One Good Hand: Part II

[Student]

In Part One I talked about my experiences leading up to this one good hand, as a grandfather who is a retired mathematician copes with poker for the first time. Now permit me to tell about the 45 hands that lead to this special hand.

My hole cards had been terrible, ever since I started at 5:43 PM Mountain Daily Time yesterday. PokerStars stats after 51 hands, when I left the table, were as follows:

BB.... 4/6 (66.7%)
SB.... 2/5 (40%)
Other 2/40 (5%)
Overall: 8/51 (15%)
Pots won on showdown: 2 of 2 (100%)
Pots won w/o: 1

I came into the game with $1.17 (58.5 BBs). Since the minimum starting bankroll for 1/2 cents NL HE is $1.00, I came in with a random amount near $1.00. By the time the special hand came up, the 46th hand, I had $1.12 left, and as a result of the special hand winnings I had $2.64, which was also my closing bankroll in the game. The game involved a total of 51 hands, and consumed 71 minutes, 39 seconds. I'm bringing to you as many stats as possible, to help you evaluate my special hand.

Ignoring blinds, notice that other than the special hand, I entered only one other hand, an incredible 1 in 39 hands that qualified as a SSS opening hand. This other SSS hand had me go all-in too, but this time everyone folded (as going all-in will tend to do, right?), so I won most of the monies I'd lost in blinds to that point. Incredibly, only one pair came up as hole cards yesterday, 44.

THE SPECIAL HAND: I was on the button, and AQunsuited were my hole cards. Being in last position, AQu was comfortably within the limits of Miller's recommended opening hands, for the case where everyone (4 persons limp, 4 fold) limps into the hand, to that point. Though the table was very loose initially, based on stats like average percentage of players entering each hand and average hand size, I'd noticed it had gotten tighter. In choosing a raise amount I had to consider the kind of raise that would keep everyone aboard, and contributing to my alledgedly "superior" opening hand. A dime had been a popular raise amount, so I went with that. They all checked, and we were ready for the flop. It didn't matter to me what the flop would be, since I'd be all-in no matter what came up! The flop was J67, and a rainbow.

Bets came Check from the small blind, raise of 10 cents from the big blind, reraise to 20 cents from another limper, and fold and then to me. I reraised all in, it being another 82 cents, for a total of $1.02 on my bet. Big Blind called, and the other 2 folded.

Well, it was all over, as to decisions. When I saw the flop I noticed I had 2 overcards, and only an Ace for the high card. I figured the guy who called me had high pair, namely JJ. Didn't matter! I believed I had the best hole cards, and SSS depends on trusting, on average, best starting cards tend to lead to best showdowns. Another thing Miller emphasizes is that no one can actually guess what cards another has. If he had flopped a JJ pair, that was lucky for him, and that's all that can be said about it, but I couldn't be sure he had even that.

So the turn was Q, and I had a pair QQ. The river was 4, and it was showdown time. Big Blind shows J9suited, a good hand, and his were a pair of Js. Mine was QQ, so I had a very good hand to introduce me to SSS nicely! Of course, if I'd lost that hand, I still would have had the satisfaction that I'd played the hand well. I'd done what I thought SSS called for, and losing the hand wouldn't have caused more than just superficial discouragement.

It was nice that my hole cards had been so blah, since the victory in spite of that should provide nothing but confidence for me. Then too, since I was on the sidelines for most of the game, even more than was to be expected, this gave me a chance to internalize the rules for good SSS play, yet I was still under the fire! So it was a special hand, believe me!!!

Dave

[OrianasDaad]

I haven't read anything with SSS in it, so I'm unsure what you are talking about.

I don't like the all-in after a raise and a reraise when you missed the flop. You are getting 1-1 pot odds on your all-in, which is pretty bad considering your chances of winning the hand.

This SSS concept disturbs me, as I try to wrap my head around what your post concerning it implies.

I'll explain how I would have played your hand after the flop.

Pot is $0.60 and six-handed (four limpers, your $.10 preflop raise, both blinds and all limpers call, right?).

SB checks, BB bets .10, UTG raises to .20, fold, (missing some action in here, going to assume two more folds), and now the action is to you.

The pot is $0.90, and you have $1.02. The bet to you is $0.20.

Against two random hand is a 2-1 underdog with that flop, or it's a roughly even-equity situation. However, there was an early bet, and a re-raise afterwards. Your opponents have indicated that they hit something on the flop. Against opponents that connected you are a signifigant underdog.

Despite being an underdog, the pot is laying you 4.5-1 on a call which is fantastic. An easy call on the button for me.

Going all-in is risking $1.02 to win .90. The only way you have a roughly 1-1 chance to win the hand is if the raiser can mini-raise as a bluff and you end up heads-up with them.

What book discusses that SSS concept? GSIH? I find it hard to believe that Ed would recommend going all-in in a situation like this, ignoring pot-odds entirely.

[Stork]

Your stack was too big to make this play. With 50+ BB, you shouldn't have raised preflop. You also should've folded the flop. You got lucky to hit your queen.

[Ed Miller]

I think you misunderstand a little bit. The short stack strategy really requires a short stack (as defined: fewer than 25x the BB) to "work" correctly. With $1.12 in a $0.01-$0.02 blind game, you have a 56x BB stack... a medium stack.

The short stack strategy works because your starting cards are, on average, superior... but ONLY because you don't have money to lose after the flop. That is, you will be putting in a large percentage of your stack, usually 20-40%, before the flop.

Let me give you an example of your AQ hand played the "right" short stack way. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

You have $0.50 in the $0.01-$0.02 blind game, a bona fide short stack. Four players limp. You have AQ on the button... so you raise. But how much? On p.129, I tell you that extra limpers in the pot mean you should raise more than the "standard" raise for two reasons:

1. Your opponents like their hands somewhat, so you're more likely to get a loose call.

2. The pot is bigger, so the reward if everyone folds is much larger than it would be if it were just you and the blinds.

So you decide to raise to $0.20 cents, an $0.18 cent raise. At that point you've invested 40% of your stack.

Say two players call.

The flop comes J76. Both players check to you. (If they bet instead, the decision becomes trickier, and I intentionally didn't address that situation in the book because I wanted the reader to experiment with it on his own. I didn't want the SS strategy to be a crutch.. I wanted it to be a launching point.)

Even though you missed the flop, the pot contains $0.60, and you have only $0.30 left, so you should bet all-in because you might still have the best hand, because your opponents might fold a better hand, and because if you check, you're probably going to call an all-in bet on teh turn anyway.

To summarize:

1. Playing superior starting cards is the easiest way for a beginner to gain an edge in these games.

2. The value that playing superior starting cards has in no limit is proportional the the percentage of your total stack that you bet preflop. In other words, if you bet 100% of your money preflop, then starting hand selection is the only thing that matters. If you bet only 5% preflop, though, then the decisions you make with the other 95% of your money after the flop become more important.

If you get 40% of your money in before the flop with a better starting hand, then you can basically just put the other 60% in after the flop almost no matter what and guarantee yourself a healthy edge.

If you get only 8% of your money in before the flop, then you have to be a lot more judicious with the other 92% after the flop. If you just go all-in no matter what, you'll be playing a losing game.

[Student]

I'll study your remarks carefully, because they constitute an actual extention by the author of a wonderfully useful book. They are refinement, and often such refinement must wait years, before another edition of the book is released.

Unfortunately, I study the words thru the eyes of a beginner, and hence I can't expect to have a proper sense of proportion. To view what I've written about SS strategy (one respondent has even complained he could find no prior usage of SSS anywhere, as though I was trying to pull the wool over his eyes - I suggest that SS is taken already; it stands for Super/System).

Even PokerStars has trouble understanding 1/2 cents poker. It's NL HE minimum and maximum bounds for bankrolling their games are always 20 BBs for minimum bankroll and 100 BBs for maximum bankroll, and this works for blinds of 5/10 cents thru $10/$20 with them. But 1/2 cents bankroll is 50 BBs for minimum and 250 BBs for maximum.

The average pot for 1/2 cents NL HE is $1.00 on PokerStars: 50 BBs. When one goes to $3/$6 NL HE, average pot size is $162 (using a small sample size). This is 27 BBs. If one defines a small stack as being 25 BBs, then we see average pot size is approximately the size of a small stack. Done this way, since average pot size for 1/2 cents is 50 BBs, one could conclude small stack size for 1/2 cents would also be 50 BBs.

My job is to take GSiH and adapt it to my play. I would use these arguments to substantiate what small stack size is. Further, I'd go to actual tables, and creat a histogram for actual stack sizes vs number of events. Then I'd conclude from the marketplace what might reasonably define small stack size. I suspect my $1.17 starting bankroll for PokerStars NL HE 1/2 cents, just 17 cents larger than the smallest bankroll they permit one to start with, qualifies as a small stack. The main thing is how do players view the stack of $1.17? Even though the largest starting bankroll is $5.00, it's not uncommon to see folks sporting bankrolls of $15, or more. In that same way, individual players of $3/6 might have $2,000 or more in their bankroll.

Kindly view this as a decision to go all-in for 82 cents, not as 41 BBs. This is real money! Going all-in into a $3/6 pot, with 15 BBs, is $90 of real money. By thinking in terms of real money, the strangeness of playing poker in a 1/2 cents arena will go away.

The advantage of taking note of what mere beginners notice is that it's likely to offer truly fresh perspective, unsullied by preconceptions of how things are "supposed" to be.

On page 132 of GSiH is the section "Playing the Flop." JMHO, but it would seem that some remarks you've made come from an earlier section, and pertain to playing preflop when a raise happens after my raise, under SSS. In particular the "Ratio" is presented, being the ratio of chips remaining to our first raise amount. Protecting our small stack is the preoccupation of play during preflop betting, but once we're going to see the flop, then remarks starting at 132 would seem to pertain.

I assume you are adding to the SS strategy here, by going all-in only to a more limited degree, after the flop.

I most appreciate your insights, because communication between the top of the heap with the bottom of the heap is rare, and such communication can be unusually healthy for both participants! The beginner is fresh and pure in his approaches, and gullible too. The expert is jaded and cynical, and forgot long ago his own plight. When these 2 extremes meet, important growth is possible. Thanks for entering into the experiment, and thanks too for your patience!

Dave

PS: I reread your answer in total, and I'll grant that I should have bet more when I raised preflop. In the section on page 125, "Sizing Your First Raise," several pages are devoted to the subject. As complicated as the reasoning was preflop, it's not surprising that I might error in terms of betting too low. After all, at that point I'd had only 2 hands practice with SS, since the rest of my first 72 minutes of play was folding. So I'm in the experimentation phase. If I would have bet 30 cents, instead of 10 cents, as my first raise, perhaps a few of them would have folded preflop. I was rather satisfied that I had 4 opponents left after my first raise, and counted as additional blessings the bets that came into the pot after the flop, and before my all-in raise (82 cents).

Too, the mere playing of 1/2 cents limits is another usage of one of the powerful ideas implicit within SSS. If I wipe out with 1/2 cents, I go to my deposited funds within PokerStars and start over. This was the case before I started with SSS, so very recently. I understand that often I'm going to lose my whole stack playing SSS, and that's what I understood concerning 1/2 cents, to begin with.

Then too, beginners are passive, no matter how aggressively they have persued life in general, simply because we don't yet no how to get some aggression into our game. SSS has solved that problem for me substantially, and I remain enthusiastic about SSS for that reason.

Fine tuning will be needed. I'd already considered moving to 5/10 cents PokerStars, because of the measurable decrease in looseness present in 5/10 cents games. Then I could go into games with 20 BBs, simply because PokerStars will permit me to do it. My practice to date has cost $7.00; predictably if I move to 5/10 cents NL HE immediately, my drawdown will be quite a bit higher than with 1/2 cents, because variance is so much higher in absolute dollar terms, even with the wonderful SSS at my side!

I'm surprised that I didn't get taken to task for the small size of my sample; it's true, after all...

PPS: I think this new response from you will help me very much, and I thank you sincerely!!!

[Stork]

[ QUOTE ]
The average pot for 1/2 cents NL HE is $1.00 on PokerStars: 50 BBs. When one goes to $3/$6 NL HE, average pot size is $162 (using a small sample size). This is 27 BBs. If one defines a small stack as being 25 BBs, then we see average pot size is approximately the size of a small stack. Done this way, since average pot size for 1/2 cents is 50 BBs, one could conclude small stack size for 1/2 cents would also be 50 BBs.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is flawed logic... Stack size does not have to do with the size of the average pot, it is only a function of how many big blinds you have. With a 50 BB stack, you will still have to "play some poker" after the flop if your preflop raise is 10BB, whereas with a 20BB stack, it is fine to just shove it in on the flop because your all in should only represent a small portion of the pot. The idea behind this strategy is to pot-commit yourself before the flop.

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
(If they bet instead, the decision becomes trickier, and I intentionally didn't address that situation in the book because I wanted the reader to experiment with it on his own. I didn't want the SS strategy to be a crutch.. I wanted it to be a launching point.)

[/ QUOTE ]

That's perfectly defensible, and given the scope and audience of GSIH probably the right way to approach it. I'm glad to have that explanation, though, because without it it's hard to tell whether that topic is an omission, whether it was covered and I just missed it, or what.

[Student]

Thanks! My thoughts exactly...

I haven't been able to keep up with answers to this thread, because frankly the content of responses as been way beyond my experience, and my pea-brain! Instead I've been plastering miniresponses into 3 threads I have going today, because that way I can take an extremely useful and complex response from someone like Ed, and divide it into a number of separate subject areas. There can be no single useful response from me, to such wonderfully diverse and powerful messages. Yet, as I ponder, useful directions and questions come up, and I'm determined to share them with you!

My 2 threads starting yesterday (Sunday), concerning the special hand, took up most of my creative juices for the day. I'm permitted only 73 units of creativity each day, and then I fissle. After all, I'm in my 67th year (or have I mentioned that before). By the way, I should say I'm in my 67th year, and so I'm beginning to slow down (etc, etc, go to the beginning of this pharagraph and reread it forever, and more!).

Here's another idea I repeat again and again: have fun with your poker!!!

Dave

[AKQJ10]

[ QUOTE ]
By the way, I should say I'm in my 67th year, and so I'm beginning to slow down (etc, etc, go to the beginning of this pharagraph and reread it forever, and more!).

[/ QUOTE ]

On a totally different subject, once you feel confident in your game you really should get into brick-and-mortar poker. Ham it up -- dress in a way that just screams to people, "tight-passive 67-year-old rock." Then take their money.

That's what I plan to do when I'm your age. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Student]

One of the problems I face is that I'm a basically frank and open person. The person whom you describe is somewhat a lie, it would seem! But, having been in politics, I have some experience at acting, and the direction you describe would sure be fun!

In fact, just yesterday I went to watch the 12 noon poker tournament at Sandia Casino, NL HE, with a $40 buy-in. $35 goes into the pot, Sandia adds $400, and they divide this enhanced pot among the top 10, according to a formula. I got there along about 2 PM, so the field had been whittled down from the initial 123 to about 31 (4 tables).

The actual winner was just such a person. He's about 80 years old, Hispanic, stoic, wheelchair bound, and on oxygen. He dresses with the usual heavy jewelry, such as gold chain etc, portraying the successful retiree.

I have the trappings for this, but everyone seems to know me already. I never play, and just stand behind the players observing. I've had direct conversations with the best of the players. I'm never afraid to talk to people, often starting the conversation with the question "Do you play poker?". What are they to say? After all, they're standing right in the poker room. So we have a nice conversation. One thing I'm looking forward to is actually playing in NL HE tournaments at the B&M!

Now, coming off as the tight, passive rock shouldn't be all that hard. That's what the player of SSS appears to be, and then he pounces! Good idea... Fun too...

Dave

[Twitch1977]

[ QUOTE ]

My practice to date has cost $7.00; predictably if I move to 5/10 cents NL HE immediately, my drawdown will be quite a bit higher than with 1/2 cents,


[/ QUOTE ]

I think that you'll find you won't lose more at .05/.10 but rather that you'll start showing a profit because you'll be able to have a proper stack size for playing the SSS. Having a proper stack size is integral for its success. (Assuming you stick to the starting hands Ed outlined in his book.)

Good Luck.

T