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| Current Issue - July 2009 | |
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What You Must Consider When You Sit Down for an Online Session By Carl Sampson Have you ever wondered just what it would be like to sit with a professional poker player and share his thoughts and ideas about the game? Have you ever stopped to think just what having that kind of help could do for your game? With coaching sites getting ever more popular now, we thought that we would do our very best to try and replicate that environment for our readers by taking actual sessions of play and having them analysed by an expert so that the reader can see just what types of thought processes go into actually winning money. In this example, I am going to take a look at a recent session that I played on Cake Poker at NL100 ($0.50-$1 no-limit hold’em). Here the game is ten-handed and the average stacks are in the region of about 70BB. First Thoughts Firstly this poker website does not allow tracking software and while this may be a handicap for many players, it also provides a safe haven for any player who does not want to get his or her game picked to pieces by what are commonly referred to as ‘Borg’. This feature of the site means that the overall ability of the players is lower on the whole as many serious players who depend on sniffer programs avoid the site. Playing in games that have no tracking software introduces a totally different dynamic. I can no longer use my heads-up display to present me with useful data but that is counteracted by the fact that the games will be easier than usual. So what we have here is a trade-off and as long as I am getting some payback for not being able to use my tracking software, then this is fine by me. In this session I don’t know anything about the players and I will also be multi-tabling, so I am basically going to have my default game to rely on and very little else. Cracking the Code On the whole, players at all levels will have what I call a ‘code of conduct’. By that I mean that they will tend to operate in a certain way. While we cannot make sweeping generalisations here, what I am referring to are the underlying poker philosophies that the average player uses. Because I am not using tracking software I am going to have to use good old-fashioned ‘feel’ to get me through. In levels through NL50 to about NL200, many players play in a very straightforward way most of the time. Most understand hand values and position and play tends to be quite tight with the average pot size being quite low, as is the number of players who see a flop. Some players will be more aggressive than others and some will have a few more tricks, but not overly so. It is a good idea to try to ascertain two things before you sit down to play: How will my opponents go about winning money? How will I go about winning money? Opponents’ Overall Plan Once you know these two basic things you can start to devise an overall strategy and plan of attack. So just how will my opponents attempt to win money (my money, to be exact)? Well, they will tend to do the following things listed below: 1. They will raise from position in an attempt to steal the blinds or put themselves into a situation where a continuation bet on the flop will take the pot down. 2. They will limp in with pocket pairs/suited connectors/suited aces, etc., in the hope of hitting a big flop. 3. They may raise the odd limper from position if they perceive weakness. 4. They will take small stabs at tiny pots with bluffs and semi-bluffs. 5. They may call down with mediocre hands that they suspect may not be good but stand a fair chance of being so. 6. They will try to pick off overly aggressive players by calling down. 7. Some may play back at what they perceive are frequent blind stealers. I am sure there will be a few others as well but this is basically a blueprint for how many low-stakes players attempt to win money – even many regulars play like this. Against unsophisticated players who are coming into the games at the lower end, this can be a very effective way to play in these games. How Do I Win? So how will I go about trying to extract money from a game like this? Well, for a start I will be attempting to do most of the things that were mentioned in the previous list. However, one of the errors that I see frequently committed in these games is with the playing of speculative hands like medium to small pocket pairs, suited connectors and suited aces. Quite often players call raises with these types of hands far too liberally, even when they clearly do not have the implied odds to do so based on either the size of the raise or the stack size of the raiser. Points five and six on that list also deserve a mention and this is another potentially fatal flaw that many players make at these levels. Calling down is usually not a good strategy to adopt as the other player is in the driving seat and you are kind of left wondering if the betting means that your mediocre rundown hand is actually second best. Paying for Information I feel that it is vitally important to explain one of the key differences between online poker and live poker. Because you cannot get access to physical tells in online poker, this means that you are going to be somewhat in the dark when it comes to trying to decipher what your opponent actually has in many situations. One of the key skills to playing well online is in judging how much you need to pay for that information. This is where ‘probe bets’ come into their own, but it is also one of the most difficult skills for novice players to learn. While limit hold’em is still a fantastically complex game, novice players cannot make a mistake in that form of poker by choosing an incorrect bet size. The structured nature of the game dictates that the only decision left for a player is should he put money into the pot or not and the question of how rarely arises. The Lobby Screen Before I take a seat in this game I will already take a look at the site lobby and see what the game statistics are for the game that I will be playing in. While these are only short-term averages, they do give me some information about the nature of the game that I will be sitting down to play. Here is some of what you will see: Average number of hands per hour The number of hands that a table is seeing per hour is a good indication of the overall tightness of the table. For instance, a full-ring game that has 55 hands per hour may mean that many of the players are calling and seeing flops and multi-way pots obviously take longer to complete. No two table line-ups will be the same and no two table line-ups ever can be as a certain configuration of players can lead to a table playing a certain way. Sometimes a very large number of hands per hour can be a good indication that a game is tight because players are folding with a high frequency. Average pot size Many players try to sit in games with above average pot sizes. If I see a game that has an average pot size that is double that of any other table, this is usually accompanied by a longer than usual waiting list of players. What many of these players fail to take on board is that the configuration of this game will have more than likely altered dramatically by the time they sit in the game, and this especially applies to players further down the list. I don’t pay much attention to ‘average pot size’ stats in full-ring no-limit play. Percentage of players seeing the flop This is a crucial statistic, which can often be married to the number of hands per hour stat. A high percentage of players seeing the flop (more than 25 percent for full-ring) will tend to mean that the game is more loose-passive. A low percentage will be just the opposite and will tend to mean that the game is tight-aggressive. Usually these averages are only taken over a few hands but this can differ from site to site, so you really need to keep a keen eye on how these statistics fluctuate (if at all) to really understand the texture of the table. The Session On we go then to the actual session itself. The table that I find myself on has a 13 percent figure for the average number of players seeing a flop, which is very low. The table statistics also show me that we are seeing 82 hands per hour, so this table is going to be tight-aggressive and probably populated by better players on average. My first decision is when to start play. Do I wait for the big blind or post in position? Hand One Here I decide to post in position and my $1 sees me enter in the cutoff position. The tightness of the game means that I can possibly get to raise here with my hand as the likelihood is that it may get folded to me based purely and simply on the ‘see the flop percentage’ being so low, along with the total number of hands per hour being high. This is better than waiting for the big blind and starting out in a position where I will probably be seeing a late position raiser while holding a random and probably weak hand! The players do in fact all fold around to me and I have utter junk with the 10-4 offsuit. Most of the time this would be a straightforward fold or check but a combination of my position, the hand being folded around to me and the overall tightness of the table now makes this a straightforward raise. I make it $3 to go and the button and blinds all fold and my stack is now $101.50 from my original starting stack of $100 – these tiny amounts really add up over a year. Entering the game in this position instead of the big blind is something that I regularly do with very tight tables, and I find it to be a profitable play on the whole. Hand Two On the very next hand I am situated in the hijack position and see the 7-6 of clubs, which is one of my preferred hands in deep-stacked no-limit hold’em play. Here it is folded around to the player two seats to my right, who limps in for the $1. It is important here to assess the stack size of the relevant players and this player’s stack size was $122. My hand here has great deceptive value when I raise and I would much rather do this than play a ‘hit to win’ type of strategy by limping along. Once again the tightness of the table allows me to either attempt to steal the blinds and the limper’s money or get the hand heads-up with position, both of which are highly desirable results. I raise to $4.50 and everyone folds around to the limper, who calls, making the pot $10.50. Here my opponent limped in and then called a raise so in trying to ascertain his range, I am maybe thinking that he has a pocket pair or possibly a suited Broadway-type hand. A premium pair is less likely now, although it cannot be ruled out. The limp-call line of my opponent seems to indicate a ‘hit to win’ strategy and if he has an unpaired hand, then he has only a 1-in-3 chance of pairing on the flop. My position means that I can dictate play and take a free card if necessary. The flop comes 5-3-2 rainbow (once club), giving me a gutshot draw and two mediocre overcards. This is also a flop that my opponent will figure that I have not hit based on my preflop raise. Instead of merely checking to me, my opponent bets out $6.50. This leading into the preflop raiser is called a ‘donk bet’ and is a standard ploy used by players who are now trying to reverse the positional advantage and put the pressure on their opponent to hit the flop. I may fold in this situation, as my previous raise may have affected the equity that I have. But the table is tight and I do have equity in this pot even if I raise and get called, due to my inside-straight draw. I decide to raise to $20…I have little information to go on apart from the fact that my opponent limped in preflop, the table is tight and that he made a ‘donk bet’. My opponent actually times out, which allows me to take another pot and my stack grows to $114 after just two hands of play. Not bad! Next month we will be continuing with this session and looking at my overall poker philosophy at small-stakes cash games – good luck at the tables! Carl ‘The Dean’ Sampson is sponsored by Cake Poker and can be seen at www.cakepoker.com/thedean and at www.pokersharkpool.com.
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