Thoughts from the Felt: A Spectacular Fold

When it comes to poker, I'm not easily impressed. It's rare that the lines and actions made by opponents at the felt are even worth noticing - never mind worthy of admiration.
First off, it's rare that a player ever really has an opportunity to even do something impressive at a poker table.
The probability of a situation arising that allows for an impressive play by someone actually capable of making that play trick cards is low enough already. On top of that, we now have to add the probability of the capable player then making that play.
To illustrate the overall rarity of this exact situation, see the pie chart above.
Now that we have the science out of the way, I have a story of a player who made a play that impressed me. There are three relevant players in the hand:
Myself: Active loose-aggressive, strong, rarely getting out of line, obviously a player to be feared (enough bragging yet?). I've just started a session of $1/$2 No-Limit and am sitting with a stack of $225.
Pushy McGee: Reckless and very loose-aggressive. The table was in a race to get his money, with him pushing light/blind and playing reckless, ridiculous poker with a stack of $125.
The Dude: The dude is a tight-aggressive player who actually pays attention to the other players. He only puts money into a pot if he has the goods, he rarely bluffs and he is playing with a stack of over $400.
The hand starts with me getting dealt pocket sixes in the small blind. There's a raise to $7 by Pushy and pretty much the whole table calls. We go to the flop eight-handed ($56 pot).

You've flopped quads. Now how do you bleed everybody dry?

The flop comes 6♥ 6♦ 4♥.
I flop the quads and, first to act, check my nut hand. Surprisingly the entire table checks behind; eight-handed to the turn ($56 pot).
The turn comes 5♣.
I'm desperately hoping someone will catch up here. That turn is great. There are now two draws on the board and I'm almost certain that after the checked flop, Pushy will make a move at the pot no matter what he has.
I check again. As expected Pushy bets $25. One random player calls, The Dude calls and I smooth-call. ($156 pot)
The river comes 7♦.
A one-card straight is the perfect board for me. Either someone has hit, or Pushy is almost sure to bluff at it. I check once more.
Pushy instantly moves all-in for his $100 and the random player folds. The pot is now $256 with the action on The Dude. The Dude sits thinking for a while, looking at me, and asks, "What are you going to do?"
I don't react to his question. After thinking for a bit more The Dude calls, making the total pot $356. I count to 10 in my head and move all-in for $200.
The pot is now $556; The Dude has to call $100 more. After a lot of serious thought, despite getting 5.56-1 on his money, he folds 4♣ 4♠ face up. As happy as I was to take down a $556 pot with quads, I couldn't believe that the player with the flopped boat could have mucked.
This alone would land the hand in the tricky situations category (see pie chart), since 99% of the time the player folding this is doing so for ridiculous reasons, or by mistake.
I've seen players fold quads facing a raise and I still don't know why. But this fold was really the only move he could make, as there was no way he could be good.

Impressive to see a laydown that big marked cards lenses.

It's just impressive to see a player lay down a hand that big.
The reason this is so impressive is seeing another player fully using third-level thinking on the fly. What I haven't told you yet is that The Dude and I had played for many hours together just the night before. We both knew each other's game and ranges and the moves we were capable of making.
His Read on Me
The first thing he has to consider is his read on me and my range. He knows that I love to play random suited connectors and one-gappers.
Although it is possible that I have an eight in my hand, it doesn't make sense with the betting. There is no way I call $25 on the turn with a gutshot unless I have pocket eights.
He can only put me on one hand he can beat that moves all-in on the river here. The board is too dangerous for me to have any other overpair. Even AA I just wouldn't play like I did.
He has to put me on a minimum of a six. But if I did have only a six, it doesn't make sense that I move in on the river with a one-card straight on the board. If I have just a six, I can only call on the river.
His Read on My Read
If he only has his read on me, it's still a hard fold - one that most players would never make. He has to assume that he's wrong on that read one in 5.5 times. The extra $100 for the pot is worth the call here based on that read alone.
The Dude took it one step further by evaluating my read on him. He knows that I know how he plays, and he knows the respect I have for his game. He also knows that I'm strong enough to acknowledge and play on my reads.

Well read, sir.

I just came over the top of him on the river, giving him 5.5-1 odds. He knows that I know the odds he's getting and I know he has a big hand; therefore I would never make a bluff in this spot.
The only thing I can be doing here is making a value raise, hoping for a call. He has to put me on an over-set for the higher house.
There is not a single hand he can put into my range now that he beats. It's a very astute observation, as there is no hand I would be correct to raise here other than a house or better.
Since he has the worst house possible, there is simply no way he can win; it's a must-fold.
In the grand scheme of things, this was an almost textbook fold once you have the reads. But the vast majority of poker players will never get such reads, and even if they do, they are simply unable to lay down a hand this large.
Props to The Dude - I'll see you on Friday.

Top 5 Biggest Pots Between durrrr and Antonius

After much anticipation, the durrrr Challenge is almost under way between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius.
In case you have no idea what the durrrr challenge is, quickly read this news article.
Now that you're up to speed easy cards tricks...
Possibly the most active online poker player in the world, Dwan has spent countless hours on online tables playing against Full Tilt heartthrob Patrik Antonius. Out of the countless pots these two have gotten mixed up in since the start of 2009, here are the top 5 largest.
5) http://www.pokerlistings.com/hand-replayer_h10525373084_c1901

Dreamy.

In this $102,999 pot, durrrr gets it all-in preflop with KK versus Antonius's QQ.
You might notice that Antonius's stack is exactly $50,000. The reason for this is that this hand takes place immediately after #4, where Antonius loses his entire stack to durrrr. Antonius reloads to $50k, immediately losing it all with QQ.
Out of the five largest pots between the two, durrrr starts up $50,000 of Antonius's money.
4) http://www.pokerlistings.com/hand-replayer_h10525353129_c1901
This pot, worth $150,394, has Antonius getting unlucky enough to lose his stack worth $74,697. Dwan makes a standard preflop raise with a small suited connector; Antonius makes a standard call with a small pocket pair.
On the flop Antonius is ahead, but still has a weak hand. He makes an almost pot sized bet (it's a small pot, making for a small bet), durrrr with his bottom pair with a gutshot draw makes the call.
When Antonius hits his set on the turn, he now believes that he holds the best hand. Unfortunately, his two outs to a set were the two cards durrrr needed for a straight.
This pot puts durrrr up $124,697 ($50,000 + $74,697).
3) http://www.pokerlistings.com/hand-replayer_h10485003467_c1901
The third-largest pot between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Patrik Antonius came to a staggering $180,390.
The advantage to having a recklessly aggressive table image is that it makes it likely you'll get paid when you hit a big hand. In this hand, durrrr flops top set and is light-years ahead of Antonius, who puts it all-in with his overpair.

Dreaming.

Antonius's play here wasn't exactly a mistake, as durrrr played his hand extremely well. There was enough of a chance that durrrr was check-raising with a bluff to make Antonius's raise worthwhile.
Adding to the total, durrrr's up $205,392 ($124,697 + $80,695) of Antonius's money.
2) http://www.pokerlistings.com/hand-replayer_h10223358034_c1901
Believe it or not, durrrr is the winner of the second-largest pot as well, this one worth $205,483.
This hand sees Antonius and durrrr go to the flop. With his overcards and gut-shot, Antonius makes a semi-bluff at the pot, which durrrr just calls. The turn is durrrr's money card. The seven not only gives durrrr a full house, but it gives Antonius the nut straight.
Antonius bets the turn; durrrr just calls. At this point Antonius believes without a doubt that he has the best hand, and is looking to bet for value on the river. Antonius ships the river, and durrrr snap-calls for the win.
With this pot durrrr is now up $306,384 ($205,392 + $100,992).
1) http://www.pokerlistings.com/hand-replayer_h10288655612_c1901
It would make for a more impressive story if Antonius had lost all of the top 5 largest pots between him and durrrr - but he didn't. Luckily for Antonius, the one he won was worth a total of $320,065.
Unfortunately for the readers, this hand is utterly boring. Dwan reraises another player preflop with A♥ K♥; Antonius reraises with J♥ J♦. Tom Dwan chunks it all-in, and Antonius makes an aggressive call.
Antonius knows that durrrr will make this bet with a wide range of hands, only three of which Antonius doesn't want to see cheatpoker.

The Dream.

The board is no help for durrrr, and he ships the pot to Antonius.
With this loss, durrrr loses some money ($306,384 - $158,283), leaving him up $148,101.
Out of the top 5 largest pots between durrrr and Antonius, durrrr won 4/5, for a total gross profit of $148,101.
One thing to remember is that this amount only reflects the wins and losses for these five pots. These two players have played hundreds of pots since Jan. 1, and this figure is not meant to reflect total gross wins/losses between the two players.
Another interesting note is that all five of these pots took place while the two were playing No-Limit Hold'em. This might be the reason that Antonius has chosen to play Pot-Limit Omaha against durrrr in the Challenge.
There's no telling whether they'll stick to PLO for the entire 50,000 hands of the Challenge, but I can guarantee there will be some sickly large pots regardless of the game played. Be sure to keep your eye on the news headlines, as we'll let you know when durrrr Challenge starts, and keep you abreast of the action as it progresses.

Stakes: Steaks or Hamburgers?

There's a lot of chatter about the astronomical amounts of money (some) people are playing poker for these days. This interest began a couple of years ago with TV shows like High Stakes Poker and Poker After Dark.
These shows began with the "usual suspects" (Doyle, Barry, Jennifer, Sammy, Daniel ...), gradually brought in lesser known but capable recreational players, WSOP winners and, more recently, the newer online phenoms.
These folks have crossed swords with serious cash on the line and it has only escalated over time.
But the focus on the "nosebleed" level games has long began in earnest among the online community, especially those on Full Tilt, and it has captured the imagination of poker junkies everywhere.
Now, we all know that there are only a very, select few who have climbed to this level and even fewer who can survive here, let alone prosper, but I suspect that the intense focus on these games being played in this rarefied realm has given a false impression of who is really playing poker and what stakes are they actually playing for.
Is the typical poker player playing for serious stakes (steaks) or for something less (hamburgers?).
First I started asking friends who play marked cards regularly, both live and online. I got fairly predictable answers.
The ones who play live tend to think that most Limit players are playing between 2/4 and 15/30 and that the majority of No Limit folks are playing between 1/2 and 2/5. The players who focus on the online game tended to have similar estimates.

1/2 is the best!

Are they right? Well, for live play you can just walk into a card room and look around. At my local room there are usually a half dozen or more 2/4 and 4/8 Limit games going, four or five 1/2 No Limit and one or two 5/5 NL tables.
But this is hardly typical. Commerce Casino will have scores of games at many levels, some quite high. Bellagio will too, as will other large rooms in major gaming cities, like the Borgata in Atlantic City.
Of course, if you go into small rooms dotted around the country you will not see many games above 1/2 NL or 4/8 L.
So, I wondered, is this pattern also found online? Will we see a similar distribution?  Are my friends basically correct in their estimates?
Not a chance. It is different in cyberspace, so different that, if you haven't taken a look, you are in for one hell of a surprise. I was.
Here are the numbers of tables in action at each of the levels that I found from the No Limit Hold-em games running at Poker Stars.
I didn't bother to record the number of players at each table, largely because there are different numbers (commonly 2-, 6- and 9-max tables) and because the numbers shift around unpredictably).
I'm letting the number of active tables tell us where the players are congregating.
STAKES                                 NUMBER OF TABLES
$25/$50 (and higher)                               2
$10/$20                                                   6
$5/$10                                                   28
$3/$6                                                     26
$2/$4                                                     72
$1/$2                                                   201
$.50/$1                                                496
$.25/$.50                                             456
$.10/$.25                                             696
$.05/$.10                                             516
$.02/$.05                                             288
$.01/$.02                                             576
TOTAL                                            3,363
There was a total of 3,363 tables going and a mere 36 (or 1%) were being played at stakes higher than 3/6. To get a feel for how different this is from live play, imagine a brick and mortar poker room with 100 tables, and only 1 is playing higher than 3/6 trick cards.
Remember that old line about "nickel-dime poker by the kitchen sink?" Well friends, that's exactly what is going on. A total of 1,380 tables or a full 41% of all the games were being played for exactly those stakes ---- or less.
This isn't "steak." It isn't even "hamburger." It's tofu, or something ... radishes, lettuce?
I collected these numbers at 1:30 PM (PT), which would be 4:30 PM on the east coast, mid-evening in Europe. They are likely different at other times and they are likely different on other sites but I'm reasonably certain that the same patterns will emerge.
I also didn't bother looking at Tournament play or S 'n' Gs but my guess is that we'd find the same pattern.
It there a message here? Damn right.
All the moralists out there who feel like they need to protect us poker players from ourselves by limiting access to the game on the Internet, stop worrying.
Overwhelmingly, the folks playing here are just having a good ol' time. Even the very worst donkey, playing multiple tables with abandon and zero skill couldn't lose more than the price of a cheeseburger, fries and a beer in an afternoon.

Courtney Gee LAPT Peru Trip Report (Part 2)

Catch up with Part 1 of Courtney's trip to Peru here.
I’m a really light sleeper and my hotel room was (once again) extremely noisy, so I slept even more badly the night before Day 2 than I did the night before Day 1.
Having slept around 10 hours in the past three nights, I went to the casino feeling like a zombie on Day 2 of the LAPT Grand Final.
Thanks to my lack of sleep (and how bad I am at dealing with it), Day 2 was a haze for me. I remember thinking that my table was quite aggressive. I also had a couple players from my Day 1 table to my left, which was unfortunate because they knew how I played and had position.
Halfway through level 1, I got dealt QQ and got my 30bb stack all-in preflop with KK. Luckily for me I hit a Q on the turn and doubled up to 120k. Someone said they even folded a Q, so it was a one outer!

No Sleep = Questionable Play

Unfortunately, my sleepy self decided to punt this amazing poker gift shortly after.
I was sitting to the left of two active players, and I decided to make a terrible squeeze in the sb with A7 after one of them raised in mp and the other called on the button.

Playing in the LAPT Grand Final.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up having to play a pot out of position with a terrible hand after the button called juice cards.
The flop came KQxr and the button called my continuation bet. The turn brought a T and also a club draw, and I checked intending to just fold to a jam since he had less than a pot sized bet behind.
My opponent suckered me in with an 8k bet into an almost 60k pot, though. I definitely should have folded, but I didn’t.
When the river came the J♣, I shoved all-in out of position, and my opponent snap called me with A♣ T♣. Talk about putting my chips in dead on every street …
After that hand I was pretty much back to where I started with around 60k or 30bb. On my last hand I was dealt QQ again and called preflop against a very aggressive player. I fist-pump-called three streets all-in post flop with my over pair and lost to KK.
It was pretty surreal when I busted because I wasn’t really clear-minded at all. I went back to my room and went to bed, and the only reason I remember anything that happened that day was because I wrote notes about each hand right after I played them.
I felt really horrible once I woke up from my nap and realized I was busto, though. Busting from a tournament because you played badly is probably the worst thing ever – MUCH worse than busting from a bad beat.
If I hadn’t played the A7 hand so poorly, I still would have had chips after the QQ vs KK cooler hand and who knows what might have happened. I felt pretty glum about it for the rest of the day.

Plenty of time to hike after busting the tournament.

Free Time in Peru Isn't So Bad

Luckily I was still on vacation and had mucho access to endless papaya juice and smoothies, so I got over the tournament fairly quickly. I spent the rest of my time in Peru eating amazing food, bartering for alpaca scarves, and hiking to Machu Picchu.
I had a wonderful time in Peru and I would definitely go back. The people are extremely friendly, the food is amazing, and the weather is great marked card tricks.
If you ever go to Cusco, I highly recommend the restaurant Greens Organic. Be sure to get the mango (with pineapple, passion fruit, and lemongrass) smoothie because it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.
Where poker is concerned, I thought PokerStars did a great job running the event. I would definitely go to another LAPT, although this time I would probably try to learn a small amount of Spanish first :)
Now I’m sadly back at home, where it’s cold and I’m trying to win at online poker. Poker has gone quite poorly since I got back; take a peek at my other blog if you want further details. The next time I write here, I’ll give a summary of how $200 and $300 hyper HU has been going since November.

Elite Footballers Ronaldo, Piqué Arrive at EPT Barcelona

While you wouldn’t confuse EPT Barcelona for the pitch, there are certainly a higher-than-usual number of trick cards footballers at the tournament this week.
Brazilian legend Ronaldo, one of the PokerStars SportStars, touched down in Barcelona for his first EPT event.
The retired footballer did a few interviews with the media before taking a seat at a special “Phenomenon Table” with several qualifiers from PokerStars.es.
Meanwhile current Spanish international Gerard Piqué took a seat in the Main Event. Piqué is no stranger to poker tournaments, playing EPT Barcelona last year and also making an appearance at the WSOP Main Event this summer.
Check below for photos of both players in the thick of the action:

The Worst Hand in Poker

What’s the worst hand in poker?
Not enough thought has been given to this topic so let’s run through some ideas.
Anyone who disagrees can click on the comment button and fire back.
For starters, let's limit ourselves to moderate stakes No Limit Hold em (from about $.50/1 to $5/$10).
At lower stakes some things change and at higher stakes everything changes.
Let's also recognize that what I'm focusing on isn't the + or - EV of each hand played but the EV of each hand dealt!
Okay?
It's Not 7-2 Offsuit
If you answered 7-2 off you're not even close. Yeah, 7-2o is awful.
Any pair is likely beat, you can't make a straight or a flush without giving away one of your cards and when you do it's often beaten by a bigger flush or higher straight.
But that's exactly why it isn't such a terrible hand. You practically never play it.
You don't limp with it; you don't call with it. You just dump it. Most of the time it doesn't cost you a farthing.
Then, every once in a while you get to play it for free when you're the big blind and a limp-fest breaks out. And every once in one of those whiles you hit some magic.
Flop two pair or trips and there's an ace or a king on board and some poor bastard is holding a weak ace or king and is gonna pay you off.
And you just recouped some loose change --- almost certainly more than you gave up those times when you had it in the SB and (wisely) mucked it or got raised off it in the BB.
It's likely that serious poker players are, over their lifetime, in the black with 7-2o or damn close.
Other candidates often put forward are problem hands like pocket jacks ("Ouch! Hate it when an overcard flops and die when another hits on the turn") or K-Q ("What do I do when the ace hits?"), J-Ts ("Yeah, I know I'm not really getting the right odds to draw here but well, maybe in 'implied' odds....") or K-9 (Mike Matusow's nominee).
It's Specific to You
Indeed, these are good "worst hand" candidates but, when the dust has settled, the worst starting hand is the one you play the worst.
It's the one you get into the most trouble with.
The one that you have the most difficulty getting away from when you suspect you're beat, the one that creates situations that you are uncomfortable with, where you are prone to making poor decisions.
For most of the poker junkies who dabble in the range of game we're looking at here, it is likely that your worst hand is one where you call a raise with some combination of unpaired "big" cards, especially one- and two-gappers.
These hands are so awful because of the many situations that pop up that can make you very uncomfortable.
Suppose you call a raise with K-T or Q-T and hit your top card. You can't feel really happy. Even if it's top pair, you might have kicker problems.
If you paired the under card you may already be way behind. If the board comes up all babies you're behind any ace. And there is the lethal tug to peel one.
How about the raggy ace? Although it's losing whatever thin veneer of strength it may have once had, there are still those will play 'any ace'marked cards contact lenses.
Consider the Flopped Draw
Consider A-6. Hit your ace and you could be in big trouble. Hit your six ... well, trust me, you don't want to hit the six.
Let's look at another example, the flopped draw. The problems here aren't in the play. They're buried in the tilt factor.
There are lots of ways to go on tilt but one of the sneakier is to miss a whole mess of draws. You know you're on this kind of tilt when you stop 'doing the math' and start believing that 'you're due' (you're not).
How about the off-beat hands, like 8-7o or 7-5s?
In the past, these 'junk' cards were regarded as close to deserving "worst hand" status and conventional wisdom was to instamuck.
But as some have learned, they don't actually play that badly.
If you miss and the situation doesn't offer options, they're easy to release - easier than K-J where you may have two post-flop over cards.
If you catch a piece and it's cheap, you can hang around and see what develops. If you catch big you can trap.
They are relatively sneaky hands and hard for opponents to put you on and they have significant metagame impact.
Know Thyself
Which of these starting hands can be played infrared marked cards ? Which can be pulled from the 'worst hand' dustbin?
If you're skilled at getting away from problem situations, don't mind occasionally mucking what just might be the best hand and are exceedingly sensitive to position, you can play any of them, with great care.
The deeper message? Again, it's one of my favorites, "know thyself."
The worst hand in poker is the one you play the worst.
Take a look at the series of columns we did on "Post Flop Play" for more on this issue.