Tuesday, September 26

Responding to a comment left to my last post: I mentioned that a common thread you read in biographies of successful entrepreneurs is that they often say that they owe it all to a risk that they took in their naive youth, which -- if they knew what they know now -- they never would have taken. The commentor raised an interesting point, which I had previously also thought about a lot, and it's this: Are the "Andy Beals" of this world the exception to the rule? Are there really 500 failed would-be entrepreneurs who regret straying from the beaten path for every 1 big success story? Mike McDermott once said "You don't hear much about guys who take their shot and miss. But I'll tell you what happened to them. They end up humping crappy jobs on graveyard shifts trying to figure out how they came up short." It's so hard to tell, but man, what a fascinating and important question. Maybe Mike McD is right, and unconventional risks result in disastrous ruin more often than not -- are they just "sucker plays"? Are the Andy Beal-style success stories essentially the real-life incarnation of the LAGgy maniac at the poker table who consistently makes atrocious -EV plays, but runs up a huge stack by catching cards? I tend to distance myself from that position: I don't think it was an objectively dumb move that just happened to pay off -- but I do think that that's a story that a lot of people tell themselves to make themselves feel better about living ordinary and mundane lives. I'm not knocking the people who do think that the Andy Beals of this world just got lucky: after all, there's a certain intuitive appeal to the argument >> it's a lot easier to accept life's rote tribulations if you convince yourself that the few shining stars in the world just won the "life/success lottery." I can't say I have much, if any, actual proof for my position...but I'm not sure just what form such proof would take. All I an do, for now, is to paraphrase one of my favorite passages from "The Richest Man in Babylon" (required reading, by the way; it's < style="font-style: italic;">can put yourself in a position where opportunity can see you. In other words, you can't control whether or not you get lucky, but you can control whether you even give yourself the chance to do so. I concede that this still doesn't address the question of what happens when putting yourself in that position involves a substantial risk that might leave you even worse off than before, but I find it inspiring nonetheless.

Someone also asked about the pending legislation. I am very, very far from being well-informed on this topic, but here is the gist of it, or my understanding of it at least. This week (of Sept 25) is very, very important. In short, we will likely know by the end of the week (or if not, certainly by the end of next) what the fate of the bill (and hence of internet poker in the US) will be. Here's the somewhat underhanded method by which proponents of the bill are trying to get it passed in the Senate (reminder: the bill already passed in the House, so all that needs to happen for it to become law is for it to be voted on and ratified in the Senate, and then signed by the president.) BUT instead of simply bringing the internet gambling bill to the Senate floor for a vote, Sen. Bill Frist and others are doing something a little sneaky: they're trying to attach it to another bill which is GUARANTEED to pass. The Department of Defense Appropriations bill (I'm sure i got the language on that wrong), will likely be voted on in the Senate very soon, and will pass without a doubt. So Frist is trying to hitch the internet gambling bill to that one to assure its passage. Kind of underhanded, but this type of stuff goes on all the time in Washington. What Frist is trying to avoid is a full-fledged debate on the merits of the internet gambling bill -- after all, it's incredibly controversial, so an informed debate might bring to light all of the inconsistencies and shortcomings of the bill; better to slip it through 'under the cover of darkness', so to speak. The good news is that a lot of Senators (even Republicans) are resisting Frist's attempts, claiming that internet gambling is not an appropriate matter to be included in a Dept of Defense bill (how right they are.) But Frist is really stubborn. Some people surmise that he's making a run at the Presidency in 2008, and really wants to shore up his support among right-wing religious groups, and he thinks that ploughing the internet gambling legislation through will be a testament to his belief in "family values", whatever that means. So everyone's just holding their breath now to see what happens. The final variable is that no one even knows what the version of the bill that might get added to the DoD bill will look like. To appease some of his critics, Frist is making some concessions on the language of the internet gambling bill, but no one really knows just how many compromises will be made. Some have suggested the bill might just prevent credit card transactions to gaming sites. That would be pretty good news, because no one in the US even uses credit cards to fund their accounts (they haven't been able to in years, thanks to industry self-regulation by the banks.) Others have suggested that the bill might cut out any sort of bank transfers or even Neteller use by Americans. This I find rather hard to believe, but the key thing to remember here is that the version of the bill that was passed in the House is NOT absolutely identical to the one that is being negotiated over in the Senate. In order to become law, the only requirement is that the version from the Senate needs to have a substantial resemblance to the one already passed in the House...and that's where these compromises come in. In the next 10 days, we'll have a very good idea of just what the final language of Frist's Senate bill will be, and whether or not he succeeds in getting it through the "back door" by attaching it to other pending legislation.

Tuesday, Sept 19: "Poker Chose Me"

Whew, the last few posts were a bit of an emotional drainer; needed a bit of a break, hence the 10-day layoff.

Thought I'd go back to a few interesting nuggets from "The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King" which I recently read. Don't worry: no spoilers here, although it's not really the type of book with twists that can be "spoiled". But if you want to go in 100% fresh, you can stop reading now. Here are a few bits that I found pretty interesting.

1) Inside the mind of Andy Beal

I've always liked reading biographies and autobiographies of successful people, and I found this Andy Beal character just fascinating. Now one of the richest men in the world, he didn't take the 'traditional' route to get there -- there was a great chapter in the book that describes how, at the age of 22 (I think....it was definitely at a remarkably young age), he found himself sitting at a real estate auction, about to bid a few hundred thousand dollars on an apartment building that he figured he could fix up and re-sell for a profit. Now, before you think that he was some sort of real estate prodigy, he had never done anything like that before, and in fact was surrounded in the auction room by middle-age men, most representing huge investment funds and real estate corporations. And there he was -- just a 22-year old college dropout who had never bought so much as a tool shed, with no more sophisticated a thought than "hmmm...seems like this apartment building is worth more than they're asking". He candidly admits that he had no idea what he was doing, but if there's a common theme to all the biographies of successful people I've read it's that they nearly unanimously agree that "if they had knowns what they know now when they were just starting out, they never would have taken the risks or made the decisions they did." So much of our culture reminds us to "look before we leap" (and god knows I see enough of the risk-averse mindset among my law school peers), but I can't help but find it fascinating that so many of the world's most successful people claim that it was their willingness to diverge from that well-worn mantra that laid the foundation for all of their eventual success.

2) Pros = perpetually bust-o.

This really took me by surprise. Almost without exception, all the pros who were interviewed agreed that evereyone -- that's e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e -- goes broke at some point in their poker careers. Each of the pros freely admitted that it had happened to them too, usually many times. There are even rumors that right now, as we speak, pros like Mike Matusow, TJ Cloutier and others are flat broke and only manage to play some of the bigger games because they're being staked by other pros (sidebar: who in their right mind would stake a broke poker pro!!??) How could this happen? I mean: I can't picture myself EVER going broke. Sure, I immediately lost the first $200 I deposited when I played online, but I don't really count that as being "broke"...what these pros were describing was losing their entire playing bankroll well into their professional careers. I can't help but wonder how (if these are indeed intelligent poker professionals) they could run through their entire playing bankrolls. Greg Raymer weighed in on this issue and suggested that he thought that theories of appropriate bankroll management are relatively new, and have really grown out of the internet poker phenomenon, which has allowed teenagers to accumulate as many hands of poker as has Doyle Brunson in his entire lifetime. That accelerated learning curve, goes the argument, has also accelerated the development of sound bankroll management strategies, which weren't really commonly known to the professionals of yore. Still, though, I really was taken aback by this idea that everyone goes broke from time to time. I guess it also depends on what your definition of "broke" is, and the author of the book does caution the reader that "broke" to a poker pro means something very different than to the rest of us. Hmmm....the above section didn't come out as clearly as I wished it had, b/c I feel like i have a lot of interesting things to say about the topic. Maybe another time...

One story that kind of warmed my heart in a schadenfreude (sp?) kind of way was Jennifer Harman's description of succeeding at the mid-to-high limit games, but always getting her clock cleaned whenever she tried moving up to the really high games. This cycle repeated itself at least a half-dozen times, where she would build up her bankroll, only to lose it all and have to build it up at the lower-stakes games again. Until she finally broke through and never looked back, and is now considered the top female cash game player in the world. I've heard complaints by so many friends and acquaintances that they can't beat a certain stakes level, which typically take the form of: "I don't get it -- I beat the (X) game consistently, but every time I try to step up to the (X+1) game, I give it all back, even though the players seem just as bad, and I'm so fed up with it, and can't figure it out." It was somewhat reassuring to read Harman's account and know that top players are not immune from the phenomenon either.

3) Jennifer Harman: "Poker chose me"

There was one quote from the book that resonated with me far more than any other: When Jennifer Harman was once asked why she chose to pursue poker for a living, she replied "I didn't. Poker chose me." I don't know if any other soundbite has ever summarized my feelings about poker more precisely and succinctly as did this one. Yes, it's true that I didn't really start playing hold'em seriously until 2004 -- I guess that would make me a relative Johnny-come-lately in this world, but I don't lump myself in with this new generation of poker-boomers who jumped on the poker bandwagon post-Moneymaker. Gambling has always flowed in my blood from a very young age. I still remember going to Vegas for the first time when I was about 11, walking through the Mirage's gambling floor and being thoroughly entranced by all the casino games. The flashing lights and carnival sounds, the way people so cavalierly pulled money out of their pockets in thick wads; how that green paper life-force that seemed to wield such power outside the casino's doors -- that people argued, married, and killed over -- could be splashed about with such reckless abandon. Every chance I got, I would sneak from our room upstairs down to the casino floor and stand in the aisles watching women play slots or spin the money wheel, until security inevitably came and told me that I couldn't stand there. Eventually I figured out that as long as I was 'moving', they wouldn't hassle me, so I learned to slow my gait to a pace that would let me watch a few full spins; and I practiced feigning a confused expression of being lost that allowed me to stand in one place with being hassled by security. It was all just so mesmerizing. I learned how to count cards at 18 and would make trips to the casino every couple weeks, and still keep count just by force of habit whenever I play blackjack, which is rarely these days. 5 years later, along came poker, which for the first time ever gave me a sense of "This is it! This is what all my experiences to this point have been preparing me for: A psychology / probability major with gambling flowing deep in my veins, and a stronger-than-usual attraction to 'get-rich-quick' schemes. All the poker boom did for me was bring to my attention this perfect complement for my existing skill set.

All in all, I think the book was a worthwhile read -- my only criticism is that it didn't really get too much into the psychology of the players...I mean, Andy's whole rationale for challenging the pros to very high stakes games was to make the amounts so high, that it took the pros out of their 'comfort zones' and get them to play scared. But we never really got much insight into what was going through the pros' heads when they were playing for amounts of money higher than they ever had before (even if it was pooled among them, hence reducing their individual exposure). Nor did we ever really get a good look at Andy's psyche (but this was a biography, and not an autobiography). The storyline of the book broke down more or less to: Andy decides he wants to challenge the pros to high-stakes poker, he playes them, then leaves Vegas, then comes back later and plays more poker, then leaves again, rinse and repeat. I guess what I'm saying is that if you're already pretty familiar with the poker world, and have played for mid-to-high stakes yourself, then the book might leave you longing for a little more insight into the psychological profiles of the characters, rather than a mere description of Andy's periodic travels to Vegas, and whether he wins or loses.

Friday, September 8th: Blind Defense and Your Poker Toolbox

After a few ‘lifestyle’ / ‘look at me, I’m in Australia’ – type posts, I figured I should get back to some poker talk, even though if you ask me, it’s far more interesting to write about the former, although I may not be winning over any readers. I’ve said many times that I used to be a full-ring limit specialist, but learning to play shorthanded has proven not only to be lucrative but has really improved my blind-defense/stealing strategies for all games, because the vast majority of hands in a shorthanded game come down to a stealing situation.

I want to compare two different lines you can take when defending your big blind, and discuss the different effect each has on your opponent’s play. First, a story about the mechanical way I used to approach this topic: let’s say I was sitting in the big blind w/ A9s, and it was folded around to the button (a somewhat aggressive player) who raised, and the SB folded. Here was my old way of thinking:
I’d be sitting there with my A9s and 3-bet the button pretty much 100% of the time, thinking to myself “Whatever, buddy, I’m not for a second buying that you’ve got a better hand than my A9s (or 66, or KJ, or the like, any of which I used to 3-bet), so I’m going to make you put more money in with the inferior hand.” That’s the old law-school-dropout play (but still the line I take the majority of the time.) But let me now discuss the two lines I want to compare:

Line 1: Exactly what I described above as my old, mechanical M.O.: you 3-bet a hand you’re pretty sure is best, and then lead out on any flop.

Line 2: Instead, you simply call the steal-attempt, and check-raise nearly any flop (b/c the button will follow his steal with a continuation bet when checked to nearly 100% of the time.)

Consider this: in each of the above scenarios, you’re expending 4 small bets, right? But think about the very different messages you’re sending with each line:

With Line 1, you’re saying “Listen, buddy, I’ve got an above average hand too…most likely two high cards, or a medium-to-high pair, and I’m pretty sure it’s better than whatever you’re trying to steal with, so I’m going to re-raise you with what I’m pretty sure is the best hand, right now.” Essentially you’re telling your opponent that you think your 2-card holding is better than his 2-card holding, preflop. In this scenario, your continuation bet after the flop is meaningless…it’s not saying anything about whether you hit the flop; it’s basically just reinforcing that you think your 2 card-holding is better than his.

Compare this to the message you’re sending with Line 2, which is something along the lines of “Well, I’ve given you absolutely no information about my 2-card holding, but I hit the flop.”

Remember: each of these lines has cost you exactly the same number of small bets (4), but you’ve “said” drastically different things with each. How can this help you? Well, think about a holding like KQ in the BB. The button makes a steal-raise, and you 3-bet, because you think your hand is better than his (which it probably is). On a flop of 2,8,9 rainbow, you keep the gas on and lead out with a bet. You’re probably going to get called all the way down by any pair, and maybe (depending on just how frisky the button feels) any Ace as well, to which you’ll lose if you don’t catch a K or Q (and if you do, a button with an Ace might fold rather than pay you off.) Any 2, 8, or 9 is also likely going to the river with you. Compare the above state of events to what happens if you take “Line 2” with the KQ example. With a smooth-call preflop and a flop check-raise, you’re telling your opponent (for the very same price) “My hand may not have been better than yours preflop, but I hit that flop.” Consider how many more hands you’ll get the button to fold. Most decent-playing buttons will fold pairs between threes and 7s. Any Ace-rag like A4, A5, or A6 will (or should) fold, if he thinks he’s drawing to as few as 3 outs (the other 3 aces), but possibly zero. You probably won’t get folds from a button with 2 overcards, but keep in mind you’re holding a K and a Q, you’ve probably got many of the overcards he might be sticking around with dominated.

So how do you use this knowledge? Well, it depends on your blind-stealing opponent, of course. An important stat you’ll want to look at (and get displayed onscreen if you use PAHUD or the like), is WSD%...I think that’s the acronym for it, at least > it’s the one that tells you what % of the time a player will go to showdown when he sees the flop. I think mine is in the 35 – 36% range, which is a tad on the tight side. The percentages I see most often for other winning players are between 35% and 40%. Conversely, I run across players all the time who are modest and consistent losers despite relatively decent-seeming preflop stats (maybe in the VPIP 26 / PFR 18 range for a shorthanded game), but they’ve got a WSD% number of 45% or higher, and I think to myself “man, I wonder if he’s figured out that he’s never going to turn things around until he stops being such a showdown monkey?”) Anyway, I digress: have a look to see whether your blind-stealing opponent goes to showdown a lot – this will give you a good idea of whether you’re likely to get called down by Ace-high. If you’re facing a tighter opponent with a WSD% of 34% or less, you might find a little more value in Line 2, knowing that you’ve got a little more folding equity by checkraising the flop and representing that you hit some piece of it. You’ll also want to look at your opponent’s aggression statistics. That might give you an idea of how “easy” his actions will be able to read, and help you decide whether you’d rather “take control” of the hand with a raise preflop or post-flop.

I will caution now that even though I extolled the benefits of Line 2 in the example above, I’m not arguing that it’s always superior (in fact, I probably use Line 1 more often)…I just wanted to get you to think about the different signals you can send for the very same price. Just more tools to have in your poker toolkit. That’s all I was trying to do with this post: help people think about the advantages of various lines in blind-stealing situations, because at its core, poker is a dialogue between two players: they give each other information (and sometimes misinformation) about their holding via their betting pattern – so you’d be well served to think more about just what you’re saying and what your opponent is saying to you with your bets, and never, I repeat N-E-V-E-R, lose sight of what your dialogue has said up to that point in a hand, and what your opponent might interpret it as having said, and how you might manipulate that dialogue to your advantage. When I start to run bad, it’s almost always because I’ve turned on auto-pilot and stopped doing the 2nd- and 3rd-level thinking that has gotten me to where I am.

Speaking of building up your poker toolkit, here’s a quick hand analysis that might give you a glimpse into the kind of thinking I’m talking about, which I think people should try to develop as they move up in stakes. It’s a simple one, on its face, but I’ll take you through my thought process nonetheless. Here’s the hand, in full.

Party Poker $30/$60 6-handed

I’m in the CO with TJ.

Preflop: Big semi-aggressive fish limps UTG, folded to me, and I call, folded to the BB (solid TAG) who raises, both UTG fish and I call.

Flop: 2 6 7, BB bets, UTG calls, I raise, BB and UTG both call.

Turn: 6, both check to me, I bet, both fold.

Hero wins 6.5 big-bet pot.

Nothing special, perhaps, but I think there’s more to this hand than meets the eye. First off – preflop: A raise out of the BB from a solid TAG shows a ton of strength. He’s saying that he can beat whatever 2 limpers might have.

But let’s talk about the action on the flop, because that’s where the hand was really won. The BB leads out with a bet (which was completely expected after his preflop raise, and a relatively innocuous flop), and UTG merely calls. That’s the first clue, and you should learn to ask what every single action means. This one was easy – UTG, although a fish, was aggressive enough that I was pretty sure he’d raise if the flop was safe and paired either of his hole cards, but he merely called, which told me right away that he had nothing: either overcards or a gutshot straight draw (or a set he was slowplaying, but I thought that unlikely.)

So here’s the information I have so far:
BB (solid TAG): either a big pair, or two high cards.
UTG: overcards to the board, or a gutshot (but did not catch any piece of the flop)

Note what I have: absolutely jack-squat, but it hardly even matters for the purposes of this hand! I’ve got two weak overcards, and while I wouldn’t make the following play often (opting to quietly fold instead), I really liked the undesirable sandwich the BB was in, and I thought I could exploit it, so I raised, knowing that it would essentially force the BB to reveal whether he had overcards or a big pair. He’d almost certainly have to 3-bet a big pair to force out UTG and whatever crap draw he was on, but probably wouldn’t do that with overcards, having to worry about two players left to act behind him.

BB just called, as did UTG (which was very much expected because he was so loose, and in fact was absolutely crucial to the hand, as I explain later), and at that point I knew that the pot was mine if a safe card fell on the turn.

The cost of obtaining this extraordinarily valuable information? A mere 1 big-bet into a 4.5 big-bet pot.

Update on what I know about my 2 opponents:
BB (solid TAG): overcards
UTG: either weak overcards (he didn’t raise preflop) or some sort of crap gutshot or worse; but the board hadn’t paired his hand, that much I knew.

The turn brings an outstanding card for me: a completely harmless 6. Both check to me, and I’m sitting there knowing that the BB is unenviably sandwiched between two players, both of whom may have him beat, so I’m nearly positive a bet now will force him to fold, which he does. UTG also decides to fold his hand (which was probably two weak overcards), but even had he called, I had already decided to bet any river, the only way I was going to take down the pot, and a good investment in this medium-sized pot.

A novice player might look at my play and characterize it as nothing more than a ballsy bluff with a shitty hand that happened to work out this time. But that substantially glosses over the thought process that higher-stakes players put into these decisions. The key to the hand was the squeeze play on the BB – if the UTG had folded on the flop, I would have immediately folded as well. But UTG’s flop call gave me all the information I needed to exploit the situation, making it way too difficult for BB to call all the way with just Ace-high (which he might have done if I was his only opponent) The second 6 that came on the turn must have seemed pretty safe to the BB as well, but when the action was checked to me on the turn, I knew that if I put in a bet, with UTG still to act behind him, the BB simply couldn’t afford to put another bet in when he could be drawing completely dead with two overcards.

Far be it for me to claim that the above was the correct way to play this hand. As I wrote earlier, I don’t always make this play, and more often than not I’ll simply fold on the flop, and still other times I’ll pull this play but end up losing when the BB hits one of his overcards or the UTG makes whatever crap draw he was on. Finding the "correct" play (as if there ever is one) is the theme of a lot of the 2+2 strategy threads, which is why I typically avoid them…far more interesting, I think, is dissecting the thought process of hands like this that (whether they pan out, like this one did, or not) allow me to add little tips and tricks to my own poker toolbox.


Finally: Why I’m not going to Aruba

I’ve adhered largely to the “no bad beat stories” unofficial bylaw of this blog, but I need to get this one off my chest, just once, and then I’ll be on my merry way. I hardly ever enter any big-buyin tourney satellites, but I felt like going to UB’s Aruba tourney in a few wks, so I entered a $300 satellite, and battled down to 4 people (only winner won package), before raising on the button w/ KK, having the terrible BB re-raise me, and instead of coming over the top, just smooth-calling so as to get all his chips on the flop. Sure enough he pushed into me, with this board.



Sigh. The poker gods didn’t even have the dignity to just throw a six up there and end it, but made me sweat it out by dropping a 5, then an 8 for a stomach-churning backdoor straight. The equivalent of a poker-site slowroll. Can’t get all that upset about it, I guess. I had previously been all-in preflop w/ A5s vs. KK, and won that…so I guess you can’t get pissed about an atrocious beat when you were only still alive thanks to a bad beat you laid on someone else (even though I had open pushed w/ A5s when my stack was really low, which was the right play, whereas I seriously outplayed the guy on the KK vs. 66 hand.) On top of that, even had I won the hand, I would only have had a 2:1:1 chip advantage over the remaining 2 opponents…hardly a mortal lock to win the thing. Just sucks walking away w/ nothing.

Alright, that’s my semi-annual bad beat allowance (and yet another reasons why NL tournament are gay.)