Dangerous Play in Texas Holdem

There's a particular style of play in Texas Hold'em that's very dangerous and erratic.  It's dangerous to the rest of the table because it can cause opponents to suffer extreme losses.  It's dangerous to the player using the style because it can result in extreme losses.  It's erratic because it can also cause extreme swings from losses to wins.  This style is called "Loose-Aggressive".

It's loose because the player will play a very wide range of starting hands and it's aggressive because bets are large and raises are frequent.  Recently, I've had the opportunity to play against 2 or 3 new guys who could be categorized as loose-aggressive.  Actually, they're the text book definition.

This kind of player can thrive against tight-passive players because these people tend to play scared, waiting for the perfect hand to bust their opponent with.  They're thrown off by the loose-aggressor and find themselves checking to the player and folding to his large bets.  In fact, they fold until the blinds have eaten them alive and they're forced to make one final all-in bet that usually loses, and when it wins, simply puts them in a position to have to do it again.  This continues until they are quickly on the sidelines.

Everyone loves to beat the loose-aggressor, but many players don't have the guts to get it done.  Sometimes, you just have to play that A-9 aggressively to beat the aggressor with the A-6.  That hand doesn't seem so strong with a board showing K-J-10-8-3, but the loose aggressor is hoping that you will fold to his bluff.  So, what should you do?  Disappoint him.  How many hands in a row could he have made anyways?  1 out of 5?  Maybe.  That would mean that 4 out of 5 times, he's got air.  Push back.

"Aggression is the ultimate equalizer."  The loose-aggressor is not equalizing.  He's unbalancing the table with his aggression.  So, you have to equalize with your own aggression.  There's a good reason the tight-aggressive player is referred to as a "Stone-Cold Killer" in poker.  You play tight until you get good cards and you play aggressively when you get your cards.  Against the loose-aggressor, you just need to loosen up a little yourself and then let him have it with your perfectly timed aggression.  How about this?

Check . . . Bet . . . Raise

The check-raise is a killer to the loose-aggressor.  But be ready for his all-in re-raise.  He's a maniac.  What else is he going to do?  Beat him (at his own game) on this hand and if he's still in after that hand, he won't likely do it again (to you at least).

And sometimes you just have to stay out of this person's way and out-last the rest of the table.  Get him head's up and you're style can break him down because a much looser range of hands will win head's up. 

When you don't get good cards to check-raise with, then the key is to stay alive.  Be aggressive against the rest of the table.  Build your stack and get head's up.  Maybe the loose-aggressor will even step off into one against someone else along the way.  Then, you're in a great position to take it all down.

When you understand how to play against the loose-aggressor, that style of play is no longer dangerous to you.  Instead, it's dangerous to him and to all of those who don't know how to handle him.  Hang around, build a stack, and take it down.

Finally Broke the Losing Streak

If you keep up with my blogs, you know that I've been dealing with weeks of overall losing.  I lost about 80% of my games over the last 2+ months during a time when I have been digging deep into a lot of poker books and working on my overall style of play.  Last weekend, all of that losing finally came to an end.

On Friday night, we played just 2 games, but I got 2nd place in one of the games.  I know that isn't a win, but considering that I was beaten only by Rob in that game, I viewed it as a success.  My game was good.  The next morning, I played in a 90-player full tilt poker tournament and got 2nd place there as well.  That was fun because I was knocking out more players that the other 2 guys who were among the chip leaders throughout the tournament.  I even eventually knocked out 1 of those guys at the final table.  By the time it was down to heads up action, I was a 6 to 1 chip underdog and all I could really do was play super-aggressive and hope for the best.  It was a good tournament though.

Finally, last night I was online playing Omaha Hi, while watching the NCAA national championship game, and ended up with 10 times more chips than I started with.  Incidentally, I have more "play" chips now than ever before.  So, that's cool.

Clearly, I'm looking for any little bit of positive that I can find leading up to my Vegas trip.  I'll take what I can get.  Whether it's for money or for fun, winning is way better than losing.

Stay tuned.

When to Take a Break (or Quit) in Poker

I'll play poker pretty much any time there's a game to be played.  Recently however, I've come across several situations that should have caused me to take a break or quit for the day.  Over the past week, I've played nearly 20 hours of poker.  If I would have stopped in a couple of situations, I would have made a lot more money.  So, this is a list of situations that should make you consider taking a break or quitting for the day.

1.  When you're too tired.
2.  When you're hungry.
3.  When you've had too much to drink.
4.  When you're angry.
5.  When you've taken a bad beat and you're on tilt.
6.  When you're sick.
7.  When you're losing too much and feeling desperate.
8.  When one or more other players at the table seem to "have your number".
9.  When you're only still playing to get even with another player.
10. When everyone at the table seems to be begging you to stay.

Texas Holdem: Not Another Bad Beat Story

This is NOT another bad beat story.  Nobody wants to hear about that anyways.  Suck-outs on the river, a term I just came up with - "River Boats", chasers, miracle inside straights, and the list goes on.  These bad beats are a fact of life in Texas Hold'em that serious players just have to be able to live with in exchange for long-term profits. I've taken some seriously bad beats in the last few months, but during that time I've also learned something very valuable about the reason for those so-called bad beats.  The lesson?  It's my own damn fault!

That's right.  Nobody else is to blame for the bad beats I've taken. Not the old man who sucked out a flush on the river at Winstar.  Not the all-camo guy who bluffed me off of pocket kings at Winstar (with pocket 4's).  And not the kid who "River Boated" me on Sunday afternoon.  It's not the guy at Friday Night Poker that loves chasing river cards either (actually the 3 or 4 guys - affectionately).

Most people don't actively calculate the odds of hitting that miracle card.  Actually, lots of guys don't even know how to calculate the odds.  We're supposed to love playing with chasers because the odds are so bad against them hitting and in favor of us making a profit.  I can live with it because the odds are against hitting for chasers.  The "rule of 2" says that to hit the river, you have to multiply your outs by 2.  So, to hit a flush on the river, you have 9 possible outs.  Times 2, that's 18% that your flush card will hit.  Put another way, you have an 82% chance of failure.

What about an open-ended straight draw AND a flush draw on the river (and forget that someone else could have already hit their flush at the turn)?  Well, here you have 9 flush cards and 8 other cards for the straight (at the most).  Now you have 17 outs!  Congratulations - you still have a 2 out of 3 chance to fail.  That's almost as good as it gets.  Don' get me wrong.  That's the kind of river I'm probably going to chase too, especially if I have an A or K that I could also pair on the river which would give me 3 additional outs (which is very unlikely to begin with).

So, with those river odds, I guess I want to play with a few chasers.  And now back to my main point.  It's not their fault when they hit and I lose.  It's mine.  I think it was Alan Schoonmaker, PH.D. who said that "aggression is the ultimate equalizer" in poker.  What an enlightening statement!

AGGRESSION IS THE ULTIMATE EQUALIZER

The guy who hit his river flush did so because I didn't bet him off of it after the flop.  His stack was way bigger than mine.  $35 wasn't getting that done.  All in!  The pocket 4 bluffer?  Something inside of me said he didn't have it, but the devil on my shoulder got me to fold.  That's because the devil on the other shoulder wasn't asshole enough to push All in!  The "river boat" was absolutely my fault.  I checked to maximize profit and the miracle river card hit.  Checking is weakness in Texas Hold'em.  I deserved it.  I let the remaining 2 sixes in a 52-card deck become a factor and he hit one of them.

If aggression is the ultimate equalizer in poker, then I'll use it.  I have to use it and I can't worry about it upsetting guys at the table (especially the loose-aggressive / loose-passive table I play at every week).  Why would I worry about it upsetting someone at the table anyways?  I don't know, but there's an interesting true story about it.

A few weeks ago, I came to play a very different game that I usually play.  I raised all of my premium hands.  Checks to me led to raises of 3 or 4 times the BB or 3 times the previous bet.  My initial bets were 1/3 to 1/2 the pot.  I took full advantage of my good hands and my good position.  This style worked.  My chip stack was nearly double the person in 2nd place.  Aggression was the ultimate equalizer.  I wasn't bluffing (at least not more than anyone else).  I was just playing my hands, position, and my reads on the other guys.

So, here's the point.  One of the guys was noticeably irritated with me and I happen to really like and respect him a lot.  I got pocket 6's and checked them on the button with some callers ahead of me.  The flop came Q, 6, and something else.  After everyone else checked around to me, I bet my set with a healthy raise.  The SB (whom I like and respect) angrily shoved all in.  He was probably frustrated because I was raising him off of his hands most of the game.  Everyone else folded back around to me and I did something that I will never do again.  Want to guess what that was?

I "contemplated" my hand, appeard to "struggle" with my decision, and folded my set face down saying, "I can't beat your set."  He showed me his bluff (of course I knew he didn't have anything) and I patted him on the back and told him what a great move he made on me.

I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.

Since that night, I've won 2 out of 10 games.  At various times in almost all of those games, I've had nice sized chip stacks too that I should have eventually won with.  I'm going to Vegas in less than 3 weeks and this crap I'm throwing out is going to get me killed!  Yesterday, I suffered 4 straight losses. I didn't sleep well last night, to say the least.  Who loses sleep over low-stakes poker games?  Me!  Most of the guys I play with play for fun.  I want the fun too, along with being able to hang out with a lot of really great men.  But I play to win and I would play that way even if there was no money at stake.  I just want to win. 

I don't think I'm God's gift to poker and that I should win every game just by showing up.  That's crazy.  I'm still relatively new at this game.  Rob and Chris are great players that make me want to be better.  Prescott's maniac game can put an entire table badly off balance.  I've seen Charlie make some seriously disciplined lay downs that I've learned from.  Spain's loose-passive style can trap you and his big hands will shut you down.  Cody's unpredictable and not scared to bluff and chase the river.  Brandon's hard to push off of a hand.  Keith is the most improved player at the table who's really starting to put a serious game together.  Larry can push a big stack around as good as anyone (and plays Q 3 like champ) and George could literally have anything in any hand.

But this is not another bad beat story and I'm not whining about my recent losses.  I'm grateful for them.  They made me wake up and pull my head out.  I'm not having fun when I lose 8 out of 10 games.  Losing SUCKS!  I'm going to start playing my big hands big - period.  My style has to be Tight-Aggressive.  I'll either wait for cards or position, and then I'll get the best of it.  If I get "rivered", so be it.  That river won't be free.  I'll still get my butt handed to me from time to time, but it won't be because I didn't do my best to equalize.

That's it.

Texas Holdem: 10,000 Hours to Achieve Greatness

I'm listening to the book by Malcolm Gladwell, called "Outliers".  In his book, Gladwell points out that throughout history, greatness has come from, among other things, 10,000 hours of practice.  He names several important historical figures that became great after 10,000 hours of working on their trade.  To this point, the most interesting 10,000 hour story that I've heard is Bill Gates of Microsoft, but plenty of others come to mind fairly easily:  Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Brett Favre . . . . Doyle Brunson.

I've only been playing poker for about 3 years.  Gladwell says that it takes at least 10 years to hit 10,000 hours, but that's about 3 hours per day, 7 days per week.  3 hours per day isn't easy.  Most of us have very busy lives.  And 10 years?  I don't know if I can stand to wait 10 years for greatness.  Anyways, I haven't put in 3 hours per day.  Gosh!

I've played live and online probably about 12 hours per week and I've watched poker on TV about 2 hours per week.  That's just 2 hours per day.  And, now I'm reading books on Texas Hold'em.  For what it's worth, I think about poker probably about 16 hours per day, on and off.  I even dream about it sometimes, but not about winning or losing.  My dreams are usually about playing specific hands - kind of hard to explain.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure that thinking and dreaming about something doesn't count towards my 10,000 hours, so I probably have about 12 long years of consistent practice before I achieve greatness in poker.  Bummer - 12 years of playing poker.  : )

If anyone wants to put together a regular Texas Hold'em game, count me in.  I need the practice.

Crazy Night on Full Tilt Poker

I've been playing around with $100 on Full Tilt Poker this week.  For the most part, I would say I've been up and down and with some huge swings.  Admittedly, I've been playing .10 / .25 tables, but my online cash game abilities need some work before I put in a lot of money.

I started the night being down 50% with just $50 of my original $100 remaining.  So, I decided to play 2 tables simultaneously ($25 each).  Everything was going along pretty well until I went all in with 2 pairs AQ on one table and lost to a sick set of 10's.  Didn't see that coming!

So, I was down to 1 table and by this time, just about $14 or $15 remaining.  30 minutes later, all hell broke lose and I was up over $75.  In 5 hands, I hit a full house and 2 Straight Flushes that were both 9 thru K.

As you can see, the 2nd was even on the flop and I only won .57 cents.  The 1st was the best because my opponent hit a full house and he called my all-in bet.

When I hit the full house, I actually picked up a set of 4's on the flop and then the board paired.  With that set, I had it all the way, but the guy I beat for quite a bit of money completely went on tilt.  This is him:

He made such as special (although completely ineffective) effort to piss me off and get me off of my game for the next 10 minutes that I thought I should memorialize him here.  At this point, half of the money I was playing with came from him anyways, so how could I be upset at him for being a total jerk afterwards.  It's safe to say that HE didn't see THAT coming either.

Anyways, I finished with $74 for the night and now I'm only down $26 for the week.  What a crazy night!

Texas Hold'em Game Transformation

Over the past several weeks, I've been literally fighting against myself in Texas Hold'em.  My game has evolved from very tight to super loose and then back to variations in between.  For too long, my cards were see-thru.  When multiple people could call my hand, there's a serious problem.  That's what instigated my current situation.


I began changing up my game and that brought win after win after win for weeks.  But then, winning wasn't even satisfying.  My game started being about something more than just winning.  I had nights where I was in the money in all 3 games and I would drive home picking my bad moves a part.  I had one game where I ended up with every single chip on the table, but all I could think about after a while was the game I got 2nd place in.  What if I would have bet big instead of check?  How did I misplay pocket A's so bad?  Did I get bluffed on that one hand?  Why couldn't I see the bluff?  Even with an over-whelming winning percentage, something was wrong.  I still wasn't good enough (and I'm still not).


Then, a series of things recently happened that turned it all upside down.  I played a cash game at Winstar and lost $300 in a rushed effort with my wife waiting.  Then, I went to New Orleans and played 6 hours only to lose $300 more.  And last weekend, I went to Shreveport and lost $100 over several hours.  Lose, lose, lose!!!  I lost $700 in about a month's time, not to mention just barely breaking even in Friday Night Poker.  You would think this probably didn't help matters very much, but it actually changed me.


These cash poker games are very aggressive.  Sitting down with under-sized chip stacks and losing $700 over the course of about 12 hours opened my eyes to the fact that not only could I sit in there with big players, but I'm just on the cusp of being a big player myself.  I feel like I'm very close and I learned that the #1 thing I'm missing is the thing I love most about poker - poker psychology.


I'm missing most of the tells and giving off most of them back to my opponents.  I'm still an open book and my cards are still see-thru, but not for long.  I had a chance lunch meeting with at attorney who just played in the WSOP main event and he placed in the top 10%, getting him into the money.  We hit it off instantly and he recommended that I read Caro's Book of Poker Tells.  In fact, he had it delivered to my office a couple of days later and I read it for the first time that night.  Yes - I read it cover-to-cover that first night.  I couldn't believe how badly I was crippling my game by giving off and not recognizing obvious tells.


So, last night I was playing Friday Night Poker with the guys and I spent most of the evening watching for tells.  I still didn't win either game last night, but I did pick up some tells that saved me a lot of chips.  One guy was sizing up his chip stack after seeing the flop.  He had a good hand and I folded.  He had me beat.  Good fold.  Another guy saw the flop and immediately glanced down at his chips - huge tell.  Then, to add to it, he appeared to be indecisive as to whether or not to bet.  That made up my mind to fold - good fold.  He had it.  Then, my favorite one took a little friendly manipulation on my part.  I had pocket J's and the flop was all cards lower than jack, so was the turn.  I bet fairly big and was raised on the flop and the turn.  So, I said to the other guy, "I have a pretty big pocket pair, so if you're raising me, you must have an even bigger pair."  It took a few seconds before he couldn't hold in his smile.  It took even less time for me to fold my Jacks and he had pocket Kings.  I'll keep watching for tells and I'm going to read the book a couple of more times too.


Finally, tonight I sat down to play a Full Tilt Poker tournament (90 players) and for the 21st time this year, I made it to the final table and ended up in 4th place.  I was pretty happy with that outcome.  My game purpose was to get back to "basics".  I tightened back up some and primarily played a range of about 15 to 20 starting hands.  I raised about 30% of the time that I bet, made some good position bets, and put in some strategic bluffs that paid off.  I even loosened up a couple of times to suck out on the river, which I guess you have to be able to do sometimes.  Tonight, I just needed to be reminded that I could still get it done if I needed to back away from the game transformation.  But then, what am I really thinking?  Back away from the game transformation?  Now, I have a "range" of acceptable starting hands, a calculated % of raises, strategic position bets and bluffs.  My game is evolving to a mix of tight and loose, aggressive and calculated.


I have no idea where my game will go next, but I do know one thing:  I'm very competitive and there is nothing that I hate worse than losing at poker.  But poker energizes me, so I'll weather the losing until I start winning consistently again.  Hopefully a winning streak is coming.