Poker Advice For Fools

Lately I’ve been losing a lot by being sucked out on, but that is fine. I couple weeks ago I was dealt pocket queens. The guy to my right raised pre-flop with a sizable amount. I doubled that, more than a third of my stack, and a horrible player on the other side of the table went all-in, which was less than my raise. The guy to my right folded. Just what I wanted. The horrible player had pocket eights. Win this and I’m the chip leader. Nope, eight on the flop.

So this guy almost tripled up and a half hour later, he was watching.

This story has been happening to me too often lately.

I’ve seen this happen to others who don’t have the patiences to deal with it. They cry and whine and talk about giving up the game and I want to slip them upside the face with a dead fish and tell them to be a man! It fucking happens! And if you are going all in pre-flop, you’ve only seen two cards out of seven.

What to do when you are going through stretches like this? Remember, you are playing better poker and eventually, if you keep playing better poker, it will pay off.

There is another thing, and that it to learn.

Back to my story. So I went from possible chip leader to struggling a little. Three hands later, two guys with about half my stack went all-in. I had King-Jack off. I called. Once had Ace-Queen and the other I don’t remember. I lost and now was really hurting. At the time I thought, hey if I get lucky here, I’m right back in it. I was fucking stupid. Normally I would have never gone in with suck a god-awful marginal hand. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Can you say Tilt?

So live and learn. The suck out was one thing and I could use that as an excuse, but the truth is, I’m to blame for not cashing that night,

I was playing in a small tournament last weekend. Early in the game, a girl at the end of the table (who had no idea what she was doing) did not raise pre-flop. She failed to raise after the flop. In fact she just called down to the river and lost to trip kings. One king had been flopped and one came up on the turn.  She, of course had pocket aces. The winning hand had King-three off-suit. Immediately everyone at the table started saying crap like, “Curse of the Pocket Aces” and “I hate pocket Aces” or “I always lose with Pocket Aces”!

I, of course, thought, this should be a good night!

And it was for a while, until all these bad players were gone and the final 12 were all competent players. I just didn’t get the breaks and finished 10 out of 40+. Yes, there were a few hands I could have played better, but WTF!

Back to the subject matter. Pocket Aces! Whenever I hear people talk about “The Curse of Pocket Aces” I see dead money.

While this is a great starting hand, and I want all players to remember this, THEY ARE JUST A PAIR! A very good pair, the best, but they are still just a pair. Most hands are won with something better than a pair. They do not mean you automatically win. And if you play them like shit, you are destine to lose. Remember, they are just two of the seven cards you get to play with!

If you are one of the people crying about always losing with this starting hand, first I doubt that is true. Here is the deal: Since you expect to always win with it, I mean it looks so great when you see them, that when you win, you don’t really think about it. When you lose, it pisses you off to no end, so those times stick in your head. When you think back, you only remember the times you didn’t win. And what is added to that memory skew if that usually you’ll win a small pot with aces or lose a huge one. I thin if you kept records, you will win more often than you lose.

And if that is not true, you are probably playing them horribly! If you don’t raise pre-flop and five or more others are seeing a flop with you, you will lose more than 50% of the time. And then you bitch “Pocket Aces  . . . cry cry cry”

If you are truly losing more than you are winning, you suck and need to learn how to play them. Maybe I’ll do my thoughts on how to play them in a few weeks.

I once wrote a piece on a poker forum about getting all your chips in the pot pre-flop, with the best hand is not always the ideal strategy. Here is the situation I described.

I’m at a table of 9 and quickly realize I am the best player at the table. You’ve been there, when you know you can run over the table. A bunch of calling stations that fold to any raise unless they’ve got a pair or an ace and if they happen to get a great hand, they make it clear.

Anyway, so you site at this table and are collecting chips and building a nice stack. Now a new player joins the table and he has about as many chips as you.

For argument sake, let’s say he pushes all his chips in and you are positive that he has Ace-King. Don’t ask me how you know that but you do! OK, you’ve got pocket jacks. Do you call? You’d be the favorite! Approximate odds, you have a 56% chance of winning.

If it is early in the tournament, I say you fold. I have done this, I will keep dong this and it works. I don’t need slight mathematical edge at this point, not against a guy who could knock me out of the tournament with so much other dead money out there.

One of the main arguments I had was that the Casinos in Los Vegas have very small edge and yet they make millions. While this is true, for that to work it would require millions of bets a day. In a poker tournament, these coin-flip situations happen to a single player a hand full of time in one night, not enough to make a slight edge worth it. Eventually I will need to take chances.

You know who takes these changes early on? People who have no confidence in their post-flop play!

Do you wonder why, in most cases, the chip leader early on doesn’t even make the final table? It is because he (or she) takes chances with coin-flips, getting lucky a few times but eventually is catches up with him. Even if you are a 60% chance to win, 4 out of 10 times you will lose and in poker it only takes once to lose.

Like everything in poker, all situations vary. There are times when I will take a chance early on, just like there is a time when I’ll call a raise with a 7-2 off-suit. (yes

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I found this wonderful 5 part Sit n Go tutorial on Youtube. Very good. I advice you watch it if yo play sit and go poker!

If you’ve never played poker or are relatively new to the game, here is the number 1 rule you must remember:

POKER IS NOT ABOUT RESULTS, IT ABOUT CORRECT DECISIONS!

Example 1: You first to act in a tournament with 7-2 off suit. You call the big blind. Another player who plays very few hands bets 5 times the big blind. Everyone folds to you and you call. The Flop comes down 7-7-2 and you win a big pot. You smile as you rake in the chips. You think how good you are.

Example 2: Same situation. This time you fold your 7-2 off suit. The flop again comes 7-7-2. You think, “Damn, I should have played that hand. I suck.”

Here is the thing. You think you made the wrong decision, but it’s the decision that you made pre-flop you should base your play. This is because poker is a game that is judged over the long-haul, not on a hand-by-hand, or ever a game-by-game bases. If you kick yourself for not playing 7-2, or pride yourself on playing it, you will lose more than you will win over time.

A 7-2 off suit against a an over pair, that’s a pair of eights or higher, your only about 11% chance to win preflop. That mean you will lose more than 80% of the time. The same hand against a suited connector like 9-10 of clubs, you only have a 27% of winning, and against a hand like 10-king off suit, about a 31%. You can see in the long run, playing this hand is not a profitable move. If you’d like to try this yourself, Card Player has a very good odds calculator.

I can here you now . . . “But I saw Gus Hanson play that hand on the WPT!” He probably did but you must remember, Gus in a math wiz and is figuring a lot more into his decision such as pot odds and implied odds. If you are reading this and using Gus as a argument, you not ready for such concepts. There are some rare occasions when it might be all right.

Underbelly’s Bottom Line: When you bust out of a tournament and you have those losing hands playing over and over in your head, ask yourself, did I make the right decision? If the answer id “yes” than you doing ok. Of course there is always the possibility that you think you played the hand correct but didn’t. That for another day.