Diary of a Poker Journeyman - April 22nd, 2008
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10:15 am
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Short and sweet
Contrary to the usual routine, I skipped any poker-playing on Sunday, but I managed to make it to the tables for a few hours on Monday. I was pretty much planning to go anyway, but the deal was sealed when Momz ended up coming to town and beating me to the casino, so...there you go. Anyway, I'm happy to report that the losing streak has ended, and I closed out Monday's session booking a pretty decent win. Yay! Nothing really spectacular or specific to report. I just played pretty solid, caught decent hands, and caught some opponents willing to pay. Nothing magical about that. :) I had AK actually hit flops a couple times, which was amazing. I think I caught all of one whole set this session (jacks), but didn't get any action anyway, so whatever. Nothing particularly sneaky or wily went on; it was just a straight-up good run.
Two things to add.
One: we knew this already, but this session just drove it home once again -- stack size is so important. The stakes are 1/2, and I bought in for the max of $300. The two biggest stacks at the table when I sat down only barely had me covered. This is so much easier of a lineup than that previous session where I came in and half the people had upward of a grand in front of them. A lot of the money I made came from short stacks being committed to pots when I had them dominated. That's the kind of thing that happens when you play short-stacked; you find yourself in situations where you just can't fold, even though you should. Even better, people would rebuy short. This guy would bust, and buy back in for $70. That guy, $100. Bust again. Repeat. Those are my favorite kinds of opponents. Playing short-stacked has one thing going for it: it makes your decisions a lot easier, because you commit to a pot so much faster. But the downside of that is that, as your opponent, it makes my decisions easier, too. And a mistake for you is a lot more damaging than a mistake for me.
Two: Today marked the beginning of a new experiment for me in bet sizing. I've been reading No Limit Hold 'Em: Theory and Practice by Sklansky and Miller. Sklansky is, well, Sklansky. Miller has been my latest favorite since Small Stakes Hold 'Em, which I found a fantastic aid back during the heyday of my limit career. I've been absorbing a lot of new tactical tidbits from this book, especially in the arena of bet sizing, and I've been made to wonder (once again, as I've mused in this blog before) if I'm really betting enough. Based on the results of Monday's experiment, I'd like to say: probably not. Previously I'd been sitting pretty low in the bet size ranges (postflop, I mean), mostly as an artifact of early training when was more rooted in, well, teachings with different roots. My previous style would hold, for example, with a flop bet of around 2/3 to 3/4 the pot as standard. This make sense under certain contexts. First, it makes sense heads-up, which was my own fault for misapplying in a multiway situation. But beyond that, it also takes into account a balanced bluffing strategy and a certain degree of postflop tightness among your opponents. Basically it assumes that chips are worth something to your opponents, such as they would in, say, a tournament. However, we're talking a low-stakes cash game. This is a situation in which pot size on the flop is often meager compared to stack size, and you also tend to face a lot of unnecessary postflop loose-passiveness. That is a time where you want (1) less bluffing, and (2) more value betting, and that is a time where you want bigger bets. So I ramped up my flop bets to be closer to pot-sized, and for this particular session, anyway, the results have been pretty good. Not just for value, either, but also for a cascading effect on other people's action.
Wow, even I am not sure what I just said. :) Okay...it's like this. A real example from that session: I had 96o in the big blind. We had eight limpers see a flop of 765. I have middle pair and a gutshot (and an over, but that is one dangerous overcard if I hit my second pair). Mediocre at best. Pot is $16, and I bet $15. A calling station calls it behind me, and then a guy in late-middle pops it to $65. I don't know about you, but I insta-fold. Later on the guy said he'd flopped a straight, and I believe him (the flop was two-suited, so he was looking to protect it). Contrast that to how it might have gone previously. If I bet out $10 there instead of $15, the raise probably only goes to like $30 or $40. I'm much more likely to call in that spot, getting a cheaper price relative to stack size, and so getting better implied odds on my admittedly-still-pretty-crappy draw. So even spending more to make it easier to get out of hands seems to work out well; that wasn't even close to the only time I had bet-folded that day, and in some cases I feel like I might have bet-called if the bet sizes had been smaller. So that's another nice side-effect of bigger flop bets.
Anyway. This is all rather vague and still largely experimental anyway. Just something I wanted to jot down before I forgot it. Stack size important. Bet size important. Onward!
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