The sucker bet. (n.) A small bet made with a strong hand to increase the pot size. Usually made knowing that other players intend to fold to a large bet, but are willing to stay in for the cheap.
Most players know this definition and may fold over cards and low pairs to avoid falling victim. This over compensation allows for the cheapest bluff in poker. I bet small every once and a while and the most common response goes something like this: “Now, that’s a sucker bet! I’m not falling for that.” And fold. They don’t always state their thought process, but often they do. I suppose to show their “superior” read and justify their fold to a weak bet.
This tip works best against tight players, both passive and aggressive, and when you have established yourself as a tight player. I recommend it when you are heads-up and post-flop, best as a continuation bet. I tend to throw out my small bets when I have absolutely nothing.
Try it, you may be surprised at the results. It doesn’t work all the time, but you are only losing a little more than you would have with a fold. The beauty of the sucker-sucker bet is that it doesn’t have to have a high success rate to still be worth it.
Being aggressive in poker is vital to becoming successful. Passive play may be rewarded from time to time but on the whole it will be the players who show aggression, by betting, who will be raking in the money at the end of the day.
The first and most obvious reason to bet is because you think you have the best hand. You find a pair of aces in the hole and make a bet as you want to win more money with what is certainly the best hand at the moment. But have you thought that by betting you not only do so for value but also for protection?
Say you hold a set of queens on a board reading 8KQ with two clubs. Your hand is currently only behind to a pair of kings but there are many turn cards that could see your opponent outdraw you. Clubs are the obvious danger for the flush draw but also any ace or nine could see someone with jack-ten fill their straight and potentially stack you. By betting here you are charging your opponent to draw and offering him incorrect odds to call you. This means you have more chance of winning the hand and forcing your opponent to fold.
Betting also gives you more ways to win a pot than simply calling. By calling the only way you can win the pot is for you to have the best hand. However, by betting you can get someone with a better hand then yours to fold, you can be called and still outdraw them to a better hand or be called and have the best hand anyway. It should be obvious by now that the merits of betting are far greater than those of playing passively.
One phrase I always try to remember is that betting when you shouldn’t leads to you losing a bet, but not betting when you should can cost you the entire pot.
Even the best poker hands are worthless if they have been folded, so a little bit of aggression can pay dividends.
In poker the term ’slowplaying’ refers to playing a particular hand much more passively than you usually would in an attempt to deceive your opponent into thinking your hand is much weaker than it is.
Used sparingly it can be a very powerful tool that can increase your profits when you play poker, but if overused or used in the wrong circumstances it can be a high-risk and costly move to make.
The best time to slowplay is when you have a strong hand on a board that contains no or few draws and your opponent is someone who is aggressive and bets frequently. For example, in a cash game you decide to limp with a pair of black nines and an aggressive player makes his standard raise, which you call.
The flop comes down 4d 9h Ks. Now is a perfect time to slowplay. If you check with your set of nines, your aggressive opponent is almost certainly going to bet to represent the king even if it has not helped him. When he bets you can flat-call and hope to repeat the same action on a safe turn. Alternatively, you could check-raise him and win at least the extra bet he has just put into the pot, something he might not have done if you had lead out. If he is aggressive or reckless enough, he may even come over the top of your check-raise with top pair and commit his entire stack as a huge underdog, which is obviously a great situation for you to be in.
Whenever there are multiple players in the hand or the flop contains a big draw it is not advisable to slowplay your hand. Imagine you have a pair of black nines again but this time you and three others see a flop reading 9h Th 5c. While there is a high chance you have the best hand right now, there are a number of possible holdings your opponents could have that have the potential to outdraw you by the river.
It’s possible your opponents could have hands such as eight-seven, queen-jack or a flush draw, so you should bet out to protect your hand rather than try and trap other players as you could give away a free card and allow someone the chance to outdraw you.
If you are in any doubt it is probably best not to slowplay your hand as it is much better to win a small pot then lose a large one.
In the beginning, Al Gore invented the Internet. He said let there be social networking, and there was MySpace. And it was good. At least until Facebook came along, then MySpace was crap. There have been many iterations of social networks in the past decade, with Facebook the clear winner in the US. At this point the only way to compete is to spin off into something different, like Twitter, or find a niche. PokerNations found our niche.
As poker players, we were never left without a place to find each other on-line. Both MySpace and Facebook have poker communities that are searchable in their respective Groups functionality. As a Ning.com member I belong to various special interest networks created by members. Although limited, I found my share of poker buddies in his manner.
The search for a poker playing social network branched out to other dedicated web sites. Most added to the poker network category as a group blogging engine and little else.
Which brings me to the good news: Poker players now have a bone fide community in PokerNations.com. It has all the trimmings one would expect: user profiles, commenting, blogging, events, polls, forum…think MySpace. Don’t think Facebook because the design and functionality is not nearly as refined as Facebook. Yes, think MySpace, only without the glitter and animated gifs. (thanks God)
I’m not trying to discourage you from joining, just trying to manage your expectations. PokerNations is a very young web site and is bound to improve. They are off to a good start. They have relationships with the Poker Player’s Alliance, the Twitter Poker Tour and other online poker organizations. They have courted a few pros as members. They are integrated with Twitter and use keywords like apps and widgets to define them self. They even have a chip earning system to encourage activity on the site which can be used as entries for prizes including a (non-main event) WSOP Vegas trip.
Long story short, every on-line poker player should probably be a member of PokerNations just for the sake of community. They will no doubt host PokerNations endorsed tournaments and freerolls and rakeback and all the other poker playing/marketing tropes, some of which I may want in on and some of which I may block. When it comes down to it, poker players are online to play more than network, but when you’re invited to the party, I say there is no reason to be antisocial.
For those of you who run a friendly home game with people you care about and trust whole-heartedly, throw a corrupting, money-hungry, greed -powered wrench in your goody-twoshoe system. Announce that tomorrow night is Cheat Night!
Cheat Night: (n.) Night in which it is understood by all that no lasting punishments will be issued for foul-play. The rules are as follows: Let all players know beforehand (preferably with 24-hour notice) that a Cheat Night will be held. Proceed with your poker game as normal. If a player catches another player cheating and calls him or her out, the offending player mucks his hand. Each player can call for a card count no more than twice each Cheat Night.
Sooo…is there a point to all this? Yes. The usual player wastes most of their suspicion on Internet card rooms and saves little for in person game play. Your friends likely shift their attention from their cards, to other player’s faces for a read, over to the TV and back again. This exercise gets people looking at the deck, other player’s cards and gets their suspicion running wild. Their healthy suspicion. Cheat Night is a wake up call. It is a call to arms to prepare you for the real world. It gets you thinking like a cheater.
The importance of the 24-hour notice is that it gives your frienemies time to bring their own cold decks, enter uneasy partnerships for collusion and whatever other preperations they see fit. It is important not to get found out because if you have to muck, you loose whatever investment you had in the pot. This also shows why it is important to play for real money. I suggest your usual stakes. The card count rule is important in case you suspect a player of hording cards from past hands. It is also important to limit the amount of times one can confirm a 52 card deck or it would happen every hand.
Poker would cease to be fun if every night became Cheat Night, but if you have an adventurous crowd it could become the most fun night of the year. I do recommend setting up at least two Cheat Nights. Players will get idea from other players and will be considerably better cheats the second night.
A couple tips: Don’t use your best cards as they may get marked. Don’t assume whoever doesn’t get called out for cheating opted out of cheating, it is likely that he or she is the best cheater. If you are dealt a statistically unlikely good hand and are re-raised, consider folding as you were probably the mark for a set deck.
As we movie into 2010, I like to try out new features for the site. This year I’ve set up a textual poker help line. Using a new service called FormSpring you can ask me any question you’d like and I will post answers within a couple hours/days. You can ask personal inquires as well, but I can only guarantee I’ll answer those that are poker related.
You always had the ability to ask me something via email, but now the whole community can see the answers.
A friend of mine and I came up with a way for guys to convey relationship status and satisfaction without having to use terms like “love” and “emotion.” It works by relating a current relationship to a starting hold’em hand. At first, it shows the early satisfaction with the new girlfriend as an analog of the strength of the hand. As the relationship matures, a year into the future let’s say, the game continues by adding a flop to the metaphor. By marriage, a turn. And after years of matrimony, the river.
Example: If a girl enters my friend’s life. He is immediately happy with her, but is unsure about a lasting future, he’d tell me he met a 77. As we know, mid pocket pairs are great starting hands, but with little room for improvement. If the relationship lasts a year, he might tell me he saw a flop of 4 6 9. This would tell me the relationship is going about as well as it did at the begining. Only one overcard lets me know that the risk of them breaking up is still relatively low. The chance at a straight says she could be the one, but it would take a runner-runner, so still not likely. If my friend was thinking about marriage seriously, I would have expected at least another 7 of the flop.
I’ve made some observations on the game. Most first loves start out with immense infatuation, the metaphorical pocket rockets. These immature relationships usually don’t improve on the flop turn or river, and you end up with a weak hand in the end. Sure, there are cases of high school sweatheats living happily ever after, and those cases can be somed up with aces catching trips on the flop and four-of-a-kind of the turn. Unfortually, this is a rare hand. I feel the strongest foundation for a realationship would be seen as a suited A K. A love that blossums into an early flush on the flop and only improves to a royal flush by the river. In other words, true love.
While this game can be used by either sex, it is tailor-made for guys who often poorly express their feelings, especially to other dudes. Give this exercise a whirl and if it doesn’ work out for you…hate the player, not the game.
Note: This is not to be confused with the method of rating the attractivness of the opposite sex by relating them to a blackjack hand. I first heard of this on the television show How I Met Your Mother. For example a hand like 10 A or anything equallying 11 would be ideal, because you’re saying that you’d hit that. It’s less of a relationship game and more of a one-off gag, but funny all the same.
Super System, Harrington on Hold’em and Poker for Dummies are all text books that would be required reading if your local college offered poker as a subject. (In the case of Poker for Dummies, think community college.) Cowboys Full, on the other hand, is the book you would give a high school grad you are pushing toward said class. I just finished reading Cowboys Full and didn’t learn so much as a good opening hand. If there was a lesson in the book at all, it was a history lesson.
James McManus first wrote of the poker world in his book Positively Fifth Street, an exploration of the Ted Binion murder. It was a book that appealed to both fans of the game and fans of murder mysteries. In contrast, Cowboys Full appeals to a narrower audience and covers a wider subject matter. To like Cowboys Full you have to really like poker. Much of the book reads as a celebration of poker. It covers the European roots of the game and follows it’s evolution through the US revolution, into the wild west with Bill Hiccock, hitches a ride on Mark Twain’s steam boats, and ends with the creation and popularization of the WSOP. If you have been playing as long as I have, I’m sure you’ve picked up some of the game’s history; I’m also sure there is more to learn within.
Overall, I enjoyed the history lesson.
The later third of Cowboys Full is a play by play account of the most high-stakes games in recent history. If you liked The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King you’ll like this part, but if you read The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King you can probably skip much of this part. There are some interesting bits about Asian culture and why the Vietnamese are ideal poker players, but not enough. When it comes to learning about WSOP final tables, television is my preferred medium. Call me when McManus makes Cowboys Full the documentary.
I like both books about poker and studies of poker. Cowboys Full just isn’t my favorite, Ace on the River is. For me, Cowboys Full was just too much poker on parade and would have benefited in editing out a few (dozen) pages.
Have you read the book? Am I wrong? Please let me know your favorite poker in print, I always have room on my shelf.
Happy late Thanksgiving to all my US of A readers! I’m thankful for a great many things this year, not least of all you, the happy shiny poker people. Thanks so much for reading this little blog.
It is because of you guys and gals that I’ve made it into my third year! Hence the triliogy-esque post title. I still have a thing or two to say, so I’ll do my best to keep the posts coming on a regular basis. As always, I do take requests. Feel free to email me or DM me on Twitter (@Grundy) if there is a topic you’d like to explored.
Long-time readers know that I took a leave from on-line poker a while back due to the US government pushing legislation against Internet gambling. I’d like to annouce that my leave was officially a hiatus and not a “quitting.” I’m back playing Full Tilt and other game rooms may not be far behind.
This decision was prompted by one of the few wins to our cause as poker players. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) is a mute point until this June, which is a substantial postponement. I’d like to thanks the Poker Players Alliance and those working towards the same goals for lobbying for the postponement. You can check out the PPA’s press release here. With any luck, we’ll get a break in June as well.
Until then, lets live in the present, I’ll see you in the card rooms.
There is one point in every tournament when every player should adjust their play. It is when the money is almost within grasp and the bubble boy (or girl) is about to be crowned. Most tighten up, some bet more freely, all have a number on their mind. The number of how many players are left.
On a micro-scale, we can deal with the easy numbers. My favorite games are single-table tournaments with the top three places paying out. (These are also known by the somewhat counter-intuitive name sit-n-goes. Once you “sit” you can’t “go” until the game is over.) The bubble here is fourth place. Out of the last ten games I’ve played I’ve been first, second, third or fourth–so the end-game strategy has been fresh on my mind. Be aware, this is on-line advice and my not apply in person.
Every time I reach the top four, everyone tightens up except for players with a significant chip lead. These players steal blinds with bets four or five times the big blind. I’ve found that when the blinds are high enough to significantly impact the smaller or mid stacks, that is overkill. The minimum raise is often enough to get the player to fold pre-flop. According to traditional advice, this is a weak play. I agree, it is weak, but if it works it works. I have been using this strategy over the last ten games and have been first or second most of them. In addition, when you do get a call, you are still seen as on the offensive for the hand. Most people will respect your post-flop bet assuming your table reputation is solid.
Disclaimer: The minimum raise has worked for me consistently, but only under specific circumstances. I’ve been min. raising (1) online, (2) with four or less players at the table, and (3) not in the big blind. I use the min. bet to steal the big blind, it is less likely to get anyone who has already called the big blind to fold. Also I’ve only tested this tactic with buy-ins between $10 and $30. Your mileage may very.
Grundy's goal is to build the better poker person. Thanks for visiting Hell's Cold Day, I'm Grundy. I've been playing cards since 2000 and have raised in stakes just short of considering myself a "pro," profiting (mostly) the whole way. I am happy where I am, even though I believe in my heart of hearts I could rely solely on poker for a living. Why not? That is a personal choice you may find in the posts to the right. Enjoy the journey, I hope I can help along the way.
A friend of mine and I came up with a way for guys to convey relationship status and satisfaction without having to use terms like “love” and “emotion.” It works by relating a current relationship to a starting hold’em hand. At first, it shows the early satisfaction with the new girlfriend as an analog of the strength of the hand. As the relationship matures, a year into the future let’s say, the game continues by adding a flop to the metaphor. By marriage, a turn. And after years of matrimony, the river.
Super System, Harrington on Hold’em and Poker for Dummies are all text books that would be required reading if your local college offered poker as a subject. (In the case of Poker for Dummies, think community college.) 
Happy late Thanksgiving to all my US of A readers! I’m thankful for a great many things this year, not least of all you, the happy shiny poker people. Thanks so much for reading this little blog.
