The Poker Blog

By Tony Guerrera

Suppose you’re playing six-handed $100 buy-in no-limit hold’em. You’re dealt AH KS under the gun. You raise to $3. The button and the blinds call, making the pot $12 going into the flop. The flop is AD JS 3S. The blinds check to you, you bet pot, the button calls, and the blinds fold. The pot is $36, and the turn is the 9H.. You bet pot, and the button calls. The pot is $108. The river is the 2S. You go all-in for $49, and your opponent calls. Did you win this hand?

Probably not. Many players underestimate their opponents and assume they will call large, pot-sized bets with top pair and a weak kicker – or even a lesser pair. However, making large pot-sized pots is generally not the way to get value from top pair/top kicker (TPTK) against most opponents. If you have TPTK or an overpair, pot-sized bets generally constrain your opponents’ calling distributions to hands that all have you beaten.

Every Made Poker Hand Is Not a Double Up

If you make a bet that constrains your opponents’ calling distributions to hands that are all better than yours, then you will lose money in the long run when playing top pair or overpairs. And if you’re losing money with these hands, you’re a losing player. The key to getting value from your good (but vulnerable) hands is realizing that your goal isn’t to double up every time you’re in a pot.

Instead of making large pot-sized bets that constrain your opponents’ calling distributions and possibly leave you pot-committed, make bets that are smaller. Make bets that increase your opponents’ calling ranges substantially, so that the hands you’re trying to get value from are actually ahead of your opponents’ calling ranges. Also make bets that don’t leave you pot-committed when your opponents have you crushed.

You won’t double-up nearly as often, but you also won’t be getting stacked with TPTK and overpairs against players you’ve misjudged. And realize that you will be winning pots that are larger than average. Instead of making lots of large, discontinuous jumps, your stack will be something more like a tank that moves slowly (but surely) towards its destination.

When To Go For The Kill

Of course, it’s still important to seek opportunities to go for the kill. When you face opponents who will call pot-sized bets with very marginal holdings, recognize and capitalize appropriately. Also recognize situations when your opponents have very good hands that they will call substantially larger bets with. When you have your opponents beaten in these situations, make them pay – possibly by overbetting the pot.

Piece by piece will be your general mentality. But as always, keep your mind open!

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers and co-author of Killer Poker Shorthanded (with John Vorhaus).

Online poker has popularized the single table tournament (STT). STT’s are a very unique form of poker. If you’re using multitable tournament strategies to navigate through STTs, you’re costing yourself some serious money. This article talks about handling 9-10 player STTs where 1st pays 50 per cent, 2nd pays 30 per cent, and 3rd pays 20 per cent.

I write a bit about being capable of breaking away from straightforward tight-aggressive play. But when it comes to the early stages of single table tournaments, tight is right. In early position, you should play pretty much nothing. AA-KK and AK is about on target. If your table is really loose passive, you can limp with any pocket pair. And if your postflop play is superb, you can toss AQ into the early position mix.

In late position, you can come in with a slightly wider mix in unraised pots (hands like AJ, KQ and KJ). But in raised pots, keep it simple and stay really tight. When you do enter a pot with an unpaired hand like AK, either limp or raise small for value. If you raise preflop and get only one opponent, continuation betting is a play you shouldn’t be excited about.

Play hands that play themselves post-flop – you want to be able to play confidently for stacks if you hit postflop because the starting stacks in STTs don’t give you much room for probe bets.

Once the blinds have increased, it’s jam or fold time. And now, tight is far from right… especially when it comes to aggressing on the bubble. When you have 4-8 big blinds, you have opponents who’ll only call you with something like AA-55, AK-A9, and you’re in the cutoff or later, push all-in no matter what two cards you have when you’re first to enter the pot. Your opponents will fold a huge percentage of the time, and you’ll never be a prohibitive underdog the times that you’re called (32o wins 24% of the time against AA-55, AK-A9). When the bubble has burst, and opponents widen their calling distributions, you’ll need to tighten up a tad, but hyper-aggressive shoving will still be par for the course when you have 4-8 big blinds.

When it comes to calling all-ins, you should typically be somewhat tight because you can always fall back on your jamming edge. And with the 50/30/20 payout, survival and just getting in the money is important. But you shouldn’t take it to the extreme where you’re only calling all-ins with super-premium hands. With the size of the blinds, you should be willing to get your chips in whenever your hand is a little bit better than 50% against a jammer’s distribution.

Times may exist where you can profitably stray from the generic battle plan outlined here. But generally, “Tight and snug early; loose-aggressive late” is the successful STTer’s creed.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

In cash games, you can afford to lay low while you observe your opponents and obtain extensive book on them. But what do you do when a tournament just starts, when new players are moved to your tournament table, or when you’re tournament table breaks and you’re forced to move to another table? In tournaments, you can’t afford to sit back idly; one missed opportunity can mean the difference between a huge payday and no payday whatsoever, and certain blind structures simply don’t give you the time to wait. And though you can theoretically sit tight early in cash games, what happens what you get AA the first hand of a session and an opponent shows aggression on the turn and the river: are you ahead or behind?

Fortunately, if you have a bit of playing experience under your belt, you actually have information about your opponents before you even sit at the table. That’s right…you have information about players you’ve never seen in your life! Before you play a single hand, you can draw upon all your past poker playing experience. You can assume that your opponents play like the average of all foes you’ve encountered in your poker-playing life.

Since poker evolves, the default profile I assign to my opponents now (April 2008) isn’t the same as the default profile I assigned to my opponents two years ago. And most likely, it won’t be the same as the default profile I assign to my opponents two years from now. It’s important to monitor and update constantly the default player profiles you assign to unknown foes. If you play in different venues, it will probably be the case that you’ll have default profiles that you assign depending on where you’re playing. For example, I use different default player profiles for each online poker room as a function of stakes, and I also have a different default player profile that I use when playing in an LA card room.

The more accurate the default profiles you use are, the less trouble you’ll encounter against fresh faces. However, default profiles are ultimately not enough. No matter how good a default profile is, you must identify as quickly as possible how each of your opponents deviates. As soon as your opponents show their true colors, you can then assign them to more specific player profiles–let’s call these more specific player profiles archetypes (In Killer Poker Shorthanded (Kensington, 2007), John Vorhaus and I put forth several player archetypes that we commonly encounter in shorthanded NLHE cash games. Check them out if you’re looking for some examples).

Archetypes are a step forward, but they still aren’t enough. After all, archetypes are just slightly more specific versions of default player profiles. The task of profiling opponents is never really done. But nonetheless, using good default profiles is the foundation for success when playing against so-called unknowns.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Poker is about much more than just your cards. It’s also about how your opponents play. Putting opponents on hand distributions is a big part of determining how your opponents play, but it’s only half of what you need to do when you read your opponents. You also need to predict how your opponents respond to your actions:

1.) If your hand compares unfavorably to your opponents’ hand distributions, lines of play may exist that will force your opponents to fold often enough for you to show a long-term profit.

2.) Suppose you’re in a hand of no-limit hold’em, and you put an opponent on a range of weak hands that are all better than your hand. For example, you missed a straight draw with 87, and you put your opponent on ace-high or bottom pair. Many foes will fold to bets on the river with such hands–but not all of them. Bluffing is only a good play if your opponent is the type who will fold such hands.

3.) If your hand compares favorably to your opponents’ hand distributions, size your bets such that you extract value or take pots down immediately depending on what the circumstances dictate..

4.) Know when you’re against a tricky opponent capable of inducing a mistake from you when you have a good–but not–great hand. Ideally, when in such a situation, you should employ lines of play that allow you to see showdowns relatively easily and cheaply. You don’t want to fold too many winners; simultaneously, you don’t want to lose lots of chips in big pots when you’re beaten.

Once you’re able to put your opponents on accurate hand and action distributions, you can have complete control over your table. You’ll know how to make as many chips as possible with your very good hands, you’ll know how to maximize value while minimizing losses with your decent–but not great–hands, and you’ll find ways to win chips even when you’re not getting good hole cards or hitting flops. To be a good player, you need to be good at accomplishing all of these tasks.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Situation 1: Joe Schmoe is playing in a fullhanded no-limit hold’em ring game. Action folds to Joe, and he raises with A♣9♣ from the cutoff. The button and the blinds call, and the flop is A♥A♦9♦. The blinds check to Joe, and he makes a pot-sized bet fueled by two hopes:

1.) One of his opponents has the case ace and will go over the top.
2.) An opponent with a pocket pair will call on the flop
3.) An opponent with a flush draw will call or semibluff

All three of Joe’s opponents dash Joe’s hopes and quickly fold.
Situation 2: Joe Schmoe is playing shorthanded no-limit hold’em. In 100 hands of play there’s only been one reraise preflop. Joe raised from the button, the small blind reraised, and Joe folded. This happened around hand #50 of Joe’s session.
During hands #101 and #102, Joe (who has been playing somewhat aggressively but far from manically) opens from the button and the cutoff with raises. Both times, the same player reraises. After not doing much for 8 hands, Joe opens for a raise with JJ. Joe is reraised again–this time by a different player who has never reraised preflop. Being that this is the third time in the span of about 10 hands that he’s been reraised preflop, Joe has faith in his JJ, goes over the top, and ends up losing 100 big blinds versus his opponent’s AA.

Hope and faith adversely affect our poker playing. In situation #1, Joe needs to think about his opponents. Instead of betting pot and hoping, he should think realistically about his opponents’ distributions. In many–but not all–games, a half-pot bet (or even something slightly less) will be ideal. A pot-sized bet might actually force a player with the case ace out of the pot if he has a bad kicker to accompany it. And anyone who mucks an ace with a bad kicker here will do the same with a pocket pair. Instead of betting big and hoping for a monster confrontation, Joe should bet smaller and get value from his hand.

In situation #2, a lot of things happen within a short span of time, and Joe makes a common mistake. At a table where no preflop reraising is happening, the reality of the game is that players are waiting for cards. The player who reraised Joe twice in a row probably had big hands both times. It could be possible that the different player who reraises him the third time observed Joe’s reaction to the prior two reraises, but the texture of the table dictates that Joe probably ran into another big hand. If preflop reraises begins happening regularly–on the order of once every two orbits or so–Joe can reason that the dynamic of the game has changed. But by letting faith replace reason with a hand like JJ and a random short spurt of events, Joe got himself into a lot of trouble.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Texas hold’em, seven card stud, Omaha, razz, Mexican poker, blind man’s bluff — the list of playable poker variants extends pretty much as far as your imagination can take you with a deck of cards. And the same can be said for the number of ways each poker variant can be played: cash games and several different tournament formats.
When playing in a cash game, the chips on the table are directly equivalent to cash (a $1 chip represents $1), and you may cash out or add more chips at any time. Generally, chips aren’t directly equivalent to cash in a tournament. You can’t just take the payout for first place and divide by the number of chips in play to find out how much each chip is worth (the exception being if you’re playing a winner-take-all tournament). When playing in a tournament, your goal is to maximize your monetary expected value, which is equal to P(1st)(Payout for 1st) + P(2nd)(Payout for 2nd) +…+P(nth)(Payout for nth)–P(kth) is the probability that you’ll finish in kth place.

At a given time in a tournament, your probability of finishing in each place will be a strong function of the relative stack sizes. And the monetary expected value associated with each stack distribution is a function of the payout structure. When evaluating the monetary expected value of a tournament decision, you need to evaluate the distribution of possible stack distributions that will result from a particular move. For some payout structures -– particularly top-heavy ones –- you won’t mind taking risks that are just barely above neutral chip expected value. For other payout structures–like the relatively flat ones found in satellites and many single table tournaments–you’ll prefer to avoid big confrontations with marginal edges, looking to keep pots small in such situations and folding if action gets too heavy.

Poker is a game of situations, but those situations aren’t just defined by the cards and how your opponents play. They’re also defined by the structure of the game you’re playing in. You can have the same cards and be playing against an opponent who plays identically regardless of format, and optimal play can dictate taking completely different lines of play depending on the format. Those who say that it’s tough to be good at cash games, single table tournaments, and multitable tournaments tend to be those who play the same regardless of the poker format they’re playing. Account for the game format, and you’ll be able to succeed in whatever form of poker you’re playing.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By By Tony Guerrera

When asked about the philosophy I take to the tables, I recently put forth the following two aphorisms:

1.) Embrace the process, and have no attachment to outcomes
2.) In general, don’t generalize
I didn’t put focus and discipline on this list because they didn’t even cross my mind. I’ve always assumed that focus and discipline are part of who I am. But after a recent edition of Killer Poker Analysis (in which Todd Brunson emphasized the importance of focus and discipline) and a careful look at my own game, I realize that focus and discipline can never be taken for granted.

Since landing my deal for Killer Poker By The Numbers back in the fall of 2005, I’ve been a writing machine. Add coaching and some random consulting here and there, and well, 2006 and 2007 weren’t exactly spent playing a lot of poker. Now we’re in 2008. I’m still writing, coaching, and consulting, but I’m also putting in some serious online playing time.

My old stomping ground, Party Poker, is no longer a possibility for me. After some serious scouting, I decided to adopt Cake Poker as my new home. Their rakeback deal is excellent, and the competition on Cake is easier than average. I don’t know exactly why it’s easier, but one hunch of mine is that it’s because they don’t allow the use of player tracking software and heads-up displays (HUDs); the hoards of HUD-using multitablers on Poker Stars and Full Tilt aren’t at Cake.

Of course, this means that I myself can no longer be a HUD-using multitabler. Luckily for me, I was multitabling before HUDs. But in those days, I was playing 4 tables at most. The beginning of 2008 has been all about honing my 6-max no-limit hold’em multitabling chops to where I can play 8-10 tables without a HUD. 6-tabling seems quite comfortable. 8- and 10-tabling territory has been tough. Observing opponents when not involved in a hand is difficult, as is typing player notes (I’m currently working on a system of note-taking acronyms to help in this department). Fatigue is also a factor (both mentally and physically). And leaving tough games can be a hassle–especially when it comes to navigating through the lobby to find a new game to sit in.

Unfortunately, the difference between success and disaster is slight. If you have KK preflop, and you’re facing a preflop reraise from a very tight reraiser, is he on {AA, KK, AK} or {AA,KK}? Is a suspicious looking bet on the river coming from a known floater or a straightforward, hit-to-win player? The difference between my big wins and my big losses at Cake (well, big in terms of big blinds anyway) has been subtle, almost undetectable shifts in judgment. Focus and discipline are the keys to reigning in these shifts.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Recently, I played in a home game with some friends of mine. If $.25-$.50 no-limit hold’em sounds like a friendly get together, think again. All the players were tough, and there was no max buy-in. $100, a 200 big blind stack, was typically the shortest stack at the table. Meanwhile, the largest stack was around $4,000. If that seems excessive for $.25-$.50 blinds, just believe me when I say that it wasn’t. What was excessive was the number of players at the table: 11!

These days, when I play online, I typically 8-table shorthanded no-limit hold’em cash games, meaning that I play something on the order of 600 hands per hour. That’s 10 hands per minute, or one hand every 6 seconds! And since I’m playing shorthanded, I’m not folding 85% of my hands preflop. When you’re used to such a high rate of action, it’s easy to let impatience creep in at a live table–especially an eleven-handed one where the number of hands per hour was probably somewhere in the 20-25 range.

The game was too slow for my taste, but that didn’t mean I got into a bored funk. Maybe it helped that all the players at the table were highly skilled; lots of interesting poker was happening. But the bottom line is that poker is a game that’s played even when you’re not in a hand. In fact, with all the thinking I do away from the table, I tend to think that it’s a game you play even when you’re not at a table!

I think having started out as a live player helps me a lot whenever I’m in a live game. But for those of you whose only experience is online, open yourself to the whole new world of information that awaits you live. Online, you get information from repeated situations happening within a short period of time, and from heads-up displays with all sorts of statistics. Live, you don’t necessarily have the same context density when it comes to betting patterns. But nonetheless, a wealth of information is at your disposal. It just presents itself in a different way.

When playing live, people’s words and physical actions might give something away–both when they’re in a hand and when they’re not in a hand. And you’re in a realm where it’s impossible to miss what an opponent does because you have to do something to do at five other tables; you don’t necessarily need betting patterns to repeat a whole bunch of times when you’re playing live.

You’ll wish that you could play more hands per hour. But the quality per hand is much higher live. And that’s what should compensate. Datamine and enjoy the show when you’re not in a hand, so that way you can pummel your opponents whenever you are in a hand.
Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Lots of motivations exist for playing poker. When I write about poker, I always write from the perspective of making decisions that make the most money possible. But really, your goal in poker, as in everything else in life, is to maximize your utility. Utility is a term from economics referring to overall satisfaction; think of it as a variable that somehow combines money and happiness (because money and happiness are not the same thing).

When I play poker, it just so happens that I maximize my utility by maximizing my expected profits. I’m a competitive son-of-a-gun who’s addicted to the thrill of victory, and I like making as much money as possible. Competitive players like myself have a tough time understanding those without the same killer instincts. But I’m finally grasping the idea that some people actually maximize their utility when they don’t maximize their expected wins.

This is a huge step from simply saying “I’ll let my opponents make however many mistakes they want.” For example, perhaps some player loves getting drunk and watching opponents’ reactions to bad beats that he puts on them. The amount of money this player loses is more than compensated by the joy this person experiences from playing the way he does. And in this player’s worldview, he’s playing optimally by playing drunk and repeatedly getting his chips in with the worst of it, because optimal play is being measured in terms of utility instead of dollars and cents.

It’s amazing how people sitting down playing the same game can actually be playing different games. Poker is wonderful in so many ways, and this is just another one. On the surface, it appears to be a zero-sum game (well, before accounting for the rake). But actually, it’s possible for the overall utility of the table to increase (or decrease). Maybe you’re a pure money player who gets in a huge pot as a favorite against an action junkie who loves the ride regardless of the outcome. You get your positive monetary expectation, and the action junkie gets his adrenaline rush. Meanwhile, two skilled players get involved in a huge pot. The underdog wins, but is pissed off about making a mistake, and his opponent is mad about having lost the huge pot when he was way ahead.

I know this article seems to be a huge departure from my usual “make the most money possible” material, but I think it was an important one. Understanding what poker can be to different players can only serve to help us in our quests to maximize our individual poker-playing utilities. And through this filter, maybe we can begin to think of poker as a game played by people, and give all players the respect and dignity they deserve–regardless of whether they play profitably.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

By Tony Guerrera

Transitioning to Mixed Games

Prior to 2002, the first exposure that most people had to poker was a dealer’s choice home game – you know, the type where a bunch of people get together, drink beer, and play all sorts of poker variants involving wild cards, passing cards, buying cards, chip declares, and whatever else comes to mind. Even though we’re in the hold’em era, these dealer’s choice games still happen. Usually they’re played at stakes low enough such that people can buy-in with their change jars, but I know of some dealer’s choice games where you need to be armed with some (or several) Big Bens.

With all the apparent craziness, these dealer’s choice games appear to be nothing more than a luck fest. But they are games of skill where most of the players haven’t done their homework. And though HORSE is a more tame mixed game, many players are lacking in the ORSE department.

All the poker variants may seem wildly different, but fundamentally, poker is poker. Here are a few concepts that apply whether you’re playing hold’em, 7-card stud, Omaha 8/b, razz, anaconda, baseball, follow the queen, blind man’s bluff, or whatever:

1.) Reading Your Opponents

Poker is a game where people interact. Your opponents cards matter as much as your cards–if not more. Regardless of what game you’re playing, you should be able to pick up betting patterns and physical tells that allow you to put your opponents on hand and action distributions.

2.) The Numbers

You need to know the odds against you hitting various types of draws–that way you know if the pot is laying you a good price. If it’s your first time playing some crazy poker variant, it’ll be hard to know your precise odds of hitting a hand with n cards to come. But with some basic probability know-how, you should be able to come up with some rough estimates–estimates that you should check rigorously post-session.

3.) Betting for Value

When you have a good hand, know your opponents’ calling ranges. If you have 99% of your opponents’ hands beaten, but your opponent will only call you with the 1% that beats you, betting is a bad play. Similarly, look for opportunities to raise draws for value. Typically, these will be situations in multiway pots where your raise won’t really shut any players out of the pot.

4.) Opportunities Where the Cards Don’t Matter

Many games have standard plays that you can run regardless of your precise hand. For example, you’re playing razz. A king brings in. You’re first to act, and you’re showing a 3. Everyone else is showing face cards. You should complete no matter what your downcards are. Keeping these concepts in mind should help you adapt any poker variant. The ability to adapt brings greater game selection, and greater game selection brings greater profits.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com