So I was sitting next to him for most of day 3 of the Bellagio Five Diamond. On this particular day Mike was pontificating about how all these new players who have come into the game are so bad and how none of them are going to stick around and all that. You know, the way Mike always does. But in there he pointed out that he hates that hold’em has become a no fold’em game. That anymore when a player gets a chip in the pot they are just never going to fold. To be fair, this is a ridiculous exaggeration. First, there are plenty of amazing new players in the game and they are not all morons and donkeys. Many of them are going to stick around for a long time to come and of those that are sticking around most are capable of folding. That is just Mike. Things are all or nothing with him and that is what I love about him because I want to be really clear here that I think Mike is a great guy and I adore him.

But he did really get the one thing right. There is a trend toward not folding in hold’em. I guess anymore people are unwilling to ever chance folding the best hand so, in Mike’s opinion and I have to agree with him on this one, they really call way too often in spots that just can’t be right. The prime example of this is these calls I see with hands in the 44 or 55 range. I will see someone move in for something like 10 big blinds and players will snap call the move in with 44 and I mean snap call when it might be for 1/3 or more of their chips. I see this when they open for a raise early with a hand like 44 and get raised all-in for at least the pot if not more and they snap call with the 44 for a significant part of their stack. Mike is completely right here. That just has to be a bad call and I am seeing this call more and more and more lately.

Here is the problem with the call: in Hold’em in general you really want to reduce your variance as much as possible, particularly in tournaments. Calling in these spots with small pairs has to increase your variance by a lot and here is the reason why: What is the person moving with? The problem with the hand is that even a complete bluff tends to be even money against you. Even if the person has something as terrible at J8 or 67 or Q9 they are still even money. So your best case scenario is racing. And the worst case is 55, 66, 77 and on up. Against all those hands you are 4.5 to 1. So the issue is that unless you are lucky enough to be looking at 22, 33 or A2 or something like that then you are at best even money and at worst 18%. That is a pretty bad prop to take. Particularly if you can use those chips you are about to call off to push people around. Because of the range of hands you are likely to be against the call has to be high variance by definition. If I am going to get my chips in with a hand like 44, I don’t know about you, but I like to be the one pushing and make the other guy make the decision. I see no reason when a dude open shoves for 10 BB’s to try my best to double the dude up in a spot where I have to be on average much worse than even money. I am just gambling even if I see my dream and dude was bluffing with 89. I would rather just fold and cost myself nothing than double the dude up risking a significant portion of my stack in a spot where I am at best in a race. Mike is totally right.

I truly believe the issue is that people are too afraid that they are being pushed around so they are desperate to make sure that they never, ever fold the best hand. But, seriously, you cannot be a winning poker player if you never fold the best hand. You just can’t. Phil Hellmuth knows this. He is notorious for folding the best hand and look at him he has 11 bracelets so he has to be doing something really, really right being so race avoidant. He knows he folds the best hand a lot but that is okay with him because he feels he can get all those chips at a much lower risk later on. We should all take a lesson from Phil on that one. Fold the baby pairs when you are looking at such a big move in. I would rather have a hand like AQ than 55 because with AQ I can actually be dominating my opponent.

Phil and Mike understand this. So should you.

Implied odds is odds on your money that will occur in the future.  Basically, the idea is that when we make some calls in poker we can also think about money our opponent will pay us on future betting rounds when we make our hand.  So when calculating whether or not a call is correct in terms of the money in the pot compared to the money we must pay we can consider in the pot size money our opponent(s) will pay off later.  Imagine we are in a situation where we are drawing to a flush and we know we will only get to see one card.  To break even on the call the pot needs to be laying us about 4 to 1.  For every $1 we call there needs to be $4 in the pot.  Let’s suppose we are only getting 3 to 1 on the call, that there is $300 in the pot and we have to call $100.  If time stopped right there the call would be a losing call.  In fact, we would lose 20 cents of every dollar we put in the pot under those conditions for a total of $20 of the $100 call.  But what if we are sure that when we make the flush our opponent will be willing to pay off $200?  Then we could add the $200 into consideration when calling the initial $100. We know we are losing $20 on the call.  But we also know that 20% of the time we will make our hand and our opponent will pay us $200.  That means the future equity on the pay off would be $40 (20% of $200). Obviously, $40 is greater than $20 so the implied call pays for the equity loss we take on the immediate call.

Okay.  So, implied odds is a concept that allows us to take a poor mathematical proposition right now because of future suspected earnings.  We can lose a little money now because we will make a more money on a later street. Great.  But the problem is that players overuse this concept to justify bad play.  They excuse calls that they know are bad by an over reliance on the implied odds concept.  An over reliance on the implied odds concept will cause you to play much too loose.
The greatest example of this comes from small suited connectors.  I suspect that almost everyone who plays these hands regularly is bandying about the implied odds term.  “I love baby suited connectors because when you make your hand you can get paid off big.”  I am sure you have heard people say that.  I suspect you may have said that yourself.  But here is what I don’t understand, how can there be implied odds if you are rooting for your opponents to fold?  Let me explain.

You are playing a hand like 67s and the board comes KsTs2d.  You are in a multiway pot.  The action is you check and there is a bet, call, and call back to you.  Let me ask you this.  You are probably overcalling here but are you really happy about it?  I mean the texture is pretty damn obvious.  At this moment in time does it cross you mind that someone else might have a flush draw?  Even if it goes bet and one call in front of you, doesn’t this concern you with such obvious texture on the board?

Okay, so you call and now the turn is the 3s.  Yippie!  You made your hand. So you bet out (you have to since a free card isn’t an option).  Stop and think for a moment.  Are you really rooting for action here?  If someone moves in on you, are you happy?  Even if someone just raises you, are you happy?  I suspect not because that creates a very difficult decision for you.  You are in a multiway pot with obviously completed texture on the board and you just got your ass raised.  That is ugly.  Even if you just get called you are not thrilled. You may very well be beat (especially if called by more than one guy) and even if you are not the board will come another spade 20% of the time and will pair over 20% of the time as well. All of those cards create very ugly decisions for your 7 high flush.  If you do get called and no disaster cards hit the river it is almost always correct to check and hope you are just inducing a bluff.  It is unlikely a worse hand will pay you so you check and cross your fingers.  You will call a bet but it is not a happy day when an opponent is willing to bet the river on a completed board.

Do you see the problem here?  When you bet that turn you are actually rooting for either a fold or just one caller.  The nightmare is more than one caller or getting raised.  And even the one caller is not the happiest of events.  The problem for the hand is that in a multiway pot where texture completes like that hands like top pair will be reluctant to pay off.  If the action comes right, sets can even get away.  So one pair becomes a somewhat easy fold in these kinds of pots.  So now I can ask you the important question:  How can there be implied odds if you are rooting against action?  Isn’t the very definition of the concept that you are hoping for action on future streets.  So you justify your ridiculous call with the 7 high flush draw by saying you might be getting the wrong math now but the implied odds are huge.  Except now you hit your hand on the turn (and the turn is the only street you can hit it on because there is always a bet on that street when you miss) and now you are rooting for everyone to fold and for you just to take the pot right there.  I mean you can use the implied odds line to rationalize the overly loose play but I don’t know how when you actually don’t want any action on later streets.  That becomes absurd.

Chew on that one a while.

I am, actually, very confused and surprised that so many players either do not understand why agreeing to go all-in in the rebuy period of the tournament is collusion or are willing to defend and justify the behavior. I think this stems from a lack of clear understanding that there are two types of equity in a tournament: your chances of winning or cashing (regardless of ROI) and your chances of making money in the event in the long term. It is 100% clear that if your only interest were making money then your ideal result in a rebuy tournament would be to buy in for double right away and then not have to buy-in again before you did a double add-on (where a double add-on was allowed, single add-on otherwise).  This is because then the prize pool would be laying you the maximum price while, at the same time, making sure you added on would maximize your chances of doing well in the tournament.  In fact, some people buy-in for double then basically don’t play the rebuy period in some online tournaments then just do the double add-on because this strategy is so ideal for return on investment.

What is also clear is that if the only thing you cared about was the title, winning the bracelet as in the WSOP or the tournament, or Player of the Year points or races  then the ideal strategy would be to move in blind every hand of the rebuy period no matter even if this meant that you bought in for more than first place paid (which could happen under this stratgey).  You would, in fact, only stop employing this strategy if you got your chips up to par for the final table.  This strategy would maximize your chances of cashing for POY points or winning for bracelets regardless of what the investment in the event was towards that goal.  You will almost certainly spend more than cashing returns under this strategy and will most likely spend more than most of the final table places pay.  So this is not a good strategy for making money, just for getting points and winning titles.

Okay, so it should be clear that there are two kinds of equity in a rebuy: one has to do basically with buying the title or the bracelet and the other to do with actually trying to maximize your monetary earn.  If two players verbally agree to go all in the problem is that they are in some sense making the choice for the other players at the table whether they want to play a high variance tournament or a low variance tournament, whether they want to have the prize pool lay them a smaller price in exchange for a higher chance of getting the win. It is not clear that two players going all-in every hand is good for the other players at the table because it will force them for sure to invest much more money in the event which will increase their chances of a cash or win but may not be their desired strategy.  And because they are not party to the agreement, it just shouldn’t be allowed.  What is much clearer though, is that this kind of collusion has a very deep and negative impact on the other players in the tournament.

Let’s take this to the extreme to demonstrate this.  If you have a table of 9 players who are all good players, better than par in the tournament, and all 9 players agree to move all-in every hand of the rebuy period then I think we can all agree that the winner of the tournament would come from that table a higher percentage of the time than any other table in the tournament.  So these players agreeing to do this are cheating every other player in the tournament because they are having a direct effect by agreement on the outcome of the event which is the very definition of collusion. In fact, this happened recently in a WSOP.  The players did not out and out agree to the all-in move but the table had a bunch of action players who understood that if one of them started employing this strategy they all would (which is the kind of implicit collusion I talked about above).  When that table broke 7 of the 9 players at the table were the chip leaders at their new tables and the winner of the event did come from that table. I want to make it clear that they did nothing wrong.  The implicit collusion is built into the rules.  Which is the very problem with this kind of event in the first place.

These events create an unfair playing field where the larger your bankroll the more likely you can buy a title or buy POY points.  In every other tournament on the planet once you have bought in, whether you ponied up the cash or won your way in through a freeroll, everyone is on a level playing field.  We all start with the same number of chips and go from there.  That is not the case with rebuy events at all.  Not only does the collusion, implicit or explicit, have a deep impact on the other players in an event, but someone’s bankroll going into an event also has a deep impact on the event.  My wallet should not increase the likelihood of me winning a bracelet.  My skill should.  Period.

Obviously, the main difference between flopping a big hand on a textured board and flopping a big hand on an untextured board is going to be the likely difficulty of decisions going forward.  Let’s say you have the same As9s or 9s9d and you flop two pair or a set but instead of the board looking like Ah9c3d it now looks like AcTd9c.  Obviously, this board is supercoordinated as there are multiple draws now available.  Those available draws will drive any choice you make on how to play this hand on the flop.

On the A93 rainbow board there are not really any cards that will give you fits on the turn.  If you have a hand like 99 and have flopped a set we aren’t really worried about any card that might hit on the turn in terms of how difficult the card might make decisions for us at that point.  Pretty much the whole deck feels pretty safe there.  That means that we can choose to slow our play down if we want because we aren’t risking some disastrous card hitting that makes us want to puke.

Sometimes the slow play will get us more money from our opponent but in order for that to be an option we have to be comfortable with the fact that the slow play insures that we will see the turn card.  If you play a line of play that makes sure the turn will hit you better be comfortable with most of the cards that are available in the deck.

There is the key to setting your goal when you flop a set or two pair on a well textured board—you must realize you are likely to be unhappy with the card that hits the turn. On the AT9 two clubs board, as an example, we know we are unhappy with a club (even if you have a set the Ten of clubs makes a bigger full).  We also know that the straight cards are going to be ugly, particularly the K, Q or J in the case of the A9 hand.  And an 8 or 7 isn’t the best.  Even a 6 might give us a little pause.  When you add up all the ugly cards in the deck, it comes to more than half of the deck.  There are 47 cards remaining and about 26 of them are going to make us unhappy.  Now, to be sure, I am not saying that in a heads up pot your opponent will have all 26 outs, of course not.  What I am saying that there are 26 ugly cards in the deck that we know will make our decision process very difficult if our opponent puts any pressure on us.

It is so ugly, in fact, that we might just lay down the best hand and our opponent might not even think he was bluffing!  What if you have an opponent who has a hand like AK with the Kc.  The flop comes AT9 two clubs and you have A9.  Obviously, you opponent is in bad shape, down to 6 outs.  Now, let’s say the Jc hits the turn.  Your opponent thinks he has the best hand and knows that even if he didn’t he has the Kc back up so he moves in on you.  Can you call?  Of course not, and your opponent  doesn’t even really think he bluffed you!  That is a disaster.  It is such a disaster hat if he moved in it would be an extremely difficult call with a set of 99.  Imagine getting bluffed off a set of nines when your opponent didn’t even think he was bluffing!

So, how do we avoid that happening when the board comes so ugly for our hand?  Well, clearly we must account for that in the goal with the hand.  When the board came favorably for our big hand the goal was simple: Figure out the line of play that extracts the most money from our opponent.  We knew we had the best hand and we just had to figure out how to get the most value from it.  But now even though we still know we have the best hand we have to worry about the danger of the turn card so therefore our goal must be to avoid making a decision on the turn card.  That means we want to opt out of the decision making process right there on the flop.  We want to play the hand in a way that when we do see the turn card that there are no further decisions to be made at the point. There are only two ways to opt out of the decision process in no limit hold’em:  Fold (which is clearly wrong here since we have the best hand) or make sure you bet big enough that you have no further decisions in the hand either because your opponent folds or because all you chips are in the pot (or you are pot committed so you can’t fold the turn anyway). That means that you should basically just move all in on flops like this.

Let’s take the case of playing the hand in position in a heads up pot.  Whether or not you were the preflop raiser or not when a board hits like AJT two suited and your opponent checks to you you should bet very big.  If your opponent folds you don’t really care.  You are happy to pick up the equity without the trouble of making a decision on the turn.  If your opponent calls you are happy too as you almost always have the best hand at the point.  When you push on a flop like this the great thing is you just don’t care which way it goes, you don’t care if your opponent folds or calls. If they fold that’s awesome because you didn’t have to fade some ridiculously ugly card on the turn.  If he calls more power to him because he pretty much never has the best hand there.  Now, obviously, if your opponent bets into you, you would just push on him as well for the same reason.

One thing that falls out of playing this hand this way is that you are actually more likely to get a call from a hand that is weaker because they are more likely to read you as either not wanting a call or as having a flush draw.  It will be confusing to your opponent that you have moved on in on a board like this because people generally play hands like sets slower.  The fact that you have played the hand so fast will suggest a weaker holding to your opponent which will increase the probability that you get called by a hand like AK which is practically drawing dead against you. If you slow it down you risk, either killing your action when the texture completes and not getting money out of the AK-like hand or you risk losing the pot to the AK when an ugly card hits and you end up making a bad lay down.
When you play the hand super fast you avoid ever making a bad lay down and you never kill your action against a hand like AK because you get all the money in before the action killing turn card can hit.  Better yet, by over betting the pot on the flop you make sure that if a flush draw decides to try to gamble with you they are gambling at a loss because they are not getting the 2 to 1 odds they need to break even.

So, in position you would play the hand to make sure you got all the money in on the flop and this would be true whether you were in position in a heads up pot or in a multi-way pot.  If you get checked to over bet.  If you get bet into, move all in. 
Simple as pie.

Next time we will cover how to play these hands out of position.

So, going back to the situation we have been covering, you have A9 or 99 and the board comes A93 no suits.  You are in position on a four way pot.  Obviously your goal is to extract the most money out of this hand, to make the biggest pot here.  Let’s see how you deal with this situation in terms of that goal.   

1)    You are the preflop raiser   

If you were the raiser preflop and everyone checks to you then go ahead and bet the hand, but bet small, around half the pot.  You will be making a lot of continuation bets anyway and you don’t want to just check here.  First, it will make everyone suspicious of your hand if you check and you don’t want to send up any red flags.  Second, most of the time you bet here you will not have much so you must bet when you have flopped the joint or people will be able to come after your other bets to easily when they know you check your real monsters.     

Not only that but if you check you may be missing out on picking up a big check raise.  Look at how the hand does against someone who has a piece of the flop and someone who has nothing.  Against the air you are likely to be getting no more money.  But if air does decide to take a bluff here, he will have to execute it with a check raise.  That check raise is going to cost a lot.  Let’s say the pot is $1K and you bet $500.  Now the bluff is going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $2K.  If you check and the air decides to bluff by leading the turn, they will bet around $500 themselves.  That means that the check raise bluff earns you 4 times as much as the lead out bluff.  So even though a check is more likely to induce a bluff on the turn, that bluff would have to happen 4 times as often as the check raise bluff just to break even on the check.  Plus you are missing out on the equity of disguising your continuation bets. 

But, it gets worse when you consider what happens against a hand like AK or AQ.  Even if we assume that the lead out bluff on the turn will happen 4 times as often as the check raise bluff so that the choice between betting and checking to the nothing hand is break even, you lose a ton against a real hand.  If your opponent has a hand like AQ and you check the flop, they will lead out $500 or so on the turn.  You will now raise them and they now have an opportunity to fold.  They can fold AQ or AK because you have played the hand like a total monster, checking and allowing a free card off in a multi-way pot.  You have told the story of a huge hand, which is exactly what you want to avoid in this spot.  By getting greedy and trappy with the check you are accomplishing the opposite of what you think you are accomplishing. You are alerting everyone that you might be holding the nuts.   

Now, if you just go ahead and bet the flop it is very hard for the AQ or AK to put you on anything because the bet looks like a standard continuation bet.  Now AQ or AK is likely to go ahead and check raise you to protect their one pair in the multi-way situation.  And that check raise is going to cost $2K or so.  That is 4 times as much as letting them just lead out the turn and then get off the hand. Now, when they check raise you will generally just move in if they look pot committed.  If you flat call it is still hard to get more money out of them because the board is so rough it is difficult for AQ to continue.  But you still got 4 times as much money out of them with the small bet on the flop.   

If the AQ just check calls you still make more money.  When they check call you pick up the $500 call (which is the same you pick up when you check and they lead the turn) but now they are going to either lead for at least $1K on the turn or go for the check raise themselves on the turn.  So either way, whether they attempt the check raise on the flop or they check call and lead or check raise the turn, you make much more money from an opponent who has caught a piece of the board when you just go ahead and make the small bet when everyone checks to you on the flop.   

Now, what if you are the pre-flop raiser and someone leads into you?  Let’s first say someone has led out and it is now just you and him.  This could happen if the first or second position player bets and then the players in between you fold.  Or it could happen if the first two players have checked and the player directly to your right bets.  In either case, a flat call is justified.  The reason for this is that when a player bets into the pre-flop raiser, particularly on a board that is so dry, it generally signals a weak hand.  In fact, the play is called a “weak lead.”  The most likely hand that the player is holding in this spot is a bad Ace.  Of course, the later the position of the better, the more likely it is a straight out bluff.  But in either case you know you are looking at a weak hand so a raise will just lose your action.  The bettor will surely fold his weak holding.  Not only that, but raising will raise out any players who have checked their action.  You definitely want to give those players at least a chance to call if not to raise so flat calling has to be the preferable play.  Hopefully you are against a player who is willing to take a second barrel at the pot and you can pick up some extra money on the turn.   

The key to the flat call here is that the board does not put you in peril if you give off a free card.  The board texture is so dry, the cards so unrelated to each other, that the free card here is very unlikely to present you with any danger.  Add to that that the player has already charged himself for the few outs he might be holding with the initial bet and the flat call looks very safe and much more profitable here.    Now, what if another player leads into you and a player or two calls in between?  When a player bets out and at least one other player calls you should generally raise.  The reason is that the overcall is already giving away the strength of your hand because the board is so dry.  This is an extremely important concept in interpreting action in multi-way pots.  When people pile on calling in a multi-way pot when the board is dry their hands tend to be quite strong.  So, the mere fact that you are overcalling one or two players is already signaling strength. The message you send with the call is clear, “I am strong.”   

In contrast, the raise here actually sends a mixed message. You could be strong but you could also be squeezing.  The squeeze play is a common play in no limit and pot limit poker in which you leverage the position of the players in the pot to bluff.  The idea is that when a player leads out and another player calls that the player who flat calls is often not terribly strong.  What this means is that a raise can be quite powerful here.  You are raising two players, which usually signals strength.  But, more importantly, you are squeezing the initial bettor out of the pot because that bettor has to worry about what the player behind him is holding.  That means the initial bettor can only continue to play with the strongest of holdings because he has to worry about both you and the player who called him in the first place.  That means there is a very high probability he will fold.  The second player in the pot has a likelihood of bein
g weak anyway so he is likely to fold.  This play is used preflop quite often but is also used after the flop as well.   

What does this all mean for your raise?  I mean you are not actually squeezing here since you have the best hand.  But you can leverage the squeeze to your advantage.  If both players are weak then the flat call isn’t going to get any more money out of them anyway.  So a raise is six of one half a dozen of the other.  But if one of the two players has a significant part of the board then the raise will be more profitable.  This is because the raise might be perceived as a squeeze which will cause a hand like AK to overplay against you.  In general, fast play on the flop is perceived to be weaker than play which occurs on the turn so by playing the hand fast on the flop your play is more likely to be interpreted as weak by a hand like AQ or AK and you will then trap them for much more money because the squeeze is an easy interpretation of the raise.     

If you choose the overcall on the flop you are alerting AK or AQ that it is very likely they should play with caution on subsequent streets because they can’t come up with a lot of hands you could be flat calling with on a board that has no draws on it.  Therefore, they will conclude that you must be slow playing a monster.  So, the fast play on the flop will be interpreted as the weaker hand which is exactly the story you are trying to tell. So go ahead and don’t be tricky.  Just raise!   

2)    Another player is the preflop raiser   

Basically, when another player is the preflop raiser the play will be the same in a multiway pot.  If everyone checks to you, you can go ahead and bet because people rarely pass the button when the field all checks.  The play is very likely to be interpreted as a bluff so you are likely to get played back at.  And even if you don’t, that is fine since you will be taking those same bets with nothing very often so you must bet your hands in that situation as well to be executing solid game theory.     

Now, if a player bets into you then play will proceed the same as if you were the preflop raiser.  If a player bets and there are no callers in between you and the bettor go ahead and flat call as in the case above.  If there are callers in between you and the bettor, go ahead and raise for the same reasons as above.  In fact, the raise is even better in this case because the original better is more likely to be strong.  In the case where you were the preflop raiser, the original bettor is weak leading.  Here, the original raiser is leading into the field so is more likely to have a real hand which makes the raise even more profitable since you are more likely to trap someone for a lot of chips.   

They key in all the situations is in understanding the story you are telling your opponents.  In this case, you are looking to tell a weaker story than what the reality actually is.  The interesting thing is that in multi-way pots,  it is often the case that the stronger play will tell the weaker story.   

Next time we will cover how to play these hands out of position in multi-way pots.      

After this year’s World Series of Poker I felt polluted.  The thing is that the WSOP is as much an endurance event as it is a poker event and in that regard I failed this year.  I was drinking upwards of 10 Diet Cokes per day in order to try to maintain my energy level and, frankly, that was a pretty terrible strategy.  The caffeine intake was so bad that I challenge anyone to fine a picture of me from the WSOP without a Diet Coke in hand or next to me on the table.

Well, there is nothing like guzzling that much soda everyday to make a person just feel like they are eroding from the inside out.  So right after the WSOP ended I decided enough was enough and I had to get clean, literally clean my body of the chemical and artificial goo I had been crapping it up with.  So I embarked on a 30 day nutritional cleanse.  No caffeine.  No chemicals. No nicotine. No alcohol.  No refined sugar.  Just clean living all around. 

So the first 10 days my boyfriend offered to move out of the house.  And I don’t blame him.  I was hard to be around.  But I came out the other side and somewhere around week three I felt this energy.  An energy I am not sure I have ever had.  The kind of energy where you feel like there is no obstacle too big, no challenge that you couldn’t rise to.  I woke up every morning just ready. Ready for whatever, anything that came my way.

That is when I realized that the problem before was that I was not finding my own focus and energy from within myself but expecting outside stimulation to pull me through the long days of playing.  And that can’t be sustained.  The focus has to be your own.  The energy generated from within yourself, from your own desire to succeed and take on the challenges that come your way, and I was finding that.  Cleaning out all the crap in my body opened me up to the resources that I could draw on from within and what was within me was so much more powerful and sustainable than any artificial stimulant I could ingest.

So after the 30 days were up I kept going.  I saw no reason to change what I was doing because I felt so good.  At the beginning of September I went to London to play my first big tournament series since the WSOP and since I had changed how I lived.  This would be the real test. If I could pass in London playing long hours with jet lag then this new thing I was doing was the real thing.

I came in 21st in the main event there, some days putting in over 12 hours at the tables.  And my energy never wavered.  I drank my water, ate my protein bars and never once gave in to the temptation to drink a Diet Coke or smoke a cigarette.  And an amazing thing happened.  I had as much energy and focus at 2 am each morning as I did at 2 pm each afternoon.  My energy level remained constant throughout the day, no huge peaks and valleys like I felt during the WSOP.  My new life had passed the test.  It was a keeper.

So here is the thing:  This whole trusting yourself to produce what you need sounds like a bunch of new age mumbo jumbo.  I get that.  I know it sounds like crunchy hippie bullshit.  But especially as it relates to poker I promise you it is important stuff.  As poker players we have to be able to put in the hours.  The longer we can play alertly and sharply in games that we have an earn in the more money we make.  The better off we are as poker players.  That fact is the pitfall for so many players.  I only fell into extreme caffeine use.  But I have other players who, in search of that extra boost they need to play the extra hours, fall into stimulant use much worse than anything ten Diet Cokes a day could do to you.  And the same thing has happened to everyone of them:  They go broke, their lives fall apart and they never recover from it.  Finding your own inner boost to draw from it not just mumbo jumbo, it might not only increase your earn but safe your life too.

So now I am no looking toward the WSOP starting in a few months with a new found confidence.  I am not dreading the long hours any more.  I know that I can sustain the endurance trial on my own, with the resources I have within me. And this might be the brightest I have felt about the event in years. 

After this year’s World Series of Poker I felt polluted.  The thing is that the WSOP is as much an endurance event as it is a poker event and in that regard I failed this year.  I was drinking upwards of 10 Diet Cokes per day in order to try to maintain my energy level and, frankly, that was a pretty terrible strategy.  The caffeine intake was so bad that I challenge anyone to fine a picture of me from the WSOP without a Diet Coke in hand or next to me on the table.

Well, there is nothing like guzzling that much soda everyday to make a person just feel like they are eroding from the inside out.  So right after the WSOP ended I decided enough was enough and I had to get clean, literally clean my body of the chemical and artificial goo I had been crapping it up with.  So I embarked on a 30 day nutritional cleanse.  No caffeine.  No chemicals. No nicotine. No alcohol.  No refined sugar.  Just clean living all around.

So the first 10 days my boyfriend offered to move out of the house.  And I don’t blame him.  I was hard to be around.  But I came out the other side and somewhere around week three I felt this energy.  An energy I am not sure I have ever had.  The kind of energy where you feel like there is no obstacle too big, no challenge that you couldn’t rise to.  I woke up every morning just ready. Ready for whatever, anything that came my way.

That is when I realized that the problem before was that I was not finding my own focus and energy from within myself but expecting outside stimulation to pull me through the long days of playing.  And that can’t be sustained.  The focus has to be your own.  The energy generated from within yourself, from your own desire to succeed and take on the challenges that come your way.  And I was finding that.  Cleaning out all the crap in my body opened me up to the resources that I could draw on from within and what was within me was so much more powerful and sustainable than any artificial stimulant I could ingest.

So after the 30 days were up I kept going.  I saw no reason to change what I was doing because I felt so good.  At the beginning of September I went to London to play my first big tournament series since the WSOP and since I had changed how I lived.  This would be the real test. If I could pass in London playing long hours with jet lag then this new thing I was doing was the real thing.

I came in 21st in the main event there, some days putting in over 12 hours at the tables.  And my energy never wavered.  I drank my water, ate my protein bars and never once gave in to the temptation to drink a Diet Coke or smoke a cigarette.  And an amazing thing happened.  I had as much energy and focus at 2 am each morning as I did at 2 pm each afternoon.  My energy level remained constant throughout the day, no huge peaks and valleys like I felt during the WSOP.  My new life had passed the test.  It was a keeper.

So here is the thing:  This whole trusting yourself to produce what you need sounds like a bunch of new age mumbo jumbo.  I get that.  I know it sounds like crunchy hippie bullshit.  But especially as it relates to poker I promise you it is important stuff.  As poker players we have to be able to put in the hours.  The longer we can play alertly and sharply in games that we have an earn in the more money we make.  The better off we are as poker players.  That fact is the pitfall for so many players.  I only fell into extreme caffeine use.  But I have other players who, in search of that extra boost they need to play the extra hours, fall into stimulant use much worse than anything ten Diet Cokes a day could do to you.  And the same thing has happened to everyone of them:  They go broke, their lives fall apart and they never recover from it.  Finding your own inner boost to draw from it not just mumbo jumbo, it might not only increase your earn but safe your life too.

So now I am no looking toward the WSOP starting in a few months with a new found confidence.  I am not dreading the long hours any more.  I know that I can sustain the endurance trial on my own, with the resources I have within me. And this might be the brightest I have felt about the event in years.

1) You were the pre-flop raiser and you are out of position in a heads up pot against either an aggressive opponent or a passive opponent.

Before we start I want the majority to admit that your instinct here is to check.  Come on…you can admit it.  I won’t be mad.  When I teach my camps and ask what everyone thinks you should do here the majority of the room, and I mean the vast majority, like the check here with the intention to check raise.  Why?  Because they don’t want to lose their customer here when they have such a huge hand.  Ok, so I understand that urge to try to keep your fish on the hook.  But check raising here is not a good option at all. 

Check raising serves a very particular function in the poker toolbox.  It tells the story of a big hand, particularly when you check raise on a board that has no obvious draws. Basically when you check raise in this situation with a big hand you are turning your cards face up and why, when you have a big hand, would you ever want to do that? When you flop a monster you want to maximize your earn on the hand by playing the hand in the way that is most likely to extract money from your opponent and will be the highest equity line of play in the long run.  You, logically, will not extract the most money out of a hand if you let your opponent know you have a monster and you will let him know if you check raise.

The first issue with check raising on this board in this situation is that generally when you are the pre-flop raiser you will be continuation betting.  In order for your continuation bets to have any meaning at all you must bet with monsters as well.  If you check huge hands and bet smaller hands your opponents will figure out pretty quickly that they should be scared of your checks and come after your bets by raising you off the hand.  That is a pattern you do not want to develop.  By leading out with huge hands your opponents will be confused.  Betting the huge hands provide cover for your weak hands and betting the weak hands will generate more action for your big hands.  They, to use a botanical metaphor, cross pollinate each other.

Players say to me all the time in this spot, “But Annie, I bet my top two pair and my opponent folded. Shouldn’t I have checked?”  I always respond the same way, “Would you be happy if they folded when you bet the KQ on an A93 board?  What about 22? What about J8?  KT? QJ?  I can go on and on.”  The point is that for every time that your opponent folds because you continuation bet your huge hand he will fold many times over when you have absolutely nothing.  By getting greedy on the big hand and missing the continuation bet you actually reduce the probability that you will take down the pots where you want your opponent to fold because you are weak.  And that makes no sense for long term earn.  It brings pattern into your play (check big hands, bet smaller ones) and any time you do that you are giving your opponent unnecessary information.  By betting out you are being more deceptive in the long run than by checking because when you continuation bet your opponent will not know what you have.

Enough with the game theory, let’s take a look at the actual math.  Do you do better in the short run by betting or by check-raising here?  Let’s look at two types of hands.  But first let’s give the opponent top pair with AQ.  In the second let’s look at an opponent with J8.  So you flop top two pair or better and your opponent has AQ and you check.  The pot has $1K in it and your opponent bets $500 and you now check raise.  A smart opponent here will fold and you have now let them off the hook for the hand.  It is so odd that you did not continuation bet this hand that when you now check raise the dry board after being the original raiser your opponent will have loud alarm bells going off.  So most opponents fold and you win $500.  Now, let’s say you continuation bet $500 yourself here.  Your opponent knows you lead out no matter what when you are the pre-flop raiser in a heads up pot.  So they can’t give you credit for a hand.  Because of this most opponents will raise and make it something between $1500 and $2000.  Now you have the choice.  If your opponent looks pot committed you can move in or you can flat call and decide whether to lead the turn or check and induce another bet when you see how your opponent looks on the turn.  Either way you have gotten a minimum of $1500 out of your opponent when he is over a 7 to 1 dog to win the hand.  Sounds better than $500 for sure and most of the time you get much more than $1500 out of the guy anyway.

Now let’s say your opponent has a stone cold bluff.  If you check you will almost always get a check back from a passive opponent when you were the original leader.  An aggressive opponent will almost always bet and now when you check raise will fold.  So you will get about $500 from the aggressive opponent if you check to them and nothing from the passive opponent (who you have now given a free card to).  But what if you just continuation bet half the pot?  Now you bet out $500.  The passive opponent always folds so that works out the same.  But the aggressive opponent will sometimes call to bluff the turn and will sometimes raise right there to attack the continuation bet.  When the opponent calls the $500 on the flop you can check the turn to them and let them follow through with the bluff, extracting at least another $1K from them.  When they raise they will make it a minimum of $1500 usually.  So, when your aggressive opponent does decide to bluff, you tend to get 3 times as much money out of them than when you just check to them to let them bluff. What this means is that when you bet out your aggressive opponent can fold 2/3 of the time and call to bluff or raise to bluff 1/3 of the time and you will break even to the play where you check to them to induce the bluff on the flop.

Now, an aggressive opponent will tend to make this kind of play at least close to a third of the time so you know you are at least close to break even on the lead out against a bluff (if not better depending on the opponent).  But combine this with the fact that when your opponent does hit the board you are hugely equity up on the lead and it seems obvious against the range of hands that your opponent holds you must lead out. 

And, just to emphasize the added kicker and to drive home the point, let’s not forget that you need to lead these big hands when you are the original raiser in order to provide cover for all the weaker continuation bets you will be making after the flop. By leading half the pot post flop in heads up situations where you were the pre-flop raiser and making these leads no matter what you hit you will confuse your opponents because the continuation bet will provide no new information to them.  It will make you more difficult to play against than if you start to make cagey checks with your big hands.

2) Your opponent was the pre-flop raiser and he/she is aggressive.

Now, let’s say you have the same A9s on the A93 board (no suits).  You called a raise before the flop with this hand and you are out of position against an aggressive opponent (I am assuming, since this is a marginal hand at best, that you were in the blind against a late position raise). Against an aggressive opponent you have two choices:  You can check to the raiser or you can make a weak lead (against a super aggressive opponent who likes to go after weak leads).  If you check to the aggressive raiser the key is not to check raise.  The aggressive raiser is also going to be continuation betting a wide variety of hands and unless you actually catch them holding something big a check raise will end the pot right there and you will get no more money out of them.  Instead, check, let them continuation bet, and then call.  If you check raise you will only get that $500 or so that they continuation bet.  By check calling you are getting that same $500 but now you can extract more money on the turn.  How you extract the money on the turn depends on your feel of your opponent.  You can check to the player if you feel they are high probability to take a second barrel at the pot or you can lead out small (half the pot) if you feel that one of two things if true: 1) Your opponent is likely to check if you check to them or 2) Your opponent is likely to read the lead as weak and will call or raise.

If you believe your opponent is likely to check if you check on the turn you must bet for several reasons.  The first is that you don’t want to give a free card since your opponent may not be drawing dead to your hand.  This is particularly true when your opponent holds a hand he is likely to call with but not bet with (like AJ for example).  If your opponent would have called a bet but not bet the hand itself you have made a threefold mistake.  First, and most obvious, you have earned zero when you could have earned half the pot.  Second, you have allowed a hand that might be drawing live to your hand to draw and pay nothing for the privilege.  And third, and most important, you have allowed a player who was willing to make a big mathematical error make no error at all.  If your opponent is willing to call half the pot, taking 3 to 1, when he is a much bigger dog than that (with AJ he would be over 15 to 1 with one card to come) then let him by all means.  Don’t allow an opponent who is willing to do bad math do good math, ever.  That is the biggest disaster that can happen in this game.

If your opponent is likely to read the lead on the turn as weak, as an aggressive opponent will, you must also bet.  After checking and calling the flop when there are no obvious draws many players will then lead the turn small when they want to bluff. Because of this there is a group of players who will read the lead on the turn as weak and will go after it.  They will go after the bet in one of two ways.  They will either flat call on the turn and wait to take the pot away on the river or they will go ahead and raise right there on the turn (this is the much more common play).  Either way, the play is at least as profitable as checking to the aggressor and letting them bet the turn for you.  Unless your opponent holds a big hand themselves then checking and raising the turn will only win you what your opponent bets ( here about $1K).  But if you lead out you might get a call to bluff or a call to get more information, either of which get you the same $1K, or you might get a raise from your opponent in which case you pick up another $2K at least extra. 

Now, to be sure, sometimes your opponent will fold on the turn to a bet when they would have bet the hand if you had checked.  That is why you need to know your opponent well.  If you feel that your opponent is likely to only take the safe bluff of betting if checked to but will not make a play if you lead the turn then you need to check to that guy.  You should only bet if you feel your opponent is unlikely to take a stab at the turn or you feel your opponent is someone who likes to go after weak leads.  If either of those is the case then betting out is the more profitable play. 
The same logic holds true for choosing whether or not to lead out half the pot on the flop in the first place.  It is unnatural for a player to lead into a preflop raiser.  How many times have you heard someone say at a poker table, “I check to the raiser.”?  I am sure the answer is a lot.  That is because that is the natural flow of the game.  So when a player leads into a raiser it sends off a bunch of alarm bells.  And to savvy, aggressive opponents those bells a ringing weak.  If you know your opponent to be both aggressive and savvy who can lead out small into them and let them read you as weak.  If they flat call the bet check the turn to allow them to follow through with their play.  Then check raise them when they bet.  If they raise you on the flop you can either flat call and decide what to do on the turn using the concepts laid out above or you can just go ahead and reraise right there, a particularly good play if your opponent is pot committed.

3) Your opponent was the preflop raiser and he/she is passive.

Against a passive opponent we don’t have nearly as many options as against an aggressive opponent.  This is because the passive opponent is much less likely to bluff so all of the plays to induce bluffs above go out the window.  First, you cannot lead into a passive opponent because they will not come after the bet even if they read it as weak.  Unless they actually flop something then leading into the passive pre-flop raiser here will lose your action and that is not our goal with top two pair on an untextured board.  You just can’t depend on your opponent to be holding a hand here so you must check.

The good news if that even the most passive of players will usually bet when checked to in a heads up pot when they were the original raiser.  It takes very little poker expertise to continuation bet in position in a heads up pot so the vast majority of the time a check induces a bet from even the most passive of opponents.  When your opponent bets you must flat all and not check raise because you do not want to turn your cards face up and cause your passive opponent to fold.

So once you flat call the flop this is where your options really become much more limited than against an aggressive opponent.  Aggressive opponents will take the second barrel at the pot so checking to them is a very good option.  But a passive opponent will only bet with a very strong hand so if you check the turn a check is the most likely response for your passive opponent.  For all the reasons already laid out a check is a disaster here, particularly against a passive player because the gap between hands they will bet and hands they will call with is much greater than in an aggressive player.  A passive player will call with many Aces but is likely to check nearly all of them when checked to whereas the aggressive opponent will bet the weaker hands in order to pick the pot up right there. Because of this a check to the passive player is out of the question.

So that leaves only lead the turn.  You must allow the passive player to put money in the pot getting the worst of it when he is willing to do so.  In order to insure this you must bet. Betting gains a lot against a hand willing to call a bet. At the same time betting loses very little against a bluff when the player holding the bluff is passive.  The passive player will not take a second stab at the turn anyway so checking gains nothing against that hand.  When you bet the passive player will fold as well.  Either way it doesn’t matter.  You can’t get blood out of a stone, or more money out of a passive player holding a bluff on the turn, no matter how you play it. 
It is against the real hands that the lead really is the big equity up play. Checking might well get you zero when the passive player checks back but betting will get you a call at least and will avoid the free card scenario at the same time.

So against both the passive and aggressive players the check on the flop is almost always right, unless you against a super savvy and aggressive opponent who attacks the weak lead.  If you do check then you should not check raise the flop and risk losing your action.  Instead you should flat call.  On the turn your play depends on what kind of opponent you are against. Against many aggressive opponents you can check and induce the second bluff.  Against super aggressive and more savvy opponents you can weak lead the turn if you feel your opponent will attack the small bet there.  And against a passive opponent you must lead as well to avoid the check behind you since the passive opponent will not take the second bluff at the pot.
Next time:  How to play out of position on an untextured board when you flop a big hand out of position in a multiway pot.