Entries from October 2007 ↓

This is the beginning of a beautiful series of articles.

I will go through every hand in every position and today I am starting with Ace King offsuit out of the blinds.

Oh btw, this is for No-Limit Texas Hold’em, maybe Dan will make a similiar series for Limit Hold’em.

But “the blinds” is not a position you say? Well, I lied, deal with it. I am a poker player after all

But seriously, the blinds play pretty much the same so I decided to lump them together this time. I will separate them if it changes decisions and situations.

Have you ever wondered how exactly you should play AK? It is notorious for missing the flop and getting beginners into trouble because it can look so good pre-flop, but when the flop hits it can go from gold to a piece of <enter favorite bad word>.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

Today I want to introduce 4 friends of mine. They will take part in all of these posts.

Mike Isaballah - Mike here is your typical youngster, he’s in his 20’s and has seen all the poker shows and seen how it is done. He is very aggressive, too much so. It usually results in him getting all-in in bad spots. It also means that he will tilt people because they will over-adjust.

Steve Hateswife - Steve is your average 40-year old who likes to sit down at the poker table and relax. A nice vacation from the high pitch soundstorms he frequently encounters at home. He is a bit too passive overall and a bit too loose.

Grandma Jones - Grandma here is about 120 years old, she never gives up in life nor in poker. She frequently calls down with any piece of the flop, sometimes she might fold because she needs a glass of water or else she’ll die.

Mikael Pengabank - Mikael is from Scandinavia. You know what that means, don’t you? He is tight and he is aggressive. He is a tough player to play against, because he is good at reading your hand and knowing where he stands in the hand. It is hard to extract money from him. I guess you could say Mikael here is a professional poker player because he frequently wins money playing poker and has done so for many years.

Pre-Flop With AK

The cards are dealt, one at a time, flowing smoothly over the online surface. You finally get to peek at your cards and what do you see? The dreaded Ace King, sometimes you feel bad about getting this hand because you just don’t know what to do with it, but life goes on and you tell yourself that you rock.

The game is $1/2 ($200 buy-in) NLHE 6-max and the first player to act raises it to the standard $7. Everyone folds and the action is on you, what do you do?

Vs. Mike Isaballah

You should re-raise. How do I know? Because you have to compare your hand vs Mike’s range here. And since he is an aggressive player he will be raising UTG with a very wide range. He might raise JTo, 76s sometimes, any pocket pair and hands like that.

And then you have to ask yourself, what will he call your re-raise with? You generally want to re-raise when you will get a call from a worse hand and thus getting the opportunity to stack YOUR OPPONENT! YEAH… OK.

Will Mike call with worse than AK? Absolutely, he might call with AQ, KQs that you totally dominate. He will most likely call with many pocket pairs also (unfortunately you are not ahead of those).

Vs. Steve Hateswife

What about our friend Stevie here? He will likely raise a tighter range of hands under the gun. But you should re-raise again. Why? Steve is a passive player isn’t he? Yes he is, but what you aren’t thinking about is what he range of hands he will call with.

You see, you are right on the fact that Steve is tighter on his opening range so he might only raise AT, KJ, 99 and better.

But what will he call with when you re-raise?

A player like Steve will usually call re-raises very liberally with hands like AJ and KJ hoping to hit something. What he doesn’t know is that you often have him totally dominated so when he hits that Ace or King you will most likely win his whole stack (or at least a big chunk of it).

Vs. Grandma Jones

Grandma Jones raises UTG and it’s to you again with your AK.

This situation is a bit harder. We have to think a bit more here, what do you think Grandma Jones raises under the gun? Which hands do you think she calls re-raises with?

A player like Grandma Jones will usually not raise under the gun without a premium hand and limp with anything else. That means that she will likely raise a range that is something like AA-JJ, MAYBE AQ and KQs, maybe even limp AK. You will have to observe a player like this and what their tendencies are.

What happens if you re-raise?

She will most likely call with KK, AK, AQ, KQs (if she plays that) and only hand I can see her 4-betting you with is Aces so you can safely fold if she re-re-raises you.

I say re-raise again because she will pay you off so lightly when you dominate her and you will know when she has you beat because she will suddenly spring to life.

Vs. Mikael Pengabank

Mikael is a tough tricky bastard. He will not be so eager to put his money in with a hand that you beat. If you’ve been playing solidly (which you should) then he will most likely fold a hand like Ace Queen. So you’re in a tricky spot here because like vs. many good players, it will be hard to extract value.

I would still re-raise because you have to re-raise a hand like AK vs. a player like this. If you’re just calling with AK and re-raising AA and KK then it becomes a bit too easy to read you.

And you never know, he might call you with AQ and go broke vs. your AK. Another scenario would be that you re-raise and he calls with Jacks, the flop comes A85r and you check to him and …

Caution

Remember, poker is a game of many variables and it is your job to properly assess them. When you misjudge it can lead to a lot of bad spots.

But when you know what someone is doing you will have a better idea of what to do. If you’re a beginner you probably do not know the best lines to take with different hands even when you know what he might have.

Don’t worry, the more you read and learn the better you become. These posts and articles are meant to show you different situations and how I think and evaluate them.

They are just one perspective. You should learn from several sources and learn to think for yourself!

How Do You Play AK On The Flop?

Next time I will go into detail how you should play different flops after you get called.

What happens when you miss the flop? What happens when you hit? How can you win the most and when should you just give up?

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When we left off I had just doubled up and was getting back into the action with a stack of ~$4k, playing 20/40 NL in a fast-paced live game running 6-handed.

The Waiting Game

The game was playing very aggressive, and very “actiony” - players willing to call raises preflop, reraise preflop, and get involved with less-than-premium holdings after the flop. I’m willing to play relatively tight and wait for high equity hands because of the action at the table.

I tread water for a few hours, losing and winning some small pots. I’m forced to fold postflop a number of times after raising and missing my hand - 88 doesn’t look so hot on a K9T flop when 3 people call your preflop raise.

I didn’t get many hands for a few hours, fortunately I was able to exploit my image a bit. I stole a couple pots on pure bluffs - I could donk the flop into the preflop raiser with backdoors and overcards and get a quick fold because of my nitty image. I also 3-barrelled(bet the flop, turn, and river strongly) a particularly dangerous board (AKxxx, 3 spades) against a good player who was capable of laying down an Ace.

I start to splash around a bit, but raising light is counterproductive when it is hard to take down a pot postflop and multiple players call raises - so I get a snack and settle in.

The Pots Keep Getting Bigger

I’m sitting with $3800 having lost a bit while splashing around. Everyone folds to an aggressive player in the small blind who covers me.

He open-raises to $140, I call with T8. I’m happy seeing a flop in position with different types of hands.

Flop: J 9 7 (Pot: $280)

Jackpot! I flop the nuts on a drawy board against an aggressive player. I’ve been splashing around a little, hopefully I look a bit more “action” than I did a few hours earlier.

He leads for $200, I raise to $700.

I need to build this pot early before an unfavorable turn or river card could kill my action - and raising the flop is the best way to give myself a chance to get my money in. Hopefully he will think I’m semi-bluffing, or trying to take a stand against the big stack. If I can encourage a “pissing contest” type confrontation, so much the better.

He calls in tempo.

Turn: (J 9 7) 7 (Pot: $1680)

The turn isn’t a great card since it could potentially make him a better hand, and gives worse hands like AA a four-out redraw. It doesn’t change my plan, though.

He checks, I bet $900. This will leave about $2000 left to bet in a $3500 pot if he calls the turn, a good sized river shove.

He starts reaching for chips, and asks the dealer for time. He asks me “Do you want the money to go in now, or on the river?”
I reply with my standard response to any question: “Whatever.”

He says “this is for the turn” and puts out a call of my $900, and then says “and this is for the river” and puts about $5k down, betting the river dark, and putting me all-in.

I call instantly, before the dealer gets a chance to burn + turn. My opponent seems a bit taken aback, I guess he put me on a draw and expected me to fold the river if I missed…

The River

The river, unfortunately, is the 9, leaving the board:

River: (J 9 7 7) 9 (Pot: $7600)

My opponent looks dismayed, so in my haste I turn over my cards before waiting to see his, and he mucks facedown! His likely holdings were an overpair, a draw, or a pure bluff - nothing else makes sense.

It’s incredible to have the dealer slide such an enormous pot in my direction, especially after such bad card for my hand hit on the river and it seemed like all might be lost. I was so stoked - it took me three hands to stack all my chips!

I played for awhile until I stopped for dinner, though no eventful hands followed.

Fortunately, I’d made quite a stack, turning a rough start into an awesome day!
The last day I played limit - I may do an Epilogue discussing some of the interesting LHE situations that came up, if there is interest.

I can’t wait to go back, live poker is a great change of pace, and it is exhilarating playing higher stakes than ever before. I hope you enjoyed the recount of my NL adventure!

Henri posted some good links today, the Phil Ivey vs Paul Jackson hand is pretty intense! Let’s break it down and see if we can get into the heads of these high-stakes players.

Opening moves

Preflop: Ivey completes, Jackson checks. This is going to happen often, both players just want to see a flop. We can narrow ranges a bit - they probably don’t have AK, AA type hands - but not much else.

Flop: JJ7r
Jackson checks, Ivey stabs 80k into ~180k, a little less than half pot.

As the narrator correctly points out, Ivey will be making this bet with a very wide range of hands, putting pressure on his shorter-stacked opponent.

First Blood

Jackson clearly can’t call his 65o, but he realizes Phil’s range is wide, so he takes a shot at the pot, raising to $170k hoping to take it down. Many opponents will give up their bluff here and yield the pot, so it’s a decent move. Unfortunately, his opponent is Phil Ivey.

Ivey thinks for a moment, and likely realizes that there are very few calling hands on this flop, so Jackson is forced into a “raise or fold” situation when he holds, say, K-hi or worse. Jackson’s checkraise could be pot-building with trips, but it could very well be a cheap bluff - Jackson’s raise is barely over a minraise!

I’ve Got It, Do You?

Ivey doesn’t buy that Jackson has trips just yet, so he puts out a “I’ve got trips - do you have trips?” raise to $320k. This is a nice raise size, it forces Jackson to call only $150k more, but it says “we’re getting all-in on the turn if you call,” so it essentially forces Jackson to decide for his whole stack.

The wheels are turning in Jackson’s head, too. He realizes what Phil did earlier - that if he actually had the J he probably wouldn’t play it so fast, and that Phil might have caught on that the flop check-raise was likely to be a bluff. Jackson essentially is saying “yup, I’ve got it” as he re-re-raises to $470k.

Jackson’s Mistake

Jackson clearly has game, and is not backing down from Ivey here in this pot. However, he made one critical mistake at this point.
Phil asks him “how much have you got left?”
Jackson counts it up, about $380k - but the pot is $1 million!

Phil’s thinking it over… asking himself questions like:

• “why did he leave $380k behind?”
• “does he want me to call or fold?”
• “What does he think I have?”

A bad player might min-re-re-raise with the nuts to try and induce a call. However, Jackson is a savvy opponent, one who knows that if Ivey’s got a hand it doesn’t matter whether he bets that $380 now or on the turn, it’s going in regardless. Jackson realizes his mistake as he counts his chips and tells Ivey how few he has left. He’s thinking “damn, I should have gone all-in, I only have 380 left.”

The most likely hand that would min-re-re-raise 150k more, leaving 380 behind, is a seat-of-the-pants bluff. It wants to risk the minimum, and doesn’t care about remaining chips because he(Jackson) will fold to further action. If he actually had a Jack, he would have counted out his remaining stack before acting, realized his opponent was pot-committed, and pushed. Occasionally this will be a clever trap with a full house or trips, but most times huge hands will move all-in rather than making a tiny re-raise.

This is (somewhat) apparent as we analyze it away from the table, with the privilege of seeing both hole cards. It’s an absolutely incredible move by both players, their insight and awareness of the other’s thoughts and likely holdings make this a truly awesome hand.

• The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker - Found this great article hidden in the depths of Bill Rini’s poker blog. It talks about what you have to do to become a winning player, it is very simple if you just do what you’re told.
• Why Money is Only One Third of Happiness - Great post by Tomaz who is a tennis coach and webentrepreneur. It delivers what the headline promises, good insightful read.
• How to Play Poker Like the Real Pros - Another good post by Bill Rini, this time it’s humorous so please don’t take it seriously!
• Phil Ivey vs. Paul Jackson - I’ve seen this before and I just watched it again. Crazy hand and a great hand. Don’t try this at home.

Yesterday I was lying in bed, tossing and turning because I had tried going to sleep too early. I hate when that happens, you go to bed thinking you’re tired and then you just stare at the ceiling. No complaints though, it’s a good time for me because I always get new ideas when I have time to think.

Today I put my latest idea into action with my Poker eCourse over at my regular website. It’s basically an eBook I had for my last website (a website before texas holdem poker 101) which I decided to dump because it got off bad and it was my first serious poker website.

Anyway, this eCourse is basically that eBook but in a newsletter format, you get one poker tip each week and special news and e-mails from me when I answer reader questions and when I add something spectacular to my website, things like that.

Yesterday I took a day off of poker and just watched a few movies and generally did nothing.

I’m going to workout now then probably hit the sauna (oh what a nice Finnish invention). After that I will probably play some poker.

I have no idea what Dan is up to, he said he was going to “head out”. He’ll have to come here and explain that, don’t you agree?