Ed’s Spring Poker Thoughts

If you play online no-limit, at least at the $0.50-$1 level or above, you’re bound to run into the light 3-bet. You open for $3.50 on the button in a $0.50-$1 game, the small blind folds, and then the big blind makes it $12 to go.

Now that’s just a 3-bet. The “light” part is what hands they’ll make the play with. This 3-bet “should” be a big pair or a big ace. Maybe some big kings too. But the light 3-better will make the raise with all sorts of hands: A 6 , 3 3 , 9 8 . Sometimes they’ll even go lower. Recently I remember having someone 3-bet me in this button versus blinds situation with K 2 .

Getting 3-bet by someone who you know will do it light can be annoying. First of all, when you open on the button, your hand is a lot more likely to look like Q 5 than K K . So the 3-bet is usually going to be pretty threatening to you even if you know that the hand behind the play isn’t always top-notch because your hand is probably just as bad or even worse.

What to do, what to do. Well, the first and most obvious play is to fold. Folding is probably the best you can do against most light 3-bets when you yourself have junk. But folding is exactly what the light 3-bettor wants you to do, so sometimes you have to fight back.

Read more…

A couple of days ago I posted a relatively routine no-limit hand for discussion. I say it’s routine not because it isn’t important, but because it’s the type of situation that arises regularly. For reference, here’s the original hand.

I’m in the big blind in a $1-$2 6-max game with $200 stacks. I hold A Q .

A tight regular opens for $7 from two off the button. A loose player calls in the small blind, and I call in the big blind.

The flop comes A 9 6 . The small blind checks.

What are your goals for the hand? How do you plan things out from here? How does your plan in this hand fit in with your entire range of hands on this flop?

The discussion in the original thread was great, and there were a lot of different thoughts about it. There are numerous ways to play the hand and plenty of justifications for those ways. Here’s how I was thinking about the hand as I played it.

Read more…

This hand is a slightly modified version of one I played recently. It’s a routine situation that I think deserves some discussion. As with many hands, I definitely don’t think there’s one “right” way to play it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about it.

I’m in the big blind in a $1-$2 6-max game with $200 stacks. I hold A Q .

A tight regular opens for $7 from two off the button. A loose player calls in the small blind, and I call in the big blind.

The flop comes A 9 6 . The small blind checks.

What are your goals for the hand? How do you plan things out from here? How does your plan in this hand fit in with your entire range of hands on this flop?

Read my thoughts in the next post.

Recently I was playing in a fairly loose $2-$5 live no-limit game. An early position player with about $300 limped. I was two off the button, and I made it $20 to go with A K . The button, with about $325 total, made it $75 to go. He was an unremarkable, if slightly loose player. The limper thought for a while and then called. I had both players covered.

1. How should I respond? Should I fold, call, raise a bit, or move all-in?
2. What’s my plan for the rest of the hand (should I need one)?

Answer those two questions for yourself before you read on.

I’ll tell you what I did.

Read more…

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed the archive, so this review is way overdue. So let’s not waste any further time and get right to it.

• Bluffing in Small Stakes No Limit Games offers some helpful tips for players who feel totally lost in those loose, live $1-$2 games.
• With this year’s WSOP coming up, I bet a lot of people will be Switching from Online To Live No Limit. Generally speaking, it’s an easy transition because online games tend to be a lot tougher than live games on average. But if you are unsure of yourself, it can’t hurt to hear some advice.
• In the vein of the above article, here are Four Quick Live Game Tips For Online Players.
• Finally, check out Tilt and the Curse of Absent-Minded Mistakes

Stoxpoker has rolled out a couple of new features that I wanted to tell you guys about.

First, they have unveiled this amazing whiz-bang new widget that lets you watch Stoxpoker videos directly from Noted Poker Authority. If you’re already a Stoxpoker member and NPA reader, you can just cruise over to the Stoxpoker at NPA page and watch all the new videos.

If you’ve just tuned in to NPA and are wondering what all this Stoxpoker stuff is about, then definitely go check out the Stoxpoker at NPA page right now.

Second, Stoxpoker has a new hand history converter that will reformat all your hand histories into an easy to read format for posting on forums and blogs. I’ve been looking for a dependable hand history converter for a while, and I’m finally happy with this one from Stoxpoker.

So if you want to post a hand on the message board, you can now use the Stoxpoker hand converter to post it. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to get the forum software to recognize any tags or codes, so for now just use the Plain Text option in the converter.

So it appears I can’t handle playing six tables. I’ve always made quite a significant number of mistakes while multitabling due to time pressure, but I figured that if I practiced six-tabling I’d eventually get the hang of it. It’s probably true that I would/will eventually get the hang of six tables, but I’m going to cut back to four for the time being. I think four will be within my comfort zone.

A couple of days ago I hit multitabling rock bottom. I played the following hand:

Full Tilt, $1/$2 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

MP: $509.25 (254.6 bb)
CO: $175.50 (87.8 bb)
BTN: $224.80 (112.4 bb)
Hero (SB): $217.15 (108.6 bb)
BB: $40 (20 bb)
UTG: $118.10 (59.1 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with K A
UTG folds, MP raises to $7, 2 folds, Hero raises to $24, BB folds, MP calls $17

Flop: ($50) J 9 J (2 players)
Hero bets $32.50, MP calls $32.50

Turn: ($115) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $75, MP calls $75

River: ($265) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $286, Hero folds

The thing that was remarkable about the hand was that I played it entirely unconsciously until the river. At that point, my unconscious brain escalated the hand to my conscious brain by saying something along the lines of, “Hrmm.. conscious brain, maybe you should take a look at this one on the bottom-left. My opponent doesn’t seem to have folded yet, so you probably have a decision to make.”

Read more…

I’ve felt a few different emotions since hearing yesterday of Brandi Hawbaker’s suicide. I’ve felt some anger and disgust. But primarily I’m sad.

I believe strongly in the power and value of community. Humans are social creatures and each of us depends on a network of relationships to help us through every day. We all have ups and downs, and I think we should contribute to our communities during our high times and receive help from our communities when we’re struggling.

I’m sad for the way Brandi and our poker community interacted. Our community didn’t function the way I think communities should, and one of its members has now prematurely died.

I’m disappointed with myself for failing to speak up about it even once while she was alive.

I know our community can work well because I’ve seen it work so many times before. I’m grateful for all the support I have and all the friends I’ve made in poker. I think we can and will do better in the future.

Today I made a contribution to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education. I hope the money will help someone else out there to make it through.

My last post was an article I wrote for Card Player about how to play suited connectors out of position in no-limit hold’em. The basic one word conclusion of that article was “don’t.”

Today janeg of the forums at InternetTexasHoldem.com alerted me to a discussion they were having about a no-limit hand played with a suited connector. But this hand was played from the button. Will I still want to steer clear of the little suited monster? Or will I be more interested in it this time around?

Here’s a summary of the hand in question. Please visit the original thread at ITH for a more thorough presentation and discussion.

It’s a full ring online $0.50-$1 game played with $100 effective stats. A player opens three off the button for $3.50. The next player calls. The cutoff folds, and the action is to us with 8 6 .

The thread provides a detailed description of the open-raiser, so again, please visit the thread to get the full information. Most notably, however, the poster says that he estimates the raiser’s range as approximately: 55+, AT+, A8s+, KJ+, QJ . He also notes that this player is quite willing to play for stacks with a decent top pair even on scary boards.

The original poster calls the $3.50, and the blinds fold. So the pot is about $10.50 on the flop, there’s $96.50 behind, and the flop comes:

A 9 7

Everyone checks to us on the button, and we bet $8 into the $10.50 pot. The preflop raiser then checkraises to $25, and the middle player folds. The action is on us.

Here were my thoughts about the hand.

Read more…