Paul Kammen's book

[Paul77]

Kammen's book is very bad. To even mention it as comparable to West's is a joke. Kammen has NOT played much -- he wrote the book while studying to become a priest. I assume he now is a priest, and can't play at all.

Well, that's news to me, I actually play daily. Look me up on PokerStars or say hi to me at Canterbury Park.

Priests can play cards. One finished 12th in the 2000 WSOP actually. I enjoy poker and want to work on improving my game, but am a low stakes player who won't be moving up. I've seen success at low stakes stud, which is why I decided to write a book on the topic. Sorry you didn't care for it. It's a bit basic, and geared for the newer players.

[Paul77]

Ok, just a few more comments...

Kammen says never to raise with three to a flush. I won’t expound on why I disagree with this here, but I’m guessing that most of you are in my camp anyway.

On a draw, I'd rather keep players in, and also limp to see what fourth street brings rather than raise. I'd only raise if I thought I could steal the antes with a big card showing, or consider a raise if I had three big cards for my three-flush.


A third-street scenario: low card brings it in for $1, three players call and two fold. You have (JJ)4. The guy behind you has a Ten in the door, and there is only the bring-in after him. The limpers have two Queens and a King. Kammen has you raise here, saying that you want to get the guys behind you out. I consider myself to be a pretty aggressive player, especially when playing $2/4 while quaffing bloody maries. I think that calling in this spot is far superior to raising.

I disagree. Yeah, most of the time they will just call the extra buck. But it's worth a shot. If you bet again on fourth, they'll remember you raised on third and put you on a big pocket pair.

He recommends that if you have a medium pair on third street and haven’t been paying attention, so that you don’t know what the folded cards are, you just fold. I think in that situation you just have to treat the unseen cards as unseen cards. Then again, I don’t watch TV while the cards are being dealt. The cocktail waitresses are another matter.

Rock on. I guess if I was distracted and just had a middle pair, not seeing any of the upcards, I wouldn't want to risk it.

The other is more general. I think low-limit stud players usually leave money on the table by slow-playing rolled-up trips. The main reason to slow-play anything is to encourage action where you would not otherwise have gotten any. Think of the times in a low-limit game where you folded for half-an-hour, raised with an Ace in the door, and got six callers. Is there any reason to slow-play in a game like that?

I actually agree with your criticism here, and tend to play even big rolled up trips aggressively; with the loose nature of most low stakes games, you will get the callers. The book was written 3 years ago, and I'd change that if I were writing it again.

[Andy B]

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Kammen says that your default play should be to slow-play big full houses or better on fifth. I think that this is a mistake in most low-limit games.

If the game is loose, certainly play it hard, but I'd rather play it loose-passive and call and hope players hit the flush or straight to extract more money from them.

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Most low-limit players won't fold a straight or flush draw no matter how hard you play your full house.

[Andy B]

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Kammen says never to raise with three to a flush. I won’t expound on why I disagree with this here, but I’m guessing that most of you are in my camp anyway.

On a draw, I'd rather keep players in, and also limp to see what fourth street brings rather than raise. I'd only raise if I thought I could steal the antes with a big card showing, or consider a raise if I had three big cards for my three-flush.

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I think an Ace or a couple of face cards is plenty, and perhaps not even necessary. Here is a scenario in Sklansky's tournament book, in circumstances where you would play similarly to a cash game: low card brings it in, a Queen makes it a full bet, and four players call. You have 6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] with Nines and Sevens live and one spade gone. Sklansky has you raise for value. Now if this is the proper play on a tough tournament table where your secondary possibilities are a bit dubious (I wouldn't be overly excited about picking up a gut-shot myself), it's certainly a proper play in a loose low-limit game where the other players' calling standards aren't going to be nearly so high. If four people limp and you have (A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]) 3[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] with one heart gone and your big cards live, it is well worth a raise. Assuming the bring-in folds, you will be putting in 20% of the money, and your equity is very likely to be much higher than that. If you're risk-averse and don't like putting in a lot of money early, fine. Just realize that you're not playing optimally.

[Andy B]

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Canterbury’s $2/4 game has a $.50 ante and $1 bring-in, and that is the model that Kammen uses for his discussion. I think that Canterbury’s $3/6 game, with the same ante and bring-in, would have been a better model.

Maybe, unfortunately this game never goes off. $4/8 does on Tuesdays, but for stud 2/4 is about it.

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At the point at which you wrote your book, I think CP's $3/6 game went off several times a week. In the $2/4 game, the ante is too high and the bring-in is too high (not to mention the rake and the jackpot drop). I am not aware of another B&M $2/4 game anywhere. It is a common limit on-line, but I believe all sites that offer it have a $.25 ante. So you chose as your basic model a game that has one table going in the entire world, maybe two at the time you wrote your book.

Lots of games are structured like CP's $3/6 game, including Party's $3/6 game, Paradise's $6/12 game, the $6/12 games in Arizona (I'm reasonably sure about this one), and all $30/60 games. Other common limits are pretty close to this, such as $15/30 and $75/150.

Why Canterbury and the poker sites use a half-bet bring-in I'll never know. If you have a limit where a 1/3-bet bring-in is inconvenient, such as $20/40, the bring-in should be slightly lower. The $5 bring-in encourages action in two ways. It encourages limping, because $5 is pretty cheap relative to the future bets, and it encourages early raises, because the difference between calling $5 and $20 is pretty significant. If the bring-in were $10, there wouldn't be all that much difference between the hands I'd play for the bring-in and the hands I'd play for a full bet.

Anyway, I think that $3/6 is a better model, because it's structured like a real stud game, and you can make adjustments relative to that baseline as appropriate to the structure of your preferred game.

$4/8 stud also usually goes on Fridays, and I played in it Friday night. The stud jackpot was over $13k, and according to one of the players, it had been going every day last week because the jackpot was so high.