White Belt Poker

I’d had an up and down kind of day playing the NL tables at Full Tilt when I decided on impulse to enter my first sit ‘n’ go – the first real money tournament I had ever played in.

It was quite exciting to actually be part of a tournament for the first time. In proper Jim McManus style, I had practiced beforehand with turbo texas hold’em (and another program DD Poker) so I knew what I was doing – enough for a $5 buy-in table anyway.

My strategy was pretty simple – very tight at the beginning (as is traditional), look to steal blinds on the bubble and (if I got that far) play super-aggressive heads-up and raise almost every time, as Howard Lederer suggests. There was one little twist I wanted to add though. I wanted to look for one big hand early on that could win me some chips and make me look like someone who would ask you difficult questions if you tried to mess with me. My chance came on the second level with a pair of black queens. I had one caller for a bet around 4x the big blind. The flop was king high, and my opponent took a long time thinking about calling the bet I had made to find out where Istood. In fact, he raised me a little, but I got the feeling he didn’t really want to be in this pot even though he may very well have been ahead – (I put him on a weak king). Had he raised me much more, I may have been forced to throw the queens away, but I sensed he didn’t want to risk that many of his chips this early on and was hoping his little raise would make me fold, so I made a pretty bold move to come over the top with a large re-raise. I was hoping to make him think I had made two pair. Over half of my chips where now in the pot. He waited until the last second before folding. I was now the clear chip leader, having increased my stack by 50% and I had made a statement that raising me could mean having to make a big decision. Okay, I’d taken a gamble, but the table had been pretty cautious so far and I didn’t
feel as if my opponent in this hand was prepared to risk many chips so early on, and I got it right. My plan then was to coast for a while and just play big hands.

Eventually though, I felt as if I needed to make another move. My chips had dwindled badly after a couple of aborted attempts to steal blinds and some stone cold cards. I ended up all-in with AJs, only to be shown a pair of jacks. Only an ace was going to stop me going out 6th, but one of them arrived just in time on the river to put me in great shape as chip leader again. I half-heartedly apologised to the guy I’d sucked out on, who then dejectedly threw away his remaining chips on the next hand but one. I busted another player then waited for the others to squabble for 3rd place while stealing pots with very little. By the time we were down to the three money places I had 10k in chips and the other two had around 2k each. I continued to wittle them down slowly, forcing them into having to committ most of their chips pre-flop, knowing that they both were looking to take the other one out then take me on with only a 2 to 1 chip deficit. I was careful not to let either of them double-up, knowing that the increasing
blinds would put more and more pressure on both of them to play sub-standard hands. The eventual heads up contest didn’t last too long. My opponent was far too passive, clearly feeling as if I would force him all-in if he raised at all. It ended when he found a pair of nines and made a stand, only to see me turn over jacks.

I was delighted, because for all of the practice I’d done with offline software, I’d never actually won a tournament before.

A bit of a late night last night, but my bank holiday weekend got off to a great start with me winning almost $50 at the $25 buy-in NL tables at Full Tilt.

I’ve been playing a little more NL recently and things have been going reasonably well. The main reason for starting to play at these NL tables stemmed from the difficulty I was having in finding profitable limit ring games at Full Tilt and the need to start pulling in some of the $200 bonus I have waiting for me.

My strategy is based heavily on HDouble’s low limit NL article from August last year. It’s pretty straightforward and tight – I’m commonly only seeing 20% of the flops – and it can be boring if you’re not getting any cards. Typically it involves a standard raise of somewhere between 3x and 5x the big blind, then a pot-sized bet on the flop if you’re reasonably sure you have the best hand. Obviously there is some room for variation, but that leaves you not having to make too many complicated decisions later on.

Although it isn’t enormously challenging, it’s possible to make more money than playing limit games. For one thing, the NL games have weaker players, which always helps, and your bonus-making potential sky-rockets as other players get involved in huge pissing-contest pots. I saw a pot last night that reached $96 (380x BB!!). I was comfortably playing two tables and won around $30 in two hours, which I would struggle to do even on a good night at my usual 50c-$1 limit tables.

But the most notable aspect for me was seeing just how many people play NL ring games as if they are in a tournament. As their stack reduces to around 30% of the max buy-in they look for all-in opportunities. Why do they do it? I saw someone go all in with 10 7o because there was a 7 on the flop. That’s insane. Without the blinds going up at regular intervals as would happen in a tournament, there is no imperative whatsoever to start playing ‘anything that adds up to
seventeen or more’. You have all night to wait for a hand if you have the patience. That’s the real issue though I suppose. These guys want to gamble and get their chips in there, the way the guys on TV do it. They’ve brought a certain amount of money to the table and they’ll play until it’s gone. God bless ‘em. The trick is to nudge them towards going all-in by gradually ratcheting up the pot when you have the best hand. I busted at least four people out in the space of two
hours doing that.

Of course, the drawback of playing like this is that you’re trying to hide the fact that you don’t want to risk a lot of money. You’re not going to go all-in for $20-$30 before the flop, even if you have aces or kings. But calling an all-in bet from someone who’s desperate to slide all of his chips in when he catches any kind of pair or a weak ace when you have the bet well covered and have a strong hand is a good way to make quick money.

Well, I’ve been having some fun playing (very) low buy-in NL games – mainly at Full Tilt over the weekend.

I started playing at a 0.05c-0.10c table just to familiarise myself with the user interface for raising in NL. As expected the maximum buy-in was $10. Everything looked pretty straightforward. I wasn’t looking to get too involved in the action. Then about five hands in… I got dealt pocket aces. Well, what could I do?? I raised 4x the big bet… and got four callers. The flop came 245. The rest of the hand was a bit of a whirlwind. People were sliding in chips all over the place. One guy ended up going all-in for $2.35 (almost 25% of what he brought to the table, don’t forget) and 23x the big bet!! I think he was relieved to just trust to luck rather than having to make reads (or any kind of difficult decision that required judgement). Luckily, my aces held up. Nobody else had anything better than a pair of fives (the all-in guy), even though they were calling ludicrous bets and raises. I practically doubled-up, making over $9 – or 90x BB!!! In one hand. What an extraordinary introduction to NL.

So this has to be the way to go forward. There is so much action at NL tables wherever you go and there seem to be people who are just desperate to move all-in with rubbish. And at this sort of level, the risk is almost non-existent. I know I caught an unusual hand here but now I see what HDouble meant about the potential for doubling or tripling your buy-in at these tables. Although inevitably you’re just sitting there waiting for the nuts (which can be boring), if it’s this profitable then I don’t care. My game is built on patience and I’m in full-on bankroll-building mode anyway.

I’ve been considering diversifying recently. My intention was always to give myself a solid foundation in hold’em because it’s the most popular game at the moment and there seemed to be more books written about beginning to play hold’em than any other variety of poker.

Over the last month or so, I’ve begun to feel as if I have that solid foundation and now I need to look at other games to continue growing as a poker player. My bankroll still isn’t big enough for me to really play significantly higher limits, so to avoid stagnating and getting frustrated I believe that I have to branch out a little.

I may need to do this by necessity because I’m trying to make a $200 bonus at FullTilt and it’s not going to be easy playing low limit hold’em. There just aren’t enough games going on. Very often there are only one or two tables at the low limits and they seem to have some solid players there. There are very few fish from what I can make out. I’m convinced that I’ll need to play other games to get anywhere near making this bonus.

So the plan is to start learning to play Stud and No-Limit to begin with, then Omaha and maybe Triple Draw later. There certainly seems to be more action at the NL tables and armed with HDub’s excellent blog article about beating these low limit NL games I feel as if I could make some money. It’ll definitely be easier to force people to make mistakes in NL anyway.

My copy of Super System 2 turned up yesterday, so I’ll be delving into a few different sections of that over the next few weeks, along with more of Hellmuth’s book and Sklansky’s Theory. Actually I’m looking forward to learning some new games. I’m sure it’ll stop me feeling like I’m on a treadmill with hold’em – which I suspect could’ve been just around the corner without a bit of variety.