Tough Poker Hand
In one word, my trip to the 2015 European Poker Tour series in Malta was “brutal”. In almost every event, I doubled up in the first two hours only to either get unlucky in a huge pot or go super card dead, eventually busting near the end of the first day. This lead to me having zero cashes in the eight events I entered. Despite the abysmal results, I am very happy with how I played and focused throughout the trip. I realize that if I ran a bit better, the trip would have been an amazing success. For example, I lost with KK versus AK in the €5,300 main event for a three times average pot in the middle of day two. Had I won that hand, I would have almost certainly cashed and made a deep run. Poker is tough sometimes! I made a video blog discussing my thought process and a few of the interesting hands, which you can watch using this link. Let me know what you think!
Today I am going to share with you a tough hand from the €10,300 high roller event. This hand took place early in day 1. The blinds were 100/200 with a 25 ante. Everyone folded to me in the small blind. I looked down at Kc-9h. Theo Jorgensen, a well-respected high stakes pro, was in the big blind. We both had 50,000 (250 BB) stacks.
- Use poker tools (which are legal at all the poker rooms) like Holdem Manager and Pokerazor to assist you in learning which situations are positive for your equity. A great way to get better as a player is to go through your hand histories and plug them into these tools and see where you might want to alter your play in the future.
- Poker is tough sometimes! I made a video blog discussing my thought process and a few of the interesting hands, which you can watch using this link. Let me know what you think! Today I am going to share with you a tough hand from the €10,300 high roller event. This hand took place early in day 1. The blinds were 100/200 with a 25 ante.
- In poker, players form sets of five playing cards, called hands, according to the rules of the game. Each hand has a rank, which is compared against the ranks of other hands participating in the showdown to decide who wins the pot.
Player I'm not in favor of anything that will make the poker games tougher to beat. On the other hand, this new and expanded version of Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players should help to spread this extremely interesting game just as the original edition did, and to make it even more popular. Thus there will be more. Some poker hands are easy, and you know exactly what to do with them. But there are some hard poker hands that can make or break your winrate. To help you practice your poker skills, I created this 10 hand poker quiz that tests your ability to estimate what your opponents are playing AND what line you should take in some common preflop situations.
When I am in the small blind and a good player who knows how to abuse position is in the big blind, I tend to limp with most of my playable range. This is because if I raise and he calls, I will be playing from out of position against a range that will be nearly impossible to read (some players defend somewhat tightly and others defend with 100% of hands). If I raise and he reraises, I will be in a tough spot, playing a bloated pot out of position with a hand that will usually flop top or middle pair with a marginal kicker. If I raise and he folds, it means he had absolute trash. Instead, if I limp, I can easily call any reasonable raise with a large portion of my range, allowing me to see a flop for a cheap price. If he checks behind, that is also fine. So, I limped. Theo raised to 600 and I called. I do not think limp-reraising has any merit as my hand is not strong enough to pile a huge amount of chips into the pot from out of position, especially when I am unsure about the strength of Theo’s range.
The flop came Qh-Jh-Tc, giving me a straight. This is certainly an acceptable flop! I thought Theo would bet almost all of his range that was not a marginal made hand, such as J-2 or T-8, or a marginal draw, such as K-4 or 9-6. I thought he would bet top pair or better for value and his unpaired hands as bluffs, given this board should be significantly better for his range than mine. I assumed he would bet all of his strong draws. I do not think leading has much merit because if Theo has something decent, leading will save him a lot of money compared to if I get to check-raise, which was my plan. So, I checked. Unfortunately, he checked behind.
The turn was the (Qh-Jh-Tc)-3h. Even though a flush is now possible, my hand is still great. I imagine I have the best hand almost every time in this situation, because most players would bet the flop with a flush draw. Seeing how I thought Theo’s range was mostly marginal made hands and marginal draws, I thought betting was the only play that made sense. I assumed that if he had a marginal hand and I checked, he would either continue checking or bet but then fold to my check-raise. So, I bet 1,000 into the 1,425 pot and he called.
The river was the (Qh-Jh-Tc-3h)-7h. While my straight improved to a flush, my hand was now far from the nuts. It is important to realize that just because my hand moved up the hand ranking chart does not mean it improved in relation to my opponent’s hand. In reality, any heart on the river is quite bad for me because I only have a marginal bluff catcher with my marginal flush. When you have a bluff catcher, betting is usually a horrible idea, especially against a strong opponent. So, I checked and Theo bet 3,000 into the 3,425 pot.
This is a difficult spot because I had no clue if he would only make this bet with strong flushes or if he would bet with both strong flushes and total bluffs. Since I knew he was a well-respected pro, I decided he simply must be good enough to bet the effective nuts and total bluffs. I made the call and was shown the nuts, Ah-Qd.
Even though I lost this hand, I am perfectly happy with the way I played it. Notice that just because Theo had the nuts this time does not mean my call was a “mistake”. If we played this hand 100 times and he showed the nuts or the near nuts almost every time, then my call would be horrible, but that simply isn’t how poker works. Most likely, my call was either barely profitable or barely unprofitable. When you run into spots like this over and over in a short span of time, you are going to have a tough series. Hopefully I run a bit hotter at the next tournament stop.
If you want to learn more about how I think during poker tournaments , I made an exclusive webinar explaining everything I do that has allowed me to win year after year. If you are interested in taking your poker game to the next level, click here.
Be sure to check back next week for another educational blog post. Thanks for reading!
Why packing the proper bankroll is critical if you’re going to survive and thrive at this game
By Jerry “Stickman” Stich
The more knowledgeable you are about the game you’re playing, the better prepared you’ll be to enjoy it (and capitalize on opportunities). With multiple-play video poker, this means you’ll need to bring a larger bankroll in order to play as long as you could on a single-play game.
Normal video poker machines are called “single play” because they invite you to play one game at a time. But these certainly aren’t the only types of video poker games. You’ll also encounter games that enable you to play three, five, 10, 50 and even 100 games at a time.
These “multiple-play” games deal the exact same hand to three, five, 10, 50, or 100 hands. The player then decides which cards to save for all the hands dealt. The strategy for playing a multi-play game is exactly the same as when playing a single-play game.
If you’re dealt a good initial hand, you can make some nice money. However, over half of all hands in video poker end up being losers. Because of this, the variance (amount of bankroll swings, both plus and minus) for multiple-play games is higher than for single-play games. You need a bigger bankroll to play multi-play games of the same denomination.
In a single-play game, variance is higher when more money is paid out on high paying hands. For example, 9/6 Jacks or Better (where a full house is paid at 9-for-1 and a flush is paid at 6-for-1) has only one very high paying hand: the royal flush. The variance on this game is 19.5. Bonus Poker is different than Jacks or Better because it pays a bonus for four aces (80-for-1 instead of 25-for-1) and four 2s, 3s or 4s (40-for-1).
Payoffs for a full house and a flush are reduced to make up for the higher payoffs on the quads. The variance for Bonus Poker is 20.9—a seven percent increase over Jacks or Better. Double Bonus Poker increases the bonus on four aces to 160-for-1; the bonus on four 2s, 3s, or 4s to 80-for-1; and the bonus on 5s through kings to 50-for-1. Two pair payoff is reduced to 1-for-1 to compensate for the increased quad payoffs. By concentrating on fewer, larger payoffs and reducing the more frequent, lower payoffs, variance on Double Bonus Poker soars to nearly 28.3. That’s a whopping 48 percent increase from Jacks or Better.
In multiple-play games, variance increases as the number of plays increase—not because more money in concentrated in fewer high paying hands, but because the strength of each multiple-play game is determined by the initial five cards that are dealt. If it’s a strong hand, each play will have a strong hand. If it’s a weak hand, each play will be weak. For example, if the initial hand contains three aces, the minimum that each play will return is 3-for-1.
If, however, the initial hand contains nothing and needs to be completely discarded, the chances for a positive outcome for this hand are small.
Now let’s look at some specific games, plays and variances.
As stated above, variance for single-play Jacks or Better is 19.5. A 3-play Jacks or Better game has a variance of 23.4—a 20 percent increase. In the 5-play version of Jacks or Better, the variance now becomes 27.3—40 percent greater than single-play. 50-play Jacks or Better has a variance of 115.8, and the 100-play version has a variance of 214. That’s 997 percent greater than the single-play version of the game! We’re talking about a huge variance for a game that initially has a relatively low variance.
What about a game with a higher single-play variance? Double Bonus Poker has a single-play variance of 28.3—48 percent higher than single-play Jacks or Better. The 3-play version of Double Bonus Poker has a variance of 35.0—a 24 percent increase from the single-play version. 5-play Double Bonus Poker has a variance of 41.8 (48 percent higher). The variance on 10-play is 58.5 (108 percent higher). 50-play variance is 194.4 (588 percent higher). And 100-play variance is 364—an incredible 1,188 percent higher!
Those are some pretty big numbers. But what do they mean to the average video poker player?
Tough Poker Hand Game
First off, let me emphasize that the more knowledgeable you are about the game you’re playing, the better prepared you’ll be to enjoy it (and capitalize on opportunities). With multiple-play video poker, this means you’ll need to bring a larger bankroll in order to play as long as you could on a single-play game. Even on the relatively low variance Jacks or Better, the variance of the 100-play game is 10 times that of the single play game. This means that even if you were to play a lower denomination multiple-play version of the game, you’d still probably need a larger bankroll.
For example, if you normally play single-play Jacks or Better at the $1 level, it may seem logical that you could play 100-play Jacks or Better at the 1¢ level. After all, you wager one dollar on each hand in either game. But, by looking at the increased variance for 100-play (10 times that of single-play), it’s easy to see that the same bankroll won’t be sufficient.
Tough Poker Hand Crossword
Keep in mind that variance can be good or bad. When riding the wave of positive variance, life is very good indeed. However, when wallowing in the pit of negative variance, it feels as if Lady Luck has abandoned you and the game is unbeatable. We encounter these hot and cold streaks with all casino games, from blackjack to the slots. One of the golden rules of gambling is that you must always possess a bankroll that is adequate for the game you will be playing—and this is especially true if your plans include multiple-play video poker.