A Slave to Variance

“The Wall” is a pretty standard strategy used in limit games by most of the better players. It is a very simple strategy, and applicable to a wide range of hands and situations.

• When you have the initiative, bet.
• If you lose the initiative, call.

So, if you raised preflop you bet, bet, bet, until someone raises you, and then you call, call, call them down. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every hand. Clearly if you have the worst (or best) possible hand, you’ll probably want to play back at the player who is trying to steal the initiative.

But if you have a medium hand that you want to show down, “The Wall” should probably be one of your primary tactical options.

[note: I first heard this strategy called “The Wall” by Bill Chen. I don’t know if he came up with the term or not, but it is a great name.]

For most average players, their biggest leak is that they call too much under all circumstances. You see this in the low limit fish on every round of play. You see this in the high limit fish postflop tenacity.

The simplest way to exploit this “universal leak” is to just value bet them. This is distinct from the usual advice that you hear:

“Tight but aggressive. That’s your style, Professor.”

- Mike McDermott, Rounders

The tight and aggressive style is designed to exploit preflop looseness, and postflop weakness. What if you want to exploit players who are far too loose postflop? To do this, you’ll need to get to the postflop rounds to effectivly exploit them. In that case, you may want to defer your tight-aggressive style until the flop has come.

Remember, it isn’t about being tight and aggressive, that is a specific style of exploitation, tailored to specific leaks. It’s about finding the exploit which yeilds the most profit.

Most players, when holding the ace of flush on a four flush board, will raise and raise and raise. Angelina is a little different. She actually thinks about the game while playing. A priori, there is only one hand in the 990 possible hands that beat her. But she knows that while I’m erratic, my river three bets here are strongly bimodal. I’ve either got the straight flush, or I’m totally bluffing - and yes, I have been known to bluff three bet the river, especially on a four flush board. If I’m bluffing, I’m not calling another raise.

Capping the river has no value for her, and she knows it. Sometimes I wish she weren’t as good as she is. But where’s the fun in that?

hold'em[L] $ 40/80 Paradise Poker - Pampelonne     Sun Jul 17
       ante:80.00 blinds:  0.00 20.00  rake:40.00 pot:    2 [7d 9c 2d 6d 5d]
 dane626       4399  4 rc   cCc  f                280  -280
 Angelina      2492  3 R    rr   rr   rc          840  -840 [4d Ad]
 David145      3264  2 f                            0     0
 gablegob      6364  1 Sf                          20   -20
*Andrew        5676  0 BC   brc  brc  br          840  1138 [9d 8d]

I played in the final event of the World Series of Poker this year, having won my entry in a freeroll on PokerStars. I somehow managed to finish 520/5619 for baby money of $12,500. There are some minor trades that I have to pay out, but I’m glad to have gotten that far. Here are some of the things I learned:

1. Vegas (still) sucks. My sinus cavities are all messed up, and my head feels like it is filled with helium. Ugh!
2. I suck. I wasn’t taking the time I needed to review the relevant information. Often, I was just stalling, not thinking about anything except maybe “the fucking Mirage”.
3. The field sucks more. How else can you explain calling off 20K in the 100/200 round on a paired board, or calling down with 33 when you are check-raised and bet into on every round.
4. There were hundreds of solid players. Many of the pros played very well, but there were many other players who were young, and who played this year for the first time, who were as good as, and sometimes better than many of the name players.
5. I am lucky. Of course, that is the story of my poker life. I’m now 3/6 ITM in WSOP events, and am averaging a profit of 8.9 buy-ins per tournament. I hear that it’s better to be lucky than good.
6. I suck. I had no idea what to do in a wide variety of situations. In particular, I didn’t have much of a plan with regard to being a bully or dealing with a bully. Likewise, I wasn’t sure of when to reraise, or how to deal with reraises.
7. I will play again. Of course, until I stop sucking I’ll have to win the entry in a satelite like I did this year.

Part of the reason I’ve been documenting strategy tidbits is so that I can make them more concrete, and hopefully remember them during the heat of battle. Unfortunatly, it doesn’t always work. Case in point:

hold'em[L] $ 40/80 Paradise Poker - Patmos         Sun Jul  3
       ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00  rake: 3.00 pot:    2 [Kd 2s 4d Kc Qs]
 shotgun dave  2887  0 Bf                          40   -40
*Andrew        2751  3 r    brc  brc  kc          640  -640 [Kh As]
 gablegob      5084  2 C    rr   rr   b           640   698 [4h 4s]
 Piledriver    1966  1 Sf

There is simply no good reason for me to put in the third bet on the turn against this player. He lives to extract value out of AK, and all I’m doing is enabling him.

Oh well, better luck next time.

UPDATE: “next time”

He tried to extract value out of AK again, but this time I was smart enough not to have AK:

hold'em[L] $ 40/80 Paradise Poker - Anjuna         Sun Jul  3
       ante: 0.00 blinds: 20.00 40.00  rake: 3.00 pot:    3 [5c 3c Ah Jd 4c]
 AggieTTKA11   4712  0 Bf                          40   -40
 am5772        2088  5 f                            0     0
 shotgun dave  3154  4 rC   cCc  kf               320  -320
 cplayer       1817  3 f                            0     0
*Andrew        3552  2 Rc   rr   brc  b           720  1077 [5s 5d]
 gablegob      3036  1 SR   brc  krr  kc          720  -720 [Ac Jh]

(n.b. My parser seems to be broken, so if some of the numbers look a bit off, it’s because I’m too lazy to fix it today.)