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Sydney Champs and the Online Grind

Well Sydney Champs has been and gone, and we are in the middle of the World Cup Of Online Poker (WCOOP).

Sydney Champs was something that I had been looking forward to, as I’ve been enjoying the live poker scene quite a lot lately. Some of my friends had already had some great results in the earlier events, most notably the illustrious Rhys Gould winning the APW $550 tourney and scoring $18,000, while the ever-handsome Nick Polias and the ultra-muscled Tobin Ryall placed second in the teams event.

For the Sydney Champs Main Event, the buy-in was $1,650, and as I’m among the most frugal of individuals I decided to try and satellite in. There were life satellites for $330 running most nights in the lead up to the main event, so I decided to jump in those.

Unfortunately I managed to bust in 5 hands during the first satellite, Semibluffing in a 4-bet pot with 2 over cards and the nut flush draw (against a flopped straight alas). In the 2nd satellite I was on the reserves list, and didn’t get to a table until the blinds had increased several times, so my starting stack amounted to only 30 big blinds. . . and pocket Jacks on a 2-2-2 flop saw me bust against Pocket Aces within just 4 hands this time. Not my most sterling performances to date, and in the end I had to buy-in to the main event anyway.

I played on day 1B, and my table was moderately unpleasant, with “El Leatheros” and Logan English-Smith both on my table. No huge hands for the first day, and the three of us tended to avoid confrontations with each other. . . except for Logan very occasionally 3-bet bluffing me. Cause that’s how he rolls.

The day was all small pots for me. Played one 10k pot with KK vs AQ and won, but other then that it was a huge amount of raising preflop and then c-betting. . . general grindy stuff. Finished day one on $62,000, when the average for day 1b was about 40k, so that was all well and good.

Day 2 started off very well. I wont a nice 50bb pot with AQ vs AJ all in preflop, after which our table broke and I moved to the table of dreams! A couple ultra tight players on my left, and a couple of fishy calling stations on my right. One youngish guy who seemed as though he played a bit online (although that may just be my ageist stereotyping). I was sitting at about 100bbs when this hand occurred:

The young kid (who had been very active) raised 2.5bbs form the cutoff. Kamyar “Commie” Ekrami (the self-proclaimed calling station) flatted on the button. I was in the BB with AJo, and unsurprisingly decided to 3 bet, making it about 3x the original raise (not a big 3bet by any means).

The young guy instantly shoved his entire stack in (which was 32 bbs), Commie folded, and the action was on me. I was getting about 1.6 to 1 odds on the call, which is plenty for AJ generally. If the young guy was instead a tight player, then I may have even folded the hand, as the hands he is representing all have me crushed. Since he was a young guy however, and since it was such an obvious spot for me to 3-bet, I figured that he could be pushing all in here with a very wide range of hands indeed.

I made the call, and my opponent said “Yeah, you got me” before rolling 9-8 offsuit. Good times! The board ran out 2 3 4 6 with the river 9 however, and the young gentleman scooped a big pot.

The very next orbit, I ran my AK into Commie’s QQ, and lost the race. Standard. Never folding a hand that big to Commie, especially since I had bluffed him earlier in the day and he seemed keen to get his own back.

Unfortunately my stack had been whittled down a bit, and the blinds had escalated, leaving me with about 30BBs. I had a short stack on my left (9bbs) and we clashed when I jammed 55 into his 66 blind vs blind. Bah! Now I was down to only 21bbs.

21bbs is a stack size that lends itself very well to the all-in 3-bet or re-raise. Generally you will wait for a loose player to raise, hopefully get a caller, and then you can push your whole stack in the middle with any reasonable hand. If they fold, you usually pick up maybe 7 or 8 big blinds, increasing your stack by as much as 40% with no showdown. Of course the loose raiser may actually have a hand when you try this. . . but you can still get lucky and win, in which case you will have a bad-ass stack once again.

I was in a great spot for this, since I had the young, aggressive player two to my right, and Commie directly on my right, so I didn’t have to wait long for a spot to occur:

As expected, the young guy opened to 2.5bbs, and Commie the calling station did what he does best and called. I had 98 suited in the small blind, and this was definitely enough of a hand to shove all in with. Even if my opponent has a hand as big as AK, I’m still about 40% when called, and hands as big as AK don’t come around anywhere near as often as this guy was raising! Commie had been calling preflop raises with 56 off suit and other weak hands, so I wasn’t concerned about him at all.

In this instance, I re-shipped all in, and the young player instantly jammed all in as well. Unfortunate, but my hand isn’t terrible, and I might still be in good shape if he re-shoved a small pair (not unfathomable) Commie tanked for a couple of minutes, asked us both our stack sizes. . . and then, like a boss, decided to call as well. I roll my hand, the original raiser rolls AQ, and commie rolls KQs.

Not actually a bad situation for my 98 suited! Against those two hands I am actually 34% to scoop the pot, the AQ is 39.5% and Commie is only 26.5% to win, so I really wasn’t in that bad shape.

The flop came K Q 2, all of my suit, so I had flopped the flush. Awesome! Unfortunately another king on the river gave Commie a full house to scoop the pot. (he then went on to finish 3rd in the tournament).

Thus my Sydney champs run came to an end. Good fun though, and the calibre of live players is inspiringly soft, so I’m very keen to play more live events in the near future.

A quick note about WCOOP: I have an aversion to getting up early in the morning, and as most of these events kick-off between 1am and 5am, I really haven’t played many of them at all (just the opening day’s events in fact). I HAVE been playing a lot of the satellites into the WCOOP events however, and then when I win, just unregistering from the tournaments and taking the money instead. Satellites are traditionally filled with an abundance of weak recreational players, so getting involved in as many satellites as I can seemed to be the way to go.

I played a session in the evening last night specifically to play the satellites, and jumped in one or two regular tournaments at the same time. I was only planning on playing for about 3 hours, so I only joined turbo tournaments. I ended up winning about $1,000 from the satellites, and also came first in the $109 turbo for about $6,200, which was very pleasant. I rarely play in the evenings because there isn’t enough volume (I tend to get bored playing less than 20 tables) but with all the satellites running filling up my screens in the evening has become viable again, so it looks like I shall be doing more evening sessions for a while!

May head into the casino on the weekend. My friend Fel is performing some incredible musical act there tonight, so I shall definitely try and get in for that.

Jesse McKenzie is back from NZ, and is grinding away like a maniac as always. Good to have him around, as his commitment to the game quietly inspires us all. (He is standing next to me as I type this)

One other thing before: for anyone who has trouble finding good poker books in Australia, this is an Australian book site that I have started using. They have free shipping as well, and they are generally cheaper than any bookstore anyway. Highly recommended for anyone looking to expand their library.

Fishpond Books Australia

Till next time, best of luck!

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Playing Tight

Most inexperienced players play far too many hands, and go too far with them. Texas Hold’em is a game where preflop hand strengths make a huge difference to the playability and profitability of a hand, and one of the first things you realise when you start becoming a winning player is that most of the time “tight is right”. Playing fewer hands, and focussing only on hands that are high quality will make you money from players who are playing weaker hands than you on average.

The other benefit of playing tight preflop is that when you are playing only strong hands, it makes your play on later streets much more straight forward.

Your plan for how then entire hand will play out begins right from the point where you are dealt your two pocket cards. Unlike the flop and turn betting rounds, which you might only play every 5 or 10 hands, you make pre-flop decisions every single hand you are dealt into. If you play too loose pre-flop, splashing around with hands that aren’t going to be money winners, you’re costing yourself cash.

Therefore, the first poker technique that you learn should be playing tight before the flop.

Focus on only playing the best starting hands. These are hands that are either already powerful, like AA, KK, QQ, etc, or hands than make top pair with a very strong kicker, such as A-K, A-Q, etc. You can also play quality speculative hands such as T9s, 56s, small pocket pairs, etc. These are hands that can flop big hands light straights, flushes or sets, and take down big pots.

In a cash game, or at early stages of a poker tournament, don’t bother playing any other hands. Not only are they negative expectation, they can also be difficult to play after the flop.

A hand like Q-7s may look good, being a Queen and suited, but this hand is virtually unplayable. When it pairs its seven, it will very rarely be the top pair on the flop. When it pairs its queen, it only has a low kicker, and will often be behind any hand between Q8 to Aq. That’s the problem with this sort of weak hand: you can never be sure if you are ahead or behind. A hand like Q-7s also has no possibility of making a straight using both cards.

But they are suited! That surely is enough reason to play the hand isn’t it? Alas no. Being suited only adds a few percent to its chances of winning at showdown. Not enough to justify putting money into the pot with a weak hand.

Now compare that hand with a strong hand like AKs. When A-K hits the flop you make top pair with the best possible kicker. You’re never going to be outkicked at showdown. In fact if someone else hit top pair too, YOU are going to be the one out-kicking them! You can play this hand strongly.

Playing good starting hands make the later streets easier. When you hit the flop, you know that you have a quality hand that can see a showdown.

If you play hands that show a positive expectation pre-flop, you should be faces with very few difficult decisions later in the hand. Your good pre-flop hands are going to make good post-flop hands more often than your opponents who are playing weaker hands than you on average.

Playing tight is an excellent strategy, which should make you money from the looser players. Fold your weak hands but play your good hands aggressively. Selecting only quality hands will make the rest of your decisions easier, and put you in a great position to win.

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