Online Reads

People claim it is impossible to establish reads online. After all, it is not as if you can glance over the table and see the Russian stereotype play with his Oreos.

However, because a lot of players believe that you can’t spot tells, they tend to play quite a conservative style – and that means it can be quite easy to read their game.

For starters, always keep tabs on those players who are multi-tabling as a significant majority will play the same type of game – it will be tight and conservative.

Consider this:

You spot a player called Frustrated Bulimic at your low level table. You scroll through the lobby and see that he/she is playing at least five other tables and has roughly the same amount of chips on each.

I can almost guarantee that he/she will be playing about 11-15% of hands and spewing out the rest. A raise from early position will be a premium hand and their opening requirements will not loosen much as they move closer to the button.

Nothing profound there.

However, when he/she calls your opening raise, you can almost always put them on one or two hands: either a pocket pair or AK (possibly AQ, depending on your position and the opponent’s proximity to the button).

These types of player don’t like to put in too much pre-flop and will be trying to either flop a set or see how you play if an ace hits. This gives you a significant edge.

If the flop is full of blanks, bet three quarters of the pot. A statistically important amount of the time, your opponent will fold. If you are called, you are either against an over-pair or a set. You should check the turn and probably toss the cards to any bet.

It becomes slightly more complicated if there is a draw on the board. In those cases, you will have to have a more in-depth knowledge of your opponent. You have to be extremely sure that if you bet again the player will fold, as a bet on the turn of three quarters of the pot will be a large proportion of your stack.

A trickier scenario is when you have an over pair, the flop looks harmless and your opponent either calls or raises. Again, you are probably against an over pair or a set but it is a lot harder to toss your aces or kings.

So, what do you do?

Well, as always in poker, it depends. Any read that you have in game is an asset but here are some general pointers.

What do you think will happen if you raise again? If you think you will be staring at a push, then you must suspect a set.

Will your opponent bet the turn if you call? Quite a few multi-tablers will put you on a strong hand if you call the raise on the flop and therefore might back off with their queens or jacks. If the turn is checked, you are probably against an over-pair and should bet half the pot on the river, unless a jack or queen falls.

It is important to remember that these players will not want to put too much of their stack at risk unless they have a significant advantage and therefore if they bet the flop, the turn and the river, you are almost definitely against a set.

Decisions and Outcomes

One of the hardest aspects of poker is to remain focused when you are losing. If, during a session, you have watched stack after stack head south, you mind can easily become a jail populated by evil thoughts. It can be even worse if one particular player has been the beneficiary of your bad run. He is not going to tell himself he’s been lucky: he is going to think he’s the Daddy.

Try to recall that good decisions don’t always have good outcomes. On the night, it is a good decision for a singleton to sleep with an attractive person. If the person steals your car the next morning, the decision didn’t have a good outcome – but that doesn’t mean it was wrong, particularly if you drive a Riva G-Whiz.

The failure to differentiate between good decisions and good outcomes is known to social psychologists as the outcome bias. The table sees you losing money and assumes you are a fish. It looks at your opponent’s growing skyline of chips and thinks he’s the man. They are biased, you are nearly wiped out and it is hard to pat yourself on the back when your hands are being broken.

Indeed, it can be so difficult to concentrate that it is always worth considering taking a break or playing at different tables. If you must stick at it (and so you should when the winning player has been very lucky) be sure you maintain the ability to make the correct decisions. The outcome bias can easily creep into your own head, you start to feel like a loser and so you start to do exactly what losers do – make bad decisions.

Poker, like God (and the Devil) is in the details. Make the right decisions and deal with the outcomes.

Opening Lines

Today’s page from The Writer’s block is about opening lines. Apparently, editors often use the ‘Airport Test’ on manuscripts – if you read the opening line in an airport bookshop, would you buy the book before boarding the plane?

It offers one from a master of the art:

‘The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease.’ (The Chamber, by John Grisham).
It then suggests picking five of your favourite novels to see if they pass the airport test. Instead, I’ve picked my favourite novel, two that I didn’t finish, the book I’m currently reading and a classic. See if you can classify them.

Dame Agnes de Mordaunt was sitting in the window of her chamber, looking out over the garden of the House of Mary at Clerkenwell.

We – the five Roman Catholics – were walking back from the bus stop up the drive to school, fresh from Mass, when Barrowsmith and four or five of his Neanderthals started chanting ‘Papist Dogs’ and ‘Fenian traitors’ at us.

The sun rose up from behind the concrete of the block of flats opposite, beaming straight into their faces.

I address these lines – written in India – to my relatives in England.

‘And don’t forget’, my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them has a heart, and each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk...’

Rate the World Series?

Poker players with memories that didn’t get erased through a summer of partying may recall that the main event at this year’s World Series of Poker began on July 3. After eleven days of intensive flopping, the field was trimmed from an impressive 6844 to a mere 9.

Rather than playing the final table the next day, it was delayed for four months so the company that bought the TV rights could broadcast tons of recorded footage of the preliminaries and whet the audience’s appetite for live coverage of the climax. That is now nearly upon us: the final players take their seats on November 9, a date chosen for symmetry as well as economics.

When the decision to delay the final table was announced, there was a reasonable amount of outraged bluster from poker professionals. Arguments that the scheduling would allow for coaching, that it would diminish the tournament and that it could provide scope for deal-making largely fell into ears deafened by the sound of ringing tills.

With some justification, some of the loudest hollers of protest originated from outside the US. Bah, they spat, it is an inconvenience typical of a nation that calls its (predominately) domestic baseball tournament the ‘World Series.’

However, because of events that few could have foreseen, it is unlikely we will hear complaints from Peter Eastgate and Ivan Demidov, the two surviving non-North Americans at the final table. Placed in 4th and 2nd respectively, both will have their pay-days significantly boosted by the crisis in the world’s financial markets.

Let’s assume that Peter and Ivan finish in 4th and 2nd.

Peter is Danish. The prize for 4th is $3.7m.

Ivan is Russian. The prize for 2nd is $5.8m.

If they had banked at the exchange rates of July 14:

Peter earns DKK 17,315,334.

Ivan banks RUB 134,831,034.

However using rates from yesterday:

Peter would earn DKK 21,807,282

Ivan would bank RUB 157,539,136

For those who can only salivate over prizes in their own currency, here is the first prize expressed in Euros:

July 14 – EUR 5,711,524

Oct 26 – EUR 7,167,070

It is a sizable difference, made even tastier by the knowledge that it ironically came about through the demands of The Man and the sponsors’ indifference to the concerns of the players.

Odds

So far, these posts have offered an overview of the different stages of Texas Hold ‘em and how they have a bearing on your choices. For the next few pieces, I’ll try to explain some of terms, styles and strategies you can employ during your session.

I’ll start with pot odds as it is arguably the simplest to understand. The term represents the probability of receiving the card you need to make your hand. The classic is drawing to a flush. You start with two suited cards and the flop brings another two. There are thirteen cards to a suit, four are on display so there are nine cards (or ‘outs’) still in the pack that can complete your flush.

If you want an approximation of the percentage chance of improving on your next card, you can simply double the outs and add one: i.e 2x9=18 (+1) = 19%, or roughly one time in five.

So, in this simple scenario, you look at the size of the pot and consider the price of calling. If you are receiving better than 5 to one, you call; if the odds are lower, you (should) fold.

However, Hold ‘em is rarely that straightforward. Usually, the only time when the pot odds are the sole consideration is when you are heads up and someone has gone all-in – there can be no further betting. The rest of the time you will find yourself in the land of implied odds.

They sound like something that has been conceived by a fairground barker who is trying to convince punters to part with their cash: look, we may be only able to offer you this amount but if that guy over there drops to tie his shoelace in approximately five seconds we’ll be able to pay a bit more.

In essence, implied odds are a test in speculation: you guess what will happen after you have put your money in the pot.

Let’s go back to the flush draw. We know that the turn will bring a card that makes a flush one time in five. Let’s add further details. You are on the button with your flush draw. The big blind has checked and a player in mid position has bet $30 into a $40 pot: $70 in, $30 to call, pot odds are 2.3 to one. Most players will call (raising might be better but that is beyond this example). Why?

Well, they expect that the size of the final pot will be quite a bit bigger. There is a chance the big blind might call, implying the odds would be 3.3 to one (effectively calling $30 for a $100 pot). There is also another consideration: there are two cards to come.
The odds of making the flush (in this example) with two cards to come are approximately 1.86 to one.

Not only is there a possibility that the big blind will call, there is a reasonable chance that the turn card will cause a round of checking, thus enabling you to take the river card for free. Add to that the times when the flush card hits on the turn and it becomes a good call.

The concept of implied odds is just mathematical short hand and don’t let it confuse you. If you are factoring in likely future occurrences to your play, you already understand implied odds.

Buoyancy Aids

It is with a certain sense of inevitability that we arrive at Hold ‘em’s ultimate destination: the river card. Until the arrival of the final card, you won’t know for sure if the play will prove to a comedy or a tragedy. When it is the latter, you will usually find yourself against someone who lives by the river to such an extent he/she thinks such play will pay for a house facing the Thames.

The reality, of course, is that such appalling abuse of the probability laws will ultimately leave those players penniless and clinging, Canute-like, to their own self deception as they are overwhelmed by the tidal wave of skill.

However, the effect of the river card can occasionally make hardened pros feel like they have been ducked in bilge water and the stains can affect subsequent play. The trick is to see it coming. Unfortunately, that is the difficult part.

If we forget the yawn-inducing hands that are checked all the way, by the time you arrive at the river you will have invested a reasonable amount of your stack and for most of us that directly corresponds to emotional investment. You have probably been winning the hand all the way. The table is probably quaking under the weight of half your stack. You are already thinking about how to spend the money.

Suddenly, another player called Socrates puts the rest of his cash in. What the hell? Your ability to think logically is poisoned by the knowledge that your money is on the table and Socrates may be executing a rash bluff. It can be so hard to form an accurate appraisal of Socrates. So much may be unknown. That’s the problem. You call. You lose. He teaches you a lesson. (And historians still think it is unclear how he made his money.)

Until you understand that the real skill at poker is the separation of logic from emotion, you might be lucky in love but not at cards. No other moment tests your emotional control as much as the slap of the river card.

Over We Go

I’m back again everyone, continuing my journey around the poker table and trying to break down boundaries so that the Hold ‘em hopefuls need not feel intimidated by the indigenous types here at Eyebrows.

Yesterday we unearthed the truth about the flop, comparing it to the front page story of a newspaper. Today, we deal with the turn card, which we can see as the first few lines of an editorial comment that might change your view of the front page.

Famous old-timer of the poker circuit Doyle Brunson believes most of the action happens on the flop, usually between two players. He wrote his poker bible ‘Super System’ before the online boom and therefore his thoughts have to be qualified somewhat.

If you start at a low level, there will be times when you see the turn card and you are not part of a warring couple, scrapping to be the bread-winner. There will often be little tykes sitting at the table, trying to spoon from the family pot. It is important to consider their presence if you want to be the Daddy.

The rasp of the turn card can indicate that another player has just hit a draw, particularly if the pot is multi-way. Flushes are the easiest to spot but do not neglect the possibility of straights, particularly if the pot was not raised pre-flop. Other players like to disguise the strength of their hand until the turn.

Here is a scenario:

You were dealt KK in early position, you raise and get three callers. Assuming the flop is free of aces but it has two-suited cards, if the turn card is a blank and your bet is raised by one of the flop callers, there is a good chance that he/she is slow-playing a set – the wait was to see if the flush hit on the turn. It is a play more suited to fixed limit as the turn bets are double those of the flop but it is still a common move in NL. If you are looking at a set, your chance of winning the hand is less than 5% and you should muck because you are not just calling the turn bet – your friend will want to apply the maximum pressure when the river arrives.

Folding on the turn is not easy – but the river card often makes the act impossible.

Impact Making

You may recall that the previous post left an impression that seven years of professional poker had left me embittered, sarcastic and with blood on my hands. Well, this latest post will do little to disabuse you of that but, for the record, I would like to state that the goat was suffering from terminal acrophobia and was becoming a nuisance in my study. It was what he would have wanted, had he been capable of lateral thought. May he baste in grease.

Anyway, today’s offering will deal with the much-loved heart stopping moment that is the flop. I like to compare it to seeing the front page of a daily newspaper: sometimes those three little cards make you feel like have seen an image of yourself scoring trophy-winning points for your local team; other times, it is like discovering that your dad has been caught in a sting and he’s partial to sadomasochism.

To play Hold 'em is to experience pain and pleasure and the flop shines the biggest light on who is likely to have the whip hand. Your job is to distinguish whether the bulb is green or red. Unfortunately some players are so blinded by the quality of their hole cards that they are unable to assess the impact of the flop. It is a handicap that can leave them stumbling around with a begging cup.

It can be eye opening to remember that if pocket aces find themselves against just three opponents (assuming live cards) the bullets will misfire over four times in ten. Those stats are pre-flop. Afterwards, if two of the players hit a pair, your odds dip extremely close to even money.

I’m not advocating that you should muck your hand (you are still ahead) but some players gripe when their aces are cracked in these scenarios. They forget how often AA loses. They don’t study the flop.

If you want to feast on the table’s chips, you have to remember that your hole cards are a mere entree: the flop is where the carving happens.

We Know and Love

As we promised, we are going to kick-start this blog’s content with an overview of Texas Hold ‘em. However, conscious that our site has some reasonably well informed individuals, we will also provide some alternative definitions for those who, over the years, have had their faith in the immutable laws of probability eroded to such an extent that the mere mention of a coin-flip causes them to gnash their teeth and pound the table.

Anyway, enough of the personal pain, here are the basics:

Texas Hold ‘em: a community card game. Players use any combination of two hole cards and five community cards to make the best hand.

Or: Other players use any combination of luck and poor judgement to pull their best hand out of their ass.

Hole cards: two face down cards, dealt before the flop used as the foundation of any hand in Hold ‘em.

Or: cards that can cruelly raise your expectations and instantly erase the memory of the stack-busting disaster that happened a mere ten minutes ago.

The Flop: three face up community cards dealt after a round of betting. A round of betting ensues.

Or: the Poker Gods’ first betrayal. A round of cursing ensues.

The turn: The fourth community card is slapped on the table. More betting.

Or: Ever heard of a method of execution called ‘Hung, Drawn and Quartered?’ We’ll leave to work out which stage the turn card represents. More weeping (than the average execution).

The river: The fifth and final communal card arrives in heart-breaking fashion on the felt.

Or: akin to the moment in the film Alien when John Hurt is attacked by a hitherto unseen face-hugger.

Showdown: the moment, after a final round of betting, when players reveal the true strength of their hands.

Or: the moment, after a final round of asset stripping, when players reveal their faith in blind luck. At this point, even rational players are susceptible to outlandish suggestions about how to improve their chances. Before taking up Hold ‘em, I had only ever sacrificed one goat. I now live on a mountain in the mist, surrounded by stone arches.

More of the Same

Ok everyone, prepare to be entertained.

Cutting its way through the swirls of dry ice and gyrating to thump of a celebratory tribal beat is a brand new poker blog from Eyebrows.

You may have played poker before. You may have a read a blog before. Hell, some of you might have read a book before (Ed – let’s not go nuts), but we promise you will not have read a poker blog like this before.

Yes, aside from making the kind of sweeping claim that causes our copyright lawyers to pop Prozac, we will also bring you a highly original take on the poker world.

A lot of blogs read like they were created by a friendless statistician with OCD but, rest assured, most of those days are behind me. Three times a week, we will bring you a combination of tales from the tables, strategy suggestions and articles in an attempt to strengthen the sense of community at Eyebrows.

Some of the posts will reflect the play at our site so regular players may well see some their moves discussed and, in some cases, criticised – but only from the stance of an impartial observer: there will be no embittered, spluttered posts about perceived injustice here. (Ed - now that’s a good ‘un). We intend to encourage debate, not to provoke a bun fight of half baked opinion.

The regular posts will begin tomorrow with the first in a series of articles that will cover the basics of poker. A lot of you will already be familiar with the mechanics so we won’t just offer guidelines for the Adams and Eves of poker. For those who already consider themselves slier than every beast of the table, we hope we can dangle some fresh apples from the tree of knowledge by providing some alternative definitions of poker terms that might just ripple your fig-leaves.

Anyway, we hope you enjoy it.

Feel free to post your comments as the blog will be enlivened by your contributions. Don’t just shut up and read.

Clueless in Clapham

I have a book called The Writer’s Block. It is designed to stimulate ideas. You open it and there is a photo, a flash-word or an exercise. Inspired by the page, you then proceed to write roughly four hundred words in a freeform fashion. After that, your block should be lifted so you can celebrate by dancing away from the laptop and not doing any more work. As I was blocked today, I opened it and was prompted to write about ‘my first brush with danger’.

The problem (and maybe the comforting thing) is that I don’t recall anything. I know I have been in dangerous situations but I can only remember those that occurred when I was an adult. I have certainly been told about risky times: when I was in nappies, my brother once plonked me on the sitting room’s mantelpiece. I think he thought I was some kind of knick-knack and I needed to be put on display.

Obviously my elevated position made me ga-ga with excitement. There was a host of new, strange looking toys to play with and I was able (quite literally, sports fans) to turn back the clock. However, it wasn’t long before my minute hands had overstretched and I discovered that nappies were not so good at absorbing the pain of a three foot fall onto an imitation marble fireplace. I greeted the floor with a thud and the doctor with a split lip.

As risky as the situation was, it doesn’t qualify as ‘my first brush with danger.’ I wasn’t aware of the perils of gravity and it has had no lasting effects, apart from the minor gastric tremors I experience when I see a pair of matching candlesticks.

Similarly, my other earliest memory of minor harm has no element of risk awareness. Again, I had been dumped somewhere (I wonder if my toddler self was used as the contaminated bundle of lurgy in a kind of evil version of Pass the Parcel). This time it was on a broken dining chair. I had started to enjoy rocking and rolling around, exploring my cushions. I only discovered that the chair was missing a vital component when I rolled backwards.

As gravity again grabbed my bonce, my pinkies enjoyed an upward arc and the last thing I remember seeing before I tumbled off the back of the chair was a pair of tiny feet bookending my mum’s anxious face. That is not danger, it is being part of a large family who loved Laurel and Hardy.

It is possible I’m setting the bar too high as the exercise is accompanied by a black and white picture of a 1950s kid playing with a matchbox and I’m sure I did something similar, but I just can’t remember a ‘brush with danger.’

It must be all the bumps to the head.

We are not Spock

Ernest Hemingway used to maintain that you should always do sober what you said you do while drunk. Even though the scar on his forehead was a permanent reminder of the effect of alcohol on judgement, he was usually good to his word. He believed the practice would teach him a lesson.

The author of The Sun Also Rises would therefore presumably be outraged by the latest application from Google – Mail Goggles. It is designed to hinder the sending of the type of message you regret the next day. The user sets it to operate at a specified time – usually evenings and weekends – and should he or she try to send an email during that period, the Mail Goggles will descend and ask a series of small mathematical puzzles. It is thought that the realisation that simple multiplication is surprisingly tricky will send the emailer to bed and prevent his or her mouse from roaring.

Assuming the application becomes popular, it probably won't be long until we hear either the sound of an assassin's bullet or the slapping of palms, as a lot of firms, already brutalised by the credit crunch, will not want the Goggles to become too fashionable. A head nodding with alcohol can boost their bottom line.

Like them, I'm with Hemingway. The loss of rational thought can benefit self knowledge. Sometimes you have to learn the hard-way. The Goggles will just keep you blinkered.

If you are a childless person who finds himself ordering a wet-suit for a three year old, we know (or, for the love of God, we PRAY) that you'd like to have kids.

Similarly, although discovering you have been accepted at the local wife swapping club might suggest obvious lifestyle changes, imagine the insight granted to the boozed up browser who, a week later, learned he had been ordained as a reverend.

Keep the Goggles off.

Glory to the Highest

Some in the book trade are calling today 'Super Thursday': nearly 800 titles will be published and many of them are contenders to be in the Christmas top 10.

One of those is cyclist Bradley Wiggins' autobiography 'In Pursuit of Glory'. The blurb states 'he first competed at twelve and immediately knew that this was what he wanted to do for his career.'

To put that into perspective, he made the decision when most of his peer group would not have been trusted selecting subjects for their G.C.S.E.s.

His focus and determination received the ultimate accolade eight years later when he won gold at the Athens Olympics for the 4km Individual Pursuit. As he details in the book, it was a triumph that nearly knocked him off track, 'my bender lasted a good eight or nine months and I wasn't quite right for about a year.'

For a while, he found himself 'outside the local' everyday. After waiting for the pub to open he 'wouldn't move for the next six or seven hours as [he] sipped through 12 or 13 pints.' Although he was able to return home and cook a meal for his wife, he would also raid his cellar for Belgian beer. It was a new hobby and he was determined to have all of the available brands.

As he puts it, 'I have mad passionate moods discovering something and have to become the world expert on that interest', which is fine when the passion wins him a medal in the Individual Pursuit, but not so fine when it causes him to down Duvel.

But is it ok in either case?

Both drinking to excess and goal setting can be forms of pain avoidance. Some, with more than a vested interest in the idea, feel that those are excessively driven by goals are suffering from 'Spiritual Deficit Disorder'.

Although these labels are often suggested by ex hell-raisers born again as self-appointed saviours, the concept of SDD makes rational sense.

To reach a goal takes effort. As the goals become more and more challenging, more and time is required. Soon, there is less and less time for human relationships which, for those avoiding pain, is probably the point.

Devotees of SSD claim that if you follow your intuition every day, without setting goals, you will automatically reach your true, personal goal. Although that may be the case most of the time, and a cartload of happy punters claim it is, can you really 'dream scrape' your way to an Olympic Gold?

Doesn't that level of achievement take the kind of relationship shredding commitment that ultimately contributed to Bradley Wiggins' descent into Belgian beer?

The birth of his son Ben, eventually offered Bradley a much needed rope ladder: 'Suddenly everything made sense' and the athlete was able to go onto greater success at Beijing.

However, apart from his guitars, he doesn't have a hinterland away from career and family. His book will be read by people that do.

They will probably be the people who struggled with their G.C.S.E. options because everything seemed interesting.

They probably have limited experience of nine month benders and would struggle to name five Belgian beers.

They probably have no pursuit of glory; but they may ultimately have a more rewarding ride.

Pain Thresholds

On Monday, a man was up a tree near Telscombe Cliffs, East Sussex. John Stirling was cutting branches when his chainsaw slipped and he sliced off his arm below the elbow. He then knocked at a neighbour's door and said 'Please help, I've just cut my arm off.'

The neighbour whisked him and the limb off to hospital, pausing only to store the arm in a bag containing frozen pastries. After fourteen hours of surgery, the arm was replaced and according to staff at the Victoria hospital, the patient is 'very well'.

Today, scientists at Oxford University have published research that provides evidence of a type of pain relief that is based on mind power.

Twenty-four students were recruited and divided into two groups: twelve non-believers and twelve Roman Catholics. In one part of the test, both parties were subject to electrical shocks whilst looking at an image of the Virgin Mary. The scientists discovered the Roman Catholic group felt less pain than the atheists and the agnostics.

In another side to the test, the participants were shown da Vinci's 'Lady with an Ermine' and were given the same electrical jolt: both groups recorded the same pain levels.

The scientists analysed images of the volunteers' brain activity and discovered marked differences: when the Roman Catholics were presented with the image of the Virgin Mary, a part of the brain called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was stimulated.

According to lead researcher Katja Weich, this part of the brain 'helps people reinterpret pain and make it less threatening'. The Roman Catholics 'felt safe by looking at the Virgin Mary, they felt looked after.' The scientists are not suggesting that 'this effect is specific to religion; [it] is about the state of mind you can achieve.'

If John Stirling is not a morphine addict, he must be a mental giant and Katya's team need to reopen their notebooks as soon as he waves goodbye to the hospital. Knowing how he stimulates his ventrolateral prefrontal cortex should help us through the credit crunch, the latest developments in Zimbabwe and possibly even trick or treat.

Further research should also provide answers to the following questions:

1. If an arborist can withstand the loss of an arm without screaming, is it ever possible to torture a tree-hugger?
   


2. If elements of the experiment were altered, how would the Roman Catholics respond to an image of Tracey Emin's bed?
   


3. What is the latest eBay price for those pastries?