Small Stakes Hold 'Em For Life

The book Small Stakes Hold 'Em (SSHE) is considered nearly a holy book on the Small Stakes forum of Two Plus Two. I've read it cover to cover two or three times and flip through it every now and again just to brush up on some concepts. It preaches what was previously considered a loose aggressive style in an attempt to take advantage of your opponents' primary weakness, calling too many bets with not enough pot equity. This hand I just played online illustrates the concepts from SSHE combined with basic hand reading to result in me dragging a huge pot with second pair.

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

Pre Flop: (2 SB) Hero is BB with K J
UTG calls, 1 fold, CO calls, BTN calls, SB calls, Hero raises, UTG calls, CO calls, BTN calls, SB calls

Flop: (10 SB) A T J (5 players)
SB checks, Hero bets, UTG calls, CO calls, BTN folds, SB folds

Turn: (6.5 BB) 4 (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls, CO calls

River: (9.5 BB) 8 (3 players)
Hero bets, UTG calls, CO calls

Final Pot: 12.5 BB
Hero shows K J (a pair of Jacks)
UTG mucks 3 T
CO mucks J 9
Hero wins 12.25 BB
(Rake: $1.50)

Preflop

This is the the type of raise that SSHE demands you make preflop. First of all, you might have the best hand, and if you don't, your hand is basically a big-ass suited connector that should play very well in a bloated 5 way pot. By raising you tie your opponents to the pot, encouraging them further to call down hopelessly.

Flop

At this level online it's pretty unlikely that any of my opponents even have an ace. Most of them are much more aggressive preflop than my live opposition, so their limping ranges are actually very, very weak. Now of course it's possible somebody has one, but even if he does it's almost certainly a crappy one (A9 or lower) and against such a hand I have a virtual cornucopia of outs, so I bet basically for value with second pair against 4 opponents.

Turn

The turn is a complete brick, with the caveat that it did put up a flush draw (most of the cards in the deck would have done that, though), and I bet again for value. The lack of a raise on the flop makes me even more confident my hand is currently best, although once they both call you have to ask yourself what exactly do these people have? It's actually not even that likely that they hold something like QJ or QT, a hand with both a pair and an gut shot, as even from those hands I'd expect to get raised at least once. So what's going on here when they both call?

River

This is another piece of take home advice from SSHE; value bet the river. When in doubt, bet the river. A small stakes poster (Bob T) once suggested that if you're thinking about not betting the river, take a moment to consider worse hands that your opponents could conceivably have and call a bet with. If you can think of two, you should bet. To be honest there aren't two hands that make sense here (there are in fact none that I could have played the way my opponents have) that I can beat, but I decide to bet anyway. The pot is huge, and I can probably get a WTF call from a worse jack (except like I said, I don't think anybody can have QJ because I'd have expected a raise at some point). So I fire and when they both call I assume that at least the over caller has played some shitty ace passively. But no...both their hands hit the muck and I drag a 12+ big bet pot with second pair in 5 way raised pot where I bet or raised at every single opportunity and my opponents likewise checked or called every time they could.

Theory of Good Games

This is just a thought that has been bumbling around in my head the last few weeks, but I think it's well-formed enough now that I can turn it into a theory. Or at least, to quote my wood shop teacher in 8th grade (Mr. Weldon, whom I hope is still alive but to be honest I'd bet the under) "something that resembles something that looks like what could possibly be the very beginnings of" a theory.

One of the main ways that your average casino poker player gets better is by observing other players in his game. He doesn't read books, he doesn't post on two plus two, he doesn't talk about hands with people who have beaten the game in the past, and he probably doesn't even think back about his own play in an objective manner and apply changes he thinks will win him more money. He just plays and watches what other people do. My theory is that if he finds a particular player who either always seems to win or is very difficult to play against, he will start to incorporate aspects of that player's game into his own. For example, if Joe decides that Bob is a solid, tough opponent and Joe notices that Bob never open limps, then it's possible, in fact likely, that Joe will start open limping less. At this point I feel the average response is probably "no shit sherlock." Fair point, this is pretty obvious. When people play games they try to copy what the better players do. But there are two interesting points.

Often times the skills required to beat one game are very different from those required to beat the next game up, or at least not enough by themselves. For example, you can probably beat a lot of green chip casino games (6/12 and 8/16) and still play way too many hands preflop. The reason for this is obvious; most of your opponents are playing so many hands that your errors are very small, or perhaps even not errors at all (game conditions dictate which hands are playable preflop, and the default set of such hands changes as you move up in stakes). So what does this mean? People who copy winning players and then try to move up will often be woefully unprepared for the next level and get absolutely slaughtered.

While the first point is interesting, the second one is more what I was thinking when I decided to write this post. If there are no "good" players in a game, none of the regulars will ever get very good. And if a game isn't big enough to support a professional, then really nobody great will ever play it for very long (he'll either move up after crushing it for a few hundred hours, or never play it in the first place). With just a little bit of logic and faith, you can use these statements to claim that live 8/16 games will always be awesome, because nobody will ever crush them for long enough for the regular players to learn enough from them to become solid winners themselves. At least sorta. The same token doesn't really apply to 15/30 and 20/40 games, because these are large enough that some people (myself included) play in them regularly with the expectation of making enough money to at least support themselves. The risk being run is that if enough good players populate these games, the bad players will eventually start picking up their tricks and improve themselves.

OK that's all I've got.

This Whole Online Thing

So I sat down to play a little bit of 3/6 on Full Tilt tonight and within moments witnessed this hand:

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 517315
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is BTN with 6 T
UTG raises, 1 fold, CO 3-bets, 2 folds, BB caps!, UTG calls, CO calls

Flop: (12.5 SB) 5 Q Q (3 players)
BB bets, UTG folds, CO raises, BB 3-bets, CO caps!, BB calls

Turn: (10.25 BB) A (2 players)
BB bets, CO raises, BB 3-bets, CO caps!, BB calls

River: (18.25 BB) J (2 players)
BB bets, CO raises, BB 3-bets, CO caps!, BB calls

Final Pot: 26.25 BB
BB mucks 8 A
CO shows A Q (a full house, Queens full of Aces)
CO wins 25.75 BB
(Rake: $3.00)


Needless to say I quickly colored the BB purple (my most fishiest color) and buckled my seat belt. The very next hand this happened, with the BB from last hand in the SB:

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 517317
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is CO with 9 9
1 fold, MP raises, Hero 3-bets, BTN caps!, SB calls, BB calls, MP calls, Hero calls

Flop: (20 SB) 2 8 6 (5 players)
SB bets, BB folds, MP calls, Hero raises, BTN calls all in, SB 3-bets, MP requests TIME, MP folds, Hero calls

Turn: (14.167 BB) 2 (3 players - 1 is all in)
SB bets, Hero calls

River: (16.167 BB) T (3 players - 1 is all in)
SB bets, Hero calls

Final Pot: 18.167 BB
SB shows 2 A (three of a kind, Twos)
Hero mucks 9 9
BTN mucks K 6
SB wins 5.667 BB
SB wins 12 BB
(Rake: $3.00)


At this point I decided I might need a new color. The very next hand I got some revenge:

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 517319
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is CO with J Q
1 fold, Hero raises, BTN 3-bets, 2 folds, Hero calls

Flop: (7.5 SB) K T 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets, Hero calls

Turn: (4.75 BB) A (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets, Hero raises, BTN calls

River: (8.75 BB) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets, BTN calls

Final Pot: 10.75 BB
BTN mucks Q K
Hero shows J Q (a straight, Ace high)
Hero wins 10.25 BB
(Rake: $3.00)


And the next orbit (when the table was a little short) we closed out with this gem (in which I think I played every street opposite of what I would usually do, except the river) since I was up against such a special opponent:

Full Tilt Poker $3/$6 Limit Hold'em - 4 players - View hand 517323
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is SB with A 8
2 folds, Hero calls, BB raises, Hero 3-bets, BB calls

Flop: (6 SB) K Q 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets, Hero calls

Turn: (4 BB) A (2 players)
Hero bets, BB raises, Hero calls

River: (8 BB) T (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets, Hero calls

Final Pot: 10 BB
BB shows 6 5 (a flush, Ace high)
Hero mucks A 8
BB wins 9.667 BB
(Rake: $2.00)


I'm not really sure what the point of this post is, other than to say that you just don't see guys like this in live 20/40 games. And when you do, you plan your day around them. This guy ended up playing 60 or so hands at about 75/50/2, which anybody who plays online will tell you is just off the chain. I'm going to log back on and try to find him now :)

Hit 'N Running is the Bee's Knees

Other than a 24 hour trip to LA that ended last night (which was a hit n run of a different variety) my life has been pretty much stress free the past week. I've gone back to treating poker almost like a hobby, and the degree to which I'm enjoying myself can't be understated. Specifically the last three times I've gone to play I've planned to only stay for a few hours tops and to get up whenever I felt like it. This has resulted in me executing 3 brilliant hit 'n runs for almost 4 figures a piece, getting home by 3pm, and bullshitting with most of my friends even more than usual.

Normally I share the professional poker player's disdain for people who hit 'n run, at least on the surface. You see it all the time; some guy goes on a sick rush immediately after he sits down, and within 45 minutes he has his chips in 5 racks and is headed for the cage and everyone else at the table feels like they just got robbed. It's hard not to be pissed off when a guy is taking $2000 off the table, half of which it feels like he took specifically from your stack. At times like this, however, a cool-headed approach is best. Hitting and running doesn't work, at least mathematically. In fact, it's the opposite of what you should do. When you're winning, as opposed to losing, things are going well, and on average this means you should stay. Maybe your opponents are weaker than usual. Maybe you're playing your best poker. Or maybe just the fact that you're winning has made your table image such that you're having as easy time of it, stealing pots and winning hands uncontested because people are afraid to play back at you. No matter what, it's obviously a better idea to extend a winning session than to do what most people do, which is to play long hours in an attempt to get even after they start off losing.

But everything in life, even poker, is not black and white. There are serious psychological advantages to hitting and running. Pete summarized it best today in an email, after I checked out of the 20/40 game only 2 hours after un-racking my chips and said "I think I've been doing it wrong" this whole time:


Yeah, I think the ability to hit & run does wonders for your mental state. Like, I frequently quit after having won a medium-big pot.

So you basically leave either up a rack, or you got buried 3 racks but won 1.5 back and you're happy being stuck only $750.

Once in a while you get crushed for 4 racks and have to go home, but in general I think your average "go home happy" percentage is higher.


He's exactly right. Employing a "soft" hit 'n run strategy does wonders for your mental state because you leave the casino happy a much higher percentage of the time, which is sort of like never going to bed angry, which we all know is a huge key to successful relationships. Basically Pete's strategy is to have a window of time, not an exact point, when he's going to leave, which gives him the ability to use this soft hit 'n run strategy. I talked about this concept in my What I've Learned post last August, but had kind of forgotten that I'd learned it (which is a common problem for me).

Anyway, today was a beautiful hit 'n run. I had been playing for almost two hours and was starting to toy with going home (another theory I have heard is that the instant you consider quitting your session is over....this is a good one), but decided to take one more big blind. I opened the CO with QJo and the lone (maniacal) big blind called. The flop was:

JT8cc

And he bet/3-bet me. This is a very strange line indeed, especially for a guy who likes to c/r big one pair hands and wait til the turn with true monsters. The turn didn't help:

JT8cc-6c

So I now beat even less and have even fewer "outs" (both my cards are red). I call.

6h

I call again and he hems and haws then throws his cards into the muck. Yahoo.

The very next hand I open AKo, get four callers, and lose only one player per street until the river on a:

K63r-8-5

board. That is to say 3 of them called the flop, 2 the turn, and 1 the river. I roll my hand and he does the standard "tap the table and shake your head sorta up and down but also sorta side to side as if you're saying yes and no at the same time thing" and pitches his cards forward face down. All of a sudden my small win is a rack and a half. Time to hit, run, and fight another day. I could definitely get used to this.

Lots of Driving

I'm driving to LA tonight to meet with some people about a prospective prop job tomorrow morning. If all goes well, I won't be back until Tuesday night, with the OK to work for them. If all goes poorly or "mediumly" I'll be back Monday night, either without the job or still on the right track but having been unable to jump through the last flaming hoop. If you're gonna be at an LA casino that has props tomorrow, keep an eye out for me :)