Q: I played a no limit hold’em cash game in a casino recently and they allowed the under the gun player to make a pre-flop bet of 2x the bb called a live straddle. Why do some players post this bet and what are some different strategies for playing after you have straddled?
Matt in New Hampshire
A: There are several different kinds of straddle bets you might come across when playing no limit hold’em cash games, depending on the house rules. The general purpose of these bets is to increase the amount of gamble and action in the game, and it is important to understand how they affect the game, whether or not you personally choose to straddle when you are under the gun.
The most common kind of straddle is a 2x the bb live straddle posted by the under the gun player. In a 1-2 game this would be posting a $4 live straddle. The UTG+1 player then acts first in the pre-flop betting round, with the option to call ($4) or raise to any amount. Action continues around until it reaches the UTG player who initially posted the straddle. Because it is a live straddle, the UTG player, rather than the big blind, has last action. If the pot has not yet been raised, the UTG player will often make a substantial raise since there is a decent amount of money in the pot already and no one has shown any strength by raising.
At first glance the straddle seems to be a play with negative expectation. You are effectively raising blind to $4 from UTG, the worst position at the table and one where good players would normally play only quality hands. Whether or not straddling can ever have a positive expectation is subject to debate, and hinges very much on specific player and game conditions, such as how effectively you can steal pots pre-flop or on the flop after straddling, and how much the dynamics of straddling negatively affect other players at the table. Let’s take a look now at different strategies for playing as the straddler.
One of the most common strategies players use after straddling is to raise an extremely wide range of hands. Some players will raise their top 50% or even top 75% of hands if they straddled, there are several callers, and no one has raised. While this may succeed the first few times in picking up the pot, your observant opponents should quickly adjust to your wide raising range with various kinds of traps. If they know you are going to raise almost every straddle, they may limp against you with a hand like 99 or AQ with the intention of re-raising after your straddle raise. If they have a real monster like AA or KK, they may even limp and then just call your straddle raise (assuming the pot is not too multi-way), with the intention of letting you bluff off more chips on the flop and beyond.
Another strategy I see too frequently is players who post the straddle and then almost never raise. For some reason they like the idea of straddling, but they only get the negative expectation part of the deal since they never take down pots through pre-flop and flop aggression, which is pretty much essential for straddling to be at least a break even play. These players can be exploited too by limping in with hands that you otherwise might fold since you know you almost never have to fear a raise from them.
Not surprisingly, another group of players like to raise their straddle only for value, with the hands that they would normally raise limpers with from the blinds (perhaps a range like 77+, AJ+, KQ, KJs). This is a fairly good way to play the straddle, although you have to keep in mind that the field will view your straddle raises with more suspicion and play back at you with a wider range of hands than if you had raised as one of the blinds in an unstraddled pot. As a result, with the smaller pairs especially, you’ll often be in the awkward situation post-flop of having raised out of position, being called in a couple of places, and seeing a couple of over cards to your pair come out.
The last way to play as the straddler is to raise with your usual raising range from the blinds, plus a handful of other hands like small pairs, connectors, suited one and two gappers, and suited aces and kings. One benefit of this strategy is that you are raising more often pre-flop and will pick up more pots right then and there without a fight. Secondly, when you do get called, your continuation bets on the flop are going to be much harder for your opponents to deal with. Unlike any of the three previous strategies, this one gives you a more balanced hand range of monsters (over pairs, sets, straights, flushes), solid made hands (top pair), big draws, and total misses. The variety of hands you could now have presents some real problems for your opponents. Since they know you are raising with a decently wide range you will now tend to get more value from a hand like top pair top kicker when they hold a dominated top pair. They will also have a harder time playing back at you when a ragged flop comes because they know that you have been raising with the small pairs, suited cards and connectors that might have hit these flops hard too.
Next time you play in a cash game that allows straddling, notice which opponents choose to straddle and then note the frequency with which they raise the straddle and any hands they show down after having done so. Try to figure out which of the above strategies they are using and adjust accordingly. Next time, I will say a bit more about playing against a straddle raiser, connect straddling with the concept of Stack to Pot Ratio (SPR) and commitment decisions, and share a hand from one of my recent sessions that illustrates a lot of these straddle dynamics in action.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Only desire what you can control
I’m no Buddhist, not yet anyway, but one thing I’ve learned from poker is that desiring outcomes that are beyond your control can really mess up your game. If you were to get inside the mind of a typical poker player and find out what he wants at some random point in a session, here are some of the things you might hear:
“To have a huge win tonight.”
“To be dealt a premium hand this deal.”
“To flop the nut straight.”
“A club on the river.”
“The donkey in the five seat to re-buy if he goes broke.”
“That jerk on my left to stop 3-betting me every time I raise.”
“More players to sit down; the game’s drying up.”
“To get back to even.”
“To beat player X in a big pot.”
Everything I’ve listed above is without question a positive outcome, and one that our emotional brain naturally desires. If it happens, wonderful, we feel great. The problem is, none of the things listed above are entirely under our control, therefore no matter how much we desire them, we ultimately don’t determine whether they happen or not, and they often don’t. How do we react in those circumstances? Do we play the A7o UTG because it’s the best hand we’ve seen in an hour? Do we stay another 5 hours trying desperately to get even? Do we blow our cool and play terribly against that guy who kept re-raising us, and then curse him out as we leave the table broke?
In poker, the things we can control are relatively few. We can prepare well for our sessions by studying and thinking about the game when we’re away from the table, and we can make sure we’re well rested, well nourished, and in a positive frame of mind when we sit down to play. We can practice good game selection by choosing where we play (online or in a casino, and the specific game and stakes), selecting the tables that look juiciest, and trying to get the best seat. Finally we can make sound, rational decisions once we’ve begun playing, about the cards we choose to play and the way we bet them throughout a hand.
When you let your emotional brain takeover, and focus your desires on things outside your control, you set yourself up for elation and despair depending on their outcomes. Catch that flush and win a big pot, and it's all good… but if a blank comes instead, then it's all bad. A brain scan of someone playing poker like this would look a lot like that of a problem gambler, which perhaps this person is to some extent, as his brain is dominated by these intense bursts of pleasure and pain. You win in poker when you make better decisions than your opponents, and you’ll have a hard time doing so when these decisions are colored by any emotional interference. So next time you’re waiting for the dealer to deal that river card, or spread that flop where your pocket sixes may or may not improve to a set, don’t sit there hoping for a certain outcome. Know that the fall of the cards is out of your hands and spend that time thinking about what you can control, the most effective betting sequences to take whether it’s outcome A or outcome B you are faced with.
So before your next session, visualize what this Zen approach will feel like at the table. By all means desire to do well those things that you can control: your preparation, your game selection, and your play. But recognize that so many of the things that affect your results are random and outside of your control, and come to terms with that. Unplug the emotional brain, and don’t desire specific outcomes because whether they happen or not, both ways you lose. You lose because you’ve engaged the pleasure and pain centers of the brain, and you lose because you won’t play your best poker when you’re emotionally high or low. Be cool and detached. Be the Tim Duncan of poker. Prepare well, play well, and don’t let the things you can’t control, control you.
“To have a huge win tonight.”
“To be dealt a premium hand this deal.”
“To flop the nut straight.”
“A club on the river.”
“The donkey in the five seat to re-buy if he goes broke.”
“That jerk on my left to stop 3-betting me every time I raise.”
“More players to sit down; the game’s drying up.”
“To get back to even.”
“To beat player X in a big pot.”
Everything I’ve listed above is without question a positive outcome, and one that our emotional brain naturally desires. If it happens, wonderful, we feel great. The problem is, none of the things listed above are entirely under our control, therefore no matter how much we desire them, we ultimately don’t determine whether they happen or not, and they often don’t. How do we react in those circumstances? Do we play the A7o UTG because it’s the best hand we’ve seen in an hour? Do we stay another 5 hours trying desperately to get even? Do we blow our cool and play terribly against that guy who kept re-raising us, and then curse him out as we leave the table broke?
In poker, the things we can control are relatively few. We can prepare well for our sessions by studying and thinking about the game when we’re away from the table, and we can make sure we’re well rested, well nourished, and in a positive frame of mind when we sit down to play. We can practice good game selection by choosing where we play (online or in a casino, and the specific game and stakes), selecting the tables that look juiciest, and trying to get the best seat. Finally we can make sound, rational decisions once we’ve begun playing, about the cards we choose to play and the way we bet them throughout a hand.
When you let your emotional brain takeover, and focus your desires on things outside your control, you set yourself up for elation and despair depending on their outcomes. Catch that flush and win a big pot, and it's all good… but if a blank comes instead, then it's all bad. A brain scan of someone playing poker like this would look a lot like that of a problem gambler, which perhaps this person is to some extent, as his brain is dominated by these intense bursts of pleasure and pain. You win in poker when you make better decisions than your opponents, and you’ll have a hard time doing so when these decisions are colored by any emotional interference. So next time you’re waiting for the dealer to deal that river card, or spread that flop where your pocket sixes may or may not improve to a set, don’t sit there hoping for a certain outcome. Know that the fall of the cards is out of your hands and spend that time thinking about what you can control, the most effective betting sequences to take whether it’s outcome A or outcome B you are faced with.
So before your next session, visualize what this Zen approach will feel like at the table. By all means desire to do well those things that you can control: your preparation, your game selection, and your play. But recognize that so many of the things that affect your results are random and outside of your control, and come to terms with that. Unplug the emotional brain, and don’t desire specific outcomes because whether they happen or not, both ways you lose. You lose because you’ve engaged the pleasure and pain centers of the brain, and you lose because you won’t play your best poker when you’re emotionally high or low. Be cool and detached. Be the Tim Duncan of poker. Prepare well, play well, and don’t let the things you can’t control, control you.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Session length and profitability
Q: How long do you think on average you have to put in at a table to increase the likelihood that you have a profitable session? I mean obviously in hold’em you can double your money at any time, but from a reasonable statistical odds perspective, how long does it take for a double up hand or several moderately profitable hands to come along?
Brendan in California
A: Assuming you are a consistent winner in a given poker game, your chances of posting a profit in any individual session definitely increase the longer you sit in the game, up to a certain point of diminishing returns which varies based on your own stamina and game conditions that are not under your control.
Your likelihood of posting a winning session increases as time passes for two main reasons. First, you are acquiring information about your opponents every hand they play. You might observe tells, see their cards at showdown, or see cards that they voluntarily show. As time passes you will be able to roughly categorize them as a certain player type and have a better sense of their possible range of hands following a given betting sequence. The second reason that a winning player figures to be ahead after a longer session is that over time, a player's actual results will more and more closely resemble the statistical expectation of his plays. To illustrate this, imagine the scenario where an expert player and a rank amateur both get all in before the flop with stacks 500 BBs deep. The expert holds AA and the amateur 33. The expert's aces are an 82% favorite to win the pot, but at the conclusion of this hand the expert won't have 82% of the chips in the pot, he will have either 100% or 0%. So, in the short term, neither result (win 100% of pot or 0% of pot) will accurately reflect the long-term statistical expectation of this play. Over time though, the player's results will more and more closely approach the expectation of the plays he makes, therefore, for a winning player, the likelihood of booking a win increases over time (provided his edge over his opponents remains constant).
Of course in the real world, one's skill advantage is NOT a constant. To use poker author Tommy Angelo's term, we are capable of playing not just our "A games" but also slipping into our "B games" or "C games", sometimes without noticing that we've done so. Players tilt, or begin playing something less than their "A game", for any of a number of reasons. Even for someone considered relatively untiltable (some have said this about great cash game players like Phil Ivey or the late Chip Reese), there is a limit to the brain's ability to function at a high enough level to continue to beat the game. So even if you are not prone to tilt as a result of outside influences, all poker players reach a point of diminishing returns when exhaustion saps them of their normal edge over the opposition.
Your edge over the table can also dry up for two other reasons. As a no limit cash game player, I've noticed that over the course of a session (and also over longer periods of time, by extension), the money in play tends to become more and more concentrated in the hands of the better players, where it is harder for you to win. Most poor players will lose their money to the better players, and those who do manage to win in the short term will (unfortunately for us) sometimes realize that they got lucky (or that they are uncomfortable playing a big stack) and cash out. An advantage player is thus going to earn the most during the "sweet spot" of any playing interval, before the fools and their money have been parted. In a standard daily cash game, this might mean that you are well into your session by 7 pm and will be fully alert until the last call for drinks at 2 am. Applying this concept over a longer time interval, it's been noted that at the World Series of Poker each summer, you might fare best during the first few weeks, when the money in the poker economy is still spread around in everyone's pockets, before many players have gone broke and a select few have had big scores in the tournaments.
The second reason your edge can dry up is that if you're playing against opponents who are at all observant, they will begin to form some ideas about your play just as you've been studying theirs. Perhaps your play falls into certain patterns, such as re-raising pre-flop with only AA and KK, or never raising on the river as a bluff. While these are somewhat problematic patterns to fall into, in the short term they will rarely hurt you too badly. But in the long term, against observant opponents who have been studying you, you will be giving them information that is too perfect and falling into patterns of play that are highly exploitable. This was an extreme example, but the point remains that almost all poker players have patterns that we fall into, and our edge over our observant opponents lessens over time as they make sense of these patterns. This is why it is particularly important, when playing against foes who you expect to face many times in the future, to mix up your play and create blended hand ranges. Otherwise, if you've raised UTG and you only do this with big pairs and high cards, your opponents will have a field day with you when they call you in position and catch a ragged flop like 7 6 3.
So, we've established that a winning player's chances of booking a win increase over time, but something else to keep in mind is that even the most skillful players in the world have losing sessions regularly. Even in no limit games, where the expert wields the additional weapon of sizing his bets precisely, and can thus expect a higher percentage of winning sessions that an expert limit player, the losing sessions still occur. In his book, Ace on the River (see p. 30), Barry Greenstein notes that for a given period he booked a win in about 58% of his limit hold'em sessions and over 75% of his no-limit sessions. So, even if you are Barry Greenstein, you cannot approach an individual session with the mindset that you can reasonably expect to be ahead after X hours. Instead, you approach it knowing that if you are a favorite in the game, you KNOW you will be ahead in the long term, and that playing 8 or 10 or 12 hours today, and tomorrow, and so forth, is how we reach that long term.
Brendan in California
A: Assuming you are a consistent winner in a given poker game, your chances of posting a profit in any individual session definitely increase the longer you sit in the game, up to a certain point of diminishing returns which varies based on your own stamina and game conditions that are not under your control.
Your likelihood of posting a winning session increases as time passes for two main reasons. First, you are acquiring information about your opponents every hand they play. You might observe tells, see their cards at showdown, or see cards that they voluntarily show. As time passes you will be able to roughly categorize them as a certain player type and have a better sense of their possible range of hands following a given betting sequence. The second reason that a winning player figures to be ahead after a longer session is that over time, a player's actual results will more and more closely resemble the statistical expectation of his plays. To illustrate this, imagine the scenario where an expert player and a rank amateur both get all in before the flop with stacks 500 BBs deep. The expert holds AA and the amateur 33. The expert's aces are an 82% favorite to win the pot, but at the conclusion of this hand the expert won't have 82% of the chips in the pot, he will have either 100% or 0%. So, in the short term, neither result (win 100% of pot or 0% of pot) will accurately reflect the long-term statistical expectation of this play. Over time though, the player's results will more and more closely approach the expectation of the plays he makes, therefore, for a winning player, the likelihood of booking a win increases over time (provided his edge over his opponents remains constant).
Of course in the real world, one's skill advantage is NOT a constant. To use poker author Tommy Angelo's term, we are capable of playing not just our "A games" but also slipping into our "B games" or "C games", sometimes without noticing that we've done so. Players tilt, or begin playing something less than their "A game", for any of a number of reasons. Even for someone considered relatively untiltable (some have said this about great cash game players like Phil Ivey or the late Chip Reese), there is a limit to the brain's ability to function at a high enough level to continue to beat the game. So even if you are not prone to tilt as a result of outside influences, all poker players reach a point of diminishing returns when exhaustion saps them of their normal edge over the opposition.
Your edge over the table can also dry up for two other reasons. As a no limit cash game player, I've noticed that over the course of a session (and also over longer periods of time, by extension), the money in play tends to become more and more concentrated in the hands of the better players, where it is harder for you to win. Most poor players will lose their money to the better players, and those who do manage to win in the short term will (unfortunately for us) sometimes realize that they got lucky (or that they are uncomfortable playing a big stack) and cash out. An advantage player is thus going to earn the most during the "sweet spot" of any playing interval, before the fools and their money have been parted. In a standard daily cash game, this might mean that you are well into your session by 7 pm and will be fully alert until the last call for drinks at 2 am. Applying this concept over a longer time interval, it's been noted that at the World Series of Poker each summer, you might fare best during the first few weeks, when the money in the poker economy is still spread around in everyone's pockets, before many players have gone broke and a select few have had big scores in the tournaments.
The second reason your edge can dry up is that if you're playing against opponents who are at all observant, they will begin to form some ideas about your play just as you've been studying theirs. Perhaps your play falls into certain patterns, such as re-raising pre-flop with only AA and KK, or never raising on the river as a bluff. While these are somewhat problematic patterns to fall into, in the short term they will rarely hurt you too badly. But in the long term, against observant opponents who have been studying you, you will be giving them information that is too perfect and falling into patterns of play that are highly exploitable. This was an extreme example, but the point remains that almost all poker players have patterns that we fall into, and our edge over our observant opponents lessens over time as they make sense of these patterns. This is why it is particularly important, when playing against foes who you expect to face many times in the future, to mix up your play and create blended hand ranges. Otherwise, if you've raised UTG and you only do this with big pairs and high cards, your opponents will have a field day with you when they call you in position and catch a ragged flop like 7 6 3.
So, we've established that a winning player's chances of booking a win increase over time, but something else to keep in mind is that even the most skillful players in the world have losing sessions regularly. Even in no limit games, where the expert wields the additional weapon of sizing his bets precisely, and can thus expect a higher percentage of winning sessions that an expert limit player, the losing sessions still occur. In his book, Ace on the River (see p. 30), Barry Greenstein notes that for a given period he booked a win in about 58% of his limit hold'em sessions and over 75% of his no-limit sessions. So, even if you are Barry Greenstein, you cannot approach an individual session with the mindset that you can reasonably expect to be ahead after X hours. Instead, you approach it knowing that if you are a favorite in the game, you KNOW you will be ahead in the long term, and that playing 8 or 10 or 12 hours today, and tomorrow, and so forth, is how we reach that long term.
Does the world really need another poker blog?
Does the world really need another poker blog? Probably not; there is an abundance of good writing about the game over at 2+2, PocketFives, and Noted Poker Authority, just to name a few of the sites I frequent. That said, I spend a lot of time playing and thinking about this game, and I’d like to share some of my ideas and observations with you. If it helps you, as a fellow poker player, to improve your game, then it was worth it. If it helps you, as a non-poker playing acquaintance of mine, to better understand the game and my fascination with it, then it was worth it. And most importantly, if writing about poker makes me a better and more thoughtful player, then it was definitely worth it.
As you can see from the title, a core component of this blog will consist of question and answer pieces. These will vary from the mundane (“How do I read the board in Pot Limit Omaha?”), to the logistical (“What are some good restaurants to check out near Foxwoods?”), to the strategic (“In what situations do you like to re-raise with AK pre-flop versus flat calling?”), to the philosophical (“How can one derive satisfaction and meaning from playing poker for a living?”). I hope that readers will send me questions, and I will also look for good questions in online forums like Yahoo! Answers, where I’ve seen many poker questions asked and few good responses given. Finally, if there’s a topic that I think would make for a good blog post, I will just go ahead and write the question that leads into it, too.
For those who don’t know me personally, I used to be a schoolteacher, and that side of me enjoys educating people about all sorts of things, including poker. I try not to educate about poker or lecture at the table, since it’s bad form and will sometimes come back to bite me in the very same session, so I figure the internet to be a better place to share whatever wisdom I’ve gained. There was a time when professional poker players shunned those who would disclose the secrets of their trade, but now that we are in the age of the hole card cam and hundreds of poker books are on the market, I think we can all agree that sharing knowledge and talking strategy with others is good for the growth and continued health of the game.
Finally, I’ve decided to create this blog to have something tangible for myself that will record the evolution of my thinking about poker. One of the drawbacks of poker as a career is that you do not produce, create, or impact anything. At the end of the year, I would like to have more than just a bigger bankroll to show for the time I’ve put in, at and away from the tables, working on my game. With this blog I hope to produce something that will be of value to myself, to my friends and family who want insight into my world, and to my fellow players who seek to improve their games.
As you can see from the title, a core component of this blog will consist of question and answer pieces. These will vary from the mundane (“How do I read the board in Pot Limit Omaha?”), to the logistical (“What are some good restaurants to check out near Foxwoods?”), to the strategic (“In what situations do you like to re-raise with AK pre-flop versus flat calling?”), to the philosophical (“How can one derive satisfaction and meaning from playing poker for a living?”). I hope that readers will send me questions, and I will also look for good questions in online forums like Yahoo! Answers, where I’ve seen many poker questions asked and few good responses given. Finally, if there’s a topic that I think would make for a good blog post, I will just go ahead and write the question that leads into it, too.
For those who don’t know me personally, I used to be a schoolteacher, and that side of me enjoys educating people about all sorts of things, including poker. I try not to educate about poker or lecture at the table, since it’s bad form and will sometimes come back to bite me in the very same session, so I figure the internet to be a better place to share whatever wisdom I’ve gained. There was a time when professional poker players shunned those who would disclose the secrets of their trade, but now that we are in the age of the hole card cam and hundreds of poker books are on the market, I think we can all agree that sharing knowledge and talking strategy with others is good for the growth and continued health of the game.
Finally, I’ve decided to create this blog to have something tangible for myself that will record the evolution of my thinking about poker. One of the drawbacks of poker as a career is that you do not produce, create, or impact anything. At the end of the year, I would like to have more than just a bigger bankroll to show for the time I’ve put in, at and away from the tables, working on my game. With this blog I hope to produce something that will be of value to myself, to my friends and family who want insight into my world, and to my fellow players who seek to improve their games.
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