pots go to you for about 95% of the total amount played, but when a big pot is building up it’s your foe taking it down. I see a lot of people relying on constant pressure but not backing it up by putting higher standards into the pots where they do get opposed. Newsflash: if you have top pair and the other guy starts pushing for the first time in 20 hands: FOLD! You are up against at least two pair! When you are able to pick up a lot of pots, give me one good reason to get tangled in a big one if you’re not holding a monster! Even more, if you can put out the signal that you do not overpush on every hand, maybe the other guy can be found prepared to come out of his shell, giving you action. When you get action in heads up, the only thing you have to do now is back it up with a big game.

Limit games are so boring! They give no thrill!

Well, in essence you’re right. The thrill factor is a lot less in limit games, but is highly compensated by the fact that now you have to play far more strategically. No limit let’s you save a hand you misplayed by pushing everyone out with strong bets. Limit games require a strict and disciplined game plan from the start of the hand up until the very end. It’s far more mathematical and far more strategically challenging. A lot of players nowadays seem to be video gamers as well, and I’m going to use it to clarify my point here. No limit games are the Shoot’em ups. You walk into a room and start popping at everything that moves! Limit games are the strategic shooters. If you blindly put out round after round, soon enough your gun will be empty, your head full of bullet holes and the game lost.

Also, this may look extremely logical reading it here, and still I see a lot of mistakes against this principle: Your limits are too low! If you play 5c/10c no limit, then off course 5c/10c limit is going to bore the hell out of you! When you cut out the unlimited betting part, you should bear in mind that you should up your limits for the same “thrill” in betting. Playing 5c/10c no limit easily puts you at the level of a standard 25c/50c limit game or even higher.

Well, that should give you enough to think about for now.

As promised, this article will be about some tricks to train your read and instinctive reactions in a poker game.

 

Having a pristine read is more than a benefit while playing. It can sometimes mean the difference between giving up on a doubtful hand and winning on a monster call!

 

A first exercise I always advise new players to start on is “10 lies”. During the course of an entire evening, you and a friend tell each other little trivial facts. Literally one after the other, but in those facts are 10 lies. The one who can figure out the most lies in the other player’s stories is the winner of the game. I used to play this game during the year I played regularly in Ghent and people there even played this with stakes (every discovered lie is a point, every truth your opponent puts on a lie is a point and every point is worth a fixed amount of money).

This game teaches you to look for physical tells in a person and makes you analyse automatically how the pitch of a voice can change when someone is telling a lie. You’ll soon notice 3 things:

-         when someone lies, he usually is looking away from you or is very artificially looking straight at you

-         a liar usually brings up very strange details in his story. Too many details can also be a point of interest while analysing a story.

-         Only a limited amount of people is able to lie “in their own words”, look for phrases or structures your opponent would only seldom or even never use. What you are looking for here are things that you would hear on TV or read in a book, but is no part of your everyday lingo.

 

A second fun game away from practising while actually playing is “blind man’s bluff”.
You get dealt a normal Texas Hold’em hand, but in stead of looking at it and keeping it hidden from your opponents, you hold them against your forehead so everyone except you can see them.

The only way now of knowing what your hand is, is looking for tells in the other players.

What you are usually looking for are quick looks to your hand when someone else is taking some sort of an action.

For example: You see a player quickly glancing at your forehead when the strongest hand around the table (for as far as you could see) folds. Chances are that you have the best hand now.

This off course also works the other way around, is the weakest one folding, then automatically people will start looking for the new low cards. Most of these looks are a subconscious reflex and are over in a split second.

This game teaches you not only how to pick up tells from people, but also how to calculate your chances of having a better hand against any opponent.

 

The ultimate reading game however, is bluff poker. This game is not played with cards, but with 5 dice and a closed cup.

The dice go up from a 9 to an ace.

No flushes are possible, there are only 2 straights, a small one (9 to K) and a large one (10 to A).

The different combinations go:

-         ace high (check it, the lowest combination is A, Q, J, 10, 9)

-         one pair

-         two pair

-         the small straight

-         three of a kind

-         the large straight

-         full house

-         four of a kind

-         poker (five of a kind)

You can state every hand undefined (just saying “I have three of a kind”, but not stating whether these are 9’s or aces) or defined (saying “I have three of a kind queens”), where a defined hand of course always beats an undefined.

You start the game by mixing the dice in the cup, you then sneak a peak what is under it and state your hand. The player to your left then has to decide whether you’re telling the truth or bluffing.

If he doesn’t believe you, he lifts the cup for everybody to see. Were you in fact lying, then he wins the game, did you tell the truth, then you win.

If he does believe you, he may now take a peak under the cup, if he wants to, he may even take dice from under it and put them on the table. He then shuffles the dice in the cup and states a new hand. This hand has to beat the previous one.

The game continues until someone pulls up the hood or poker is reached. The winner of the last game, starts the new one.

This game teaches you how to bluff, since the game gives you no choice but to bluff, from time to time. But also teaches you how to pick out a bluff from an opponent.

 

Well, These three games should give you some fun and practice away from the green felt.

 

Until next time, take care.

 

Should you have any questions, see if you dare to call me first!

 

The Mad Man

Wow, wow, wow!

Have you read Thomas’ post on mickeycpoker.be ?
I just have to respond, there’s no way around it!

Do i push Under the Gun ?
Sure! Don’t you ?

The only question you have to keep in the back of your head when shoving UTG is “when”.
I don’t see a lot of possibilities, but sure, there are some.

1. You are the short stack and need to find momentum, pick up a hand somewhat decent and desperately need chips. At this point your position is redundant, you take away the play of early and late position anyway with your all-in.
   Mind you that I said SHORT STACK! In a tournament where you start on 1500 chips, going down to 1000 on blinds 15/30 doesn’t make you a short stack, it makes you an idiot who got trigger happy and whose fingers should be amputated, effectively excluding you from any future online stupidity.
2. You’re up against a much stronger field and want to establish that you don’t fear them, Chances of gettin called are slim, especially when you pull this stunt early on, but just to make sure, don’t go pulling this idiocracy with substandard hands, please. And remember: when facing a stronger field in a ring game, the best tactic is still getting up and finding a table more to your suiting.
3. You are one of the better players at the table and pushing like a maniac makes your table mates very frustrated.  Nothing funnier than making your opponents run into the red obviously showing you have their number with your reads and can push whenever you damn well please, since they clearly have nothing anyway.
4. You have the best hand and a reputation of maniacly pushing your chips to the middle of the table. Basicly, you’re the nutcase on aces, and will have a bigger chance of getting called than your rocky friends with all their tight plays.
   Imagine you’ve been frustrating your table with some badly timed shoves, stopped it because the risk of getting a steaming caller got too high and all of a sudden, you find a monster in your hand. SHOVE! now! Do you pick up another uncontested pot? Good, from now on you’ll only push on monsters. Eventually someone will want to see what you’ve been messing around with.

Let me eliminate an urban legend about agressive play for you.
A lot of people see maniac plays as “the easy way out”. Players going for the “insane play” are considered impatient, and lacking more playable options and a trustworthy read on other players. The truth is far from that.

You already might have noticed that I proclaim training your read quite a lot. Pick up tendencies, betting paterns, little tics in other players and build your assessments on it.
Let me add that in order to “hack and slash” your way around a poker table you definately need the self control to await your moment and be stealthy enough to show one thing, but do another.

Playing aggressivly is more than just pushing it all in to drop all playing possibilities. Sometimes the most spectacular result comes from kicking the right straw.

Do you find a plausible reason to push UTG?! Please do so, mixing it up this way can off course run you down in a jiff, but when succesful, you’ll see monster profits.

The Mad Man