Final tally - 63'rd/15xx for (40% of - I'm fully backed) $8,359.

I started out at a pretty decent table and quickly chipped up to 5500 from the starting 4K from blind steals and playing smallball. I lost a bunch of it during the 2'nd hour when I raise/folded KJo from the SB (live poker is so easy that when they RR you from the BB you can easily do that), then reraised someone with QQ and checked behind an ace high flop (he bet the turn, I folded, he showed AK. Pretty standard for live) and ended up with 4,050, up 50 chips. That was the only time I went backwards in chips for most of day 1. The highlights:

-At 100/200. two people limped and the button made it 1100 of her ~4K (?) stack. I had JJ in the SB and chose to simply shove (I had her covered by a thousand or so) since I wasn't really going to call OOP. She showed me AK, took a minute and folded face up(!)

-A hand I wasn't in but made me laugh: During 200/400, a huge LAG with at least 30K limps UTG, someone else limps, and an old guy who has a weak/tight look all over him but also has a monster stack limps on the button. 5 people see a Q 6 2 flop. It's checked to the button, who bets close to the pot, and folded to UTG, who immediately checkraises to 5K. Button takes exactly 2 seconds to call, and we see the K hit on the turn. UTG checks, button now bets 3K into 15K, UTG insta-CR's again to a whopping 9K, button takes 30 seconds, agonizes and folds J 8 face up. The LAG, of course, flips up QJo, no hearts, and starts to celebrate while the button dejectedly moans about how the fourth heart had to hit.

-One of those weird bluffs that you can only pull off live/I hope the BB isn't reading this: after just getting to a new table, I raise 77 UTG and it's folded to the BB, who calls. Something about the call puts me on edge, but the flop comes 4 4 3 and he checks, so I bet anyway. The BB instantly puts out all his yellow 1K chips and checkraises me just under half his stack, leaving himself all the smaller ones. I know exactly what he has and should really fold, but again, something about this tells me "forget pot odds, he's folding so many better hands to a shove". I ask him to count his chips while I think about it, and this + the small chance I'm bluffing with the best hand = me putting him all in after about 30 seconds. He agonizes, tells me he puts me on kings, then folds after a full 2 minutes.

But wait, it gets better: A half hour or so later, I raise AKs UTG at 3/6. MP calls and the BB reraises to 5600, now about a third of his stack (the previous series of hands has me chipped up to about 30K). Of course, I shove. BB says something like "goddammit, this is the exact same situation and the exact same hand", curses himself and his fate again, then folds JJ face up. This time, I show my hand. He mutters something about "how can he put his tournament life on the line with no pair" under his breath. Live poker is awesome.

The first time I lost chips the entire tournament was on the bubble, when I got repopped PF a couple of times. I went from a high of 35K down to 18K or so, but doubled up on a 70/30 (my first all in that got called when I was covered and the last until my final hand), won a flip right afterwards, and ended the day with the 66.8K stack I mentioned.

Day 2 started on a good note. A few hands in, I raised J5o from the SB to 6K, planning to fold to a shove from the BB, who had around 19K total. Of course, I forgot about the antes which made it an autocall, so I really should've shoved in the first place and instantly regretted it when the BB moved in. I disgustedly said "well, I have live cards, I call", flipped the J5 and watched the BB turn over...76o. Okay. A few hands later, I had 90K and reraised an LMP raiser on the button with AK. He (properly given my image) shoved AQ, I called and held up and probably had the #3 stack (170K) in the tournament out of around 90 people.

Unfortunately, that was pretty much it. After I moved to my last table (only the second one I would say was really tough), I chipped down to 140K at 2/4K blinds until the following 2 hands:

On the hand before my bustout, an MP player, a well known pro and a solid TAG, raised in MP. Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin), sitting to my left, called. BB, a short stack, clearly didn't like his hand much but called anyway, and three people saw the A J 2 flop. ZJ and the BB both checked to MP, who bet a fairly large amount, ZJ instantly checkraised the minimum, and the BB, who again hated his hand, finally called all in (everyone in the building could probably put him on a weak ace at this point.) MP instashoved, ZJ thought a few seconds and called with AQo, no diamonds - a call that, even getting somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1, was honestly the worst I've ever seen him make. MP had AK, by far the bottom of his range. Of course, a queen hit the river, MP hit the roof and got a 20 hand penalty for crumpling the offending queen into a ball, and instead of being out of the tournament, ZJ had a ~500K stack.

On the next hand, I raised with AJ in LMP, ZJ called from the cutoff and the BB overcalled. The flop came A 5 4, BB checked and I decided to CR ZJ all in as I knew he would bet the vast majority of his hands here if checked to/I could make him fold a naked heart (plus, I could get away if the action went "ZJ bets/BB shoves", something that could well happen.) ZJ did bet, BB folded, and I checkraised as planned...into his T 9 flush. Oops. I'd still make this play again given the circumstances, so I'm not too disappointed, but I do wish he hadn't hit the 3 outer on the hand before.

It wasn't a great ending, but a smooth start to the WSOP - hopefully I'll be following this up with more as the events go on.

Short update since I just got back from a long day: I'm in the money at my first WSOP event of '07, the 2K NL (Event #10.) 125 of 1500-odd people remain; I have a 1.5x average or so stack, although it'll only be ~22 BB once the blinds go up again and the structure is very fast late. We resume play at 2 PM (Vegas time) tomorrow and play down to the final table.

I had a bunch of interesting hands this weekend, but one ultimately totally inconsequential one stood out. In the Absolute 150K, with effective 5K stacks at 50/100, a terrible player (something like 60/9 in PT and unable to fold a pair if his life depended on it) limped UTG, I overlimped 6 5 in MP (not something I do all the time, but worth doing with a guy like this in the pot), a nondescript TAG button also limped and 5 people saw the flop, which came A K 5.

The BB, who was running at something like 40/25 [and later put 40 BB in postflop with K4o on a KJ99 board], bet out 300 into 500. UTG did what he'd usually done so far and called. I could safely assume that, barring exactly a flush draw or the remaining fives, the button was out of the hand. What should my action have been?

Lately, I've been reading stoxtrader's new limit book from 2+2, Winning in Tough Hold'Em Games. It's an excellent book - probably the best limit book ever written. Most of it is inapplicable to NL, but there are some concepts that roughly transfer over. If this were a limit hand, the book's advice here would be straightforward - fold PF (your hand strength is not high enough to raise or call, even against this horrible limper) but certainly take a card off on the flop because of the immediate odds, the double bet size on the next street and the fact that neither of these guys will fold top pair. There's one big difference here between limit and NL - I'm only getting a shade under 4:1 here, while in a limit pot it'd be closer to 7:1 - but then again, implied odds are much greater in NL, I can perhaps bluff a turned heart if they both check to me*, and of my 5 outs, 4 are almost certainly clean.

*This isn't really a contradiction from 'these guys will never fold'. Lots of people will bet Ax here as the BB, and UTG is bad enough to call with as little as Kx. But once someone else overcalls, many of these same guys will check/fold, or bet very weakly on the turn, allowing cheap draws in.

So, in this spot, I'm limping a hand exactly because of its implied odds potential against, frankly, someone who's terrible at poker, then go on to flop what is basically a very well hidden ~5 outer counting the backdoor draw. But from an informal poll over AIM, many people simply fold even with 100 BB, never mind 50, and almost no one peels every time even with the players described. I think that in this particular spot - against bad players who are often happy to get their stack in with A2 if you turn a 6, and will *always* do it assuming a split if you turn a 5 - you might have to peel every time, even if you know for sure that only improving will win you the hand. The only real problem is the relatively shallow stacks; with 100 BB in this spot in the future, I won't even be thinking twice.

Caveat: in the actual hand, after I called, the button overcalled and almost certainly got there when a spade hit the turn. Don't *totally* count the TAG out :P

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Some other hands from the weekend:

1)With about 2.5K effective stacks, CO raises to 180 at 30/60 blinds and I make it 600 with AKs. He calls, then leads a Q66 (1 heart) flop for 300 (that's 1/4-ish of the pot). If you choose to continue here (it's not a crime if you fold), what's your play? I see shoves all the time, but rarely calls - and I think calling is the way to go. Nobody ever folds a queen to a flop shove and some of your opponents will even make heroic calls with middle pairs, but if you call, you have two shots to win - by spiking something or by raising them off their hand on the turn if he checks/bets a small amount one more time. As a bonus, you can mix in the occasional bluff of this kind with slowplaying your aces.

2)Simple, common spot that's really annoying when you guess wrong and he checks or folds: I'm deep stacked in the BB with Q 9. The CO, with a 15-20 BB effective stack, minraises and I call. I flop a K high flush (we'll call the flop KTx, but it can really be anything). What's the play? Checkraising usually wins a small to medium-ish pot; leading wins bigger pots but less often. The trouble is that it's incredibly hard to find the right balance of hands to lead on those flops vs. hands to checkraise (note: cash players don't have this problem because stacks are deeper and you can bet/3 bet enough that nobody wants to check in this spot.) This is also tricky because the king and queen are accounted for, so if you lead, only the A will continue/your hand isn't horribly vulnerable like it would be if you had 54. I suspect there's a mathematical answer that makes one option correct vs. most people's ranges, but it'll take a long time for someone to figure this out.

3)Another bitch about Stars tournaments: at one point today, I was 75'th of 2000 in the Million with a whopping 60 BB. Considering it's a 7000+ man tournament that starts with 200 BB, something is ridiculously wrong here. There are live tournaments with a 50K prize pool that have deeper stacks/better structures 2/3 of the way through than that one! But oddly enough, as I write, both the Million and the FTP 400K - which has a much better structure in the first 2 hours - have 20 BB average stacks with 150-ish people left and are more or less evened out with each other. How does that work, and why is the Stars structure so skewed 2-3 hours in? I hope someone fixes it soon, because between that and the terrible payouts, I have to fight myself to play it every week even after winning it once.

Looking forward to the WSOP...look for some big updates all month.

A quick announcement - a new quarterly magazine is picking up this blog as a syndicated column, along with some additional content from yours truly. We're still negotiating, but watch this space for updates.

I don't have a theme to write about at the moment due to not playing too many hands lately, but some of the ones I've played have been interesting, anyway. In no particular order:

-Spot the mistake(s): 25/50 in the 650 WSOP sat on Stars (I have about 3K chips.) I open limp AA UTG+1 hoping to limp/RR (this isn't the mistake), 1 more limper, SB completes, BB checks. The flop comes K54 2 clubs (I don't have the Ac), it's checked to me and I bet 150. The last limper raises to 500, the others fold, and I call. The turn is an offsuit 8 and I check/call 3/4 pot, then check/call 1/2 pot all in on a jack river. Clear mistake #1: not 3 betting the flop. If he has 54, fine, but I should be willing to get it in against the vast majority of his range on that board. Clear mistake #2: calling the river. It hit one of the few hands that he can very well have (KJ) that I still beat, and he should really not be 3 barreling a bluff by this point. I'm just not good often enough.

-A similar "fancy play syndrome" type hand that, IMO, is actually not FPS'd at all: In the Bodog 50K 109 on Sunday, a very loose, very bad player who calls down with any piece limps in MP at 75/150 (I have about 4K; he has me well covered). In a previous hand, he limp/overcalled my isolation raise from EP (the button had also called), led 1/3 pot into me on a Qxx board, then got 50 BB in vs. the button with Q9o. In this hand, it's folded to me on the button with AKs. The blinds are both decent and one of whom is probably capable of making a move. I overlimp looking to shove on a blind raise. Almost nobody ever overlimp/reraises on purpose (fish do it with hands like 44 sometimes.) I think this play is underrated, especially when you have a medium strength postflop hand like AK-AQ, JJ-88 (and very rarely, only with the right table conditions, AA-QQ) that you want to stack off with on some flops but not others. Just don't ever do it with 44/this is probably best off never used in a cash game where you can't just bomb it all in. A good chunk of the value here comes from them putting you on exactly a small pair and never anything as good as AK, and calling light.

-Playing with bounties, jackpots, and other weird promos: Some day, I'm going to write a few blog entries on this in detail, because, to my knowledge, nothing in print on any of these is any good.

I: In any promo where you can win your buyin back or a significant amount of money relative to the pot, loose preflop calls are basically essential. This especially goes for bounty tournaments where someone has shoved in front of you and you are closing the action; in a 50% bounty structure, even when half your chips are at risk to the all in, your pot odds are lousy, and you think you're ~33% to win (in other words, you have something like 92o), there is a very good argument for calling. Like I said, someday, I'll do the math (which is pretty extensive), but this is a popular format at the lower limits and people don't really play them well.

II: WSEX "Aces never lose" hand that I posted on 2+2: at 10/20 limit (where you get $75 back if your aces lose at showdown), I raise red AA UTG and only the BB calls. The flop comes something like J 9 5 , BB checks, and I check behind. The turn comes something like the 3 , bet/call; river J, bet/call. BB shows J7o, no clubs, and takes it, but I make $15 on the hand (35 postflop), and unless he was going to checkraise this on the flop and maybe 4 bet, I played it optimally. After doublechecking on 2+2, I'm pretty sure it's optimal vs. his entire range, too. "Insurance" promos like this one also make for odd strategy decisions.

There should be one more update before the WSOP - starting around the 6th, I'll be shifting to daily updates with lots and lots of live hands/chip counts :)

Getting back to bread and butter for a while, until I get back from the WSOP I'm going to focus more on specific hands and tournament summaries.

To start off, I'm going to talk about a hand that was actually posted in BBV. I had a couple of people disagree with me in that thread about it, but I'm very, very sure I'm right. The hand in question:

PokerStars Game #10068071900: Hold'em No Limit ($2/$4) - 2025/05/23 - 15:26:24 (ET)
Table 'Errai' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: MrteddyKGB ($388 in chips)
Seat 2: XTBCX ($191.70 in chips)
Seat 3: gambler2k4 ($878.05 in chips)
Seat 4: 007james007 ($298.60 in chips)
Seat 5: MrDima ($425.80 in chips)
Seat 6: Stoffer77 ($209.40 in chips)
gambler2k4: posts small blind $2
007james007: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to gambler2k4 [Ks Qs]
MrDima: folds
Stoffer77: calls $4
MrteddyKGB: calls $4
XTBCX: folds
XTBCX leaves the table
gambler2k4: calls $2
007james007: checks
*** FLOP *** [Qd Qh 5c]
gambler2k4: checks
007james007: bets $4
Stoffer77: calls $4
MrteddyKGB: calls $4
gambler2k4: calls $4
*** TURN *** [Qd Qh 5c] [As]
gambler2k4: bets $20
007james007: folds
Stoffer77: folds
MrteddyKGB: raises $20 to $40
gambler2k4: calls $20
*** RIVER *** [Qd Qh 5c As] [Qc]
gambler2k4: checks
MrteddyKGB: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
gambler2k4: shows [Ks Qs] (four of a kind, Queens)
MrteddyKGB: mucks hand (AA)

gambler was frustrated that KGB checked behind the second nuts here. Now, there's no question KGB played it bad on three streets, but the river was actually quite good and this is a spot where people should frequently save themselves a lot of money (but rarely do). Consider the action:

-In a 4 way QQ5r pot, BB minbets (who cares), the first limper calls (this can be a 5, a pair, occasionally ace high), the second limper overcalls (this is usually *not* a 5 or worse, although really bad players will sometimes still have ace high, and occasionally something like 88 will show up here) and now the SB makes it call #3. What does SB, a regular actually dropping down from 5/10, have on this completely dry flop? Hint: it's not a 5. Even without any reads, you could check/fold unimproved AA on the next street here and be right 9/10 of the time - even if SB is bad enough to have nothing, there are still the other guys to worr about.

-The turn is an ace and now SB leads into the field with a large bet. This one's pretty simple: either he's a giant clown with an ace (if you're KGB holding two of them, that's sort of unlikely) or he's been badly slowplaying a Q (pretty much 90% of the time). When KGB raises and gambler calls, since even a complete idiot isn't likely to think A5o is still good here, that changes to around 95%.

-The river is a queen. Gambler puts his opponent on an ace and 'of course' checks. This is a terrible play as no opponent in his right mind would value bet this river with an ace (even the Zeebo theorem doesn't usually work on a guy with a 5 in this spot), but KGB has two aces. Does that change anything? A cursory look at this hand says 'not really' - there's just very little way for gambler to end up with the last ace in his hand at this point, and he's certainly getting checkraised by the last queen. Therefore, what KGB has is a crying check behind. In fact, if I were him, this is the rare spot where I don't even bother calling a river bet with the second nuts, either.

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I recently played a 20/40 limit hand (yes, I know, bear with me) with the same idea. In a very good 8 handed game, 2 people limped, the button raised, SB called, I called with Kxs in the BB and 5 of us saw a flop, which came KJJr. It was checked to the button, who bet; SB called, I overcalled, and both people called behind me. The turn was another jack; if it were not disrespectful, I would have open folded.

Certainly, when the button bets, he often/usually has me beat here, but not always; it's a big pot, he might have raised some other suited king (giving me outs to split) or QTs, even if he has AK I'm only losing a small amount in equity by taking a card off for one bet, etc. When the SB calls, he can have QT, 99 (it was a good game), some sort of AQ/AT type hand, and so on. As long as he isn't slowplaying a jack *most of the time*, my overcall is still marginal either way. But when both limpers call after me, either we're playing a live game where everyone is drunk and hasn't looked at their cards yet, or at least one jack - and probably both the other kings - are out. It's simply almost mathematically impossible for me to have > 1 out. While the third jack makes my third nuts look pretty, it doesn't actually mean much except that I'm now drawing dead.

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This leads me to the title of the article- in a game with thinking players, or at least players that understand the other guys have cards, too, overcalling on scary boards is a tell that cuts both ways. Note that in the second hand, I overcalled on a KJJ board with a king/no kicker, essentially a bluff catcher, counting on my overcall to shut down the action from anything worse and telling me whether I had the best hand; to some extent, you can use the 'implied strength' of this kind of overcall to your advantage. But after that point, on a board that scary, slowplaying is useless because your hand is just as face up whether you raise or call - and you really shouldn't be calling the bottom 95% of your range.

There is absolutely no need to make your opponent feel that acutely aware of his need to fold the second nuts.