This was THE nit festival of all nit festivals. Your normal hourly rate simply does not translate when you remove the fun-loving, didn’t-come-to-fold tourist factor and replace it with the game-has-obv-passed-me-by-but-I’ll-still-sit-here-and-fold-for-$10/hr-zomg-dreams-do-come-true jaded older Vegas reg. I mean, it was truly miserable.

Las Vegas is awesome. We all know about the availability of booze and gambling 24/7, and the ability to keep whatever sleep schedule you desire. As cash game poker players, we never have to endure the pain of an alarm clock’s rouse, as Vegas embraces daywalkers and nightowls alike. The cost of living is relatively low, especially considering the quantity and quality of entertainment options available as compared to other cities with similar offerings, such as LA, San Francisco, Miami. If outdoor adventure is your thing, you can find plenty of that at places like Red Rock Canyon; hikes such as the Gold Strike near Hoover Dam, which takes you all the way down into the Colorado River; and weird natural beauty like the Valley of Fire. And for those less willing to leave Clark County, there’s the peaceful Summerlin suburbs, and the increasingly interesting downtown Vegas scene.

But as much as I love Las Vegas and as great a fit certain aspects of this city are for my personality, I can only go so long before an excursion out of town becomes necessary. I’ll be heading to California for a good couple of weeks and am really looking forward to it. As a low stakes grinder I can’t really afford to just take an entire month off from playing. Well, maybe I could, but it would be a guaranteed whack to my bankroll and I don’t think I need a vacation that much. I just want a change of scenery for a bit … so San Diego and Los Angeles, here I come. I’ll be doing more of the ChipTracker session reports while in CA and should have plenty to write about from the LA cardrooms.

As for my poker results since my last full blog post, I can happily report that things took a nice turn for the better around the middle of January. The night that I wrote that update was definitely a low point. Seeing as such, I decided to change my gameplan, which at the time was (as it is now) to play cash games wherever I felt like playing that particular day. I took a day off to make sure I was composed mentally, and then, at 11am the following day, parked myself in what I would discover were the most miserable $1/2NL games I’ve ever played in: the Tropicana day shift.

You may have heard about a few of the poker rooms around Las Vegas that have started offering cash back to players who play a certain number of hours per day or per week. At the time the Trop was giving $10/hr if you played all 8 hours between 11am and 7pm. When you’re losing every single day for almost two weeks straight, this seems like a fantastic deal. I knew I was running bad, but I still had a decent hourly rate overall and figured if I added $80 per day, well hell, how could I go wrong? The problem is that these games take away the number one weapon a professional poker player living in Las Vegas has in their arsenal, in my opinion, and that is game selection. This was THE nit festival of all nit festivals. Your normal hourly rate simply does not translate when you remove the fun-loving, didn’t-come-to-fold tourist factor and replace it with the game-has-obv-passed-me-by-but-I’ll-still-sit-here-and-fold-for-$10/hr-zomg-dreams-do-come-true jaded older Vegas reg. I mean, it was truly miserable.

However, there was one very important lesson that I needed to be reminded of while grinding out the Tropicana games. It was that I’m not doing this to make fancy plays to keep myself entertained at the table, or because it’s some glamorous job like a lot of people who don’t play poker might be led to believe. It’s to sit down and grind out a paycheck at the end of the day, so that I can drop it into my bank account, so that I can pay my bills. And that’s done by playing solid, don’t-get-out-of-line poker. I played a handful of days at the Trop booking very modest wins, but more importantly, tightening up some screws in my game that were coming loose. I branched back out and into my other regular rooms around town and from the middle of January and for at least a month straight, keeping that lesson in mind every single day, it resulted in booking a solid win at the tables almost every single day. Yes I was definitely running better but I was playing much more disciplined poker–the kind that keeps variance minimized and decision-making simpler. I put together a great string of wins and moved back up to $2/$5NL at the Bellagio, where I continued my rungood for a few sessions.

Unfortunately, over the last week or so, my upswing has hit the breaks somewhat. But it has to be expected at some point I suppose. Even though I think I have less ego than a lot of other full-time players, it’s always tough to go back down to smaller limits. It makes it twice as hard to stay disciplined when you’re playing for about half the stakes, but it’s always vital because the lower you are on the ladder, the more important it is to just play an ABC-style game. It is what it is though. Once I string together a few wins at $1/$3NL I’ll take another shot at the next level. Hopefully I’ll find that next uptrend in California.

Real life training for poker live and online, with a community of continued support and education. Click here for the Pokerati discount, and otherwise just be sure to tell ‘em we sent you.

Quick lesson today — from another 20-year-old kid who seems decidedly anti-baller despite going on a hella baller tear since he began his “career” two-and-a-half years ago. Now a CardRunners instructor after turning pro fresh outta high school, Mickey Petersen, known among avid onliners as Mement_mori, is in the running for CardPlayer’s Online Player of the Year at #13 … and ranks 2nd in the world over at 5+5, with qualifying results spread across 18 pages.

Though CardPlayer’s OPOY counts only $1.05 million earned with 18 final tables and two wins in the past year, Pocket Fives totals his wins at $2.7 million. But the stat I find most mind-blowing with this Gen-Z Magic player (inspired by the likes of David Williams, Eric Froehlich, and Dario Minieri to make the crossover into poker, he tells CardPlayer) … Petersen’s average cash is $1,527 … in 1,778 money finishes! Gotta think Phil Hellmuth couldn’t claim more than double that (live and online) over his entire life even if he included cash games … which says a lot because Hellmuth had already won the main event before Peterson was even born.

With Peter Eastgate retired and Gus Hansen one of the losingest players of the year (even if he takes down a WSOPE bracelet today ), seems like Mement_mori (Latin for “Remember you will die”) has easy claim as the best player in Denmark even though he has yet to cash in a live event. It doesn’t cost online players a thing to get their Cardrunners schooling with financial aid from Truly Free Poker Training. (Sign up here – promise you’ll qualify.)

The brilliance contained in this article is how you react to it. After reading it take the following quiz.

Which statement below is most accurate:

A) They (The Pros) aren’t as good as everyone says they are.

B) You aren’t as good as you think you are.

Todd Anderson from Fargo, North Dakota, bought into his first WSOP Main Event a few days ago, and we were talking about the value of chips acquired early in this $10k, long blind-levels, triple-stacked tournament. Before long we began to conclude that a player would be fine making it to Day 2 without playing a single hand. We couldn’t agree, however, on where that chipstack would be at the end of Day 1.

So here is my attempt to calculate it … feel free to disagree and/or disparage:

First, we needed an accurate assessment of how many hands get dealt per hour, or per “down” — dealer parlance for a half-hour.

Matt Savage, Executive Tour Director of the WPT, estimated that a good dealer gets out 40-50 hands per hour, though acknowledges that antes do slow it down a bit.

Team Pokerati player/dealer/part-time Venetian floor guy Harris (@85Nutz) worked the WSOP box from 2007-2009 — and was good enough to be a featured-table dealer, as well as a top-contender for Dealer of the Year last year (which he did not win – I call shenanigans!). He guesstimates 15-20 hands per down, or 30-40 per hour. He too points out that antes do slow it all down a bit, but how many hands exactly that bit is, I’m not so sure.

OK, so with that, I am going to use 40 as the number. And instead of dropping it down to 37 or 38 when the antes kick in at Level 4, I’m going to leave it at 40 to compensate for the periods where tables are 9- or 8-handed, and therefor moving a bit faster.

So now, using that figure, all we have to do is look at the structure sheet

As we know, players start with 30,000 chips.

They played 4.5 levels today –for a total of nine hours of action.

Level One is 50/100. During those first two hours, an empty seat loses 150 per orbit … so facing 8 orbits (80 hands), they’d sacrifice 1,200 chips.

Level Two is 100/200 … so that would cost an additional 2,400 chips.

Level Three is 150/300 … so that’s 3,600 more.

Now Level Four is where the antes kick in for 150/300 + 25 … so that would be 450+250 per orbit … 700×8=5,600

And Day 1 finished an hour into Level Five, where blinds are 200/400 + 50 … so that’s 1,100 per round, but only four of them, not eight … 4,400 more chips lost to the pot.

To give a bit of a range, if you expect more from your dealers (and players), at 50 hands per hour would leave a non-playing player with 8,500 going into Day 2.

But at a rate of 30 hands per hour, you’d still have 17,100 remaining.

Hmm, considering the disparity based on the quality and skill of dealers, you can see why many players complain and why casinos presumably look forward to the day when they can replace these workers with fully programable androids.

My real guess, btw, for average hands per hour on Day 1 was 38 … with that number dropping by 1 each day moving forward. But I went with 40 to keep the math simple, and because 38 really is just a guess. Regardless, I think you can feel confident that if you play zero hands on Day 1 you should end up with more than 10k chips, and fewer than 13k, for sure.

To understand more about what that means … 1,125 players entered Day 1, with 819 remaining. So the average stack amongst Day 1A players is currently about 41,200. These numbers could change a bit as the other Days 1 flatten out any variance … but they should give you a ballpark picture behind the meaning of stacks at the end of Day 1.

My pal Todd, as president of the Heartland Poker Tour, thinks about these sorta blind structure things often. He survived his Day 1A, and will return for Day 2A with about 43k in chips … slightly above average.

Probably good that he decided to play at least a few hands.

UPDATE: Jack Effel thinks the number should be fewer hands, which would leave you with more chips if you played none.

@WSOPTD @Pokerati roughly how many hands per down does a good dealer get out per down? 15 .20?~>15 depending on game pace – antes dont slow too much

We’re more than happy to pass on the info, and encourage you to follow your dreams of becoming a Hollywood an internet star by teaching online poker geeks to mathematically extract more money from their less-educated opponents.

CardRunners Is Giving Away Almost 10k In Prizes

CardRunners is going to pony up $5,000 for the best poker video, so if you ever wondered how your poker training teaching skills match up against the competition, now’s your chance.  We’re inviting you to submit the best poker training video at http://www.cardrunnersvideochallenge.com before 11am PT on July 1, 2010 to be eligible for the big payday and an offer to become a CardRunners instructor.

Spielberg. Coppola. You.

Visit CardRunners Video Challenge and submit your soon-to-be famous poker instructional video by following the stated instructions.  Don’t forget to review Tech Support 101 and Lee Pryztula’s Crash Course on Video Making.  It’s gonna be magic, baby.

“First Prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third Prize is you’re fired.” Actually, the real prizes are:

Grand Prize: $5,000 and an offer to become a CardRunners instuctor
Second Place: $2,500
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Fourth Place: $500
Fifth Place: A deluxe poker chip set valued at $175

Cool. Sign up to submit your video here.

This week, I vid’d up with Markuis, apparently quite the low-stakes heads-up no-limit specialist. He must be good … because the bets and hands all seem to work out right for him on four separate, simultaneously running tables. I suppose it’s my task to figure out how … and maybe why.

To fast-track your path to success, get a little drinky before “school” and you could be 8-tabling his action. (Double the knowledge?)

Put in your own table-time for even more full-length CardRunners video lessons — Markuis heads-up excerpt below — at TrulyFreePokerTraining.com.

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.

I’m new to this whole reading Omaha hands thing, but most likely he had a flush draw and/or a pair and a gutshot. Maybe trips. Something like A-6-7-8, with the Ace-x of hearts. A-10-J-x with a bunch of other big cards also occurred to me, but then he folds.

It also occurs to me: I hope I wasn’t being a bad grandson by leaving my 80-year-old grandmother at the airport by not leaving the game immediately when I learned she was still there after two canceled flights and possibly needed me pick her up and bring her back to my house for the night.

(Fortunately another young man from Texas was there and had been taking care of her all day after seeing her wander aimlessly near the gates, took her to dinner, called my parents and eventually got her on a midnight flight).

Knowing she was safe and that I didn’t have to leave after this hand no matter what, but also that I might be due for a slight bit of bad-grandson karmic recourse, I’m thinking: “No Ace, no heart, no middley cards for a higher striaght!”

The River: Ac.

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 like A-10, which he likely wouldn’t bet, but might call with.

So I cavalierly throw in a $100 bill. Before it hits the felt I’m thinking: please no 7-10, please no 7-10!

My opponent insta-calls. Sure enough, he says, “7s full of Aces” and scoops a healthy pot.

I’m not sure betting there was wrong, but not trusting my instincts was. And even if the right play upon trusting my read was to bet, I bet too much. I think something told me to bet defensively, and that’s part of what was behind the $100 bill. I didn’t wanna bet pot, because I couldn’t afford a re-pot if he just happened to think I was bluffing. And if I checked could I fold to a much larger pot-size bet?

But with all that said, then the right bet there would been more like a thoughtful $50 bet. The smallness would scare him into just calling with a non-nutty boat. And if he pots it from there, I can fold. Right? Or maybe not. Maybe a confident $100 was the right thing to do because the same logic applies if he goes pot, but it stillgives me a chance that he’ll put me on something like 10-10, 10-7, or A-7 and fold a baby boat with 6-6 or 6-7.

I was upset because I felt that the river mighta given him a better hand, and yet I still tossed in a bill with little thought. So after doing what I thought was a mistake that visibly cost me, even if it wasn’t, and the game started to break, I didn’t fight to keep it going. I had gotten all these chips from Katkin, after all, by getting my money in when I wasn’t sure I was ahead, only to learn multiple times that I was, even after running turns and rivers twice.

Bottom line is I wasn’t sure how to stay in control of the hand, and I didn’t feel comfortable about my stack, nor my ability to protect it + I had a little grandma guilt, even though she was now safely en route from LAS->DFW, thanks to a nice young man from Flower Mound who wasn’t her grandson playing poker just down the street. So it was probably time to go. Book a win, write off the leak, and maybe play again tomorrow.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

In my earlier article about re-stealing from loose players, I mentioned that this is a very high risk/reward strategy, which is often crucial to success in the later stages of tournaments, where your priority is to win big occasionally rather than get in the money constantly (due to the extremely top heavy prize structures). The re-re-steal is perhaps the most high risk/rewards strategy possible, and it can win you massive pots without showdown if timed correctly – which is always a huge asset in tournament poker, where every all in could see you exit.

One of the best situations to execute this play is when playing deep stacked and raising a hand like a suited connector in early position. Say a loose and observant player makes a re-raise and they have seen you open a lot of pots. This is often a great situation to make a big re-re-steal if the flow of the game feels right – it is unlikely that your opponent can ever justify calling without an absolute monster in this type of situation, as all the signs are that you are sitting on aces, kings or at worst ace king.

So thats the good news, the bad news is that this play can easily go spectacularly wrong when your opponent either has the goods or makes a marginal call against you because they have a read that you might be up to something. This is why it can often help to make these sort of plays with hands like suited connectors, that although behind, give you the best possible chance of cracking big pairs or big aces.

The re-re-steal is a play that really can make or break a tournament for a player. 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. Try and look for spots where this super high risk play can be executed successfully and give your self every chance for that big first place cash.

More Marcus Bateman

The Art of The Re-Steal
Staying One Step Ahead
Playing Suited Connectors
Poker Pride and Warfare

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.

This is not to say that bluffing should never be attempted in limit games, more that the style of bluffing has to be changed. In no limit hold’em it is usually possible to push people off middle and bottom pairs quite easily if you have the nerve – in limit hold’em this is much harder due to the vastly better odds you are forced to offer them. As a result of this it is important to try and size up which players will: a) regularly call bets with marginal hands (just only bet into them with strong hands and let their curiosity pay you off), or b) are folding in spots where they are clearly getting the correct odds to call with even a very weak hand.

The latter are by far the most profitable to play with in limit games – by failing to understand how much more they should be calling in limit they leave themselves wide open to attack from better players. 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. You have to be extremely sure that you are best if you are going to fold when being offered ten to one or greater odds – and as a result both your bluffs and your calls have to be adjusted considerably.

Related Strategy

Bluffing – How to Pull the Trigger – Marcus Bateman
PLO Bluffing – Marcus Bateman
No Limit v Fixed Limit: Art v Science – Matthew Pitt
Bankroll management, variance and bluffing – Matthew Pitt

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.

The second point about these games is that they are very quick (especially if you play the turbo structured ones), which means that you can play a huge number of these games in very short periods of time, which allows you to quickly overcome the variance. As an example of this, when I play a schedule of around thirty to forty of these games every day for a week, I hardly ever have more than one or two losing days, and this is very useful to someone who is just trying to grind out consistent money from poker.

So that’s the good news. The bad news about heads up sit and goes is that the profit margins in them are very slim. Even the very best players at these tournaments struggle to hold on to a return on investment, or ‘roi’, of above 5% over thousands of games. Obviously slim margins like this can soon add up to huge sums of money , but 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.

These games are definitely some of the most fun and intellectually challenging games on the Internet, and over the next few days I want to outline a basic low limit strategy that yields good dividends in the low stakes games.

Related Strategy

Heads Up at Aussie Millions – Final John Tabatabai
An Interesting Heads Up Dynamic Marcus Bateman
Heads Up Times are Changing Matthew Pitt
Controlling Your Ego Marcus Bateman