A Slave to Variance

… the fish, or the fish who follows him?

hold'em    $ 100/200      Poker Stars - Cyrene II      Fri Apr 22
 ante:0.00 blinds: 50.00 100.00  rake:2.00 pot: 2300        [3h 7c 6d 8d 7d]
 payoffking    2724  1 SRc  kc   kc   kc          900  -900 [Qd Ks]
 fish          3439  0 BR   b    b    b           900  1398 [8s 5s]
 fishchaser    4273  3 rC   c    f                500  -500 [Jd Kh]
 folder        5530  2 f                            0     0

Ok, so I’ll admit it, I’m the fish chaser. I’m not really that happy about calling a cap with KJo. But you have to wonder - in a game where fishies are going to be capping preflop with 85s, and getting paid off by KQ-high, should I even bother playing KJo from the cutoff?

I’m finally even on PokerStars.

And by even, I mean even overall at the site, after playing there off and on for years, and being down well into five figures at the low water mark.

“I can quit now.”

From the mind of Michael Lerner comes a opponent-centric solution to the heads-up jam or fold problem. The basic idea is to determine which hands you can jam with heads up. Alternativly, if your opponent has jammed, which hands can you call with. There are several parameters which need to be filled in, the most important being the rough range of hands your opponent will hold. Is he jamming with every hand? Or just half? Or is he super passive, jamming with only his best hands.

If you look carefully, you can actually see the gap concept in play.

I stumbled across a couple of papers on the [0,1] game. I haven’t had a chance to pick through them yet, but hopefully I have a chance to go through them in the coming weeks while I’m on vacation.

I have a motto that I live by: “Slowplay Kills”

A corollary of that is: “Always Fastplay”

This applies especially to hands where you have your opponent crushed by luck. Like when you flop quads. [Which relates to a common preflop mantra of many players, “I could always flop quads”] The best part about flopping quads is that people never put you on quads. So they’ll sometimes play back at you because they figure you are trying to represent. Fasplaying quads is especially fun because there’s no way in hell you are going to make a lot money unless they have a hand, and if they have a hand, they may have a real big hand. Like, an overpair to the board, or pocket sixes, or a crack pipe.

hold'em    $ 100/200      Poker Stars - Corduba
 ante:0.00 blinds: 50.00 100.00  rake:2.00 pot: 2850        [7c 7h 7s 5s 2c]
 crushedbyluck 4658  4 r    bRc  rc   c          1400 -1400 [6c 6s]
 folder        8051  3 f                            0     0
 folder        3489  2 f                            0     0
 folder        3354  1 Sf                          50   -50
 Andrew        3596  0 Bc   krR  bR   b          1400  1448 [7d Th]