Robert Yocum

When you switch between poker games, which for most new players its when you get bored with Hold Em and and move on to Stud and Omaha, you have to learning a completely different skill set.  When playing different types of the same game, obviously it doesn’t take a different skill set, but a different playing style.  For example: You’re playing Hold Em, your in the big blind, and you have 3 8 Offsuit.  In a cash game and a MTT, if someone raises the pot, more often than not you are going to dump this hand.  In Limit Hold Em, since the raise is so minimal you will probably call the raise, unless its re-raised before it gets to you.  Also, since you cant re-raise enough to move someone off a hand.  However, in a no limit game, if you have a weak read on the player who raised, you might re-pop with the 3 8 off.

While a very basic example, this serves to illustrate the difference between a skill set and a play style.  Playing a STT requires a play style with a very simple mindset.  If you are in it, you better want to win it.  If you go broke in a cash game, you can easily reload and win your money back.  Similary in a MTT with rebuys, if you get a bad beat and go busto, you can buy back in and make a run for it.  But a STT requires a different play style.  The number of chips in play is minimal, the blinds go up freakishly fast, and usually only 1/3 of the people playing get paid.  So every chip is vitally important.  So if you play a pot, you better expect to win it.  Unless you get a big chip dump to start, you really don’t have chips to waste.

Now most of the poker sites have hand tracking, so lets look at my numbers and see what I am talking about.  With 6119 hands played, the first standout stat is: Hands Won: 20%, Showdowns Won: 50%.   Now the hands won might seem low, but my play style is hard core Rock.  So I don’t do much with the weak wacky hands.  So only winning 1 in 5 hands is normal for me, when 3 of the 4 hands I lost I folded pre flop.  I have been known to not play a hand, blinds included, for 4 or 5 orbits because of crap cards. 

The real tell is the next two stats.  Flops seen: 28%, Win % if flop seen: 43%.  Again the flops seen might appear low, but if you factor in the fact that if you raise pre flop and no one calls, that number is also quite normal.  The post flop win percentage marks the fact that if you go in with good cards, its easy to get someone off a hand or to flop the nuts, depending on the texture of the board.  This reinforces the point that I am not playing every hand, but if I am in a hand I mean to win it.  This play style is finalized with the rest of the stats:

Your Actions: Fold: 48%, Check 17%, Call 14%, Bet 10%, Raise 10%, Re-raise 1%

When you Fold: Pre Flop 64%, Flop 6%, Turn 3%, River 2%, No Fold 25%

I would really like the stats to include betting amounts, the size of pots won, and those sort of things, but it doesn’t track that.  Regardless, the stats do show my main point.  You’re not going to win every hand, and you’re not going to play every hand.  But you should have either the cards, the position, or the flat out stones to win every hand that you play.

In his comedy special, Norman Rockwell is Bleeding, Chris Titus has a great bit about knowledge.  If you haven’t seen this special, then you are missing probably the greatest 90 minuets of comedy ever done.  In this special, Titus talks about how mothers give children knowledge and fathers make children earn it.  It’s a riotous bit that goes through the special.

How does this translate to the poker STT?  It’s simple.  Given knowledge is what you read.  Books by poker pros, blogs from established players, even the random babblings that I crank out now and then.  These are all examples of given knowledge.  Earned knowledge is when you actually are brave enough to make moves on players.  Like when you bet out on a 1 suit board with no flush draw to take down the pot. Or when you re-raising a player when the board pairs.  So the key to any good move is to know what the books say to do and using that to your advantage.

In a recent STT, I had a player to my left that was addicted to weak aces.  I had already taken about half his initial stack on a brave but correct call when I had top pair top kicker against his top pair weak kicker.  I had also seen him go up and down calling to the river with an ace in his hand.  So a few hands after I took part of his stack, I am in the small blind and he is the big blind.  The cards are delt out and I get pocket aces.  My first thought is, crap.  Big pairs in the SB rarely get any action.  But I manage to get the perfect storm when 4 people limp ahead of me.  Now the books say if a bunch of people limp, make a big raise out of the blind.  It’s your standard issue squeeze play.   So I took a minuet to make it look like I was trying to summon up the courage to raise the pot.  In reality you have to put a lot of thought into your bet.  There was 250 in the pot, and the player on the left had 750 left.  So I bet 300.  More than the pot was key, but I wanted it to look like I had fold equity.  The player on my left shoved all in.  It folded around to me, of course I called.  He had what I knew he would if he shoved in on me, a suited ace.  My hand held and I went on to take 2nd.

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Warning, profanity to follow

When it comes to online poker, the sit and go is a great invention for both the player and the site. For the player a final table mindset can be developed without having to spend long hours navigating through a massive field. For the site, when someone busts out early they tend to jump into the next available STT looking for some karmic payback.

As someone who spends most of his online activity playing single table tournaments, one of the first things you start to notice is trends. Patterns in both players and play are easily recognizable. The best way to survive STT in the long run is to find the patterns as quickly as possible. Sometimes they are about as subtle as Ted Nugent at a PETA convention. Other times the sirens call to a huge pot and a big payoff can blind anyone to the most obvious of situations.

So for the first part of the STT walkthrough, we are going to discuss the two most dangerous aspects that a player can display. Those would be SFI and DFL.

SFI stands for Stupid Fucking Idiot. And yes I mean to use very harsh language in the following article. The true SFI is rare. Usually they are the kind of player that is so clueless than you might wonder if they were capable of finding their own ass with both hands and a road map. These are the people that are first out on a STT, usually before the first orbit finishes. Case in point was a previous article when I mention a guy who went all in with King Five with the board Ace Ace Five, and I happened to have an Ace. The play itself wasn’t SFI, because if I didn’t have an Ace, there is no way I could call the bet. The SFI came in his blaming the site for his bad luck and worse play. There is no middle ground with the SFI. Depending on your cards and play, they should either be avoided when possible or eliminated as quickly as possible. Obviously in a no rebuy STT, you want their chips, especially when they give them away so easily, but when a SFI combines with a DFL, you can go broke before you can even finish blinking.

This brings us to DFL, Dumb Fucking Luck. As someone who as been on both the high and low of the DFL swing, you just have to hope you are on the good side of the DFL and not the bad side. Avoid the DFL at all costs, especially when a high side DFL is the SFI. There is no middle ground when it comes to the power of the DFL/SFI combination. My last STT experience had a DFL/SFI of unfathomable power. DFL is first to act and he puts in a standard raise. The next guy to act re-raises. Two quick folds brings the action to a third player who goes all in. I muck my hand; DFL calls the all in, as does the re-raiser. The re-raiser had pocket aces; the all in player had kings. What did DFL have? Pocket sixes. A re-raise and an all in after his initial raise and DFL thinks that 6’s is the best hand??!?! I would give you three guesses what the river card was, but you will probably only need one. DFL had already taken a good chunk of several other players’ stacks, some from my stack a few hands ago when I turned a King high flush but he had the Ace. So now with 2 people gone from a 10 player table, and 15k in chips in play, DFL has a little over 7200 in chips. I wound up cashing that table, but I was first out to cash when my AQ was crushed by his A9.

Frankly I was lucky to get away.

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I had a flash of insight the other day. I had a moment of clarity that really brought a few things into focus for my game. I honestly don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before. It was so simple, I guess I missed it. Anyway, here is what happened.

I was on Bodog again (its pretty much the only place I have money now. I got a couple of bucks on Full Tilt but I never play there). It was another STT, as I cash on those about 60% of the time. I am first to act and I have Ace 8 suited. Not a great hand in that position, but hands like that I use all the time to test my table image. Basically when I don’t play for an orbit or two and get this hand I see if my bet will be respected. It’s a great way to test in advance whether or not bluffs will work later down the line. Anyway, back to the story. Blinds are 15/30 and I make a raise to 100. It’s a little bigger than 3x I know, but I always do my best to control pot odds for the next person to call. So if someone does call the 100 into a 145 pot, I know that they have a strong hand. It folds around to the small blind, who just calls, and the big blind folds.

The flop comes down Ace Ace 5 and the small blind goes all in. Interesting, very interesting. So I try to break down the hand. I discount Ace with a higher kicker. Out of position I figure the player would have re-raised me with anything A10 or higher. That leaves a small pocket pair. I figure he has something like 4’s or 6’s and is betting on the fact that I don’t have an Ace. So I call, praying he doesn’t have Ace 5 or pocket 5’s.

Now imagine my shock when his cards show a King 5. I actually did a double take on that. Well turn was a jack or something. I forget what. He was drawing dead though. What sparked the insight, though, was his reaction. He first said “Figures” and I took that to mean he just picked the wrong time to bluff. Then he starts cursing out Bodog and his own bad luck. So he played an absolute crap hand, out of position, caught bottom pair with 2 aces on the board, and he is unlucky???????

Then it hit me, like a left hook out of no where. Every time I try to put a person on a hand, I am assuming my level of intelligence and skill, and applying it to that person, thinking that they would play how I would. And in the case of that hand, I was assuming any intelligence at all. Then it occurred to me. Every time I got beat when I was completely wrong on what a person held in that hand, its because they played a way I didn’t anticipate. It’s an odd glitch in my game I have to fix, but at least I know the problem now.

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People have often mentioned that chips in both live games and tournaments are your weapons for war. That you use them to battle other players and fight to win pots. While I don’t disagree with this philosophy, as usual I take a different tack in that approach. I think of chips as your voice. Some people talk during play, some even are well know for the ability to use table talk. But the clearest voice at the table is your chips, if you know how to listen.

For example, when you bet, you are speaking. You are saying that I want you to call, or I don’t want you to call. When you raise, you are shouting. Re-raise? Now you’re screaming. All-in? That’s using a megaphone. The problem is that it’s easy to hear the voices, but it’s much tougher to listen to the voices.

I was in a $100 + $9 MTT on Bodog a few weeks ago. I was running really well for the tournament. I had run my initial 2500 chip stack up to over 15,000. I had made a couple of key all in calls, doubled up once, and knocked 9 people out. It’s about 75 people from cashing and I am doing really well. I am 2 off the button and get K8 of hearts. The blinds are 200/400 with a 50 ante. I limp in, which is not characteristic of me. But there are a couple of short stacks left to act and if someone moves on the pot I can just dump it. It folds to the small blind, who completes the bet, and the big blind check. The flop is absolutely beautiful for me. King King Seven Rainbow. I am in Heaven right now.

What confuses me is the action after the flop. The small blind goes all in. The big blind goes all in. So let’s listen to the sound of the chips.

The small blind going all in is clearing saying I want this pot and I don’t think anyone can call. The big blind is shouting that I have some part of this flop and I want to force out the third person (me). Now if I listen to the voice of the big blind, he probably has the 4^th king. I don’t put the small blind on the 4^th king because he is the short stack. There is about 1500 in the pot and they are shoving their last 3k in. The big blind had shoved in about 8k into a 6k pot. So clearly the big blind has the 4^th king and it’s a battle of kickers. Clearly one of these people has me beat, so it’s a tough but obvious fold.

So of course I call, I got fucking trips. Well the cards are shown and the small blind had limped with pocket 7’s, so he has 7’s full. The big blind has King 10, so both players have me smoked. The turn and the river are blanks. So the small blind triples up and the big blind breaks about even with my chips. I am down to about 6k and go out with about 20 places to cash. I honestly don’t remember which hand I went out on, but I did manage another 35 minuets. But with the blinds and antes combined with my short stack, I just had a lot fewer moves. The only fault in this hand is playing it to begin with. A standard raise to 1200 and the small blind has to go all in and I have to call or muck. It might get the big blind out but I doubt it. No way had I put the small blind on a pocket pair, because of the limp. After the flop there was no way I wasn’t going broke.

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As a Hold’em and Omaha player, you never really know the whole picture of the hands you play. Several people have commented that poker is a game of incomplete information. Many books have talked about reading people and analyzing betting patterns. And while the information is never 100% until the cards are revealed, there is a wealth of information out there. It’s just a matter of sifting through all the data to find the right answers. But in order to get the answer, you have to define the questions. As a core post flop player, I never consider the play of the hand to have started until after I see the first 3 cards. So when I am faced with a decision after the flop, I always ask my self the 3 same simple questions.

Here is the situation I was once in. I have AK unsuited under the gun. Blinds are 200/400. I make a higher than standard 4xBB raise. It folds around to the button-1 who calls, the button folds, the small blind calls, and the big blind folds. The flop comes down A J 4 rainbow. The small blind immediately goes all in for 10k. Here is where the 3 simple questions come into play.

Question 1: What is the best hand?
While this seems like a simple question, but that’s the title of the post. Plus it’s easy to get lost in your own hand. This question forces me to think about what other people have. So the best hand is pocket aces for trips. I also consider the 2nd best hand, which are pocket jacks for trip jacks.

Question 2: What is the best draw?
When I have to call a bet, instead of making one, I always assume that whoever is betting wants me to pay for whatever draw can be out there. In the case of this hand there are 2 ‘best’ draws. KQ/K10 draws for a high straight, 23/25 draws for a wheel. Again these are simple questions but they are meant to force you to slow down and think.

Question 3: What cards do you think the player has?
This is the money question. This is also where all the information comes together. Let’s look at the best hand. I made a big raise UTG and 2 people called. While Top/Top is great in normal situations, in no way can you discount pocket jacks or pocket aces. I doubt the small blind has either of the draw hands. Most players make a small ½ pot size bets when they are bluffing at draws. So let’s look at the players. I know the SB player very well. She is a solid player. I respect her game very well, but she is not above a well timed bluff. So let’s break down cards. J4 is completely out of the question. Only a maniac would call a raise with those cards. I can’t put the button-1 on a hand yet because she won’t act until after me. Plus she is an unknown. Back to the small blind. Her eyes are screaming call call call call call call call call.

My answer: Fold. Whatever the small blind has, she clearly has enough confidence in her hand to risk all her chips on it. If it was one on one I might call, but with the 3rd player I have to fold. So I fold and the 3rd player immediately calls and shows pocket jacks for trip jacks. The small blind flips over pocket aces for trip aces. The last jack never comes and the small blind takes the pot and knocks out the 3rd player. By all rights I should have gone broke that hand. And no, I can’t dodge bullets baby. I just don’t throw chips after hands I don’t think are any good.

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