Paul Kammen's book

[Andy B]

Recently, a couple of different people have asked about Paul Kammen’s book. I had not read it, but said that Mason wasn’t complimentary of it. Apparently, I was mistaken. Oooops. This was a very bad thing for me to do, to Kammen, to Mason, to you guys. For this, I apologize. As penance, I went out and bought Kammen’s book. I have now read it, and I don’t like it as much as West’s book....
From the text:

“Nine times out of ten, your first three cards will be in the muck.”

Does anyone, and I mean anyone, play this tight? In good low-limit games, I’m around 25%, and in tough games, I’m probably around 18%. Seems to me that anyone playing 10% of his hands is going to go like Broomcorn’s uncle.

Kammen’s recommended buy-in for $2/4 is at least $40. I’ll let others elaborate.

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. Actually, he doesn’t mention the ante. I wonder if he’s aware that there are $2/4 games where the ante is $.25, and many low-limit games with no ante.

Really, I think that a modern book on low-limit stud needs to cover both spread and structured limits with no ante, small ante, large ante, and over-ante. This is only one of the reasons I’m still on page 4.

Kammen says he has only been rolled-up a few times. I wonder what he means by “a few.” I don’t know how many times I’ve been rolled-up, but it’s at least 100, which is more than a few. I wonder just how much this guy has actually played.

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. Your raise isn’t going to get out too many people who weren’t folding anyway. There just isn’t that big of a difference between calling $1 and $2. Maybe the bring-in will fold for the extra $1, but if his hand is that poor, he’ll probably fold to a bet on fourth street. You’re not going to get the big cards to fold for another dollar, and any one of them could hit on fourth street. I think you’re much better off limping and then hoping to get a raise in if things fall good on fourth street.

Kammen says to raise with a big pair on third street 99% of the time. I don’t know what the proper percentage is, but it ain’t 99% of the time. You shouldn’t even play 99% of the time.

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.

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.

There are ten questions at the end of the chapter on third-street play. I answered about seven of these questions with another question. In most cases, he has not given enough information for me to make a decision. For example, the first questions is, you are the bring-in with (JJ)2. Do you bring it in for $1 or $2? My question is, what else is showing?

Kammen has you slow-play big rolled-up trips but play small rolled-up trips fast. I’ve seen similar advice elsewhere—West, and I think even 7CS4AP. I have two problems with this. One, I just don’t think there’s that much difference between 222 and AAA. I have lost with rolled-up trips many times, at least 20 or 30. I don’t think I’ve lost with rolled-up trips to a bigger set more than once or twice. It’s mostly been straights and flushes and a couple of full houses.

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?

Kammen suggests that if someone is showing open Queens and you have pocket Jacks on fourth street, you can call if your hand is live and the other guy’s is dead. I think that this is a terrible game-plan. If someone disagrees with me, I’ll go into mind-numbing detail.

Kammen has a few scenarios where a bigger board acts after a lower board. When this happens, it means one of two things:

1) There was a bigger board out that checked.
2) The high board check-raised.

This is relevant information. Kammen is constantly guilty of oversimplifying things, leaving out important details. This is too complex a game to be doing that.

Kammen seems to suggest that your default play with unimproved Aces on fifth street should be to check-and-fold. I think this is weak-tight as best. While there will certainly be times when you will need to do just that, my default play is to bet. Two things:

1) You will usually still have the best hand.
2) Fifth street is frequently your best opportunity to get people to fold.

Also, since there will usually be a decent amount of money in the pot on fifth (you did raise on third, didn’t you? You did bet fourth, didn’t you?), automatically giving up is a mistake.

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. They don’t fold when you bet your unimproved Aces or two crappy pair. Why would they fold when you bet your big full house? You can afford to slow-play, but you’re usually leaving money on the table by doing so.

Canterbury Park has a bad-beat jackpot for all games below $10/20. To qualify for the stud jackpot (stud and stud/8 share a jackpot), you have to have Aces full of Tens or better beaten by quads or better. Kammen says that if you have a jackpot-eligible hand on sixth street you should slow-play it to try for the jackpot. I think that in general, this is a mistake. Basically, no one is going to fold a hand with jackpot potential on sixth. How often do you fold trips or a straight flush draw on sixth street? The typical low-limit player virtually never will. On sixth, you only have two more streets to collect bets, so you should usually take advantage of the opportunity. There is the occasional exception, of course. If you have quads with three of a kind showing and you think the other guy probably has Aces-up, you can well afford to give him a free card. But if you have (99)499T against the same Aces-up, he’s not going to fold, and you have him drawing dead. Failing to bet here would be criminal.

Kammen has you usually just call on sixth street with trips because trips aren’t as strong in stud as they are in hold’em. While this is true, trips are still usually strong enough to raise with in stud, although whether or not you do depends on what you think the other guy is betting with.

Kammen says that if you have two pair on sixth street, the odds against making a full house are 10:1. This is correct if you consider your hand in a vacuum (actually, 10.5:1). By sixth street, however, you will have seen quite a few cards. If you’ve seen a total of 20 cards, and all of your outs are still live, it’s less than 7:1 against making your full house. On the other hand, if you’ve seen two of your cards, it’s 15:1. In the first case you might be persuaded to call a raise and in the second you may not even be able to call a bet.

Anyway, you guys get the idea. Rather than write my own book, which would be a lot of work, I could probably come up with a few hundred pages of stuff I don't like in other people's stud books. I haven't even seen Ken Warren's book yet.