DeucesCracked Articles

The Second Worst Play Ever

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:56:53 +0000

In 2003, I intentionally folded pocket aces before the flop in a live, $20/40 limit hold’em game. It was, according to my meticulous calculations, the worst play ever. But that wasn’t the only reason I did it. I wrote an article at the time in which all is revealed: http://tommyangelo.com/articles/the_worst_play_ever.htm Today I am here [...]

Aussie Update: tourney 1

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:29:42 +0000

tourney 1 was a 1k buyin event that was pretty massive– first place was looking to take over 200k. Seven of us DC guys played (myself, vanessa, joe tall, krantz, josh/sthief, wiltontilt, and danzasmack). Unfortunately, Josh and I got pulled to the same table while everyone else split up to start (though Vanessa and Danza/Chuck [...]

Muckin Psychology

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:26:26 +0000

What’s up guys, Been a while since I offered a poker article to you guys, but I have a thought that’s been kickin around in my head so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s probably most relevant in HU matches but is definitely still applicable in a 6m setting (possibly even full ring, but [...]

Assume the Position

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:10:58 +0000

You’re playing live poker and you just folded before the flop. You’ve got a minute or two, maybe longer, before you get more cards. What to do? What to do? You could watch TV. You could turn the volume up on your headphones. You might order a beverage, or [...]

On the EV of Mouse Smashing

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:24:34 +0000

I just got off the phone with a mouse smasher. Or you could call him a mouse masher. (It sounds the same either way, whether you are saying it, or doing it.) I’m going to call him Humphrey. The topic was poker coaching. During the conversation, Humphrey asked some questions [...]

Wasting Away in Badugiville

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:54:47 +0000

Tilt As a Physiological Reaction

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:26:45 +0000

I Love Badugi

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:33:30 +0000

Poker and Mindfulness

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:02:24 +0000

Six of the eight episodes of The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment have aired at DeucesCracked.com. (Here’s a blog post that answer the question, “Huh?”) I’ve been answering lots of questions at the message boards at DeucesCracked.com. Today’s blog post is a revised version of a reply I wrote over there. POSTER: “While I watch [...]

Heedlessness

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:40:09 +0000

Heedless. Is that a beautiful word or what? It takes something that’s hard to put into words, and puts it into one. Here’s are some synonyms I found online: careless, negligent, thoughtless, unthinking, inattentive, unmindful, and unobservant. Those last two especially made me want to start remembering to use this word. I recently saw the [...]

An Offer He Couldn’t Refuse, But Did Anyway

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:33:50 +0000

Many of my conversations with my buddy Alex begin similarly: Hi. Whatsup. How you doing. It doesn’t matter who starts the initial hellos. All that matters is who ends them. If I start talking next, the conversation can start anywhere and go anywhere. If Alex starts talking next, it goes like this: HIM: [...]

Why I Don’t Talk about Hands When I’m Playing

Thu, 28 May 2009 14:28:15 +0000

I’ve made a new friend at Lucky Chances. His name is Django. (Pronounced Jango.) He’s a young, instantly likable player, very sharp and well-respected. The first dozen times we played together was in early 2007 when I played a few times a week for a few months. It was right [...]

“SHOW ONE SHOW ALL!”

Fri, 01 May 2009 15:43:57 +0000

The first time Andy slithered into our little snake pit, he had no chance. Not because he was drooping around like someone who had washed down his quaaludes with Jack Daniels, and not because he lacked basic card sense. There was no way to tell if he did or not. That’s because this [...]

Overestimating Your Implied Odds Against Short Stacks in No-Limit Hold ’em

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:31:06 +0000

Early Position with Small and Medium Pocket Pairs Part 2: Playing in Weak-Tight and Aggressive Games

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:16:55 +0000

Early Position with Small and Medium Pocket Pairs Part 1: Playing in Loose-Passive Games

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:55:20 +0000

Odds in Poker

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:11:52 +0000

That Bastard!

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:35:22 +0000

He really got me good on this one. I was all-in without a paddle. I was up shit creak and drawing dead. However you put it, it wasn’t pretty. I was played $40-80 limit hold’em at Lucky Chances. This was around 2002. Alex was at the next table, playing no-limit. [...]

Three Smooth Calls, Two Check-Raises, and a Delayed Raise — All On One Street

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:47:58 +0000

[This article originally appeared in BLUFF Magazine.] Man. Talk about giving away the story in the title. I didn’t know what to call this one. I could have called it “A Really Neat Hand, Seriously, I Mean It.” Or I could have called it “Now I’ve Seen Everything” which is how I felt when it happened. But [...]

The Benefits of Going Broke

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:43:39 +0000

I’m in Vegas right now doing a three-day coaching program with a new client. At the end of day one, we went downstairs to the poker room at the Venetian to play some poker in the same game, for mutual observation. The plan is that I watch him and take notes on things [...]

What do you do for a living?

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:42:03 +0000

Here’s a hand I played in the big no-limit game at Lucky Chances. There was a guy in the game I’d never played with before, and he was giving lots of action. So far I’d played two pots against him. Both times I was on the button. Both times the river [...]

Five Adjustments for Micro-SNGs

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:54:32 +0000

You might have read a book on SNGs, like Collin Moshman's Sit 'n' Go Strategy, or watched SNG training videos at a site like DeucesCracked or others (all great investments, by the way). They all universally advocate a conservative strategy for the early rounds, and an increasingly aggressive blind-stealing strategy toward the end. In general, this strategy is sound for all buyin levels from $1 to $1000. However, many microstakes (below $5) players get frustrated that their late stage shoves get called really lightly ("How did that guy make that call?!"), or that they end up folding a hand like AKo to a strong re-shove early only to watch the raiser double up with a crappy hand all-in preflop on a subsequent hand ("He went all in with THAT?! And the other guy called with even worse?!").

So are there some adjustments you can make to the winning basic strategy of "fold early, push late" so that can you get an even bigger edge on your microstakes opponents? You bet.

The main adjustments you will have to make to play micro-SNGs:

1. In the early levels, pot control goes out the window. You are starting with premium hands preflop and are only 50-75BB deep. If you hit your hand, even if it's only a one pair hand (overpair or top-pair-good-kicker), don't slow down! You will often get three streets of value with pot-sized bets the whole way. Don't get scared that three streets of action means your top-pair hand is in jeopardy: it isn't. Bet and keep on betting until you run out of chips.

2. Be willing to get it all in early with AK. In a higher-stakes SNG, if someone challenges me to get my full stack in the middle preflop in the early stages, I'm often going to concede the pot with AK, JJ and similar strength hands (depending on the action). Don't do this in a micro-SNG! You will be shocked how often you will be up against hands like 77 or AT. So, if you get in a spot where you are unsure if you should get it all in, err on the side of getting it all in.

3. In the early levels, don't bother stabbing at small pots if you miss. These players just aren't going to fold often enough, the immediate reward is too small for what you are risking, and you want to save enough chips for the massive future edges your opponents will offer. So if you raise preflop with AK and miss, just try to get to a cheap showdown and check-fold if you face a bet.

4. In the high-blind phase, respect the implosion factor. Micro-SNG players have a tendency to take really stupid risks for their entire stacks for no apparent reason. Maybe it's lack of knowledge, maybe it's boredom, maybe it's a generalized inability to sustain focus and make rational decisions after 50 or so hands. Whatever it is, it's real and a real factor in your decisions.

So how does it affect you practically speaking? Fold out the bottom (and sometimes middle too!) of your shoving and calling ranges. Survival tactics can often give you a bigger edge than pushing thin chip-accumulation edges. The more hands you get to play, the more time your natural skill advantage has time to express itself in dollar terms.

So hang around to play those extra hands. Try to maneuver yourself into the money. You can hang around for a suprisingly long time with a short stack, and by doing so, you have a substantial chance that one or more of your opponents will utterly and spectacularly implode. So if you've got a marginal push or call decision, tend to err toward folding.

Following guideline #4 might skew your finish distribution a bit more heavily toward 3rds than you might like, but if your bubble opponents will basically hand you 3rd place, I see no reason not to take it. You will often make enough extra 3rds to compensate for the 1sts you might have accumulated (but of course you'll turn some of those 3rds into 1sts too, right?).

5. Bankroll management is stupid. Ok not really. But... even though "proper bankroll management" (the 50-, 75-, 86-, 104-, or whatever. buyin "rule") might tell you that can't afford to play the PokerStars $3.40s with, say, only $100, you really can. The rake is so bad at the $1s (20-25%) and the play so bad at the $3.40s, that it's really a smart gamble. Assuming you have some modicum of skill, you should have a fairly large edge on your opponents, and you simply won't experience those large, long downsings nearly as often as winning players do at the mid- and high-stakes, for which most bankroll advice was formulated.

If you are just beginning, play those $1.20 or $1.25s just to get your bearings, but as soon as you know what you are doing, move the hell up.

I have no doubt that these adjustments will help you destroy micro-SNGs, if you aren't already, and more so if you already are.

Good luck!

How to Tilt

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:29:17 +0000

(This article first appeared in BLUFF Magazine.) How to Tilt by Tommy Angelo My mom used to tell me, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” This is such a profound and righteous philosophy. And I’ve stuck to it. For example, when I eat popcorn, I think it’s worth doing, so I do it well. With [...]

The Guiltless Gambler

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:04:56 +0000

I’ve been rummaging through dozens of ancient folders on my hard drive, full of half-started articles and unexpanded ideas. I found a few unpublished finished works that I had totally forgotten about. “The Guiltless Gambler” is one of those, from about ten years ago. Enjoy! The Guiltless Gambler Rick Strenson inventories his hundred-dollar bills, quickly touching the [...]

The Blue Marble

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:11:18 +0000

I was 14 years old in 1972 when astronaut Harrison Schmitt aimed a Hasselblad camera out the window of the Apollo 17 spacecraft on its way to the moon and took a photograph of the full earth from 25,000 miles up. NASA dubbed that photo “The Blue Marble”. It showed the world the world, [...]

Surfing and Tilt

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:27:37 +0000

What’s up guys, I’m here in beautiful Troncones, Mexico, chilling on the beach after an afternoon of surfing in the sun. Actually, while I was surfing it wasn’t going all that well. The past few days, every time I’ve surfed I’ve hit a ton of waves and it’s felt great. I felt like a king. Today, [...]

Forming a postflop plan in limit hold em I:Dry board

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:40:45 +0000

Moving Up

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:44:55 +0000

A Smooth Move

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:50:19 +0000

There was a period of a couple years, I think it was around 2000 and 2001, when there was a no-limit hold’em game every night in a poker room in San Mateo called Pacific News. The room only had three tables. One of them was used for newspaper reading and dealer break-taking and players in [...]

DIY: Build a Poker PC

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:33:52 +0000