But there was no way I was quitting poker entirely. I just needed a new game to learn. My first trips to casinos started me out with limit hold’em, so I was fairly familiar with that game. I had read books on it, played a lot of it, but was weary of it after 9-4 offsuit rivering a third 4 to crack my overpair too many times. No thanks on going back to that.
There was also Omaha 8, a game that’s spread in a lot of the casinos here in Southern California. The fish that frequent the cardrooms seem to enjoy it, as they feel fully justified in playing lots of starting hands and chasing a lot. It satisfies their desire to gamble in ways that limit hold’em can only begin to approach. I’d been told by a few savvy players that Omaha was the game to play, because so few people played it well and there was so much action. Still, I didn’t relish the thought of putting significant portions of my bankroll in jeopardy learning a game that was brand new to me. Furthermore, there wasn’t a preponderance of literature on the subject at the time, so I decided that Omaha wasn’t yet the game for me.
How about Stud? All I really knew about it was the basic format, and that the tables seemed to be mostly filled with old timers and young donkeys that were running bad at hold’em. (I’m trying my best not to think about how well that second category fit me at the time.) But I had a copy of Supersystem, and thus I decided to read Chip Reese’s section on Seven-Card Stud. The strategy that Mr. Reese outlined seemed fairly straightforward, and so I committed it to memory and soon tried my hand at the $4-8 Stud games at the Commerce Casino.
I enjoyed early successes. The more experienced players at the tables rarely gave me credit for having anything. I played aggressively, and I generally got paid off. Their lack of respect for my abilities ensured that I could expect to leave each session ahead a few hundred dollars on average. However, as a few months passed, and I was playing with the same players regularly, they began go to get a handle on my game. I found that I was getting trapped more often, and that my big hands were getting paid off less. I went back to the text of Supersystem, and tried to plug the holes in my game as best I could. I also tried finding articles online, but for the most part they were written for a pretty basic level of play. A skill level that would get eaten alive in the games I played in. I was missing something, but I didn’t really know what it was. I was completely baffled on how I could be a winner at Stud. Just like no limit hold’em, it seemed that I couldn’t beat the game any more.
Eventually, I just gave up poker entirely.
It started out as just a break. But with Billy out of the country, I didn’t really have anyone to get my competitive fire going. Didn’t have anyone in my ear yapping about bad beats, or blogging about improving their game. I lost interest in it. My girlfriend was happier when I wasn’t playing poker. My family was happy to hear that I was off it. I was focused on work and the classes I was taking at night. Poker was no longer a part of my life.
Well, eventually all that changed, and when I came back to the game, it was playing no limit hold’em. I came back to find out that the live games were as juicy as ever, and I saw some of the biggest cashouts of my life in early 2007. Since then, my game has steadily improved (though I can’t say the same for my bankroll), including a sharp increase in poker acumen over the past month or so. I feel like my skills at no limit hold’em have never been better.
Recently, Billy and I were jokingly brainstorming on ways he could improve his memory of his hole cards in hold’em. He has a history of forgetting exactly which two cards he’s holding, and for some reason, he still hasn’t taught himself to consistently double-check. We always get a good laugh when he quickly mucks a hand based upon what he convinced himself he was holding rather than what he actually had.
And even though I give Billy a hard time for failing to remember cards he had just seen, the discussion caused me to realize an area in which my Stud game could use a lot of improvement. As they say, Seven-Card Stud is “a game of live cards.” This means that it is crucial to always be aware of how live your hand is at all times. That is, you have to have a very good idea of how many outs you and your opponents have to make their hands.
As you play Stud, the reasons that memory is important become obvious. Say you have an open-ended straight draw on 5th Street, and need either a King or an 8 to make your hand. However, a player to your right who had been inactive until this point just caught a King, and leads out with a bet, representing that the King helped him. In order to know how many outs you have left, you have to think back to the earlier streets and the cards people folded. Did anyone fold a King or an 8? Do I have the full seven outs, or is it fewer? You cannot determine if you are being offered the right pot odds if you cannot recall how live your hand is.
Assume for a second that again, a King is leading out on 5th Street, but this time you have two Queens in the hole. Now, it’s pretty clear that if he has the pair of Kings that he is representing, you will want to know if any Queens have been folded already. Chances are, you’ve been paying careful attention to the cards out there, and you will immediately know if a Queen or any of your kickers has been folded somewhere. You’ll be looking out for that. But you should remember all the cards that come out. Have two people folded Kings already? If so, then it’s unlikely that your opponent actually has the case King. But if you only focus on the cards that help you, you likely would have missed whether or not anyone had folded a King.
At least, I would have. Everyone can remember what they have seen. Some simply have a better sense than others, and I’m definitely among the ‘others.’ I recognized that I had been probably sacrificing a ton of profit by not having a better handle on what my outs and my opponent’s outs were. Either by calling bets when I didn’t have live cards, or not extracting the maximum when my cards were the best. But like with Omaha 8, I didn’t want to lose a lot of money just practicing improving my memory at the tables.
So I came up with a game that would help me remember what cards have been folded in Seven-Card Stud. It is set up like an eight-handed Stud game, except there are no hole cards. Eight door cards are dealt out. The low card stays in, and then the three players to act after the low card all fold. The folded cards go into a discard pile.
On 4th Street, I act as if the high hand leads with a bet (though no chips are necessary). The two players left of the high both fold and their cards are placed into a second discard pile.
On 5th Street, there are three “players” remaining. Once again, the high hand stays in, and the hand immediately to the left discards into a third pile.
On 6th Street, it is heads up and the low hand discards into a fourth pile, and the game is over.
Next, I create a chart of the hands that I can remember being folded, as follows:
I give myself 1 point for every card I can remember from 6th Street. 5th Street cards are worth 2 points each. 4th Street cards are worth 4 points each and 3rd street are worth 8 point apiece. If I did my math correctly, that should work out to a total of 50 points possible.
As I get better and better at identifying how many of each card rank have been folded, I’ll start upping the ante by attempting to remember the specific suits. Once I’ve played this game enough times and remembering what’s been folded becomes second nature, then I can go back to the tables and focus more on watching my opponents instead of watching the cards. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll be able to perform the Rounders scene in real life, and read all my opponents’ hands blind.
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