Poker’s Endless Lesson; or, In Todd We Trust

Have been playing more and more Stud-Eight-or-Better lately. Doing okay, actually. Also have noticed my variance is quite low when compared to other games, especially when I play on Stars where the antes are lower than on Full Tilt or Bodog.

I’ve read up a bit, having worked through the Stud/8 half of Ray Zee’s book, High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players, as well as Todd Brunson’s chapter in Super/System 2. Am feeling increasingly comfortable gauging starting hands, remembering upcards, figuring out when to apply pressure, and keeping in mind the importance of scooping (what Brunson calls the “platinum rule” of the game).

Like any game, intuition plays a big role in Stud/8, I think, insofar as one has to have a “feel” (so to speak) for what others have and are gunning for, as well as whether or not the situation is right to pursue one’s own hand. Of course, moving from flop games like Hold ’em & Omaha to stud games introduces some different situations that can have a tendency to screw with one’s “feel,” making intuition less reliable as a result.

Keeping track of upcards, for instance, is a very alien-seeming obligation to Hold ’em & Omaha players. And while that can be hard enough to do, knowing what those upcards actually signify isn’t always as easy as it might appear.

Here’s just one example of how our intuition -- esp. among us players of flop games who haven’t a lot of experience with keeping track of upcards -- can potentially fail us. I had a hand a couple of days ago in which I was dealt Q-5-Q rainbow with one of my queens showing. I instinctively glanced around to see if any other queens were out, then waited for the action to come around to me.

Might be a playable hand in Stud high, but in Stud/8 this is a fairly crummy starter. Even a relative novice like me knows better than to get in too deep with a high-only hand like this. Making me even less likely to play the hand was the fact that to my right I saw two players each of whom had a king showing. There were a couple of limpers, the first king folded, then the second one -- the one to my immediate right -- completed.

Like I said, I had already decided I’d probably be letting go of my queens. But tell me this. What do you think are the chances the fellow who completed has a king underneath?

This is exactly one of those intuition-defying situations, I think. Todd Brunson writes about it specifically in his Super/System 2 chapter. His entry is divided into a list of concepts, and included is one titled “Dispelling a Long-Held Misconception.” His point there is to explain a mathematical truth that frankly seems counterintuitive until one really concentrates on the explanation. For those who haven’t read it, let me try to summarize. Brunson is making a point here about making assumptions about what our opponents might have underneath on the basis of what cards are showing on third street.

Let’s say (says Brunson) we look around the table and see one player with an ace showing. A certain percentage of the time that player will also have at least one ace as a downcard as well. Brunson goes through the math to show that there is exactly a 13.94% chance that player has at least one ace underneath (if we don’t hold one of them, that is). So if that player completes or raises on third, we keep that possibility in mind as we proceed.

Now let’s say we look around and see two players have aces showing as their door cards. What percentage of the time will one of them have an ace underneath as well? Without doing the calculations, we might be tempted to say the percentage must be less than in the previous scenario. After all, there are only two aces left, right?

That is the long-held misconception, explains Brunson. In fact, there is a higher chance one of the two players has an ace underneath. Significantly higher, actually. As Brunson shows, in this case one of the two players will have at least one ace underneath 18.35% of the time.

Going back to my hand, if I weren’t aware of Brunson’s tip, it might have seemed like there would be less chance the fellow who completed had a king underneath. Perhaps if I were a bit looser (or thick-headed), I’d have talked myself into playing my queens based on that assumption.

But no. I let ‘em go. I knew better than to pursue a high-only hand like this. (The idea that it is worth going for half the pot -- except in certain cases -- is itself a misconception a lot of players have trouble dispelling.) And I’d also read Todd Brunson’s chapter and so had an idea my neighbor might have split kings after all. The hand played to the end, with my neighbor ending up sharing the pot with a low hand across the table. Sure enough, he’d had a king underneath. Full Tilt does reorder the downcards after the hand is done, but I’m reasonably sure he had that king under there to start out.

How long would it have taken me to learned that bit about upcards and stud games? If you hadn’t known already, how long would it have taken you?

A lot about poker I don’t know. One thing I do know, however. There’s always something new to learn.

Dazed and Confused; or, My Introductions to Omaha and Seven-Card Stud

Still keeping an eye on that H.O.R.S.E. event at the WSOP. They’ve finally whittled the original field of 143 down to the final 9. Gotta love that final table, with Doyle Brunson and T.J. Cloutier still there. Talk about a couple of tough “horses" -- a couple of 70-plus-year-olds making it through that ungodly 19-hour second day. Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch, Chip Reese . . . should be a great finale. A shame that they will now play it out as a no-limit hold ’em event, but I’ll still be checking in to see who survives.

Again, as a nod to the H.O.R.S.E. event, I wanted to make one more non-hold ’em post and talk a bit about Omaha and Stud. I used to play both games quite a bit, especially Pot Limit Omaha (high only), though not so much for the last six months or so. My introduction to Omaha was kind of interesting. I had only been playing for play chips on PokerStars for a month or so when some of the friends with whom I had been playing recommended giving Omaha a try. After only a few hands at a ring table, I entered one of those Sunday afternoon freeroll tournaments Stars regularly runs, a fixed limit Omaha (high only) tourney with over 6000 entrants. I searched around on the web a bit just before the tournament began and found what looked like a reasonable, simple little chart explaining how to rate Omaha starting hands by assigning certain points -- e.g., AA gets 30 pts., Ace & anything suited gets 10 pts., connectors get two points, etc. If your hand totalled 10-15 pts., you could call the BB. If you had more, you could call a raise. Even more and you could raise yourself. I propped my chart on the keyboard, loaded Led Zeppelin’s eight studio albums into Winamp, and watched as the first hand was dealt.

Now these huge freerolls tend to attract a lot of less-than-serious players, and in the case of an Omaha tourney, I’m sure they also bring in a significant number of folks who aren’t even clear about the rules of the game. (I at least knew the rules, even if I didn’t have much of a clue about strategy.) I followed my little chart pretty closely, which I soon realized only permitted me to play about 10-15% of the hands. Such a super-tight approach allowed me to survive the first couple of thousand casualties pretty easily, although my stack wasn’t growing very much. Then somewhere around “Gallows Pole” I caught a rush of cards and found myself among the top hundred. I continued to limp along. A couple of hours later we were down to 800 and “Achilles’ Last Stand.” Then there were 300 left -- “Hot Dog”! Finally came the last, drawn-out chords of “I’m Gonna Crawl” . . . an appropriate title, as I had become one of the shorter stacks clinging for dear life. The music stopped and I looked up to see I was sitting at 9th out of 12 remaining. Then 9th out of 11. Then 9th out of 10.

The “prize” for the tourney was only for those who made the final table (top 9) -- an entry into the “Weekly Round 2” tourney the following Sunday (a freeroll with a $100 prize pool). I remember being dealt something like and actually folding it, nervously eyeing the guy on the other table who only had a single big blind remaining. Finally, after folding a few more hands, I watched as he was bounced. “Congratulations, you have made the final table!” The very next hand was an all-in fest, and I happily went out in ninth place. Ninth! Out of over 6000. I was starting to think I might like Omaha.

Only later did I realize that I had misread the chart I had used -- it was designed for Omaha 8-or-better (or “high-low”), not just Omaha high. So that’s why it awarded 15 pts. for having a deuce and a trey in your hand! (Shamus smacks forehead.) Still, somehow, I’d overcome even this self-imposed handicap to get through five-plus hours and thousands of opponents. Have to say, for someone who’d yet to make his first deposit to play real money games, this was some serious fun.

I checked the schedule and saw the following Sunday’s “Weekly Round 2” was actually a limit Stud tourney. I didn’t realize at the time that Poker Stars allows you to bank tourney entries and use them whenever you wish, so I thought I had one week to learn yet another game. I picked up a copy of Roy West’s 7 Card Stud: 42 Lessons How to Win at Medium & Lower Limits -- not necessarily the best way to learn how to negotiate a stud tournament (although there is a section in the back by Tom McEvoy about “Tournament Tactics”), but definitely a nice introduction to the game. I read through the entire book, took lots of notes, and made up a chart that compiled West’s recommendations for starting hands and fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-street play. Whereas I had prepared a total of ten minutes for the Omaha tourney, I had probably put in at least 15 hours getting ready for my big Stud debut.

What happened? Not much. I busted out within the first hour. None of West’s recommendations seemed to work as described. I was placed at a table where five of the eight players had neglected to show up for the tourney, so it was just me, the five “sitting out” zombies, and two extremely aggressive players who appeared ready to cap the betting on every street. I couldn’t keep up at all, and thus received both an early exit and a short-lived prejudice against Stud.

Eventually I came to appreciate Stud and played the ring games every now and then. Omaha I liked even better, and for a time played nothing but PLO on Stars (nothing above the $0.05/$0.10 tables, of course). I did reasonably well in a few PLO SNG’s, and I even made another final table in another Omaha freeroll, finishing ninth again out of another field of thousands. I gravitated back to hold ’em, however, where I’ve been mostly camped out ever since.

I’ve been leafing through West’s book lately and occasionally sitting in on a few rounds of Stud. I’d like to get my hands on a good Omaha book, also, and get back into that game as well. I’ve seen recommended Ray Zee’s High-Low Split Poker (which covers both Stud and Omaha) -- I may pick it up. (Can anyone who has read it tell me what they think of that one?) Even if the WSOP has decided now that we’ve reached the final table of the H.O.R.S.E. event that these other games are no longer interesting, I’m still curious. Would hardly be a self-respecting detective if I weren't . . . .

Image: Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin (1969), Amazon.