Rolled On The River

At the end of April I started staking and coaching a friend of mine (who had no exposure to poker whatsoever) from the ground up on two conditions:

#1 – that he would blog his journey with weekly entries

#2 – That he would watch at least three StoxPoker videos a week.

He has diligently been blogging whilst learning and I think his most recent entry provides some valuable insight into the path of learning via videos. With his permission I have included it below:

Poker videos come in two flavours, theory and practical. Theoretical vids show the math and psychology behind the games, and the practical ones show the teacher playing games and putting the theories to use in real situations, I started my little poker life watching mostly theory videos in the form of Ed Miller’s classroom clips, and slowly moved on to more practical ones. I would reccommend a combination of both, the theoretical ones are so valuable, they could replace almost any book, giving step by step instructions on the variety of plays out there, while taking the time out to crunch the numbers behind certain decisions and certain situations.

The practical ones take a coach on his thought process during a session, and the audio is usually (not always) recorded during the sessions, so you can get a grasp of what the coach is thinking on the fly. What I’m saying here is that both types of video should bring your learning full circle, which is the impact I’m beginning to feel. On one hand, you learn a bunch of theories you have try to match to the practical situations in which they apply (see Ed’s Art of Misapplication vid), on the other, you are watching the hands as they come up, and trying to work out what the most relevant information you should base your next move off.

You may be 3-bet with AJ, your decision has to be one of position, stack size, and player statistics. You also have to consider any history you have, and a few other situational factors. Watching practical videos will show you, for example if the guy was short-stacked and prone to 3-betting, you should put him all in, because thats what you saw a coach do. While on the other hand, the theoretical videos will give you the numbers behind stack to pot ratios, the advantages of position, and the ranges of players with a certain percentage 3-bet percentages.

Though this may seem like an absolute plethora of information to process in a short amount of time, continued theoretical and practical study sessions prove to help make the right theory stand out when you’re faced with a problem, the culmination bringing about better, faster, more informed decisions for you at the tables.

I’ve found both to be vital in moving forward so far, and I’m sure I’ll continue to in the future.

You can view the original entry here

Join thousands of poker players across America who are raising their voices to keep the US’ most popular game legal. On July 22, during National Poker Week, the Poker Players Alliance will present this petition to the President, asking his support to exempt poker from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), and for the legalization and regulation of online poker.

Please sign the petition and help everybody to be heard! If you didn’t catch the link in the entry you can find it by clicking here.

Please note this article mostly covers the Rakeback’s inner workings. To find out more about signing up for Rakeback, vist: http://rakeback.cardrunners.com

As you may already be aware, online poker rooms take a small portion of each pot to finance their operations. This is referred to as the ‘rake’. Rakeback is a portion of this that you, as a consumer, can claim back through an affiliate. Essentially, the affiliate receives a portion of the rake for referring you to the poker room, and then affiliates that offer rakeback push a generous portion of this to you, the consumer.

Unfortunately, because rakeback is managed through affiliates, it is only open to new accounts (existing accounts cannot be tied to a new affiliate, since that would prevent your original affiliate from receiving the income it already does from your play).

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I played 6-max No Limit Hold’em at 200nl until February of this year, at which point I decided to change my focus to Full Ring. Although unconventional, since most players don’t move from 6-max to Full Ring, I’ve found I can play 16-20 Full Ring tables quite comfortably, but only 8-10 6-max tables before losing focus. I felt that if I could achieve a winrate close to that of my 6-max play, I would be able to achieve a higher hourly return.

Thankfully, with the help of coaching from a coach, I did manage to accomplish this. I have since played just over 70,000 hands of NL100-200 Full Ring, playing 21 VP$IP / 19 PFR over 16 tables for a little more than 7 big blinds per hundred hands.

I intend to continue working on my No Limit game; however, I’ve also turned my attention toward Pot Limit Omaha Hi, and have begun coaching with StoxPoker coach Onassis for an hour each night, with the hope of beating these games in the near future.

I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is rather well off, and who used to play Poker recreationally quite frequently. Although he was ultimately a losing player, he didn’t mind losing a few hundred dollars on the weekend since he considered it to be ‘entertainment money’. Unfortunately, he is no longer interested in playing after a couple of heads up matches where his opponent decided that, in some way or other, verbal abuse gave him some hidden psychological edge.

As a collective, we should be promoting poker, as well as trying to create a fun atmosphere where one doesn’t need to understand every nuance and rule of the game in order to enjoy his or her self. When I was learning poker, and a total fish, I remember having a whole host of people willing to help me out, and to ensure that I was comfortable and enjoying myself. I’m seriously wondering if someone just starting out today would feel inclined to play through more than an orbit.

I really don’t mean to be so negative about this issue, but it seems like you can’t play at all lately without seeing somebody berating a player for their Ace high call on the river, making a snide comment about a poor pre-flop call with a hand like J2 offsuit, or making a scene when somebody pushes all in with a low pocket pair and sucks out.

If you are one of these people, please stop! If you see somebody making a play like this, relish the fact that, although you may have lost the hand to a poor player with poor cards, you made a winning decision and can be happy that the game of poker is alive and thriving. As for the age-old excuse that table talk will somehow cause your opponent to stack off against you lighter – nonsense! Any small temporary edge you’re gaining by tilting this opponent is offset by the fact that they’re more than likely to quit you earlier (increasing your chances of being hit and run), or won’t re-deposit once they’ve run through what they already have online. Instead, if you get sucked out, just reply with ‘nh’ and enjoy knowing that, although you lost your money, the chances having it returned are much better than if the TAG player down the road scooped the pot.

I’ve taken a new student on board who’s learning poker from the absolute ground up. This student is a real life friend of mine, who I’m staking and coaching for the long term. My coaching was under one condition: That he is to make 2-3 blog posts a week, as he progresses in knowledge, which will provide himself and others with a diary that shows a player’s progress from not even knowing the hand rankings correctly, to beating the mid-stakes online. The link to his blog is http://padawan.rolledontheriver.com – Enjoy!

One of the great perks of my position at StoxPoker is that I get to learn many different types of poker vicariously through the videos that I review, and also by chatting with various coaches. One of the games that I’ve been working particularly hard on lately is Pot Limit Omaha Hi. I posted quite an interesting hand from a session this week on TwoPlusTwo and StoxPoker, and thought I’d share the general feedback I received on the hand as I found it quite interesting. Enjoy!

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Never hate your adversary blindly. Understand his motives; recognise and respect his strengths – and you will be better prepared to meet him on the battlefield.

Over the years heads up displays like Hold’em Manager and PokerTracker have become very widely used throughout the online poker community.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that, although a lot of people now have a solid grasp on statistics such as VP$IP (Voluntarily Put Money Into Pot) and PFR (Pre-Flop Raise), many people still seem to have difficulties fully understanding Aggression Factor, and are therefore unable to use it to influence their decision making.

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Throughout 2005, my sole income was from playing live poker. Thanks to this, I feel I better understand the aspect of grinding, and now that I play online can clearly depict the difference between the two. Essentially, every evening I would arrive at the casino, join the waiting list for the highest running Limit Hold’em games, and then jump on the first available table. It’s also worth noting that I never stuck to the one table if I knew there was a better one going. As soon as I found a seat, I ensured that I stayed on the waiting list for other tables – if a better one became available then I would move to it. The most important thing about playing live poker is being able to sit in the best game available; you’re only playing one table and you need to ensure that you’re making it the best possible table.

Live poker, although easier to beat overall (no live player should ever kid themselves, the average live player is most definitely less skilled then the average online player), does have very different upsides and downsides to online poker. The advantages of online play should be quite apparent – you can play more tables, you can track your income and opponents quite easily with various software packages, you can get rakeback, and you can also find a good game with a good structure and soft opponents at virtually any time. If I had to make a recommendation to an aspiring professional poker player, I would most certainly recommend that they play online poker over live poker.

So what are the advantages of live poker? Well for one, you’re meeting people. Online poker players lose a lot of interaction, and essentially have a desk job that doesn’t bring them around people. If you’re a people person, you’re going to prefer live poker. This isn’t to say that online players aren’t sociable people, as I personally have found quite the opposite and would argue quite vigorously that they are. I’m also of the impression that your average big blinds per hour is higher at a live table than it is at the equivalent stake online table (and I still believe this after taking rake and game structures into consideration). Why? In my experience live tables are generally much better in that value bets get called thinner, and the saturation of information at a live table allows you to squeeze more money out of your opponents than you typically could with the absence of physical reads / tells. One thing to keep in mind is that although physical tells are quite prevalent in live play, the average opponent puts too much emphasis on them. The play of a hand and your opponents’ tendencies should be your first and foremost source of information when making your decisions – ie. use tells as a method of enforcing or questioning your decisions, not making them.

Another interesting point about live poker is table talk. A lot can be learnt about a hand just played even if you weren’t the one in it. Let’s assume that you see a hand where you suspect that Villain A beat Villain B with two pair. A simple statement such as “I knew you had a set there!” although untrue, if presented in a berating manner, will often cause Villain A to either defend himself (which will give you more information), or Villain B to provide you with more information about what he was thinking in the hand. As an example of the latter, I observe a hand where Villain A bets the flop and in turn and is called by Villain B on both streets; however, when he bets small on the river, Villain B folds. I can’t see many feasible hands that Villain A could have been representing, and I’m curious as to why Villain B folded. By simply saying something along the lines of “I knew you had a set the whole way, nice hand” to Villain A, you will sometimes get Villain B jumping in saying something like “No, he had a straight,” or “No, he had Aces.” – giving you information about how Villain B thinks.

Why do most live professionals not last very long? Well, in the most part I’ve found that, on average, they don’t put in enough hours. Live poker is a modest income at best; without playing fairly high stakes and without logging the hours you will often not last very long. During the time that I played live for a living, I saw many aspiring live professionals come and go – some of which had games I truly respected. On the most part these players would start off logging eight to ten hour days, but over time this would drop to one or two days a week. The pattern here? A lot of players would run good at some time or another and make the assumption that this is maintainable, causing them to play less. Making $200 / hour at $5/$10 Limit Hold’em is a very good heater, but it isn’t maintainable. Just because you have managed to do this for two or three sessions in a row, certainly doesn’t mean this is going to continue being the case.

Recently StoxPoker coach Stosh McConnell and I started discussing the concept of four betting light versus four bet shoving. What do we mean by this? Well, basically Hold’em betting patterns are commonly referred to using numbers. (Although a common misconception, this use of numbers doesn’t have any correlation to the bet size.) For example, the first bet into a pot is usually referred to as “opening”. If this bet is then raised, the person who raised them is said to have “three bet”, while the next person to raise would be “four betting”. What Stosh and I were discussing is whether it would be profitable to four bet shove our Ax (An ace with any second card) hands, as opposed to four betting these hands lightly (by lightly we mean raising the three better by a small amount – the strength of the play often having enough merit that the raise itself doesn’t need to be large). We were mostly focusing on the $0.50/$1.00 stake online, and thought the play may have some merit due to how lightly people currently three bet at these limits.

Example NL100:

SB: $.5
BB: $1

Hero opens for: $4
Villain three bets to: $13
Hero four bet shoves for: $96

There is now $114.50 in the pot, and Villain needs to call $87. To make this call profitably, Villain needs to have at least a 43% equity (87/(87+114.5)=0.43176).

Assuming Villain calls, and we only have one overcard (our ace), then we are still 30% likely to win. Villain is less likely to call with an ace, since there are fewer aces available due to card removal effects. The merit of this play, however, doesn’t come from Villain making a call here, but rather from the fold equity that the strength of our play has (generally we will also fold out most hands that completely dominate us, except for AK and AA combination’s).

I then spoke to Felipe Mesquita (another StoxPoker coach) to take this further. We made the following assumptions:

Assuming these are the ranges for our Villain, then, taking fold equity in consideration, we lose 17bb’s each time we make this place. Fold equity is a much lower consideration in this example, since Villain is three betting us with QQ+,AK and calling with any AA-KK, AKs combination, essentially he’s only folding a small portion of his hands (QQ, AKo).

We adjusted the second example’s ranges to take into account a more typical NL100-NL200 opponent. In this example, Villain three bets with 22+,AJ+,KQ (10% of hands), however, his calling range stayed the same. In this instance the play actually became profitable for us, making 7bb’s. If we then adjusted his calling range to include AKo and QQ, it becomes 2bb’s.

Basically, the end result of our experiment is that it can be profitable to four bet shove against the right opponent (one who three bets 10% of his hands).