Monday, December 22, 2008

Poker gems, #200




Lee Jones, in Bluff magazine column, January, 2009, p. 65.


A couple of years ago, Greg Raymer won a Pot Limit Omaha event during PokerStars' WCOOP tournament series. When it got down to heads-up play, I instant-messaged a colleague and said, "Greg is going to take this thing down and it's not even close." How did I know? Well, it was like this: when Raymer had the button, he'd raise, and his opponent would call. When the opponent had the button, he'd limp in. So to a first approximation, every pot in which Greg had the button was three times as large as the pot in which the opponent had the button. Who would you put your money on?

At a major tournament about a year ago, I was chatting with Daniel Negreanu about the value of position. Steeling myself against a potentially fatal blow to my ego, I said, "Daniel, suppose you and I are playing PLO heads up. But one thing: I've always got the button. Who wins?" Daniel thought briefly and said, "You'd win." ...Now, just to be clear, Daniel Negreanu is ten or a hundred times the poker player that I am. But faced with me having the button on every hand, he fancied my chances better than his.

2 comments:

Jim Cheseborough said...

Hey Grump. I still haven't have the pleasure of playing with you live in Vegas (I play 40hrs a week so by the sheer number of hours I get in, we *must* have crossed paths "here or there" in the last year - for example I USED the cool hand driers at Binions too! lol), but I did play with you in the blogger tourney (I finished 70th) Sunday. I'm writing to ask you about your weakness in poker. I see you mentioned Daniel Negreanu is 10x the player you are. Where do you feel you fall short? I think this topic would be a great blog post for you. It should help *you* as much as your loyal readers! Cheers

Rakewell said...

Just to be clear, the Negreanu story is part of what Lee Jones wrote, not my own comment.