Snow snow, quick quick, Snow

Then what happens? We get three days of media headlines talking about the snow that lasted 2 two days before promptly disappearing and people everywhere saying “well did you see that snow?” and “what about that snow then?” and “the snow didn’t last then?” and so on..

It drives me to distraction that a dusting of iced water can run riot over our “news” pushing real stories into the snippets sections, Yanno real stories like 60 people getting their heads blown off in Iraq, or another xx soldiers dying in a helicopter “crash”, or the fact that the current resident in the Whitehouse has the neo-con pack barking and baying for a NUCLEAR pre-emptive strike against a country that has yet to be seen to being doing anything wrong.

Damn we are sizing up for a freaking nuclear war and 3 inches of snow in LittleHampton Village makes the BBC news as main headlines for three consecutive days!

Stop the world I want to get off!

Ok rant over. Sorry about that… hmm No I ain’t.

Poker stuff then…

I lost my first NL Hold’em game in the league for this year.. Dang, and there I was hoping to go a whole year undefeated.

Of course I am spinning the information now, because it sounds better than saying I am now 6 wins out of 9. (2 of the losses were the O h/l PL.. not my game)

Before I forget I have to mention a SNG that myself and Dog played in late last night. It was a 9 man NL Hold’em. Dog grabbed the chip lead early on and for the most part dominated the table during the session. I was just sitting mostly having had cold cards dealt to me from the off, we are down to last 5 players.

I pick up AJ suited in the hole, Dog is outta the hand so I shout over to him what I got and he is like “Do it.. DooOooo it he [BB] ain’t got nothing.. Now’s the time bro’ dooOoo it!”

And of course he is right, but I get this nagging instinctive feeling this could be a bad move, don’t ask me what I am basing this on but I was right. The BB had AK and that was me down to 75 chips!

Of course I am like bitching at him like it is his fault, when all along I know I’d have made the same move every time, but he was there and he shouted it, so I vented it on Dog.

So I am all in very next hand with a family pot, holding A4s in the hole, flop comes 235 and I am back to 575 chips. Then a few more hands and I am on 3000 chips. Eventually it is me and Dog heads up with very even stacks! After about 5 minutes of back and forth heads up play, Dog is all in.

Remember we are on audio together at this point and there is a lot of banter, “I got yah ass now Dog”.. “bring it on bro’”.. “I got rockets!”..”yah me too”.. etc.

So Dog is all in, I call, we are even stacked so this it!

He laughs and shouts at me he just knows a 2 is gonna hit and dang me!

At this point I have to slightly lower the headphones from my ears as Dog is leaping about and loudly whooping it up … “I told yah! I told! Yah babeee! haha Yeehaw”. He is celebrating so loudly and enthusiastically he totally misses…

And the river card is moot…

I am still trying to get his attention by shouting down the microphone at him, but it isn’t until the money slides to me and not to him on the table, does he fall off the ceiling with a resounding thud and a “What the F**k!” …

I gotta tell yah folks I was hurting with laughter, it was a classic and the dumbfounded cussing coming down my headset just made it funnier.. Dog had like 100 chips left and next hand it was over.

That beat is a keeper.

—————

Regarding my month of experimentation playing MTT’s and monkey’s.

There is much more that I observed and learned from that month than I was able to include in the last blog entry and again too much to put it all in this one. That said I will touch upon one area today and that is what hands do I mean when I say things like “opening the starting book up”.

Typically No Limit Hold’em is all about your first decision, on seeing your hole cards and how you react to your hand and the betting and dynamics of the table, from those 2 hole cards. And so typically NL Hold’em is a game of high cards, meaning that usually most people in the game after the flop are holding high cards.

The vast majority of players will be playing the top 20 starting hands with confidence, in the case of monkey’s these hands will be played with over-confidence, thus the all-in’s we encounter all over the felt in the early stages of MTT’s.

Early in a MTT with an unknown quantity of monkey’s at the table I found I had to adjust what was the norm regarding top20 starting hands. My top 20 opening hands when playing the MTT’s with monkeys early on in the game would look more like those shown here along with the normal top10. There are caveats to playing these hands which I’ll explain below.

If I picked up a top20 hand in any position I would try to limp in, rather than the normal push. If there were raises (plural) I’d drop the hand, even from the blinds. In these games you will get callers and even an AA in the hole versus 3 callers holding rags, will, and does, often get outdrawn.

In late position with a normal top20 starting hand, depending on the bets that were before me, I might, might make a push. But the rule here is generally to play very strong hands, passively, limp, call, but do not raise. The emphasis here is that you really do not know what you are up against, so keep the pot small as you can until you are sure you have the nuts.

Normally good starting hands like AJ – Q10 – KJ etc are not worth anything with more than one caller in these sort of games. Keeping in mind the “unknown quantity” sitting to the left, yet to bet.

The theory behind changing my opening hands was based on the fact that the monkey players will more often than not, play any high card with a rag, (especially aces). Any 2 cards that are suited, and any pair.

To give myself the best possible chance I have to not play the same cards as the monkey’s. If there are 4 or 5 big bets in front of me when I am in late position or in the blinds, you can almost be guaranteed they are all sharing the same cards and outs.

I am looking to, 2 pair the board, trip the board, straight draw the board and maybe, maybe flush draw the board. There are more of my cards left in the deck when the flop comes so I have a better chance of hitting my hands than they do.

Of course we all know poker is not a precise science (I have said that before eh?) so none of this is written in stone. It is a ‘general’ strategy to be employed at the right time and from the right position. Some of the obvious caveats to be applied when playing these sort of hands in these kind of games are;

• Position, you should be playing from late position and the blinds most of the time if not all of the time. (next time you are in one of these games watch and see how many hands are won from the blinds, you’ll be surprised)

• These sort of hands are much more successful with a family pot or with more than 3 callers/raisers.

• Ego, swallow your ego and play those normally strong hands passively.

• Patience, you will be playing a lot less hands than maybe you normally would.

• Connectors are kings in these kind of games. Suited connectors have the cherry on top.

• Recognizing when the table dynamics have changed due to the fall out of the wild players and adjusting you game accordingly. Note, when this happens and you start to pump your monster hole hands the previous strategy will still be usable concerning connectors etc.

You’ll lose more times than you win in these games, but and this is a big but, when you do hit the money you are usually hitting it much bigger than you could manage in a SNG.

Finally good luck to ya’ll on the felt and any comments, critiques are more than welcome.