Winners... grinners

Should I learn no limit? I'm asking myself for two reasons. The first is that I don't feel I am making progress at limit. I am winning more than I'm losing and I'm fairly sure that altogether I'm a winning player, but I don't feel I'm any better now than I was a couple of months ago. I'm sure all players who are learning the game have this feeling. Bad play can really hurt you in limit. You patiently wait for the good hands and then you fuck them up. The second reason is that whereas I thought I would be temperamentally better suited to limit, I enjoy no limit more, and I think I play it better. I do not think I am any good at it but I do win money.

I've just won a sitngo. It is just a five-dollar game but winning is winning. You have to be better than the other nine players. Before that, I came fourth. I made a bad play as a bluff. It was tilt. I suffer from tilt and need to think about how I can fix that. (For those who enjoy reading about horrible play, it went like this. Blinds of 100-200. Villain bet 600. I called with A8s in the big blind. That's an okay call. I'm putting villain on A-rag or a small pair at best; maybe just stealing with something smaller even than that. The flop comes Q-rag-rag, rainbow. Not a great flop for me, but I can be reasonably confident it's not great for him either. I check, he bets about 300. Looks like a weak continuation bet. I push all in. I'm thinking that he's missed and has A high. He might be beating me but he's not going to call and I can take this decent pot. What the fuck came over me? I knew I should not do it and I did it. Tilt. The guy had AQ and I was finished.)

So I got back on the horse after that and played a tiltfree game. I took some horrendous beats and could have been tilted by some halfwitted slowplaying. One guy in particular insisted on slowplaying everything. I comforted myself with laughing at his poor play though. Slowplaying has its place, but it's better to bet for value and not let your opponents have the free cards to beat you. On one hand, he had a pair of Ks. He limped and I limped with QT. The flop came Q high. He checked. I bet out. He called. He checked and I bet out again on the turn, which was a brick, and he called. But I had kept my bet small because I was suspicious. The river was another brick. He made a small bet and I paid him off. A few hands later, he had K7 and the flop came 776. There were four to the flop. All checked. The turn was a brick. All checked. The river paired one of my cards. I bet out. He raised and I called, suspecting the bluff. So I paid him, what, 500 chips with the blinds at I think it was 50/100. Big deal. He didn't take a cent from the other two players. Later on, he met his end with a hint of poetic justice. He had hit the flop and yet again slowplayed, this time with top pair. The turn was a brick. The other guy bet, he pushed all in. The other guy called. He had slowplayed a bigger pair! I L'dMAO.

Once in the money, I outplayed the other guys. I had plenty of space to manoeuvre because the blinds were still quite small. So I watched and waited and then started putting some moves on them. The big stack, A, was a particular kind of player. This type will bet when they have an ace, say, or a pair, but rarely with a king or worse. After the flop, they will bet when they hit and will fold to a bet if they haven't. They'll sometimes check and call with a small pair, and sometimes will slowplay when they have called a PF raise and think that they have the raiser beat. I don't know how you'd characterise that type of player but I know them when I see them. They're awesomely predictable. What they don't realise is that they are exactly the kind of player who gets sucked in by a slowplay. A tricky player, knowing where he is against a player like A, can wait for just that hand where A hits and he hits too.

The other guy was just rubbish. The worst thing you can do in poker is call bets when you neither figure to be ahead nor are drawing to be ahead (or even if you are drawing to be ahead, you figure to pay more than you'll ever earn when you hit, over the course of all the bets you take). Sometimes, you'll be calling with a small pair and will get lucky, but generally, you want to be betting or folding, not calling, unless you are drawing. You can take that too far, or forget the folding part, and play too loosely and aggressively, but it's far better to be a bit aggro and win some, lose some than to be too willing to pay when you are losing.

I guess he can consider himself a bit unlucky because he got all in with me with AK. I had QQ. It's the classic coin flip. I love it! I love it either way. You are a slight favourite with the ladies but I don't mind having Slick. It gets the heart going. My ladies held up and that was him done. I did the poker equivalent of slapping A around. He had run pretty hot early in the tourney, and had amassed a lot of chips, but by this stage, I was the big stack, and I used it to push him around.

Of course, I remind myself, when I make the final table of the stud freeroll, I think I should be a stud player; when I win a packet at limit, I should stick to limit... that's how it goes. Your best game is always the one you just won at!

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:15 pm