Questions Thread #10

ok – call me tenacious or call me dense – but I really really really would like to see a discussion on the difference between playing in Vegas or Southern California?

Sorry to be so persistent. I am an inquiring mind and I want to know.

The Scientist.

My question is how do game at the 20-40/30-60 level even exsist? Is it only the pros/semi-pros that play that level? If there are fishy players at that level, who in the heck are they? Ican’t even begin to imagine 4000-8000 games that I hear go on. Are the fish just players that are trying to jump a level?

Is there a “second math” to poker?

What I mean is, there seem to be a good bit of players that are college educated and have degrees in some really notable fields. So far however, I see no “huge” math in any of my readings that would seem like that advanced mathematic skills is needed.

Thanks

Jim

If you were going to play hold ‘em with a joker in the deck, what adjustments would you make to your playing strategy?

Hi Ed… Not exactly a strategy question, but I just purchased and read Getting Started in Hold Em, and have really found it useful. I’m not a total beginner per se, but have found your breakdown of the game excellent and easy to understand. I’m just wondering if you have any plans to do a series of Getting Started books for games like stud and omaha?

Ed, I’d like to ask you about having a bad seat in a great game.

Everyone at least knows in priciple the importance of position and game selection. The ideal seat in the ideal game would be with the bad players to your right, of course. But what if they’re to your left? Would you move out of a great full ring LHE game with two or three terrible players to your immediate left? These guys are prototypical bad players: they cold call far to often preflop, and make significant errors postflop. The rest of the table plays pretty well, but not as well as you do. You would be moving to an OK game. If you stay, what sort of adjustments do you make? How does the answer change if you’re playing NLHE?

Hi Ed,

Do you have any thoughts on the equivalence of player skills in online vs. live games? For example, in my limited live play, I’d say that the 1/2 limit players in cardrooms aren’t nearly as good as the 1/2 players online, but do you have any feel for what limits the typical 2/4 limit live players or 1/2 no limit players correspond to in online games? Yes it’s a broad question, but I think it would help ease some people’s fear in transitioning to live play.

Carl,

I’ll take a stab at this one because I’ve played at the levels you’re asking about both online and live.

The players in the typical 2/4 live limit game are horrible. The 25c/50c games online are much tougher and they aren’t anywhere close to tough.

If you are a consistent winner at 2/4 online, you’ll either be frustrated by 2/4 live because of the 6-7 way flops, or in heaven because of them.

Optimum Bluffing Strategy

Howdy Ed,

I know I am at very small stakes and bluffing shouldn’t be too much of a concern. But I am still trying to grasp me head around the concept and it’s bugging me to the point I need to ask someone.

In “The Theory of Poker” It says in an example of Bluffing Frequency, that if a pot lays an opponent 6-1, that, your chances of you bluffing him should be the same.

But what about other hands? What if the pot laid 4-1, 8-1, 12-1? You just can’t change your bluffing frequency on the spot to accomidate the hand at the moment. He doesn’t mean that I sit around and wait for the pot odds to be around 6-1 each time I want to bluff, that makes no sense. I just don’t get it.

I feel that even though it’s only .50/$1 table I play online, I feel that I am getting taken advantage of a bit because I am tight and fold to a raise a lot. When I do raise and get a hand, I am not getting any action. This is the reason I wanted to study bluffs. Besides, I think that practicing it for .50/$1 would be better than hitting the live $2/$4 since I am goig to screw it up quite a few times before I get the basics down.

Thanks for everything Ed

ThatJimGuy

Let’s post a hand for Ed to analyze…

No individual reads, but based on what I’ve seen so far, the table seemed to be loose and aggressive.

Party Poker 5/10 Hold’em (5 handed)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Js, 9s
UTG calls, 1 fold, Button calls, Hero completes, BB checks.

Flop: (4 SB) 7s, 4s, 3c (4 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, UTG checks, Button bets, Hero calls, BB folds, UTG folds.

Turn: (3 BB) 5h (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets, Hero raises, Button calls.

I was planning to bet any river card.

River: (7 BB) 9d (2 players)
Hero bets, Button folds.

Final Pot: 8 BB

I was just wondering, that since learning poker anywhere decently should take at least half a year, or maybe severals years to us mere mortals, there must be several things good, experienced players look back and think: “gosh, was I stupid back then or what”.

Those players that share their knowledge, by writing books, participating in forums or whatnot, mostly talk about the things they now know. Which is fine, of course, because it teaches us beginners.

But sometimes it’s more enlightening to hear what wrong ideas some expert held at first. Not because it’s nice to put them down. But because it highlights the tricky parts. It might make you think something along the lines of: “even an expert like Ed was confused about this-and-that concept, maybe I should study more about it.”

So my suggestion to Ed, and any other experienced players, is: give us some wrong idea that you held for long after you started playing and how did you actually overcome it.

I know that most players go through the same misunderstandings and that these misunderstandings are well documented. But it’s nice to hear them from experts, not to beginners.

I hope this is the correct method to post my question. But, here goes: What are the benefits of a poker coach? Clearly the benefits of a coach in any sport are well-documented…but how to pick one? I guess I would have to “interview” a few different ones that speak to whay I would like to be able to do…any thoughts on this would be appreciated. I am just tired of my yo-yo bankroll syndrome and jumping from LHE to tournaments to NLHE to PLO back to tournaments, etc…methinks I would like to make a focussed effort to grind limit for this year and see what happens…cheers,

Bill

Is it possible that a discussion area could be set up to discuss hands? I’m guessing you don’t want this to turn into another twoplustwo so maybe you could select 1-2 hands a week and post them. Everyone could discuss these hands for a few days then you could post what you would have done and then post another hand to be debated.

Another hand. No real read on opponent; he just sat down.

The idea on the turn was that (1) the four-to-a-straight looks really scary (esp. given villain’s half-pot turn bet), (2) I have lots of outs, (3) making a small raise doesn’t leave much left for the river. I discussed this with a friend, who is pretty adamant that the turn should be a check/call. Comments?

Absolute Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $1/$2
6 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is UTG with 10h ah
Hero calls, UTG+1 raises to $8, 4 folds, Hero calls.

Flop: 10s 6h 7s ($19, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets $20, Hero calls.

Turn: 8h ($59, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG+1 bets $30, Hero raises all-in $324.25, UTG+1 calls all-in $193.6.
Uncalled bets: $100.65 returned to Hero.

River: :8d ($506.2, 0 player + 2 all-in – Main pot: $506.2)

Results:
Final pot: $506.2

Ed,

What are your thoughts on open-limping in small/micro stakes 6-max NL games?

Help me settle a terminology debate.

Let’s say I have JhTh, and I know for whatever reason that my opponent has 2d2s. The flop is 8h9h6s.

If I bet, is it a value bet or a semi-bluff or something else?

Ed,

Would you consider going over blind stealing/blind defense? In the the old micro days it was never a problem because the pots would almost always be multiway, but recently as the online games have become tighter I find myself frequently encountering these situations with little to guide me through them.

Atonio,

Ed was just plugging Dave Fromm’s DVD set for playing shorthanded and I have it (Like I have Ed’s DVD set, check the link at the home page halfway through the page). Much like yourself, I was pretty clueless of what to do and how things went as

1) the number of players at a table went down (Ed dicusses playing shorthanded in his DVD set, but it’s generally pre-flp info)

2) tougher games that get to the blinds a lot more.

I highly suggest picking up the set since it does cover it pretty darn well.

Not that I am an expert on it now by any means (I did just get it two weeks ago), but here is one thing I can tell you if you end up playing a lot of blind defenses, prepare for short term swings you may not be used to. You have to hit the river a bit more than usual and that takes bets away quicker than you may be used to with 4-6 players on the flop. (Or in the case with micros as of late, 3-4)

Just like Ed’s, it’s a good DVD set. A lot of things, “clicked” with the concepts that were presented.

I do have a question for Ed though concerning full ring to shorthanded blind defense. Does the requirements for blinds steals/defenses change at all between the two games?

Thanks

Jim

Dear Ed,

Do your change your considerations in shorthanded live LHE when the table decides to play with one big blind, and not a small and big?