The Crafty Re-Steal (Part 2)

Given that the subject of the re-steal involves bluffing (we wouldn’t really be stealing if we had a better hand), getting acquainted with typical situations and features related to the re-steal is imperative. Another scenario that tends to be more difficult than we think it should is making the most from a pot when we’re strong, but at least then we have the advantage of ‘knowing’ that we will pick up chips. But with the re-steal being a bluff this certainly isn’t the case, and we obviously need our opponent to fold their hand in order for us to win the pot.

In Part 1 I mentioned that our table image is a factor as our action needs to be believable, but of course it pays to closely observe the opposition, too (remember we should anyway be doing this at all times, as a matter of course). Clearly, the best players from whom to re-steal are those who we believe are stealing in the first place. It takes one to know one, as they say. And, often, those who we will spot as thieves tend to be the better players who are indeed better because part of their overall, successful strategy is accumulating chips through helping themselves with well-timed but deceivingly ‘regular’ pre-flop raises.

Note that we need also to be able to make the distinction between this kind of player – whose prudence and practical superiority leads them to fold when we strike – and others who are prone to raise pre-flop. Wilder players may well react to our three-bet by putting us all-in, for example, and if we find ourselves in this position a couple of times (and folding, of course) it’s time for us to take a step back and perhaps pull something different out of our bag of tricks.

Meanwhile, as regular readers are well aware, poker is closely related to chess in that in both we need to get used to thinking ahead. There’s no point trying to re-steal if we’re lost for a plan when we’re called. Which brings us to both our cards and our position.

Rather than being in the unenviable position of fighting for the hand with a mediocre ace, for example, when we could well be dominated and simply not know where we stand, we’re better off with a small pair or 67s, for instance, which are both potential monsters and easier to handle.

As for position, we will usually be in the blinds representing considerable strength against a late position raise. But of course should we be on the button and the opportunity to re-steal arises, then it’s time to step up the pace, our move being more likely to work – especially against better players – thanks to our being in position.

Good luck re-stealing!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

€5,000 Easter Festival at 32Red Poker

Hot on the heels of four days’ worth of free and great value events during Cheltenham, here comes 32Red Poker’s €5,000 Easter Festival!

While some believe that Easter might be a time for chocolate eggs and fluffy bunnies, the clever money should be logging on to 32Red Poker over the holiday period (29th March – 1st April) because it will feature poker specials worth €5,000 in no less than 10 free or super value events.

Of course we’re not always successful in tournaments, which is why there’s a ‘nailed on’ offer of free money in the form of an Easter Reload Bonus with a reward of up to £/$/€ 100!

As usual it doesn’t matter what your favourite poker format is because among the 10 events packed into the four days there should be something for everyone. Kicking off on Friday March 29 (8pm UK time) is the (NL) Good Friday Freeroll – aptly named in view of it costing us nothing to enter yet dishing out a guaranteed €1000 in prize money. An hour later sees another NL tournament, this time with a buyin of €3 + €0.30 and €300 in guaranteed prizes. Other tournaments over the following three days include PL Omaha H/L, NL 7 Card Stud, NL Razz, PL Omaha and three Raked Hands Freeroll events.

Finally, try to be neither full of chocolate or a fool on April 1 at 9pm as that’s the time of the Easter Main Event, with a €20 + €0.20 buyin and a guaranteed prize fund of €2000…

The events can be found under Scheduled Tournaments > Special, while all the information is at www.32redpoker.com/promotions/easter-festival-2013.html

As for the Easter Reload Bonus, this is a 100% match bonus of up to £/$/€ 100 when you deposit at 32Red Poker between 29th March–1st April, the free chips credited into your bonus account and released into your actual cash balance as you play (at a rate of 5 chips per 25 generated in cash games rake or tournament fees).

Good luck at the tables, and Happy Easter!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

Thoughts on Position

A problem with poker, which we also experience in other sports and games (and was touched upon in ‘ABC or Autopilot? Don’t Forget to Think’) is that, for many of us, familiarity breeds carelessness and a blasé attitude to some of the key strategies and golden rules that we once appreciated and adhered to. By tightening up our game to once again get the most out of what we have picked up over time we are sure to enjoy significant improvement in our results.

The more we play and learn, the more we hear about the importance of position (where we are seated in relation to the other players at the table), and this is absolutely one of those major aspects of the game that we can’t afford to ignore.

In poker, the ‘action’ journeys around the table in a clockwise direction (with the money following it), which means it will be coming to us from our right. This, of course, means that we have an advantage over those players to our right by virtue of seeing what they have done before deciding on our own action. On the other hand, we are at a positional disadvantage to players on our left.

If everyone played the same kind of game, then, eventually, these (dis)advantages would even themselves out. But poker is far too rich a game for that to happen, and herein lies the secret to exploiting position according to its context.

Not surprisingly, we will get more out of position on some players than others, while some players will punish us more than others when they are seated to our left. How we get to maximise the pluses and minimise the negatives is by recognising when our neighbours on both sides are playing poorly enough to either give us too much or to fail to punish us properly.

With this in mind, we want to be sitting to the left of the looser, aggressive (and, ideally, weaker) players as these can be best exploited when we have more control over the pot and more information (or, to look at it another way, when we’re giving them less information). Tight, conservative (i.e. not aggressive) players we are content to have on our left because their positional advantage isn’t going to be used as much because these players don’t get involved very often.

Obviously positional poker is much more complex but, as a starting point (and a reminder to those who already know!), this should prove useful.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

ABC or Autopilot? Don’t Forget to Think

Of course there’s nothing wrong with playing good old so-called ABC, common sense poker, as long as we allow ourselves to actually think about what we’re doing.

If we get to a point where – even if we’re doing well – we’re making this or that play without being aware why, then, if nothing else, we certainly can’t be learning much.

It’s vital that we back up what we do with some kind of logical reasoning and purposeful thought, and there is a danger – thanks to the convenience of online poker – that we neglect this area of the game, either by being distracted (deliberately or otherwise) by TV, surfing the web and so on, or by what some see as an ‘obligation’ to increase output (and hopefully profit) by multi-tabling.

Again, opening up two or more tables definitely works for some, but not others, and there is something to be said (for the vast majority of players) for minimising the number of tables in order to maximise focus.

An immediate result from concentrating on just one table is no longer making automatic plays – a bad habit indeed. Even better, by forcing ourselves to appreciate that poker might well require a modicum of thought, we deny ourselves the ‘luxury’ of using the automatic ‘check’ and ‘check/fold’ facilities. A would-be convenient tool for the multi-tabler, this is usually a simple tell (not that multi-tablers are too bothered about who knows they don’t have much interest in a pot) but, with this in mind, and with enough time to analyse what’s happening, we can use the lazy button to our advantage.

The ‘check’ button is so ‘obvious’ a tell nowadays that it’s worth using occasionally when very strong (ideally with a big made hand) to induce action from elsewhere. It might sound like a rather simplistic tactic but, perhaps surprisingly, it can be an effective one!

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

Decision Making on the Turn (Part 3: Strong hands)

Part 3: Strong hands

Strong hands are obviously very much welcome as the cards are dealt around the virtual baize, but of course they don’t necessarily play themselves. As well as being able to get us into trouble if we don’t show due care and attention, it’s also important that we learn how to extract the most of them. Either way, as with any hand that we could get involved with, we need to grow used to planning ahead, post-flop.

While we should try to avoid serious trouble with other hand categories that might not justify full commitment, genuinely strong hands can be handled much more confidently (although we’re not bullet-proof regardless of our holding, remember).

Examples of a strong flopped hand would range from delights such as a full house, flush and straight to others we’d still be quite excited about, like three of a kind and top two pair. Often a monster could simply prove too far ahead of the opposition’s best holdings to tempt others into the pot, and many players are unsure of how best to continue when the flop indeed seems too good to be true. There is a tendency to automatically slow-play through fear of scaring opponents off with the slightest hint of aggression. Of course there is a case for the tricky, trappy slow-play – for example when out of position against a lone, aggressive opponent who we believe will take the bait when checked to.

But it is surprising how effective a more ‘normal’ approach can be. With my chess pro hat on, the advice that ‘obvious is often best’ can be met with confusion because aspiring players run the risk of believing that the ‘clever’ aspect of chess means nothing is ever simple – in looking for unnecessarily complex, convoluted solutions they can’t see the wood for the trees.

The same goes for poker – if we want to get into the habit of winning big pots with big hands, we need to get to grips with the poker truth that big pots tend to be made by betting (and raising) rather than waiting for someone else to do the pot-building for us.

Indeed striking while the iron is hot, when we flop a strong hand, is what ‘value’ is all about. The opportunity to win a juicy pot is too big a chance to spoil by trying to be too clever. If we’re given a speedboat we don’t want to break it up to make a raft…

Scared opponents are likely to be scared on the last two betting streets if they won’t play ball on the flop, so we should just go ahead and get the ball rolling with betting and raising. Obviously we’re not talking enormous bets, rather betting for value with the simple and effective aim of inducing the opposition into coming along for the ride when they’re behind.

I hope that this series of articles has helped players better put into perspective how to assess their chances on the flop and, subsequently, lock on to an appropriate plan of action by contemplating how play might pan out over the rest of the hand.

As with everything, experience helps, but it will soon became evident that incorporating this key form of analysis into our game is much easier and natural than we might imagine.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

Wise Guys Results (8th – 14th Oct)

Win at the 32Red Poker cash tables and you may qualify for even more cash rewards with our Wise Guys weekly leaderboards. Yes, we reward our biggest winners at 32Red Poker and we reward them well, with over $1,000 in prizes every week!

Congratulations to last week’s prize winners…

32Red’s Wise Guys

32Red Poker rewards loyalty, and winners – so if you’re a winning player, don’t be shy and try out our Wise Guys weekly competition. Have fun at the tables and good luck this week!

Wise Guys Results (16th – 22nd July)

Win at the 32Red Poker cash tables and you may qualify for even more cash rewards with our Wise Guys weekly leaderboards. Yes, we reward our biggest winners at 32Red Poker and we reward them well, with over $1,000 in prizes every week!

Congratulations to last week’s prize winners…

32Red’s Wise Guys

32Red Poker rewards loyalty, and winners – so if you’re a winning player, don’t be shy and try out our Wise Guys weekly competition. Have fun at the tables and good luck this week!

Patience – Poker is a waiting game

Indeed poker is a lot of things but, alongside (notably) position, patience is a key contributor to the ultimate poker p-word: Profit. The recent introduction to 32Red of Blaze Poker – which does away with the ‘non-playing’ time spent on waiting for a hand to complete by transferring us (as soon as we fold) to a brand new table with brand new players, straight into the action of a hand – will obviously be an attractive development for most players.

Nevertheless, even with this new format, impatience can still rear its ugly head if we fail to be consistently disciplined, and we need to be conscious of what is essentially a natural desire to see our lot improve and, subsequently, the equally natural urge to ‘end’ the frustration by settling for mediocre opportunities. There’s no point having a range that we’re very happy with when everything is going our way if we have a tendency to recklessly dispense with it when the tide inevitably turns against us.

Seemingly endless periods of both bad holdings and bad beats are always going to crop up from time to time – moreover a terrible period might appear to come to an end as our ‘luck’ changes, only to be followed by an even worse run of cards. Nor is it so unusual, when the poker gods are amusing themselves at our expense by serving up just about every combination of hole cards except pairs, suited connectors or even a scrap of hope in the form of a suited ace, to find that when we are dealt a hand that is just about playable the pot is raised and reraised before we get a chance to join in, thus forcing us to fold yet again.

Eventually, too many of us let frustration morph into temptation, as holdings that we rarely give a second glance before folding, such as J8s or an ace with a poor kicker (the kind of hands we usually hope our opponents will go with), start to look increasingly promising. And once we allow these floodgates to open the tide of trap and dominated hands and the difficult situations (and often poor decisions) they lead to will wash away any gains we might have made.

But of course if we take away the negative emotions and frustration that build with each successive trash hand and look at a run of bad cards logically, it’s clear that by folding we aren’t going to be bleeding chips unnecessarily or (worse) losing big pots – patiently waiting out these dry periods (however long they might last) is the ultimate in profitable play.

While not exactly embracing a string of bad cards we should still maintain a positive outlook and extract the positive aspects of such situations by using this time we’re not involved in a hand to see what the other players are doing. Rather than curse our poor luck while becoming annoyed at the good fortune of others we should be exploiting these opportunities to accumulate very useful reads. What we’re ‘losing’ in taking a back seat, away from the action, we’re gaining in potentially valuable information!

Strong players prefer to hold back a little when first joining a game. Consequently they don’t at all mind starting a session on a new table with a bad run of cards because they’re interested in finding out as much as possible about the opposition while giving out as little as possible about themselves.

Patience. It’s not enough to read these words (or even write them!) and nod along in approval of what is really no more than common sense. We need to apply a level of realism during play, and appreciate that while we’re having to keep folding we’re also able to garner information by more closely observing other players’ habits, as well as keeping our powder dry by not being drawn into battles we stand to lose.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

No Limit: Value Betting

We all know that betting with a monster makes sense, but many players (at all levels) tend to have difficulty deciding on the most appropriate amount to bet with a strong hand – how do we get maximum profit when we judge that we have the best hand? The answer is value betting. This is a bet that we want to be called, and the aim (the tricky bit) is to bet as much as possible while still eliciting a call. Note that at Fixed Limit strong hands call for strong betting as the relatively small bets are likely to be called even by weak hands, so value betting is particularly relevant to No Limit.

Of course this is one of those situational plays that poker likes to throw at us, but here are a few tips that should help. For many the first step might be getting into the habit of value betting and out of the tempting but potentially wasteful habit of slowplaying. Obviously there should be some balance, and slowplaying is a useful weapon in the right circumstances, but it is imperative that we become acquainted with value betting. Furthermore, while slowplaying is aimed at tempting in lesser hands, effective value betting from the flop can also generate big pots through the accumulation of increasing value bets, with all-in scenarios quite possible by the river.

Obviously, in order to value bet properly we need first to determine that we’re ahead, and then try as accurately as possible to put the opposition on a hand in order to find the right amount to bet to induce a call.

The kind of player we’re up against is also significant. For example the less experienced, weaker player with an average hand tends to ‘believe’ big bets but more readily call more modest sized bets. Consequently, against this type of player it is important to help them feel that calling is affordable – ideally we want our value bet to meet with an ostensibly value call.

Unlike most people (who are concerned only with their hand in relation to the board and how much they will then pay to call for confirmation), stronger players will also have put some thought into what we have. Clearly this complicates our task considerably, especially when we must factor in our table image, betting habits and recent history (which we should be doing constantly, remember). Now we must find an amount to bet based not only on the strength of our opponent’s hand but also on what we believe they think we have.

This psychological aspect of the game is what makes poker so fascinating and intriguing. For example, if indications are that our knowledgeable opponent can beat only a bluff, then rather than making a small value bet – that anyway might not be called – we should stick to the opposition’s script and oblige with an overbet that smells of bluff. Good players are capable of making big calls with marginal hands when they smell a rat, so we should be alert to the possibility of tricking them into believing they have an opportunity to make such a brave call when we have determined we are way ahead.

Value betting takes some getting used to and it is worth analysing different situations away from the table but, in time, we should be able to get to grips with this crucial part of the game.

Good luck at the tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s Blaze Poker! (Part 1)

The point of Blaze Poker is that whenever our involvement in a hand ends we transfer to a new table with a new, random set of opponents from the large pool of Blaze players. Not only can we simply fold and move on to new horizons when we don’t like our holding, but the so-called ‘Quick Fold’ button even allows us to do so out of turn – instead of hanging around on the button with 72o while the other players are thinking we can fold as soon as our cards appear on the screen! (Note that blinds are assigned to those players who have gone the longest without posting).

Not surprisingly, by eliminating the time that we usually have to wait for a hand to finish in a standard game, Blaze Poker maximises the time we actually ‘play’ during a session and, in turn, means we get to play many, many more hands. And for those of you who already enjoy the benefits of 32Red Poker’s 30% Rakeback, the potential to earn more rewards while simultaneously tightening up our game by avoiding the temptation of playing poor hands is a great bonus.

Of course while Blaze Poker is essentially a slightly tweaked version of the standard game, there are a few things to keep in mind when tackling this new format. One significant difference is that we won’t be sitting for long periods with the same opponents – of course we will keep finding ourselves facing familiar names here and there, but won’t be able to learn about players’ habits to the extent that we can use these reads (and our own table image) to pull off complex, tailor-made plays. This, in turn, helps emphasise the importance of getting used to a more ABC oriented approach that relies more on actual hand strength and position.

Nevertheless, this isn’t to say that, with so many players adopting such a very tight strategy, we should be on auto-pilot (like almost everyone else). There will be opportunities to use the psychology of this format to our advantage.

One such tactic is 3-betting. The vast majority of players will be looking to make the most of the Quick Fold facility in order to move on to greener pastures and wait for better hands, while a few will be trying to steal. Consequently, when we’re in position we should contemplate 3-betting (suited connectors, for example, are fine to be doing this with) – some players (including those who would normally follow us, remember!) will have auto-folded by the time we get going, those with marginal hands might stay around to see if it will be a limped or raised pot and move on as soon as they can’t join in on the cheap, and if we do get action we will very rarely be raised. Mostly we’ll pick up the pot or have the advantage of being the aggressor, in position, against a compromised caller who doesn’t even have the luxury – that would normally be the case in a standard game – of being well acquainted with our style.

In Part II we will consider a few other features of the game that are specific to Blaze Poker.

Good luck at the Blaze tables!

Angus Dunnington (AngusD at the tables)
32Red Poker Ambassador

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