Change I Can Believe In

In this scene from D2, the sequel to The Mighty Ducks, Coach Bombay is missing from Team USA's sidelines. The team's tutor Michele McKay is trying her best to fill in for him, and although she has absolutely no idea what she is doing, even she can see the obvious.

McKay: "We look tired out there. We need to ... trade places."

The kids exchange a confused glance.

McKay: "Uh, new players?"

Charlie Conway: "Ohhh. Say 'Change it up.'"

McKay: "Change it up."

Charlie: "Scream it."

McKay: "CHANGE IT UP!!!"



Immediately five players come out of the game and are seamlessly replaced by five fresh players from the bench. The entire exchange takes two seconds.

McKay: "Cool!"
_ _

As you may recall from this post, I was pretty much raised by this film. I grew up in a pretty strict household, so we didn't get to see too many movies that were rated higher than PG. We happened to have D2 on VHS (I know), and since this was one of the few pre-teen movies in the house, my sisters and I watched it over and over and over. Maybe I should make this the second in a series of life lessons gleaned from the Mighty Ducks franchise. Could turn out to be cathartic.

I had been on a sick run playing the $1-2 No Limit at the Hustler Casino of late. But the past two sessions were losing ones for me. The amounts weren't huge (-$45 and -$190) compared to what I've been winning, but after last night I am starting to feel that I need to change it up.

But I don't want to mess with my playing strategy, as that has been wildly successful for the most part. I'm thinking of a more dramatic shift, at least temporarily. I'm talking switching to stud for a little while, because in the last two sessions I could really feel myself starting to get frustrated with grinding for hours and playing really tight, only to get it all in with a big pair against someone who decided to call a big raise with a goofy high-card/low-card hand and flopped a monster.

Of course, there are a lot of suckouts in limit stud as well -- indeed, I daresay there are more. But it is tougher to get stacked on a single hand in that game. You only have to pay off one or two bets to find out if the deck screwed you again. I am hoping it will be a nice change of pace. Ideally I'll win there for a while, and then once I start to get frustrated with that I can switch back to hold'em. Or maybe play some Omaha-8 if I can find a game where the stakes are high enough.

I'll let you guys know how it works out.

Phillip D. Ivey makes the Main Event Final Table

As often has been the case with proposition bets between my blogmate Billy and myself, our World Series of Poker Fantasy League has come right down to the wire. With the card player formerly known as No Home Jerome making the November Nine, it looks like I've got a bit of a sweat.



The way that our league is structured, Ivey needs to take at least third place in order for Billy to pass me in the points and win the league. But if Phil continues to make mistakes like this, my lead might be pretty safe. We will find out in two weeks ...

Setting Limits: The Good & The Bad (Part II)

In my last post, I discussed a few of the positives and negatives about setting limits for how much I lose per session.

How about win limits? This is where a player decides that if they get ahead a certain amount of money, they will be happy and quit for the day. For professional grinders, this is often called "making their daily nut." The beauty of this is that you set your goal, you reach your goal, and then you can go about the rest of your day happy that you have booked a nice win. You also prevent yourself from losing it all back. On the surface, this sounds like a pretty good strategy for a winning player to have.

But it has a few problems. One of them is pretty obvious. If I set a win limit, I am literally limiting the amount that I can win. So if I am in a very profitable game, and playing really well, I'm forcibly removing myself from the ideal poker situation. If my win limit is $300, and I reach it, I never allow myself to have +$1,000 days on those days that a really awful player shows up to unload his paycheck to the poker economy. I would miss out on the really gargantuan scores that we all drool for. And since you never know in poker when you are going to go on a dry spell and have several losing sessions in a row, you want to have some major wins to counteract those rougher patches.

Another problem is when you are just short of the target, but for whatever reason the table conditions are no longer optimal. Sticking with the $300 example, say I get up to $280, then lose a pot by getting outdrawn and am down to $240. Further assume that the donkey that just doubled up off me hits and runs and the remaining players are all tough tricky players with deep stacks. Do I want to continue in the game just to get over that $300 hump? A problem with setting targets is that it can become too much of a focus and get in the way of other important aspects of the game.

I think the top professional players would say that setting win targets/limits is not the best way to go, for the reasons I have described. But there are several lower-level grinders who swear by this method. They put in their time at the table, and if they hit their target early they are free to do whatever they want with the rest of their time. Personally I agree with the top pros that it isn't the ideal thing to do, but honestly I find myself doing it sometimes. Since I don't have an enormous bankroll, it is very important for me to regularly book winning sessions. So for whatever stakes I am playing, generally if I quadruple my buy-in, I start thinking about making an exit. I may play a little longer to see if I can go even further. But if I buy in for $100 and am able to take my stack to $450, I generally will tell myself I will play on but if I get below a stack of $400 I will call it quits. Or something along those lines. However, I leave myself the flexibility to stay in the game if my opponents are playing very poorly and I am playing very well. So I avoid giving back my winnings but also have the option to win more.

Finally, there are time limits. Time limits have a lot in common with win limits. You play up until a certain point and then you stop no matter what. Up, down, doesn't matter. This way you can just focus on playing to the best of your ability, and don't worry so much about winning or losing in individual sessions. You play your career like one long poker session, and if you are a winning player, the results be there in the long run. Like punching a clock. Players do this because they are self-aware enough to realize that they generally start to play worse after a certain length of time passes. They get bored. They get tired. Whatever the reason, they only want to play for so long each time out.

The problem with this method is that it doesn't take into account the conditions of the table on a particular day. Even if I play in the same cardroom, at the same level five days in a row, I might encounter five unique sets of table conditions that may be either good for me or not so good. So instead of playing for four hours on each of those days, it might make more sense for me to play for eight hours against the worst players, and only three hours on the other days.

I am not a huge fan of time limits on poker sessions. (At least not self-imposed ones; many times you have to leave for other reasons. I get that.) I think if you have the flexibility to do so, you should be able to quit at any point and to stay for as long as the game is good and you are playing well. Like it or not, we are not always in the mode of playing our A+ game. So I think it is wise to capitalize on those times when we are.

So, that's my two cents regarding setting limits. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me, but as The Wife can attest, it probably wasn't. Nevertheless, I would sum up by saying that I think stop-losses are good, but winning targets and time limits may not be (though I am guilty of setting win targets myself). See ya next time.

Setting Limits: The Good & The Bad (Part I)

For everyone who has ever gambled in his or her life, I'm sure this will sound like a familiar scenario. You are playing your game of choice and having a good time (blackjack, poker, slots, whatever). You get really lucky, go on a great run, and find yourself up quite a bit of money. You briefly consider quitting while you are ahead, but you're having so much fun and the money is flowing so easily that you're not ready to leave just yet.

Then suddenly, things take a turn for the worse. You get really unlucky on a play, and after that it seems like you just can't catch a break. You slowly start to lose the money that you have built up, and maybe you even start making riskier wagers to get back to your former heights. "If I can just get back to where I was before," you tell yourself, "I will call it a day and be happy."

But you can never quite get back there, and eventually you lose it all. As you leave the gambling arena to move on to your next activity, you mentally beat yourself up for not leaving sooner. Even if you had only left with half your winnings, it would have been a great score. "Why did I have to get so greedy?" you silently wonder.

Ever happen to you?

It used to happen to me all the time at the poker table. Back when I was first starting out going to casinos, I hadn't quite learned to control my aggression at the poker table. This resulted in me taking my $50 buy-in and running it up to $250 in a very short period of time, only to lose it all back again with an ill-timed bluff or questionable value bet. Back then, $200 was all the money in the world to me, and even losing the $50 buy-in was often more than I could honestly afford. So the first lesson I had to learn was never to gamble with money that I needed for other things. That is one limit that I don't think any gambler should EVER cross.

But that isn't exactly what this post is about. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that I have a poker bankroll that is used strictly for poker, and if I lose all of it I will be all right financially. The question I would like to address is, within that bankroll of X # of buy-ins, does it make sense to have a per-session limit to how many buy-ins I allow myself to lose? Is a two or three buy-in stop-loss good for me as a poker player, considering I generally am playing against weaker opponents?

There are other types of limits that a player can set as well. I can set a limit on the amount that I win, and I can set a limit on the length of time I play in a given session. I would like to consider the pros and cons of each type of limit, and share those thoughts with you.

First, loss limits or stop-loss. Now, there are some players that have excellent discipline at the poker table. They are able to recognize when they are playing on tilt, when they are outmatched, or when the table conditions are otherwise unfavorable and they just get up and quit for the day.

I am not one of those players. In the games that I play now, I am often one of the most seasoned players in the game, and I typically have a large edge over my typical opponents. So whenever I get loser, I tend to think that I can still outplay my opponents so I should keep reloading until things begin to turn around. I even have a few huge comeback wins in cash games that could support that exact conclusion. However, there are some times when I really am outclassed in a game and refuse to admit it, or think that I have gotten over a bad beat when I really haven't. And I know that I do not play my best when I'm stuck (no one does), but I will continue to buy more chips over and over until I have no money left in my wallet. So I think for me, a stop-loss is a good thing. If I only take a few buy-ins with me, then I can be forced to go home, cool down, and attack the game again the next time. (But with the ATM's inside the casinos, I have to leave the ATM card at home too! Or at least in the car.)

In the next post, I will address win targets and time limits. Should be tomorrow, unless I get too lazy.

Bet-Sizing with the Nuts

Once in a while, we as poker players find ourselves in the enviable position of holding the stone cold nuts on the river. Ideally in these spots, we like our opponents to also have monster hands that are second best so that we can get paid off handsomely and drag enormous pots. Often, however, our opponents will have much weaker hands than we do, and we must determine what the optimal bet size should be, i.e., how to get them to put in as much money as possible.

Let me use an example from a recent hand that I played. The game is $1-2 No Limit. I have been playing tight on a table with several loose aggressive players. After one such LAG limps in, I raise to $10 in middle position with A-K offsuit. The LAG is my only caller. After the rake is deducted, we are contesting a pot of $18. His stack after the call is $125 and I have him covered.

The flop comes down A-K-2 all different suits. He checks, and I check it back to him. Against this loose player's range, top two pair is a little bit too strong to bet. I feel that I have to let him catch up a little, or maybe induce a bluff from him on the next street. Free card, the pot remains at $18.

The turn is another Ace. I have just made the nut full house and, even better, my opponent quickly bets out $15. Bingo! The way this is going, I rate to win a very nice pot on this hand. However, I elect to just call at this point. The reason? I feel it is STILL a little too early to tip him off to the strength of my hand. I am almost certain that he does not hold an Ace. There really are not too many hands that he could hold that would call a raise from me here. But if I flat call him, he may try and push me out of the pot on the river. I am giving him a chance to make a mistake. The pot is now up to $48.

The river comes -- an irrelevant 4. My opponent doesn't hesitate too long before firing out one more bet of $18. Small for the size of the pot, this actually looks like more a value bet than a bluff. Now I am putting him on a King rather than air. Clearly at this point, last to act on the river, I have to raise his bet. But for how much? He has another $92 behind. The pot, if I call, will stand at $84. Let's run some numbers and see what looks like the best bet. For simplicity's sake, I am only going to examine three possible plays. Min-raising to $36 (2x), value-raising to $64 (about 3.5x), and shoving for his last $92 (about 5x). I will have to make some assumptions, and of course this won't be the best way to play it for every single situation. But I'm curious ... and it is always good to practice thinking about these things after the fact.

Let's start with the min-raise. I will call his raise and add another $18, which will offer him about 5.6-1 pot odds. I estimate that with his range of a king, a pocket pair above 4, or nothing, he will call the min-raise about 40% of the time. So making him put in another $18 40% of the time shows an EV of $7.20.

How about the medium-sized raise? If I make him put in an additional $46 he will be getting about 2.8-1 pot odds. I estimate with that same range, he calls this bet about 20% of the time. So he is putting in an additional $46 20% of the time ... the EV on this raise gets up to $9.20.

And the shove? Now he is looking at 1.9-1 pot odds. I am guessing he only calls this maybe 12% of the time. $92 12% of the time looks like $11.04. Also with pushing all in, since his call frequency is going to be lower, you don't have to show down your cards as often which I like.

However, you can play with the numbers a lot, and get them to fit any bet you like if you manipulate how often you think the opponent will call. There is no way to prove any estimate one way or another. But that isn't the point. The point is to use your best guess, and to always consider all the options available to you. If a player will only call a value-raise slightly more frequently than he will call an all in shove, maybe we should be pushing all in on the river more often. Players sometimes fall into the habit of 3x-ing everything ... and they forget that the beauty of no limit is that you can gun for your opponent's entire stack at any time!

Perfect Poker

Last night I went to the Hustler, and didn't have to wait too long to get into the $1/$2 no limit hold'em game. Once I was seated, I immediately knew that I was a little more dialed in to what was going on than I have been in several months. While I waited for the blinds/button to pass to be dealt in, I was already putting people on hands accurately, profiling my opponents well, and anticipating how they would act on their hands having been seated for only few minutes. Yes, I could feel that, barring some future meltdown or very bad luck, tonight rated to be a big night for me.

My last session had also been at the Hustler, and the results could hardly be more deceiving. I made a few hundred dollars -- (unfortunately) one of my biggest wins in a while. But by making bad reads, lazy decisions, and poorly-timed bluffs, I left a lot of money on the table. The way I was running I easily should have won another $700 Tuesday night, were it not for careless mistakes on my part. I spent Wednesday and Thursday seething at myself and longing for another chance to play the right way.

When I arrived at the game last night, I realized that this was that chance. I was feeling really focused. I was already ahead a little bit for the week so I didn't have to worry too much about losing. This was a great opportunity to prove to myself that I am capable of playing really solid poker when I make a conscious decision to do so.

So I set for myself a goal: try to play four hours of mistake-free poker.

I think I did a pretty good job. I didn't realistically expect to be able to pull it off, but I think having that mindset really helped me to avoid some bad situations. Obviously it is impossible to be completely objective about one's own play, but I turned every single decision I made at the table over and over in my mind both then and since. And I have come up with only three clearly identifiable mistakes from the session.
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#1
Early in the session. On my right I have a good player, an older gentleman who has a habit of flashing his cards when faced with a big decision. And I don't mean that he doesn't protect his cards when he looks at them, where I get to sneak a peek if I really try. It's more like he would show them to me. He would lift them up in front of his face, and since we were on the end of the table (he was the 7 seat, I was the 8), I was the only player that could see his cards. He did this even when I was in the hand! This could potentially be a HUGE advantage over the session.

My mistake? I moved one seat to my left, away from the free information. The reason was that the glare shining on the board was causing me to have to partially stand up to see what the flop, turn and river were. I was worried that standing up to see the cards would open me up to being read by my opponents. They would all be zeroing in on the exact moment that I saw the board, and I didn't want to be giving up that edge. So I moved to the 9 seat so that I could see without straining and avoid facial tells. I might have made the right decision, I don't know. Perhaps not having to strain to see the board (and potentially misreading it) was more profitable. But who knows what I could have made from seeing his cards every time?

(Side note: he ended up moving one chair to his right shortly after I moved, so it probably would have been a moot point. But one could argue that moving away was questionable AT THAT TIME.)

#2
I have A-K suited in the cutoff position, and there are two limps to me (playing six-handed). As it is shaping up to be a family pot and I don't want that, I decide to raise it to $10 (on the larger end of the raising spectrum for that game). It is folded around to the Limper One who, after some thought, calls. Limper Two seems to make a pot odds-driven insta-call.

The flop comes down 7-4-3 all different suits, and it is checked to me. I decide to make a continuation bet of $15, a little more than half the pot. Limper One quickly check-raises to $35, and Limper Two gets out of the way. I think perhaps I can move him off a weak top pair or medium overpair, or maybe he was just making a move on me, so I put him all in without much hesitation. He calls just as rapidly for his remaining $70, and shows me two Queens. Oops. But the turn and river come Ace, King and I win the pot anyway.

Now, I was definitely going to see the turn card. There was no way I was going to fold for $20 when the pot was $75 and I was getting some implied odds as well, not with two overcards and potentially bluffing outs if he had the type of hand that I put him on. So the mistake wasn't that I didn't release my hand at that point. But did I really need to shove? In that game, you honestly don't see too many check-raise bluffs. I really should have discounted the possibility that my hand might be good. There just wasn't all that much chance of A-K beating him. A call there would have given me a lot more flexibility.

#3
I limp in the cutoff with pocket 3's. It is a seven-handed family pot. The flop comes A-A-3 and it is checked to me. Family pot, so someone must have an ace, right? I bet out $8, the button (a very very tight player) calls me, as does a player in early position. Nice.

The turn is a Q, not the best card in the deck. But when you have 3's full, you never know when a card is going to fill your opponents up (if they don't have a full house already). Since I didn't see any shift in my two opponents that would make me think they improved, I wanted to stay aggressive. After a check, I bet out $18 and both players quickly called.

The tight player on the button seemed very agitated however. I know that agitation. It's the feeling that you HAVE TO call down because you have trips, but your kicker is not strong at all. You just hope that they will check the next street so you can save some money.

The river was an 8. The first player to act was all in by calling the turn, and the tight button player had $65 left. For some reason I can't fathom, I decide to bet out $40 rather than putting him all in. I cannot justify this bet in any way. In my opinion, it was the worst mistake I made the whole night. Sure, he called it and I won a nice pot by firing three bullets. But I knew he had trip aces, I knew he couldn't fold it, I knew he would check if I checked ... I had him covered, so that should be a pretty automatic shove. Ugh.

_ _

Overall though, the session went well. I don't know why this seems like such a novel concept to me. Don't make mistakes. Duh, right? But for some reason, I often show up to a game and just play. I may tell myself "Okay, let's play tight today" or "Let's really mix it up and keep the pressure on." But outside of tournaments, I've never really said "Let's just try to make the right play on every single street of every single hand." It's obvious, but I should force myself to play this way EVERY time. And the results should fall into place.