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Starting to play for real (money)
Let’s start small : $0.10/$0.20 or $0.50/$1. Fixed Limit Hold’Em is the next step. This will drastically reduce the lunatic opponents scenario. All of a sudden, only 2 or 3 opponents are calling your raises. Your opponents don’t want to give their money away, and they want to take your money off you! Let’s sit down with a $50. If this doesn’t last you at least 20 hours playing time, don’t move up. Ideally, you shouldn’t move up until you are breaking even. This is probably a good rule to abide by at all levels. Ok. I know what you are thinking : I haven’t given you any clues on what sort of cards to play, what situations, or 'position', to play them, and how to play them. If only it was that easy! The answers are, it depends, it depends, and you guessed it, it depends. (I should have been a politician.) Over the weeks, I’ll try and cover as many 'it depends' as possible.
Do! A starter for ten… 7 2 off suit is not a good hand. 9 3 is also not a good hand. Just watch me blow $15000 (real money) on Sky Sports next month for proof. I was heads up with Peter, having outlasted the other 4 opponents. I believed Peter was playing too tight for heads up play, so I decided to bully him. Wronggg. I raised his big blind once too often with 9 3, and he surprisingly called me with 10 Q. Whoops! Not a very nice scenario. Needless to say I went out, lost my money, lost the $15000 prize money, lost the opportunity to win $200,000 in the final, looked rather stupid on TV, and lost my pride. And the moral of the story is… 'Let’s stick to decent starting hands'.
'Position' is just plain common sense. The further you are from the Big Blind, the more information you have. It is commonly believed that having the best position is always being in last position. In fact, my mate Brad who has an IQ of 180, insists that being last to speak is always the best position to be in. It is in fact one of the few statements he has made that is completely incorrect, wrong, short sighted simplistic rubbish…but for the time being we will assume he is right. Let’s assume that we have all been good boys and girls, and we are sticking to Fixed Limit Hold’em at bet365poker... no bigger than 50c/$1. (I know that No Limit is more fun but patience, patience, patience.) Ok. So you are first to speak after the Big Blind, commonly referred to as 'under the gun'. You are looking down at AJ. Nice hand... No, not in this position. There are 9 players who haven’t acted yet. 9 hands that may contain a pair of Jacks, Queens, Kings, Aces, AK or AQ. All of which, you don’t want to play against. And, should you raise from this position, all the hands that you want to play against, JK, JQ, J10, A10, A9, will probably fold to your raise. The bottom line being if continuously play AJ from here, you will lose money in the long run. Difficult to believe? but true... honest guv, I’m a poker player. OK. So we are now sat on the button. Le position perfecte. You look down at AJ. Nice hand…well maybe… Lets say. The man under the gun raises, the next player re-raises, and the ultra tight Miss Rock of Gibraltar, I only play Aces, next to you has capped it. Do you want to play your AJ now? No, of course not. But the point is, you have found out that you don’t have the best hand without putting a cent of yesterdays winnings in. If you had raised under the gun, and then had to fold, you would have wasted 2 bets, $2, half of Sian’s entrance fee to watch Peter Pan. OK. So we are now sat on the button. Le position perfecte. You look down at AJ. Nice hand... well maybe... Lets say. The man under the gun folds, everyone folds and the regular limper in with A 2 to your right, limps in. Now of course, we want to raise. The guy to your right didn’t raise, so he can’t have a better hand than you. And there are only 2 hands (the small and big blind) behind you. A very small chance of there being a better hand than yours… If you get really lucky, the Big Blind might fall in love with his J 9 and call as well. The flop comes down Ace high or Jack high, and they will probably bet and call your raises all the way to the river. So the morale of this week’s story is that AJ under the gun, is errr... a fold I’m afraid. Ok, well A 10 or A 9 is anyway.
100 UP
Well, I finally managed to win my 100th live multi-table poker competition. Of course, being the strange breed that the poker gods are, they dictated that it would be my biggest ever win to date, and that it would be exactly ?100,000. I struggled past 135 players over two long days of poker to win the Victoria Classic at the Victoria Grosvenor Casino on London's Edgware Road.
One of my key hands was late on Saturday night, when I won a large pot with KQ against a pair of 7s. It was of interest to the player sat next to me, who was surprised that I committed such a large portion of my stack in the pot with such an average hand. I thought documenting it here, may give a few insights into No Limit Hold Em tournament play.
I was in the small blind 400. The big blind was 800 and there was a nominal running ante. The first player to act, smooth called. In most cases this tells us nothing about this player's hand. Most players will smooth call in this position with big hands like Kings and Aces, hoping that a later player will raise, so that they can then put a very large re-raise in. But the player may also, of course, just have JQ of hearts or many other inferior hands.
The next player to act folded, and then Frode, a top Norwegian player, also smooth called. It transpires, he was wary of the early caller, and fancied him for a big hand. Now, all of a sudden there was a larger than usual pot developing. So two players in late position also called. They were basically getting very good value for their mediocre hands, so why not? When the action reached me, I looked down at KQ off-suit. Fortunately, the player to my left was paying very little attention and didn't look like he had a hand. So I thought the time was right for a semi-steal. There was 4600 chips in the middle. Well worth the effort when the average chip stack was less than 20,000. But try to bluff when there are 4 callers?
It's not as difficult as you might think, if we look at the information available. The big blind player has switched off. Frode and the two late callers have already given their type of hands away. If they had a big hand they would almost certainly have raised to try and take the chips that were out there. This is because the early limper had created the extra value. Generally, if there are more than the BB and SB out there, then its best to raise your good hands and just take the available chips uncontested without any danger to your stack. Also if you have a big hand, you are better playing it heads up. So the late callers just can't have a big hand unless they are looking for trouble.
Fortunately, I had been on an earlier table with the first position limper for several hours. I had noticed that he loved to raise at every opportunity, and that he liked to play more hands than most. So I thought there was a good chance he wouldn't call. So I raised 5000, thinking that I had a 80% chance of picking up the pot there and then, uncontested.
The big blind and early limper passed as expected, but Frode thought for a second, and then moved all-in. His re-raise was my 5000 with another 7400 on top. The late players passed as expected, and I had to contemplate his raise. The pot odds on calling were excellent. I was risking 7400 to win 22,400.
The big problem was that if I lost, a further 7400 would leave me with only 5000 chips. At the start of the hand, I had a comfortable chip stack. At the end, I may be in big trouble needing to go all-in during the next 2 rounds. So I looked at this problem from two more points of view : what type of hand am I in big trouble against, and what type of hand has Frode got.
I was sure that I was just a 47% underdog. The pot odds dictated it was a call. I could possibly recover if I lost the pot. You don't win tournaments without playing big pots, and you certainly don't win tournaments without getting lucky! My chips went in, and as you can guess, I hit a King. Frode was out, and I was in a very good position to proceed into the second day.
The point I am trying to make though, was that if Frode had not called, it would have been an excellent move stealing a large amount of chips uncontested. The type of move that helps you survive the long barren spells when you don't pick up any nice hands. As it worked out? I just got lucky! Articles Written by: Dave Colclough (2004-10-12 18:19:38)© 2001-2004 bet365 Ltd. All rights reserved
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