EV for tournament hold 'em

[UK-21]

Played my first poker tournament one evening last week. An interesting experience - sweat, attitude, testosterone and bad dress sense all concentrated into one room. In order that I don't stand out as a nooby in the future I must get some sunglasses, one of those tiny iPod MP3 thingies and check out some of the how-to-jiggle-your-chips videos on YouTube - oh, and improve my table manners, as not remembering "the rules" I made the common nooby betting errors and kopped a reprimand from two of the young ladies dealing the table.

It set me thinking though. With a registration/session fee of between 10%-50% and the house taking a slice off the top of the total buy in, one would have to come in the first eight every time, or in the first five very regularly in order to come out in front with this. Unlikely even for a good player I would think, bearing in mind the luck element in the game and the number of starters (70+ in this case)?

I also wondered whether even the better players there would be able to get to grips with AP BJ.

Thoughts ?

 

[moo321]

Played my first poker tournament one evening last week. An interesting experience - sweat, attitude, testosterone and bad dress sense all concentrated into one room. In order that I don't stand out as a nooby in the future I must get some sunglasses, one of those tiny iPod MP3 thingies and check out some of the how-to-jiggle-your-chips videos on YouTube - oh, and improve my table manners, as not remembering "the rules" I made the common nooby betting errors and kopped a reprimand from two of the young ladies dealing the table.

It set me thinking though. With a registration/session fee of between 10%-50% and the house taking a slice off the top of the total buy in, one would have to come in the first eight every time, or in the first five very regularly in order to come out in front with this. Unlikely even for a good player I would think, bearing in mind the luck element in the game and the number of starters (70+ in this case)?

I also wondered whether even the better players there would be able to get to grips with AP BJ.

Thoughts ?

I certainly don't like tournaments because of the variance. Also, if you win all the chips, you don't win all the money, only first place.

I much prefer cash games.

 

[callipygian]

I dislike tournaments. Aside from the overhead, you're also expected to tip the dealers from your winnings (2-5%), which is a huge rake. People tend to be on their best behavior playing tournaments, meaning the same chumps are easier to beat in cash games than in tournaments.

That being said, people make a lot of tournament-specific errors, such as playing too loose at the beginning and too tight towards the end, which is actually the exact opposite of what you should be doing. Read Harrington's books on tournament poker for excellent advice.

Cash games are much more profitable IMO, and incidentally, if you play LHE, looking like a total n00b will help your win rate, not hurt it.

 

[UK-21]

Thanks for those comments gents.

Although I may make playing in a tournament a monthly jolly for entertainment purposes, I certainly won't have any expectations of returning home with more than I went with - I can't see its any different from dropping chips onto a roulette table really; in actual fact I think the volatility of the game would make playing roulette a better bet if you stuck with the even and 2-1 bets.

And moving on, that's an aspect of the game I'm struggling with - the volatility. I don't play much, but when I do I throw more hands than I play, don't fly kites, raise with strong hands, call potentials and generally bide my time. Generally a strategy of slowly slowly catchy monkey. But, I've never managed to win a bean. Other people I play with in a private game will play with rubbish and as often as not someone will hit a lucky card on the turn or the river and clean up. Although this is only a regular social game with a tenner a head buy in, it's beginning to wear thin when it's the players who consistently play hands needing long odds draws scoop the pot with monotonous regularity. Sore loser? Probably.

It seems to me that the lower down the skills spectrum one goes (I consider myself somewhere near the bottom although I can't be doing everything wrong as I managed 12th out of 76 for the tournament), the more luck plays a role, and the volatility inherrent within the game simply swamps the skill at that level. Perhaps playing a slow deliberate game isn't the way to win at a low level and you need to be a gambler, fly kites and get lucky? Is it a case that because the game is one requiring a great deal of intervention, there's a perception that it's not a game of chance but one of skill - whereas in reality at low levels it is indeed a game of chance?

I don't play for the money but an occasional win would be welcome. At the moment I do wonder whether I should just hand over to Mrs N what I buy in with so she can play the 37 notched wheel of fortune.

Yours requiring inspiration . . . .

:=(

 

[Canceler]

Maybe inspiring...

Yours requiring inspiration . . . .

If you're not reading the Two Plus Two forums, you should probably start. Lots of good info there.

 

[callipygian]

Other people I play with in a private game will play with rubbish and as often as not someone will hit a lucky card on the turn or the river and clean up. Although this is only a regular social game with a tenner a head buy in, it's beginning to wear thin when it's the players who consistently play hands needing long odds draws scoop the pot with monotonous regularity.

Keep in mind that this is good for you. You make money from exploiting other peoples' mistakes. If your opponents never made mistakes, you wouldn't stand a chance of making anything. What you need to do is learn to exploit their mistakes. And of course, minimize your own.

This principle is the same at any type of poker, any stakes - but the application is different because people in different games and different stakes make different mistakes. If people are too tight, steal their blinds; if they're too loose, nail them when you score the nuts; if they're too passive, overcharge them for drawing; if they're too aggressive, trap them when you have them beat.

I don't play NLHE much, so I'll just use LHE examples. Let's say you're at a table where everyone - literally - will call every hand to showdown and you have AA. Your aces will get cracked an amazing 2/3 of the time - with various combinations of 72o and T5o taking turns beating you. Yet playing AA is incredibly profitable - the 1/3 of the time you win, you win 9x what you put in: a +2.33 EV on your investment.

Have you read Sklansky's books on LHE or Harrington's books on NLHE? If not, I would highly suggest it as basic primers.

Hold 'Em Poker (Sklansky): very basic book on LHE

Small Stakes Hold'Em (Miller, Sklansky, Malmuth): the "Bible" of LLHE play

Harrington on Cash Games + Vol 2 (Harrington): books on NL cash games

Harrington on Hold'Em + Vol 2 (Harrington): books on NL tournaments

 

[UK-21]

I have put my nose into a couple of elementary level books. One was full of sound advice and had a very useful opening hands table - problem is that if you stuck to it rigidly, and followed the rules in response to the calls and raises, you'd only every play with a pair of aces or a pair of kings. So it became clear after just a short trip out that this needed to be tempered with a degree of flexibility, as at the level I play at (deep down at the bottom) you'd regularly be throwing in winning hands if you didn't, and wouldn't be playing that much poker (although that's not the prime consideration of course).

One of the links provided had a book review at the end of it, and someone wrote something along the lines of when playing at a table where the majority are lunatics that have taken over the asylum, one has to become slightly mad (and fly a few kites?) to have any chance of having an impact. No doubt others have hit this particular dilemma in the past - how do you overcome the long odds lucky draw approach when, say, six out of ten players are employing it? Play loads more in an attempt to get some evening out of the results? Loosen up, and work on the basis that the more hands you play the more chance you have of pulling those long-odds draws too(although the more chance you have of busting out along the way)?

If you're not willing or able to put in a lot of time at the tables (and I don't want to spend all of my spare time studying poker), does there come a point when playing at the elementary level where you have to accept the volatility within the game leaves it being not much more than a crap shoot, and where playing cautiously or otherwise against looser opposition has very little to do with the end results?

I suspect this is beginning to sound like a winge. I'll play on with gritted teeth and see what happens . . . .

 

[callipygian]

if you stuck to it rigidly, and followed the rules in response to the calls and raises, you'd only every play with a pair of aces or a pair of kings

Assuming this is hyperbole, you're right, but there's a dangerous trap that a lot of people fall into that I want to explain first. The trap is thinking that just because a rigid, inflexible set of rules doesn't work that a rigid, inflexible set of rules is useless.

There's no doubt that if you want to be a winner at LLHE, you're going to have to be patient. There will be stretches of 1 hour where you don't play a hand, and maybe stretches of 3 hours where you don't win a hand. Most bad LLHE players are bad because they give in to that boredom - they start making questionable calls because they just want to play and make questionable bets/raises because they just want to win a hand.

how do you overcome the long odds lucky draw approach when, say, six out of ten players are employing it?

By maximizing the pot for that minority of time where you do win. If you're winning 1 $55 pot and losing 6 $10 pots, obviously you lose in the long run. But if you can make that winning pot $65 instead of $55, you win in the long run.

In general, this is done after the flop. Post-flop play is actually more important than pre-flop play, which is why many of the experts will play looser preflop than textbook recommendations. Basically, they're sacrificing some EV preflop by playing EV- hands knowing that they can outplay their opponents postflop and make back that EV with a little more. The better you are at postflop play, the looser you can play preflop.

If you're not willing or able to put in a lot of time at the tables ...

The easiest way to practice is to play online. You can download any number of clients to play for free. Obviously, the competition at the free tables is absolutely horrendous, but it serves as a baseline check for how you're doing. Because the games move faster, you can get a good sample size in just a few hours.

You can deposit a dollar (pound?) or two and play some microstakes games ($0.10/$0.20), whose players are not unlike LLHE players in the casinos.

 

[UK-21]

Had a bit of an epiphany moment at the weekend . . . . .

I've realised that I've been making the very common mistake of:

(a) playing for the sake of playing,

(b) playing to win each and every hand - with the result that I've been making calls on hands that, although the odds are in favour of the opposing player(s) not have "XX" in the hole, carry too many opportunities to lose with.

(c) assuming there are sophisticated bluffers at the table. Looking back, this has rarely been the case, and people rarely raise a biggie in an attempt to fly a kite.

In the future I think I'll take a rather more balanced approach, and play with the aim of leaving a table once I've increased the starting roll by, say, 20%. I won't always achieve this before tapping out, but in the past I think I've achieved it in around 75% of sessions and then gone on to lose it all, and more, by being silly.

So . . . . a new day, a new approach, a new era . . . . .


Oh, and thanks for the pointer to the 2+2 forum. Lots to consider.

 

[callipygian]

thanks for the pointer to the 2+2 forum

My username there is the same. Mostly SSLHE and LVL, might be moving up to MSLHE.

 

[moo321]

Low level limit is just about peddling the nuts. Wait for a good hand or nut draw and flood the pot. Variance is a bitch, but when you get hot you'll make a killing.

I won 150 big bets at a low limit live game one time.

 

[callipygian]

Low level limit is just about peddling the nuts. Wait for a good hand or nut draw and flood the pot.

While this will beat LLHE, you can actually do better by playing for value. If you're interested, you should read SSHE, it talks a lot about how to play marginal hands and how to squeeze the most value out of them.

 

[mjbballar23]

While this will beat LLHE, you can actually do better by playing for value. If you're interested, you should read SSHE, it talks a lot about how to play marginal hands and how to squeeze the most value out of them.

haha dont get Moo123 started on SSHE.

 

[UK-21]

No change of fortune last night . . . . .

Took part in the usual private game where everyone starts out with a stack of 1000, and blinds start at 5/10 and go up every 20 minutes.

After around 8 hands, when I had only one worth raising into (a two pair that still got beat for 1/3 of my stack), I was down below 500 chips - experience suggests with the company present this is a hard one to recover from, and unless I can bring myself back to nearer the start point, anymore leakage and I'll be toast. I then pulled A8o. After the flop, 2 7s were on the board I raised in with 300. Everyone folded bar one (I usually play tight and everyone knows it) and the last guy calls. He goes all in on the river so I'm f--cked. He's holding the pair of 7s I'm bluffing on. Goodnight. Don't quite know why he left it until the river to go all-in when he's got 4 up (but does it matter)? What are the odds of that happening? Unfortunately that isn't an isolated instance, and I'm regularly on the receiving end of such "variance". None of the participants at this regular get-together are particularly good players, and it seems there's a lot of reliance on long odds draws coming good - which they do for some, far more often than the maths suggest they should.

Still, I'm currently consoling myself with the thought that I'm lucky in love. But I am wondering how long I should continue with this 'cos for me, it just ain't working (and Mrs N is itching to get back to a roulette table, and at the moment I'm having a hard time arguing she should avoid them).

Sorry . . . another winge . . . . . . . .

:-(

 

[callipygian]

After around 8 hands, when I had only one worth raising into

Wait, 8 hands, or 8 orbits (80 hands)?

8 hands without anything playable is not unusual at all. At the beginning of a tournament, you should be playing 10% of the hands you're dealt, so stretches of 15-20 hands without a playable hand isn't unusual.

As the blinds go up and number of players go down, you need to become looser. A8o is a bad hand if you're playing with 5/10 blinds and you've got 600 chips (60 big blinds) at a table of 10, but it's an all-in hand if you're playing with 100/200 blinds and you've got 600 chips (6 big blinds) at a table of 3.

Don't quite know why he left it until the river to go all-in when he's got 4 up (but does it matter)?

It's called slowplaying. Basically, he's flopped an invincible hand on the flop, but he was afraid you didn't have enough to call an all-in raise on the flop. So he waited and hoped that you'll find something on the turn or river that's good enough to call with, knowing that you can't outdraw him.

Even without knowing how things turned out, though, you committed a cardinal sin - pot-committed yourself with a bluff. Pot commitment is when your chips remaining are small relative to the size of the pot - at that point, you have no choice but to go all-in.

I'm even worse at NL than I am at limit, so my advice should be taken with a huge grain of salt, but I wouldn't pot commit myself with anything less than top two pair on an uncoordinated board (e.g. no flush draws and few straight draws), and I'd probably wait for top set or better if I could (basically unless the blinds were starting to eat me alive).

Read one of the Harrington books. Buy it and keep it in the bathroom; every time you take a dump read a chapter.

 

[bjcount]

Buy it and keep it in the bathroom; every time you take a dump read a chapter.

Why are you giving away my secrets? :laugh:

BJC

 

[UK-21]

It's called slowplaying. Basically, he's flopped an invincible hand on the flop, but he was afraid you didn't have enough to call an all-in raise on the flop. So he waited and hoped that you'll find something on the turn or river that's good enough to call with, knowing that you can't outdraw him.

You are, of course, correct but I fear you give him too much credit - at that stage I had committed myself and was virtually cleared out. Pot to stack ratio - good point. I shall bear that one in mind in the future.

A8o - not a great hand I know, but in this case it's virtually irrelevent as this was a pure, "I'm going to fly a kite on this one" bluff and it wouldn't have made any difference if I'd had the worse hand of any combo. I posted this not to highlight what a $#it NLHE player I am (although I don't think I'm any better or any worse than those I play with) but as an illustration of the disastrous beats I've experienced in the 3-4 months since starting to play. And no, I'm not applying a selective memory on this - I have suffered from these beats far more often than I have benefitted (I have taken the odd sizeable pot on the river, but things like this really haven't happened that often).

When I started out, I was under the distinct impression that it was a game of skill and that with putting some time in, like blackjack, it was possible to raise oneself above the level of playing by gut feel. Why this is, of course, possible the one thing I have learned is that at the level I play at, and with the amount of time I am willing to devote to it, the volatility in the game is off the Richter scale, and remains it virtually a crap-shoot. It raises the profound question of whether the game is one of skill or chance, and what factors make it which? Perhaps my expectations at the outset were off?

After a year and a quarter I now consider myself to be a reasonably sound BJ player. To get to the same level in HE, I think it is going to need far far more time and effort to acquire the knowledge and skill, and far far more hours of play to even out the peaks and troughs to a point where the skill results in more wins than losses. There's a regular, late night, TV programme on Poker in the UK and one of the presenters reckons it's possible to go from being a complete novice to a "pretty reasonable player" in just 6 months. Possibly, but I've yet to see any discussions on the effect of variance and the fact that even if you're "pretty reasonable" (subjective I know) fate might just kick your ass - regularly. I think this is more to do with massaging egos (ego seems to be a big part of the game) in confirming to the viewers that anyone with 6 months practice under their belt is an above average player? Wouldn't want to interupt that regular flow of fish-$/£s to the tables now, would we?

I think there will come a point where I shall just walk away and let others play the game - although I don't know how far I'm from that yet. There are other factors to consider as well - anecdotal I know, but you do seem to meet far more testosterone ridden, macho a$$holes playing poker than at the BJ tables, as my visit to the tournament a couple of weeks ago showed.

We'll see how thing go . . . . .

 

[callipygian]

After a year and a quarter I now consider myself to be a reasonably sound BJ player. To get to the same level in HE, I think it is going to need far far more time and effort to acquire the knowledge and skill, and far far more hours of play to even out the peaks and troughs to a point where the skill results in more wins than losses. There's a regular, late night, TV programme on Poker in the UK and one of the presenters reckons it's possible to go from being a complete novice to a "pretty reasonable player" in just 6 months.

I don't want this to sound like a brag at all, because I'm not bragging - I think anyone can do this: it took me, literally, $500 and 10 hours of play (plus reading one book) to become a winning LLHE player.

It's straightforward to win at LLHE because, like blackjack, your opponents can be very easily mathematically modeled. (Compare this to higher stakes LHE or NLHE where an element of "reading" your opponent comes into play - LLHE players are not tricky, or are predictably tricky.)

I'd argue it's actually easier to become a winner a LLHE than at blackjack. The drawback is that moving up at LLHE is more difficult than moving up at blackjack - a strategy that wins at $5 blackjack will also win at $25 blackjack, but a strategy that wins at $5/$10 LHE will not win at $25/$50 LHE.

Variance is also much lower at poker than at blackjack, at least at the beginner levels. In blackjack (for a medium sized effort), you might be looking at a +1% advantage and a SD of 3 units/hand. In poker (for the same effort), you're looking at a +1 BB/hr (+3% advantage) winrate and a SD of 12 BB/hr (2 BB/hand).

Don't pay for any course that's going to make you a poker winner in 6 months. It's literally easy enough so that given a few hours of typing I could probably teach you in this thread (I still think you should read the books because they explain better than I do). You can even deposit like $10 into an online poker account and play microstakes ($0.01/$0.02) LHE for literally pennies (or, shillings, I suppose).

 

[UK-21]

I . . . I think anyone can do this: it took me, literally, $500 and 10 hours of play (plus reading one book) to become a winning LLHE player.

Hmmm . . . . depends on one's definition of a winning player (and at what level) but to claim this after just 10 hours of play is, I think, mightly bold talk - as Robert Duvall said in True Grit.

I do play online for pennies, and you are right - with patience and a little appreciation of the game it is possible to come away with more pennies that you started with more often than not. But when playing in a live game, where a typical first raise is 10xBB, I've found things very different and the variance is through the roof. Interesting where you say that the variance in poker is lower than in BJ - my experience is completely the opposite. With a relatively high call/raise to starting stack ratio, one lucky draw by someone with a marginal hand can clean up, and calling in with a fair hand but then folding can, after just a few rounds, whittle away the starting stack to a point where you've either got to fly a kite yourself (as I did) or accept your seat in the departure lounge and wait for the boarding call. Perhaps I'm playing the wrong game?

I shall draw the horns in for the next game and see what happens. But, on my past record, if I pull trip Kings I won't be too surprised if someone pulls trip aces or a FH. I'll take that as one of KatWeezele's cosmic forces sending me a message to just jack it in. Frankly, regularly being on the wrong end of 12-1 draws, and flopped quads, it can't really get any worse.

Your comments are appreciated.

 

[UK-21]

As a further illustration . . .

Playing ionline for pennies yesterday evening, and third hand in. I have A7o in the hole, with a BB call to see the flop. Flop falls A,7,4, so two pair with tops. Turn gives up a 4. Risk is that someone may be holding a 4, but with 10 people at the table, and 8 of them folded, its not unreasonable to assume that if it ever turned up it may have gone already. River can't remember but no impact. So I'm playing two pairs, aces and sevens with a lower pair on the board. Other player calling through but no raise at the last opportunity, despite their being 50+ BBs in the pot.

Showdown? Cards shown are a pair of fours. Thank you God. Odds on that happening anyone?

:-(