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Texas Holdem / Poker Strategy Author
Tony is a high limit specialist, rising in limits initially in Limit Hold'em, and now playing Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo full time. He currently writes on general theory, and is the host of his own forum in the ITH forums. To ask Tony a question, simply visit the Ask Pilchard forum and express your mind! |
| To Chase or Not to Chase: That is the Question |
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In a break from my series of articles on the secrets of limit hold’em success I want to talk about my week. It hasn’t been the greatest week ever in terms of my bankroll (not that weekly results matter in the grand scheme of things) but it has been a very important week in terms of my understanding of what gives me an edge over my opponents and it has also confirmed my beliefs on how you should approach your poker education.
3.30pm Thursday 27th October I have got Ah Kd Jh Jd in the SB in a 200$ buy in PL O8B 7 handed ring game. (In this game both the SB and BB post blinds of 2$) I have managed to work my buy in up from 200$ to 345$ after about 45 minutes of play. After a couple of limpers I check and the BB checks too. The flop comes: Ac Qs 3s (8$ in the pot, 4 players). It is checked around. I have to admit I am not paying a lot of attention to this table. I am also playing at 2 shorthanded 5/10$ hold’em games and one full 10/20$ hold’em game. Turn is Tc. I bet 6$. The BB folds but both limpers call. The first limper only has 5$ left at this point whilst the second limper has about 150$ left. River 2d I check. They both check behind. I show my hand. The first limper folds and the second limper shows 8c 8s 4c 4s. 9am Monday 24th October For the past 18 months I have played exclusively at Empire. I would usually single (or occasionally two table) the high limit games there and have had success over a long period of time. Apart from the monthly bonus or two I would receive from Empire (which it would be stupid not to take advantage of given that I played there anyway) I have never really considered bonus chasing. However, with the action drying up at Empire I decided to reassess my options as to where to play and also whether I could take advantage of the bonus schemes that different sites are offering. After reading about the 666$ bonus at HOLDEM poker I decided to deposit some money there and to play there for the week. 2.45pm Thursday 27th October I log on to HOLDEM poker and sit myself down at 2 shorthanded 5/10$ hold’em games, one full 10/20$ hold’em game and a 200$ buy in PL O8B ring game. My “bonus chase” to date is not going great. In search of my FREE 666$ I am already down 1400$. On the positive side, I am flying through the hands I need to play to get the bonus. At this point I have already got 3/5ths of the required points in no time whatsoever. When you are playing 4 tables at once it doesn’t take too long to get those raked hands in. In my second hand at the O8B game I have 2c3c4s7c in the SB. After 3 limpers I check and the BB checks. The flop comes: Ac 8c 7s (10$ in the pot, 5 players). I have the nut low (with protection), bottom pair and a flush draw. It is checked to the Button who bets 7$. I check raise the pot (to 31$) and only the Button calls. Turn is 5s (72$ in the pot, 2 players) I bet the pot and the Button calls River is Kh (216$ in the pot, 2 players) I have committed 105$ to this pot. At this point the Button only has 65$ left. Given the percentage of chips he has in the pot I cannot see him folding. Given that I am going to call a bet anyway, and if he has the same low my pair of 7s may be good, I go all in for my last 93$. The Button folds and I pick up the 309$ pot. The Button types something along the lines of “both flush draws and the straight draw, cannot hit a thing today” 3.31pm Thursday 27th October To recap, I have checked the nut high Broadway on the river and the two players have checked behind me. The last player has shown 8c 8s 4c 4s for a pair of eights and 8432A for low. As fortune would have it, I did not immediately click back to one of the hold’em tables because a strange thing happened. The whole pot got pushed to me. This took a few seconds to register as I was already thinking about my river check and whether I was right to try and entice a bet from the short stack and then check-raise the pot if the late player called when I was 100% sure he did not have the same nut high as me. What was going on here? Was there a programming error? I looked up to the top of the table and noticed the words “Hi Lo” were missing from the table description. I had spent the last 45 minutes at this table playing a different game to everyone else and had still managed to turn 200$ into nearly 370$. After a huge sigh of relief I started to think about the second hand of the session and my bold betting with a low flush draw and a pair of 7s  At this point I stopped playing at all the tables and tried to assess what was happening. 8pm Sunday 30th October I finally accumulated the points I needed to get the bonus. I acquired the last 2/5ths of the points I needed playing just one table of O8B and one table of hold’em and, although it took a lot longer to get the points, I managed to finish only 40$ down (so 626$ up with bonus). This was a big improvement on the 1400$ hole I had found myself in. My game has always been based on good game selection skills and the ability to study my opponents so that I can maximise gains and minimise losses. All of that had gone out of the window. Instead I had sat down at the first tables I could find, leapt from one table to the next making decisions without any reference to the playing styles of the opponents who were involved in the hand. Hold’em is all about your opponents and their cards, not you and your holding. Admittedly, some hands do play themselves to a certain degree (usually when you have a very weak hand or sometimes an exceptionally strong hand) but most of the time when you are involved in a hand your opponent(s) should be influencing your decision making. Now I know what some of you are thinking. “It is different for us low limit players where the size of the bonus may be far in excess of our potential winnings”. There seems to be a mentality here of just get the hands in as quickly as possible and hopefully at the end of the chase you may be slightly up but even if you are slightly down you will have had a good result with the bonus payment. It may be that in the short term this strategy is the best way to build a bankroll. However, it does nothing for improving you as a player. When I first started playing, the software only allowed me to play one table a time. I can confirm that I did not play more hands through boredom. Rather I concentrated on what was going on at the table and making the right play in the circumstances. In fact, this week has shown me that I play MORE hands when I multitable because I know that even if I lose what might be a marginally negative decision, I will be playing another hand in a minute. Most importantly, I learn from my mistakes when I single table. If I play a hand and win or lose I replay the hand over and over in my head because it is usually a few minutes, at least, before I am involved again. When multitabling I might make a decision to call a river bet with third pair. After making the decision another table pops up and I never get the opportunity to evaluate my call and the play throughout the hand and what conclusions I should form about my opponent because of that hand. So what have I learnt this week? I’d have made more money just concentrating on what I do well and then picking the bonus up at some time in the future when I had played the requisite hands. What advice can I pass on? For those playing low limits, if your aim is to eventually play higher limits, do not concentrate solely on increasing your bankroll through bonus chasing. Getting your bankroll big enough to play 5/10 is not going to do you any good if you are going to be out of your depth when you get there. Instead, spend some time acquiring a poker education. With all the bonus schemes on offer, improving as a player may not be the best way to obtain a short term increase in bankroll but it is the only sure way of attaining longevity in this game and maximising long term profit. |
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