Life and Times of a Poker Addict

As in, I have been getting absolutely...

Bad session, good session, bad session, okay session, bad session, awful session... and there you have the story of my last week.

Apparently everyone wants to be the hero against me lately, or their draws are getting there and mine certainly are not. Add in a couple of awful all-in calls I made and I was down three buy-ins at the Warehouse last night. I had Kings cracked by Q3 suited, but in the end it was my own fault, I should have known that he had trips when the second queen hit the board on the turn. I put in a few suckouts of my own to walk out down as much as I did... it could have been worse.

So my buddy JR has mentioned once or twice that he wants to see some poker theory or style explanation on these pages. And since we got in each other's ears the other night, I figured I'd put a little something together here. I play a very aggressive style of poker. I usually am coming in for a raise and almost certainly am making a continuation bet on the flop if I don't hit part of it. I may even make another bet on the turn if I have picked up any kind of draw even if my continuation bet got called on the flop. I have picked up a lot of small and medium sized pots in this way which allows me to be a little more loose some evenings with making bigger calls, or pushing all-in with a medium strength hand to apply pressure to someone.

Of course the flip side of this is that after a while people start calling you down with middle or bottom pair and sometimes I get caught on the bluff. But that's just fine because the percentage of the time that I have something compared to not is much more in my favor. The key to successful poker is getting the most value out of your hand at each betting point. This is the thing that I see as the weakest aspect of the players I play against live, most have no idea how to bet properly. There are a lot of guys I go up against who play basically only the nuts or second nuts, which is just fine. But they mostly just check-call there hands down to the river where they overbet and don't get a call they might have gotten if they had just tried to sell the hand for a little less. Moreover, a lot of money was probably lost on the flop and turn where leading out the betting, or making a moderate re-raise could have netted them more money before the river.

I'll post a past hand or two to illustrate some of these points:

Me ($175): AQ hearts
Player 1 ($40): KJ offsuit

I raise before the flop from late position to $6 which is the table standard for the evening. I get called by a player who limped in front of me, and the flop comes Kxx with one heart. Player checks it to me and I make my continuation bet here of $8. I bet here because I've been shown weakness and I've made the original raise, I just want to take down the pot. I also know that if I get called, I could still hit my ace or possibly pick up a second heart on the turn for the nut draw. Player calls my $8 and we go to the turn card which is another low heart. This time he bets $10 and I call and I hit my flush on the river. He checks and I push him in for his remaining $15 and he calls and gets angry because he had me the whole way until that river card.

The player made several key mistakes here. He didn't lead out on the flop or reraise me, which he should have, to find out where he was at. If you are playing a hand like KJ offsuit, I don't know what else you are hoping to hit except the King or the Jack. You ahve to bet there or check-raise, nothing else makes much sense. He could have taken the pot down there. The turn, he could have pushed all-in, and it's debatable whether or not I would have called with just 12 outs getting about 2.2-1 on my money, but I don't think I'm quite that psycho.

So there's a little something for you JR, and I will probably post a little more tomorrow or Friday. The poker gods had their way with me on my birthday, which seems a little perverse, but hopefully I can turn this month around...