What is it with people over the past few days slow playing pocket aces and then whining like a small child who’s dropped his lollypop when they get cracked?

Now I’m expecting most of my readers will know this but AA is not invincible! Worse still the more people you let in for free/cheap the more chance that you’re dropping your lollypop.

According to the poker odds calculator at http://www.oddspoker.co.uk/Odds.html AA will win (give or take 1%):

85% of the time against one random opponent.
73% of the time against two random opponents.
63% of the time against three random opponents.
55% of the time against four random opponents.
49% of the time against five random opponents.
43% of the time against six random opponents.
38% of the time against seven random opponents.
34% of the time against eight random opponents.
and only 30% of the time against nine random opponents.

So what does all that mean? Well in a nutshell slow playing those aces is suicide. If you’re seeing the flop with four others you’re into coin flip territory, even with only 3 others you’ve lost a lot of your edge. More than four and you may as well be holding whatever the other players have.

You’re probably wondering where this little rant came from? Well in the past two days I’ve witnessed four separate hands where a player has slow played aces with between four and six callers. In each of these cases they ended up being beaten on the flop or the turn, going all in and drawing almost dead to the river and then abusing their opponents for poor play.

Usually this wouldn’t bother me as I want to see my opponents making these mistakes, but it is so frustrating to see them abusing others when it’s themselves that are to blame. So I thought I’d write this in the hope that any new players reading my blog won’t make similar mistakes, as for the players I witnessed these past couple of days… let them learn the hard (and expensive) way!

When you get your pocket aces, raise it up big and hope for one or two callers. Sure, sometimes you’ll scare everyone out of the pot but at least you’ll be getting the blinds instead of losing your stack. Also remember that even with two callers, you’re losing 27% of the time… suck it up, bear it and know you made the correct, long term profitable play.

If anyone remembers the post I made about “My Aims” you might remember that one of them was to “… fold when my cards are beat”.

Sounds simple right? It should be, but if it was would I still be making stupid plays like this one?

Middle position, dealt:

:Ad::Qd:

and I raise it up 3X, the button and BB both call and we see a flop:

:Kd::Td::Kc:

The BB checks, I bet half the pot, the button flat calls and the BB folds. At this point I’m nearly 100% sure that my remaining opponent has the king. We see the turn card:

I hit the nut flush and bet the pot. He calls. The river:

He’s hit his full house… I know it, he knows it, everyone at the table knows it (except they still think I have also). So instead of the correct (although very weak and unfortunate) “check”, I decide on the much more stupid but 100 times more manly “All-In” (for what remains of my now very small stack). He calls and does indeed hold the full house.

Folding the nut flush is hard, but it’s stupid play like this that’s costing me money and making me look like a fool. It’s a big leak in my game and although I guess I’m some of the way towards fixing it by admitting to it… now I have to go all the way and stop doing it!

No poker to report on tonight (dinner with the indoor cricket team - Marion Hotel, not a bad chicken parmi)… anyway I thought I’d share a link any Poker Champs players might find interesting:

www.pokerchampsforum.com

It’s an on-line forum dedicated to Poker Champs, some interesting discussions on potential site improvements etc. so if you play on PC go check it out!

Just a quick one to share with you:

I actually don’t have any good notes on this tourney (so tired, Friday night is catching up with me!) but I did come back from shortest stack in the final four to take the victory.

Final hand was pocket 8’s vs pocket 2’s… my 8’s held up (obviously :)).

Last night (this morning?) I got the opportunity to hit the poker room in the Adelaide Casino and play a bit of $4/$8 limit hold’em.

Now, it should be noted that the plan for the night was not to play cards, instead I was out celebrating with a few friends. This meant that by the time I got to the casino I had polished off more than my share of alcoholic beverages…. not the best state to be in when playing poker ;)

Anyway, over the course of a couple of hours at the table I played (in my opinion) a pretty solid game. Let me run through a few of the more interesting hands…

Hand #1:

:Ac::Qc:

Raised pre-flop from a relatively early position (the table was very loose-passive at this point, next to no preflop raises, people playing with everything) and was called by a guy who had been playing extremely loose and calling down to the river with hands no better than middle pair/weak kicker. No one else called, the blinds folded (this shocked me, I think they may have noticed how tight I’d been playing) and we went heads up into the flop:

:Js::7d::9h:

Nothing really to help me and since my opponent could be playing anything and I know he’s almost guaranteed to raise me if he’s hit anything I check, he checks and the turn comes:

No help to me, but surely no help to him either. With my opponents check on the flop, I decide that he hasn’t hit anything and given that the four was unlikely to have helped him I decide to bet, he calls and we see the river:

I really doubt he has the jack, but I haven’t hit anything either and as I believe this player is unbluffable, I check. He bets. Now, I just know that he doesn’t have the jack… he would have been betting/raising like a mad man on the flop if he did. But there are three other cards out there that he could have to beat me and in my mind it is very likely he’s called my original raise with Ax suited and paired up his kicker on that board, I fold. A kind of shocked look comes over his face and he flips over his cards to show me:

:Ks::Qh:

King high, he only had bloody king high!! I’d love to think that he made a brilliant read on me and pushed me out of that pot with his superior skills but that would almost certainly be giving him too much credit. As I watched him proceed to lose his entire stack in fairly short time after this hand I knew he’d just got lucky.

I stand by my decision to fold against this opponent in this situation, sure it meant I lost with the best hand in this case but in the long run I’m pretty sure I’d be losing money making that call.

Hand #2:

:Ks::Kd:

Raised it up preflop and got a couple of callers, all low cards came on the flop and I bet again to end up heads up with a guy who had hit top pair on the low board. He called my bets down to the river and my kings held up to give me my first pot for the night.

Hand #3:

:Qh::Qs:

On the button I again raised it up and was called only by the BB.

Flop:

:3c::6d::Ad:

He checks, I bet, he calls. At this point I put him on the flush draw, I’ve been watching this guy’s play a fair bit and I know he wouldn’t have checked had he hit the ace.

Turn:

He checks, I bet again and he calls.

River:

He checks, I figure he’s missed his draw and I’m not getting anymore money out of him. There’s also a small chance he does actually have the ace so I simply check and show him my queens. For some reason he decides to flip up his cards and show me that all he actually had was the 6!

After playing a few more hands and chasing a couple of draws that didn’t come off I was down around $40, I would have loved to stick around and keep playing with these guys but it was 5:30 am, the sun was coming up and it was time to go to bed. They would just have to give me their money another day.

One thing is for sure, I’ll be reading my “Small Stakes Hold’em”, putting together a live bankroll and heading back to these tables sometime soon… there’s money to be made!

Six guys were playing poker when Smith loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest and drops dead at the table.

Showing respect for their fallen comrade, the other five complete their playing time standing up.

Roberts looks around and asks, “Now, who is going to tell the wife?”

They draw straws.

Rippington, who is always a loser, picks the short one.

They tell him to be discreet, be gentle, don’t make a bad situation any worse than it is.

“Gentlemen! Discreet? I’m the most discreet man you will ever meet. Discretion is my middle name, leave it to me.”

Rippington walks over to the Smith house, knocks on the door, the wife answers, asks what he wants.

Rippington says, “Your husband just lost $500 playing cards.”

She hollers, “TELL HIM TO DROP DEAD!”

Rippington says, “I’ll tell him.”

Bought my first poker book today, “Small Stakes Hold ‘em: Winning Big With Expert Play” by Ed Miller et al.

Won’t be doing an official review as such (there are already 100’s of them on the web), but I will be giving you my thoughts on the book from my point of view and letting you know some areas of my game that it (hopefully) improves. Stay tuned!

Wow these things are addictive! Didn’t have much of a chance to play poker tonight but somehow I always manage to squeeze in a couple of SNG’s…

Went out on the bubble in the first one, fourth place… I was crippled early and never really came back. No hands of note so I won’t bore you with any details.

The second was much more interesting, had rockets (pocket aces) hold up early to double me through then kept a pretty much steady stack size until the final four. Played the bubble tight and watched the short stack get knocked out to put me in the money.

This is where things got a little interesting, my two opponents were (in my opinion) playing quite well. Everyone was stealing their share of the blinds and pushing at the correct time, I’d been doing alright myself and had worked my way up to slight chip leader when in the small blind I was dealt:

:Th::3h:

Now as I’d folded my previous two small blinds I thought this might be a good opportunity to steal the big blind (blinds at this point were 200/400) and I raise it up to $800.

He flat calls and we see a flop:

:Td::7c::4d:

I’m first to act and as I’ve hit top pair I bet the pot ($1600), action goes over to him and he re-raises me another $800.

Now, before I continue I should mention that I had been taking down quite a few pots on the flop using pot sized bets… he’d seen this (and been a victim of it previously) and I my instinct told me at this point he was testing me to see if I was bluffing. I re-raise him back all-in.

He calls.

I take a look at his cards:

:Qd::7s:

He’s hit middle pair against my top pair and I smile knowing I made the correct read. Poker, however, is a game of highs and lows. That was the high, here’s the low:

Turn:

River:

He hits a runner-runner flush and the smile is quickly wiped off my face.

This left me with around $800 in chips and backed into a corner I had no choice but to put it all-in a couple of hands later with:

:Ks::7s:

On a flop of:

:Kc::2d::5h:

I was instantly called by the same player who’d taken my chips earlier and he showed me:

:Ac::Ad:

He’d limped in with rockets and set me up beautifully, he must have been pretty happy with himself… until:

Turn:

River:

Revenge is sweet, I got lucky and was able to play my normal game again and within a few hands my nemesis had handed the rest of his chips over to myself and the eventual tournament winner.

The final hand was a race, I hit a king high four flush on the flop and ended up all-in against a pair of jacks. I missed my flush and that was all she wrote.

Some would say getting all-in on a draw is a pretty reckless (stupid?) move and I would agree, but after surviving that previous big hand I think I was lucky to be in second place at all. It seemed like a good spot to push heads up, but it fell through this time… I’ll have to keep practicing! :)

Something I forgot to mention earlier, the latest Poker Diagram podcast is up.

If you haven’t heard them before it’s basically two guys (Henry and Zog) out of London playing live on-line poker and commentating on the results…

These guys really are great fun to listen to, if you haven’t heard them before head on over to www.pokerdiagram.com and check them out!

Nothing better than spending a lazy Sunday afternoon playing a few Sit ‘n Go’s. I decided to sit down at a few $2+$0.20 tables (I’m moving up the limits soon, I promise :)) and test my “skills”, here’s how I went:

SNG #1:

Played this one fairly tight to finish in 2nd place, my opponent had me well covered heads up (by around 10x) as he’d caught AA and KK in consecutive hands to knock two players out.

In the end I had to gamble, blinds would have had me within 3 hands otherwise. Here’s how the final hand played out:

On the SB, my hole cards:
:Qh::6h:

I push all in.

He shows:
:9c::9s:

Nice hand for him to catch on the BB heads up. We see a flop:

:Jh::9d::Th:

Ok, he gets a pocket pair on the BB now hits his set on the flop. I still have hope… c’mon the straight or flush!

Turn:

“Them’s quads beeetches!” (thanks to the Poker Princess for that line), unfortunately in this case I was the “beeetch”.

SNG’s #2 and #3:

My notes on these two are kinda, umm, brief. There’s an unfortunate reason for that… my time at these tables was “kinda, umm, brief”!

I finished on the bubble in number 2 (fourth place) and went out in a disappointing fifth place in number 3. My notes claim I wasn’t getting any cards but I believe my biggest mistake on both of these tables was that I was playing way too loose.

If you’re making loose calls in the middle levels of a SNG you are simply bleeding chips, before you know it you’re the short stack and everyone on the table is coming after you. You end up all in with some more marginal cards and short of a miracle you’re going home early…

SNG #3:

3rd place! Not bad, but I am extremely annoyed at myself for not getting further. I don’t know about you guys but I can handle taking a bad beat pretty well, if I have get my chips in while I’m ahead then I believe I made a long-term profitable play, it’s when I make a bad play that I get really annoyed:

I’m on the BB, the dealer folds and the SB min-raises. I have the SB slightly outstacked and to me this looks like an attempt to steal my blind, I’ve been stealing a few blinds myself and all I can think is he’s trying to push me back a little. I look at my cards:

:7c::Td:

And for some inexplicable reason I call. In hindsight these probably aren’t blind defending cards, even if they are a flat call just screams WEAK here. I might as well tell him what cards I have.

Anyway, onto the flop:

:3d::Ts::Ac:

SB bets the minimum bet which is only a quarter of the pot, to me this is a weak bet and hints he may have missed the flop (”My king didn’t hit, but you believe I have the ace right?”). So with all the stupidity in the world I click that fun little button “All-In”, he calls (damn!) and shows me:

:As::Jd:

Double damn! I’ve walked right into his trap, I wouldn’t mind except that I completely ignored the big neon warning sign flashing “Danger: TRAP!”.

Of course the poker gods want to get their kicks too, the turn comes:

I’m saved!!! What? Oh yeah, the river:

I was kicking myself. Needless to say the blinds caught up with me next time around and I was outta there in 3rd.

SNG #5:

I played in one more SNG yesterday and again placed 3rd. Unfortunately though it was one of the most boring SNG tables I’ve ever sat down at, talk about a rock garden. My natural instinct when faced with an ultra tight table is to push, raise pre-flop, steal blinds and scare them out of pots… which is fine, as long as you don’t push it.

I pushed it.

I think I got a little over aggressive and going into the final four I was almost the short stack (around even with another player and well dominated by the other two). As the guy I was equal to was on my left I was pushing him as hard as I could, in the end I got lucky catching a straight on the river after a bluff attempt and took him out. Because the table had been so tight, it had taken a long time to get to this point and the blinds were at $600/$1200 (the SB alone was enough to eat my stack), I didn’t catch any cards and was out of there a short time later.

Summary:

Three ITM finishes in 5 SNG’s is nothing to complain about, however, I still have a lot to learn. I especially need to work on when to be aggressive and when not to be aggressive (two of the things I listed here). I’m sure this will become more natural with experience, so my plan for now is to keep playing as often as I can…