Just Playing Math in Texas Hold'em

I love this subject because it's the math of poker.  In my Friday Night Games, I started saying, "I'm just playing math."  It's really maddening sometimes to know the math of poker, especially the odds of hitting draws (or really the odds of hitting any card).  It's maddening because of how much fun it is to play and not fold, but smart poker relies on playing the odds.

Many of the guys I play with regularly REALLY like to have fun playing poker - I mean seriously, really like to have fun.  And the trade off to fun is WINNING in the long-run because smart poker requires folding and not getting involved in many hands. 

What?  Folding!  And then there's Friday Night Poker.  I'm not risking all that much to play with my friends, so it's OK.  But, like I said, this is a fun topic and I'm going to write about it anyways. 

So, the odds of hitting draws on the river are really, really bad.  It's the rule of 2 which says that you multiply your outs by 2 (with only the river card to go) and that gives you the percentage chance of success.  So, the best possible draw you can have is an open-ended straight draw, along with a flush draw, and add that one of your hole cards is an Ace that if it hit could possibly win the hand.  So, you have 4 cards to a flush already, leaving 9 other flush cards.  Add to that 6 of the remaining non-flush cards that could make your straight, and the remaining 2 non-flush Aces and you've got yourself a solid 17 OUTS.

Now multiply those 17 outs by 2 and you get a whopping 34% chance of hitting a winning hand.  That's basically a 1 in 3 chance of success, but a 2 in 3 chance of failure.  But wait!  What if you're up against another flush draw hand or another open-ended straight draw hand and that person hits too and has a higher flush or straight?  Well, now you're just screwed all the way.  You might think that a scenario like that is too unlikely to really happen and true, the odds of that aren't super high, but I've seen it.

Last week, I saw 2 guys hit a Jack High Straight by the turn and river, while a 3rd guy also hit his Jack High Straight on the River (seriously, this really happened).  Guess what?  Guy #3 actually made a Jack High Straight Flush and won the hand.  The really sick thing about that, is that his odds of hitting that Jack of diamonds were about 49 to 1 against, but for some people, hitting that hand is all they need to chase cards for the rest of their poker lives.

But back to our 2 out of 3 chances of failure scenario.  The only way you can make a call where 2 out of 3 times you will fail is if you get more than those same odds in the pot.  So, you need to make 3 to 1 or more on your money to even consider calling river bets.  And there you go playing math again.

At a game like I play on Friday nights, you have 4 to 6 guys that are generally willing to call down to the river - regardless of the odds.  If you have 1 or 2 guys who do this, then you have a very profitable game in the long-run, but with 4 to 6 people doing it, you're very likely going to simply lose your mind.

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.

Avoid Mis-Played Poker Hands

I just finished watching some of day 2 of the WSOP on ESPN.  The broadcast really highlighted Daniel Negreanu who was bleeding chips.  One thing that I love about the WSOP is that over 6,000 people pay $10,000 to play for a chance to win nearly $9 Million, and this means that lots of amateurs are playing along side serious pros.  What other game / sport does that happen in?  I'm never getting subbed in for Marion Barber and I won't soon be dishing it off to LeBron, but I could find myself sitting next to Negreanu at a poker table.  If that ever happens, as much as I like Negreanu's playing style, I hope he plays like I just saw him playing tonight.

He mis-read his opponents' hands and mis-judged at least one guy's stomach for calling his large bets.  I've said this before, but it applies here as well.  KNOW YOUR OPPONENTS.  If you can do this, you can anticipate what they MIGHT do, especially in response to your moves.  Why bet $6,000 at a pot when you have NOTHING, NOT EVEN A PAIR, when your opponent is showing a propensity to call?  Sometimes your beat, even by an amateur, but at least it can be a beat from laying down your cards and not your chips.

And when you're hemorrhaging chips, know yourself.  A little self-awareness comes in handy.  Know when you're pushing it too much.  Know when you're making bets that don't make sense.  Know when you're out of rhythm.  A lack of self-awareness will cause you to miss-play hands.

Finally, when in doubt, understand the basic odds of poker.  What are the best and worst starting hands?  What is the likelihood that someone has a bigger pair than you do?  What's the likelihood that someone has a better starting hand than you?  Flush draw?  Straight draw?  What are the odds of hitting?

So, that's the lesson.  To avoid mis-played hands:

1. Know your opponents.
2  Know yourself.
3. Understand the odds.

Texas Holdem: Chasing the River

I am generally against what I call "chasing the river".  This happens when someone has a straight-draw, inside-straight-draw, flush draw, and even and open-ended straight-draw, and keeps calling bets all the way to the river card.  The odds just aren't usually there, but people do it all the time.  You're sitting there with just the river card to go and you need one card to make your straight - let's say you need a 10.  There are only four 10's in a deck.  4 out of 52 cards is only 7.7%.  Another way to look at it is that by chasing a river 10, you have a 92.3% chance of missing, and maybe it's worse than that because someone else already folded a 10. 

Maybe your chasing a flush on the river.  In this case, you have 4 cards to a flush and you need just 1 more.  4 of the 13 cards of that suit are already accounted for, so just 9 possible cards remain that could help you make that flush.  9 out of 52 cards is 17.3%.  That means that you've got a 82.7% chance of missing your flush IF nobody else already folded cards of that same suit and IF your remaining opponents aren't holding any.  Those are big IF's. 

Maybe you have an open-ended straight-draw where you could make a straight with a card on either end of the 4 consecutive cards you already have (including the board).  Let's say you have 8, 9, 10, J.  In this case, you could make a straight with either a 7 or a Q.  So, you chase the river.  Your odds are going to be a little less than the flush draw above since there are 8 possible cards in the deck that cold make your straight.  8 out of 52 cards is 15.4% .  As long as some of those cards weren't already folded or someone else isn't still holding them, you have an 84.6% chance of missing.

When you hit your cards, your thrilled and your opponents cuss you, but usually you miss and you donate.  The odds just aren't in your favor to chase the river.  As with many other aspects of poker, there are exceptions to not chasing the river.  I'm not getting into those exceptions here.  For now, just understand that the odds are against you and your buddies at the table are going to cuss you when you hit.