Ask me about poker!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about poker!

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Jmcrofts posted:

I suck a lot at poker. I'm probably never going to play online or in a "real" game, but I play against my friends from time to time and just do terribly.

When I've tried to learn the basics, it seems like guides are written under the assumption that your opponents will play "correctly" (folding when they don't have a hand, betting based on their table position, etc) but my friends are a little more YOLO than that.

When playing with people who play every single hand and raise and fold seemingly randomly based on feeling, do the same strategies apply or is there a way I should be playing to take advantage of their recklessness?

If there are four to five people seeing every flop one pair hands often don't win. This means hands like AK unsuited decrease in value and hands like 76s increase in value when you're talking hands to see a flop with (note that AK is still worth more than 76 here in aggregate but instead of it being like three or four times better like it is heads up it's almost equal). Tables like these are much easier to make money at than tables where players play more correctly. You will not win as many pots that you enter percentage wise in the long run in that environment but the pots where you do win are going to be very large multi-way affairs that more than make up for it. So expect swings and invest in hands that can kill the table when they hit. Bluff less.

It is more important that you differentiate between wet and dry flops in multiway pots than in heads up situations. It is still important to notice these things heads up but not immediatly having a different feeling toward A :s:

vs. J

in a four way pot is a big problem with your understanding of how the hand is going to play out when there are four other people in the pot looking at that flop.

If just one or two of them see a flop with you the hands will play exactly like they do in the books.

The above is an oversimplification but the answer in poker in how to play is always to maximize your expectation vs. their range -- it's your known hand vs. a weighted average that you adjust on each street. By "their range" you need to consider that "their" can be plural, there is usually only one winner to a pot so you sometimes need to consider how likely your hand is to win (or you are to bluff everyone else out) vs multiple foes. Don't forget that how you play will alter their range quite a bit. Also remember that to them they're trying to make money still, to play well, to have fun, whatever their motivation is. It's not random like you think it is now, it's a genuine (and fixable!) error to look at any poker game that way.

raton fucked around with this message at 18:54 on Jun 1, 2016

# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 18:45

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:49

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Imaduck posted:

From what I understand, WSOP Online is pretty much the only one that meaningfully operates in Nevada. It's supposed to be pretty good.

In NJ, I can't fathom why you'd play on anything other than Pokerstars.

The traffic level is abysmally low on WSOP.com Imaduck, many of the lower stakes guys there still use Bovada just so they can have some games to look at. Also aren't you some kinda data scientist in real life now? I wanna PM you about that some day

raton fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jun 1, 2016

# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 18:46

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Orange Sunshine posted:

When I was involved in online poker, over 10 years ago, there were people who would play at many tables at once. Like 8 or 12 or even more hands at the same time. Are people still doing this?

Of course. At the higher limits players restrict their number of tables quite a bit but even like 50-100 PLO and up (if you can find those stakes these day any more) you aren't usually going to see someone single tabling. The lower limits are much harder to win at than they were in 2006 but until you get to mid stakes at least most winning players would have a better hourly making their default plays vs villain HUD on 10 tables than they would putting everything they can into like four tables.

raton fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jun 1, 2016

# ¿ Jun 1, 2016 18:52

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

If you have not played much poker the best book to read is Phil Gordon's Little Green Book. It keeps things as simple as they can be without leaving out anything critical. It's poker 101. Once you're out of 1/2 NLHE live games there will be lots of players who are not playing poker 101 any more but you have to start somewhere.

If you have some experience at poker already and want a solid book to open the door into the modern poker world you can't do better than Small Stakes No Limit Hold'em by Metha and Flynn and one other guy that I always forget. This is the book that spread the concept of SPR and therefore introduced the modern mindset of choosing lines and bet sizing that shape foes toward your profitability, an idea central to Janda's book in the next paragraph. Poker 201.

There are two more upper division bibles IMO. Tommy Angelo wrote a book called Elements of Poker that focuses on the non-betting aspects of poker -- not tilting, planning your study so it's effective, keeping your local poker environment healthy, etc. This stuff becomes very important to how well you do at poker once you have erased the typical major poker errors from your game (playing too many hands, limping too much preflop, playing without regard to position, ignoring flop texture, stuff like that) as the remaining errors can only represent fractional improvements whereas, say, not tilting once a month where you used to can maybe represent a whole bet per 100 hands. Or maybe driving away a bad reg from your local cardroom with abuse. The other one is Applications of No Limit Holdem by Janda. This book attempts to find and justify a game theory optimal version of no limit Hold'em -- if you read this and didn't immediately object that a GTO Hold'em strategy is going to have a lower long term EV than an exploitable strategy in low limit games then this book is not for you yet. Poker is about making money long term and this last book can actually lose you money if you don't understand when to apply its lessons and when not to -- Janda warns you as much at the outset but that warning needs to be restated in my recommendation of the book here. This is also one of the rare poker books written and directed toward the more mathematical / analytical player who in truth absolutely dominates the modern poker landscape, especially online, where all the highest level poker is played anyway.

Note that all of these books primarily focus on cash games. If you are more interested in tournaments they are still useful but there are probably better primary texts to consider.

The utility of video coaching sites on how modern poker players learn is also important to understand. Everyone reads books. Many of the better players also have a subscription to a site like Deuces Cracked or Cardrunners (or even on Twitch) which pay very good poker players to make instructional content. The best players also aggressively study their flaws and innovate on their own by examining data collected on their own play by software like Hold'em Manager or Pokertracker -- often talking these things over in the flesh with other trusted players. I personally don't think that any one of these three learning methods can compensate for not doing one of the others, however it's probably fair to say that beginners get the most out of books, intermediate players from videos, and advanced poker players from self examination and peer discussion.

The foundational text for poker is The Theory of Poker by Caro, however everything valuable in it is much better illustrated and even expanded on in Angelo's Elements of Poker.

raton fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jun 2, 2016

# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 00:25

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5jwBo3zvCs&t=86s

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 00:46

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct4S-5NlxAQ

Play four card it's better

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 00:49

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Ciaphas posted:

Poker Tracker automatically hooks into e.g. WSOP's software and gives you the reports and this isn't cheating? Whaaaa?

(edit) Random side note: wow the wsop software uses WISE installer, I haven't seen that in a fuckin' dog's age

(edit again) oh I guess it is in fact illegal in Nevada. Question still applies for other areas though, jeez, just seems like a huge advantage to those in the know that such software exists.

This is what it used to look like when I played a lot of NLHE. Note that this image is pretty old and I would change some of it up now.

Anyone midstakes or higher is using a HUD. It's impossible to be a top class player without one and the software that allows for the projection of a HUD is crucial for examining and improving your own game.

Here's an annotated version:

And the text I wrote when I made that post forever ago explaining what the stats were and how they are useful (to an extent -- again lots of this may be slightly off these days)

quote:

First Line -- VPIP and PFR are statistically useful after 40 hands or so, AF and SD are postflop stats and need about 100 total hands before they speak accurately about a player.

Player name - This is included so I can be sure I've got the right stats next to the right player. FullTilt has a lot of table configuration setups that you can fuckup and end up with wrong stats over wrong players, so having the name there in tiny letters assures me I've set things up correctly. Player names don't influence my playing decisions much, but if someone's named BIGDAWG420 and it's Saturday night and I've seen him reraise three times in a row already the name might confirm my thought that he's a laggy moron looking to bluff all his money to me.

VPIP - This is how often a player volunteers to put money in the pot and is a good measure of looseness. For six max less than 10 is very nitty, 20 means they get away with stuff occasionally and is fairly normal, 30 means something like they will play any connector suited or not, and anything over 40 means more than half of their hands are loving trash.

PFR - Percentage of time they raise preflop when they decide to play a hand. This number should be compared to the VPIP to get useful information. If someone has a PFR of 20 but a VPIP of 60 most of the pots they enter they don't raise, and a raise probably indicates something that's not total trash. If someone has a PFR of 20 but a VPIP of 20 that means they always raise in and are conscious of aggression and probably position. If (PFR/VPIP) is 1/4 they're very passive and almost always limp. 1/2 usually means they limp with their worst hands and raise with their best hands. 3/4 is pretty normal and means they raise most of the time, but will limp behind sometimes hoping that low pocket pairs or connectors hit hard before they start jamming money in. 4/4 means they always raise in and you can't get useful information from their holdings based on their raises preflop.

AF - Aggression factor is a ratio of aggressive POSTFLOP moves to passive ones. So (bet% + raise%) / (check% + call%). 1 is very very passive, they won't bet without a set or better most of the time, and even then they're probably scared that you'll run away if they fart so they might not bet anyway. 2 is still fairly passive, but at least they'll protect against draws and bet at loose players who'll call anyway. 3 is quite aggressive, they'll be making plenty of Cbets with nothing, checkraising dry flops to scare away foes Cbets, etc. 4 is very aggressive but still on the edge of reason. Anything over four either means they've got a horseshoe up their rear end with flops while you've been watching them or they have to win every pot and will bet to do so.

Showdown Percentage - This is how often they make it to showdown after they see a flop. 10% or less means they bet so hard no one stays with them unless they're crushed; this can be normal for people with very low VPIPs, but if they're loose and have a tiny showdown percentage they're very bluffy/spewy. 30% is fairly normal and equates to about how often people make a pair when they see the flop with two high cards -- the most common preflop holding overall. 50% or more means they'll call three streets of betting with a gutshot and then call on the end when their draw bricks because they have an ace. This is a very useful stat to look at when you're wondering if you should check behind with top pair top kicker on a very dry board because you're worried that a bet now will kill your action.

Second Line -- Because of what these stats refer to, they're only really statically relevant after 100 hands or so.

Cbet Flop -- Percentage of time they'll bet the flop if they were the aggressor preflop. 30% is very low and means they only really cbet when they hit a pair or have an overpair that's still good. 60% means that about half of the time they whiffed, but honestly you probably did too, so you want to Cbet at least 60% of the time. 80% is quite high and usually means they Cbet religiously on all but the grossest of flops -- if a player with a Cbet stat like that doesn't Cbet on a flop he obviously should (contains an A or K or AA-TT) watch the gently caress out -- but there's nothing wrong with having a Cbet percentage like this yourself.

Folds to Flop Cbet -- Does he understand that people will cbet with nothing? If this is at 100% he doesn't, and he'll only play against aggression when he's flopped the nuts and you should be pounding on the bet button on every flop where you raised pre. Around 60% is fairly normal here. 30% or less means they read somewhere that Cbets are bluffs and don't respect them as a matter of principle or a matter of stupidity, or else just that he likes to play chicken on the turn.

Attempted to Steal -- Percentage of times this player raised when the action folded to him when he was in the cutoff or on the button. This should be quite high -- at least 70%. If you see something like 30% the player only raises with good hands and is ignorant of how profitable stealing is, maybe he's decided that it's the micros and everyone will call anyway so why bother but that's a stupid thing to get stuck in your head -- if they call anyway a cbet on the flop will still take it so often that you really need to be stealing frequently. If you're in the blinds this stat can help tell you whether you should fold/call/reraise vs. button action.

Folded BB to Steal -- There's no particular number you should see here, but if they never fold (less than 40%) to "steal" bets they're too loose and are too willing to build pots out of position. Whether this is okay for them depends on stacks and if they suck and their understanding of postflop play and whatever, but at the micros they don't understand most of that very well anyway. If this number is very high don't get terribly excited yet -- there are a few players who very rarely call a button raise, but very frequently three bet as a resteal. Take a look at the 3bet stat when you see a very high FBB2Stl before you get all excited.

Third Line -- 3 bet stats become accurate after about 100 hands, BB/100 doesn't become accurate for a very very long time, like 300 hands at least. Note that I use the preflop 3bet info because postflop 3bets are so rare that unless you have thousands of hands on a player you won't have useful info there -- three betting postflop is more about the situation of player vs. player vs. holdings vs. flop and it's therefore much less related to a player's general poker philosophy than preflop decisions, which are sometimes as simple as "I haz pair I raise".

3 Bets Preflop % -- if someone raises ahead of this player, what percentage of the time does he reraise? 4% means he's only doing it with premium hands for value. 8% means he sometimes will reraise for isolation or because he wants to punish a loose raiser and is fairly normal with thinking players. 12% takes the same ideas as in 8% and pushes them further. 20% is quite high, and a player who reraises that much is depending on people to play poorly postflop against his show of strength to make a profit.

Folds to 3 Bets Preflop -- Will they get involved postflop without the aggression advantage going into it? A lot of the better grindy players have very high fold to 3bet stats, which usually they're on eighteen tables and can't be bothered to get into guessing matches postflop -- they'll just wait for a situation that requires less thought because they've got three other decisions to make right now so why bother. A three bet shows a lot of strength, though, so this number shouldn't be too terribly high. It's also something good to look at when you're thinking of reraising a loose player as a bluff -- some loose players make little minraises as their default action and will fold to any reraises with their poo poo holdings, some will call even with poo poo.

BB/100 -- this is the number of "poker tracker big bets" won per 100 hands. A poker tracker big bet is a posflop bet for limit, or two times the big blind in no limit ( ). If you have like 4000 hands on someone at the micros and they lose at a rate of 20PTBB/100 that's a person you always want to seek out -- habitual losers are the best source of profit. On the other hand, if you see a guy on FullTilt with a little iron man chip and his BB/100 is at 6 you don't really want him on your tables -- it's going to be a suckout contest with no point with him. Anyway, 3PTBB/100 is about what people aspire to these days in profit. 5 is quite good. 10 or more means someone won't believe you have the results you do (unless you're at the micros where play is so horrible that 10 is very doable).

Total Hands -- this is such a complex and intricate stat to go into that I won't even bother. I don't understand it and I never will. In fact, I don't think it's possible to understand. (PPS: you need this stat so you don't go bonkers when you see someone has a VPIP of 100% -- if he's only played four hands so far settle down and continue to play normally). Because a wizard told me so, I only have the HUD display stats for players I have at least 20 hands on.

Be specific when you consult stats! Lets say someone raises, you call, the flop come A59, you hold A8, and he bets at you again. You see that he has a VPIP of 60% and reraise him, and he shoves over you and you call because OMG he's bluffing his VPIP is like a zillion, you may have just hosed up. What was his PFR? If he has 60% VPIP but 4% PFR that means he only raises with the cream of the crop and is probably making GBS threads all over you right now with AK-AJ. On the other side of the coin, if someone has 15 for VPIP and raises early, the flop comes low and action is reasonable until the river when he starts freaking out you don't have an autofold. What's his AF? If it's high he might be the sort of guy who can't stand to give up a pot once he's in it -- gently caress if he cares if his AQ whiffed the flop, he has a VPIP of 12 by god every pot he's in belongs to him because the king said so. Does his Showdown Percentage confirm our suspsicions that he can't find the fold button? If the AF is low and he's abnormally raising then yeah, you're loving sunk, but if it's high and the SD% is high and your have an overpair with something like 99 you might want to look him up. Anyway, why would you look at preflop stats when you're thinking about postflop action? Of course, your preflop info is hardly irrelevant, but look at the most relevant stat FIRST, then turn to other stats to help define his range.

This isn't a barebones setup but it's not too in-depth either. It's almost entirely focused on preflop and flop play, I tried to play the turn and the river more by hand reading than stats at that time but the world of postflop stats is very well developed these days and I'm sure top players make a lot of decisions based on stats. There's an idea called "balancing your range" that becomes more and more important as you move up and leads naturally to a more statistically driven game.

Also check out that vintage GBS 1.0 posting stylez!!!11

raton fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jun 5, 2016

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 02:52

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Orange Sunshine posted:

When I used to play online on PartyPoker, 12 or 13 years ago, I played at 6 max tables with an average VPIP of 40+%. They weren't all that loose, but you could watch tables and just play at the ones which were. I'm guessing you don't see that any more, even at low stakes.

You do at low stakes and on PLO tables but it's not, like, normal like it once was.

The main thing is that in the old days if someone had 40%VPIP they had it from every seat (except the BB where it was 110%). Now a portion of your 40% guys have 6% UTG and 70% on the button. This kind of positional differential in VPIP is in my mind the first statistical sign to show up that directly and reliably correlates to playing quality. I mean, 40% is still too high but if you only have a hundred hands against them and they have this kind of 6-70 spread it's pretty easy for a little variance to leave them at 40 for the few hours you're playing with them.

raton fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Jun 5, 2016

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 06:07

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

BTW Ciaphas this in no way doesn't mean you shouldn't play poker. On any given night if we played six hours at a table with seven other players you could absolutely crush me. You could have a lot of fun. It's social. There's always something to learn. And, to be honest, it's often cheaper than a night out drinking and eating and seeing a movie once you average out your wins and losses even if you're a pretty bad poker player. Most cities have a 5-cent 10-cent game going on in someone's house or dorm somewhere and the players there are about equal in skill to the 1/2 NLHE players in most casinos in the US.

Poker is an extremely good game from a pure gamesmanship standpoint -- right up there with go or chess or bridge. You can continue to play it and be social no matter how old you are. It's great to know how to play it and to post about it &c. If you get tired of Hold'em you could learn Omaha or 2-7 triple draw and each new variant you learn will inform aspects of play of the ones you already know. This is because at its heart poker is really a pricing game, not a card game, and this element of setting the right price and finding incorrect prices is such a huge part of the human experience that poker touches almost everything in some small way.

Also I am like many players in that I actually talk a much better poker game than I play. These esoteric seeming stats with percentage range differentiation don't mean very much if I misread the loving board once in a while or whatever. There's no reason to be intimidated by the game or the people playing it and I kinda think it's cool when I get a player playing that role at a table I'm at.

raton fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jun 5, 2016

# ¿ Jun 5, 2016 06:27

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Ciaphas posted:

I played in one of the WSOP nevada freebie online tourneys yesterday and now I remember why I stopped going to poker rooms: it's pretty bloody loving boring 99% of the time. I saw 12% of flops which I guess is about right, but that meant most of the time I was ticking 'fold' for when my turn came around and alt tabbing to watch youtube or whatever. Not an option in live rooms, which are slower than online anyway.

I wonder if cash games instead of tourneys would be any different, but I'd rather not spend a lot of money on it, so I probably won't find out.

Question for the thread: how do you stay entertained at the table when it's boring? How much attention do you pay before you stop caring? I know I should be watching the other people's actions but really there's only so much I can learn at my novice level, and it's just not interesting to me if I've already decided I'm out.

I take a break at least every two hours but IMO it's important to find some way to occupy yourself when you don't have a hand. Preferrably something that leads to an advantage in a hand later, but if not that just being social with a new or old player or whatever.

There are times though when everyone is still and no one is talking and it gets real grindy and lovely.

Online you just open enough tables to where you don't have long in between decisions. Open up tables until you're on the edge of comfort, then close a table and do that is a good rule of thumb.

I've almost always played cash, almost never tournaments (apart from some freerolls I played in Vegas because hours in a room or a high hand got me a free entry).

raton fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jun 7, 2016

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 04:13

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Here are two specific scenes in Rounders that were written right but acted/directed wrong:

- Damon tell his "I bluffed Johnny Chan" story to Knish. Every long term player has a story about a play they made against some one sort of famous. I, for example, bluffed Paul Magril because he brought some of his buddies into a low limit game and we got into a hand together. In the story Damon tells he didn't play very many hands recently and then for no reason decides to bluff Chan out of the pot. This is fine (or fine-ish). What isn't fine is that Chan gives several indications that now is not the time for a bluff that Damon ignores and keeps pressing -- in Hold'em there are enough situations where the opponent knows his hand is unbeatable (or nearly unbeatable like the A9 vs AA on A9x9x board that busts Damon at the outset) that you can't bluff despite your image. His dialog at the end shouldn't be so confident, if his character was really that way he wouldn't be great at poker and that little speech would be a reason for Knish to deny him the loan rather than go through with it.

-The fact that he blew out his whole bankroll on a single play is ludicrous. No one who lives off of poker would ever play that way. Even the most ancient poker texts recommend a 30 buyin bankroll for no limit and have pages of warnings about "not playing over your roll." Today even fairly well off poker players do not enter tournaments with million dollar entries on their own dime (they have investors that buy a certain percentage of their win at a certain rate, usually with a small vig, often for just that one tournament or for that one and others in the series, sometimes as a long term standing deal). There are poker players who play this way and are pretty good at poker but the person you respect most in a poker room is Knish, not Damon. His ability to put it all on the line and take risks is foolish, not some little mark of excellence. Knish brings this up in one very good speech in the movie but apart from that the movie wants the viewer to think that it's, like, plucky or something to do this, instead of blatantly retarded. The speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7NxEj4A1Cg&t=90s

raton fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Jun 7, 2016

# ¿ Jun 7, 2016 16:37

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Your Gay Uncle posted:

Is Phil Helmuth as big of a twat as he comes off as or is it an act for TV? He's had some truly inspiring meltdowns in his time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYD6ZL0u7Ls

He was the first TV poker guy I ran across. He's not playing a character on TV. He's a mental baby who can't control himself sometimes, the rest of the time however he's a decent to good person which honestly you can't say for every poker player. Was it in Rounders where they said the nicer the guy the worse the player? Because to a certain extent (regarding casual players at least) it's true.

He may let himself go off more easily when a camera is there because he decided at some point that it was good for his brand or something but I think it's all genuine feelings that he lets go.

He's also a big guy. I'm six three and he was easily taller than I am. Six six or so at least. Wearing his thigh length leather jacket in Aria.

raton fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Jun 8, 2016

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 01:38

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Please witness maybe the worst call ever televised along with the most unjustifiable blow up, courtesy of Phil:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waaU_ir7fgA

(Please note that the poker analysis for this show was written by former goon and current 2+2 admin Gobboboy, I think he also ran the stats for them for win rates and stuff like that)

Here's an analysis of why it's such an absolutely terrible call:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCNXV_Nk6_c

(Please note that this YouTube channel is my favorite poker related one -- their analyses are really well done. Also the guys that worry me the most at a poker table look like the two presenters do for this channel, not some flashy thrillionaire dipshit but some mild half slobby dork)

raton fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Jun 8, 2016

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 01:44

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

He was up against puppy feet after all

raton fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jun 8, 2016

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 02:11

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

One of my biggest reservations about playing on Bovada (although I still do) is that historically cheaters and bots were almost always caught by the player community rather than the site itself. (Bovada is set up so you don't know who you're playing, everyone just has a number corresponding to their seat, and they make using tracking software difficult.)

And the hysterical amount of two/three seating that must go on there out of the micros.

raton fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Jun 8, 2016

# ¿ Jun 8, 2016 02:28

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

faarcyde posted:

PITR got me started. Reading posts from JCarver, EC10, Adar..then transitioned to Cardrunners and HUSNG.com with CTS, Lotto Lenya, Croixdawg, etc. Not sure what you would define as "big". I made six figures plus most years playing $60-300 six max and then later on heads up SNGs, making videos for Cardrunners and PokerStrategy, coaching, running a stable, etc. What made me quit? I've been doing real estate for about five years because I knew poker wasn't going to last with the government crackdowns...buying rentals, doing flips, etc. Last year I decided it was time to push off and pivot hard into something permament. Games were really bad, I would be waiting for two hours for a $100 game, on a good day maybe play 20 games..it just got old real quick. Super glad I did it though. It gave me the freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted for a long time. Never working more than 30 hours a week, traveling to Iceland, waking up and deciding I am going to go golf instead of work, buying investment properties, etc. It treated me very well.

One story sticks out. I was never a MTT player but one year I decided to do the whole WSOP thing. I thought I would play a light schedule, maybe 15 tournaments. The first day there I get to the Rio and valet my truck and I am walking in and realize I left fifty grand in cash on the passenger seat (I was so green back then I didn't realize you could wire money to the cage there). I go into a dead sprint to catch the guy valeting my car and grab it. Phew, that could of been a bad start. The first event I play was the $2,500 mixed limit / no limit. In the first ten minutes I get it in with AA against AK and AK. I am thinking "this is how my legend begins, tripling up and final tabling my first ever WSOP tournament" then it four flushed and I lost. Oh well, I have a good bad beat WSOP story I thought. Then the next day I got food poisoning from some bad Thai food. I end up in the hospital near death and miss the entire rest of the series. Maybe it was God's way of telling me to stay away from MTTs.

I never knew you were Cardrunners faarcyde lol

Guess I should have known that

You have intimidated me into folding this post

raton fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Jun 9, 2016

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 00:26

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

faarcyde posted:

I live in Detroit..from 2012-2015 I rented an apartment in Windsor so I could play on Stars and Full Tilt. I commuted back and forth, it was about a 25 minute drive depending on tunnel traffic. I have geography run good.

I had never before considered this angle for some reason

I suppose there are also a bunch of American pros in San Diego who commute for work into Mexico

Hm.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 04:14

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

faarcyde posted:

That doesn't work because it can take 2-3 hours to get back into the country form Mexico. Usually only takes 10 minutes in Windsor/Detroit, on a bad day maybe 30.

Oh okay. Is it specifically Windosor/Detroit or is this kind of a US/Canada border thing?

It'd be weird if there was a large community of online poker pros in Detroit for the sake of one workable border there.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2016 05:47

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

mostlygray posted:

I find being really irritating as a good way to bluff. Like mentioning to people at the table when you catch yourself in a tell. Like "Hey, I just noticed that I fan my cards differently when I have a so-so hand." Talk tons of poo poo all the time. My brother in law likes to call out the cards that are in play in community games to make it seem like he can truly count cards. He can't, but it puts people on edge. I like to call out things like "third card down is the 3 of clubs" because I'll see them as I shuffle. I then have someone else cut the cards and even ask that they re shuffle if they're concerned. I never, ever, cheat. I just want them to concentrate on making sure I don't cheat instead of thinking about the game. Make it seem like I'm magically controlling the deck.

Then you can bluff because they're so frustrated that they've turned into Helmuth and aren't paying attention any more. Just yelling and rambling on about bad beats.

First troll post itt imo

# ¿ Jun 13, 2016 23:56

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Tab8715 posted:

How do I play against donks or players that'll endlessly call? Do I just play my connectors / suited cards harder?

Evaluate how well your hand is doing vs their range of hands and make bets/calls/folds so that they can call with worse ranges or so that will fold better ranges, or, if you don't have a profitable option in your position, fold.

In general in those games value hands go up in value, bluffs go down. Average winning hands by the river in multiway pots are always bigger than they are head's up, so pay more attention to multiway examples from books/forums/videos. The biggest mistake (monetarily) a tryhard usually makes at a table of bad players is playing a TPTK type of hand against four foes like he's only against one because 80% of the hand examples from the books he's read are heads up hands. If you have a tight image and are second to act, being the preflop raise, and you bet when there's an ace on the board and get two calls at least one of those people is not calling with second pair. In short, HU, you play like you've been told you're supposed to. Multiway you're probably not a good player yet and need to think about each action more, really consider what each person's range is relative to what he thinks your ranges are, not just combos and "TPTK is stonk so" kinda stuff.

It's very important to remember that everyone at the table is trying to make money in their own way. If they're donks and they keep calling either a) they think they can make enough by hitting their kicker, trips (five out draw) or their draw (8 or 9 outs) on you that calling is worth it (and often they're right in live games as people for some reason often bet around half pot on a two flush board and then get mad when their opponent calls with a flush draw and an overcard and hits his overcard), b) they think you're too aggressive and always bet the flop after raising so maybe their pair is good if you don't bet again/if the board stays free of A/K/Q) or c) they have some emotional investment in the pot. Figure that poo poo out. That's the one of the fun parts of poker.

The answer is to play poker.

You want the formula from 2005 back when no one knew what they were doing? You set mine and get it in, or you get top two pair and get it in, and once in a while you catch a lucky straight or flush and get it in, or your set gets bigger and you get it in. Otherwise you bet one street postflop and check it down afterward. The grinders would sit around being rocks like this and hammer the fish.

The most important thing though is to be nice to these people. Maybe they're new, maybe they're learning, maybe they read a post I made online and I told them it'd be fun and for now they're having some fun. Poker players always benefit from the game growing, it isn't even a predatory thing. So find out their name, tell them a joke, don't be a oval office. If you bust them don't say sorry or patronize them, respect their courage at least even if they're not good at poker.

raton fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Jun 14, 2016

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 10:28

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Mortley posted:

How do real poker players feel about video poker?

Some of them play particular machines in order to get into a better comp tier at a casino. They all recognize that certain machines have a 20% edge and they shouldn't touch them so they hunt for particular machines with good rules or for comp promotions (some off-strip casinos in Vegas will have a night of the week where you get 5 times the normal comp points per spin or something) or where the progressive jackpots have gotten high enough to maybe make the machine 0 EV (or maybe even +EV).

I would go on Tuesday to hang out with one of my poker friends in Vegas sometimes. Tuesday was the unofficial poker player's day off there because that was the day with the lowest tourist traffic in general, also it was more likely the people you knew who worked in cardrooms or casinos had that day off because of lighter scheduling. He would hunt for high progressive jackpots and stuff hundreds into the machine until he managed to bink them. Sometimes it went quick, sometimes it took hours and he went through considerably more than the progressive was worth -- it's no fun being 3k in on a 1700 progressive. If that happened we'd go to the comp office and tell them that, then they'd scan his card to confirm his action and give him a 300 dollar meal comp for the next day and he'd invite out six or seven other guys and we'd show up to these fairly nice in-casino restaurants and eat like pigs while dressed like pigs and talking about videogames while the next table over was dressed up Europeans trying to live the life on their holiday. This also kept his comp rate high on his card so he always had tickets to the shows and a free suite once in a while for someone coming in from out of town etc.

There used to be +EV video poker machines back in the day but those are long gone now, even off the strip. Any real poker player that's on a machine is doing it for recreation, to grind comps, or sometimes just to figure out the machine if it has some kind of interesting gimmick. No one likes them flat out for what they are. If learning which machines are better than others and stuff like when you should draw to quads instead of holding a full house or whatever is interesting to you it can be an okay hobby. Wizard of odds dot com will guide you on that path.

The vast majority of poker players however never touch the machines (unless they're with or trying to get with a girl) and don't think about them.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 10:48

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Tab8715 posted:

What are the best States aside from Nevada for poker? Second, aside from playing what are the best resources? Books, Videos, Twitch Channels, etc.

Florida and California supposedly. By California I pretty much mean LA and the cost of living and rake are high there so you need to be at least mid stakes to have a chance. I've already talked about books and videos in this thread a little.

I talked to a long time live grinder in Vegas for a while when I first got there (Squidface on 2+2 who has been at it for 20+ years and is probably the most regular face in the Venetian -- nice guy, generous with his time) and he said he'd go to Florida right now if playing poker was his only consideration.

It also seems like there are a lot of terrible players from Baltimore but I haven't heard anything about Baltimore specifically.

raton fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Jun 15, 2016

# ¿ Jun 15, 2016 19:40

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

My favorite poker youtubers break down probably my favorite poker hand.

Dwan has addressed himself what went down in this hand and said a lot of it came down to personal history between him and Eastgate, but the first time I saw this hand I basically threw my hands up in the air and was stunned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8qFoh6pUEM

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 08:39

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

# ¿ Jul 15, 2016 23:14

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

mostlygray posted:

Genuine question:

Why does everyone like Texas Hold'em? When I was young, it was always 5 card draw. When I play with my brothers-in-law, we always call a different game each time. Sometimes it's 5 card draw no wilds, sometimes it's Chicago High, sometimes it's Follow The Bitch, sometimes 7 card stud with 4's and whores wild, etc. The rules are called per hand based on whomever is the dealer with the exception of house rules. Keeps you on your toes and creates big winners and big losers. You have to stay on your game and you fold all the time. It's all about bluffing and playing the person, not the odds.

With the big games on TV and such, it's all Hold'em. I don't understand.

Sid Meyer said what makes a good game is a lot of interesting decisions. Almost unquestionably the three variants of poker that offer the largest volume of of tough decisions are Hold'em, 2-7 Triple draw, and Pot Limit Omaha, in no particular order. Stud is probably close as well.

The main reason for Hold'ems dominance is, however, historical. The first WSOP was held in Binions and was cooked up by the regs and management there basically as a promotional tool to get more people playing poker. Almost everything was cash games then but the more casual players that are in the pool the more easy money there is (there are other effects of poker's explosion such as it becoming a draw for whales which it never was before then, but I don't think any of the grinders cooking up the first WSOP had that much in mind). The choice of games for the first WSOP came down to either 2-7 Triple Draw (seen at the time as the most skill heavy game) or Hold'em. Hold'em was selected because it has many more opportunities to say the words all in, which is undeniably appealing to casual fans, because it's a much simpler game to explain the structure of, and because strategy doesn't involve memorizing discards at all which casual players see as unfun. Part of Hold'ems continued love is still along these lines -- new people can understand it easily and don't run into many situations where they feel cheated or caught out by some obscure rule, or get made fun of because they missed some piece of face-up information, or whatever.

One other huuuuuuuge advantage Hold'em has that was also unforseen is that its immensely well suited for television via hole card cams. The hole card camera was probably the single biggest driving force in poker's boom. Remember the tapes of Chan's WSOP game from Rounders without the hole card cam? Even real poker professionals who were specifically interested in those two players (see them as heroes, play against them regularly, whatever) would have a hard time sitting through more than a few minutes of tape where you have no idea really what each person is holding.

With that said you'll be pleased to know that dealer's choice games (which is the term for what you guys played when you were young) are becoming more and more popular even at lower limits. The poo poo town I'm stuck in now regularly has three games going. The room with the sharks is Hold'em or PLO, dealer's choice, except on Sunday when it's complete dealer's choice (we played one orbit of Stud Hi where the winner of the hand was whoever was second best, which is awfully confusing multiway) including wild cards, games like Badugi which are rarely much more than flipping coins, etc. The smaller casual game regularly starts out as a 4-8 Omaha 8 game and develops later at night into 1/2 Hold'em or 0.50/1 PLO. The irregular game (which becomes the big game on the weekend) is in a bar downtown and plays dealer's choice Hold'em, PLO, or Tahoe (which is Hold'em with three cards and is hella dumb IMO but whatever).

Anyway I think Hold'em is a very good incarnation of poker. It allows for some variation in viable playstyles (tight aggressive is easiest but loose aggressive is possible and sometimes immensely profitable, and within these rubrics there are are wide variation of styles and approaches that tumble into the similar statistical presentations once you zoom out a little, never the less they are interesting choices sometimes), there is a very good balance between the value of your cards vs the value of your position and how you should react vs. different sorts of players to play optimally, aggression is very valuable in Hold'em which makes for more spots where decisions are possible, etc. I personally prefer PLO (in my mind there are many fewer interesting decisions on the river in Hold'em than there are in PLO, to be fair though there are often more decisions to be made on the flop in Hold'em than in PLO, but in balance I think it swings to PLO).

To contrast this I would not be interested in playing Stud Hi with 4s and Qs wild. In a game like this I would not be doing much more than waiting to start with two wild cards in my hand and draw to quads most of the time and would probably only have real decisions to make once in a while when I held, say, a full house and got checkraised on the river in a medium sized pot. There's not much game in that game. It's fun to yell quads but it's more fun to be in interesting spots, put other people into tough spots, and find a way to a solid statistical edge and a game like that doesn't offer much in those departments.

E: One last thing I want to say is that poker is not really a card game. Poker is betting game (I prefer the term "pricing game" but I think that term can be misleading to laypeople). This is why poker with play money is not poker, the meaningful part of the game has been made meaningless, and without real money at stake, even if it's just a tiny bit, there is no game at all left, it's just seeing card combos come out with no meaning attached to them at all. So when you want to know what kind of poker is the best, you need to look not at the cards, but at the betting possibilities that are reasonable and select from those sets the ones that are the most fun. Some varieties of poker offer a lot under this rubic. Some are awfully awfully lean.

raton fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jul 17, 2016

# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 04:05

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Never fast enough

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 03:51

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

twodot posted:

You can definitely run a free poker tournament, and you're still playing poker and winning it will require much or all of the same skill as a tournament you paid to get into (presuming participants actually want to win, games where the people playing aren't actually trying to win aren't typically fun, but that's not unique to poker).

In theory yes. In practice I'm not sure -- I would expect things to go down like described above.

Let me put it another way. There's always at least two kinds of expected value in a hand. There's Monetary EV and Fun EV. The structure of most forms of poker is built around allowing for interesting competitive decisions to be made with regard to Monetary EV. If there's no monetary component left then people will seek to maximize Fun EV. Most people maximize this by yelling "all in." Some people prefer "all in bitch!"

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 23:36

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

The best tournament I ever played in was a ten dollar GSOP rebuy event. Scotsman, who ran/runs the rakeback site a lot of goons used managed to lose the vast majority of his all in shoves and was in for about seven hundred dollars. I think I had about ninety in but had won more often and eventually we had a pot together where we had maybe 2,000 BB effective stacks. We somehow saw a flop and I pushed the remainder of his stack in the middle, minus one penny. He of course called, keeping one cent back in his stack, leaving himself with the obviously massive Fun EV play of folding for a one cent bet on the turn, which he executed flawlessly.

It's not often that you get railbirds on a ten dollar rebuy but we sure had 'em, given that our average pot was much larger than the buyin for the tournament starting maybe two minutes in. We told them we were anime figurine connoisseurs and the winner of the tournament was going to get a particularly coveted nude tween doll.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2016 23:47

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Mind_Taker posted:

I really hope poker finds a good way to implement a shot clock in every major televised/streamed tournament because it really becomes a drag watching events live when every mundane decision takes 20-30 seconds.

I don't think there's a way to bring decisions under that timeframe that's fair to competitors -- live poker needs editing to be watchable IMO.

Remember that most of those people aren't getting paid to be on TV, not even indirectly. You're asking them to pay large amounts of money in entry fees and good poker players will avoid bad structures and other tournament issues like the plague. Online they implemented time banks to do this as a sort of compromise and it works there. I know some poker shows have tried to use basically the same system. But in the end having to wait for certain players to over examine their players is just a part of live poker that can't (and maybe shouldn't) go away.

raton fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jul 19, 2016

# ¿ Jul 19, 2016 22:17

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

mostlygray posted:

That makes total sense. I finally understand why it's popular. 5 card draw or Omaha would be a terrible spectator sport.

There have been some PLO cash games televised that came out okay. I don't think Limit O8 will ever be a game for TV. It's usually a pretty good game to play for money in lower stakes settings because most casual players are just terrible at it and these days it's not that hard to find a table of it but whatever.

raton fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 19, 2016

# ¿ Jul 19, 2016 22:22

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Murphy Brownback posted:

Are you aware of any site that actively tries to prevent/limit multi-tabling? It drives me nuts trying to focus on one game but the other 8 players all wait until the last second possible to make a move because they have like 20 other tables open.

No live game in your area?

If you're waiting maybe open a second table yourself to stay busy. No site that I've ever seen forbids multi-tabling. Some sites have different limits on tables -- you can only have four open on Bovada for example.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 14:08

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

The big freerolls did offer little cash payouts though, right? That at least makes the final table into real poker.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 19:26

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Jeza posted:

The real risk was dying of old age beforehand.

True

I think Isildur's first money came from the freerolls, maybe that one Overstaad or whatever chick too? I just deposited 200 or whatever because I wasn't 13 when I started playing

raton fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jul 20, 2016

# ¿ Jul 20, 2016 22:19

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

If you had switched to an all turkey sandwich diet like you were advised to would you have been able to not lose the WSOP?

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 00:27

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

JaySB posted:

Who advised me of such a thing? And likely no

Just a little ten year old Jcarver turkey meme that may have never existed outside of my own mind :smug:

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 04:37

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

If you want a withdrawal they'll let you withdraw it no sweat. Don't worry about that.

As an American I can only play on shitburg retard sites and they don't give a poo poo about anything. Stars is the flagship site in the poker world without question and it's nice to see them trying to do something imo, even if it's a bad experience for you.

I wish I could play on Stars.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 19:27

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

It's unusual but I'm not surprised that Stars is putting in that kind of care. It's that same mindset that kept them from running into any of the major scandals that killed a lot of other big sites.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2016 19:39

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

bengy81 posted:

Regarding books, I saw the recommendations from the first page, but I was wondering if any of the older Sklansky books still hold up? Like I have Hold em and Stud for advanced players, and I haven't read them in a few years, just wondering if it's worth taking the time on them or if I should invest in some newer material.

I think newer Hold'em material would be well worth the small money you'd pay for it over those ancient Sklansky books. Stud for Advanced Players is still used mostly because there isn't much out there in the way of Stud books (same for the 2-7 chapter in Super System 2), at least not in book form. I know Joe Tall has some Stud videos on deucescracked, which is also his site.

Note that the recommendations earlier in the thread were all almost entirely about No Limit Hold'em. Hold'em For Advanced Players is a limit book. You should, of course, read a book about the variation of poker you're going to play. If you play NLHE and have only really read Sklansky's old HFEP book then Small Stakes No Limit Hold'em by Metha/Flynn is basically the best possible book for you. If the price on it is prohibitive to you (like 30 bucks or something new?) you might be able to find a very extended sample of it in PDF form somewhere online.

raton fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jul 26, 2016

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 00:26

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

bengy81 posted:

Thanks, I totally forgot that HE was a limit book. I figured it was worth investing in some newer material, but figured it was also worth asking about.
Poker books are expensive but I think 2 + 2 is running a sale at the moment. Also I would go ahead and say that if a 30 book on poker is too much money then you probably picked the wrong hobby.

It's also not okay to be selling poker books for hundred or sometimes thousands of dollars like some people have done in the past.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2016 00:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 07:49

raton: Jul 28, 2003; by FactsAreUseless

Keg posted:

Didn't everybody just steal Let There Be Range, anyway?

And Chambers' PLO book, though I don't know if Vol 1 ever got leaked to the general public.

Still though.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2016 03:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about poker!

«‹›3 »