Poker as a platform game.
Topic: Poker

And so we say farewell to Bluescouse over at 88% Concentration. I’m very much a late arrival to the party here, having only caught on to his blog in the last month. I wish I’d jumped on for the ride sooner. For those who don’t know his story, the gist is that he’s a teenager in Wales who plays online and has in the past managed to win huge sums having started small and continually parlayed up to bigger and bigger games. At one stage he had his bankroll up to about £170k, but inevitably perhaps, when his lucky streak ended and he experienced the normal run of bad luck that all of us get at some point, he wiped out the lot.

 

Undeterred, he cashed in his ISA and proceeded to give that a spin. That got him a fair amount of negative feedback. Yesterday he saw the light and decided to quit. He blames the pressure of impressing his father and his loyal readership for some of the mistakes he’s made, but as he's got no understanding of money management, I don’t think he would have lasted even without that pressure.

 

He’s not alone. I’ve heard of others who done something similar. One south of England player springs to mind. He has run his net worth up to over £200k a couple of times, and up to lesser levels of £50k and £100k several times too – always going completely broke within months. Given that I can think of many ways that my life would be improved by having more money, I struggle to understand people like this. Both the people I’ve mentioned so far live with their parents! Couldn't they at least rent an apartment for themselves? That’s got to be the dream of any person under 30, surely?

 

I don’t think of them as compulsive gamblers. Although I’ve met several compulsive types in casinos, I really don’t think that poker lends itself to compulsive behaviour. It’s just too slow. The casino games of roulette and craps are far faster. You don’t have to wait as long for the resolution of any given bet. So what is going on with these people? One possible answer was suggested to me by Matt Arnott. We were discussing these guys at the Western when he suddenly said:

 

It’s like they’re playing Super Mario Brothers!

 

Of course; that’s how they see it. The challenge isn’t to raise your standard of living. It’s not to increase your income. It’s not to achieve financial and personal independence. Their aim is simply to get to the next level or die trying. That led to a discussion of who must be the final ‘boss’ to beat at the end before they could quit. Matt suggests Gus Hansen, but I’d make it Ben Roberts.

The rakeback kid.
Topic: Poker

Here's an interesting feature about Mark Goodwin:

http://www.totalgambler.com/pokertips/skillsandstrategy/1706/turning_poker_pro.html

The money quote:

"His figures show that he’s made $180,000 from tournament winnings this year – but his entry fees and expenses total $182,000! Without the sponsorship deal paying his entry into events he would be breaking even – and he’s currently sixth in the European rankings!"

I have to say that this 'business model' reminds me of those online players who break even in the games and only make money because they have a rakeback deal.

However the lifestyle side of it is a lot better!

Sad day for poker.
Topic: Poker

I'm sad to see that Derek Kelly has been found guilty in the case against him regarding the Gutshot Club. I think it sets poker in Britain several years back, unless overturned on appeal. I haven't read the Gaming Act of 68 but I sense it's intended to protect people who play games of chance against the house. I'm told it has nothing to say about poker. The fact that it talks about games of both skill and chance being games of chance suggests to me that it's concerned with games like Blackjack and Casino Stud Poker where some decisions made by a player can reduce his expected loss, but not give him a positive expectation. But I'm not a lawyer.

In any case, the current situation is absurd. This morning I read in Metro that a late night ITV phone-in show was found to have held a game where players were invited to suggest items that a woman might have in her handbag. Two of the 'correct' answers were a balaklava and a rawl plug.

I. Am. Not. Making. This. Up.

Nearly every television channel is running these ridiculous phone-in games with there being no transparency whatsoever. And what have the authorities decided to prosecute? - A member's club where the game is dealt fairly and transparently. Incredible.

Who is the victim in Kelly's crime? By my personal moral code, a thing is illegal because it's wrong, not wrong because it's illegal. In every other crime I can think of, the 'victim' wishes that the crime had not occured. Yet Gutshot's players, the people who have paid the disputed 'service charge' are the people most keen to keep the place open! The only losers have been the established casinos who cannot stand the thought of losing customers. Actually this isn't really the case. If a private members club were to take away 100 potential players from a casino on a given night, the casino would only care about the loss of the five who also punt heavily on the dice and roulette. The other 95 are of next to no concern.

I really don't want to go back to where we were in this country a few years ago, where with the exception of the Vic, poker was treated as a 9pm loss-leader to drag in a few punters to keep the pit games busy. The game could be so much more than that. Condemning Gutshot isn't going to protect anyone. The people who play in it can easily play online (where a rake is charged) or go to casinos (where they must be subjected to the temptation to play negative EV games).

Who wins today? Nobody except perhaps the established casinos operators. And in my opinion, most of them don't really care about poker enough to invest in doing it properly and have no idea how much more profitable it could be if they cared.

Short stack play in online omaha.
Topic: Poker

There's been an interesting thread on 2+2 recently. No, not that one. I'm talking about the growing dissatisfaction with the fact that so many online pot limit omaha players are playing with short stacks. I recently spent a couple of weeks multi-tabling PLO at Pokerstars, so it's a subject that's fresh in my mind. It was while playing there a few weeks ago that I suddenly thought of a winning strategy for playing omaha with a small stack on several tables at once. I didn't follow through on it because I was already winning by playing a deep stack game, but I did wonder whether any friends of mine had thought of it too.

When I asked around, a couple of people mentioned that Rolf Slotboom had written something similar to it in a book. I decided to see whether anyone on Stars was playing the way I was thinking of, but concluded that the small stacks weren't doing what I would have expected them to. Basically if you're going to go all in before the flop with a small stack then you either want to have two aces in your hand or none. Yet I kept seeing people doing it with one, which makes no sense to me.

A glance at the PLO forum on 2+2 shows a great deal of irritation with Slotboom for encouraging short stacked play. Technically he's not the first writer to have floated the idea. One of the Sklansky/Malmuth books explains why the ideal buy-in for limit 7-card stud is the running ante only, which isn't allowed. However Slotboom has gone much further and outlined a practical 'system'.

When his critics aren't complaining about his book, they are petitioning for an increase in the minimum buy-in. They say that too many short stacks are killing the game. I think they have a point. In my opinion, the fact that the stack sizes are so much lower in relation to the blinds, compared to typical live games, is a far more significant difference between live and online play than the presence or absence of physical tells. To see whether the complaint is valid, I decided to check out the state of affairs on four full ring (nine-handed) $1/2 games on Pokerstars.

This is what I saw:

Neva -$282, $342, $210, $279, $386, $145, $200, $27, $150

Leo Minor - $255, $96, $194, $200, $219, $179, $170, $207, $42

Jiangi - $177, $558, $120, $112, $209, $178, $177, $189, $196

Chalonge - $140, $175, $191, $220, $124, $14, $38, $198, $133

Compared to the Victoria's omaha games, this is very shallow stuff. On table Jiangi, there are only two players with more than the max buy-in. One of them only exceeds this by $9! Has only one person doubled up? Perhaps; but if not, where's the rest of the money? The answer to that is one of the reasons I tend to get fed up with online poker after a few weeks of it and return to live play - the incredible, by live standards, preponderance of the hit-and-run. Seriously, does anyone apart from me stay longer than three minutes after a double-up? I've lost count of the times I've gone a couple of buy-ins behind, only to see after a quarter of an hour that none of the people who won my money are still there. The flip side is that when I double through and stick around, after an hour or so, I start to wonder what the point is, when nobody else is close to matching me dollar for dollar.

Perhaps having an hourly charge discourages nursing a small stack. The Vic's £10 per hour in the hundred game is just over three big blinds (five, when the big blind was £2 not so long ago). That might deter people from clinging on for dear life with only seven or nineteen BBs, as two players on table Chalonge were doing. Whatever the case, I'll be interested to see what happens. Will 'stars take notice and raise the minimum buy-in? I would like to think so. But in order for that to happen, there would have to be some senior decision-makers working in the company who understand the game from a player's point of view rather than a marketing exective's. I've told Lee Jones, Rich Korbin, Conrad Brunner and Dan Goldman that the Sit'n'Go lobby is far too cluttered and splits the liquidity providers (people who sit down first) several times. But instead of being simplified it gets more and more complicated, with the end result that you get a large number of lists, with only a few names each on them. Surely the reverse would be more profitable?

Meanwhile the omaha games are still profitable for now because, as Big Dave D reports, many people are not correctly applying Slotboom's strategy. But in the long term there is a danger that the short stack approach will kill the game. Will 'stars react in time before the game dries up or drifts elsewhere? The race is on!

A new poker blogger.
Topic: Poker

I've added a new poker blogger to my sidebar (see left column). It's the new blog from Hugo Martin, also known as "The Sweep"*. Hugo works for something called http://www.pokerverdict.com, about which I know nothing. His blog is http://www.pokerwiththesweep.blogspot.com/ 

Enjoy.

*This is because Allan Engel said Hugo looked like he was auditioning for the part of a chimney sweep in Oliver Twist. When I read that I laughed for about 24 hours.

I guess you had to be there.

You must have thought I was bluffing, Mr Bond.
Topic: Poker

SPOILER WARNING! Casino Royale discussed below.

http://entertainment.aol.co.uk/film/casino-royale 

click on 'clip three' to see a disgusting slow-roll. I hope the villain dies in a really nasty way.

Advice for idiots.
Topic: Poker

What would we do without blonde presenters?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXbv0Rl7fh0&mode=related&search=

Super-sat lunacy.
Topic: Poker

Not long ago I outlined my concerns about super-satellites and in a later posting, considered the circumstances in which it could be correct to play them. One situation was where there was a freeroll or added money. I also considered the possibility that the standard of play in them could be very bad indeed.

 

Today both factors came into play. I have just completed an FPP super-sat online that gave 10 per cent of the field a chance to play in a $100,000 freeroll tomorrow. Obviously this is far too good to miss. Play got down to 24 players, with 23 qualifying. I was the lowest in chips, with only about 4000, while the blinds were 600/1200 with a running ante of 75. I opened up one of the other tables to see what was happening there, when I saw this:

 

Seat 1: robert7777 (33195 in chips)

Seat 2: affirmed317 (12498 in chips)

Seat 3: BruceLi (4355 in chips)

Seat 4: harryspeed (13735 in chips)

Seat 5: balerno (16269 in chips)

Seat 6: RainerW70 (23870 in chips)

Seat 7: keshi1 (11557 in chips)

Seat 9: Dorf42 (11000 in chips)

They all post a 75 running ante. 

keshi1: posts small blind 600

Dorf42: posts big blind 1200

*** HOLE CARDS ***

robert7777: calls 1200

affirmed317: folds

BruceLi: folds

harryspeed: folds

balerno: raises 1200 to 2400

RainerW70: folds

keshi1: raises 9082 to 11482 and is all-in

Dorf42: folds

robert7777: folds

balerno: calls 9082

*** FLOP *** [3s Jd 4s]

*** TURN *** [3s Jd 4s] [8h]

*** RIVER *** [3s Jd 4s 8h] [4h]

*** SHOW DOWN ***

keshi1: shows [Ah Jc] (two pair, Jacks and Fours)

balerno: shows [Kh Ks] (two pair, Kings and Fours)

balerno collected 25964 from pot

Woohoo! I’m through.

Incredible stuff. The AJ has no reason to get involved at all. There is no upside whatsoever. There were plenty of other players who had smaller stacks. There is a player on the same table with less than 5,000!

 

Is this sort of blunder widespread, I wonder? Have I been missing something? I still think super-sats are wrong in principle, but in practice if this sort of lunacy is commonplace, I may have to try some one day!

Those we have loved.
Topic: Poker

What has happened to the Victor Poker Cup? The website merely refers to 2005. I can find no reference to this year.

What about the World Sports Exchange London Open? Last year's event at Billingsgate was described as 'inaugural'. There is no mention of 2006 on the website.

While I'm at it, has anyone seen the Walsall Quartermillion kicking around anywhere?

They all seem to be suffering from a chronic case of Chuck Cunningham Syndrome!

'Getting in cheap', continued.
Topic: Poker

So when is it correct to play a satellite for a big event? Before answering that, I'll just summarise the problems with satellites:

1) Inflexibility. If you win a ticket and can't exchange it for cash then you're commited to being in a given place at a future date. You may fall ill or have some other emergency in the mean time. What happens then? In addition note that in the UK, if you don't arrive in time to play the first hand, you are disqualified. If you have paid in cash, you'll get a refund. If you won a satellite you won't.

2) Tying up the money in the poker economy. If a card room runs satellites for an event that is far in the future, it ties up money that could otherwise be in circulation in the room's other tournaments and cash games. This can't be good for business. Of course not all that money is lost, as there are people who would play a satellite who wouldn't play a tournament or cash game with the same money. But even that extra money can't be a net gain for the core business, except in the rare situation that it generates another seat for someone who wins big in the main event and returns to the room to play with it.

3) Vulnerable to cheating. Satellites with more than one seat on offer are more vulnerable to cheating than any other form of the game. This is a tricky one to explain, as I don't really want to inform dishonest people why it's true, though it's fairly obvious once you realise that there is no difference between first and second prize. The silver lining in this cloud is that satellite finals tend to be watched and supervised closely, so that chip-passing ought to alert attention.

Before addressing the reasons why it can be correct to play in a satellite, I should make clear that I'm not addressing 'Grand Prix' events like the William Hill Grand Prix and the Grosvenor Grand Prix. These aren't satellites in the true sense, as you cannot buy in to the final with cash. However the point about the vulnerability to cheating is still true in the heat stages. It could be said, however, that someone who plays in a Grand Prx heat could just as easily play in a regular tournament of the same size and structure and use winnings to fund themselves in a big tournament of the same size and structure as the Grand Prix final. To illustrate by example, consider the Grosvenor Grand Prix. The Heats are £100+10 to enter and a seat is worth roughly £1,500 give or take a hundred. A player could just as easily enter a £100+10 competion, win £1,500 in it and then enter a £1,500 event at a future festival. This would achieve the same thing as winning a seat in the Grand Prix, with the added benefit of flexibility and reduced vulnerability to collusion.

I'm also not talking about one-table satellites. I'm less critical of them for two reasons. Firstly the collusion issue is either much less important or totally absent; I'm not sure which. Secondly they tend to be held much sooner to the event for which they are being held than multi-table satellites. If you relish the chance to play a sit'n'go with only one prize and you would have every intention of entering the main event if you won the same amount in cash obtained in some other way, I don't see anything wrong with playing a one-table satellite, particularly if it's held less than 48 hours before the main event.

So when is playing a super-satellite correct?

1) Only game in town. You may find yourself in a card room where there is nothing else to play. It's happened to me a couple of times, such as recently when I drove a friend up to play the second day of a two-day event in Luton on a weekday afternoon. In this situation, I didn't mind participating in the afternoon super-sat, as my time would otherwise have had zero value.

2) Added money, freeroll, FPP, guarantees.. There are times when money is added to the prize pool by sponsors, such as Blue Square does in the fortnight before each festival at the Victoria. That adds value. There is also nothing wrong of course in playing a freeroll or using up FPP online. You may sometimes find a satellite with a guaranteed seat where the number of runners is so low that the sponsor is forced to add money. It's fine to play in all these situations.

3) The standard of play is worse than in similarly priced tournaments.. This is perhaps the most important consideration of all. Given the nature of the satellite philosophy - the idea of turning a small stake into a very large win - it's possible that satellites attract some very poor players with big dreams. I certainly notice that there are some people who appear in the Victoria in the fortnight before every festival whom I don't see at any other time of year. I hear reports from friends who do play satellites that there is some seriously bad play in them and that many people don't grasp the increased importance of survival. I would have thought that this was obvious, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it isn't. Some people I consider decent but not spectacular tournament players do seem to reliably win seats for big events through satellites and this may support the thesis that the standard of play is far poorer.

Despite arguing against the expansion of satellites, I must confess that I have moments when I get caught up in the idea of 'getting in cheap' and going on to win a big score. I'm soon brought back to Earth when I remember that there is now no shortage of tournaments in London where sums of two to five thousand pounds can be won against a field of 25 to 60 opponents and money won in those can be used for any main event you fancy. Check out the schedules for the Sportsman (Monday+Friday), Western (Tuesday), Palm Beach (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday) and Gutshot (Saturday). I didn't understand why I had these moments of satellite daydream irrationality until I read that FT article I mentioned before. It's a common behavioural trait that people value money differently according to how it is obtained and knowing that it's irrational doesn't make the feeling go away. It merely tells us to think again.

'Getting in cheap'.
Topic: Poker

There's a book for sale in a glass cabinet in the Vic's card room with a title I find amusing. It's called Win your way into big money hold'em tournaments. It amuses me, because I can't stop wondering how that's any different to 'Win money'. After all, if you win enough money playing poker in any of its forms, you can use it to enter a big tournament. It doesn't have to be earned in a satellite. I've had this debate with many people before and I even wrote about it for the Gutshot site. 

There were times when I wanted to shout 'Money is fungible!', but it would have been no use, because it wouldn't have meant much to most people. But I came across an article on the FT website today that uses almost the exact same remark ( "Money is a fungible commodity" ). The article is worth reading, because it touches on the same illogical behaviour in consumer spending that people tell me about in poker.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ebe247e0-4a4b-11db-8738-0000779e2340.html

Instead of 'I'll play a big comp if I can get in cheap through a satellite, but if I won the cash I wouldn't buy the ticket with it', it's the idea that people will spend a casino cash win on a frivolous purchase, but would spend money inherited from a dead relative on something sensible. The difference derives from what the author calls the 'mental account'. Put simply: "We put a different value on money depending on the source of funds".

It may derive from some evolutionary programming in our minds, but it's illogical nonetheless. That's why I have a problem with super-sats. They seem to require the willing suspension of disbelief, rather like watching a ventriloquist with a dummy. The fun is gone if you see straight through the act. There are a few reasons why playing a satellite or super-satellite might be a good idea and I am going to give some thought to them this week. But in general, remember that money is fungible and 'getting in cheap' is a myth, particularly when there is a vibrant secondary market for tickets and your decision to play the event in question instead of selling means you've forgone the money that you could have sold the ticket for.

Crush or cultivate?
Topic: Poker

Over at 'Everything has a limit',

http://peterbirks.livejournal.com/162070.html#cutid1 

Peter Birks explains that a "a significant minority of [these] younger male players do not want to maximize their profit. What they want to do is dominate the game. They want to be the alpha male. And, in anthropological terms, causing your "opponents" to slink away, so that you can let out a lion's roar, or whatever the young American male quivalent of this is, is the ultimate victory. But, of course, this doesn't maximize your profit. That comes not from "crushing the poker economy", but from cultivating it."

I only mention this, because the next James Bond movie is based on Bond 'crushing the poker economy' of Britain's enemies! Youtube has the trailer for Casino Royale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl5WHj0bZ2Q

Believe it or not, this is actually quite a faithful interpretation of the Ian Fleming novel, except that poker has been substituted for Baccarat.  I know that some of the dealers at the Vic auditioned for it, though none got in. Apparently they weren't convincing enough at playing themselves, something that rather reminds me of the comment made by Arthur Freed, the producer of Brigadoon: "I went to Scotland and found nothing there that looks like Scotland".

Initial reports about the proposed poker action in the film are not encouraging, with Bond losing his money, going on the nip and then returning to win it back, and more, by hitting a back-door straight flush. I really hope that's been sent to re-write, but I fear not.

Why is Phil Laak so highly rated?
Topic: Poker
I got a flyer from the Sportsman in the post yesterday, promoting the William Hill Grand Prix. It mentioned that Phil Laak won it last year and that at the time it was his biggest win (£150k). I found that hard to believe, so I checked it out on the HM database and it's true!

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=16576

What I can't figure out therefore, is why then this bloke is so well revered? His record isn't that impressive relative to the attention he gets and I can't understand why he was invited to an invitation only tournament in Feb 2004. What had he done prior to that to deserve it?

A poker hand.
Topic: Poker

I'm playing the Gutshot Series of Poker today. It's the best structured mid-price tournament that there has ever been on British soil. If you have the time and £330 is in your price range, you really must play it.  Gutshot are to be commended for putting this on.

Talking of NL freezeouts, I'm reminded that I played a £100 one at the Western a couple of weeks ago. I'd heard that there was to be a £3,000 guarantee and went hoping that only 15 people would show up! Alas it was not to be. The tournament attracted 57 runners, rougly half of whom had 'qualified' at a pub called the Captain Morgan. As the guarantee was in no threat of being invoked, the Western topped up the pool by £300 to make it a round £6,000. Nice one.

A good turnout.

 

As the event was well structured and well run, it was annoying that I got very unlucky and was knocked out on the bubble by none other than the eventual winner, Mark Strahan, author of a 25,000-copy selling poker book, which tragically I've never found time to read. Mark has inaccurately described the hand on his website, so I thought I would put this one to you. I'm happy with how I've played it - I don't think there's much special about what I've done. Instead I'm interested in whether readers think that Mark's played this wrong.

His account: 

http://ukpokerukpoker.blogspot.com/2006/08/aug-8th-10010-nl-holdem-western-club.html 

We were down to 10 players left, with only nine to go through to the final. Someone had vetoed the idea of a 10th prize and I was fine with that. Playing two tables of five each, I'm on the big blind with Mark on my right in the small blind (not 'late position' as he describes) when to my surprise I see two people limp in early position for 1200. Mark made up for the 600 small blind and I looked down to see AA. It's very rare to have people limping in pots at this stage of the tournament. It tends to be a 'pump or dump' moment. But there was quite a lot of play in the game thanks to the generous chip allocation of 5,000 points and a reasonable clock interval of 30 minutes. I think the average stack was about 24,000 at this stage and I had 16,500 before posting the BB.

Upon finding the aces, I raised 7,000. There was 4,800 of blinds in the middle. It's a bit more than I would normally raise to win this, but I thought it would thin the field and I might get action from one of the early position limpers regardless of the amount if they were trapping with KK or QQ.

The limpers folded and then to my surprise, Mark asked me 'How much more have you got, Dave?' I replied ''8,300' and he said 'I'm all in'. I said 'So am I'.

Mark showed JJ and won when a jack hit on the turn.  This was frustrating of course. I wouldn't have minded so much if Mark had raised and then called my re-raise. That would be a fairly common blind skirmish encounter. What I couldn't understand was how his hand was worth 600 more one minute and 17,000 the next. How had it gone up in value so much? His unsolicited answer was 'I thought you were at it'.

Hmmm. I think that answer says more about how Mark plays or thinks most others play than it says about me. That's a clue by the way to many people's thinking. They reckon that others think like them. So the way they interpret someone else's action is through the prism of how they would play the hand in the same circumstances. That's one way you can get a line of someone's play without being in a hand against them.

What interests me more is whether Mark's call before the flop made sense. Obviously his hand is not to be folded, but shouldn't it be raise? I think it's a clear raising situation. You should like JJ, but not want to play them four handed out of position if possible. But at least one well respected player has told me that he agreed with what Mark did, but added that instead of re-raising he'd have flat called the 7,000 and then led into me on the flop regardless of what fell as a stop'n'go. (See comments to find out who)

I'm dubious about this I have to say. If you don't like raising with JJ because you fear that the early position limpers might have the hand dominiated, surely my raise should be feared because I've shown that I don't fear them? Unless you think I'm just some wild reckless gambler that is.

The worthy winner!

The Year of the Car Park?
Topic: Poker
As others have noted, it wasn't a good WSOP main event for those who promote the idea that the name players have a substantial edge over the field. Not only was the winner, Jamie Gold, a complete unknown, but so too was virtually everyone else in the last 100. After Gryko got knocked out in 50th place, I think there were only three people left I'd heard of!

Faced with that, I can't help wondering whether this was bound to happen, given the plethora of books about No Limit hold'em that have been written in recent years, and the huge amount of actually quite good blogging about poker hands and situations (mercifully surrounded by a lot of crap too). There used to be a rule about not educating the weaker players - "Coaches in the Car Park!"

Luckily there are still plenty of people who are capable of reading a good poker book and completely misunderstanding the context in which its advice applies. But in a field of nearly 9,000 players, there's going to be about a thousand who are clever enough to digest the advice and know when to apply it and when not to. With the addition of many more skilled players, along with the increased field sizes, perhaps your skill level matters less than your stamina; knowing the odds and the moves being less important than being able to apply any skill at all after nine long days of play!

But what if someone wrote a really bad book? I'm not pointing any fingers here, as I've not read much of the output of recent years, but isn't it interesting that in the year following the publication of 'Kill Phil', Phil Hellmuth has one of his best WSOPs!