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Elvis lives
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(United States)About me
| Presentation | I'm not loved by all. Someone blocked me. Boo-hoo. Here's the deal, I post to everyone who has left a guestbook post in the first 15 pages of my book. If you don't like my posts, just let me know and I'll stop. Or, after about two weeks, I'll stop, too. All quotes below are from Harrington on Holdem Volume 2. -"If you have position after the flop, you can make smaller raises and let the hand continue; if your opponent has position after the flop, you must make larger raises in an effort to end the hand now." If you want to place a value on position, Dan just did it. -It’s the end of an online SNG, and Dan is defending his blind. After the flop was checked through, Dan doesn’t really know what his opponent has, so he says "if you’re guessing, putting him on ace-x is always a good first guess." -"Often you may feel that you understand what the player in front you is doing, but the death blow comes from behind." If someone is still in the hand, all your chips are still in play. -"Train yourself to look for the plays that make future decisions easy." For me, when I have position, I like betting the flop so it’s then checked to me on the turn. On the turn, I know that my opponent can only charge me one more big bet to see a showdown. If I check the flop, I frequently have to fold to a turn bet - a bet that I induced. I make plays that make future decisions easier. -"Players tend to go away when you bet more than half their stack, but stick around when you bet less. There’s a subtle notion that if they can keep more than half their stack, they can still play." So, if you want them to call, bet less than half. Now, go forth and take advantage of human behavior. -"You are the chip leader. Players are more likely to fold marginal hands against you. As before, to exploit this you must be willing to play marginal hands." Just as playing a small stack requires modifications, so does being the big stack. -After some math, Dan calculates that he’s a 1.5-1 favorite to win, so he’s "very comfortable going all the way with my ace-king." When he has an edge, all his money is in the middle. That’s no-limit poker. -Dan had AK and faces a re-raise. He’s thinking about re-raising and forcing someone all-in, but in the end he reasons, "you’re getting a fair price on the bet, but no more, and your chip situation is very comfortable. Fold, and wait for a genuinely favorable situation later." If I’m not sure I have an edge, I tell myself I’m gambling and fold. When I’m playing well, my profit comes from investing with the best hand and/or the best position. -"[Excessive conservatism] happens to the best of us (although not as often as it happens to the worst of us.)" No one is perfect, but great players are much closer. -When milking a monster, "you want to bet amounts that still leave him with a good percentage of his chips if he calls and loses. Those bets are much easier to call." If your opponent wants you to call, that’s usually bad. -At the end of an SNG, Dan steals from the small blind with trash like 85 after the button bailed because, "if you wait until the next hand, when you’ll be on the button, you’ll have to make a move with two active players already in the pot." Beating one is much easier than beating two. -There are five left in an online SNG, the big blind has only enough money for three orbits, and Dan is contemplating stealing the blinds with 64 after the first player mucked. "Don’t try to run bluffs against a player who’s itching to get his chips in the middle." When I’m stealing blinds in a ring game, I won’t steal against a player with only a few big bets left because he will not fold. -When the table is short, 3 to 5 left, raises become less meaningful. "Since there aren’t enough strong hands to go around, good players know that a lot of these moves are based upon weak hands, and the way to exploit that situation is to pick some spots and come over the top at the initial raiser. They’re trying to win the pot, of course, but they’re also trying to get an answer to an absolutely key question: Will this player defend his raise, or will he throw his cards away if he doesn’t have a really strong hand?" -In no-limit, we have to figure out what our opponent has, and then give him bad odds to call our bets. "If we raise much more than this, we can keep reducing his odds, but we’re also committing ourselves to the pot, in which case we may as well go all-in to start." No-limit is a balance, and the great ones understand every bet. If you are committing yourself to the pot, move in and really commit yourself while you have fold equity. -"As you get close to the end of the tournament, eliminating players becomes more and more important, as each player eliminated guarantees you a larger minimum prize. A quick rule of thumb for these cases is what I call the ‘10-1 Rule.’ If I have at least 10 times as many chips as another player, I will cheerfully but them all-in with any two cards." It’s good to be the big stack. -Dan isn’t a fan of isolating with middle pairs, hands like 88, when short-stacked because you are most likely only a small favorite. The first to move in probably has big cards, not small pair, "And in order to become that small favorite, you had to jeopardize all your chips." I don't like to isolate much in cash games with medium pairs either unless I'm sure my opponent will fold if he fails to pair and won't play back at me. -"Once you make an all-in move or two with hands that don’t get called, you become a prime target for everyone at the table. If you then pick up a great hand, and you act after a raiser, you will be called." Yes, it’s a card game, but it’s also a mind game. We have to think about how our opponents will respond to us. -"Remember that the pot is a dangerous place in no-limit. Every hand where you get involved is another chance to leave the tournament. There’s a lot to be said for ending pots quickly when you have a medium strength hand." Limit is similar. If you give a free-card, then that’s the card that can beat you. When in doubt, bet. -"Way too often the deuce plays no role in the hand, so it’s not that much different from just calling with a single ace." I think about this often. AND FOLD! -Dan only has enough for 2 orbits, but he has 3 players covered. "Don’t be fooled by the fact that you have more chips than three other players at the table. You’re still desperate, and just because those players will be leaving the game in a round or two doesn’t make you any less desperate." Dan wants to win the tourney, not just improve. -Once you are unable to play 2 orbits, you have to move in first - and quickly. "Any ace, king, queen, or any two medium cards that are suited or connected would be enough for me to go all-in here. I’m really more interested in a situation where I am the first to enter a pot, than I am in waiting for a better hand. Two unsuited low cards are about the only hand I’ll automatically throw away in this situation." It’s a tournament. You have to be first in when very short. -Dan is involved in a hand on the final table with 99 and is first to act. He has 4x the big blind. He’s going to raise and call no matter what because if he folds after a raise, he will "have lost any ability to steal pots, which is a crucial part of your overall equity in any hand." Again, Dan is looking forward and making a stand now. Waiting gives away "steal equity." Also remember that a great player won’t fold with any kind of hand when short stacked, so don’t bluff post-flop. -"The characteristic end-game blunder made by players who are both tight and weak is waiting too long to pull the trigger. There’s some hidden value in moving all-in sooner rather than later." Yeah, you want to bet while your bets are scary. If you wait too long to move in, you will be called by a big stack who wants to knock another player out of the tourney. -"Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are no conservative players at the tail end of tournaments. Someone who’s waiting for premium hands with a short stack isn’t playing conservatively, he’s just playing badly." Can I get an "amen?" -Dan is in the Orange Zone and writes, "Don’t get cute and imagine that you can creep back into contention with some artful bluffs and pot-stealing. You’re going to have to double up in an all-in situation, and you’re going to have to do it more than once. That’s what inflection play is all about - picking the right moment for your all-in moves." In almost all tournaments, we reach a point where we need to double up, so we will either survive or get bounced. Dan accepts this as part of tournament play -Dan was the big blind and called an all-in with Q6 because both he and the all-in had small stacks.. He says, "The sophisticated players at the table will understand what you just did and see you as a dangerous opponent. The fish will see you as an even bigger fish." I love it when a poor player decides that he’s better than me and tells me so. -"Without first-in vigorish, your hand is as worthless as it looks." Dan has people moving all-in with hands that will surely be an underdog if called because of first-in vigorish. If he’s not first in, then he mucks his trash. -Dan is in the Red Zone and says, "As your stack drops, your first-in vigorish shrinks." If moving all your chips into the middle still offers a blind 3-2 odds, he should - and will - call. You have to steal blinds, or win showdowns while a dog, while you have enough chips to scare people. -"In the Orange Zone, however, an old idea assumes crucial importance: first-in vigorish." If you come in raising, you can win if everyone folds, and if you play to a showdown - which you will. This concept and it’s elaboration, is enough to justify buying the book. -Dan is playing in the Yellow Zone and says, "Your criteria for calling someone else’s raise will also drop, reflecting the fact that your opponent may be raising with weaker hands than before." Tournaments are so much more than the cards. Because your stack halves when the blinds double, you have to get into pots and take more risks. -"Another way of looking at M is to see it as a measure of just how likely you are to get a better hand in a better situation, with a reasonable amount of money left." Waiting for a better hand has a price that is equal to the blinds and antes you will pay while you wait. -"The Red Zone: You have 1-5 times the pot. …In the Red Zone, you’ve lost the ability to make a bet other than an all-in bet." And you want to be the raiser, not a caller. -"The Orange Zone: You have 6-10 times the pot. …In the Orange Zone, you have to play even more aggressively than in the Yellow Zone." You need to pick up some blinds and pots to keep playing. At this point, another blind increase is has you on life support. -"The Yellow Zone: You have 10-20 times the pot. …The blinds are starting to catch up to you, so you have to loosen your play. …Oddly enough, however, certain hand types (small pairs and suited connectors) become less playable in the Yellow Zone." If you don’t change your game relative to the blinds, you will be blinded out tournaments. -"The Green Zone: You have 20 or more times the pot. …In the Green Zone, you are a fully-functional poker player, and it’s worth taking some risks to stay here." This is just a fancy way to say you are a big stack. "I like to refer to M as the ‘strong force.’ It’s the dominate idea which governs your play at the ending stages of tournaments." If you are serious about making money in poker tournaments, you need Dan’s book - because your opponents at the end of the tournament will have read it. -"The most important single number that governs your play toward the end of the tournaments is M, which is simply the ratio of your stack to the current total of blinds and ante. This number is crucial, and you must develop a facility for calculating it quickly and easily at the table." As Dan said, when your stack shrinks, so do your options. M is the measure of your options. -"As your stack withers, your options shrink." Yes, until you have only one play: all-in. -"….The strategy for proper play changes as your stack shrinks in relation to the blinds. Be advised that playing correctly around inflection points is the most important single skill of no-limit hold ‘em tournaments." This knowledge on inflection points was worth the price of the book. I’ll get to his "zones" in a post or two. -"Depending on position and the blind sizes, hands that were worthless on the first day can now become strong enough to justify an all-in move before the flop." Tournaments are poker games that have constantly changing "rules" because of the changing blinds. Winners change their games with the blinds. -"Your check-raise was very aggressive, but you picked a poor situation. If you had just led out, you’d know exactly what to do now (he has something) but you would have paid much less for the information." Dan is playing the next street at all times. As we all should. His point is that a bet tells you someone has a hand worthy of seeing the turn, i.e., they have something, at a lower price. If you bet the flop, bet the turn, and get raised, you know you are in trouble. If you check-raise and then check, what does your opponent’s turn bet tell you? He can be betting because you showed weakness. -"The hidden disadvantage to playing middle suited connectors is simply that flops that hit you very well almost by definition will miss the other players at the table, who are playing high cards." I’ll add this to the reasons why I don’t like middle suited connectors. In poker, we only win huge pots when someone has a strong second-best hand. Making a strong hand is only half of the equation. -You hold AK, raise, and flop Kxx. You bet the flop and then check the turn. Dan calls it "bet-check-bet." Here’s his thinking, "On fourth street, you check, indicating that your first bet was just a continuation bet and now you’ve given up on the hand. On fifth street, you bet again, indicating that you decided the pot can be stolen, and you’re taking a stab at it. When this play works, your opponent calls or raises you on the end with a medium or small pair, figuring you missed your hand, and you win a big pot." I use this play after I’ve had to fold two or three times to river bets after AQ or AK have hit nothing. -Dan has AA in the small blind and limped head-up against the big blind. The big blind then raised. Dan re-raises just enough to ENCOURAGE a weaker hand to move in. Here’s his thinking. "If he puts us all-in, we can (he thinks) still retreat with about two-thirds of our original stack. We’re not committed to the pot yet, so he could still push us out with a big bet." Everyone loves to bluff, to act strong when weak, but winners know when to act weak when strong. And to everyone who bemoans AA, here's a world-class player doing all he can do to get ALL his money in preflop. -"When you play against super-aggressive players, remember that all your hands are stronger than they look." I’ve called down super-aggressive players with middle and weak pairs many times, because this advice is very true. -"You have a much better than average hand in the big blind, so you’re entitled to make a substantial reraise." When the button or small blind attacks, we have to let them know that they open the door for a reraise, too. If we have a hand in NL, jack ‘em up and end the hand. -"Any bet that can win immediately 50 or 60 percent of the time is a profitable bet to make." Nobody folds a winner when we check. When in doubt, bet. -"But remember this principle for the future: A small bet can be much scarier than a big bet, especially to a strong player." Good players smell traps, and small bets are how pots are massaged into big ones. When I bluff, I tell myself that I have a certain hand, and I play exactly like I have that hand - until I fold. So, if your opponent is strong, he’ll know what you are representing. -"Remember, you’re the second-biggest stack, so you can hurt him almost as much as he can hurt you. In a balance of mutual terror, whoever acts first has the advantage." We play tournaments to win. To win, we have to get everyone’s chips. "You could make a defensive bet of about $150 or so, with the idea of heading off any bet on his part." This concept is great. I use it all the time. If I know I’m going to call, and he might check a hand I can beat, I go ahead and bet. I mostly do this when the 3rd flush card falls on the river. A pair with a worse kicker won’t bet, but he’ll call. If he has a flush, he might fear to raise me - and I was going to call anyway. If he raises, I’ll worry about that when it happens. -"Train yourself to be a cool customer, and your results will improve dramatically in the long run." This is easy to say for a quiet-by-nature person like Dan. I prefer the animation, yet joy, that Daniel Negreanu exhibits. -"It’s nice he has an ace in his hand, but his other card is a deuce. Unless he catches a deuce on the flop, he’s really playing with just one card - a single ace." The next time you feel like playing a weak A, think about whether you would play the hand with only one card - because you are. -"When you’re looking at a flop to bluff against, there are two cards you don’t want to see: an ace or a ten. The ace is obviously a bad card, since players tend to play aces more than any other card. The ten is less obvious but also bad; tens are the most common card used in straights." I haven’t yet used this info, but I know I should. -"The more you slowplay, the less effective your bluffs will be." Poker is very much a game of tendencies. I like to bluff, but I bet my hands, too, so I don’t have this problem. Show weakness and my chips move. If the board pairs, I’m probably in the pot, too, whether I have the trips or not. -"Slowplaying is a less effective tactic for a player who is recognized as conservative. When such a player gets in a hand, he’s presumed to have something." We have to be aware of how we are perceived on the table. I prefer to check-raise a flop and take the lead on the turn because I don’t want a hand checked on the turn when I’m holding the winner. With the winner, I want maximum money in the middle, it’s temporary home before it sits in front of me. -"I’d much prefer bluffing with a hand that’s worthless, which I can cheerfully dump when someone plays back at me." In NL, you have to be prepared to play for all your chips at any time. When bluffing with trash, it’s an easy decision when you get jacked up. -"With the security of a big hand behind you, focus on getting your chips into the middle gradually. We call this , massaging the pot, and it’s a key skill to winning extra bets and larger bets." It is a crime when someone with a monster fails to get more money into the middle. The goal is to win money, not show a big hand. -"…because you will occasionally have to put out a bet in these situations, so your opponents can’t simply peg you as someone who checks when he’s strong and only bets when he’s weak. Good players have a tendency to fall into this pattern…" Yep, I hate to bet trips and have everyone fold, but we have to do it, or they’ll never fold when we bluff. -"Remember, your goal is not to trick him, but to get his money in the pot." This is why I tell people to bet when they hit their straights and flushes instead of check-raise. If you bet out, you can re-raise, but if you check-raise, top pair or top two will not let you cap. -"When I hear someone telling a story about how he shrewdly laid down middle set after some intricate chain of reasoning convinced him he was beaten, my quick (but silent) reaction is 'Idiot.'" I need to work on removing my smirk when I have this thought. -"If you get knocked out of the tournament because you lost in a set-over-set confrontation, then it just wasn't your tournament." In a ring game, we can reload, but in a tourney, we're out. I hope everyone can find the professionalism to know that "it just wasn't your tournament." -"The play I like here is the delayed continuation bet. Check, to take a free card now, then bet on fourth street if your opponent checks. Daniel Negreanu is the specialist at this play...." We can never let our opponents know absolutely what we will do. If they know us this well, we are too predictable, and we are going to lose. I do this every day and get all kinds of crummy pairs to call me down hoping I have AK and not a big pair. -"Always know why you are making a bet, and what you expect to gain." For me, I frequently ask myself if I will fold to a check-raise before I bet, usually on the turn. If yes, I then consider the likelihood of winning versus getting check-raised. If I choose to check, I know that I'm both inducing a river bluff and giving a chance for the next card to beat me. Dan is right: "know why you are making a bet." -"I wanted both Arieh and Raymer to know that by betting more than half my chips, I was committing myself to the pot, so they couldn't have any notion about calling and then manuevering me out of the pot after the flop." Again, decisions now affect the decisions later in the hand. Against top players, they know exactly what your actions mean, and like you, they are playing the rest of the hand, too. -"In general, if your opponent now makes a continuation-type bet, you should call it. Your game plan is to see what happens on fourth street, and take the pot away if he shows weakness." This advice was given if you get some of the flop, bottom or middle pair. I like how Dan is playing the next street with his call, and plans to attack weakness. -"As you are watching, keep one thing in mind: Most flops miss most hands. If you notice that when a particular player takes the lead preflop, he almost always bets after the flop, you know that a lot of the bets are simply bluffs because he could not have hit his hand that often." We have to pay attention to each player's tendencies, and use them to our advantage. -"Good flops for continuation bets have low cards, or a medium card and a low pair, or three widely separated cards." We have to know what kind of flops help our hands and what kind of flops allow us to make continuation bets, which are really bluffs. -"A half-pot bet only requires you to win one time in three to break-even." This is my favorite lesson from Dan. It's frequently the fact that you bet that's enough to win a pot, so there is no reason to bet too much. -"However, beginners certainly get too involved trying to steal the blinds. Usually this occurs because beginners don't yet have the patience to endure the long run of bad cards that prevent them from making any solid bets, so periodically they'll take a couple of worthless cards and make a move at the pot." Poker is about both books and experience. -"What kind of stack to bluff? Medium sized stacks are better than either small or large stacks.... The medium-sized stack is probably more concerned about the danger of shrinking to a small stack than the opportunity of growing to a large stack, and is therefore more likely to fold a moderate hand in the face of apparent strength." Everyone knows about hand selection, but not everyone is aware of bluff selection. I am quite a thief in late position, but I will stop stealing if against a calling station. -"The weak-tight player looks for an excuse NOT to play a hand. A big bet by you could be just the encouragement he needs." Bluffing is more than just courage. It's also based upon the other player's tendencies. In this case, Dan targeted someone who folds too much. |
| Personality | Cuddly |
| Occupation | Grinder |
My Poker Achievements
| Date | Event | Winnings |
|---|
Game Information
| Poker Idol: | Chicago Mike  |
| Favourite game | |
| Structure: | |
| Casino game | |
| Prefers | |
| PokerOnline |
Hobbies & Favourites
| Hobbies | Business and Investments, Health and Fitness, Eating Out, Entertainment Movies Theater, Online Gaming |
| Favourite sports | Basketball, Bowling, Football |
| Favourite music | Jazz, Country, Rock |
Personal Links
| Link | Description |
|---|---|
| Bookmark it | Cardplayer comes out every other Wednesday. You must read it. |
My TopLists
My Loves
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Movies
- Top Gun
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Why I'll Turn on the TV
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- Survivor
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