Pro Donates to the Joe Fund

So I'm about an hour in to a session of 1/2 No Limit at Caesar's palace. Made 1 bad call and down probably 150-250, but as always, I've added-on to table max ($300), when a young pro looking dude I've seen before sits to my left. He's got headphones on, not talking or having fun, etc.

A hand or two in, young pro raises Pre-Flop in early position to probably $12. He gets 1 mid position caller and it folds through to me, Ad8d in the big blind.

Now this is an easy call thinking the guy is a decent player. A pretty standard raising range from early position from up front including plenty of hands I beat, and if not, ones that I can win a big pot from if I get a nice flop. If this guy was a 65yr old dude, I'd probably just fold because he's likely to be playing AQ+, QQ+ and I'm out of position to him and another player. Anyways, I call.

$37 flop:
8s8h3c

I think for a bit about how I'm going to make the maximum amount of money in this hand. If I bet out and neither player has anything, they'll just fold. And if I bet out and this pro has AA, he very well might just call and see what develops later on in the hand. So I decide to check-raise.

I check, pro bets $20, the other player folds. I decided to raise to $65 to build up a pot and make it hard for 99-AA to fold. To my delight, he then shoves his entire chip stack of about $280 into my. I obviously call, the board bricks out, and I show my A8 immediately to be nice to the guy, and take down the pot. He pretty obviously has a worse 8 with a hand like 78suited or 89suited or a big pair like AA or KK. Doesn't really matter.

This is a fairly standard hand, but is a good example of what can happen when you put a bit of thought into the best possible way to make the most amount of money out of your strong hands.

-Joe

Table Courtesy

Table Courtesy

Round 1 - Do You Chop?

If you understand what chopping the blinds is, skip to the 2nd paragraph.

In Hold 'Em and Omaha, the flop games of poker, there's a standard small and big blind bet placed out by the two players just to the left of the player currently marked as the dealer with the dealer button. People get that. Cool. In every single casino in the San Francisco Bay Area, there's at least one game where there's also a blind bet put out by the player with the dealer button. For example, at Garlic City, you have a $1, $2, $2 blind structure. $1 on the button, $2 in the small blind, and $2 in the big blind. At M8trix, there's a $1,$2,$3 game. $1 on the button, $2 SB (small blind), $3 BB (big blind). OK. Now chopping... so in a normal game with 2 blinds - Lucky Chances' $3,$5 game for example - if everyone folds to the players in the blind, those two player can "Chop it". Chopping means that they take most or all of their money back and chose not to the play that hand against each other. With Lucky Chances specifically, they rake $2 a hand no matter what ($1 + $1 for bad beat jackpot), so each player hands the dealer a dollar and we all move on to the next hand. Why would people do that? Well, normally in that same game, the house takes $6 per hand that goes post-flop. So out of the $8 out there, which will likely turn into $10 once the player in the small blind player calls, $6 is immediately taken away. So the two players have invested $5 each to play for a pot of $4. So most people instead chose to chop it. Makes sense, right?

It's a little different when you've got a blind bet out on the dealer button. Let's take M8trix and Bay 101's $2,$3,$5 games for example. If the action folds around to the player on the button with $2 out there, and everyone chops, the player with the dealer button sacrifices $1 out of the $2 they have out, then the small and big blind take all of their money back. Well that's not particularly fair, now is it? You take the best position at the table and make it so of that guy is super nice and decides not to use it to his advantage by raising, he is the one also giving up money in the chop. In my opinion, that's stupid. So when the situation comes up and players ask me, "Do you chop?", the answer is "I don't chop my button, but I chop my blinds every single time." People that haven't thought it through like I have sometimes take issue with my policy. They think I might be a shady character by changing my blind chopping policy dependent on my positional advantage. But if they ask or say stuff out loud about it, I typically explain and they typically say "Oh that makes sense.", and we move on and play cards.

Yesterday at Bay 101, this exact scenario went down. I told the table my chopping policy when asked, I told them, someone asked why, then I explained it. Almost the entire table made a Eureka-moment "Ohhhhhhh!" after my explanation. Then later on, a new player sat to my right, the situation came up, and he asked if myself and the player to my left chopped. I told him, "I don't chop my button, but I chop my blinds every single time." Then the player to my left started mouthing off about how stupid the policy was. I attempted to explain the thought process to him, but he just kept mouthing off, cutting me off, and telling me what I should do. I asked him politely at first not to tell me what to do and not to tell another person what I do, what I should do, or what I shouldn't do. He then went off and spouted out several poor defenses, to which I got a bit more agitated and said something like "Look, just don't talk for me and don't tell me what to do." This cycle happened a couple times until the guy shut up.

Round 2 - Talking When You Don't Have a Hand

Probably 10-20 minutes later, I got involved in a pretty sizable pot. There was 3 way action and currently around $700 in the middle with $200 for me to call, but likely more money would go in if I continued in the pot. The board was 7,J,J,K. The guy to my left started talking to the guy to his left. I couldn't understand him perfectly because his English wasn't great, but it was clear to me that he was talking about the hand that was taking place and what types of hands the bettor was likely to hold. THIS IS NOT OK. Talking about a hand you're not in while those who are in it can hear can change the actual action and win or lose people money.

Example: let's say in precisely this pot, I was holding Q,Q or A,A & I'm a complete idiot. Maybe I hadn't strongly considered the possibility that the guy betting into me had a jack or I had written it off in my mind for whatever reason. This guy saying "...jack.." could restart the thinking process in my brain of what types of holdings my opponent might have. Literally one word out of that guy's mouth could lose my opponent $200 or even more, considering we both would have had more money left over had I called the $200.

So I asked politely again for the guy to not speak about a hand that he's not in. Again, he went off and spouted out poor defenses, such as "I wasn't talking to you." and "I wasn't talking about the hand.", which were both complete lies. I called over the floor man and requested that he ask the guy to my left not to speak about hands he's not in. The floor man then asked the dealer what happened. To my surprise and dismay, the dealer basically shrugged and said he didn't know. I explained precisely what happened and asked probably 2 or 3 more times for the floor man to just remind the guy not to speak about hands he's not in, to which he eventually mumbled out "yeah don't do that." Guy to my left wouldn't let the incident go and kept on me while I was still trying to think through this hand I was in, the floor man had to come back twice and say "hey just calm down guys move on", to which my reply was "sounds great, I'd love to." I wasn't paying super close attention and I'm not sure if someone asked him to move, but soon afterward, the guy to my left picked up and either moved to another table or left.

Super frustrating 20-ish minutes. I was super heated and very glad that he left.

Bottom Line

Don't be disrespectful to others at the poker table. It's OK to have differing opinions on things like blind chopping policy, but that doesn't mean you should express them in a disrespectful manner. And don't talk about hands you're no longer in while they're still happening. Even wincing when a card that would have been good for you comes is rude and disrespectful to the players that are still in the hand. Players in the hand don't want your words or facial expressions to change the action that you're no longer involved with

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Feel free to comment below or send any questions, comments, ideas, or w/e in to dj8bitavenger@gmail.com, and I'll make sure to incorporate the feedback into future posts.

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Let's Catch Up

Let's Catch Up

No hands today. I've played several sessions live and had some interesting hands that were worth talking about. But I played a bunch of sessions online @ America's Cardroom as well as live and kind of thought them through and answered my own questions. I've also gotten approved for a home loan, had an offer on a property accepted, and had the loan pass conditional approval through the underwriter. Oh, and I still have my 40hr/week job. So you could say that I've been busy.

Live vs. Online

I played a bit over 5000 hands of NLHE (No Limit Hold 'Em) online at $.10/.25 stakes - some 6max and some full ring (9 players) tables. Plus I played a few small tournaments. It's pretty incredible how many hands you can get in online when you're playing 6 tables at once.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that people playing NLHE online are really, really, good. The $.10/.25 tables were dramatically tougher than the $1/2 and $2/5 type tables I usually play at live. So I'd say that playing NLHE online is like playing over 10 times the same stakes live. It's pretty nuts. People are making plays every other hand that I might not see an entire night live.

Other Games

After losing nearly half of the money I deposited, I decided I'd rather try to grind out my deposit bonus playing other types of poker at even lower-stakes, somewhat for fun and somewhat because I'd like to know a bit more of how to play other games when an opportunity presents itself to play those games live.

I had been listening to an old poker podcast ran by Bart Hanson called Cash Plays and depending on the guest he had on, he would talk about different games - 7-Card Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, Omaha 8, PLO (Pot Limit Omaha), and some even rarer games. This got me kind of excited to give these games a shot and learn about them at the baby stakes.

Stud Hi/Lo

So I hopped online and looked for low/micro-stakes games of Stud Hi/Lo, PLO, and O8. I still have a ton to learn about all 3, but I quickly learned that even though I knew little-to-nothing about the game, that the players I was facing at Stud Hi/Lo knew even less. It's a split-pot game, where the goal is to make the best high AND the best low hand, with half of the pot going to the player with each of the 2. So if you have the best of both, you'll take the entire pot. So a few great starting hands might be:
A♠,2♠,3♠
3♥,4♥,5♥
A♣,2♣,5♣.

For some reason, people were playing and raising stuff like:
J♦,K♣,K♥
9♠,10♣,J♥
A♦,5♠,8♣

There are always exceptions, but playing hands like these clearly give you no real shot at winning both the high and low end of a hand. Another big mistake I saw players making, is that even if they had decent or great starting hands, they would still bet/raise extra money in situations where they could really only expect to win half of the pot, while I've got a two-way hand.

Once I felt comfortable that I was easily out-playing the micro stakes, I quickly moved up to $1/2, then 2/4, 3/6, and finally $5/10, where people are still making the same basic mistakes. I'm definitely making mistakes, and focused on learning, but I can see clearly that long-term I can make a significant profit against these players at these stakes.

Stud Hi/Lo has another few really cool benefits. Since it's an ante game and there aren't blinds, you can truly get up and sit down any time you want without losing a whole lot of value. Also, I'm receiving points toward my deposit bonus at an extremely high rate in a game with much lower variance compared to NLHE. You end up splitting the pot when you're behind a lot. And even in a super aggressively raised pot, the maximum you might lose is very low compared to a No Limit or Pot Limit game.

Until Next Time...

Unless something particularly interesting comes up, I probably won't make another post until after the move, when I'll hopefully have something super cool to announce. Good luck at the tables!

♠♥♣♦

Feel free to comment below or send any questions, comments, ideas, or w/e in to dj8bitavenger@gmail.com, and I'll make sure to incorporate the feedback into future posts.

Another One

Another One

I had another hand that I wrote down as well, but this one was way more hype. Maybe I'll post the next one tomorrow. Anyway, Lucky Chances has a much more standard structure, so I'm not even going to talk about it unless asked. Here goes:

$3,5 No Limit Hold 'Em at Lucky Chances in Colma ($100-$500 buy-in)

I was just moved from my original table to this one. I see one player I remember as decent across the table with huge stack of chips, and the players to either side of me have big stacks as well. This certainly doesn't always mean they're good players, but it's a good indicator. They're both very well composed, so I'm assuming a higher-than-average skill level for both of them.

9♠, 8♠ UTG+1 ~$1,100 effective stack

On my second hand, I'm 2nd to act with an effective stack of about $1,100. The player to my right, UTG, calls for $5. I look down at 9♠,8♠ and raise it to $30. The player to my left, the Villain in this hand, calls $30. It's folded around to the guy who limped in UTG, who also calls.

$90 Flop (3-Way) - 5♠5♦3♦

We have basically nothing. We surprisingly have 2 over-cards, so depending on the action we could be ahead if a 9 or 8 come. We do also have a back-door flush draw with our ♠s, but unless something happens otherwise, I definitely think we've got the worst hand here.

The player UTG checks to me, I make a fairly standard continuation bet of $60. Villain thinks for a bit and calls, and the player UTG folds.

$210 turn (Heads-Up) - 2♥

Board: 5♠5♦3♦2♥

I figure the villain behind us likely called us with some sort of A high or small-to-medium pair. He could also be chasing a flush-draw at a fairly high frequency here. He could also clearly have a 5, though I assumed he would raise the flop to both make it worse for a flush draw to call and get money in, in case I had a big pair. If he had an A,4 or 4,6 suited, then he would have a straight here as well.

I figured most of the hands he has here are weak and I'm representing at least some sort of over-pair if I bet again, so I do - $110. He calls. At this point I feel like shutting down my bluff.

$430 River - K♦

Board: 5♠5♦3♦2♥K♦

Now this is an interesting card. Thinking from my opponent's perspective: If I was betting 2 streets with A,K, then I've hit a K. If I was betting with some sort of suited connector, like J♦,10♦, then I've hit my flush. If I had K,K I've filled up for a Full House. Probably the absolute worst hand I'd bet here would be A,K or maybe even a straight with A,4 or 4,6. So I think for a little while again and bet $175, sized to look like a value bet - Representing that I have a strong hand and want him to call with worse. He thinks for a good minute or so and folds.

The player later tells me that he had 4,4 and assumed I hit a pair of Kings on the river. He said he wouldn't fold the river if it wasn't a King. I tell him I bluffed him and probably wouldn't bet if a King didn't come. Right before I left an hour or two later, he tells me he doesn't believe me and is basically asking me to tell him what I really had. I told him "9♠,8♠ I swear". He didn't believe me because I played near 0 hands after that and shut down after C-betting on hands that I was in there and raised.

So I should bluff all the time then, huh?

Please don't learn the wrong thing from these first two hands - bluffing is not something that I do, nor should you, at a high frequency at these low stakes games. I would recommend a beginning player literally never bluff except for continuation bets on flops when they were the pre-flop raiser.

Once you start to recognize situations like the following: What you normally have when you bet in this situation looks very scary versus what your opponent normally has...OK start to throw a bluff or two into your game and get a feel for them.

I used to literally NEVER bluff other than C-bets and was still very profitable at the low stakes I played - typically 1/2/3 at Garden City, 1/2 at Indian Casinos and the old Garlic City. Some might ask the following: "If you don't bluff, how can you have a balanced range? If you don't ever bluff, then your opponents can take advantage and make easy folds against you and be correct to do so."

OK, yeah. You're right in theory. But most of the players at this level don't fold when they should. Unless the situation is just right for it, and you have the right type of opponent, it's just not likely to work. I saw a guy call later this same night with a single pair on a board with a flush and several straights out there, with action on every street. 2 nights ago I saw a guy calling down with bottom pair several times when it made no sense.

So unless you have a solid indication that you're against a thinking player, you have a good idea of what he has, AND the way you played the hand aligns with what better hand you're representing, please, don't bluff at low stakes poker.

But it sure feels good that I'm finally comfortable doing so when the right opportunity presents itself.

♠♥♣♦

I received some feedback that some of the terms were a bit hard to follow, so I tried to make sure I explained everything that I said the first time I said it. Definitely let me know if I'm still not handling that well.

Feel free to comment below or send any questions, comments, ideas, or w/e in to dj8bitavenger@gmail.com, and I'll make sure to incorporate the feedback into future posts.

New Blog / 1st Hand

New Blog / 1st Hand

Welcome to my blog that I'm calling 8BitPoker. I've started playing poker a whole lot more again recently and I decided I wanted to start a blog for two main reasons:

• I want to share my poker journey, especially particularly entertaining or interesting parts, with friends, family, and whomever else might be interested.

• It's probably a good idea to give myself yet another reason to do my best to remember as many details as I can about impactful hands and analyze them after the fact - look for misplays, opportunities for improvement, etc.

What to Expect

I expect my primary focus to be on sharing No Limit Hold 'Em cash game hands - one per session that I find particularly interesting or fun. If this gains any sort of popularity and people want something else - More or less context on hands, Q&A, thoughts on different parts of the game like bankroll management and game selection - I'll do all of the above. But enough talking about what I'm going to do, how about we do it, huh?

$1,2,2 Spread Limit at Garlic City Casino in Gilroy ($40-$400, $2-$200 Spread)

First off this is a super weird structure at a very unique card club, but I think the level of play is so low that I'm 100% OK with it. What they mean by spread limit is that the maximum bet/raise is $200, plus there's a 4-bet (1 bet, 3 raise) maximum on every street unless the hand is heads-up - kind of a mix between limit and no-limit betting structure. $400 buy-in is fairly deep and they take $4 per post-flop hand, so the structure is actually pretty decent overall. Anyway, here's the hand I played last night:

A♣, 5♣ in Small Blind ($2) - ~$190 effective stack

There are severally limpers (players just calling the minimum bet) in the field, I check my option, and our villain in the hand - the BB (big blind) - raises it up to $17 in something like a $10 pot. He's been raising fairly often pre-flop, but typically for smaller amounts.

3 people call in the field, I call.

~$90 flop (5-way): 2♦6♥3♣

I have a gut-shot straight draw (any 4 hits a straight), a back-door nut flush draw (any 2 clubs for flush), and a single over-card that may or may not be good if I hit (pair of Aces).

I check, villain makes it $20, 1 player in the field calls, I call.

My thinking is that there's a high probability I'm good with anything that hits me and that I can pick up the club draw on the turn and keep playing even if I don't get exactly what I want, and I will probably get paid for whatever I hit. Getting 6.5-to-1 on my money, yeah...call.

$150 turn (3-way): 2♣

the board now reads 2♦6♥3♣2♣

I still have the gutshot, I still might be ahead if I hit an A, and I now pick up the nut flush draw. Not the best card, but I'll take it. I check. Villain bets again for $65, the 3rd player in the hand folds, and it's back to me.

Now I'm in a kind of weird spot. To make the call I have to put in $65 to win a pot of about $215, which is about 3.3-to-1. If I still think I'm good with any 4, A, or ♣ (which I do), then I'm about 32% to win the hand and need a little over 2-to-1 to call, which I'm getting the right price on. If we assume our A is no good because our opponent has A,6, or a pair of Aces here fairly often, then we're about 26% to win or need 3-to-1 to call, which we're also getting.

But apparently I'm bad at math at the table. I thought I wasn't quite getting the right price to call, but I assumed he'd pay me off for the little left in his stack ~$80 if I hit. At this point I mostly put him on Jacks through Aces and figured there's no way he's folding based on how he and I both played earlier in the session. Anyway, after a really long time miscalculating the pot odds and some guy that's not in the hand getting mad at me about thinking super long over a $65 bet, I call.

~$280 river (heads up): 6♠

the board now reads: 2♦6♥3♣2♣6♠

There's no way I'm good here. GG. Hand over... HOLD UP. I think for a second, realize he's going to have a really tough time calling here with a single pair, and I throw enough chips in to cover what he's got left (~$80) in, fairly quickly. He immediately makes an audible upset grunt-type reaction, says "You have a 6, huh?", takes about 30 seconds to psychologically get over the fact that he's lost, then folds.

I am actually pretty darn proud of my river play here, even more-so than I am embarrassed about not being able to do the math on the turn. I correctly put my player on a big pocket pair most of the time that we're in this situation, though he should show up with a pair of 3s, A6, or AK a bit of the time as well. I realized with a double-paired board that his most likely holdings would have a tough time calling AND my line looks super strong. I called pre-flop, I called on the flop, I called on the paired turn, and I fairly quickly and confidently bet out all-in on the double-paired river. I'm representing AT LEAST a 6 here.

Not only was it a great feeling scooping a pot where I was clearly behind, but it was a confirmation of my progress as a player. I started playing poker fairly seriously when I was 18, and in the last 10 years I've been very on-and-off and just haven't played a ton in between. I would never have made this play any time in that period until maybe a few weeks ago because I just wasn't reading hands that well or making decisions based on as much information.

Feel free to comment below or send any questions, comments, ideas, or w/e in to dj8bitavenger@gmail.com, and I'll make sure to incorporate the feedback into future posts.

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