Poker gems, #470

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, March 19, 2014 (vol. 27, #6), pp. 41-42.


Winning poker requires high aggression and much risk-taking. You cannot systematically reduce the risk and still play a strong game. It can't be done.

Elite players...play a particularly high-variance style because that's the best, most profitable way to play. If you intentionally try to reduce your variance, you must accept that you will never play well.

Poker gems, #463

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, October 17, 2012 (vol. 25, #21), page 36.


If it's nearly impossible against certain players to get your sets paid off for 200 big blinds, doesn't it follow that your monster bluff is a near lock to work against these same players?

Probability of a bigger pair

Ed Miller's column in the June 27 issue of Card Player magazine is about bet-sizing tells. He walks the reader through a hand that he played while holding Q-Q, showing how opponents' bet sizes helped him deduce what hands he was up against. I have no quibbles with his reasoning. In fact, it's a highly worthwhile piece, and the sort of insight that makes me never want to miss his columns.

I do, however, have a quibble with an incidental point tossed in along the way. In explaining why he elected to just call rather than reraise when faced with an opening raise from a nit under the gun, he says:

[T]here are still five unknown hands behind me. There's about a one percent chance each player has either A-A or K-K, making about a five percent chance in total that one of the two hands I'm most afraid of is lurking behind me.

(Note: this is just one of the reasons he cites for not reraising, not the only one.)

At first I wondered why he was making a distinction between the players who have already acted and those yet to act. After all, A-A or K-K is an ugly problem for Q-Q no matter where on the table it is being held. But I think I see what he means. If he were in the big blind, and thus last to act on the raise, and nobody had reraised yet, then he could quite confidently assume that nobody was holding A-A or K-K, unless it is the UTG nit.

Or put it another way: Before there is any action, there is a fixed probability that any other player has been dealt a pocket pair higher than Q-Q. But people so reliably raise and reraise with A-A or K-K that when they fail to do so, we can safely revise downward that estimated probability.

What is the a priori probability that somebody at a ten-handed table has been dealt A-A or K-K when I'm holding Q-Q? It turns out to be a ferociously complicated mathematical problem, one that I could never solve on my own. Fortunately, though, somebody a lot smarter than me has already worked it out, and you can see both the process and the result here:

http://people.math.sfu.ca/~alspach/comp35/

The table containing the solution is at the bottom of the page. The answer for Q-Q is 0.0841. That is, if I see Q-Q in my hand, and I have nine opponents, about 8.4% of the time one of them will be holding a pair bigger than mine. That does indeed work out to a round estimate of about a 1% probability that any particular one of them has the goods. And that's a useful rule of thumb. Before there is any action (action constituting additional information to throw into our estimation math), each player in a full ring game has about a 1% chance of having been dealt a pair higher than my queens.

If I'm in the big blind and nobody has raised, then probably nobody has a bigger pair, unless they're trying the ol' limp/reraise thing. Also, if I open-raise from under the gun with my Q-Q and get only callers with no reraise, I can go to the flop reasonably confident that nobody has A-A or K-K. But really, that fact has everything to do with what we know from experience about how people play, and little to do with the math. The conclusion would be equally true if the a priori probability of somebody holding a bigger pair were 80%, or 0.8%, rather than the actual 8%.

But I think there's a problem with how Ed applies the math to the situation he describes. Once a nitty player has opened for a raise from under the gun, we no longer have the baseline 8% chance that somebody at the table has A-A or K-K. The probability now has to be estimated to be vastly greater than that. Exactly how much greater depends, obviously, on exactly how nitty this particular nit is. If he is the extreme case and will only raise UTG with exactly A-A or K-K, then our previous 8% probability goes to 100%. Of course, it's not often you'll have a player with a range that narrowly definable, so it usually won't go up all the way to 100%. But it's surely a damn sight higher than 8%.

If the nit does, in fact, have A-A or K-K, then the probability that any other player at the table also has A-A or K-K is much lower than the roughly 1% apiece that we would otherwise be using as our rule of thumb. Using the next column in Alspach's table, we see that the a priori probability that two players have been dealt pocket pairs bigger than my queens is only about 0.2%--a negligible quantity. The implication is this: The fact that a nit put in an UTG raise means that the probability of a bigger pocket pair being out there is much greater than the baseline 8% (as just discussed), but also that nearly all of that probability resides in the nit, not in the players who will be acting behind me.

It is thus no longer true that each player behind us still has a 1% chance of holding aces or kings. Our estimate of the probability that any one of them has A-A or K-K must be greatly reduced from its baseline ~1% by the fact of having observed that UTG raise from the nit. Put most simply: As the probability that the UTG nit has aces or kings goes up, the probability that anybody else at the table has aces or kings goes down.

Now, this is where it gets a little weird and mind-bendy. Because two things are simultaneously true: (A) The probability that any player is dealt A-A is independent of whether any player is dealt K-K.* (B) Alspach's calculation of a 0.2% probability of two players having A-A or K-K is no longer valid once we actually know that one player has one of those hands. The 0.2% is valid only when we have no information except for having seen our own Q-Q.

This is analogous to questions such as the probability of a roulette wheel hitting 00 twice in a row. It is 1/38 x 1/38 = 0.026 x 0.026 = 0.0007. But if we spin and the ball falls in that 00 slot the first time, now the probability of seeing 00 twice in a row greatly increases, to 0.026. Of course, the probability that the second spin will be 00 has not changed one smidgen by virtue of the result of the first spin, yet the probability of seeing two 00s in a row has changed.

So it is with the A-A and K-K. If we know that the UTG player surely or almost surely has A-A or K-K, we have to throw out the window the Alspach table numbers. They no longer apply. The 8% probability (that exactly one player has A-A or K-K when I have Q-Q) is no longer valid because we have strong reason to believe that this specific shuffle of the deck did, in fact, result in one of those 8% events. And the 0.2% probability (that two players have each been dealt A-A or K-K when I have Q-Q) is no longer valid both for that reason, and for the reason that once the UTG nit is known to have A-A or K-K, two of those eight cards are no longer available to be given to other players.

The knowledge (or at least high suspicion) that UTG nit has one of the two premium pairs is akin to opening the sealed box in which Schrodinger's poor cat has been confined. It is now known to be either alive or dead, not in some hybrid or probabilistically indeterminate state.

Mind you, I don't claim to have worked out the math so as to be able to tell you exactly what the new, revised probability is that each of the five players yet to act has a pair bigger than Q-Q, in addition to the one that we presume is hiding under the nit's card protector, but it is definitely not well estimated by the 1% rule of thumb. It must be substantially lower than that. Exactly how much lower depends entirely on the degree of confidence with which we can assign A-A or K-K to the open-raising nit.

*Note: I realize that that is not quite true, because as soon as two aces are in a player's hand and no longer in the deck from which the dealer is pitching cards, the concentration of kings in the deck rises slightly by virtue of card subtraction, so the probability of K-K goes up slightly. But it's a tiny difference.

Poker gems, #456

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, May 16, 2012 (vol. 25, #10), page 38.

Whenever you beat players in a hand and they complain about how you played it, you're officially in their head.

Poker gems, #450

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, May 2, 2012 (vol 25, #9), page 34.

The regular's strategy of folding a lot and playing big pots only with nut hands has a major strength. Any time the pot gets big, the regular will be a favorite to win it.

Does it, therefore, make sense to play a strategy against this player that relies on winning big pots to be successful? Does it make sense to try to hit big hands and get paid off against this player?

Of course the answer is a resounding NO! If your opponent's strength is having good hands in big pots, why on earth would you play a strategy designed to try to win a big pot? It's not going to work! Why bang your head repeatedly against the deadbolted and barred front door when the back door might be left wide open?

Betting versus check-raising

I like Ed Miller's columns in Card Player magazine. He is the writer who is most likely to have a specific idea that offers a relevant way to tweak my game, something concrete that I can implement the next time I play.

In the April 4, 2012, issue, he discusses a hand played by one of his students. In a $1-2 NLHE game, the student raised under the gun with Js-Jc and picked up three callers. On a flop of 9d-7d-4s the student checked, had an opponent bet, which folded the other two still in the hand. The student then check-raised. When asked about his play, the student said that his goal with the check-raise was to get his opponent to fold.

Miller spends most of the column discussing (appropriately) how wrong-headed this is. Not that he needs my two cents, but here's how I would have phrased the general idea:

I don't make money when my opponents make correct decisions. I make money only when they make mistakes. The most fundamental categories of mistake they will make are bad folds (when they have the best hand) and bad calls (when they don't). Of these two basic types of error, bad calls are far more lucrative overall. This is because of two factors. First, bad calls result in bigger pots than bad folds. Second, bad calls are a much more frequent error than bad folds, especially among low-stakes players such as those that populate Vegas's $1-2 games.

The consequence of these observations is that opponents' bad calls are the single most important key to making money in poker. Well, I'll qualify that. One could argue that avoiding making bad calls oneself--or, more generally, making fewer and less costly mistakes than one's opponents--is even more important. But in terms of what you might be able to manipulate opponents to do, inducing bad calls is the vein of gold.

One of the most frequent post-hand commentaries that bad players offer shows how poorly they grasp this concept. Hardly an hour of play goes by without somebody making a prohibitively large bet on the flop, folding the field, then showing an overpair with a comment like, "I didn't want anybody drawing at that flush/straight." If you ever want to show the poker world that you're unclear on the concept, be one of the guys who does that. What you should really want, of course, is for players to call too much money with inferior or speculative holdings, while simultaneously being able to deny them proper implied odds for the call by being able to get away from your hand on the occasions when they hit their draw, miracle two pair or trips, etc.

All of which is a long way of introducing what I thought was the most mysterious lacuna in Miller's column: the near-total lack of comment on his student's check on the flop. At the end, he does add this: "The irony of all this [i.e., his long criticism of his student's stated goal] is that I like his raise just fine. (I would have simply bet the flop, but given his check, I like the raise.) It's just his reasoning that was bunk. I like the raise specifically because lots of worse hands--tens, nines, diamonds, straight draws, and so forth--will call. My student raised thinking he would get folds, but in fact his bet is going to get action from all the right hands."

I don't disagree, but I would have put much more emphasis on what is passed over lightly with just the parenthetical remark. I would insist that betting out should be the default plan, with a check-raise an acceptable alternative only if the student can articulate very specific facts about his opponents that can justify it. Perhaps there's an aggressive player on the button who always bets when everybody checks to him. Maybe the student has been playing in a perfectly straightforward manner--check/folding flops when he has less than top pair, betting them only when he has better than that--and he has reason to think observant opponents have noticed this tendency and will try to steal from him. He may know one of the other players always bets draws rather than trying to take a free card. But there has to be something very specific about this particular confluence of opponents and circumstances to make going for a check-raise a viable alternative to betting.

I would give two reasons for this argument. First, as Mike Caro repeats ad infinitum, the obvious, straightforward action is usually the right one, and you need special circumstances to make deviating from it profitable. A continuation bet while holding an overpair to the board is clearly the most obvious, straightforward choice, the one least likely to trigger the fatal consequences of Fancy Play Syndrome.

Second, on a relatively draw-heavy board, giving a free card to three opponents would be a mortal sin, not forgivable with any subsequent act of atonement. One would need to be highly confident that a bet from one of them was going to be forthcoming before choosing to go for the check-raise. In this particular hand, without running any numbers, offhand I'd put the requisite level of confidence in an opponent betting at something like 80-90%. In order to have that high degree of confidence, one would need to be able to articulate specific facts about the situation based on previous observations and patterns.

So my only criticism of Miller's column is that I think he passes too lightly over the bet versus check-raise decision, as if it's kind of just a matter of taste or style. That may, in fact, not be his view of it. Maybe there just wasn't room to go into it while still airing out his main point about the flawed rationale his student gave. But I think that the check on the flop (assuming there were not adequate, specific justifications for it) it as big a problem as the warped reasoning about inducing folds.

Poker gems, #447

Dennis Miller, in HBO special "The Raw Feed":

I saw a painting of drug-sniffing dogs playing poker. It was awful. They were all ganging up on this little Shi-Tzu who was trashed on PCP, overplaying small pairs. You hate to see that.

Poker gems, #443

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, November 2, 2011 (vol. 24, #12), page 34.

The great thing about the turn is that nearly every drawing hand is an underdog to a decent made hand....

Therefore, whenever you bet the turn, you usually want draws to call. My guess is that statement strikes many of you as wrong. "I bet to get the draws out!" you exclaim. "I sure as heck don't want them calling and drawing out on me!"

Nope. You want them calling. Or at least you should. Because if you're betting so much on the turn that the draws fold, then you're also pricing out many of the weaker made hands. With no draws and no weaker made hands to call, you're getting action only from better hands. which means you're making losing bets. If trying to get draws out is how you think about the turn, then you have it all wrong.

"See a lot of cheap flops"

My friend Josie posted about a big tournament she recently played at Foxwoods, here. She says, "My modus operandi was to try to see alot of flops on the cheap and early. My guideline for these cheap flops was that I had to hit better than one pair to keep going otherwise muck after the flop."

What follows is the comment I left on her blog. But after submitting it, I decided that I might as well post it here, too, since I spent some time writing it, and perhaps readers will find it useful.

You didn't ask for my advice, but I think that is a lousy plan.

One of the best gems of poker wisdom I've ever come across is this, from John Vorhaus: "There's nothing more expensive than a cheap flop." (http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/08/poker-gems-155.html)

The first problem is that if somebody raises behind you, you are faced with choosing between (A) abandoning the chips you already put in, or (B) playing a weak hand against a raiser from out of position. Not a very attractive pair of options, is it?

The second problem is that you are relying on hitting a hand in order to win. So is everybody else limping in. You have no better chance of flopping a monster than anybody else. Playing this way levels the playing field and eliminates whatever edge in skill you might have. You're turning a poker tournament into a game of bingo.

The third problem is that the great majority of the time you will not flop a monster, and you'll have to fold. This is a big leak of chips. Ever seen a water bill when you had a leaky faucet you didn't know about? Drip, drip, drip, one big blind at a time, your stack leaks down the drain. It is mathematically demonstrable that over the long run you will not win enough when you hit to make up for all the small losses you take along the way.

As a general rule, calling (preflop or postflop) should be your LAST option. There are definitely situations where it is the best route, but you should always first try to find a reason for an aggressive action (bet or raise), secondly consider folding, and only if it's clear that neither of those is optimal consider a call. You are turning that basic, sound, universal strategy on its head by making a call your first choice.

I defy you to find any well-regarded tournament strategy book or successful tournament player who advocates the approach you're describing. I'd bet you $100 you can't find one. There's a reason for that: IT'S A TERRIBLE STRATEGY THAT ONLY WEAK, LOSER PLAYERS EMPLOY!

Don't be one of them.

Now that I'm in my own forum, I can add a couple more thoughts.

Yet another disadvantage of this plan is how transparent it makes your hand when you do finally catch a flop. Opponents know that you're limping a lot, but you're presumably still raising with your best starting hands. Ipso facto, they know even before the flop that you don't have a big pair, A-K, A-Q, etc. They also know that when you limp, this is followed by a fold on most flops, which sets you up to be bluffed the 98% of the time that you don't flop two pair or better. If you do bet or play back at their flop bet, they'll know you have a real hand, and they can give up with only a small loss--which means only a small win for you.

Josie's post gave a concrete example of how this knowledge can be used, though in this case to her advantage. She had 10-6 on the button, with a flop of A-A-6. She called down a bluffer, confident that he didn't have an ace because he didn't raise pre-flop. Fine. But others can use exactly the same logic against you. You can't credibly represent having the ace the same way you could if you had raised on your button in that spot.

A far, far better strategy is frequent, small raises. Make the same size raises with, say, 20% of your starting hands, consisting of a mix of big pairs, unpaired Broadway cards, small pairs, suited connectors, and a few random fliers, and your opponents will never be able to know whether you're betting the flop for value, as a bluff, or on a draw. When they are reduced to pure guessing about your hand, they will make a lot of mistakes, which translates to chips going your way.

An alternative to making exactly the same size raise every time (say, 2.5 big blinds) is to vary it according to your position and the number of players who limped in ahead of you. That is, you generally want to play bigger pots when you have better position, smaller pots when out of position, all else being equal. You can also sensibly raise more after a bunch of limpers than when everybody has folded to you, because the pot has already grown, and you want to make the pot odds less attractive for the bottom-feeders. But the size of your raise should never be dependent on the strength of your down cards. Bet sizing tells are among the easiest for opponents to spot patterns in.

Limping begets limping. You may be excited when your 6-5 offsuit hits a 9-6-5 flop, but the guy who you let in cheap with 9-6 likes it even better, and may take your whole stack. He would have folded if you had raised with your little connectors.

Limping makes exactly nobody afraid of you. Limping never forces your opponents to make a difficult decision.

Finally, consider this: You never win the pot pre-flop by limping. You can never steal the blinds with a limp. You never induce a better hand to fold by limping.

I certainly understand the appeal of the "see a lot of cheap flops" approach. It's low-risk, loses chips only slowly, and once in a while scores you a big pot. It also is relatively simple to execute, requiring few hard decisions. But it simply cannot succeed over the long run. When it works, it's by sheer dumb luck going your way. That's no way for a skilled player to take on the game.

Not only does this make you look like a weak player, it actually turns you into a weak player. I don't think there is a single thing to recommend it.

My thinking on this subject was changed forever by reading a great column by Ed Miller, back in December of 2008. It's available online here, and I highly recommend it. He's talking about cash games, but the same principles apply to tournaments. Choice excerpts:

So, your [limping] strategy must rely mostly on making a hand and getting value for it. Unfortunately, that's the same strategy that your opponents will have. And that's the fundamental problem with overlimping; it creates situations in which you and your opponents are all playing roughly the same way. When everyone is playing the same way, no one has an edge....

The bottom line is that when you overlimp, you're mostly hoping to make a hand and win a big pot, and yet it's hard to stack someone or otherwise win a big pot when the hand starts out limped seven ways. And to top it off, your opponents are also hoping to make a hand and win a big pot, and they're almost as good at doing it as you are. So, you just don't have a whole lot of edge....

When seven people see the flop in a limped pot, everyone is playing "make-a-hand" poker, and you don't have it much better than anyone else. But when you raise preflop and only one or two people call, often your opponents will be playing make-a-hand poker while you will be playing "I win if you don't make a hand." This scenario can offer you a much more significant edge over your opponents....

Overlimping is not at all universally bad. It keeps you in the hand and gives you some chance to win a big pot. And in very aggressive games where people are raising and reraising like crazy, overlimping can often be your best play.

But when the game is passive and many pots are being played five-, six-, or seven-handed for the price of the big blind, overlimping often handicaps you. It forces you to play primarily make-a-hand poker, and therefore it deprives you of many of your potential edges. Try raising instead. Doing so can tilt many pots to your advantage and enable you to exploit much larger edges. The bigger your edges, the more money you'll make.

When I first read this, the phrase "make-a-hand poker" instantly struck a chord with me. It's one of those little nuggets that lodged deeply inside my brain. I will occasionally now catch myself playing this way (especially if I've stayed at the table for too long and I'm feeling fatigued), and that phrase will leap to the front of my mind as a self-scolding: "You're playing make-a-hand poker again, aren't you?" It will usually cause me to either return to my tight-aggressive baseline game, or decide that my A-game is gone and it's time to go home, both of which are much better choices than to stay in the loose-passive rut.

So, Josie, if you find this way of thinking about the "see a lot of cheap flops" game plan enlightening, divide your thanks between Ed and me.

Poker gems, #425

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, June 15, 2011 (vol 24, #12), p. 42.

If you're paying enough attention to the game, you should see several accidentally exposed cards every hour that you play--cards that get flashed during the deal, during folds, when people look at their hands, and so forth. No, I'm not saying that you should crane your neck to look at your opponents' cards. But cards flash all the time, and the only way that you won't see them is if you aren't looking. If you aren't seeing them, you aren't looking enough.

Ed Miller

I played at the Venetian yesterday afternoon. My first table was all deadly serious players trying hard to win--hard place to make money. I noticed that the next one over was much more jovial, so when a seat opened up I got permission to move.

I realized that one player looked familiar, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why. He looked like Ed Miller, columnist for Card Player magazine and Sklansky's co-author on No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice. I wasn't sure it was him at first, so snapped the above picture and asked Twitter for opinions. Nobody responded, but over time conversation made clear that I was right. I may have impressed him (in a strange way) by being the only one at the table who knew that he had once been on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."

I wish I had some great story to tell--me making a phenomenal play against him, or us forming a lifelong friendship, or discovering that he is a devoted reader of this blog, or whatever. But truth is, it was kind of a boring session with not much interesting happening. Sorry.

Ed Miller is obviously clueless

In a recent column for Card Player magazine, available here, the demonstrably idiotic Ed Miller* writes:

The “Cold Decked By A Drunk” Beat

There is a loud, drunk person at your $1-$2 table. Every third hand or
so, he moves all-in before the flop. Usually he wins the blinds and a $2 limp or
two. When this happens, he taunts everyone at the table for being scared of him.
Every once in a while he gets called. When that has happened he has shown hands like Jd 5s and 4c 2c . He’s usually up against a big hand, but so far he’s been lucky to win about half of these pots. Whenever he wins, he cackles gleefully. Whenever he loses, he rebuys for $100 from a thick wad of bills.

Ahem! In what conceivable way is J-5 anything like the most powerful hand in poker, the 2-4 (in crubs, no less!)?

On behalf of the Holy Order of the Mighty Deuce-Four, I demand an apology and retraction!


Incidentally, Miller's column continues the hypothetical story like this:

Last time around, drunk guy lost with Qd 4d when his flush
draw missed. He’s sitting on $100, and he moves all-in. Everyone folds to you in
the big blind, and you have Qs Qc . You call. He starts laughing
and says to you, “You’re going to love this one,” and tables Ad Ah.
No queen hits the board, and you lose.

For me, that's no hypothetical. It actually happened. This was back when the Aladdin was in transition to becoming Planet Hollywood and the poker room was temporarily upstairs, at the top of the escalator. There was a drunk Irish guy who was shoving blind every hand. I watched him to be sure he wasn't peeking at his cards first, and he wasn't. About the fifth time in a row that he did that, I picked up J-J. Plenty good enough to call a blind shove. Yep--the luckbox flipped up A-A that time. Arrrggghhh!


*I'm just funnin' here. I actually like Miller's writing a lot. Of all the columnists that churn out stuff for Card Player, Miller is by far the most likely to present a specific tactic or idea that I can actually remember and use the next time I'm going out to play. His book with Sklansky on NLHE also probably did more to change how I think about the game than any other.

Poker gems, #369

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, April 21, 2010 (vol. 23, #8), p. 50.


The guy who won't fold is usually the most profitable opponent at the table for you. You're going to miss out on the party if you tighten up too much and wait to catch a big pair or flop a set. I mention this first because it's my experience that tightening up is exactly how most players react to a non-folder. It's ridiculous when the loosest guy at the table has trouble getting action, but I've seen it many times. You're going to get the guy's money by playing with him, not by waiting and waiting.

Poker gems, #307

Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth, in Small Stakes Hold'em, pp. 17-18.


The beats do not cause you to lose in the long run. Playing passively does.

...

The strange notion that your profits might be bigger against better players comes from the exact same trick that poker plays on your brain. The most horrifying result in poker is the "bad beat," when you lose a big pot that you were heavily favored to win. When you experience a terrible outcome, your brain tells you to avoid the cause, the same way your brain tells you to avoid a hot stove after you get burnt. It is trying to help you, but instead it is misleading you! Bad beats happen most often in the very best games. Avoiding bad beats by playing against only good players is the worst thing you can do.

...Your opponents' mistakes create the potential for more profit, but if you play incorrectly, you may not take advantage of it. If you do not win in the long run, it is not because your opponents are making too many mistakes; it is because you are.

Poker gems, #226

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, March 11, 2009, (vol. 22, #5), p. 84-85.


Here's my way of looking at it. Poker is not a social game--not if you care to play it well, that is. Learning to play poker well is a solitary exercise. It's an exercise in introspective spirituality. There's no good way to measure whether you're a good player or not. It has to come from within.

I look at it like learning a martial art. I am studying something that will make me a better person. I am always learning. I have never mastered it, nor can I ever master it. I am more skilled than some people, and less skilled than others. Some things I learn quickly, and others I learn slowly. It's a lifelong task.

Every day, I learn something new. My skill improves, and my decisions are sharper and faster. And every day, I have prepared to learn even more the next day. Every day, I climb a new step, and yet I will never reach the summit. I can only be satisfied with how far I've come and be eager for the journey ahead.

The money won or lost is irrelevant. I mean, truly irrelevant. I know that some people say, "Money is the way poker players keep score," but that's nonsense. You keep your own score. Are you happy with how much you're learned? Are you ready to learn more? What do you believe you've mastered, and what challenges are still before you?

...

Poker is a psychological trial. It will test you every day. It will test your ability to handle failure, and it will test your ability to accept success with humility and temperance. You cannot hope to succeed in these trials unless you are strong and confident from within. How do you feel about how you play? What do you think you have to learn? And, are you ready to play today and learn that thing?

Ed Miller: Straight guy

While I was looking for a photo of Ed Miller to illustrate the previous post, I decided to read his Wikipedia entry. Maybe everybody else already knew this, but I had not previously heard that he was the subject of a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy episode on Bravo. I can't find that episode online, and it appears that DVDs of it aren't available through Netflix, so I'll mostly just have to wonder about the before and after looks.

However, I did find one short clip from the episode over on Hulu.com. It shows the crew meeting up with Ed at the Silverton casino:





I also found this short YouTube clip of Ed visiting his mother's home after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Sad.

Poker gems, #225

Ed Miller, in Card Player magazine column, March 11, 2009 (vol. 22, #5), p. 84.


As social a game as poker is, it's also an extremely lonely one. You enjoy your wins and suffer your losses alone. No one knows how much you've won or lost today, this week, or this month. Even worse, no one cares. And I mean, no one. Even your mom doesn't care. When I play poker, my wife doesn't care how I did. My friends don't care. No one cares.

Poker lessons from non-poker movies: "Charlotte's Web"

I just finished watching "Charlotte's Web," a movie so adorable and charming that it might even make an arachnophobe think spiders are cute. If you don't get at least a little teary during Wilbur's last conversation with Charlotte, you're an even harder-hearted SOB than I am.

What's this got to do with poker? Well, the funniest line in the movie, for my money, is when Templeton the rat, perfectly voiced by Steve Buscemi, jumps off the truck at the county fair. He's in a hurry to find all the dropped food goodies that have been described to him. He eagerly exclaims, "OK, where's the filth?"

Charlotte disapproves of his greed: "Have you ever heard that good things come to those who wait?"

Templeton retorts, "No. Good things come to those who find it and shove it in their mouth!"

****

Once in a while something I read has an immediate effect on either how I play or how I think while I'm playing. One of the most recent was this Card Player magazine column by Ed Miller. He accurately describes how in live, low-buy-in NLHE games there is an unfortunately tendency for many players to limp in with a wide range of weak hands. The column is about exploiting that weak play. He uses a phrase that immediately stuck in my brain: "make-a-hand poker."

The bottom line is that when you overlimp, you're mostly hoping to make a
hand and win a big pot, and yet it's hard to stack someone or otherwise win a
big pot when the hand starts out limped seven ways. And to top it off, your
opponents are also hoping to make a hand and win a big pot, and they're almost
as good at doing it as you are. So, you just don't have a whole lot of
edge.

...

When seven people see the flop in a limped pot, everyone is playing
"make-a-hand" poker, and you don't have it much better than anyone else. But
when you raise preflop and only one or two people call, often your opponents
will be playing make-a-hand poker while you will be playing "I win if you don't
make a hand." This scenario can offer you a much more significant edge over your
opponents.

Now, I realize that this isn't a particularly brilliant or original observation, but something about that phrase hit home with me. It has caused me to scold myself at the table when my first inclination is to jump on the limper train: "You're playing 'make-a-hand poker' again, aren't you? Do you really expect to win just by getting luckier than everybody else?"

It doesn't always change my play, but there have been a fair number of times that it has; I either dump a crappy hand and wait for a better spot, or decide instead to raise. In the latter case, I can then either make my opponents worry about how strong my holding is or surprise them when a tricky little hand hits the flop hard under great disguise.

The fact that you can take either approach successfully (dump it or pump it) is what I find so great about the little exchange between Charlotte and Templeton. You can achieve success in poker by either sitting back and waiting for the good things to come your way, or by taking the initiative--by grabbing it and shoving it in your mouth.

Some days I play Charlotte poker. Some days I play Templeton poker. I can usually make money either way, but Templeton poker is a helluva lot more fun.

Things people ask me, #3: Buying in short

So where was #2 in this series of things I frequently get asked via email and comments? Well, I kind of forgot to label it as such, but it's the post called "Where I play." All of them can be found through the label "questions."


I've mentioned many times that I almost always buy in to my $1-2/$1-3 NLHE games for $100, which isn't always the minimum (a few places set the min at $50, and Bill's $1 game has a buy-in of $20 minimum), but is also never the maximum. Conventional wisdom is that you have a strategic advantage if you always buy in for the maximum, particularly if you figure to be a better player than most of your opposition. So people naturally wonder why I go the other way. (It's technically not "short" in the sense of being below the table minimum, but I'll call it that, since it is below the table maximum.)

To be honest, the habit started because I was new to playing, trying to just get a feel for the Vegas games, I was scared money, and I didn't have any real bankroll to speak of. As you may know by now, I wasn't planning to play for a living when I moved here; I was planning to get a job dealing and play on the side until I got good enough to go pro. But the dealing job never panned out, and I found that I was winning from the get-go, so I just sort of fell into it.

During that period, I discovered that I liked buying in short. It allowed me to feel out the table without having too much at risk. My liking for it continues, for much the same reason. I think of it as taking the temperture of the table by sticking my toe in the water, rather than diving in. The first buy-in is expendable--not that I'm seeking to just give it away, but I'm willing to let it be an investment in learning how the table plays and reacts to me, if need be.

Suppose in the first few orbits I find prime bluffing opportunities. I can make the all-in move. I either get away with it and win the pot and learn that this table might be one I can push around, or I get caught, lose not too much money, and learn that this table might be one for value-betting my strong hands to make my nut, rather than blustering my way to a win.

Similarly, it allows me to discover if I have an exceptionally smart and/or tricky opponent who has trapped me with a second-best hand without losing a ton. Occasionally, I find myself at an unusually sharky table, and when I have to pull out that next Benjamin after losing the first, it occurs to me, "I don't have an edge against this table." That prompts me (if I don't let my ego get in the way) to move to a different table or a different poker room, before I lose more.

There's also an emotional component to it. I find it extraordinarily satisfying to start with $100 and watch it grow to, say, $500. Sitting on $500 feels oodles better if I started with $100 than if I started with $400. And in the worst-case scenario, if I lose it all in one hand, and it's either too late or I'm too tired or discouraged to keep playing, my net loss is still only $100 in the former case versus $400 in the latter.

Starting somewhat on the short side also usually forces me to play tight at first, which is a bit of imposed discipline that I definitely sometimes need. To be profitable with a shorter stack, you just have to be more picky about starting hand requirements, less inclined to chase draws, etc., because you don't have the implied odds to play a broad range of speculative hands. That imposed discipline also has the lovely side effect of creating a certain table image.

To the extent that there is any typical session of poker, I'd say that my most common pattern is this: I buy in for $100, play tight and solid, establish a rocky image, and gradually build up to around $200 or $250. That's when I either leave the game or seriously change gears, depending on how long it has taken me, what I think of the table and my edge over it, where I am on the mental tiredness/alertness scale, and various other factors. I love it when indicators are to do the latter. That's when I start bobbing and weaving, making the tricky plays, playing the speculative hands. By that point, I have a much better feel for which players I can push, which to avoid, which ones will pay me off when I have the goods, and so on. My opponents will also have developed a false impression of my playing tendencies, which I can now exploit. I can also absorb the impact of a bad beat (or a bad move or a bad read on my part) or two without turning my W into an L for the day. Finally, if all is going well, there will be one or two bad players who are in the hole and trying to climb out (a process I will have witnessed step by step), and I can take full advantage of their growing desperation.

Of course, it doesn't always work out that way. Lots of things can muck up the game plan. But by far my most profitable and satisfying sessions are the ones where this pans out: I buy in for $100, play tight and solid, build the stack slowly while simultaneously building a reputation, then turn up the heat when I've got more in front of me, and accelerate the profit-making, finally leaving with a tidy profit. Ain't much in this world that makes me happier than the cash-out and drive home after such a day at the tables.

To be sure, there are at least two major advantages that buying in for the maximum would convey, which I am sacrificing by this choice. First, if I am actually the best or one of the best players at the table, my edge is greater against weaker players when we both have big stacks, because deep-stacked decisions are more complicated, risky, and error-prone. A less experienced opponent is more likely than I am to make a very expensive mistake, to my profit. Second, it's great to be on the good side of a nuts versus second-nuts situation and make the most money possible from it, which I can't do if it happens near the beginning of a session and I have only $100 in front of me. I might be missing out on, say, another $300 that I would have made on the hand if I could have gotten the opponent to commit his stack when we were both equally deep. (Of course, the flip side of that is that when I'm on the second-nuts side of it, I don't lose as much. But presumably I'm better than my average opponent in escaping that kind of trap when necessary.)

Those are not small considerations. They are, in fact, the main basis for the conventional advice to buy in for the maximum. And maybe I should. I don't preach this as gospel. I'm just telling you what works for me. It has been a successful pattern for a couple of years now, and I'm content with it.

For further reading, Daniel Negreanu wrote a nice blog post debunking the myth of the strategic advantage of the big stack here. And in his first columns for Card Player magazine about a year ago, Ed Miller did a bang-up job explaining the same concept:

http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/9869

http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11158

He then proceeded to show how starting with a shorter stack provides a particular strategic advantage against a wild table:

http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11211

http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/273/11226

In apparent response to Miller's series, fellow Card Player columnist Bob Ciaffone penned a jeremiad in which he grudgingly acknowledges the strategic advantage of the short stack in no-limit poker, but decries it as "a poker pestilence" (great phrase!), rather than something to be desired and/or attempted by his students or readers. In this piece, Ciaffone unleashes on habitual short-stack, hit-and-run players (and the casinos with buy-in rules that encourage them) a heaping helping of vitriol that I don't recall ever seeing come out in his writing before or since. It's a must-read column: http://www.cardplayer.com/author/article/all/4/11117

So consider all sides of the matter; don't just take my advice. In fact, I wouldn't even call what I've written here "advice." As I said earlier, it's just what I have found works well for me. Your mileage may vary.