We don’t necessarily talk much strategy here at Pokerati, but I’m gonna make an effort to occasionally chronicle my own errors at the table with the goal of not repeating them (often). I had a pretty good session of Pokerati 1/2 (no-limit hold’em/PLO round of each) at the Hard Rock. In for $400, I had made a nice come back from about $80, rebuilding my stack to about $800+change — thanks to Katikin-on-tilt — when I got 6d 8c 9c Jd in the small blind. With about four limpers I threw in the buck.

The flop: 6-7-10 rainbow.

I tossed in $6 … had to build something. The cut-off, a solid player and the other big stack at the table with about $700, also mostly from @JaKatkin, called.

I know better than to bet the non-nuts in Omaha … and my instincts were screaming, “That Ace is not a bad card for him!” But I convinced myself it might also have given him something like A-10, which he likely wouldn’t bet, but might call with.

The turn came another 7, to put two hearts on the now-paired board. He bets $20. I pot it for $82. Alarm bells go off for my opponent but he calls. I start thinking about the boats he might have. Not pocket 10s. 6-7 was a possibility, but I think he woulda raised me on the flop. Pocket 6s was a threat, but not a big one, because I had one. 7-10 was scarier, but same thing … I think he woulda popped me on the flop with either of those hands.

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We all know how poker offers many rewards to the smarties. (Well, some of us do. Don’t tell the others, please.) So no surprise, really, to see poker featured over on the Chronicle of Higher Education website this morning.

In an article titled “What Poker Can Teach Us,” James McManus (Positively Fifth Street) shares a number of arguments on poker’s behalf, suggesting how poker helps us in various areas such as politics, business, and even in the struggle to come to a better understanding of the human condition.

The article adapts material from McManus’ long-awaited, forthcoming history of poker, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, which finally hits the shelves later this month.

Part 2 of his tutorial with Kristy Arnett … this time Schneider talks about how to play “royalties” and deuce-to-seven in the middle … along with some additional strategy to out-point your opponents.

It was dinner break on Day 7 of the main event — and hoping to finalize our patch deal with the really big money (and camera time) getting nearer, I joined Tom Schneider, along with Julie and Robert Goldfarb, at a Vietnamese restaurant with less than 30 minutes before play resumed. But alas, so much for Team Pokerati cracking the top 50 … all they wanted to do was play Chinese for $10 a point.

Here’s his latest instructional vid, teaching Kristy Arnett how to play everybody’s favorite 13-card game:

It’s something that wasn’t written about in Super/System … yet everyone has to consider it. Barry Greenstein has a good vlog post up about what goes into making a decision about which day to start in the WSOP main event, where he gives his thoughts on why day 1c may be the toughest field to wade through — with input from Justin Bonomo, Roland deWolfe, and Sorrel Mizzi. Check it out here.

Today is the first day of the 2009 main event. I’m sticking to my guns and saying the field size will be anywhere from 3,000-12,000 and offering 10:1 odds on anything outside of that. Just made a wager on the over for 5,000 … easy. Anyone else wanna offer that line? Seriously, it’s such a wild guessing game, and yet in the end, why do I think it’s gonna be just a few hundred less or just a few hundred more than last year’s main event field of 6,844? People can get their money off of PokerStars, right?

Meanwhile, Team Pokerati final tableist Gregg Merkow won his main event seat last night … and now is trying to figure out the differences between Day 1A-1D:
via Facebook

Winner winner chicken dinner won my seat to the main event in mega sat. today but can’t decide what day to play fri,sat,sun or mon.

Good question. Though as Kevin points out the numbers will likely differ noticeably as the 96 hours that constitute Day 1 progress, is there really a difference in the types of fields you can expect on each day? One more donkey-filled than another, for example (and is that a good or bad thing, lol).

Choosing when to play, of course, is the first of many decisions that will be part of someone’s journey toward becoming the winner. But it may also be the least relevant and simply depend on the player and his or her life schedule.

PokerNews has a pretty cool new(ish) feature on YouTube called “Hand of the Day” — where they get two players to break down a specific tournament situation in a relatively interesting way. In this episode, they talk to Bryan Devonshire and Noah Boeken about an unusual hand in $1,500 Limit Hold’em where the dealer dropped the stub and exposed three cards from the bottom of the deck:

Before I go any further, let me make one thing perfectly clear. I respect everyone who’s made the final table of the $1,500 No-Limit Hold ‘em Shootout. It’s a great accomplishment and one I’d be happy to emulate.

That said, my question is, couldn’t this be considered the easiest WSOP bracelet to win? Sure, it’s a tournament that started with 1,000 players, but the winner only has to defeat 26 of them to claim the prize. It’s not the same as a $1,500 donkament where you’re likely to see 1- or 200 different faces on your way to the final table, or even a 10K event where you may face 40 or 50 different opponents as tables break and shift.

This is essentially three sit & gos. Tough? Sure. But compared to other tournaments?

Watching the $1,500 No-Limit Hold ‘em Shootout at the WSOP today brought up an interesting question; how much does the luck of the a player’s first round table draw factor into their chances of winning?

Looking at today’s field, there were some tables that were obviously much more difficult than others. Of course, this is true in any tournament, but the structure of a shootout makes this more important in my opinion. Why? Because in a standard MTT, there’s a much better than average chance that you’ll change tables at least once on the first day, giving you a shot at facing some weaker players along the way.

In a shootout though, you’re stuck with your table mates. If you’re a seasoned pro, this probably doesn’t matter as you’ve probably played with them already and know their games. As an amateur though, you may be seriously screwed if you end up with someone like Ivey on your left and Negreanu on your right.

Does this mean I think shootouts are unfair for the casual player? Not at all. Just that they may be more difficult than you might expect.

Good post by Gugel over at AnskyPoker where he breaks down the three things you need to be a great poker player. These kinda-sorta go without saying, but at the same time, it’s always good (for many of us) to see a visual reminder for a more embraceable understanding of the concept:

I think the only thing he forgets in this model is “lucky rivers”.

Frequently in tournament poker you will encounter players who are re-raising your opens at an inappropriate frequency.

At the lower stakes they tend to re-raise too little, either trying to fold to cash or just call and play passive pots without the momentum of a raise or a strong hand. As you rise up the stakes though, you will start to encounter players who re-raise too much, and against these players you must be prepared to make one of the boldest plays in poker – the re-re-steal.

“If pulled off correctly it can help someone hugely chip up and push on for the win, if it goes wrong it can just look like a massive spew as someone loses a massive pot with a weak hand”

This play can only ever be effective if both players have enough chips that fold equity can be created, as there is no point making a big bluff like this if your opponent is pot committed by the bet; and should only be made against a player whom you know is capable of re-raising you with a lot less than premium hands.

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This is simply because the odds a player faces in limit hold’em are nearly always very good – and as a result folding too much is a much bigger mistake than calling too much (if you are getting ten to one odds you do not have to be right very often to show a profit making thin calls); this is the exact opposite of big bet poker, where calling too much will quickly bust you (you have to be much more confident about your hands strength when getting two to one or worse odds – as you have to be right a much higher percentage of the time).

“Always remember that limit is a game about extracting as much value from your hand as possible, and saving as many bets as you can when it looks like you are behind.”

As a result of this, many players brought up on big bet poker find limit an extraordinarily boring game when they first start learning the mechanics of it – the scope for advanced play making (and therefore a lot of the creative thought) is just much less in limit simply because it is so much harder to bluff. With most players now being brought up on big bet poker, many of the limit games (particularly the now popular mixed games) have become rather juicy in recent times, full of big bet players who try and bluff far too much.

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Heads up sit and goes provide a great opportunity for spinning up a bankroll to the beginner or play money player. The variance is very low in these games, as they combine many features which allow skill to shine through over the short term.

” …it is important to understand that heads up games will not give you that monster score of multi table tournaments, they will just give you a steady profit over the long run.”

The first point about these games is that heads up games require much more skill due to the massively increased number of decisions a player has to make. You can’t simply sit back and wait for big hands in this format – you have to be playing lots of hands in order to stop the blinds from eating you up, and this means that any edge you have is made significant much faster than in any other games, and your profits are made in a much more steady manner.

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A ‘random walk’ is a mathematical term to describe looking at sequences of consecutive random events and observing the patterns.

A simple random walk can be built using just the flip of a coin. If we assign heads the number +1 and tails the number -1 and flip a coin 6 times we will have a number of possible results, ranging from the extreme results of +6 after five heads in a row, and -6 after five tails in a row; and including every other possible result in between, with the true odds lying at the number 0 (indicating an equal number of heads and tails). Mathematicians have done these sort of tests over hundreds, thousands and even millions of throws, and the results they give tell us an awful lot about poker strategy.

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