(Note: this post has a LOT of poker vocabulary in it. I'll try to put up a poker vocab post at some point in the future)
Live poker is a completely different beast from online freeroll poker. Pokerstars enabled me to build a solid base of knowledge about the game of poker. It gave me a feel for the odds, a feel for the relative values of hands, and a feel for how position(i.e. the order people act in a hand; the later the better, strategy-wise) really affects the outcome of any hand. Individual player tendencies are difficult to follow, since each player "looks" pretty much the same. Consequently, the best strategy online is to to play the best solid game you can play - maximizing gains, minimizing losses.
In live poker, player tendencies come to the forefront. What you have matters, but what your opponent holds matters as well. Figuring out the latter can make the former inconsequential - if I know a player check-calls the flop with second pair but check-raises with top pair or better, then I can use that knowledge to run circles around him (make it too expensive by betting big later in the hand if he has second pair, play more conservatively if he raises, etc)
I started playing a relatively small game at college: 10 cent/20 cent no limit hold'em, min buy-in $20. I'd like to introduce you to a few of my memorable opponents and their tendencies, as well as how I countered those tendencies to maximize my profits. Over time, the limits increased, and the stakes got higher, but their tendencies remained largely the same. Without further ado..
Joe Poker Joe was one of the central organizers of the games I played in. He specialized in limit games and draw-friendly games like Omaha(essentially hold'em with four cards instead of two) and razz(lowest hand wins!). Because of this background, he loved to play "drawing hands", i.e. hands like 4 to a straight or 4 to a flush, where there is potential to make an almost sure winning hand, but where you also don't have anything yet. Joe's love of drawing made betting and raising big with a pair or better very profitable - he often overplayed his draws and got a lot of money into the pot with just a draw. Also, calling his big flop bets was a must, since he liked to "semi-bluff" with a draw - bluff with a chance of making a big hand anyway. Either way, his classic statement after calling an all-in bet: "Call...I have outs.", meaning he knew he didn't have the best hand but was calling anyway.
Antonio Antonio played a solid game. He bluffed a little too much, a little too obviously, but that was only a minor error. His biggest weakness, though, was that he was wont to go "on tilt"(play poorly or emotionally after a big loss or unlucky moment). Early in the evening was an excellent time to play a longshot draw against Antonio - hit it once and you could be relatively sure he'd lose his whole stack out of frustration later in the night. The lesson here: don't play emotionally! (P.S. You already know this, Antonio!)
Cyrus Ah, Cyrus. Every good poker game has players known as "producers", people who lose large amounts of money consistently in the same game. Cyrus didn't care about the money - the stakes were small for him. He raised, reraised, and put pressure on his opponents at every opportunity. Aggression is good in poker, but not if that's your ONLY strategy. In the end, a LOT of money went into pots that he should never have been a part of. To beat an aggressive player, usually the best course is to just let your opponent hang himself by calling, calling and calling some more. Cyrus, however, tended to believe you were bluffing him, and would reraise right back, so being slightly less aggressive, but not much, was the order of the day.
Dorian If Cyrus was aggressive, then Dorian would best be described as insane. Reraising a 60 cent bet to 20 dollars or more was standard. Simple to beat - grab a good hand, get the money in the middle. Sometimes it's that easy.
Ashraf Ashraf was somewhat of a "calling station" - he preferred to check-call with decent hands rather than betting or raising. To beat him, I would make a lot of value bets, meaning I bet with somewhat marginal hands, trying to extract the maximum value out of these hands. He bluffed occasionally, but since he preferred calling when he didn't have a monster hand, it was relatively easy to bluff him right back and take down the pot with nothing. Calling stations are pretty simple to play against, since it's easy to dictate the pace of the hand and difficult to overcommit yourself with a marginal hand. He won't reraise you most of the time.
Sumeet Sumeet once read somewhere that aggression was good in a poker game, and that playing tight was also good in a poker game, and that playing "tight-aggressive"(little of both) is the best professional style. He suffered from a poor sense of starting hand quality - he often played hands like Q6 suited or K4 offsuit, which led to him having a lot of second-best type hands when his top pair of kings got beaten by my top pair with a higher kicker(second card in your hole cards other than the pair, i.e. if I have AK and he has K4 on a board of K63, the ace is a higher kicker than the 4) The response - play solid, and mix him some fancier moves just to keep him thinking about poker strategy, since he usually thought about it poorly.
The Kaiser The first person I could legitimately "read" by looking at his face. If he was excited but quiet, he had a hand. If he was talking, he didn't have a hand. Fairly easy game once you know your opponent's cards.
There were a few players who legitimately knew how to play(Rob, George, Alex, Asian Rob, Dave, etc) Against these players, I had to break off of one simple strategy and use poker tricks like slowplaying, trapping, bluffing, smoothcalling, and everything you'll find in a poker strategy book in order to disguise the strength of my hand and figure out the strength of theirs. Generally, the good players all played aggressively, so there was some value in simply playing solid poker: let them play every hand, I'll just play the good ones.
Strategy constantly evolves when you play with the same people over and over again. You learn their tendencies, and they learn yours. In a casino setting, however, you don't have the luxury of knowing how everyone plays when you sit down. Categorizing players becomes paramount, so I'll go over that in my next post.
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How do you play against more than one of these styles at once? (or is that covered in part IV?)
ReplyDeleteAlso, is there any way to play just against one person? I don't mean late in the hand when there's only two of you left. I mean like when I was on a cross-country train trip and my friend and I couldn't find anyone else to join a game. I lost everything (I guess bluffing comes into play more heavily, as does luck, and I had neither) (... everything was only $1), and I had no fun. Is that just typical? Or is there a way to enjoy one-on-one poker?
Doyle, nice blog.
ReplyDeleteIf you got some free time, I'd like to see a write up for who u called the "legit" players. I'm sure korean rob, cen, dave all had their own styles no? I'd like to hear what those styles were and while you said you changed up ur play vs them, did u find anything in particular that worked more often? it'd be curious to see how ur thoughts about each player compare to mine.
good luck - hope u make it big as a pro
Ertzeid-
ReplyDeleteOne of the ways to play against multiple styles is to do what's called an "isolation play". Let's say our fish limps in by just calling the big blind. I want to play heads up against him because he's a weak player, so I can raise in order to push other players out of the pot. Typically, the more players in a hand, the more you need to actually hit the flop in order to win.
As far as 1-on-1 goes, I find it to be an incredibly enjoyable experience, but it is probably the most artistic of poker games, in that reading your opponent's tendencies and hands becomes far more important than playing your cards. Trash hands are what you get, and you have to play them, so you need to figure out if and how they connect to the flop in addition to(and even more important than) if and how you yourself connected with the flop. Two people with a decent knowledge base of the game can play a very interesting 2 player game.
George,
I stuck with the simple ones since obviously a 2 line "how to play korean rob" strategy would be a foolish pursuit. This blog's audience(thus far) is mostly people who don't play poker regularly, so getting in depth into checkraising, bluffing, etc would be difficult. The problem with good players is that they adapt their strategy to you, so you need to constantly update your counterstrategy for a specific player.
But, just for kicks-
Against asian rob, I'd bluff-raise more often than not because he liked to show down a hand if he wasn't the reraiser.
Against korean rob I'd value bet more often because he was on a "pair improvement draw" at least half the time. Jerk.
Against Dave I'd just fold. he was my kryptonite.
Against Cen I'd smooth call more often because as far as I could tell, he liked to bluff me. I might've been wrong about that one, but whatever, it was two years ago lol.