When the Stars Align

It doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while I have a night where it just seems I can do no wrong... a Friday night cash game proved to be one of those times, but I had to overcome some early adversity to make it happen.

With the blinds 25/50 cents, I buy in for $40, and turn that into $75 within the first 10 hands. I had hit a few flops, and bought a few nice pots, but nothing significant happened until I ran into a very tough situation.

UTG, I'm dealt 66, and decide to bump it up to $3, and 3 guys call. Our cash games, due to the low stakes, are typically fairly loose, so when the flop comes down 6h-5h-3h, I'm not feeling too good about my situation. I've flopped the top set, but straight and flush possibilities exist, and 2 of the guys that called me are known for especially loose play.

I decide to see where I stand, and bet $9, hoping to make flush and straight draws fold their hands. The one guy who isn't really loose is first to act, and he re-raises me $42 more, putting himself all-in. The other 2 guys fold, and I'm left with a very tough decision. In my gut, I suspect I'm already beat, and that he's made either the straight, or a medium flush.

I show my cards as I fold them, and most of the table goes nuts, amazed that I didn't call the bet, but I didn't want to risk all the money (and then some) that I had already won in a situation where I'm likely beat, or at best even money vs straight and/or flush draws. My opponent shows his cards, revealing Ad-4h for the open-ended straight flush draw.

A little rabbit hunting revealed I would have made a full-house on the turn, and quads on the river, just to emphasize a point I guess. It took me quite a while to recover mentally from this hand, as I kept replaying it in my head.

I kept wondering what would have happened if I'd checked the flop, and called the $5 bet likely to be made by one of the other players. I didn't know what the flop and turn would bring, what if instead another heart came down, my hand would have been all but useless then.

I concluded I played the hand properly, and just chalked this one down to being one of those situations that happen in poker, where no matter how you play a hand, you'll never feel good about it. When I did start to focus and play poker again, the rest of the night was fantastic.

Every bluff I made was perfectly timed, most over-bets I made to make it look like I was trying to steal the pot was called, and I had a lot of great starting hands and flops. I wish every night of poker could be like this, as I walked away with $170 profit on my $40 buy-in, and aside from that one hand mentioned above, I was never at risk of losing large chunks.

Poker Survivor

I haven't posted anything here in a long time, partly because my life has gotten much more complicated recently, but also because I haven't been as enthusiastic about playing/watching poker as I used to be. I think this is changing, as I am once again getting the itch to play poker more often, and to watch and talk about poker.

I've still been running the monthly poker tour that I've been a part of for the past 8 years, and this months tournament is the first one in a while that is building a bit of hype, as it is our 2nd edition for Poker Survivor. The basic style of poker for this format is Hold'em, but it varies from a standard tournament in a few different ways.

Each table is their own tribe, and unlike normal tournaments, you don't balance tables after eliminations, and the tribes are dispersed only at the Merger, which for smaller sized tournaments would mean the final table. Every blind raise (or every 30 minutes) a card is dealt face-up to each player at each table. The player to receive the lowest card is sent to Exile Island, where they will face the other Exile(s). The chip leader can declare immunity to this prior to the cards being dealt face-up.

Each Exile must take 50% - 100% of their chip stack to Exile Island, without knowing how much their opponent(s) will be taking with them. Play continues as normal at the Tribal tables. The Exiles battle and each time a player is eliminated, the person who claimed the elimination gets the Immunity idol.

The eliminated player returns to their Tribal table with whatever chips they left behind, or they are eliminated if they took all their chips to Exile Island. Once only one player remains on Exile Island, they are sent back to their Tribe.

The immunity Idol can be used by it's owner to prevent bad beats. When all-in, but before any hole cards have been revealed, the owner of the Idol can play it to prevent him/her from losing any chips in this hand. If he does lose the hand, he gets all chips back that he put in the pot. If he wins the hand, he still takes it all. Basically, he's free-rolling, but once the Idol has been played, it is lost.

As always, I'm interested in hearing other peoples variations on poker, or their thoughts on this format.

Poker Tournament Formats

Looking to spice up your poker tournaments? Here are a list of some different ideas for your next game, most of them I have tried at least once. Give them a try, let me know how it goes, or tell me about your ideas. I'm not going to list different forms of poker, such as Hold'em, Omaha, Razz, Stud, HORSE or many other games that are all well documented on the web, and played at WSOP events. You can look elsewhere for those, I'm trying to offer something else.

Riverboat - Inspired by the movie Maverick, the idea is to split your group of players in tables of even number of players. For example, if you have 20 players, 4 tables of 5 would be ideal. Then each table plays until there is only one player left at each table. No merging of tables or sending players to another table for balance. The winners of each table play at the final table, until a champion is decided. This format can be adapted with a variety of other tournaments listed below.

Heads-up - Already fairly common, but worth mentioning. This can be done with any number of players, but 8 is the minimum I'd advise trying this with. Players are divided into pairs, each player plays until one person has all the chips. Winners advance until there is only one player remaining. See http://www.printyourbrackets.com/ for printable bracket structures of single or double elimination for almost any number of players.

Royal Rumble - Inspired by the WWE, this one probably works best for single-table tournaments, but could be applied to the final table of a larger tournament as well, or incorporated into a Riverboat structure. 2 players are randomly chosen to start play heads-up. Then, after a predetermined set period of time, another name is randomly chosen to enter play, and so on until all players had entered the game. The blinds only raise at a set time after the last player starts. The advantage to be chosen last could be negated by the likelihood that he will be the short-stack at the table.

Teams - Players are divided into teams, randomly or otherwise, and are assigned a point value based on their final position in the tournament. If you have more than one table, I'd recommend splitting up teammates to different tables. This one could work as a normal tournament style or as a Riverboat style.

Survivor - Based on the TV show, this is a very complicated format, but the one time I ran a tournament of this format, everyone agreed it was a lot of fun. The unique feature is that at a predetermined time (we did every 30 minutes) 1 player from each (tribe) table was randomly selected to go to Exile Island (a separate table). We only had 2 tables, so in this case the 2 players played heads-up, with an Immunity Idol on the line. Each player could chose to bring as much of their existing stack as they wanted to risk to Exile Island, without discussing it with their opponent. If one player was able to eliminate the other, the winner would get the Immunity Idol, and both players would return back to their initial table with the chips they had won/lost, unless they had brought everything with them, and lost.

The Immunity idol can then be used in a variety of ways, depending on how much power you want it to have. My initial idea was that the bearer of the idol could use it on the flop or turn to prevent any more community cards from appearing this hand. This would be especially helpful if the idol bearer flops a set, but wants to avoid seeing a flush card hit on the turn or river. They play the idol (which means they lose it) and all hands are revealed. Another possibility is that on the river, before hole cards are revealed, the idol bearer has the option to use the idol, and thus guaranteeing him that he gets back all money he invested in the pot. Several other possibilities exist, but it has to be powerful, as the idol is very hard to get, and can only be used once.

Bounty Hunter - There are several ways to run a bounty tournament, but I'll outline my favorite. You take a portion of the tournament buy-in (10% to 100% depending on what you like), and give everyone a special poker chip (or whatever) to signify their bounty. When you eliminate someone, you collect their bounty. When the tournament is over, you cash in all the bounty chips you collected for the value you determined before the tournament began. For example, if you have a $50 buy-in, and you set aside $10 for the bounties, the remaining $40 of every buy-in goes to the main pot, but the $10 left over goes in to the bounty pot. Remember, when you are eliminated, you give your opponent only your personal bounty, not all bounties you have collected.

Re-buy/Add-on - A great way to get more money in the game, and tons of options to customize, both Re-buy and Add-on can be used individually or together. Re-buy is simple, when a player gets eliminated, they have the option to re-buy into the tournament for the initial buy-in, getting the initial starting stack. This should be done immediately after that player is eliminated. Add-on is an option to pay a specified amount of money to get a specified amount of chips. There is a lot of flexibility with this rule. You can chose to have limits on one or both, or at specified times. This one in particular requires more effort from the Tournament Director.

The Next Level

As I've all but given up online play, my focus recently has been on improving my game at the table. I now have a sound understanding of different strategies and when to use them. I know what kind of player I am, what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I know how to use that knowledge to my advantage. I know about pot odds, implied odds and the thin bet. I have successfully used all this knowledge to my advantage at one point or another during a cash game or tournament, and hopefully I have learned from my failed attempts as well.

Still there is one major area that I have yet to truly attempt to utilize while playing poker. One skill set that is blown out of proportion in the movies, but is underdeveloped probably by 95% of all poker players.... reading tells.

For years Hollywood has portrayed the tell as being something so obvious that it's comical. From teeth tapping in Maverick to Oreo cookies in Rounders and many other extremely obvious examples that even an 8 year old could pick up on, most poker players realize that poker tells are never this obvious, and as a result, they don't even bother to look for them anymore. But tells are still there to be read, you just have to know what you're looking for, and what they mean.

Like many poker players, I've read numerous articles on tells, but then when I sit down to play poker, I get lost in the excitement, and rarely perceive anything that I think could even possibly be a tell. You see, picking up a tell takes hours of research, a great memory and keen observation. Sadly, I seem to lack the memory of the attention span required to do this successfully.

So.. as many of my previous blogs have done, in this one I'm going to challenge myself. I have a Championship game this Friday, after a 10 game regular season, for which I am the defending champ. I'm going to focus on one or two players at my table, and watch them as closely as I possibly can. I'm going to watch for things like how they place their chips in the pot and how they react immediately after seeing the flop.

For information on tells check out these links:

http://www.pokertells.com/

http://www.playwinningpoker.com/poker/tells/

http://poker.about.com/od/strategyadvice/a/basictells.htm

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-spot-poker-tells

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqF8m12JSDE

Rush Poker - analysis

Ok, so the company I work for has finally got their website up and running, and I'm listed as a blogger, linked from the site. Guess it's time to update this damn thing.

My last online experience ended about a month ago when Full-Tilt poker introduced a new concept, called Rush-Poker. Basically, the concept is that as soon as you fold your hand, at any point in the hand, you are immediately brought to another table with new players, and another hand starts. As impatience has long been my biggest weakness, I was immediately intrigued, so I checked it out.

Pros: You don't have to waste time while waiting for someone else to fold a hand, especially if you folded rags preflop. This is likely the reason for the invention of Rush-Poker. You can also avoid playing weaker hands out of boredom, knowing that if you laying down your K-10 preflop to a raise, you can just fold 5 times in the next 10 seconds and find a much better hand to play with.

Cons: As always, strengths can be made into weaknesses, and this is also the case with Rush Poker. As you are immediately taken to another table the very moment you fold any hand, any time, you don't have the opportunity to watch the rest of the hand play out. Yes, preflop folds with nothing are easy to walk away from, but if you've been forced to fold a strong hand on the turn, it's often nice to see how the rest of the hand would have played out.

Also, because you can be more picky about starting hands, so too can your opponents. This means most people are playing only premium starting hands. I suggest taking an opposite approach, play weaker hands preflop, try to see some cheap flops and bust people who just can't lay down their great starting hand.

My personal experience was pretty interesting. With my Freeroll winnings up to almost $100, I bought in for $40 with a 25/50 cent blind level. Within 3 sessions lasting about 2.5 hours, seeing at least 500 hands in that time, my bankroll had gone from just under $100 to well over $375. I was feeling pretty good, playing very well and avoiding the "bad beat".

Again, strength can be weaknesses. Much more quickly then that money came my way, it disappeared in an astonishingly quick fashion. Several bad beats and bad plays on my part, and the money was all but gone. I haven't played on-line since, but I'm sure eventually I'll get the itch.

Results of the dress test...

Well, to be honest, I'm not sure that dressing differently had any impact, but then again, I didn't exactly get any cards to make an impact with. I finished 9th out of 20 people, but I did managed to pull off a nice bluff early on. Making my opponent fold AK with a flop of K-4-2, I held 43 from the BB.

I thought I was ahead, and bet out on the flop. He re-raised, but it felt like he was just trying to steal the pot from me, hoping his Ace high was still good, so I re-re-raised. Not sure my clothing had any impact, as less than 30 minutes earlier, I told that particular player how I was going to play very tight and aggressive. He figured me for trips or 2-pair, but either way, I got very lucky there.

Overall, I'm not sure this one tournament was enough of an experiment to say if the clothes affect the play, so I'll give it another try next time, maybe even get a few decent cards to work with so I can have more in-depth analysis. I really was card-dead all night, it's pretty amazing I finished 9th.

Image is everything... or is it?

I'm playing in my normal monthly live tournament tonight, and I'm going a slightly different route to see if it has an effect. As much as I try to play a more standard, basic style of poker, I usually let myself get carried away and start to play too many pots and take too many chances. As much as I'm trying to improve, I have to accept that in all likely hood, it will happen again, so I might as well embrace it, right?

So what am I going to do differently? The answer, change my clothes.

I'm not talking about finding a new lucky T-shirt, or a hoodie to hide behind, I'm talking about a complete style change. You see, normally, I wear jeans and a t-shirt, maybe a ball cap, but always very casual attire. Combined with my style of play and extreme familiarity with most of the players in these tournaments, and I've been quite accurately pigeon-holed into a specific type of poker player.

I'm the type of player that every time I make a bold move, everyone else at the table yells "BLUFF, BLUFF, CALL HIM!". I love it, because I get paid off more often than most on my big hands, but it also means I get busted on bluffs because of my reputation. They know against most people they should fold, but because I am who I am, and nobody likes to get bluffed, they make the call anyways.

My hope is that by changing my appearance, by wearing a nice pair of dockers and a button-up black dress-shirt (a fine Xmas present from my Aunt, btw), is that perhaps subconsciously my opponents may give me more respect than I would normally get, which is very little. Only time will tell, but I know the way a person dresses can have a great impact on the subconscious, we're all very shallow by nature, but will it be enough to overcome a table image I've spent years to build?

unbefawqinglevieble!

Might be time, already, to take a break from playing online poker. It's been a while since I've had a good ole fashioned bitch-fest, but I think this is deserving of it.

I've played in 3 tournaments in the past 24 hours, and have taken some pretty ridonkulous bad beats. The first 2 both happened on hand #2 of the tournament.

Bad beat #1: I have QQ, get all-in preflop against JJ, the river brings a Jack, and I'm done.

Bad beat #2: I have AA, get all-in on the flop vs QQ and JJ, with a board of 4-6-8, the turn brings a Jack. Amazingly, because the other 2 players played the first hand and both lost, I got credit for the kill and collected the knockout bounty, and was eliminated a few hands later.

Bad beat #3: I'm getting somewhat short-stacked and need to make a move, so UTG I push all-in, and get one caller, from the player beside me. Amazingly, he called almost 50% of his stack with 10-J, and my A-J is looking pretty good... until the flop. The flop is 10-J-6, and his 2 pair are ahead... until the turn. An Ace on the turn makes me a HUGE favorite now...until the river. A miracle 2-outer hist, a 10 on the river, he makes a full-house to beat my 2 pair.

Stupid poker.