Online Poker

If you ever thought the chat box in an online poker game was inane, try online bingo.

Yes, I do have a very good reason for playing bingo.  There's a fantastic offer on quidco.com right now where you get £30 for registering a new player account and betting £10.  It told me I already had an account, so I had to do some jiggery pokery using my full name and a different email, but it tracked in Quidco immediately once I'd played through the £10.

I didn't win anything, but that's probably because I'm a bingo donkey.  I expect I was seeing too many tickets with weak balls.  I guess I also need to try to dab more aggressively with my good numbers.

However, the £20 overall profit from the bonus just about makes up for having to endure an unbearably cheesy online gaming experience.  My avatar was a cartoon dabber with a big grin - do I need to go into this any further?  It really hurts to think about it now.

Looking back at this screen full of chat is especially painful.

We've got the universally standard gl, wd and ul (good luck, well done and unlucky) making an appearance.  The tg suffix means to go, so many of these comments are players announcing how close they are to winning a prize - tactics designed to put fish like me on tilt for sure.  Makes you want to mark off a whole bunch of numbers much to hastily.

The one that took me a while to figure out was wdw.  It means well done winner - a fabulously impersonal way of fake-congratulating an opponent who just outplayed, outclassed and outdabbed you.  It's not like you don't know who won - it tells you their name and shows you their winning ticket!

It's like "well I know I didn't win, so I don't care who did" so I imagine wdw is said sarcastically just as often as nice hand is used in poker to actually mean nice suck out. 

As I didn't stick around very long, I will just have to pretend that this was a real bingo conversation:

wdw lucky fish u suck
nice miracle numbers
poor play rewarded again
so sick

It could be ...

Remember what I was saying about cheap limit tournaments, where most of the players don't actually want to be there?  I had the pleasure of getting my pocket aces cracked by one of them just now, but it was more than made up for when I flopped a set a little later.

This is a $1k guaranteed tournament on Empire Poker that I dropped on during late registration.  With 299 players and a $6 buy in, it's somewhat different to the uber-tight $215 tournament I played last week.  There's just 159 players remaining at the first break - one hour in and nearly half the field has gone broke already.  I expect most of them wanted to.

As no hand history convertor appears to work with limit tournament hands, I'll have to do my best to recount the action using actual words.  Skip about four paragraphs if you want to avoid what is technically a bad beat story, even though I couldn't really less about losing that hand.

I have pocket aces in middle position.  There's a limp and a raise ahead of me, and I 3-bet.  Six players see the flop: 5c 3c 9d.  Yes, six.  I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't in Vegas yet.  Sadly not - it's still seven days away.  I check/call the flop hoping to see a good turn card so I can punish the draws on the next betting round.  A risky play, but nobody's folding for one small bet here, and I don't expect anyone to raise ahead of me if I bet.

OK, one player folds for one small bet when it comes from the player to my left, and five of us see the turn: Kd.  It looks like a good card for me, except that there's now two flush draws to avoid in a 5-way pot.  I can't let anyone draw for free, so I bet.  At first I'm happy to see the next player raise, although when I work everything out it's not as good as it first seemed.  I realise that I'm way out of practice at counting large multi-way pots: anyone else tagging along now is going to get pot odds of at least 6-1.  It's really as much as I could hope for to try to force out the draws, but it's not quite enough.

However somehow we're heads for the river: Jc.  It's now just a case of whether I actually have the best hand and I should probably bet/fold here, but I check/call instead.  Of course he had rivered the flush with 7c 8c.

Let re-evaluate: (1) cold-calling three bets pre-flop with a very poor hand (2) open betting a weak flush draw and gutshot on the flop and (3) raising the turn when calling with this draw would be infinitely superior.  This beat was actually great news for me.  His flop play wasn't terrible, but I now know that this player wants to play big pots and won't give up with much of anything.  He is playing a death-or-glory strategy and has potential to throw his chips away.  I just need to get lucky to capitalise.

Getting lucky happened with pocket deuces.  I'd limped and our friend raised pre-flop so I stuck around to see three more cards.  One of them was exactly what I wanted.  The flop: Tc 2s Kc.  Can I check/raise him here?  You bet.  I check/call the flop, hoping to win at least half a big bet extra by waiting until the turn to speak up.

It works.  The turn: a harmless 5d.  I unleash the check/raise and he makes it three bets.  Well, if I've been screwed by another set-over-set here so be it.  Much more likely he has one or two pair.  I cap it.

River: Ts.  Not great.  Although I have a full house, he just caught up if he had KT.  But, given the high likelihood of spewage, I decide to go for it.  I lead straight out, he raises, three from me and he caps.  His ace-king is far from good, and I rule.  Hello the chips.

A result in this tournament isn't going to be life changing, although $388 first prize isn't bad at all for a $6 investment.  But still it's more much-needed limit tournament practice, and hopefully once the field has thinned a little it will play a little more sensibly.  I just need to run well enough to maintain a playable stack for a few more rounds.

EDIT: 4th for $104.65.  Woohoo.  Trip report may follow tomorrow, not sure yet

So did I learn anything from the $215 limit tournament that, truthfully, I should have never played?  Yes I did, but it definitely wasn't worth the money.  I'm sure I could have learned exactly the same thing from a $30 or $50 tournament.

One thing I'd forgotten is that fixed limit poker plays out much slower than no limit, and how significant that could be in a tournament.  Because many more hands go to a showdown, you get to see play hands per level.  Even starting with 2500 chips (62.5 big bets at 20/40), it didn't seem long before everyone was short stacked.  After an hour, 29 players (of 36 in total) still remained but with the next level being 150/300 and the average stack at just over 3100 chips, most players are already just two pots away from busto.

Players don't go broke in the early stages, and even the very worst - or the very unluckiest - bleed away slowly, so unless you can accumulate a lot of chips (usually by runing very hot) you end up like the rest of the field: waiting to see a big hand and hoping it holds.  Therefore I suspect that, during the first few levels, looking for opportunities to play hands with big pot potential like suited connectors and small pocket pairs cheaply is much more valuable than trying to milk a tiny edge from your very strong hands pre-flop.  One extra bet won in level 1 is only worth half a bet as soon as the clock chimes in level 2.

The main point of strategy I'd overlooked though was blind play.  Whether it was trying to defend against suspected stealers or finding opportunities to steal myself, I never really got it right.  With more severe blinds stealing becomes more attractive and defending with marginal hands - particularly out of position to a button raise - becomes a very volatile strategy.

With a short stack, blind play requires great care indeed.  There is no such thing as a resteal move - the best you can do is offer the raiser 5-1 pot odds to see a flop - and you cannot open-push in order to put maximum pressure on the blinds.  If you decide to raise, you have to be prepared to play a flop.

The biggest mistake you can make in limit hold'em is to fold the best hand for a single bet.  However in a tournament, making thin value calls can be devastating when that single bet represents a large proportion of your stack, or even your last few chips.  Now that I am a little more prepared to think ahead, hopefully I will be able to avoid going too far in situations where a crippling river call would be mandatory.

I made many notes to try to convince myself I was getting something of value of the tournament.  I forced myself just to pick just one hand to write about.  I began with 1130 in chips - just over 5 big bets at the 100/200 level:

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, Q. Hero posts a blind of 50.
6 folds, Button raises, Hero 3-bets, 1 fold, Button caps, Hero calls.

Flop: A, 6, 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

Turn: 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.

River: 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks.

I found myself insta-raising with AQ from the small blind when facing a button raise.  As you do.  However, I'm pretty sure this was a mistake when the reraise already committed about 30% of my chips to the pot, and possibly more if it was capped.  Although a smooth call encourages the big blind to come along for the ride, in this situation I think it's a risk you have to take.

I should have chosen to control the pot size, rather than to force out the third player in the hand.  I figure that my hand is probably the best and I definitely want to see a flop, but I'm not going to check-call off almost all of my stack one bet at a time with just ace high.  Leading out when I miss the flop is going to be the only chance to bluff at this pot, and the smaller the pot, the more significant my flop bet will be.

So with the pot as big as it could possibly be, I immediately decided to just check-call with the top pair in an attempt to lose as little as possible.  His pre-flop cap showed strength, or so I thought, so AK was a very likely holding.  I couldn't lay the hand down, but I did not expect to be winning.  This thinking is dreadful.

Had I thought ahead like I was meant to, I would have realised that one more small bet and two big bets would have left me with just 230 chips - barely one big bet, and almost no chance of recovery in the tournament.  The decision to go all the way if I hit the flop should have been made pre-flop.  Then, when I do hit, the objective is to get as many chips into the pot as possible.

That means I have to try to get in a check-raise for a big bet.  So I should check-call the flop and then let him bet again on the turn - as I did, but for the wrong reason, and without firing the check-raise with a hand that was committed to this pot.  If there's no turn bet it means I've got it all sewn up so then I can lead the river (but probably don't win any more money).

Trying to trap here, even without being at all certain that my hand is best, gives him the opportunity to lose money with worse hands than mine, and I don't scare off unimproved pocket pairs by admitting that I liked the ace on the flop.  It gives me the best chance to get all my money in the pot, which is what I clearly have to do if I make a hand that I'm prepared to take to showdown.

He showed JJ, and I survived - for a little longer at least.

Here endeth the $215 lesson.

Well I'd been hoping to drop on a non-stupid fixed limit tournament all week, and it just happened.  Right there staring at me in the Poker Stars lobby the minute I signed in... way beyond my bankroll but how could I possibly say no after all this time?

$215 Weekly Fixed Limit Hold'em - Late Reg.

Baptism of fire coming right up then.  It's 10/20 blinds in level one with 2500 starting chips, and I got a walk on my first big blind.  Definitely playing a little tighter than I've seen before.

EDIT: Nitted my way to 14th place.  Wasn't as useful as it should have been for $215 but at least I did pick up some things to consider.  Probably post some hands tomorrow.