Low Limit Poker Blog

Limit Holdem: Making Fewer Mistakes Part 2 (Bad Draws)

2009-10-14T10:38:00.001-07:00

In the first part of this article I talked about making fewer starting hand mistakes in Limit Holdem which isn’t as simple as playing aces kings and ace-king only. The next most common mistake limit players make is continuing on the flop and turn with bad draws.

What is a bad draw?

A bad draw is a draw that will not win enough money when you win to offset your current and future contributions to the pot when you lose.

A beginner’s approach to this is to look at the pot odds for a draw compared to your odds of making that draw with one card. For example if you can call a bet for $10 and the pot already has $100 in it then the pot is laying you 10:1 odds, therefore if the odds of making your draw are less than 10:1 the you should call and if they are greater you should fold. Pot odds has some flaws, namely:

It doesn’t take into account future action on the hand. With some draws you are more likely to get paid off on the river (or even have your opponent raise you) when you make your hand. This concept is called implied odds and basically means comparing your total contribution to the pot when all cards are dealt to the final (obviously estimated) amount of the pot.
It doesn’t take into account the times that you make your draw and still lose the hand. This concept is called reverse-implied odds. A common example of this is drawing to a flush that isn’t ace-high (a non-nut flush draw). Sometimes one of your opponents will have a larger flush draw and you will end up paying extra bets on the end when you make your draw. Other common examples are drawing to non-nut straights or drawing to a hand like two pair (sometimes your opponent will have a set or even a full house when you make your hand)
Many players don’t see all of the draws available to them in order to more accurately estimate their chances of winning when all the cards are dealt.
The way you play the hand (perhaps by raising instead of calling) can affect not only your likelihood of winning the hand but also the amount of money that ultimately goes into the pot.

So ok that is a lot to think about and being able to accurately estimate the amount the final pot size and how much you’ll have to invest to get there is a skill that requires experience, however there are some mistakes that people make in limit holdem that are so bad they are quite easy to identify and take advantage of:

Mistake #1: the inability to lay down a pocket pair, especially in non heads-up situations

You’ve definitely seen this one if you’ve played any amount of limit Holdem… There are certain players that absolutely cannot fold pocket pairs regardless of how unlikely they are to win. You will see people call down to the river with pocket tens while the flop is Ace King Four against three opponents. The general rule of thumb for pocket pairs is that you want to flop a set and in most cases if you do not you should fold your hand. If your pocket pair doesn’t give you 1) a set, or 2) an overpair or 3) the high end of an open ended straight draw then in almost all cases you should abandon it on the flop vs. more than one opponent.

Mistake #2: weak straight draws while there is a flush draw on board

If there is a flush draw on the flop then you only want to be drawing at the top end of an open ended straight draw and even then you should often abandon this hand if there aren’t enough people in the pot. You will notice some people that will draw with the bottom end of a gutshot straight draw when there are only one or two people in the pot. You need to first mark these people with a little green dot in your poker client and then you need to take advantage of them by betting your stronger draws and made hands consistently against them.

Mistake #3: non-nut flush and straight draws heads up.

When you are in small pot situations and you don’t think there’s a decent chance your hand may be best right now it is often correct to dump many draws when you are playing heads up (for example the button raises and you are the only caller in the big blind). Usually the flop call is correct and the turn call is incorrect if your opponent has a better made hand than you do (when drawing to a nut flush, for example, your ace high alone may give you the best made hand). In these situations it is a matter of knowing your opponent and what range of hands they are likely to play to know if you should abandon your hand or play it more aggressively if there’s a decent chance you can get them to lay down a better hand than yours.

If you have a simple draw and decide that drawing (check/calling) is the correct move then you should often draw on the flop and fold on the turn if you haven’t improved and if your draw has less than 10 outs. Keep in mind you may have other outs besides your main draw. In a heads-up situation, for example, your ace may be good if you are drawing to the nut flush.

Mistake #4: Drawing with less than six outs with one card to come.

It is almost always wrong to draw to a gutshot straight draw or worse (most common worse draw is hoping to hit a set with a pocket pair) on the turn. It is a rare pot that is SO huge that you can afford to chase your hand in this situation. You’ll be plugging a big leak if you can get out of hands in this situation.

Summary

If you can learn to take advantage of other people making these four mistakes and avoid making them yourself you will see an immediate improvement in your limit results.

Limit Holdem: Making Fewer Mistakes Part 1 (Starting Hands)

2009-08-17T08:15:00.001-07:00

In poker it's not so much about being great. It's more about sucking less

In many sports your goal is to be stronger, faster, tougher, whatever than your opponents. A runner wants to run fastest, a jumper wants to jump highest, a poker player, however, just wants to suck less. In this case “sucking less” means they want to make fewer mistakes than their opponents and they want to find opponents who make more (and worse!) mistakes than they do. It also means that when they do make mistakes they want to minimize the consequences of those mistakes and when their opponents make mistakes they want to take full advantage of them.

Typical Low Stakes Poker Starting Hand Mistakes

Here are a few of the most common starting hand mistakes you can make in a low limit game:

Playing implied odds starting cards (also called multiway hands like JTs) either out of position or when you aren’t in a multiway hand
Playing easily dominated and/or small cards out of position like KJ, QJ, etc. when you are in a non-multiway hand (against one or two opponents)
Playing unsuited garbage hands like K5o, A3o, J4o

When your opponent makes these mistakes they automatically pay a price for them. For example when they play a hand like 56s against one or two opponents they won’t hit their hand often enough to make money in the long run. In addition when they do have a draw the pot odds and implied odds will be much tighter with fewer people in the pot.

Besides the automatic price your opponent is paying you should take advantage of their mistakes and increase the severity of their error:

The first way to maximize your opponent’s mistakes when they have a poor starting hand selection is to always raise your premium hands preflop when they come into a pot before you. If they are likely to raise with their dominated hands then you should usually be willing to re-raise them pre-flop with AK-AJ, KQ and any pocket pairs you suitable for your position at the table. If they often limp into a pot with suited connectors again you should raise to reduce the number of opponents and penalize them.
If your opponent plays easily dominated or garbage hands, then be more willing to bet your top pair top kicker hands like AK, AQ, AJ (flopping a K, Q, or J respectively) aggressively on the flop, turn and river. Always value bet the river unless your opponent has shown extra strength on the turn. Sometimes you will have to fold to a river or turn raise with these hands (100% vs. an opponent who isn’t generally capable of a river-raise bluff).
In addition, when playing a hand like AK your opponents will often call gutshot draws on a board like AQx when they hold KJ or KT even when there aren’t many people in the pot. Take advantage of this through value bets on all streets, but also be aware of their betting tendencies when a third Broadway card hits and they raise as you’ll often have to fold a one pair hand here against many opponents who, when raising the turn, are representing at least two pair.

Avoiding Starting Hand Mistakes

As a general rule, raise your premium hands before the flop. Don’t be afraid to three-bet with hands like AK, TT+ AQs and three-bet with even worse holdings against someone who often raises with poor cards. It’s tempting to wait and see a flop with AK, but at most online tables today it is a mistake—raise! One exception to this rule is if there is a maniac player to your left in which case you can sometimes limp and re-raise with your best hands.
Don’t come into the pot with a multiway hand like QJs, 65s, 55 unless you are relatively sure there will be five or more opponents seeing the flop. These hands are best against a lot of opponents when you are in late position.
I recommend avoiding small and medium pairs when facing 1-3 opponents. While it’s true that 66 has a slight edge over AK heads up it will often be difficult to get more than a single bet per betting round when you win and you’ll often be facing tough decisions where you may end up folding the best hand or paying extra bets with the worst hand. Obviously this is a situation you want to avoid. Usually you have to flop a set or some sort of a combo draw (like a board of 3 4 5 when you hold 66) when you have a small/medium pair. The exception to this rule is when you are up against an opponent who plays and raises will all pairs in which case you should be willing to play pairs as small as 77 heads up against them.

Review your play

After you’re done with a session, pull your hand history into a hand replayer like Popopop’s excellent (and FREE) hand replayer and look at the hands you were involved in. Notice the starting hand mistakes you and your opponents made and also see situations where your opponents loose hand requirements caused you to lose more money than you should have when they made two weird pair or a gutshot straight draw. See what you can do to mitigate those situations and also get more money in the pot when you have the best of it.

Until next time, keep flopping quads…

Part 2: Bad Draws coming soon.

Face the Ace is the Worst Poker Show Ever

2009-08-08T22:49:00.001-07:00

Since the last poker explosion which I’ll give full credit to the World Poker Tour for creating, there have been a number of poker shows on TV. Many of them weren’t very good (Celebrity Poker on Bravo anyone?) but none of them were as bad as this horrible piece of crap brought to you by the creative forces of Full Tilt poker and NBC. The only show that comes close to the “What the hell were you thinking…” moments of this one was Ultimate Blackjack which I think lasted almost an entire episode.

Lets break it down…

The host, Steve Schirripa, seems to know next to nothing about poker. What he does have is an acting role in “The Sopranos” for a little mafia flavor. Yes, that’s just the image we were hoping for as the PPA lobbies congress to legalize online poker in the United States.
The contestants, as you might imagine, are nervous amateurs. Well at least we won’t be relying on their conversation skills as the primary source of entertainment during the meat of each episode. What? Oh shit.
The structure has these nervous amateur contestants risking 100% of their previous winnings to play the next “Ace” from Full Tilt poker and the next big payday. Win the first match in Face the Ace and get $40,000. Win the second match get $200,000. Win the third match and get $1,000,000. Lose the third match (and spoiler alert THAT IS JUST WHAT HAPPENED ON EPISODE 2) and almost cry on TV and the days later probably kill yourself. Brilliant NBC.

Where can I sign up?

Revenge of Cooler

2009-07-30T16:54:00.001-07:00

This hand happened in a qualifier tournament on UltimateBet today. Ouch.

Bicycle Club Legends of Poker Schedule Week 1

2009-07-26T17:23:00.001-07:00

The first week of the legends of poker is almost upon us, so if you are in the Southern California area come on down and play in some of these events at the Bicycle Club Casino.

When	Event	Buy-In
7/28 3:00pm	Casino Employee NLHE	$100+$20
7/29 3:00pm	Media Event NLHE	$0
7/29 4-6pm	Legends of Poker Cocktail Party
7/29 7:00pm	Legends of Poker Event Center Grand Opening NLHE	$300+$35
7/30 3:00pm	NLHE	$300+$35
7/31 3:00pm	NLHE Day 1A	$300+$35
8/1 3:00pm	NLHE Day 1B	$300+$35
8/2 1:00pm	Lips Tour NLHE	$300+$40
8/2 7:00pm	Limit Holdem	$300+$35

Other Cardrooms, why can’t you do what PokerStars does?

2009-07-23T06:33:00.001-07:00

I guess I’m not a ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ kind of guy, so I like playing poker live at a few different cardrooms and I also like playing online at a few places. When I’m playing live here in Southern California at the Bike or Commerce I almost don’t care about the room I’m in as much as the particular game I’m playing. After all I can only sit in one seat live and I don’t have to work about cashout timing (I’ve always been able to convert my chips to and from cash at the live cardrooms without issue and most importantly, immediately!)

Online it’s a different story. The way the different cardrooms handle multi-tabling support (playing one more that one table at the same time), customer support, funding and cashing out all vary quite a bit, but in the online world there appears to be one constant. PokerStars is best. I might be able to find a better table (one with worse players) at UltimateBet or Full Tilt Poker but seemingly without fail of there’s a quality comparison between the cardrooms like which site is it easiest to multi-table 20 tables or which site has the best player loyalty program or which site has (by far!) the best customer service then the answer so far has always been PokerStars. Naturally that’s one very good reason to play poker there and I definite do that, but I particularly want to do that exclusively so this is a shout out to the top cardrooms to get your collective acts together. YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG and POKERSTARS IS DOING IT RIGHT. This is especially true in the realm of customer support where PokerStars actually gets back to you with REAL INFORMATION and they do it FAST. It’s also true in terms of software features to help people play more than one table at a time. I’ve found that I can play at least double the number of tables comfortably that I can play on any other site. Note to other sites: COPY OR IMPROVE ON WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Is there not enough money in online poker? Can’t you afford it Full Tilt? I know you can… So DO IT. Arrrg.

Full Tilt Celebrating 5 Year Anniversary

2009-07-13T16:20:00.001-07:00

Starting at five minutes after midnight tonight (Eastern time), Full Tilt Poker will be starting their 55 hour 5 year anniversary celebration. All points earned during the 2+ day event will earn 5x Full Tilt points for all time spent at the tables. Got your eye on some fancy new Full Tilt gear? Now is the time to grind some poker (maybe clear your bonuses) and get a huge return on frequent player points.

Poker Tips from Down Under

2009-07-12T14:55:00.001-07:00

One of the longest standing casino and online poker rooms, 888, has a decent page on their Australian site of holdem poker tips for tournaments and cash games. One basic concept they touch on is playing much fewer hands from early position which is extremely important even in loose limit games (but is a real game breaker if you violate it in most online NL games). I know you love to play J9 suited (or whatever your favorite hand is) but just lay it down when in early position and you’ll go a long way to plugging one of the most prevalent holdem leaks.

Cashing out to ewalletXpress from an online poker room

2009-07-11T09:57:00.001-07:00

For poker players in the United States, one of the few reliable poker funding choices now is ewalletXpress. You can fund your ewalletXpress account using your checking account which must first be validated using the usual method (they make a couple of small deposits in your checking account and you have to report the amounts of those deposits back to them, proving that you own the account).

Getting money into ewalletXpress is fairly straightforward and they even have an instant option for a nominal additional fee the funds will be available immediately so you can get playing without any delay.

When transferring out of your online poker account back into ewalletXpress, the ewalletXpress website claims:

Once the merchant has processed the transfer, the funds are immediately posted to your eWalletXpress account. An email will automatically be sent to you to confirm the transfer.

The reality is that after your merchant (your poker room) emails you and says your withdrawal is processed, then ewalletXpress will take some of its own time to process, so don’t expect your money to appear instantly (although it will usually appear with 24 hours.

Proofread Much?

2009-07-03T13:43:00.001-07:00

The Bicycle Club casino here in Southern California has announced the grand opening of their Legends of Poker Event Center and are celebrating it with a tournament. Here’s the announcement they sent:

$300 +$35 = $330?

$1,000 for $5 Bonus Chips (seems a bit steep!)

In any event if you’re in town come join this tournament. I think I will be taking a stab at it but I may have to forgo the $5 bonus chips.

The Grand

2009-06-27T08:07:00.001-07:00

If you missed the 2007 move ‘The Grand’ check out the trailer:

(Full disclosure I cribbed this from pokersluts http://pokersluts.blogspot.com) If you have Netflix you can watch this movie instantly via streaming.

Just in case going out on the bubble didn’t irritate you enough…

2009-06-27T07:35:00.001-07:00

… After every sit and go tournament at Full Tilt Poker:

Personally I couldn’t find any way to turn this dialog off. (checking the box on the dialog merely causes the tournament window to close after you are knocked out). Anyone else have luck with getting rid of this rat bastard message?

Happy Father’s Day

2009-06-21T08:02:00.001-07:00

I’ll be spending some time with my son today and calling my dad over in Ohio. Don’t forget to take some time out from poker to tell your dad you love him!

UltimateBet/AP (Cereus Network) Bad Beat Jackpot up to $650,000.

2009-06-16T16:56:00.001-07:00

Here’s the approximate breakdown if you were to participate in the jackpot (requirements are 4 8’s or better losing with both players using both of their hole cards while playing at a jackpot table)

Total: $650,000
Rolled to next Jackpot: $162,500
Fee: $65,000
Loser of BB Hand: $211,250
Winner of BB Hand: $105,625
Other players in the hand $1,000 each (plus limit share)
Limit Share: $98,625 split among all players playing at the same limit.

Good luck at the tables. Visit UltimateBet for more information.

Bodog gets its domain back…

2009-06-15T08:42:00.001-07:00

In late 2007 a company called 1st Technology LLC gained the rights to the bodog.com domain name and Bodog was forced to use other domains including newbodog.com and bodoglife.com.

Bodog has now finally worked out this dispute and people can access the site through the original bodog.com domain.

The Every Other Week $50 Money Added Tournament from LowLimitForum.com (phew!)

2009-06-05T10:07:00.001-07:00

For some time now we’ve been running a money added tournament on Full Tilt for regular members at www.lowlimitforum.com – and by regular members I mean people who contribute at least from time to time on the forum and not someone who saw the tournament on Full Tilt and decided to spam the forum with 50 bogus posts in order to see the password (a great way to get banned).

So the scoop is this, every other Saturday at Noon Eastern (9am Pacific) a tournament will be listed on the Private tab under tournaments in Full Tilt:

The buy in is $2 + $0.50 and we normally see 10-20 folks make the trip out to play this turbo game. I hope you consider joining the forum and playing with us tomorrow.

Visit www.lowlimitforum.com for more information (and check out this post)

Sunday Freeroll at Full Tilt Poker from lowlimitholdem.com

2009-05-09T08:52:00.001-07:00

A heads up—there’s a freeroll this Sunday (that’s tomorrow) at noon Eastern time at Full Tilt Poker. You can get the password at www.lowlimitholdem.com (make sure to check the what’s new section if you’re having trouble) See you tomorrow!

Jackpot Strategy

2009-01-19T19:55:00.001-08:00

There's a new article over on Low Limit Holdem Strategy and Tactics about changes to strategy when playing at jackpot tables. It's a work in progress and will probably undergo some revisions in the coming days but check it out.

A Thursday "Nooner" at The Bike

2009-01-16T07:22:00.001-08:00

SillySpade and I decided we hadn't played live poker in too long so we went down to the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens (Southern California) to play in one of their middle-of-the-day weekday tournaments

The buy-in was $30+$10 (which reminded me of one of the reasons I like to play online nowadays--the same tournament would be $30+$3 at any of the online rooms, but that just isn't doable in a live setting where you have to pay real dealers, etc.) and there were 120 players and a starting stack of 2000T. It felt strange to be back at a live cardroom after several months away and I definitely wasn't playing great poker, although I was playing tight enough that I wasn't dumping my chips. I got involved in the very first hand with T6o in the SB (blinds were $25 and $25 at the first level so I didn't have to put in any extra to see the flop) when I flopped top pair on a 2 3 6 rainbow board and got called by the BB when I bet $50. The turn was a 4 making a one card straight on the board and I bet $50 into the pot again and was min raised by the BB. I thought about it a moment and called thinking he was making a move and didn't draw to a gutshot on the first hand. I check-called another $200 on the river fully believing he was on a bluff and he showed down T5o.

Needless to say I woke up after that and stopped making the donkey payoffs. The next hand I was involved in I was on the button and it was folded down to me with AQs and I made the standard 3x raise. The big blind wasn't having any of it and reraised all in (which I had barely covered). I was getting 2-1 on a call and unless he had aces I had odds so after 10 seconds or so I called the raise and he showed A8o and didn't improve almost doubling me up.

After that I wasn't catching cards at all (I only had 3 pocket pairs during the entire tournament) so when my stack dwindled down to about 1000T and the blinds rose to 50-100 I started playing all-in poker. I took the blinds twice with AQ and AK and then on my third attempt my all in on the button with AQo was insta-called by the small blind(!) I knew I was in trouble and after the BB folded he shows QQ. Ouch! However the poker gods granted me the suckout with an A on the flop and no more queens in the deck (someone else at the table said they folded one) and let me double through.

I played decently for a while and managed to get my stack up to 7700T and we were down around the bubble so I was avoiding unnecessary confrontation. I looked down and found JJ in the SB and was happy until the player to my right who was never showing down anything worse than AK raised it to T6000 on the button first in the pot. I thought the raise was excessive and that he probably had a hand like AK/AQ and I thought a long while about it but then folded the jacks not wanted to run a race that close to the money. He flips of pocket kings... ! Nice laydown.

After a break we are down to 19 people and top 18 pay. Of course I find KK UTG and am conflicted about what to do but cannot bring myself to dump it. With blinds now at 300-600 w/ 100 ante and my stack around 7200T I push. All fold to the dealer button who was a young asian woman who sighed and said 'I call'. She shows As Qs and my kings are ahead. The flop has two spades and the turn is the 4s so I'm drawing dead. Ouch! SillySpade lasted almost as long and went out around 27th. Not a profitable day, but all things considered a decent ranking and a fun tournament. If you're in the SoCal area definitely worth a try...

New Bi-Weekly $50 Money Added Tournament

2008-08-26T07:55:00.001-07:00

This Saturday, August 30th at 9:00am Pacific Time (Noon Eastern) at Full Tilt Poker there is a $2 buy-in tournament for visitors of the Low Limit Poker Forum with $50 money added (that's 25 players worth of low limit dead money!) so join us there.

Technorati

2008-07-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

I'm always hunting around for good poker blogs and I cannot list them all here. Check out my Technorati Profile for my favorite poker blogs you might like too.

Full Tilt Affiliate Freeroll

2008-06-21T14:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I played in the Full Tilt affiliate freeroll today (124 entrants). A mega-LAG towards the end finally did me in in 12th place (10 places pay):

Full Tilt Poker Game #6916180105: Affiliate Freeroll (50847401), Table 2 - 250/500 Ante 50 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:13:23 ET - 2008/06/21
Seat 1: LowLimitHoldem (8,935)
Seat 2: bradz21 (26,152)
Seat 3: Mago666 (8,150)
Seat 5: imteaz (6,301)
Seat 8: RAYZ (15,375)
Seat 9: mimoAS (28,592)
LowLimitHoldem antes 50
bradz21 antes 50
Mago666 antes 50
imteaz antes 50
RAYZ antes 50
mimoAS antes 50
Mago666 posts the small blind of 250
imteaz posts the big blind of 500
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LowLimitHoldem [Qs Ad]
RAYZ folds
mimoAS raises to 2,050
LowLimitHoldem raises to 8,885, and is all in
bradz21 folds
Mago666 folds
imteaz folds
mimoAS calls 6,835
LowLimitHoldem shows [Qs Ad]
mimoAS shows [6d Ks]
*** FLOP *** [Kd 7d Qc]
*** TURN *** [Kd 7d Qc] [Tc]
*** RIVER *** [Kd 7d Qc Tc] [Kh]
LowLimitHoldem shows two pair, Kings and Queens
mimoAS shows three of a kind, Kings
mimoAS wins the pot (18,820) with three of a kind, Kings
LowLimitHoldem stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 18,820 | Rake 0
Board: [Kd 7d Qc Tc Kh]
Seat 1: LowLimitHoldem showed [Qs Ad] and lost with two pair, Kings and Queens
Seat 2: bradz21 (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 3: Mago666 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: imteaz (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 8: RAYZ folded before the Flop
Seat 9: mimoAS showed [6d Ks] and won (18,820) with three of a kind, Kings

Phone Blogging

2008-06-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Not nearly as nice as using a laptop but at least I always have my
iPhone with me. Now you can read all the bad beats just after they happen...

Sent from my iPhone

Firefox Download Day (Or I Heart Server Errors)

2008-06-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Today (June 17, 2008) is the official Firefox 3 Download day where they hope to beat the world record (except there is no official world record) for downloads in a single day. I have to say that I've been using the beta and release candidates for Firefox 3 for several months and it BLOWS INTERNET EXPLORER away. It's insanely faster better stronger, just not even close... So try it out and if you get an HTTP 1.1 Server Error when you try, just... try again

Get Firefox 3 Release Now

Weekly $20 Money Added at Full Tilt

2008-06-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post a quick note here that the weekly $20 money added ($2+$0.50 buy in) is changing format. It will now be 6max No Limit Turbo (instead of full ring non-turbo). It runs every Saturday at Full Tilt at 9:00am Pacific (Noon Eastern) and is on the Private Tab under Tournaments.

The password is LOWLIMIT

Hope to see you there!