Recently, I won $0.50 in a Poker Stars freeroll. I’ve decided to try and grind it out into a $1000. Not an easy task. Luckily, Poker Stars has some incredibly low limit games that I could actually buy into with just a mere .50. So, I’ve been playing the .02/.04 limit hold’em games and doing fairly well… well, for starting out with .50 in my account.

Currently my balance is at $3.27. This is after a few days of play, playing for an average of about 3 hours at a time.

There’s no amazing strategy at these kind of levels. Basically, you play tight. Wait until you get a good hand and get in the pot. With monster hands, you raise raise raise. With spec hands you call. If you flop a monster, you bet. If you flop something rather weak like a pair where more than 1 or 2 people are still in the pot, check/call so you can keep the pot small. If you flop nothing, you usually get out.

In other words, it’s no brain required to play. So typically I do this while I’m working on other things (I do NOT recommend that you do this for any other level or game). But at this level, you aren’t really worrying about other people’s hand so much… they’ll bet nothing just as much as they bet the nuts… so hand reading is pretty much useless… just play your hand and when it’s obvious your beat, don’t even make the extra .04 call… just save yourself the money, regardless of pot odds.

I guess that means that I’ll have to start keeping regular updates. I wasn’t even planning on doing an experiment like this, but it sort of fell in my lap. My goal is to get it up to a $1000 before the end of the year. However, I few ground rules.

1. I will never risk my entire bankroll in one game.
2. I can only buy into tournaments and sit-n-gos that are less than 10% of my entire bankroll.
3. (Once I get to bankroll amount where I can play no-limit) I can only risk 20% of entire bankroll in any no-limit game.

So, there go. Grinding through these lower levels is sure a pain, but I guess I should have won more than $0.50 in the freeroll.

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Recently, for my home game I decided to run a series of poker games. The Penguin Poker League, if you will.

This wasn’t necessarily an easy task. First I had to decide on a point system. I wanted to make it fair for people who didn’t necessarily play every week, but at the same time make it easy to understand. Also, I wanted to provide slight weight for the weekly winner. In the end, I decided on a simple system of (# of players - 1) + (+1 for the winner). This takes into account how hard it is to win in a larger field and give a bump to someone for winning.

The only thing about this system that I don’t like is that it doesn’t take into account the number of times a person plays. Maybe next series… right now though I felt that the need for keeping the system simple was over whelming as I have a lot of inexperienced players who play my weekly home game.

The next challenge after deciding how to score it was how long it should run. I wanted to make it a prize worth fighting for and hopefully time it with the fall Bayou Poker Classic at Harrah’s. I decided in the end to run it 23 weeks and take out $20 each game. The last game, the 23rd game, will be a large buy-in event for double points. That way, it possible that it could be anyone’s game and hopefully have more people in the running, making the whole thing a nail biter up until the bitter end… and with a healthy prize of $500 (or the entry fee of a WSOP circuit even satellite).

Of course, to keep players interested in the series throughout the whole 23 weeks, I wanted to keep very exact and weekly statistics of all that was happening. I looked at numerous online solutions to make these stats available. Some good and some horrible. The one I decided to go with in the end is diypokertour.com.

First off, it’s free. A big factor in my decision making process, cause I’m not making any money off running a poker league… I don’t take a rake. Second, it’s easy to work with. Not only can I figure out my own point system. I’m able to easily go login and update statistics. I can easily add players, add games, even send emails to all the players involved. DIY Poker keeps track of the regular number of wins, cash won, number of games played… but also the weighted average finish (perhaps I use that as a scoring system next series). Third, their support is great. I had a few questions and they were very quick to respond.

Some of things that I’d love to see (which they were very receptive to hearing), the ability to add your own logo to the leaderboard. The ability to add the leaderboard to your own website (like this one). But overall, I have to say I’m very happy with dyipoker.com in regards to league management.

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Last night, I decide to finally combine my two passions of poker and film making. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for awhile and I just happen to have a good buddy of mine who is a top-notch Assistant Camera staying at my house while he works on a feature shooting in town. He had the day off so I recruited him to run camera for me.

So here it is, Part One of a (hopefully) multi-part video series from Poker Penguin on how to play No-Limit Texas Hold’em. This first part covers the basic rules of No-Limit Texas Hold’em (in a hopefully entertaining format).

Let me know what you think.

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Last night I played my first bar tournament. These are the types of games that are never advertised, never promoted and you have to know someone to get into. Not that it’s illegal in my state, it’s not (the law is kinda gray about it).

Anyway, the whole tournament is played by a bunch of locals who all know each other. It was $25 to enter with unlimited rebuys for the first hour, so pretty much a crap shoot. You start with $5000 in chips and the blinds go up every 20 minutes.

I played it tight early… the first hand someone called an all-in with AK high. No pair. No nothing. Just AK high! Crazy shit. So, tight was right.

I want to talk about two hands that stood out. One good. One bad.

1. This is the good hand. I had AQo under the gun (first after the BB). First let me say that I hate getting hands like AQ in such an early position. It’s just annoying. The blinds are $100/$200 at this point, so I raise to $700. A few callers (which is what it is, people would stick around just to see the flop), when a guy in middle position raises all-in. Everyone folds to me.

Okay, this the reason I don’t like AQ in early position. It’s just a bad hand here. There are too many things he could have that are dominating me, AA, KK, QQ, AK. At best, something like JJ, I’m in a coin flip… and even for a player like this one (this was the same guy who was all in during the first hand), someone would have to be down right crazy to raise an UTG raiser with JJ.

I fold. Everyone else folds. Mr. All-In flips up AK. So there you go. Good lay down by me, but nothing brilliant… I mean, read one poker book and you’d know that AQ was no good in this situation either.

2. I had about $4200 in chips. I was dealt A 8 in the BB. Blinds were at $100/$200 still and a bunch of limpers come along, per usual. I don’t have anything great here, so I check.

The pot is $1200 and the flop comes K 9 4.

I check. The person to my immediate left raises $700. Everyone folds to me. I immediately push all-in. Maybe a foolish move considering how loose the table was… but what else was I going to do? I mean, certain for $700 more I was going to call… I thought if I pushed all-in, at least I’d have a chance at winning it right then… and if he called, no matter what he had, I was only a 3 to 2 dog at worst.

Anyway, the guy goes into the tank for a bit, then he looks at me and says, “Flush draw?” Without thinking, I raised an eyebrow. This was all he needed. He called and flipped over King-rag… which held up.

I gave it away by giving my hand away when confronted with table talk. I didn’t rebuy, but I left disappointed that I had basically lost control of my eyebrow and give away my hand.

Stupid.

More on tells later.

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I think every poker book should have a disclaimer in its foreword.

“Attention: This book will only help you in 4-8 limit against grandpa”

or

“Warning: This book is only applicable if you are playing in the WSOP”

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy. There is no strategy that performs equally well in a 3-6 limit table and an online tournament with 5 minute blinds.

I am almost done with a book which does actually have a disclaimer like this. So far, this book has had a more positive impact on my results than any other I have read. I don’t necessarily think it is because the strategies in the book are superior, but rather that the strategies in the book are targeted at a very specific type of game, and the book goes to great lengths to emphasize that the techniques are narrow by design. This book is for fast No-Limit tournaments, and nothing else. The book is The Poker Tournament Formula by Arnold Snyder.

Prior to trying a tournament, I had read 4 books on Poker. I felt that they were all pretty good books, and they helped me quite a bit in my 3/6 limit games. Unfortunately, I was a total chump any time I played short handed, heads up, or in any form of tournament structure. Unfortunately, I got extremely good cards in my first online tournament, so it took a while for me to realize that my strategy was crap. It took several games of blinding down to nothing to realize that I was doing something wrong.

Poker Tournament Formula has been extremely beneficial to my tournament performance. Previously, my fate was entirely decided by my cards. If I got the good cards, I did well. If I didn’t, I blinded away with a whimper. Now I realize that there are opportunities to win chips in between the good cards. There is actually more to winning than just to the strength of your cards…who’d a thunk it?

The key psychological point that makes these techniques work is that everybody’s chips are finite — and due to the blind structure of fast tournaments they will never last. Even though a lot of people play very loosely early in an attempt to double up, almost all players reach a “scare point” where they fear being knocked out of the tournament. Even when you’re playing online with play money, people want to win. In a regular ring game, chips can be effectively infinite. If you go all-in and lose, you can buy more chips. In these fast tournaments however, when you run out of chips you lose. This changes the way people play.

There are desperation plays, power plays, steals, and bluffs that occur in these tournaments that you will almost never see in a ring game. The ever-increasing blinds are a constant pressure on all players. Nobody is immune to the blinds — not even the biggest stack. The tournament and blind structure drastically alter the nature of the game. This book does an excellent job of quantifying this fact, as well as giving you powerful set of tools to profit from this structure.

The only real down side I can see to this book is that the advice is so specific to fast tournaments that if you attempt to use these strategies in regular ring games you will quickly lose your money. Like I said, though, the Author is very clear about this point. Not only does he warn you that the strategies will not work in regular ring games, but he also warns you that they will be of limited value in very slow tournaments.

The book is an entertaining read as well, and has numerous anecdotes and colorful stories to break up the material. He can get a little heavy on the calculation from time to time, but that is to be expected in any book that delves into odds. Overall, I think this is a book worth reading. If you intend on playing fast tournaments, I think this book is a must-read, if only to understand the tricks your opponents are going to try on you to steal your pots.

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On a whim, last night I went down to Harrah’s and played in a $200 buy-in tournament for the WSOP. I did not do well.

I managed to stay in for about 2 hours. But in the course of that 2 hours, the best hand that I saw was pocket Kings and I only managed to win the blinds with them, after raising in early position and watching everyone fold. Second best hand, pocket 7s. Blah.

The rest of the two hours, I got some pretty miserable hands. I lost a big pot with my ATo vs. KTo when he hit a King high flush to my Ten high flush. Eventually, the blinds were $100/$200 and I was looking at a stack of $450. I went all-in, in late position after 4 limpers, with 9-Ts. I didn’t think my extra $250 would scare anyone out of the pot, but I’d have good equity and probably two live cards. Anyway, I completely missed the flop (along with everyone else), but still lost to a pair of 5s.

The structure is really bad, IMO. You start with $1500 and blinds go up every 30 mins. It’s setup to be a fast tournament and if you loose the first big pot you play, you’re basically left with the situation I was left with.

They do have single table sit-n-go satellites though for $65/$110/$175 respectively. The run continuously in the main tournament room on a sign up basis. So perhaps I will try one of the $65 sit-n-gos later this week.

The $200 tournaments run nightly at 10 PM, although I don’t think I’ll be entering another one of those unless I do really well in a cash game and have some money to blow.

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How could that guy have beaten me? I was 80% to win!

Well, that means 2 times out of 10 you’re going to lose. Sorry buddy. I’m pretty sure you didn’t whine about the other 8 or so times you won with your pocket aces against that flop.

The bad ones have a way of burning into your brain while the good ones just fade into the background. Of course I won! Why wouldn’t I? And we forget those. All we remember is the ones we were supposed to win but didn’t.

Today I was lamenting these bad beats that seem to cling to me like a stink. Why me? Why I am doomed to endure these bad beats?

This on a day when I left $70 up from 3/6 limit. Not a fortune, but I played a good solid game and won money. Yet I seethed over the stupid hand(s) I lost.

I began thinking like a superstitious gambler. I lost to the exact inverse of last week’s bad beat story. Instead of my low pocket pair full house being beat by the psycho with the K-4 making a higher full house, I was the guy with A-K who hit trip kings and lost to the guy who made a full house with trip threes.

But page 299 of Caro’s Most Profitable Hold’em Advice saved me from the gamblers’ disease. If you’re only playing good hands, it stands to reason you’re going to take more bad beats. People who play janky hands lose a whole lot of hands, and only a few of them are bad beats. When you’re playing good hands, you lose a whole lot fewer hands, but those few losses are going to be overwhelmingly bad beats.

It’s pretty obvious once you think about it, but those bad beats can really get a hold on you. My wife even argued for playing bad hands on these grounds. She used several bad beats we experienced as examples of what happens even if you play good hands.

Bad beats are a psychological trap. They don’t really matter. There is simply playing correctly, and not playing correctly. Bad things that happen when you play correctly…well, they’re just that 20%. When you’re losing, it doesn’t feel that simple, but it is. When you play that 80% hand, don’t forget you’re still going to lose that 20% to someone who is probably going to be a sucky player.

Hey, if you want less bad beats, there’s a simple solution. Just play crappier hands, and you’ll have all kinds of beats, and those big beats will just be background against the white noise of your frequent losses.

In closing, stop the bitching. If you’re playing well, most of your losses are going to be bad beats.

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In a follow up to my last article, Reading Your Opponents, I’d like to talk about reading opponents who have a better than average read on you.

I have a weekly home poker game, as most of you know. It started off with rather unskilled players (myself included) and has since developed into a game of highly skilled players who are always working on improving their game. The table is getting harder each week.

A situation came up this week, that I thought was interesting and exemplifies a point I brought up in a previous post a few months ago, Playing Your Gut.

It was in the third round of the tournament game. The blinds were $20/$40. I had about $800 and was in the SB with A 8. Everyone, including the button, folds to me. With only one person to act behind me (my girlfriend at that), I decided that perhaps I should just try to take the pot right there. I raise 3x the BB, making it a $120 total to go.

Now, my girlfriend is a very good hyper-aggressive player in her own right who kindly listens to me ramble about poker on an almost daily basis. There probably isn’t anyone in the world who knows how I play better. She’s just watched everyone fold to me and for to make a basically textbook play of raising out of the SB, so she calls.

The flop comes A Q 6.

Okay. Not too bad for my hand. I’ve got top pair with a lousy kicker, but she probably would have raised had she had an Ace. Again, I play it by the book and make a standard continuation bet of another $120.

The BB calls.

So… she caught a piece of that. Now I put on my thinking cap. What could she call with? I put her on a Queen… maybe QJs or even KQs. I think she would have probably raised preflop with any Ace and definitely AQ, so it’s not that.

The turn comes 7.

Now, as much as she knows my play style, I know hers. She aggressive with mediocre hands when she senses weakness, so I check with that thought that if she bets, I’m probably coming over the top.

Course, she knows me too well. She checks.

The river now comes up as an 5.

I check again… that check on the turn worried me worse than her betting. A check is something I could expect if she had two pair or a set and trying to trap. My hand hadn’t improved. Hopefully she’s just check it down and we’d flip our cards over.

Course, like I said, she knows me too well. She goes all-in and smiles coyly.

I only had her covered by about $40 so this sent me to the tank. I know she knows how I play and she knows that I know she knows, etc etc… it’s was like a loop in my head. What could she have!?

The dealer called timed and gave me a minute left to act, so I went back to the only thing I thought I could rely on her was all the actions before the river:

• She just called my pre-flop raise
• She only called my continuation bet
• She checked the turn

Out of all the possible hands she could be playing, it kept adding up to me that she had a pair of Queens and she thought I had an Ace.

At the 10 second mark, I finally call and watch the smile fade from my girlfriend’s beautiful face. She had Q9 (yes, another Q9 story! LOL)

Later, she said that I often over analyze a situation and that with just top pair, I was very likely to talk myself out of calling her. But, I knew she knew that. So, in the end, I went with my gut (something that she advised that I do more often, BTW). On the flop, I thought she had a Queen. My gut was screaming Queen by the way she played the hand until the river. I knew the way she played and I knew she played that way because she knew the way I played, which made me fearful of trap, but allowed me to narrow down her hand range correctly in the end.

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Note from David: I’d like everyone to welcome a new writer to the Poker Penguin Team. His name is John and he’s just coming into poker. He’s been a friend of mine for awhile and I’ve always enjoyed his writing, so I invited him to come on Poker Penguin and write about what he’s learning. So, expect more articles from him in the future. I think you’ll enjoy is witty, direct, in-your-face, writing style. So without further ado, I give you John’s first article:

Come on, admit it. There’s a good chance you’re reading this because you have fantasies of beating the Russian in his own basement. Ed Norton is your loser sidekick, and you have the supernatural ability to spot tells.

Texas Hold ‘em is like the grown up’s version of being an astronaut. Most likely you aren’t an astronaut or a professional poker player — and probably never will be. But that’s OK. I still love you.

So how do you go from noob to pro? Or at least from noob to “someone who doesn’t hemorrhage money?”

Well, when I figure that one out, I’ll let you know, but in the meantime I’ll relate to you some of the things I have learned. As always with a new endeavor, I find the first several weeks of learning extremely inefficient. There are certain basics that — to me — are the very first things you need to know, and it is exactly these things that are never written down.

1) All Poker is not Created Equal

This is probably the most important thing I have learned. I’m not talking about different forms of Poker. I’m talking about different variants of Texas Hold ‘Em. Most books, even beginner books, just start you out in the middle of a bunch of assumptions without letting you in on these assumptions. They don’t tell you what type of Poker their advice is applicable to. The first chapter of the first book I read gave me a rigid beginner structure to stick to for my next several sessions. This is great, it’s an awesome way to learn. The problem is that the book neglected to mention that this advice is totally useless when playing short-handed and, especially, heads-up.

You cannot approach a 10-man 3/6 limit Hold ‘Em table with the same strategy as a friendly 6-man No-Limit game with tournament structure. While an expert will find that his skills translate well from game to game, the noob who is memorizing basic betting structures will find himself completely bewildered.

2) You have to play for an amount of money people do not want to lose

Playing a $5 buy-in No-Limit tournament with friends is fun, but you’re unlikely to learn a whole hell of a lot. People will go all-in pre-flop with crap, people will bluff like madmen, and people will call any and everything. If you’re playing tight, like a noob should, you’ll find yourself staring down a mountain of chips from the lucksack who happened to win the all-in showdowns.

If you’re playing with friends, the buy-in should be enough that winning and losing actually has some meaning to the people playing. Otherwise, everyone will play essentially randomly. This advice may not be 100% accurate, because if everyone participating has sincere intentions of improving their game, they may play properly even without money at stake. I’m just saying this is pretty unlikely.

3) Pay attention to how much of your hand is made from the board.

Wow! I have a straight! I’m going to go all-in! Hold on there a second, buddy. How much of that hand is coming from your hole cards, and how much of it is on the board? Is 7-8-9-10 on the board, and you’re holding 6-K? Well, guess what, somebody else almost certainly has that jack, and your straight is very vulnerable. If you have a heart flush, and there are 4 hearts on the board, what is your highest heart? If you’re holding 2H, your flush isn’t worth squat with a board like that.

This is a very important concept, and one of the easiest to screw up as a noob. You cannot look at your hand in a vacuum, but rather the strength of your hand relative to the board. Which brings me to the next important concept:

4) Pay attention to when the board is dangerous.

Many players will play almost any suited connectors (i.e. cards that are sequential and of the same suit). Some people will even play any two suited cards. Whenever you see three of the same suit on the board, a warning light needs to go off in your head that somebody may hold a flush. Due to all of the possibilities, straights are a little harder to spot, but be careful any time you see a board with many cards in similar rank. For example, If you hold K-10, and the board is 10-J-K-A-2, anybody holding Queen has a straight. Even though you have two pair, that isn’t really such a great hand with this board.

It seems to me that two pair is a particularly dangerous hand. It is very easy to overvalue. It goes without saying, but your two pair doesn’t mean much if there are two kings on the board and your second pair comes from a low-rank hole card.

Also, a pair on the board is a dangerous thing in general, particularly when it is a high-rank card like a king. If there are a pair of kings on the board, there is a very good chance that someone has at least trip kings. Many people will play hands that have any combination with an ace or king.

This past weekend I played pocket sixes in late position. The flop was K-6-4. I bet heavily. After betting and raising, the result was heads up between me and a super old dude. The turn was a King. I had a full house. I bet again. Super old dude raises. Uh-oh. River comes, it’s a deuce. So the board is now K-6-4-K-2.

He had played K-4. His full house beat mine. Beware pairs on the board, especially if they are a high rank.

5) Low-rank pocket pairs aren’t that great.

See the above anecdote. Pocket fours may look really cool pre-flop, but after a flop of 10-Q-A, they are pretty crappy. You usually won’t hit your trip, and you’re stuck trying to defend a crappy pair. More often than not, the flop is going to make you fold because of good overcards. Low pocket pairs are fun to get, but they end up costing you more money than you think.

6) Don’t bluff very often.

In the grand scheme of things, you ultimately have to bluff sometimes to keep your game unpredictable. But you aren’t a pro. You’re still a noob. You’re going to have enough trouble just knowing when your hand is actually strong. Bluffing is part of the romance of the game, and hence most beginners go hog wild with bluffing. But bluffing is hard, and I daresay a relatively advanced tactic, and probably shouldn’t be a big part of your game initially.

If you insist on bluffing, try to bluff with hands that are possibly winnable. This is called a semi-bluff. An example of a semi bluff would be betting when you hold 10-J, and the flop is 9-10-K. You almost certainly don’t have the high pair, but if a Queen comes down, you’ll have a straight. (Which would still be beaten by A-J) And even if you don’t hit your straight, there’s still the possibility that nobody hit the king and you’ll win.

7) Ten people means a lot of hands

It is very easy to get amazed when your hand is beat. “I can’t believe he had pocket kings!” But ten people means ten hands got dealt! The more people at a table, the stronger your hand needs to be to win at the river. In heads up, a pair of kings will win most of the time. At a ten man table, that same pair won’t win nearly as often. The more people playing the game, the higher the odds that somebody has something good.

8) People at 3/6 limit play almost anything, and it’s tough to make them fold.

3/6 limit is a pretty popular game, and since I’m still a noob, it’s what I play. There is a huge mix of people, ranging from tight/aggressive players to total maniacs. In 3/6 limit Hold ‘Em your hand really needs to be good most of the time. You can’t go “all-in” to muscle people out of the pot, and many people will see you all the way to the river just to do it.

I think the biggest leak in my current game is that I raise pre-flop too often. I raised pre-flop with those pocket sixes I mentioned above with the express purpose of getting people to fold pre-flop. Grandpa crazy saw my pre-flop raise with K-4 from early position. (Of course my play may be questionable, but the point is that it’s really hard to get these people to fold!)

Anyway, in 3/6 limit, your winning hand is going to have to go to the river most of the time. Even after the bets double, your opponent only has to risk $6 for a substantially larger pot. People on straight and flush draws are often willing to take these odds. Even when you know you’re winning this very second, it’s often impossible to knock people out before the river. You can’t make them go all in for that flush draw. For this reason you have to be very confident of the strength of your hand in 3/6 limit.

So there you have it. That’s the condensed basics I wish I would have known when I started playing. Bear in mind, all of this comes from somebody who is still pretty sucky, so your mileage may vary.

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I’m stealing this from directly from Professional No-Limit Hold ‘em: Volume I (a book that I suggest you pick up by the way).

The reason I stole this quiz is that I think it provides a good example of an important point which I will discuss in the comments.

You’re playing a $5/$10 no-limit game with everyone having about $2000.

You have A Q.

You open from middle position for $30. The cutoff calls. The button, a tight, aggressive player reraises to $120 total. The blinds fold. The pot is now $165.

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