Malmo: poker question

Doyle wrote:

One more question: What's the best advice you've ever gotten as a poker player?

"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done." - Kenny Rogers

30 player tourney? What was the prize structure?

In tourney play, I don't go all-in before the flop until I'm in the money. NO MATTER WHAT.

Look at it this way. I figure that in a tournament of your size you'll be faced with at least a half dozen opportunities to go all in. For arguemnts sake, let's just say you get wired Aces on each of those occasions. If, on those 6 occasions you get the hand down to a heads-up situation, your Aces are 85 percent winner (against random hands). Make that play 6 times and you are only a 38 percent chance of surviving. Best hand, heads up, and after 6 times you only have a 38 percent chance of surviving? So why would you continually go all-in with lesser hands?

The objective of tournaments is to win money. You can't win money unless you are on the final table, so why take the risk. Fold and get on to the next hand.

As far as rebuys and add-ons go - I don't. They dilute your leverage on the prize pool.

Best advice? Here's a few:

1) Math is your friend

2) Weak players play their strong hands weak and their weak hands strong. Care to guess how strong players play?

3) Wuddydo Wuddygot

4) Poker is a game of patience and discipline.

5) When you win a pot, don't do a sack dance. Don't talk. Don't replay the hand. Let the loser talk and nod in agreement. If you want to increase your earnings don't diss your customers while raking in chips. They'll remember you for it. That's not to say you can't play mind games at the table - you can, and they get your opponents on tilt. Just don't try it while raking in your chips.

6) Learn to play limit poker before you venture to no-limit or pot limit. They are two very different games.

Best advice I've given at the table?

1)"When I check you check. When I call you call. When I raise you reraise, and when I fold you get a straight flush."

How about if you are in the SB with 2-2. The button raises you and he has called an all in previously with 5-10 suited becuase he has a big stack? You are already in the money and have a short stack.

Would you think that he would not make a raise again to rish looking foolish as he did with his 5-10 or would you think that maybe he just has 2 overcards and is pushing you around with his stack?

BF

Thanks for the advice. Money paid out top 4 here, so I guess going all-in with so many people still in was foolish. I'm normally a tight player but I make compulsive decisions sometimes which have cost me big time. I have too much gamble in me right now... my main weakness.

bfullem wrote:

How about if you are in the SB with 2-2. The button raises you and he has called an all in previously with 5-10 suited becuase he has a big stack? You are already in the money and have a short stack.

Would you think that he would not make a raise again to rish looking foolish as he did with his 5-10 or would you think that maybe he just has 2 overcards and is pushing you around with his stack?

BF

You just wanted to go home Brian. Good game.

great advice from malmo about going all-in early... the other thing to consider is that despite being correct by having him on a small pair, there's the possibility he could've had queeens, kings, a-k, or a-q, which would've put you in an EXTREMELY difficult position...

to any newbies out there: do NOT play freerolls (they'll corrupt your game)...

Doyle wrote:

Thanks for the advice. Money paid out top 4 here, so I guess going all-in with so many people still in was foolish. I'm normally a tight player but I make compulsive decisions sometimes which have cost me big time. I have too much gamble in me right now... my main weakness.

You wouldn't be the first. Anyone can learn to play winning poker. Patience and discipline is difficult to learn. The guy who taught me poker 15 years ago had the urge to gamble too. That's why I suggest playing Turbo Texas Holdem. Since you can play 500-600 hands an hour, time is in virtual compression. Your play should become automatic - decisions made in nanoseconds - and you'll get positive mental reinforcement that "staying the course" and playing like a dispassionate machine is the way to go.

You WILL go through long dry spells in poker. Trying to force a win with bad play will not help your cause. The only strategy that works in those situations is to wait, you will eventually get hands to play.

Weak players play strong hands weak? What about when you have the nuts early on in the hand or at least something that you feel no one will be able to beat no matter what cards fall? You check all the way through and reluctantly call...they think you were running a draw if you ceck before them after the river. Then they make a big bet to try to take the pot b/c they feel you have a busted draw. To ther surprise you re-raise or go all on after they make a large bet. They think you are making the same mistake they are, and they call. I've won many poker games with that move. If you check when your cards hit, then they have no idea what you have. It can backfire, but you should only do this when you feel that nobody will get a better hand. If you have top pair after the flop, bet. However, if you're sitting on a high pocket pair and you hit a set on the flop with no flush or straight dras out there, then just check and call until the river. Just my two cents. My best advice is to always change up how you play or at least disguise how you bet by making the same bets with very different hands...just don't make very stupid bets. Most important piece of advice for novices: BLUFFING IS OVER-RATED!!!

yeah, it's called a slow play, but then you still hit big in the end. If you push all in before the flop, versus after a river, and they call, it's still the same sized pot. Thing is, your opponent will be less likely to call a big bet early on.

playing weak and playing slow are different.

Just bet your hand, you'll make much, much, more money this way than you would on those few times you trap a player or two by slow-playing the hand. I'm positive of it.

The reason why you bet (or raise) is to get as much money as you can in the pot. You only make money by betting. Checking only opens to door for checks behind you. Which, is a much more liekly scenario in the real world. You want callers. In order to get callers you must be a bettor. You don't bet or raise to "get rid" of bad players, or suck-out artists. A winning player wants those players to call bets no matter how frustrating it seems - it pays off. I don't know how many times I've heard of players complain that their raise with Aces didn't get rid of the no-business-running-draws that beat them. While strong hands have a lower winning percentage in a loose game, they pay off much, much more in return as a compensation. In short, always be glad that bad players are calling you to the river. Your P&L will thank them.

i don't know much about poker, but can attest to the "all in" analysis by malmo. jsut last night, watching the world series on ESPN during a rain delay in the braves game, two guys at the money table (granted, what malmo said was for situations "out of the money," but no one had left the main table yet, so this sort of applies) get deal pocket pair: one aces, one tens. guy with aces (slightly shorter stack than the other) goes all in. guy with tens matches.

flop! ten comes up. playing malmo's way, the aces character would have bet, been called, seen the flop, and had a chance to get out. no guarantee he would have, but he doused himself by rolling pre-flop. just an observation...

Disagree;

There are many instances when a bettor should and does want to drive off weaker hands. Some hands are good but hard to improve. If there are 2 cards to come, say, a bettor whch such a hand will want to drive off players who need to draw an out to win the pot.

I may (think i) have the best hand post-flop but know i only have a 10% chance of improving a hand. If I offer another 2 players each with a 30% of improving his hand good pot odds with my post-flop bet they will stay in. I am now odds-on to lose. My tactic is to bet enough so that they dont stay in.

yeah, cause he would have seen that ten and just known that the other guy had pocket tens and could have avoided the whole situation completely. it happens all the time, but there was no way he was getting rid of pockets aces, its a bad beat, it happens, but he didnt do anything wrong

darrow wrote:

yeah, cause he would have seen that ten and just known that the other guy had pocket tens and could have avoided the whole situation completely. it happens all the time, but there was no way he was getting rid of pockets aces, its a bad beat, it happens, but he didnt do anything wrong

my point was not that he should have gotten rid of pocket aces, but a) if his opponent stayed in, with a flop of 10-8-4 or whatever it was, he would have to have known the opponent had some sort of pair, at minimum; b) he disposed of all flexibility to get out and stay at the table.

my argument was that the example was why you don't go all in BEFORE the flop, not that you don't go all in EVER.

malmo wrote:

30 player tourney? What was the prize structure?

In tourney play, I don't go all-in before the flop until I'm in the money. NO MATTER WHAT.

Look at it this way. I figure that in a tournament of your size you'll be faced with at least a half dozen opportunities to go all in. For arguemnts sake, let's just say you get wired Aces on each of those occasions. If, on those 6 occasions you get the hand down to a heads-up situation, your Aces are 85 percent winner (against random hands). Make that play 6 times and you are only a 38 percent chance of surviving. Best hand, heads up, and after 6 times you only have a 38 percent chance of surviving? So why would you continually go all-in with lesser hands?

I disagree. This may be the best way to play if you're at WSOP with 2 hour rounds, but in most tournaments you only get to see 15-30 hands before the blinds increase and these are the tournaments that most people play.

I would gladly make that play with aces every single time. In order to win a tournament you HAVE to get lucky. I don't care how good you are. If you don't get good cards, you aint winning. Of couse, the more skilled you are the less luck you need, but regardless you still can't get dealt crap and win.

According to your scenario, I'd only have a 38 percent chance of surviving, which assumes that my opponent had an equal or larger stack than me each time. This means that 38 percent of the time I end up with 64,000 chips if I start with 1,000. That's an average stack at the final table in a tournament of 640 people (generally a very large tournament, online it would be considered a medium sized one). I will take those odds any day. You put me at the final table with an average stack and I am winning thousands of dollars, even if the buy in is only $50. All I have to do is wait for those 2 or 3 short stacks to go out and beat another medium stack or 2. If I do that 38% of the time then in a year or two I am retiring (considering that I play anywhere from 4-15 tournaments a week)

You can't enter a tournament thinking that you can win it as long as you dont get really unlucky. You have to enter thinking "I need to survive long enough to give myself a chance to get lucky." (courtesy of Tom McEvoy)

The last tournament I played in I had 15,000 chips when the average was only 5,000. A maniac was moved to the position to my right with 20k in chips (obviously he was getting very lucky). Every time I entered a pot he would set me all in. This went on for a whole hour until I only had an average stack. Realizing that I have to take a stand, I waited and waited for some cards and then finally moved in with 99. he called with KQ and he busted me, but I don't regret it at all. If I hadn't done that, if I had waited for aces, he would have chipped away at me till I had no chance at all. Sometimes you HAVE to take a risk in order win some money in a tournament.

XCHAMP, you are taking my example of "six all-ins", and 38 percent survival rate, too literal. In that hypothetical example, I went with the presumption that on each of those all-ins you would be dealt wired aces, to be used as an illustration of the futility of going all-in on a continual basis. Using the best possible scenario as the standard and comparing it to the probability of survival I thought was a no-brainer. In reality, the hands dealt to you are going to have much less value than Aces. The result of going all-in and winning six times in a row in that case will be much less than five percent. Not a good result. There are much smarter plays to be made during a tournament without risking your entire capital. Treat tournament play the same as you would in a non-tournament no-limit game.

Secondly, I'm not following the point of your big stack to the right story? "Every time I entered a pot he would set me all in" "This went on for a whole hour until I only had an average stack" As long as I've been playing poker I've never seen this happen. Try as I might I cannot come up with a scenario how going all-in every time, brings your stack down to "average." You can only have a huge stack or nothing as far as I can see.

Additionally, what's the problem with an aggressive player sitting to the right? I like your situation. Let him battle the other players at the table, he's bound to get taken out at the knees. Even if he doen't, by virtue of survival, you'll move up in the ranks.

I just purchased the "Rounders" DVD and it had some good "special features" which included advice from professional poker players.

Chris Moneymaker: "Never call. Always raise if you're going to call, as long as you're within your means. You will win so many games just that way."

Moneymaker or somebody else: "When raising, keep it at the same amount game to game, so others can't read you according to your bets."

Moneymaker: "Go all in when you are behind in the hand. Get extremely lucky and pull your out card on the river. Repeat 4-6 times. You can win $2.5 million like I did."

I realized you were using an extreme example, and I more than well know the perils of moving all in preflop (or even on the flop). My point was that some people take this too far and thus never make it deep into the money. In tournaments with short rounds you need to take what you are given. I'm gonna move all in with kings unless a rock reraises big. With queens or jacks I'll try and check out the flop for overcards. If some idiot moves in with his flush draw and I have high pair, A kicker, I'm calling. There just isn't enough time in most tournaments to let hands go when you have a 60%+ advantage.

I used to play conservatively and wait for premium hands and good flops where I was a lock, but the same thing kept happening. Every tournament I would end up saying to my buddy "I just couldn't catch any cards and the blinds ate away at me." In order to make the final table playing that way I needed to get dealt great cards for 6 hours straight, and that is a very rare thing. Since then I've opened up my play and started doing things like raising with AQ in eary or mid position, calling all-ins with a pair vs. a draw, etc, and I have done much better in tournaments.

The reason why I went from a big stack to an average stack is because I would enter a pot, say by calling the blind or raising, and then the maniac would move all-in and I would fold(I accidently wrote that he was to my right, I meant left). That happened many times. I folded because I only held coin flip hands (never a high pocket pair) and didnt feel like risking my large stack on a 50% shot. He was bullying the entire table and no one was standing up to him; not only that, but I was the only one with enough chips to hurt him and the table wasn't going to break up for another hour. Everyone was just sitting there, like me, and folding to him as he accumulated chips. If I sat there and waited I would gradually lose chips (only 15 minute rounds) over an hour which is a huge amount of time in an online tournament. If did not go all-in then I would have had to wait an hour before I was moved, at which point I would have had close to 5k in chips, which would have been at least 1/3rd of the average. With big blinds I would be basically doomed. Instead i decided that I was going to double up, putting me in a decent position to make the final table, or I was busting out. I stand but what I chose.

"Treat tournament play the same as you would in a non-tournament no-limit game."

The correct strategy for tournaments is much different than cash games. Never in a cash game can you fold and win money, but that happens all the time in a tournament. Sometimes in a tournament the correct play is to call when you are getting terrible odds but that's never true in a cash game unless you think you can tilt a man.