Wednesday July 27, 2005

Ace on the River

Ace on the River by Barry Greenstein is an amazingly cool poker book. Its a strange but well coordinated mish-mash of stories about Barry's poker career together with a lot of very straight up comments on the poker community. In some ways the subtitle ("And Advanced Poker Guide") is likely to lead many astray and many others to take their game to another level. I only have a specific comment on one section (below) but the overall comment I would make is to be sure that you don't overlook all of the great material at the beginning of the book just to read the hand examples. Both are great. Read it all. Many times.

Chapter 23 has a great pro/con list on how much to buyin to a game. Many other authors (esp. ones writing about big bet) just say "cover'em" without any explanation of why. But this isn't always correct as Barry's lists show. ( Jul 27 2005, 02:59:01 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

polyphasic letdown I didn't last a week sleeping the uberman sleep schedule. When I was just about to get into the right sleep phase I would end up missing a wakeup and resetting my body clock. The next two weekends make this experiment impractical but after that I'll have to try it again. ( Jul 27 2005, 02:55:55 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Wednesday July 20, 2005

polyphasic sleep Patri Friedman's mention of polyphasic sleep has me experiementing with it this week. I normally sleep very erratically with short periods (less then a week) of fairly normal 8 hour sleep periods followed by long periods of less sleep per day. I'm only in day two of my experiement but I seem to have fallen into the rhythem fairly easily. Maybe it natural for me? The real question is going to be is if once it becomes ingrained is the pattern two inflexible to be changed for tasks which take longer then 3.5 hours? ( Jul 20 2005, 02:20:07 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Monday July 18, 2005

short buy ins

I recently picked up Russell Fox's and Scott Harker's Matering No-Limit Hold'em. I know Russel and Scott from BARGE and thought it might be an amusing read. Its hard for me to go to Vegas and not make it to one of the gambling book stores in town and spend at least some money. On page 8 I ran across this statement:

In all cases, we recomment you buy-in for the maximum possible amount -- there is no reason to put yourself at a disadvantage with your opponents by buying-in for a smaller amount.

I see variations on this statement made all the time. Typically there are no reasons given (like in this book) or the reasons are example of where it would be better to be deep. I think the statement is fundamentally broken.

First off I'm fairly certain that Russel and Scott are only talking about capped games (the context of the paragraph implies that). "In all cases" makes me wonder though. Even if we assume capped buy ins the statement is still to glib for my tastes. Its not clear that you are giving up an advantage not to take the max buy in. Maybe there are several target stacks that will push on the small stacks but play sanely against the larger stacks. This is not so uncommon in these days of television tournaments. In that case it can be more profitable to play a short stack. Maybe you are taking a short at a larger game and think that playing a short stack is a reasonable tradeoff. Maybe there are meta game consideraitons. For example I've played with one well known television "pro" who played like a smuck in a smaller game until he was covered. It would be silly to cover him.

Scott and Russ talk about Poker being a game of decisions. Behind those decisions needs to be solid logic. Learning to not just blindly buy in for the max or to cover the table is an example of where applying logic and experience can lead to becoming a more profitable poker player. ( Jul 18 2005, 02:16:03 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Thursday July 14, 2005

wsop

WSOP main event didn't amount to much for me. I was rarely over 10k. I started out at a fairly active first table. I had all the calling stations lined up to my left. But then nothing to go after them with. A few steals always got called. One amusing story from the first few hours. A player who early on made the statement that "today was for survival" managed to get his stack in on a flush card turn with top and bottom. I had marked him for some special attention. Glad I didn't push on him too hard. Well after dinner on the first day I was moved to a more passive table. Managed to steal some and win a few pots. Picked up black aces UTG, open-raised to 1100, got two callers. The first caller gives wonderful tells. On a Qs 7s 5h flop he was interested. I checked, he bet 3k, the player behind folded, I called off 3k of my 3900 (I intended to raise but lack of sleep or something and I made an inconsequetial error). I bet all in on the 6 turn and a spade came up on the river. He showed me 8s 6s for a thin leader on the flop and a slight trailer on the turn (guess that erroneous call on the flop was better then I thought). Next.

Generally I thought there were a whole host of silly organizational issues with the tournament. The painful hallway of smoke. Some really silly decisions (floor decides that because there hasn't been "much action" [only a fold, open-raise, two more folds] and because the opener doesn't mind that that a late discovered 3 cards in the big blind creates a misdeal). The poker lifestyle arena mostly holding the hopes and prayers of companies trying desperately to jump on the poker bandwagon (reminds me of an Amiga conference I went to in the early 90s except that the booth babes at the WSOP had invested in Dow chemical a little more). Creating more congestion around the tournament by forcing the participants through the poker lifestyles area. Having the side games be "first-come first-serve" (I'm sure this cost Harrah's some multiple of the side game revenue) because nobody could figure out how to or cared to figure out how to use a clipboard in this day and age of computerized game lists.

But that was well made up for by the amount of dead money in the tournament and the amazing side action around town. ( Jul 14 2005, 02:04:04 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]