November 19th Study Notes
Deuce Plays Podcast – Hero Calls
-In the first hand, Bart discusses a recent hero call he made. He was in the big blind with two red queens and raised pre-flop after a couple players limped in. The flop was Jc8c5d. Bart bet around 2/3 pot on the flop and was min-raised by the player who limped in UTG. On a wet board, this is normally indicative of a top-parish type hand. Bart just called and the turn was a Kd. Bart checked and the V over-bet the pot. Since the V is tight, Bart thought he might be making this play with something like KJ or a flush draw. He called and the river completed the backdoor flush draw with something like a 2d. Bart checked and the V shoved all-in. He though the V might be on AJdd, but didn’t think he would over-bet the turn with that hand since he could still get value out of it. In the end, he called and won a huge pot by reconstructing the hand and determining V was most likely on a busted flush draw.
-The next hand stresses bet sizing and texture when hand-reading. There is a pf raise, a call, and Bart calls from the big blind with A8s. The pot is around $140. Bart checks the AK4hh flop as does the pf raiser. However, the other player bets $30 (becomes a field bettor) and two players call and one player folds. Bart concludes that the pf raiser is weak since he did not bet into the pot with it being multi-way, but that the field bettor is probably on a draw due to the small sizing. The next card is a 6. Bart leads for 150 and the field bettor shoves for 500. Bart concludes he either has a draw or A6.
Book Reading – Theory of Poker
Chapter 3 talks about the fundamental theorem of poker. In typical Sklansky verse, he tends to confuse some people with the concept. But it is actually pretty simple. We gain when our opponents make mistakes and we lose when we make mistakes against our opponents. That is the general gist of it.
He talks about if we don’t chase a draw when being offered correct odds, we are making a mistake and thus making money for our opponent. We can make deceptive plays to force our opponents into mistakes.
An example he gives is when he just over-calls an all in bet on the turn instead of shoving. The play that offered the best odds was the call. His opponent behind called and made his hand, so Sklansky lost the pot. But because he forced his opponent into an incorrect call, he gained.
Chapter 4 is about the ante structure, which of course is not used for the games that I play in. But we can relate it to the pot size. In general, we should tighten up if the ante (pot) is expected to be small. It is not worth letting our opponents in cheaply once the ante (pot) gets up there in size. The last thing I took away was that it does not matter how large the ante (pot) is, if a player plays too loose he will always be a losing player in the long-run.
Pot odds is the topic of Chapter 5. It goes over the basics of odds calculations and offers up some charts showing the percentages that we need when we are drawing. It talks about how extra outs (which we now call backdoor equity) increases our chances of winning the hand, sometimes significantly. He states that the difference between a great player and average one is being able to fold your hand when you realize you are drawing dead.
I got more out of Chapter 6, which explains how we need to consider Effective Odds. I think these are still very important to today’s games. Most of the time when I am calculating my odds for drawing on the flop, I consider the equity as if I have two streets left to make it. While that is true, I am going to be facing additional heat on the turn if my draw misses. I need to keep that in mind when deciding if I am priced in or not.
Chapter 7 covers implied odds and reverse implied odds. Implied odds are useful when drawing and we don’t have the immediate odds to draw. However, we have to be careful not to get carried away. But no-limit poker is a game where implied odds are a factor. We also need to make sure our draw is going to holdup if we make it. That leads into reverse implied odds. If we make our draw but another player makes a stronger hand, then our hand is going to lose money.
Threads
Out of Rhythm / Life Tilt - Live Low-stakes No Limit Poker Forum - Live Poker Low-stakes NL
This was a pretty interesting read. A guy ran pretty hot for a while after expanding his game and playing more loose-aggressive. But he hit some serious run-bad and was questioning his poker skills.
My opinion is that the OP expanded his game too much and was trying to play too aggressive for this level. I think a reading of
The Mental Game of Poker would get him back on the right track.
Bart’s Tweet of the Day
“On the flop after the preflop raiser has checked the pot is ripe to be taken away #crushlivepoker”
This is the attack the field bettor play that I have talked about. I will probably add this as a task for a future session.