Liverpool FC Forum

[peterc1992]

Very off at the minute..]

Played a 2 euro mtt.I have about 1600,started with 1500 and about 50 people knocked out and about 200 left.
I get  5 5 on big blind . a few fold and one guy raises an extra 100 which is big blind,one other calls and i call too.So its 5-5 v Q-Q V A-10. Flop  5 A 10.IM happy.I check.QQ bets  700,A 10 all in,i push all in aswell. the Q Q calls!! So im happy wen i see the cards although im wondering how the QQ calls with  an ace on the board and with two people all in in front of him.I have a set and the QQ hits his third Queen on the turn.Tournament over!.................................. ...he calls all in with pocket queens and and over card on the board,espicially with two of us all in already,reallyt annoyed me i had to get away from the pc for a few minutes....

[burjennio]

Very off at the minute..]

Played a 2 euro mtt.I have about 1600,started with 1500 and about 50 people knocked out and about 200 left.
I get  5 5 on big blind . a few fold and one guy raises an extra 100 which is big blind,one other calls and i call too.So its 5-5 v Q-Q V A-10. Flop  5 A 10.IM happy.I check.QQ bets  700,A 10 all in,i push all in aswell. the Q Q calls!! So im happy wen i see the cards although im wondering how the QQ calls with  an ace on the board and with two people all in in front of him.I have a set and the QQ hits his third Queen on the turn.Tournament over!.................................. ...he calls all in with pocket queens and and over card on the board,espicially with two of us all in already,reallyt annoyed me i had to get away from the pc for a few minutes....

again that is to do with the standard of players you get in the MTTs, if you are a solid player and your lucks in you can really go far and get a great payday, but every time someone makes a call for all the chips, money in good or bad, the statistical probability of the next suck out gets higher and higher.

My favourite is on a similar note, stupid calls after the flop and one that REPEATEDLY felts me is the AK call allin when the player misses the flop, only for the turn or river to bring a wholly undeserved catch, unjust reward for playing like an idiot.

[peterc1992]

Played a 1 euro tourny an hour later and made it to 11th out of 300 so i was quite happy...Was stll off wit the earlier one though.

You wait to get a good hand for youself and you push the stacjk in knowing you have the pair of aces bet and some idiot calls with  a pair of queens and hits the set

[bigmick]

Played a 1 euro tourny an hour later and made it to 11th out of 300 so i was quite happy...Was stll off wit the earlier one though.

You wait to get a good hand for youself and you push the stacjk in knowing you have the pair of aces bet and some idiot calls with  a pair of queens and hits the set

In fairness mate I don't fold Q's as a rule myself either. If I get the Q's and someone goes all in, I'll shove as well (if I'm over them obviously I go all in as well). I have been known tolet em go if there's three or four all ins, but ultimately there's only two hands which are better, and as you say you've still got an outside chance of hitting a set and taking the pot anyway.

If I've been sitting waiting for a hand though and I hit Q's, I ain't folding. Matter of fact if it's towards the end and the blinds have crept up, I'm pretty much a certainty to be looking to get my chips in pre flop with the Q's, so I'm happy to call or raise an all-in.

[Effes]

Got done last night byt KQ when I had AA - he went all in pre-flop so I had to call,
he got the run.

In the 2nd tournament I had AJ, and the flop was 5, J, 7 - some fella went all in so I called.

He had J 3 ! - he hit the 3 on the river. Unbelieveable.

[bigmick]

Any of you guys get involved in any of that "EV" stuff? I'm reading a book by Colin Moshman for about the third time and he goes on about it quite a lot. Previously I've dismissed those parts as being "boring" and skipped over them but I might give them a look this time. Also, any of you guys use sit and go tracker or whatever it's called? The program you can buy which automatically calculates such b0ll0cks apparently while you're playing?

As for your beats Eff, first one happens, second one the fella wants shooting. That said, as all of us kick around in the small stakes circus's you're going to get that. One time I logged onto a two dollar tournament only to be informed by the Mrs that "we" had "already arranged" to go round her mothers for dinner in about ten minutes Course there was absolutely no show of me getting through 179 players or whatever it was in that time, so I just committed hari kari. All in with everything regardless. The funny thing was, I nicked about 6 lots of blinds on the bounce before I eventually got called. Poor fecker had K's or something only for my 9 4 to trip up on the 4's (I may be making up the cards I can't remember exactly). Anyway the speech box was lit up as he went off on one, then I knocked another two poor feckers in the same hand out with a ridiculous straight. I don't remember the cards but I do remember the message box, one of the guys still in it said "this is fecking ridiculous!!!!"  .

Anyway I kept going for it for about another six hands and nobody was prepared to call, before someone inevitably hit the Aces and put me out. The box was chockers then with guys telling me to "feck off!!!!" and the like . Anyway the point of the story is you only get people playing like that because it's tiny stakes. If it was costing you 500 quid to play, guys wouldn't push all in with J3 then I don't think.

[Effes]

Any of you guys get involved in any of that "EV" stuff?

No ides what that is Mick?

[bigmick]

Feck me I've left the book at work so I can't quote it. I think that's the right two letter, is it Estimated Value or Equity or something like that? Essentially it is a calculation based on the pot odds, the odds on offer AND on stack sizes relatively I think. It's a development of the fact that at a 9 man table, if you fold first hand and two blokes go all in, even though you're not involved you kind of benifit from it. I'll dig the book out, but there's whole reams of data on it the twoplustwo forum (twoplustwo.com or something like that). Feck me they make the game a science on there.

Basically though, all the sit and go grinders, those feckers who play 24 tables at a time and crunch out a huge living in front of their computers (and people say it's not a game of skill  ) all live and die by these calculations. At the end of sit and goes when the sh!t is properly hitting the fan, they base their decisions oin whether to move all in or call all in much more on these factoirs than they do on what cards they hold apparently.

Anyway, as I don't really understand it myself I've probably already overstretched myself in talking b0ll0cks on the subject.

[burjennio]

positive and minus EP is estimated value on each different hand and the scenarios that they play in, this is the main part of the "Theory of Poker" book by David Sklansky and the twoplustwo forum is, or was anyway co-owned by him. Two make it simple, it takes a formula that compares the size of the pot, the size of the bet and the probability of your hand either increasing or decreasing in value and the idea is that in the long term, if you get your money in the pot when you have positive expected value you will in the long term be a winning player because mathmatics and statistics even out over an infinite number of hands. In truth its only marginally used by most of the top pros in NLHM, but it goes into overdrive in a game like Pot Limit Omaha where you see umpteen drawing hands, more players per average seeing flops and therefore bigger odds on when you hit your draw. If you know who Tom "Durrr" Dwan is this is the method that he bases his madness on, he may look like a crazy maniac but every hand he plays is processed in his brain like a mathmatical calculation. Stu Ungar used this style as well, and was regarded by many to be the greatest poker player ever, winning the world series of poker main event on 3 separate occasions, albeit with a significantly smaller field than today, but he was also an addict who lost over an estimated $40m in poker winnings on sports betting and cocaine before his premature death in 1998. Just read his Wiki Entry to give you an idea of the genius and madness this guy possessed, then go and and buy his biography immediately.

Back on topic and to give you a very simple example of EV in action. Say you have KQ of hearts on a board of 2s 6h 10h, but you are pretty sure your opponent has AA in his hands. If their is $500 in the pot and your opponent  bets $100, you are getting laid 6-1 odds on you hitting a flush in the next two cards, assuming that you opponent would check the turn (if he doesn't your odds decrease and you end up dealing with whats called implied and reverse implies odds which involve chasing a hand with the knowledge that you will or will not get paid on it) on what is a draw of about 3-1 (approx the value of hitting a flush after the turn in this situation, there are loads of different odds to know in different poker situations, I would advise most players to become reasonably acquainted with some of the more common ones, so to summarise you are getting 6/1 odds on a 3/1 shot, giving you 50% positive Estimated value.

A negative EV example would be the same flop as above but this time your opponent bets $500 into the $500 pot, creating a pot of $1000 but which you would have to pony up $500 to continue playing. So in this example you are only getting laid 2/1 odds on a 3/1 shot, giving you a 33% minus estimated value on the hand.

These are very simple examples but should give you an idea of what I'm on about, although some players dont really care about the math, Barry Greenstein used a catchphrase on an episode of High Stakes Poker that "math is idiotic" but its probably better for most of us mere mortals to stick within the guidelines of EV when playing draw hands, or suited connectors pre-flop (ie, DON'T play them against a single player if he has raised, its a HUGE minus expected value play). Players like Dwan are highly skilled at counting up the odds of even the most complex plays but are in the rarity, most rely on observations of their opponents playing styles and actions and their "feel" of the tables style.

[peterc1992]

Played a 1 euro tourny an hour later and made it to 11th out of 300 so i was quite happy...Was stll off wit the earlier one though.

You wait to get a good hand for youself and you push the stacjk in knowing you have the pair of aces bet and some idiot calls with  a pair of queens and hits the set

In fairness mate I don't fold Q's as a rule myself either. If I get the Q's and someone goes all in, I'll shove as well (if I'm over them obviously I go all in as well). I have been known tolet em go if there's three or four all ins, but ultimately there's only two hands which are better, and as you say you've still got an outside chance of hitting a set and taking the pot anyway.

If I've been sitting waiting for a hand though and I hit Q's, I ain't folding. Matter of fact if it's towards the end and the blinds have crept up, I'm pretty much a certainty to be looking to get my chips in pre flop with the Q's, so I'm happy to call or raise an all-in.

I like them aswell,but not when theres an ace on the board and two people have went all in in front of you.First of all there two hands  all in that could have better than you and at least one of them is an ace because they shoved there stack with a 10 A 5 flop.

[Number 9]

Well i finally got round to using my money on poker stars earlier on the micro tables!!
£10 lasted me about 4 minutes!Apparently two pair is fu'ck all and i got beat on 3 of a kind as well!!Never won a hand...bast'ards,its a total mugs game that on the computer!

At least when ya do a footy bet you have a say in picking your teams!
Never again....i'll just wait till the footy starts again to do my betting!!

Mugs the lot of ye!!

[Effes]

Back on topic and to give you a very simple example of EV in action. Say you have KQ of hearts on a board of 2s 6h 10h, but you are pretty sure your opponent has AA in his hands. If their is $500 in the pot and your opponent  bets $100, you are getting laid 6-1 odds on you hitting a flush in the next two cards, assuming that you opponent would check the turn (if he doesn't your odds decrease and you end up dealing with whats called implied and reverse implies odds which involve chasing a hand with the knowledge that you will or will not get paid on it) on what is a draw of about 3-1 (approx the value of hitting a flush after the turn in this situation, there are loads of different odds to know in different poker situations, I would advise most players to become reasonably acquainted with some of the more common ones, so to summarise you are getting 6/1 odds on a 3/1 shot, giving you 50% positive Estimated value.

A negative EV example would be the same flop as above but this time your opponent bets $500 into the $500 pot, creating a pot of $1000 but which you would have to pony up $500 to continue playing. So in this example you are only getting laid 2/1 odds on a 3/1 shot, giving you a 33% minus estimated value on the hand.

To be honest mate, thats how Ive always worked it out.

Just came 6th in a 90 player $6 sit n go (won $18) - what killed me was I had AK and called 2,400 (BB), some fella went all in with AT - I called.

He hit the fecking 10 didnt he? Always the way.

Mind you, earlier on I folded 99 when one other was in; but he'd gone all in (22,000 - I had 18,000).
I think I made the right call, guess I'll never know.

Not sure if the top players would have done that ??

[Effes]

What I wanna know is the odds on getting a flush needing just one card after the flop.

The way I work it out is 2 goes at 3/1 (roughly) = 6/4.

Factor in the fact you have 2 suited and 2 are already out makes it 7/4 ??

Anyone know the answer to this?

Handy to know if a short-stacked fella goes all in after the flop, and you're getting odds of around 6/4.

[burjennio]

lasted 25 hands in a $50 90 seater. Here is the starting hands I got in 25 hands

9h10h
jq off
qq
jj
a3 off
2 10 off
qq
aq
27 off
8j off
86off
63off
73s
510off
8joff
42off
a6off
410off
79off
68off
kjsuited
k2off
a7off
kqs
44

Now thats a pretty outstanding run of cards for 25 hands. I won 2 f*cking hands. Beaten twice with QQ, flopped 2 pair with the kj and was called allin by a guy on a royal flush DRAW, in a pot I have re-raised, yep allin 20 hands into a tourney on a f*cking draw. Hits a flush. Left with 450 chips limped with the KQ and missed and the next hand 4 callers in the pot I pushed allin for 400 (25/50blinds) with my 44 and was called by, I sh*t you not, 5 8 offsuit which flopped 2 pair.

I am so absolutely sick of doing everything right and getting kicked in the balls for doing so, I cannot put together more than a few good wins and then its suck out city for a massive run of games, and the way im running in MTTs like the 1 above would make you think Im on an episode of Beadles About and the dealer has a suspiciously small hand.

Arrrraaaaagggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   

[bigmick]

Drop the MTT's and go back to the 18 runner events on pokerstars mate. They pay first four and it is beatable consistently. Yes you don't pile up huge amounts of cash, but it is very satisfying having been a gambler all my life who has done my b0ll0cks on a consistent basis to finally find something i can win at, albeit in my case at a miniscule level because of my previous addictions. Football bets on who will win the title and stuff I can have a nice few quid on, but I play poker pretty much everyday so I have to keep it tiny.

I have had the old ROI over 20% but went through a suck out period where it almost dropped to break even point. It's climbed a bit now, and I reckon I'm making about 20p an hour which is absolutely awesome Check me out on Pokerstars/Sharkscope-Mickthemunch. King of the $1.50 tables