Don’t Want No Short People ’Round Here?

You guys remember that song, right? Randy Newman? Late 1970s? They got little baby legs that stand so low, you got to pick ’em up just to say hello?

I mentioned last week having listened to Tommy Angelo interviewed on the Two Plus Two Pokercast. During the first half of that particular episode (the 9/15/09 show, show no. 88), the hosts had a conversation with online player Jason “Imsakidd” Kidd in which the focus was short stacking, a topic about which a lot of no-limit hold’em players tend to have strong opinions.

And by strong opinions I mean they think short stackers got no reason to live.

In fact, while Kidd did mention a few of the strategies he employs when short stacking at the NLHE tables, a lot of the conversation was taken up with the subject of the hatred many players profess for short stackers. “It’s... the way that I play that annoys them,” said Kidd, who went on to talk about how infuriated some players get when he’s at the table, sharing some of the vitriolic responses of players who believe short stackers “ruin” the game or are inherently bad players because they appear more interested in gambling it up than playing “real” poker.

Indeed, as Kidd pointed out, the very fact that some players get easily tilted by a short stacker at their table can sometimes work to his advantage. After co-host Adam Schwartz mentioned how he had a friend who would often “spite call” short stackers just to try to bust them -- even with marginal holdings -- Kidd replied that he frequently encounters similar responses from opponents. “That’s very standard,” said Kidd. “Some of the biggest winners in the games will just snap-call with 7-2 offsuit or whatever, just because they hate me,” adding that he was perfectly fine with their willingness to call his all-in bets with such hands.

My game is pot-limit Omaha, and short stacking is also an approach some employ in that game as well. Rolf Slotboom outlines in detail how to go about it in his earlier book, Secrets of Professional Pot-Limit Omaha. My buddy Mark has a simplified introduction to short stacking in PLO over on his OmahaPlanet site.

The fact is, as in NLHE, short stacking can be a viable strategy in PLO for those who know what they are doing. However, despite the preponderance of short stackers in the PLO games I play (the $25 buy-in games), very few seem to have a grasp on how to exploit their short stacks to any real advantage.

Even though my name is “short-stacked,” I generally do not favor short stacking when I play. It is true that when I first started out with PLO, I did often sit at the table with less than a full buy-in, mainly because of my own uncertainties about my play and the desire to minimize my potential losses. The fact was, I didn’t really know much about how to play the short stack, and so wasn’t really helping myself that much buying in for less than the maximum. It took awhile for me to realize I was also minimizing my potential gains by sitting there with the short stack, and even longer to figure out that given the way I was playing, my variance actually lessened considerably if I bought in for the maximum.

So now I always buy in for the maximum, and if I fall below, say, $15, I tend to top off again rather than stubbornly sit with less than a full stack. Haven’t yet clicked the “Auto-Rebuy” option I was discussing a few weeks back, though essentially that is what I’m doing manually -- automatically rebuying whenever I fall much below the max.

And often I am sitting there with short stacks all around me, especially in the full-ring games. I’ve had numerous situations lately where I’ll be sitting at a nine-handed PLO25 table, and four or five of the players have bought in for $5 or $10.

The problem, like I say, is that many seem not to know that their short stacks prevent them from being able to limp into many pots to see flops, or even to put in initial raises before the flop in many spots, or try to engage in any extended postflop play. My guess is a lot of these guys may well be relatively new to the game -- like I was when I was starting out and buying in small.

There are a few, though, who know a little bit about what to do with the short stack. But sometimes they run into trouble, too. I watched a funny hand recently involving a short stacker who had bought in for $5 at the PLO25 table. Shorty limped in from under the gun, had one caller, then another player in late position made a smallish raise to 75 cents. It folded back to MartyMule in the big blind who called the raise, then Shorty reraised pot to $3.35. The others folded, but MartyMule -- who started the hand with $57 -- made the call.

The flop came . MartyMule checked, Shorty put in his last $1.65, and MartyMule quickly called. Shorty showed , while MartyMule had -- a flush draw plus an open-ended straight draw. A spade fell on the river, and Shorty was rebuying for another five bucks.

There was some dialogue afterwards between the pair in the chat box:

Shorty: i*diot
MartyMule: ok
Shorty: no implied odds reraise pre
Shorty: lol fish
MartyMule: just want to see the flop
Shorty: yep fish

Shorty’s chat showed that he obviously has given some thought to how to play a short stack, though I think he’s missing the point a little bit when he gets mad about a player calling his limp-reraise. That’s exactly what he should want, isn’t it? Otherwise, he’s risking $3.35 -- two-thirds of his stack -- to win the $2 sitting in the middle. Not saying Shorty played it wrong, but it seems strange for him to be upset (or surprised) that at least one of the remaining three players in the hand called him.

I wouldn’t say MartyMule played it wrong either, actually. If he puts Shorty on, say, single-suited aces -- which is a pretty reasonable guess -- he’s got a decent hand here with which to call. Nearly a coin flip, in fact. As it happens, MartyMule was just a 53-47 dog. Shorty has a point about the lack of implied odds, but really just simple pot odds tend to make the call not so bad here, don’t they?

Anyhow, while the short stackers can be annoying -- and I’ll sometimes join in the fun of cursing their existence away from the tables (as I recall doing in that “Topping Off” post alluded to above) -- I welcome bad players of all varieties. Obviously the more the bad players bring to the table the better, but bad short stackers are certainly welcome, too. Just means I have to try to take their moneys in bite-sized chunks NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM-NOM.

Okay... for those of you who have the song in yr head now anyway:

Levels of Difficulty

Was listening the other day to the latest episode of Bart Hanson’s Cash Plays (8/20/08) -- a consistently smart & interesting podcast, in my opinion -- which includes a good interview with cash game pro Gabe Thaler. Among other topics covered in the show, Hanson asks Thaler a question about playing deep-stacked no-limit hold’em.

The question actually follows up on something discussed in an earlier episode of Cash Plays and concerns the relatively rare situation of having to fold a set in no-limit hold’em. I won’t go through the entire question, but essentially Hanson asks Thaler how he feels about the argument that in order to play deep-stacked, high-stakes NLHE, one has to be able to fold a set if the circumstances warrant doing so.

I love Thaler’s response: “My feeling is that I don’t like to play in any poker game where people fold sets. I try and find other poker games, ’cos that’s just too f*cking good.”

Thaler brings up the same point a couple of other times in the interview -- that basically it is silly to play in games against tough opponents if there are other, less difficult games available.

Like most of us, I’m miles and miles away from the stakes of the games Hanson usually discusses on his show, but I still think I get something from the discussions. And that advice from Thaler -- that one really should seek out weaker opponents and avoid tougher ones whenever possible -- makes sense no matter what the stakes. Had a short little session of pot-limit Omaha on Bodog yesterday that confirmed the idea, in a way.

I’ve been wanting to play PLO on Bodog more often, but haven’t all that much of late for a couple of reasons. One is that I have some sort of firewall issue happening on my laptop which prevents me from being able to log on to Bodog.

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled and still get the same error message. I phoned their support -- who I have to say, was very, very supportive, taking an inordinately long time with me trying to figure out what my problem was -- but we couldn’t resolve the issue. Most other programs work fine (including other online poker sites), but there are a couple which are behaving similarly, so I’m sure it is something on my end. I’ll figure it out one day, perhaps with the help of my tech-savvy brother.

The other reason I haven’t played that much on Bodog is that usually there aren’t too many PLO tables running at my preferred limits ($25 and $50 max. buy-in). I don’t play in the evening that often, so it’s usually daytime when I log in to find at best two and often just one table of PLO25 running -- six-handed, no less, and usually full.

So often I’ll just log in, take a look around, then log out and head elsewhere.

Yesterday I had just a short while to play -- a half-hour, max. -- and so took a peek over on Bodog to see what was happening. Again, just two tables of 6-max. PLO25 (both full), and a single table of 6-max. PLO50 (also full). Meanwhile, there were four tables of PLO10 running: three 6-max. & one full ring, all mostly full. So I took a seat really just out of a vague desire to play a hand or two on Bodog.

Stepping down a notch stakes-wise is often difficult for most of us. In fact, it might be one of the many paradoxes of poker that good players step down in stakes all the time, while poor players don’t (and/or move up when they shouldn’t).

As a part-time, recreational player, I’m tend not to be possessed by ambition to move up in stakes (although being human, I do contemplate the idea now and again). I know, however, I don’t want to move down -- at least not to the PLO10 tables -- and so as I took the first few hands was considering the exercise a strictly temporary, “special occasion”-type event. I was also preparing myself mentally to be frustrated. Not that the tables at PLO25 and PLO50 are necessarily dominated by brainiacs (doubt I’d be there, if they were), but I did figure to encounter a slightly higher-than-average amount of less tutored play at the lower level.

A windy preamble to what is essentially the story of a single opponent and two hands. In both hands, I’m playing from the blinds and manage to luck into hitting the nuts. So both presented me with the challenge of trying to get paid from early position with a big hand.

In the first hand, three others had limped, and I had in the big blind. I checked, and the flop came . The small blind checked, and I went ahead and bet the pot (a measly forty cents). Now what I’m expecting here is for the player with the set -- or in some cases, two pair -- to call (or, maybe, raise), and the guy who also has Broadway to raise it up. Or, perhaps, everyone to fold -- which would not be bad at all. As nice a flop as that is, it is not the most comfortable spot to be in when acting from early position.

Anyhow, I get two callers (the small blind went away). The turn was the . I was still good, but now there’s the spade flush to worry about as well. I went ahead and pumped $1.60 (a pot-sized bet) in the middle. I’ll admit I’m influenced here by the relatively small stacks. I only had $12.45 when the hand began, so there was not much reason to be cute. Again, both of my opponents just called. One could also have Broadway here, but I’d have expected a raise if so. Pot up to $6.40.

The river was a good one -- the . Worst I can do is chop. In these Bodog hand histories, there’s a timestamp for every single action, so I can tell you with confidence that I waited exactly ten seconds before acting on that river card. That was deliberate. I then bet one dollar.

Now I’m thinking this is the most transparent sort of value bet imaginable. No one is gonna buy this, are they? But to my delight, the player to my left called my bet two seconds later. Then the other guy -- ShowMeMoe -- waited twelve seconds before raising the pot with a bet of $10.40.

Oh, well. So I will be chopping. I called, of course, and the player to my left folded. I showed my nut straight, and ShowMeMoe turned over . Wha? He’d flopped a pair of aces (and a pretty hopeless straight draw), turned a flush draw, then rivered a jack-high straight. I won the $28.05 pot -- a nice one by my standards, never mind the stakes.

About ten hands later I was in the small blind with a pretty good holding -- . Three limped, I completed, and the big blind checked. The flop came . I wasn’t too interested in this one, but when ShowMeMoe bet a quarter into the fifty-cent pot and no one else came along, I decided to take one off. The turn brought the . How do you do? Broadway. Nice to meet you again.

I paused just a bit (six seconds this time), then bet the pot. ShowMeMoe took two seconds to call. Pot $3.00. The river was the and again I had the good fortune of ending the hand with the nuts. I took four seconds to bet the pot, and ShowMeMoe took half that long to call me. His hand? . Top two and another busted flush. $8.95 to Shamus.

Up over $20, I folded a few more hands then took off, wondering how much less I’d have made if I’d played those exact same hands at a higher limit. In both hands, the only “subtle” play I made was the dollar value bet on the end of the first one, and to my way of thinking, that was almost pathetic in its blatancy. Even making the nuts in both, I really shouldn’t have made more than a pittance given the other hands’ having come up short (not to mention my being out of position).

Of course, I’d planned going in to keep it simple. Which frankly ain’t that bad of an approach in PLO25 and PLO50, either.

In the end, the stakes you play don’t matter nearly as much as the ability of yr opponents (relative to yr own, that is). So find those ShowMeMoe shmoes -- or PLO games in which players try to bluff you off yr obvious nuts -- wherever you can. And if they’re folding sets in yr NLHE game, do like Thaler and find another table.

Hammett's Op & the Perils of Stirring Things Up

Was looking back through a volume of Dashiell Hammett stories, all of which feature that nameless private eye who is an operative of the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco -- a character usually referred to as the “Continental Op.” Hammett started his career writing stories about the Continental Op, the earliest of which appeared in Black Mask way back in the early 1920s. Would end up writing over thirty stories featuring the savvy, hardened detective, some of which got compiled and refashioned as his first novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.

Anyhow, was reading one particular story titled “The House on Turk Street” and was reminded of a situation that comes up now and again at the poker table. In fact, it recalled a particular hand of pot limit Omaha ($25 max. buy-in) I’d played earlier in the week.

In the story, the Op has been assigned the task of tracking down a particular person -- we’re not told why -- and so has been going door-to-door on a particular block of Turk Street with a fabricated tale designed to uncover the man’s whereabouts. After several unsuccessful visits, the Op finds himself having been invited into an elderly couple’s home for a cup of tea. The trio chat aimlessly, then with one sentence the light mood turns swiftly dark:

“Something cold touched the nape of my neck.”

It’s a gun, all right. Turns out the house is the hideout of a gang who has just pulled a bank heist in Los Angeles (they’ve paid the old couple to cover for them). Completely unrelated to the job for which the Op had been originally assigned. Before long, the Op is tied to a chair wondering how he’s gonna get out of the house on Turk Street alive. I won’t go through the rest of the plot, but eventually the Op succeeds in getting the gang members to turn against each other, thereby managing to wiggle himself free of a tricky spot.

What’s familiar here is that situation where you find yourself trying “to stir things up” (a favorite phrase of the Continental Op), then get into an entirely unexpected jam that forces you to find a completely new strategy in order to survive. You aren’t innocent, here. Like the Op, you were trying to get something from others and were using a bit of subterfuge to accomplish that task. But suddenly you feel something cold on the back of your neck and yr caught in an entirely different imbroglio than the one into which you thought you were entering. (Or creating.)

Here’s the hand. I was sitting in late position with 9-8-7-6 unsuited and it folded to me. I raised it up, as I’ll sometimes do with these rundown-type hands, and ended up getting two callers. The pot was around three bucks. (Sorry, don’t have the hand history.)

The flop wasn’t so hot -- . Really only three viable outs for me there. The early position player thought a sec and bet two dollars, and the guy in between us calls. What do we have here? Coupla draws? I ended up calling. Not so hot, I know. That’s the moment where the entire situation had changed. Like the Continental Op, I started out thinking I was in charge of the proceedings, but now I’d found myself tied to a chair, wondering what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

The turn was the and both players checked to me. This is one of those situations where it is probably better to be up against two players than one. They’re worried about each other, perhaps more so than about me. I checked as well, though I was starting to see a way out of this pickle.

The river brought the , a card that completed no draws. Both checked to me again. I quickly made something like a two-thirds-pot-sized bet into the $9 pot, and both folded instantly.

Doesn’t always work out for me the way it tends to do for Hammett’s Op. Sometimes in that spot a player who flopped bottom set -- or who is sitting there with K-Q-x-x -- will look me up there, and I’m cooked . . . .

The Op usually winds up in the clear, though. Not conscience-wise, necessarily. But breathing-wise.

Is PLO the “Game of the Future”?

Recently listened to online whiz Brian “sbrugby” Townsend interviewed on the 4/29 episode of PokerRoad’s Cash Plays. During the last part of the interview, host Bart Hanson asks Townsend some questions about pot limit Omaha, and the discussion is a good one. Definitely worth hearing, if you’re a PLO fan, I think.

The pair address a number of PLO-related topics, including playing aces, short-stacking (how to play & how to combat against), deep-stacked play, bluff-raising, full ring vs. 6-max play, folding after flopping the nuts, freerolling, and even PLO/8. They also touch on that myth about PLO being a game of coin flips. Regarding the latter, Townsend sounds as though he agrees with Jeff Hwang’s observation in Pot-Limit Omaha: The Big Play Strategy that PLO “is not a 50-50 game” and that “it is a pure fallacy that you have to be in a gambling situation when the money goes in.”

Near the end, Hanson asks Townsend what he thinks about the notion that “PLO is the game of the future.” This is an idea that Bob Ciaffone was suggesting way back in the early 80s shortly after the game was first formulated at the Golden Nugget by Robert “Chip Burner” Turner and -- as Ciaffone tells it in Omaha Poker -- that “Oriental lady from the Seattle area named Gwen” (nicknamed the “Dragon Lady”).

Hanson, of course, is referring more directly to recent buzz surrounding PLO, with new interest in the game being perhaps most directly influenced by all of those ongoing high-stakes ($200/$400) games occurring on Full Tilt Poker. (That photo above shows Townsend taking down a $430K pot in one of those games vs. David Benyamine and Tom “Durrrr” Dwan.)

“I think PLO is a beautiful game,” is Townsend’s reply to Hanson’s question. Hanson chuckles in response. “It’s a lot more interesting that no limit Hold ’em,” he adds.

“Really?” says Hanson, a bit incredulous sounding.

Townsend goes on to explain that in his opinion, “no limit Hold ’em really needs antes,” especially online. He notes that one finds such games in live play quite often, and that it adds an extra layer of strategy that makes the game much more fun for him. He doesn’t elaborate, but I think he also is implying that antes would force people to play more (and different) hands in different positions, thereby adding some of those “nuances and subtleties” to NLHE that Townsend was remarking upon earlier in the interview as characteristic of PLO.

“PLO doesn’t need antes because it has that deceptive factor that you think you can play so many hands when in all actuality you can’t.” It is, as Ciaffone dubbed it long ago, the “action game.”

Funny how the “deceptive factor” to which Townsend refers (if I understand him correctly) in fact concerns how one can deceive oneself more easily in PLO than in other games, not to the strategy of trying to deceive others. Although that’s a big part of the game, too.

Dunno if PLO is the “game of the future” or not, but anecdotally-speaking I do believe it has risen in popularity over the last few months, as I am routinely seeing more PLO tables running when I go online these days.

Which is good for me. ’Cos I do like the action.

April Is the Coolest Month

Spent a little time today looking over the April stats. Turned out to be a terrific month -- my third-best ever. My previous all-time best month was last April, actually. Something about the springtime, I suppose.

Ended up playing a lot of different games over the last thirty days. I could go back and check, but I probably played fewer hands of Hold ’em (a little under 400) during April than in any previous month since I started playing online poker.

Altogether I played about 8,200 hands of poker, not counting tournaments (of which I only played a couple, the only significant cash being last Saturday). Most of the hands were pot limit Omaha (61.1%), followed by Stud/8 (20.1%), H.O.R.S.E. (12.3%), and limit Hold ’em (4.6%). I played one short session of Stud Hi and PLO/8 (both times having accidentally sat down at those tables). Also played a few hands of five card stud on Bodog.

Essentially broke even in those Hold ’em hands. Won a little at H.O.R.S.E. and a little more at Stud/8. But by far most of my winnings for the month -- nearly 90% -- came at the PLO tables.

Why did April go so well? I ran well, I know. The biggest difference, though, had to be the fact that I rarely bought in short all month. I had been in the habit of buying in for $10 at the PLO25 tables, employing the short-stacker’s strategy of looking for spots to gamble and double up. Was mostly working, I suppose, but I had come to realize that once I did get a bigger stack I tended to make better decisions.

Finally I just started buying in for the max. every time, and while I did get stacked every once in a while, my overall swings were actually less dramatic than they were when I was primarily buying in short.

Of course, it helped to have hands like this one (from last night):



What a massacre! Bodies all over the stage. Doesn’t hurt to have a big stack, I suppose, when the cards come out so agreeably.

Let’s keep it goin’ in May, why don’t we?

Celebrating Seconds

Played two MTTs on Saturday, both pot limit Omaha. Early in the afternoon I managed yet another mediocre showing in an AIPS event, this time finishing 28th (out of 72 runners). Was mostly too passive -- only partly due to an uninterrupted series of crummy starting hands -- and even though I lasted into the second hour I never could really wiggle myself out of the folding funk.

Later in the afternoon I bought my seat for Saturdays with Pauly, a $10-plus-$1 PLO tourney on PokerStars. Have played four or five of these suckers, I think, with my previous best showing being a tenth place. There were 29 entrants this time, meaning the top five spots paid.

After a little over two hours and about 180 hands, I somehow found myself one of two remaining players, sitting on the short stack with about 7,000 to my opponent’s 36,000.

“Gotcha right where I want ya,” I told him.

I’d been on the short stack the entire tournament, actually, having made a bad blunder early on that had knocked me all the way down under 500 chips (21st of 21 players at the time). Ultimately managed to chip my way back from the brink, though. Got extremely lucky in a hand just after the first break in which I was dealt . A player with over 7,000 raised from late position, I reraised all 1,185 of my chips, and he called showing . Uh oh. At least both my suits were live. The board came . . . . Whew. I was relatively healthy again with 2,520 (6th of 13 left).

I then managed to survive to the money bubble, which ended up taking twenty-plus hands or so. Kind of an interesting dynamic there, as one of the remaining six players had well over half the chips in play. At one point I noticed he had over 28,000 while the rest of us all sat in the 2,000-4,000 range. Finally one short stack knocked out another and we were in the cash.

Thereafter the big stack would end up losing a series of all-in confrontations with several players before going out in fourth. While we were three-handed I was the beneficiary of several nice starting hands, allowing me to survive to heads-up.

From there I only lasted five more hands against my big-stacked opponent, finally deciding to take my chances with . I liked seeing my opponent’s hand -- . Was actually about a 55-45 favorite preflop (according to Two Dimes). But the board brought me no aces, queens, flushes, or straights, and I took the $69.60 prize for second.

Wouldn’t say I played stunningly well, but other than the one early faux pas I don’t think I made too many missteps. Frankly the only obvious “skill” I might have demonstrated all tourney was simply being able to remain patient. I guess I did open things up a bit once we were three-handed, making a couple of decent plays there. (Though as I say, I picked up some hands then, too.) Very nice to make a deep MTT run, though. Been awhile.

Seems appropriate, actually, to have landed a second place just in time for my second birthday. That’s right. Hard-Boiled Poker turns two today. Hard to imagine it has only been two years, especially when I think of the many, many great folks with whom this here blog served as our introduction.

Was looking back on a post from early on, called “An Existential Pause,” when I stopped and looked around a bit. I quoted Raymond Chandler describing the detective story as “a man’s adventure in search of hidden truth.” Said then that “all poker bloggers were shamuses, really. Investigating themselves.”

At the time I wrote that post, the blog was only three months old -- “a mere babe in the blog wilderness, its identity still uncertain.” I suppose by now we’ve been walking upright for a while. Still a ton to learn, though. So continues the investigation . . . .

Thanks again, everybody, for following along.