If you would, please.

Hey, I never ask anyone to do anything in this blog but I'm asking you now to help out here. If you scroll down on the right you'll see a widget I added from Barack Obama's voteforchange.org. Rumor has it that Mr. President elect plays a mean game of poker. I'm asking you to take a few minutes of your time and help support the cause for getting online poker's status changed.

It seems silly to me that the NFL has a carve out to keep Fantasy Football legal (which is actually gambling), as well as Interstate Lotteries ( which is serious gambling if you look at the odds of winning), and Horse Racing (um, you guessed it....gambling) but online poker is made out to be the big bad wolf on the internet.

There is more skill involved in poker than randomly picking some numbers on a lottery sheet, or guessing which quarterback is going to light it up this week. So out of all the gambling games mentioned above we have exemptions for the ones that a monkey could do and your odds of winning would be the same.

Now let's say the monkey was playing $1/$2 No Limit Texas Hold Em with $200 and had Ac,Kc pre-flop and is up against a player who plays 40% of his hands. He bets $10 and the monkey calls. He's already a 66% favorite against the other guy's range of hands. (Examples below, courtesy of Poker Stove)


Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

765,399,888 games 1.562 secs 490,012,732 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 66.445% 64.70% 01.74% 495236094 13336967.50 { AcKc }
Hand 1: 33.555% 31.81% 01.74% 243489859 13336967.50 { 44+, A2s+, K2s+, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, A3o+, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T9o }

Let's take it further. Suppose the flop comes up Ah 5c 8c and the monkey is faced with an all in bet from the opponent. Should he fold? If he does he is making a critical mistake since he is now a 91% favorite in the hand.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

372,240 games 0.046 secs 8,092,173 games/sec

Board: Ah 5c 8c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 91.213% 90.59% 00.62% 337208 2325.00 { AcKc }
Hand 1: 08.787% 08.16% 00.62% 30382 2325.00 { 44+, A2s+, K2s+, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, A3o+, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T9o }

The point of this is to let you non-poker playing readers know you can calculate your odds of winning a poker hand in any situation by reading your cards and seeing what kind of odds the pot is offering you. If the price is wrong you fold. If it is right you must play the hand because, if you've done your homework on the game, mathematically you'll win in the long run by making sound decisions.

Poker is the only game on the UIGEA list where this is possible.

A Micro Limit Challenge.......

Since I'm focusing more on Limit Hold 'Em I'm doing a challenge I read about on 2+2 in the Micro Limit Hold 'Em Section called the 15BB challenge.

You start with 15 Big Bets at a very low level. Once you make 15 BBs you move up to the next level. I'm starting at the .02/.04 level with $.60 and I'll move up to .05/.10 once I have $1.50. From there I'll move up to .10/.20 when I have $3.00, and so on and so on.

I just finished the .02/.04 level on Poker Stars in 38 hands playing some 6-max (my normal game now) and will continue tomorrow during the day. I actually did it in 15 hands after flopping quad 10's and getting action from 3 players but sadly didn't sit out before the Big Blind hit me.

Four hands later I cap AK pre-flop against a complete maniac. The flop comes 2, 7, 6 and he smooth calls, as well as doing the same on the turn and river (the turn is a 6 and the river is a 10). He beats me with the mighty power house hand of 92 soooted.

I'll keep updating my progress and see how far the 60 cents can take me. I'll post some interesting hand histories that come up.

Good luck on the felt and may the good cards hit your hand...........

Poker, Poker, Poker

In a recent post I talked about losing focus on what games I wanted to concentrate on and I think I've come up with an idea that will work. I'm going to stay with NL 6-max for the most part on Full Tilt Poker and Bodog. I'm also going to drop down a level at FTP to work out some of my leaks. But I'll be playing 6-max Limit on Poker Stars since my bankroll is quite smaller there. Playing limit will give me something to do at work during the slow times (semi-brag, I guess).

There's a new site that I would like you to try out called The Poker Basement run by one of my mini mastermind members, Flamm. He's a successful player who's turned $84.00 into well over 4 digits and is really generous with his time. His site is very good to get your feet wet if you like playing online poker but just don't know where to begin.

He has some great articles for beginners, bank roll building, reviews of training sites, books and software, and if you get stuck in a hand you can email the hand history to him and he'll analyse it for you. Kind of like having a personal coach.

So now you're thinking, 'great, but what's the catch'? That's the best thing about The Poker Basement. There isn't one because it's a FREE SITE. Please check out his content and leave him a comment. His site will be huge one day and you can say you were there in the beginning. Until then, good luck on the felt and may the good cards hit your hand.