CardSharp

Last article we looked at the set farming strategy, and saw that it was an effective way to take money from an opponent with a big pair if both players adopted certain strategies. We also looked at two possible “defenses” the guy with aces could employ – raising more or having a smaller stack. However, both of these are infeasible in many circumstances. You don’t have much control of your stack size, and raising the needed 10% of the effective stacks is often not feasible in deepstack games. Clearly there’s only one option left for the aces: they can’t always pay off the set for a full stack. In fact, against the strategy I described for the set farmer (check-fold postflop if no set), there’s no reason the aces should ever pay off the set. Any time the guy bets, or even calls, you know he’s got you beat (unless you also hit a set). This creates an odd strategy for the guy with aces – bet out every time, and if your opponent folds, fine. If he gives you any action, check-fold the rest of the streets. This strategy beats the set farmer out of almost 4BB/hand on average with the setup from the last article. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for one of the most important things I’ve got to say about no limit Texas holdem. We’ve talked previously about the topic of set farming when discussing the 5/10 rule. Specifically,

Set farming is calling a bet preflop with a small to medium pocket pair (which is unlikely to be best by the river if it doesn’t improve) hoping to hit a set (3 of a kind made with one on board plus your pair). It’s a longshot play where you rarely hit, but when you do you have a hand that’s almost certainly best, and you can comfortably get your stack in.

Set farming is a very central part of correct NL play. In fact, against certain opponents, it is the single most profitable tactic in your arsenal. To understand why, consider this hypothetical hand: Read the rest of this entry »

Like most people with websites, I occasionally look to see what phrases people are searching for to find my site. One of the recent ones was “what does it mean to be in position”. This sent the searcher to one of my pages, albeit not one that actually answered his question. While I can’t help that guy out (unless he comes back), I can answer the question for someone else.

It turns out that position is a bit of a complicated topic, because it really refers to several different concepts that are only slightly related. All of them have to do with the order in which the players act, but that’s where the similarities stop. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of silly rumors floating around about what this year’s WSOP main event is going to look like. All we really know at this point is that it’s going to be a poker-free circus with a high probability of the winner being a total assclown, just like the last two years. That’s what ESPN wants, of course, so that’s what Harrah’s wants. Of course, it could be fixed if someone really wanted to. Maybe if the enough name players demanded it, something would happen. Here are the major problems as I see them: Read the rest of this entry »

In the last game theory column, I presented a real-world poker problem, and started through the process of figuring out the equilibrium solution. As you probably noticed, I simply told you what the solution was without explaining how I got that solution. Now I owe it to you to explain how I did it. Read the rest of this entry »

Last time, I explained what game theory is using examples from roshambo. That’s all well and good, but this isn’t a roshambo strategy site. So let’s look at the poker implications. As we stated, any time there is a strategy rho, you can minimize the worst result you can get by choosing randomly between the options in the head of the rho at some frequency. Thus far, for poker, we’ve only discussed one rho: the big rho of tight play, aggressive play, and calling down. This is certainly an interesting example of a strategy rho, but it’s lousy for a discussion of game theory. The reason is that it’s somewhat of an abstract concept – we haven’t defined what exactly each strategy entails, and therefore it’s impossible to figure out the exact expectation when two strategies meet. This makes solving the associated game theory problem of how frequently you should do each to get a game theoretic optimal result impossible. To that end I want to introduce a new rho: the bluffing and calling on the end rho. Read the rest of this entry »

Game theory is somewhat of a hot topic right now. The application of said theory to poker has always been a topic of discussion amongst certain mathematicians and players. Then The Mathematics of Poker was published, and it temporarily put game theory front and center in the poker discussion. However, I would happily wager that 90%+ of winning players at any level could not give a correct and comprehensive explanation of what game theory is.

So for all you folks who don’t really know what game theory is, or what it has to do with poker, never fear. CardSharp is here to help Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry about being delinquent in getting this up. I’ve been rather busy. My itinerary looked much like the last two trips: fly out cheap on Sunday & stay the first part of the week. This isn’t the best itinerary for getting action – staying the weekend would be better – but it is dirt cheap. Compared to the last two trips, a few notable things have changed Read the rest of this entry »

Subtitle: How to Win at No-Limit Hold’em Money Games

Author: Dan Harrington & Bill Robertie

Publisher: 2+2

Finally. Two plus two has put out two books on NL holdem cash games in the last few years. Sklansky & Miller’s No Limit Holdem – Theory and Practice was marginal. Profesional No Limit Holdem Volume 1 was a complete turd. Both were far inferior to what Doyle wrote in Supersystem. This created the absurd situation where the most popular poker game today had only one chapter in one book addressing it in a decent manner. Enter Dan Harrington to rectify the problem. As anyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows, Harrington was responsible for a wildly (and deservedly) popular series of book on NL tournament play. He’s the only author reviewed on CardSharp who has consistently achieved a 5-star rating for his books – not an easy feat since I tend to be stingy with top ratings. Needless to say I was thrilled to hear he was tackling cash game NL. Read the rest of this entry »

Something rather silly happened on rec.gambling.poker today. One of the group’s less observant participants claimed that if you play 1/3 NL or bigger in a casino, the effects of the rake and other expenses are minimized. Fact is, that’s far from the truth. You have to play MUCH bigger than 1/3 NL before the rake and your other costs don’t have a major impact. To illustrate the point, I put together what I think is a fairly conservative list of expenses for a 1/3 NL player, and looked at what that did to your win rate. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve become convinced that the most common mistake beginning poker players, and in particular NL holdem players, make is playing what I call ‘backwards poker’.

Backwards poker is when a player refuses to put money in the pot when he knows he has the best of it, but is all too willing to put money in the pot when it’s very possible he may have the worst of it.

Now, it should be obvious that backwards poker is a really bad idea. The whole point of playing poker is to wager a lot of money when you have the best of it, and not to make wagers where you have the worst of it. So why would anyone choose to do just the opposite? Good question. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Bob Ciaffone

Publisher: Self Published

There’s something very weird about Omaha players, and especially authors of Omaha books. They seem to be unable to view their game in the context of what’s really going on in the poker world. I have yet to read an Omaha book that doesn’t claim Omaha is “The Game Of The Future!” and “The Action Game!” or some very similar nonsense. I’m beginning to suspect the guys who write Omaha books just copy eachother’s introductions.

The reality is somewhat different. You’ll find 50 mid-stakes holdem games in Vegas for every one Omaha game. Omaha is the game of the future in the same way flying cars are the commuter vehicle of the future. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ask top poker pros what distinguishes them from merely good players, they very often say the same thing: “changing gears”. So what exactly are they talking about? Read the rest of this entry »

I got the following question a couple of days ago, and it’s a good one:

Poker games have different card structures (stud vs. holdem for example) and different betting structures (limit vs. NL). They’re not the same. So independent of any unique talents one might have, is there a particular game that is objectively more profitable than the rest?

Specifically, stud feels like less of a guessing game than hold’em, but I’ve yet to learn it.

Best regards,
-Chuck

Read the rest of this entry »

In this series I discuss topics that are well known within the gambling community, but that may be new to players who come to the game of poker from a non-gambling background.

A parlay is a bet where multiple things have to go your way for you to win the bet. The terms is most frequently used in sports betting. In a standard sports parlay, you can combine multiple team or total bets where you would normally lay 11:10 into one bet. Since it’s more difficult to have all the components come in than it is to win a standard bet, the house offers more attractive odds – usually they pay 13:5 for a 2 team parlay and 6:1 for a three team parlay. Note of course that these odds still have a built-in house edge as with any sports betting – you would get paid 15:5 and 7:1 respectively on a gentleman’s wager.

Parlays occur in poker all the time, but they’re not always obvious. Consider the following fairly common situation in limit holdem: Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry I’ve been dormant so long. Life interfered. I should be able to write regularly again, and I’ve got a lot of material I’m planning to post. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back I wrote about the horserace paradox. I want to continue that discussion specifically in the context of poker.

A common decision in poker arises when you have the option of betting aggressively to drive out opponents or being passive as a means of keeping them in the hand. It should be obvious that this is in some ways related to the scenario in the horserace paradox article, where additional opponents with a limited chance to win cause a frontrunner to perform worse. I got to thinking about this issue because of a number of columns in Roy Cooke’s Real Poker II in which he advocated letting additional opponents in preflop in limit holdem when holding pocket aces because by calling they were making a mistake and therefore he must be benefiting by conservation of money. My intuition at the time was that Cooke was wrong and that those players were often not making a mistake by calling. But I wasn’t certain. Subsequently I’ve thought about it more, and I’m convinced Cooke was wrong but the situation is much more complicated than I originally thought. Read the rest of this entry »

The flop is the defining moment in holdem. Play before the flop focuses on setting yourself up to flop something good. Play after the flop is about figuring out what your opponent flopped and drawing at or defending against draws made on the flop. Before the flop you’re dealing with hypotheticals unless you hold a big pair. After the flop you’re dealing with a much better defined situation.

Because the flop serves as a dividing line for the hand, it’s the perfect place to take stock of your situation. Misunderstanding the implications of the flop is the primary cause of costly stack-sized mistakes. So here are some things you should figure out before proceeding: Read the rest of this entry »

Reading the board quickly and accurately is an important skill for both players and dealers. It is the process of looking at the community cards and determining the following information:

1. What hands are possible on the current board
2. What draws are possible (assuming there are cards to come)
3. Where a given set of hole cards sits into the range of possible hands, or how two hands compare Read the rest of this entry »

One mistake I see a lot of holdem players making is that they incorrectly estimate the strength of their hand on the flop. This can lead to some ugly mistakes in play. While most players eventually learn by experience what hand/board combinations are strong and which are vulnerable or near-certainly beat, this process can be expensive and is mostly unnecessary. Here’s a quick and dirty method for figuring out where you stand on the flop that you may find helpful.

Read the rest of this entry »

Authors: Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, Ed Miller

Publisher: 2+2

Professional No-Limit Hold ‘Em was a widely anticipated book. The literature on NL holdem is very sparse, which is somewhat odd given that it is currently the most widely played form of casino poker. Over the last couple of years, 2+2 publishing has put a number of books and series in the pipeline to try to fill that gap. The first was Sklansky’s No Limit Holdem: Theory and Practice which I found interesting but problematic in many areas. Next up is the Flynn/Mehta “Professional” series starting with this book, and announced but as of yet unavailable are a series of Dan Harrington cash game books.

Sadly, this book really disappointed me on a number of levels. Read the rest of this entry »

I got back from Las Vegas a couple of days ago. This trip was very similar to the last one – I stayed at the MGM and played primarily mid-stakes games. I really have very little to report because all the observations from last trip stayed unchanged. The 20-40 stud at the Bellagio is still the softest midstakes games in town but is fragile – it doesn’t seem to run through the whole day. It really surprises me that most of the time when it was running I didn’t see any competent players or indeed any regulars whatsoever. That’s pretty extraordinary for a game with stakes you could live on. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Anonymous

Publisher: Lyle Stuart/Kensington

Given the hordes of formulaic books published on poker in the last decade, it’s nice to see the occasional book that breaks out of the mold and goes a different directions. Such books have a tendency to be either very insightful or steaming piles of crap. This one happens to be both at once. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back we did a big example of odds math and discounting outs.  These examples were somewhat complicated because I wanted to give a comprehensive picture of what can be involved in an odds problem.  Indeed, these problems were so complicated that the math really pushed the edge of what a player could be expected to do at the table.  In other words, those articles fell slightly short of my own standards of what constitutes good poker math.  I want to rectify that here and also present the process I use to do so as a template for simplifying other poker math problems. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last NL holdem I wrote about basic starting hand selection for deepstack play. The key concept was to play hands that are likely to make the nuts, in position, for a raise. Now I’m going to discuss some associated topics and some exceptions to the rule. Read the rest of this entry »

A key concept in holdem, especially in NL, it “hot and cold” comparison of starting hands – namely the the odds of each pair of hole cards winning in a two hand matchup that always goes to the river. While it’s not important to memorize these odds exactly (and I’m not even going to bother calculating them exactly here – that’s what poker stove is for), it is important to know them in an approximate sense because a lot of correct preflop strategy in holdem is a direct result of this concept. Read the rest of this entry »

As I stated previously, starting hand selection is not as critical to success in deepstack no limit holdem as it is in other forms of poker. Various players have adopted radically different strategies and yet still achieved good results. However, that doesn’t mean you should neglect the subject altogether. What it does mean is that rather than present an ironclad system I’m going to give some suggestions that most players, especially those new to the game, should have reasonable success with. Read the rest of this entry »

As a result of Saturday’s column, I’ve had an interesting email conversation with Mike Caro about the subject of big folds in tournaments. I suppose it’s always a little bit dicey criticizing someone’s work, because you never know how they’re going to respond, but I’m glad to report that Mike and I had an interesting discussion and reached common ground on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to like Mike Caro. I really do. Every discipline needs it’s mad genius, and the man certainly has the hair for the job. But I can’t deny his Poker Player column is making a encore appearance on “Nonsense Debunked”. That’s not a good thing. This week’s nonsense is about tournament bubble play. Here’s the setup in Caro’s own words from the Oct. 1 2007 ‘Poker Player’: Read the rest of this entry »

Many of yesterday’s Things You Should Know about NL Holdem focused on the effects of deep stacks and implied odds on the game. I think one of the easiest ways to get your head around the effects of deep stacks is to consider what would happen if the stacks were infinitely deep. As you might expect, stacks that are merely very deep have the same properties, but sometimes not to quite the same degree. If the idea of “infinitely deep” stacks bothers you, just think about a stack that’s 1 million big blinds deep – ie. a 2 million dollar stack at 1/2 NL. Here are some effects of those huge stacks: Read the rest of this entry »

A rather unusual situation has developed in US poker at the moment. Cash game no limit holdem has become by far the most popular form of casino poker in the country, but there is almost no good information on how to play it published in book form or on the web. In an effort to plug that gap, I’m going to publish a series of articles on the game that should contain sufficient information to take a player to at least the intermediate level.

To get started, I want to present some central concepts for NL holdem. The idea is to get you in the right frame of mind for thinking about NL play. These are in no particular order. Read the rest of this entry »

I was playing crappy Colorado casino poker yesterday when a noteworthy situation arose. The game was $5 limit holdem. That’s right, 0ne $5 blind and all bets are in increments of $5. It’s hard to imagine a worse structure. But this isn’t about the structure. It’s about one of the worst plays I’ve ever seen at limit holdem. And It’s a bad play that happens surprisingly frequently and that many players probably don’t even think of as bad play at all. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a classic logical fallacy, the Emperor’s nose fallacy, that all poker players need to be aware of because it appears so often in poker reasoning (especially in poker books and forums) and has become increasingly common of late. Read the rest of this entry »

In poker, play on the last betting round (aka  street) takes on a decidedly different nature from play on any other round. Because there are no cards to come, the relative rankings of the players’ hands are fixed, and as such all betting revolves around uncertainty about opponent hole cards, not uncertainty about the cards to come. This simplified environment causes many issues that are murky and complicated on earlier betting rounds to become more clear, and as such play on the end is the perfect framework for introducing a number of important poker topics.

In the last installment of this series, we discussed the two fundamental types of bets & raises – value bets and bluffs. Now I want to talk about calling on the end. For the time being, assume that play is heads-up and you are facing a bet, and thus you have the option of closing the betting by calling. Also remember from last time that excessive aggression on the river with mediocre hands has a high probability of splitting your opponent’s range and being incorrect. So only rarely in this situation will you be raising – and almost never with a mediocre hand. That leaves the player with a mediocre holding two reasonable options – call or fold. Read the rest of this entry »

In last week’s article on odds, I went through a complicated example of deciding if you should call with a draw. The point of this example was to show, in a big-picture sort of way, how odds are used to make poker decisions. Now I want to explore one small aspect of that more closely.

Specifically I want to talk about discounting outs. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since I wrote the last bankroll management article, I’ve been getting search hits for “craps bankroll management”. I feel sorry for these folks, because I doubt anything I said dissuaded them from their belief that somehow they could beat craps if only they played their money right. It’s important to understand why there are useful bankroll management principles that apply to poker, but there’s nothing to be done about craps. The difference is that poker, if played correctly, offers you a series of positive expectation wagers. Craps, in contrast, offers you only negative expectation wagers. So if you keep playing craps, in the long run, you will always lose. In contrast if you play poker skillfully you will always win in the long run. The problem, in poker, is to get to that long run without going broke in the process. That’s what the previous bankroll management article was all about – making sure you have enough money in you bankroll to weather the swings and get to that perpetually profitable long run.

There’s another aspect of poker management that’s worth discussing, and it’s probably a lot closer to what those craps players are thinking of when they think bankroll management: figuring out when to stop playing. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve already talked about odds in a general sense here and here. Now I want to take that foundation and talk specifically about odds in poker.

Odds, as applied to poker, are really fairly simple but somehow the poker literature has gotten itself turned around and explained them in a very awkward way. Read the rest of this entry »

I normally don’t comment on current events or news items, but this one dovetails nicely with some things I’ve been meaning to write about, so here goes. There is now high quality evidence that there has been cheating going on at one of the major poker sites, Absolute Poker, for the last 2 months or so in the high stakes limit and NL games. While this evidence is not 100% conclusive, in my opinion it’s at least 99.9% conclusive. My opinion is based is based both on the evidence presented and the people it came from. There’s an excellent summary of all the evidence here on 2+2: Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping accurate records of your play is important for all poker players. It’s essential for tax purposes to know how much you won or lost in each session, but there’s lots of additional benefits to be gained by having comprehensive records. Specifically, good records will help you improve your win rate over time by highlighting situations where your results are consistently different from your expectations. This process will enable you to develop your game selection intuition. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Fish Psychology series, I explore the reasons that losing players continue to play, and look at ways to keep them coming back for more.

Our first explanation for long run losing play is that the player does not in fact believe they are losing. Notice that I’m talking specifically about the long run. It’s very easy in the short run to believe your expectation is positive when in fact it’s not, and we’ll talk about that in another article, but I’m more interested in cases where people continue to believe they’re winning when any rational examination of the evidence would indicate they’re not. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to pose a simple question: why do losing players continue to play?

This question should be of supreme interest to anyone considering a career in poker or considering playing at high stakes. It should be obvious that poker games cannot exist without losing players – if the players with a negative expectation made a policy of quitting a game, that game would quickly cease to exist since in any given lineup there’s always someone who has a negative expectation[1] and who would thus be quitting. Read the rest of this entry »

Before we get started on the fundamental theorem of poker, I want to introduce a concept that I hope is very obvious nay axiomatic – conservation of money. Simply put, playing poker neither creates nor destroys money. Or put another way, if your results are that you won X everyone else at the table’s collective result is that they lost X and vice versa.   Stated in mathematical terms, everyone’s results sum to zero. Note that the house, if collecting rake, is one of the participants in this equation. Hopefully we can agree this is pretty obvious stuff.  I mention it because it’s the starting point for the fundamental theorem of poker. Read the rest of this entry »

Previously, I’ve tried to convince you that doing your poker math in odds notation is far easier, once you get used to it, than using percentages. Now, I want to show you how to do some of the arithmetic usually associated with percentages faster and easier using odds. But first we need to lay some groundwork. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Roy Cooke

Publisher: ConJelCo

Real Poker II is a collection of Roy Cooke’s Card Player columns focusing on the play of middle limit holdem hands taken from his play in Las Vegas.  In each hand, Roy describes the situation and one or more key decisions, and then tells the reader what he believes is the correct course of action and why. Read the rest of this entry »

I’d like to say a little bit about my philosophy on mathematics in poker. Generally speaking, there seem to be two vocal camps on this topic. One camp is full of math-phobic players and writers (often forum posters) who will try to convince you that poker is a game of psychology, not numbers. The other group is the ever-growing number of mathematician players and writers who seem to talk about equilibrium solutions and similar high math incessantly. Read the rest of this entry »

In poker play on the last betting round, or street, takes on a decidedly different nature from play on any other round. Because there are no cards to come, the relative rankings of the players’ hands are fixed, and as such all betting revolves around uncertainty about opponent hole cards, not uncertainty about the cards to come. This simplified environment causes many issues that are murky and complicated on earlier betting rounds to become more clear, and as such play on the end is the perfect framework for introducing a number of important poker topics. Furthermore, since there are no more cards to come, most versions of poker (excluding split pot games) with the same betting structure play very similarly on the last street. Read the rest of this entry »

In amongst the grand strategic concerns of poker, there are some small things you can do that will improve your game and keep you out of trouble. Little “good habits” that usually don’t make a difference, but every once in a while save your butt. These things take almost no effort once you form the habit, so adopting them is essentially a freeroll. No cost and potentially substantial gain. Read the rest of this entry »

Bankroll management is a controversial topic, because the term means different things to different people. For a long time, the term has been used to describe fad systems that claim (incorrectly) to beat various house banked negative expectation games like craps. These methods, such as variations on the Martingale system, are of no real use for any purpose. The reason is simple – no amount of varying your bet size will change a negative expectation into a positive one. If the odds are against you, they will still be against you no matter how much or how little you bet. Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunately, like any activity where money changes hands, poker attracts its fair share of cheats. While today’s casino games are almost certainly cleaner than at any time in the past, players and the house need to understand cheating methods and the rules and dealing procedures were developed specifically to counteract them. Below I outline some common cheating methods, and describe how they can be counteracted. It’s important to understand that these rules exist for a reason, not just as tradition. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Doyle Brunson + numerous collaborators

Publisher: Cardoza

Part update to the original Supersystem and part add-on, Super System 2 follows the same structure as the previous book.  Doyle recruited a groups of fellow high-stakes pros to write about various games while he tackled NL holdem.  The games covered are NL holdem, limit holdem, Omaha 8, pot limit Omaha, Stud 8, and lowball triple draw. In addition, there is some general material provided by Mike Caro & others that replaces the general poker section of Super System 1.  I didn’t find this additional material particularly valuable, but most of it wasn’t bad.  The exception is the internet poker material, which is out of date and essentially a sales pitch for Doyle’s site.  Annoying to say the least, but easily avoided.  The real important stuff is the game-specific chapters Read the rest of this entry »