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This is my 2007 World Series of Poker trip report. This was my first time playing in the WSOP, or for that matter in any large or high buy-in tournament.

My plan was to enter Event 38 ($1,500 No-Limit Hold' Em) and then Event 42 ($1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-or-Better High-Low). If that was a bunch of gibberish to you, just skip down to the end -- heavy poker content follows.

My flight into Las Vegas arrived Saturday morning and I took a taxi straight to the Rio. The tournament began at noon, and we soon learned that there were 2,778 entrants for a prize pool of $3,791,970, with the top 277 players being paid. So my job was to outlast at least 2,501 other players.

Unfortunately, my table assignment indicated that this goal was not going to be easy. I was at Table 42, Seat 5, and at Seat 7 of the same table was J.C. Tran, who is currently ranked either 1st or 16th in the world depending on which measure you're using. Either way, he's not the kind of person you want two seats after you in your very first big tournament.

We all began with $3,000 in tournament chips. My first hand dealt was pocket eights, which I played from middle position with a standard raise. The big blind called and flopped trip sixes. He got a bit more excited than he should have, and I folded to his lead-out bet. He showed off the six in his hand.

The next hand I played was A9, which flopped top pair, top kicker (972). A late position caller raised my pot-sized bet. Remembering Phil Gordon's advice not to go broke with one pair, I gave him credit for a higher pocket pair or maybe a set, and folded.

Now I was down to 2,450 chips and starting to feel like a donkey. Things brightened up a bit when my AA held up against KQ on a JJK47 board. I was able to extract just about the maximum I could from my opponent, given that we were both scared of trips, and I was up to 3,825.

Round two, blinds up to 50/100. I correctly read a player for high pockets and declined to call his early-position raise with my AJ. For unknown reasons another player decided to take him on with K9. The early-position player's QQ held up (as it would have against my hand).

Where was J.C. in the middle of all this? Getting a chair massage at the table, actually, and chatting up all the players around him (as well as the occasional fan who jumped the guardrail for an autograph). But he was definitely paying attention. Not ten minutes after I'd finished stacking my winnings from the AA-KQ hand, he pulled off his headphones and pointed out to me that I'd left a $500 chip among the $25 chips -- unintentional, of course, but disallowed by tournament rules because it could allow a player to underrepresent the size of his chipstack. I'm sure J.C. was using the first rounds to scope out other players, in addition to disarming his opponents by making friends with them.

After the second round, we had our first 15-minute break. This is probably the only time on Earth that the men have had to wait in line for the bathroom while the women zip right in.

When we returned, the blinds were up to 100/200. I went the whole round without playing a hand, partly because J.C. woke up and started playing. Or more accurately, he began stealing some pots. His pattern was fairly simple: regardless of position, if nobody had entered the pot yet, he slightly overbet the pot (e.g., for 100/200 he'd raise to 325 or 350). Most of the time the rest of the table wilted like butter lettuce in the sun. Occasionally someone would reraise, and he'd either fold or call, then generally proceed to play the flop very aggressively. Interestingly, nobody ever called his raises; I don't think anyone wanted to try to outplay him after the flop.

One big hand made quite an impression on the rest of the table. It started off pretty standard: J.C. in early position is reraised by a late-position player (the same guy who played me on the AA-KQ hand), and he calls. Flop is AdJdx. J.C. leads out and LP reraises all-in. J.C. calls in a flash and shows..... Td4d, which elicited gasps from everyone. He made his flush on the river and doubled up (luckily for him, the LP had himself just won a big pot and was briefly the table chipleader).

By "quite an impression," I mean "holy crap, this guy is insane." There's just no way this was anything but reckless play. However, once J.C. emerged alive from the hand, the rest of the table knew that our folding equity against him wasn't worth much. And now that J.C. had a huge stack, we ruefully realized that his earlier stealing was just the start of the carnage. His raises got larger and even more frequent, seemingly regardless of earlier action in the hand. I was happy to survive to the 100/200/25 round with a measly 2,425 stack.

J.C. was smart enough to get the heck out of the way with my early position raise of QQ. A late-position player mysteriously called me (I say "mysteriously" because I was obviously one of the tightest players at the table, having played three hands in nearly four hours, so my early-position raise surely meant AA/KK/AK/QQ), and the flop came Q9x. I bet the pot and he came over the top all-in. Earlier in the hand I assumed he wasn't an idiot and must have been holding AA/KK/AK/QQ (which would have been the only explanation for the "mysterious" call), so I gladly called, expecting that I'd just cracked aces or kings. Nope, he was on a draw with JT. I doubled up to about 4,600.

A couple hands later, every NLHE player's dream: AA on the button all-in preflop against KK. Up to 9,500 and I was ecstatic to make it to the second break.

No hands played through 150/300/25, and by 200/400/50 I was blinded down to about 7,600. Meanwhile, J.C. was continuing to run over the table, amassing an impressive stack of ante chips.

Next a near rerun of an earlier hand: my AA holds up against KK preflop, and I'm up to about 11,000. Then I decided to try stealing with J9 against two blinds who were playing meekly. They both called, surprisingly (or maybe not; maybe they thought I'd be a pushover post-flop). I represented pairing the king on the flop with an overbet, and they folded. Aces twice more but raked just small pots from them. I was up to over 14,000 and well above average at that point in the tournament.

Of course, all this time J.C. is continuing his aggressive play, generally avoiding confrontations and rarely losing a showdown (though he did double-up a short stack who sucked out on him). So with the exception of my few big hands, I was steadily losing 1,300 every time the dealer button went around the table, and I needed to make a move soon, or else my above-average 14,000 would be wiped out quickly. The good news was I survived to the 300/600/75 round. The bad news was we were now at the 300/600/75 round.

The turning point of the tournament for me was just before the dinner break. J.C. opened as usual, though this time with a call (as he occasionally did). At that point this meant nothing, of course, but I was about to learn more, because I found AK suited in the big blind. I raised to 1,500, which I meant as an isolation raise to get out the big blind. That much worked; he folded. However, J.C. reraised to 4,500. Replaying the hand to that point, I judged his initial call (versus a stealing raise) to indicate a slowplayed low or middle pocket pair, and now he was trying to put me on a hand. There was also a possibility of AK/AQ/AJ but it seemed less likely because of my holding. Anyway, the pot odds were good at this point and I called, hoping to pair the flop...

... which came 999 -- freaky. It was obvious to both of us that neither of us had quads; T9 and A9 were outside possibilities but just not believable. So we were pretty much playing just our hole cards against each other.

Given my read on J.C., I knew he had the better hand. With seven outs (including the fourth 9, which would have given me the pot with the ace kicker), I was about 28% to improve by the river, and I was sure any improvement would have won the hand for me. With about 11,000 in the pot and about 8,500 in my stack, I seriously doubted I could bluff J.C. off his flopped full house.

From J.C.'s perspective, I had two moves (check or all-in), and neither would have helped him decide whether I was holding a made hand. Checking could be a slowplay or weakness, and all-in could be a value bet or a bluff.

Anyway, I showed my stripes and picked weakness. I checked.

To his credit, J.C. responded with a very, very nice bet of $6,500, which was very close to a fair price in pot-odds terms. (A neutral price would have been about $4,500.) He was basically saying to me "I think you have two overcards. Go ahead and draw, but it'll cost you more than it's worth. Moreover, given your now-wimpy stack size, I'm committing enough to the pot that you cannot possibly get me to fold now." In other words, classic no-limit betting.

I folded. Afterward, J.C. asked whether I had AK. I said yes, and he said he had a full house but if I'd hit, I'd have won. I'm satisfied believing this story because it's consistent with the betting, and since I was the second-largest stack at the table at that point, I can't imagine him wanting to tangle with me without a very strong hand. But hey, he's a pro and I'm not; maybe he had AJ or 72.

At the dinner break I called my railbirds on the phone and let them know things were looking bleak. With 6,525 chips I could last about four more rounds before going broke to the blinds and antes. About half an hour after we returned from dinner an EP opened with 5x BB, and I reraised all-in with TT. He called with Ad3d, and my hand was looking great until the A on the turn, and I was out, around 480th out of a field of 2,778 (top 17.2%) and about 200 spots from the money.

Short of cashing in the tournament, I think I got as much as I could out of this experience. I butted heads with one of the currently hottest pro players in the world, got AA five times in six tournament hours and raked a pot from each of them, and learned a lot about aggressive tournament style (which I've applied twice since then in single-table tourneys and cashed in both (Update: make that three)). I didn't make any glaring errors, at least none that a player at my level would realize. I made it as deep into the field as would be expected by my style (solid but slow in adjusting opening hand requirements to the increasing blinds), and am as a result working on specific improvements in my game. I also decided that the PLO8 event was negative EV and didn't enter it, which probably saved me another $1,500. As far as weekend vacations go, this one was on the expensive side, but well worth it.

Last week PokerStars added HORSE to its repertoire of games. HORSE is an acronym for Hold 'Em, Omaha 8, Razz, Stud, and Stud 8 ("Eight or better" hi-low stud). The game types switches after each round, where a round lasts for as many hands as there are seats at the table. Or something like that. Anyway, HORSE is reputed to be a better test of general poker skills because it requires mastery, or at least competence, in many of the major forms of poker.

On day one PokerStars had only $1/$2 limit cash games. These are bigger stakes than I've ever played, but I wanted to give it a try. In each of my first two sessions I turned $10 into $80. Brimming with confidence, I then went on a bender in my third session and turned $80 into $0.

On day three PokerStars introduced HORSE tournaments. After reading up a bit on Razz strategy (where I noticed I was losing the most money among the five different game types), I entered two $3.40 tourneys and won both of them.

So the jury's still out whether I have any HORSE skills. But here are my observations:

• Limit is quite a different game from no-limit. I haven't put my finger on exactly how it's different, but there is quite a bit more subtlety to betting than with no-limit. Suppose you have a monster hand against what you believe to be your opponent's playable hand. Thus, your goal is to maximize the amount of money in the pot, as well as to keep the hand going as long as possible. In no-limit, you have four options: make a big bet and hope he comes along for the ride; make a value bet and hope he doesn't smell a trap; check-call and represent a draw; or check-raise and hope he calls. (Obviously, there's also bet-reraise but that's a rare dream scenario.) In any of these cases the visible action is different, so in some ways it's clear to an attentive observer what's going on. But with limit, there isn't any quantitative difference between a big bet and a value bet, which makes it harder to discern the meaning of an opening bet. Moreover, if your goal is to get as much money in the pot as possible, then other factors become relevant, such as who begins the action and how many players are at the table. It's possible that limit is actually a simpler game than no-limit and that I'm confusing lack of familiarity with complexity, but at the moment I find I'm spending more cognitive cycles trying to figure out what the heck my opponent is thinking, whereas in no-limit I find I can usually narrow it down to three choices (strong representing weak, weak representing strong, or on a draw).
• Razz seems to be a game of bluffing. That's the only way I can think of that makes it interesting; otherwise, it's just several people calling bets and hoping the next card doesn't make a pair. Unfortunately, at the lower levels, I don't see people paying a great deal of attention to other players' hands. How else can you explain why someone keeps calling with 89K when I'm showing 762?
• In hi-low stud, forget it: you're not going to be able to make a low hand. I don't care if your starting hand is A23. Just fold.
• Tournaments seem like they will last forever until you get to the non-stud-based games (Hold 'Em and Omaha). Suddenly, instead of tiny antes and small bring-ins, you are hit with blinds -- which have gone way up since the last Hold 'Em round. One round of $100/$200 Hold 'Em quickly knocks out the small stacks.
• Stud is a hard game because it requires card memory. In Hold 'Em, the only thing you have to remember is the previous betting action. Since bets are closely related to threats, your primal fear center naturally remembers things like check-raises or suspicious cold calls. But in Stud, you have to quickly memorize the ranks and suits of all visible cards, including those that get immediately folded after the deal. You never know when your hand will develop into a two-outer situation that's actually a zero-outer if you'd noticed that both black tens were folded on third street.

This is the story of how I broke my game.

When I try to look through the backs of my opponents' cards, I usually see nothing but bicycles or crosshatch patterns. Every once in a while I correctly guess what someone's holding, but it's due to fear of monsters under the bed more than astute deductions. In any event my guess is usually too late to benefit from it. An example might be a loose opponent's reraise of my KQ on a Q-high board: OK, I'm starting to believe he has AQ, but I'm pot-committed, so all I get to do at this point is call and see it.

Despite my card myopia, I was on a pretty good upward trend a week or two ago. By applying straightforward late-tourney strategy, I frequently survived the bubble, and then through unbridled aggression frightened my opponents into giving up second or even first place. I nearly quadrupled my original bankroll at the peak and was feeling confident.

But rather than falling prey once again to the Peter Principle, I took a break. I sat in with a $1.00 buyin at a $0.01/$0.02 no-limit table. I resolved to ignore the monsters under the bed and not fold my cards unless an opponent had told me a consistent story about why he was beating me.

Obviously, this required me to pay attention to those stories, which I did. And I discovered a couple interesting things.

• Amazingly enough, stories don't always make sense. Example #1: if you really did hit that ace-high flop as hard as your bet suggests, why did you limp preflop? I don't have an ace, either, but I'll reraise you to let you know I think you're full of crap, and what do you know, you fold. Example #2: your big bet represents that the turned board pair helped you. So you're telling me that you checked a junk board on the button with a pair on the flop? Nope, I don't think so. I'll call.
• If you develop theories that suggest it's worthwhile to stay in the hand, you are more likely to stay in the game and find that the turn or river improves your hand. Continuing Example #2, I call your turn bet, and hey, the river gives me top two pair, ha ha ha. These are the kinds of events that usually occur only when we're both cowards (in the sense that we're afraid of post-flop play) and move all-in to make sure we get to see the full board.
• Card-reading isn't always about knowing what your opponent has. Sometimes it's simply a matter of eliminating some of his possible holdings. That can be enough for you to conclude that your seemingly poor hand still has him beat. This is especially fun when you cold-call to the river and beat AK with T5 on a 925JJ board.

If you've been through this experience before, you might know what happens next. You feel invincible. Suddenly a 92o is a completely playable hand. Every cheap flop is worth seeing. You become the guy who keeps pot odds low for the straight/flush drawing hands (even though you yourself have nothing), which you feel entitled to do simply because you've correctly identified that they're on draws.

This was tremendously fun for a while, especially when I made seemingly impossible calls for most of my stack on the river and exposed my opponents' broken draws or dangling high cards. However, a few days after moving back to my $6.50 SNG games, things fell apart. To my opponents' credit, they identified me as a classic LAG (loose-aggressive) player, and tightened up. It's hard to improve with 92o against QQ, even if you do hit the flop. And combined with the big bets that typically accompany the low-buyin turbos, my new playing style meant that a single mistake early in the game pretty much crippled me, making cashes extremely unlikely.

It turns out that I'm not the first to have evolved into this trap. Explains Ray Zee:

This is the advanced stage of a poker player's career. Now the cat is out of the bag. He wins more often and gets what he believes is the right feel for the game. Great plays come about by pushing marginal hands and making fantastic calls on the end through his ability to read hands. Poker is fun played this way. But no longer is the tight player inside the body. All hands start to look like they have value, and with skillful manipulation winning the pot is easy. He begins to believe that he can play bad hands for profit where in reality he can't. The player has taken a big step backward and a long leap forwards at the same time. The tight style needed is gone and a new imaginative style is born and he becomes loose aggressive. Unfortunately for him, if he gets too loose he loses all his money and may never recover. But for those that are moving up the ladder, this is the last leap before the finishing stage.

Except for the "this is the advanced stage" part of this quote, this describes precisely how I feel. Internally, I was hyper-aware of what's going on at the table, but externally I was the practical equivalent of a coin dispenser.

So I took a few days off, re-read Harrington, and then last night returned to the game as a tight player. Two cashes out of three tournaments, 1st place and 2nd place. I made a couple great calls that I probably would have folded two weeks ago, so not all my newfound abilities are lost. It's too small a sample size to reach any conclusions, but it's certainly better than losing. We'll see what happens next.

BB (t1690)
UTG (t2470)
MP (t2790)
Sowbug (t1380)
Button (t5240)
SB (t1410)

Preflop: Sowbug is CO with 7s, 2c.    
1 fold, MP calls t30, 2 folds, SB completes, BB checks.

Flop: (t90) 7h, 2s, 7c (3 players)

Warning: whatever you call a lower form of blog post than a bad-beat blog post, that's what this post is. These weren't even bad beats; they're just death hands. But there's an attempt at a lesson at the end if you feel like slogging through the crap.

There's an ESPN episode of one of the 2005 WSOP final tables (not the main event) where Morgan Machina began as the chipleader. Over and over, Morgan faces the short stacks and ends up on the wrong side of AK vs. pockets. His big chip lead dwindles. Eventually, when he's the short stack, he goes all-in, and as he stands up and looks down at the board, he pleads to nobody in particular, "come on... it's my turn."

I didn't feel much empathy for Morgan when I first saw the show, but today I do. This was a bad weekend, poker-wise, and it can be summed up by involvement in races against bad calls where my turn never came up.

First, the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP). After the first break I'm doing OK with close to 6,000 chips (about twice the average stack) when I find myself with 88 on a rag flop against one opponent, a pushmonkey. And what do you know, pushmonkey pushes. I think he has two overcards, and I have him covered, so I know (a) I'm a 75% favorite, and (b) if I knock him out, I will stop being annoyed by his constant, skill-free pushing on the flop. So I call, and his KJo catches a K on the turn. Once I'm crippled, a few hands later my AT pairs an ace on the flop. Of course, the same pushmonkey pushes again, and I call only to see him complete his ridiculous flush with his any-two-s0000ted hole cards. But as Wes said, better to go out 1314th and earn nothing than to go out 200-something and earn nothing. At least I got to spend more time with the kids on Fathers Day.

Second: Fire up a PokerStars SNG. Third hand: 88. Flop a set. All-in against JJ, who's ready to pack things up and go home until he makes a flush on the river. Then I spend the next 45 minutes working my 170 in chips up to 1,180, and lose with 33 on another raggedy flop when a big stack (who of course called my 4x BB preflop raise with J8o, and then calls my all-in) catches an eight.

Third: maybe it's PokerStars out to get me. So move to Full Tilt and cash in the satellite token I won a few weeks ago on the $8,000 guarantee (since obviously the best thing after a losing streak is to dive right in again and keep playing in the very same mindset that got you started on the losing streak). For the next 52 hands I am dealt nothing better than A8 offsuit; I see exactly one flop... in the big blind with 32 offsuit against 6 limpers. Finally, on the 53rd hand, I get 99. I have 580 chips -- not one of the lost 920 put into the pot voluntarily -- and I push preflop because gosh, it would be nice to take those blinds and chip up to something like 700. Does it matter that my SF% is 1.9% up to this point? Does it matter that I opened under the gun? Does my raise get any f-ing respect at this table? Nope, small blind calls with ace-crap, and you know what happened on the river.

Fourth: Back to PokerStars for one last 2-table SNG before bed. Doing fairly well here with a middle stack two spots away from the bubble (6 players left and 4 pay). It's folded around to me in the small blind with 44. Big blind has me *barely* covered by about 200 chips. He doesn't know the first thing about me because I was just moved to the final table about 5 hands earlier. So I push. He quickly calls with that legendary monster starting hand, A3o. And here's where I start to feel like Morgan: come on, dealer, it's my turn to win a god damned race ONCE tonight. But you know how it is, the PokerStars server can't hear me because it's way up in Canada, and the ace on the flop sends me to bed.

Disclaimers: I did cash a couple times in some other SNGs, and as is always the case I don't seem to remember the races I won. Like I said at the start, this is a crappy whining I-lost-and-I'm-annoyed blog post.

So I was torturing my wife with each of these got-all-my-money-in-with-the-best-hand-but-that-fool-called-and-sucked-out-on-me stories. She suggested I move up in buyins to a point where people don't make stupid calls with A3o for over 90% of their stack. Those of you who read the 2+2 forums know the answer to this argument. If you suck at lower buyins, you're going to suck more at higher buyins, and no, you're not that special kind of player who can beat only players above a certain caliber.

Face it, Mike: you put yourself into vulnerable situations with easily defeatable hands. And to cite Wes again, looking at the actual matchup of hands is results-oriented thinking. Unless you're a brilliant Negreanu-level hand reader, at best your read on an opponent is going to be a fuzzy range of hands. Just as in the Birthday Paradox, all the hands that beat you within that range add up to a lot more than you expect. According to PokerStove, A3o vs. 44 is a 70% underdog. But if I knew he's the kind of dumbass who would call with A3o, then his actual range is probably 22+, A2s+, A2o+. And that range vs. 44 is actually favored 51% to 49%. Granted, he had no idea what I had; there was a chance I was bluffing. The moment he saw my 44 he probably regretted his decision. But I let him make the mistake by risking everything as an underdog to steal one big blind.

I promised a lesson at the end of all this. The most succinct summary would be just to read what Wes wrote on the subject. In my own words: pockets are just one pair. You'll lose often, much more than you expect, with just one pair. Don't go broke with one pair. If you identify another player as a dumbass, good for you -- but act on that conclusion by not getting into a situation where he can luck into hurting you. And then maybe you won't end up writing a blog post like this where you whine about losing a few coinflips in a row.

After losing a few too many late-stage tournaments with AA, whether to KK making a set on the flop, or to my opponent's pair on the flop making two pair on the turn, or to insane miracle flushes on the river, I have to say I'm warming up to this starting hand once again after the following:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (9 handed)

UTG+1 ($10.15)
MP1 ($4.25)
Sowbug ($9.65)
MP3 ($8.50)
CO ($10.10)
Button ($3.85)
SB ($8.65)
BB ($3.35)
UTG ($23.60)

Preflop: Sowbug is MP2 with Ah, Ad.    
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $0.30, 1 fold, Sowbug raises to $0.60,
5 folds, UTG+1 calls $0.30.

Flop: ($1.35) Jh, As, Qd (2 players)
UTG+1 checks, Sowbug checks.

Turn: ($1.35) Qs (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $0.75, Sowbug calls $0.75.

River: ($2.85) 2h (2 players)
UTG+1 bets $1, Sowbug raises to $3, UTG+1 raises to $8.80,
Sowbug calls $5.30 (All-In).

Final Pot: $19.95

Results below:  
UTG+1 has Qc Ac (full house, queens full of aces).  
Sowbug has Ah Ad (full house, aces full of queens).  
Outcome: Sowbug wins $19.45. UTG+1 wins $0.50. 

I recently discovered a key point about No Limit Hold 'Em, and I'm going to share it with my loyal readers. Ready? Here it is.

In No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, position is very, very important.

Wait! Wait! Don't close this browser window yet!

Yes, I know. Everyone knows position is important. That's Poker 101. Everyone knows it, but not everyone feels it. To understand the difference between knowing and feeling, imagine yourself on the balcony of a third-story apartment. You lean over the railing and look down to the sidewalk below. Now you stretch a bit farther out, and for the briefest moment your feet slip.

What emotion are you feeling at this point? Almost certainly fear. Why fear? Is it because you once read a book telling you that falling from high places was dangerous? Have you ever actually fallen off a third-story balcony onto a sidewalk? No. You instinctively feel the danger. The situation is obviously dangerous, and you don't need anyone to tell you so.

Back to position. Do you know it, or do you feel it? Until recently, I was a knower, not a feeler. I knew that starting hand requirements were higher for earlier positions, but I honestly wasn't entirely sure why. I did my best to resist the urge to limp in with QTo under the gun, but folding lovely hands like that felt like such a letdown (and that was certainly a feeling!).

I wish I could say I had an epiphany of some kind in my poker game that suddenly caused me to feel the importance of position. Nope, no such luck. Instead, I just fell off the balcony a few hundred times.

But even slow learners can be taught. Nowadays, when I'm in early position and see ATo at a tough table, my first emotion isn't excitement, but dread. Dread of splattering once again on the sidewalk. And now that I feel that dread deep down inside myself, I think I'm qualified to make you feel the same way. Here we go.

First, stop thinking of a poker table as a big circle with everyone sitting around it. The roundness of the table is an optical illusion that tricks beginners into ignoring position. Instead, unroll it into a long, narrow table. The guy in the small blind is at the front of the line. The guy with the dealer button is last in line.

Now I want you to imagine that we're changing the rules of the game. No money is involved. Every player starts with a score of one point.

At the beginning of each round, each player receives a piece of paper with a number written on it. Nobody knows your number except you. The numbers range between 1 and 20. Number 1 is the worst number. Number 20 is best. Number 2 beats Number 1, Number 3 beats Number 2, and so on. Number 20 is actually just a rumor; the rules say it exists, but I don't know of anyone who's ever actually held it. I saw Number 19 once on television. I did get Number 18 once, four years ago, and I've gotten Number 17 several times. The low numbers are really common; fifty percent of the time, you get Number 1. (For math weenies, the probability of a given number X is approximately 0.5 to the Xth power.)

There's one way to win this game: be the last player left. For each round of the game, people get a new piece of paper with a new, random number written on it, and the players either opt in or opt out for that round. All the players who opted in for the round show their numbers to each other. The player with the highest number wins the round and is awarded a point. The other players each lose a point. If they are left with zero points, they're knocked out for the rest of the game, and they lose.

What if people tie? Excellent question. For numbers higher than 5, ties lose and all players who have opted in lose a point. All other ties win and all players with the tying number receive a point.

If you're following the rules so far, you understand that it's bad to opt in to a round where your number is not the highest, especially when you're down to your last point. Opting out is boring, but it's safe, and you can theoretically get all the way to second place simply by opting out. Moreover, there's no such thing as a guaranteed win when multiple players opt in; even if you had Number 20, you'd lose if you went up against another player who had it, too.

So let's imagine you're first in a line of ten players in the first round of the game (meaning you have only one point). You haven't looked at your number yet. Do you opt in or opt out?

Even though you don't know what your number is, your instinct might be telling you to opt out. There are nine other players acting after you. If even one of them opts in with you and has a higher number, you lose the game entirely. (Note that unlike poker, this game doesn't increase your potential reward when more players opt in; at most you win one point during a round.) Chances are you'd be making the right decision to opt out without even looking at your number.

Now suppose you're last in line, and everyone ahead of you has opted out. Can you safely opt in? Of course you can; there's nobody after you. In fact, you'd always opt in to get the free point, even if you were holding Number 1. Once again, the number you're holding is irrelevant.

But what if instead the next-to-last guy did opt in. Now you're facing competition if you join him and opt in, too. If you did so, would you win? What number do you think he has? Or, to put it another way, was he taking a big risk by opting in? Not really; the only risk he was taking was that a single player (you) would opt in with a higher number than his. It's certainly possible that he's holding an amazing number like 19 or 20, but it's also quite possible that he'd opt in with 1 or 2, for the very same reasons that the last player would always opt in if he were unopposed (remember that in a low-number tie such as 1 vs. 1, both players win). So you should look at your piece of paper and opt in even if you have only a medium-strength number. In fact, given the fact that you have only a single late-position opponent, it would be somewhat rational (though pretty reckless) to opt in regardless of the number you have.

At this point we've established that opting in at the front of the line is always risky, but opting in at the end of the line is sometimes risk-free (in fact, it reduces future risk because you receive another point that protects you from elimination). Both cases are true regardless of the number you're holding. At the front of the line you're facing as many as nine opponents, but at the end of the line you know exactly how many you're facing.

Are you starting to feel why it's better to be at the end of the line? If not, then let me tell you the final rule I forgot to mention: if you lose, you are thrown off a third-story balcony. (Yes, this game is harsh, but it's educational so it's for a good cause.)

If it's still not hitting home, don't feel bad. I had originally imagined this article being only a couple paragraphs long and not nearly as intricate as it turned out to be. My goal was to describe a simplified game that emphasized position even more than Hold 'Em does, but still roughly resembled the actual pattern of Hold 'Em play. As it turned out, this imaginary game is simple, but it's hard to describe concisely.

But if you do now feel the beginnings of a new instinct about early vs. late position, congratulations! Next time you play poker, try applying that feeling to your game. In early position (sorry, I mean at the front of the line), formerly strong hands will show themselves as the chip-draining traps that they are. At the end of the line, you'll begin to recognize situations where your hand becomes a powerful weapon, regardless of the actual cards you're holding. And the same day you save a third of your stack by folding AJo under the gun only to see the hand develop into an all-in war between KK and QQ that you completely misread as a blind resteal, you'll also take down a pot on an ace-high flop with your 72o on the button against a middle-position guy who's convinced your ace's kicker is stronger than his. Both hands will intoxicate you, and that's a feeling you don't need to be taught.

Three weeks' worth of Mookie tourneys, condensed into one blog post.

Two weeks ago: raced home from work and registered at 7:00:57, seconds before registration closed (yay!). My first hand is KK (yay!). One player calls my big preflop raise (yay!). Flop comes rainbow, Jack-high (yay!). I bet the pot; other player reraises me all-in (yay!). I call, expecting TPTK, and indeed see opponent's AJ (yay!). Turn brings an ace (boo!), and I'm out. My first sub-minute Mookie. At least I can feel good that I got all my money in with the best hand.

One week ago: got no cards the first hour. Then things picked up after the break, and after a few great hands pitted against slightly-less-great hands, I was a huge chipleader. Then a couple very weird boards knocked me down a few pegs. Finally Waffles followed through on his threat to kick my ass next time I reraised his small-blind steal attempt. This time I had TT, and if it's possible to call faster than instacalling, Waffles did it with his KK. Out in 5th place, after the bubble.

Last night: lesson learned, or relearned I guess, was just to shut off the computer and get blinded out rather than trying to play while having a family discussion. Waffles (congrats on his eventual victory in the tournament) got me again; I called a preflop raise from a third player with my AJs, and Waffles reraised us both. First player folded; I suddenly came down with a severe case of aw-screw-it, called to see his AA, then shut off the computer and returned to real life. A complete waste of $11. Uh, except for the valuable lesson learned, I suppose.

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

Things are looking better:

Notable results:

• $4.40 180-player SNG, 1st place, $216 (with a "you're disgusting" bonus comment from my heads-up opponent after my all-in A4s sucked out against his AJs).
• $4.40 180-player SNG, 3rd place, $85.
• $4.40 180-player SNG, 10th place, $8.64 (not especially lucrative, but significant nonetheless because I was able to reach the money in 3 of my 4 most recent $4.40 SNGs).
• A bunch of smaller SNG finishes in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place.

My game has tightened up almost ridiculously. Before the final table in the 180-man SNGs, I've typically seen fewer than 10% of flops. It's agonizing to fold AQ in middle position, but rewarding that my raises are respected and that I win most of my showdowns.

The downside is that I've regressed to almost exclusively Level 1/Level 3 thinking. Either my starting hand is not premium and I fold, or it's a monster so I can safely skip Level 2 (what's my opponent holding?) and go to Level 3 (how can I make my opponent think I'm weak?). This won't hold up against skilled opponents, who should peg me as a slowplaying rock and refuse to give me their chips when I am in a pot.

In future games I'll make a couple adjustments: first, play a few more late-position hands and occasional trash hands, making sure to show these down cheaply if I can. Second, spend the 90% of the game when I've folded a hand paying attention to my opponents' play, attempting to build some Level 2 skills. For the 180-player SNGs where I'm going to spend perhaps an hour with the same opponents before a redraw, the study should be especially worthwhile, as opposed to the turbo SNGs, where players are either weak-tight or super-aggro, and in any event gone after 20 minutes on average.

There are a couple factors at work here.

First, my 2nd-place finish at the $4.40 180-man SNG triggered a textbook case of the Peter Principle; I promoted myself from my level of competence ($6.50 SNGs) to my level of incompetence ($16 SNGs and $20 180-man SNGs). There were a few ITM finishes, so these weren't total disasters. But they were net negative and took a huge chunk from my $200 bankroll that I've been nursing since 2003.

Second, after exhaustion from 4-tabling for a couple weeks, I wanted to try thinking a bit deeper about my plays, going beyond the ABC strategy that generally ekes out a reasonable profit in SNGs. That's a good goal, and it's obviously crucial to becoming a better poker player, but (a) I'm not very good at it yet, (b) I used it as an excuse to stay longer in second-place hands, and (c) I applied it even to turbo SNGs, which doesn't make any sense because the answer to the question "What is my opponent thinking?" is almost always "absolutely nothing." A mechanical, tight-preflop, aggressive post-flop strategy continues to be optimal in turbos, and any second-guessing disguised as deep thought simply doesn't help.

So what to do? Well, notice the little red smudge in the bottom right of the graph that points upward if you squint. That's me after listening to a podcast from Chris Ferguson. A couple years ago, as a personal challenge, Ferguson started with $1 in an online account and worked it up to over $20,000. The specific numbers aren't particularly interesting; anyone who can afford $1 can probably afford $100, and $20,000 isn't enough to quit your day job. What is interesting is Ferguson's discussion of his bankroll management during the challenge. He never risked more than 5% of his bankroll on any single table. For example, if he had a $20 bankroll, he would play only $1-buyin ring games, and $1 tournaments. (Obviously, he had to make exceptions at the very beginning, because there isn't much you can do with 5 cents even on an online poker site.)

Besides limiting downside risk -- you won't go broke unless you hit a 20-event dry spell at the lowest buyins -- Chris's approach creates a nonmonetary incentive to succeed at individual events based on the assumption that higher-buyin events are more fun to play. Suppose my bankroll is $120. I can't enter $6.50 tournaments anymore because that would risk more than 5%. That sucks! But I do have enough to enter $3.40 tournaments, and if I come in first place, I now have $132 -- just enough to play one $6.50 tourney.

Applying a new bankroll management strategy, as well as attempting to use the right basic strategy for SNGs, seems to have stopped the downward slide. I'll no doubt keep bumping up against incompetence as I build my bankroll and move up in buyin levels. But if I tilt again, at least it'll be at a lower price.

Tonight's Mookie tourney was a heartbreaker. After a weak start in which the relentless chatter of bloggers seduced me into playing too many hands, I tightened up and worked my way up to chipleader. I said to myself, "Hmm, better take a picture of this one while it lasts." Et voila:

Moments later, the horror began:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (7 handed)

CO (t4585)
Button (t3200)
SB (t7153)
BB (t4860)
Sowbug (t6426)
MP1 (t4470)
MP2 (t2806)

Preflop: Sowbug is UTG with Js, Qc.    
Sowbug calls t200, 1 fold, MP2 calls t200, 3 folds, BB checks.

Flop: (t700) Ts, 9c, Jh (3 players)
BB checks, Sowbug bets t750.

So far, so good. I have top pair, reasonable kicker. I bet the pot to keep pot odds poor for anyone on a draw. And I have an excellent bluffing hand because nearly any card that completes someone else's straight also completes my straight.

MP2 calls t750, BB folds.

Hmm, so MP2 either is on a draw but can't compute pot odds, or also has a pair. Let's call it AJ (though wouldn't he have raised preflop with that? Maybe not in middle position, but most likely he would. And wouldn't he have come over the top on the flop?), or maybe 67 or even 78.

Turn: (t2200) 8h (2 players)

OK, I have my straight. If he was on a draw, he probably does, too, and I beat him. If he did have TPTK, I beat him. Let's put him to a decision.

Sowbug bets t1856, MP2 calls t1856 (All-In).

River: (t5912) 3h (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: t5912

Results below:  
Sowbug has Js Qc (straight, queen high).  
MP2 has Kc Qh (straight, king high).  
Outcome: MP2 wins t5912.

Ouch! Turns out he'd flopped the nut straight and my best hope all along was a chop. Even if I had somehow figured out he was holding KQ on the turn, I'd have been shoved into a Dan Harrington back-alley mugging with my betting earlier on. This hand dropped me to middle of the pack, but I was far from crippled. Still, it's no-limit hold 'em, so you don't need to be crippled to be knocked out on a single hand:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (7 handed)

UTG (t4585)
MP1 (t3700)
MP2 (t7053)
CO (t4560)
Sowbug (t3320)
SB (t4070)
BB (t6212)

Preflop: Sowbug is Button with 5c, Ah.    
1 fold, MP1 calls t200, 2 folds, Sowbug calls t200, 1 fold, BB checks.

Flop: (t700) 6c, 7h, Ad (3 players)
BB checks, MP1 bets t200, Sowbug calls t200, BB folds.

Turn: (t1100) 5h (2 players)
MP1 bets t3300 (All-In), Sowbug calls t2920 (All-In).

River: (t7320) 2s (2 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: t7320

Results below:  
MP1 has 6s 6d (three of a kind, sixes).  
Sowbug has 5c Ah (two pair, aces and fives).  
Outcome: MP1 wins t7320.

... and I'm out. No comment on his hand, other than that it was nearly the same hand I used to knock out the esteemed SirFWALGMan earlier on in the tourney:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (8 handed)

CO (t1413)
Button (t900)
SB (t1075)
Sowbug (t1705)
UTG (t1250)
UTG+1 (t605)
MP1 (t1932)
MP2 (t1645)

Preflop: Sowbug is BB with 5c, Ah.    
4 folds, CO raises to t150, 2 folds, Sowbug calls t100.

Flop: (t325) 3c, Ad, 2h (2 players)
Sowbug checks, CO bets t250, Sowbug calls t250.

Turn: (t825) 5d (2 players)
Sowbug checks, CO bets t600, Sowbug raises to t1305, CO calls t413 (All-In).

River: (t3143) 3h (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: t3143

Results below:  
Sowbug has 5c Ah (two pair, aces and fives).  
CO has As 6h (two pair, aces and threes).  
Outcome: Sowbug wins t3143.

... only this one went so, so differently, and in the winning version at least my excuse for playing A5o at all was that I was in the big blind heads-up against an aggressive player against whom I thought, correctly, I could get action if the stars aligned.

Moral of the story? Don't take screenshots until you're finished. :)

Congrats to jjok and surflexus who were heads-up last time I checked!

I'm trying a Google Calendar feature: tracking online poker tournaments that people like me might be interested in joining. You can subscribe to it, too, either through the XML feed, through the iCal feed, or by searching for it in Google Calendar search.

All times are Eastern, which matches the timezone that PokerStars uses. Unfortunately Google Calendar doesn't seem to do the right thing for people (like me) in other timezones. I'll look into whether that's user error or a to-be-implemented feature.

Took 4th place in a $4.40 180-player SNG last night, raking in about $57. Yay, woo hoo, good result, right?

Maybe yes, maybe no. In every tournament where you aren't the last one standing, afterward you naturally focus overly on that last hand. You know, the one where you hesitated a few tense moments before swinging the bet slider all the way to the right, clicked "Raise $(everything I've got left)" and winced, hoping not to hear the clink of the other player calling you. Then you instantly regret to see that yes, he did have you outkicked, and the board brings no miracles. IGHN.

In this case, four of us remained at the final table. Our chip leader (t120,000) had properly taken a LAGgy strategy as we got shorthanded. Thus, it was not unexpected to see him min-raise under the gun to $3,200, which was the going rate for buying the blinds. Button folds to me in the small, where I find A9o. Now, ace-nine is usually crap, but at this table it's a premium hand, and my t15,000 isn't earning any interest on its own (especially since the middle stacks are in the t40K range, far outside my reach unless I double up a couple times). I swing the bar and take a deep breath as I click. T120K shows me his AK, which holds up.

The simplistic, chump way of summarizing this hand is that I got donked out again with ace-trash against ace-better. Ace-better stencils another fish onto his fuselage, and I feel bad. But that view's way too narrow. This was a final-table situation with a big stack who could afford to raise/call with a wide starting range against the shortest stack. Earlier in the tourney I'd properly folded even AJ, 99 and 55 to early-position shows of strength, I stole blinds from average stacks with trash, and successfully goaded short-stacks to push into my KK and TT. And the luckbox was AWOL: I was never involved in a suckout. Each time, the best hand going into an all-in was the best hand coming out. I lasted longer than 176 other players; that has to mean something. Yeah, it was a good tournament and a good result.

What's my point? I think it's simply that 179 of 180 players in this tournament have a story about their last hand and how things might have turned out differently if they'd pushed earlier in the hand or else folded it entirely. One hundred and seventy-nine regrets. But the final hand is not the metric of your performance; it's really just the epilogue of a long story. The trick in advancing from a beginner poker player (where I am today) to an intermediate poker player is to study the whole story, even the parts that didn't have exciting, unexpected, or drastic endings, and learn from all of it.

I've been playing $4.40 180-person Sit-N-Go tournaments lately, after a cold streak in the smaller Turbo SNGs. The slower structure is refreshing; when antes begin hours rather than minutes into a tournament, it's far more likely you'll be outplayed by an opponent than blinded to death. Or, just as likely, you'll outplay yourself.

This brings me to The Mistake. Originally brought to my attention by jjok who was citing Poker Nerd, The Mistake is that move you make after hours of careful, quality play that cripples you or knocks you out, turning a potentially decent hourly profit into a stinging loss. It's the first thing you think of when you wake up the next morning. It's the hand your brain chooses to store it in ultra-high-res long-term memory so you can conveniently recite it down to the suit of each card six months later.

My two most recent Mistakes:

• Survived the bubble. My M is 8 and I have a good shot to make it to the final table. My A5o in the small blind was good enough for a steal attempt, but the big blind was sick of funding my comeback in the past few rounds and decided to call my raise. I flopped a four-flush with my ace of diamonds, and made a pair on the board with my five. I min-bet. Big blind, who has me covered, goes all-in. At a minimum I should read him for ace with a higher pairing kicker, or possibly medium pockets. But I called, feeling sure I'd see another diamond. Nope, he'd tilted briefly when he called me with 74o, he flopped a 45678 straight, and my low pair didn't improve on the turn or river. Note that the straight was irrelevant; the Mistake I made was risking all my chips on a draw when I believed my opponent held a better hand than I did. Finished 15th out of 180, and my memory of an otherwise well-played tourney is sour.
• This was the hand in mind when my alarm clock rang this morning. I'm seventh place in chips out of 19 players (i.e., next player out pops the bubble). Under the gun, I raise AQs to 3x BB. There's nothing wrong with this play; we're shorthanded and it's more likely than not to succeed as a steal. But the steal fails; the player to my left (who is sixth in chips) re-raises me with half his stack. At this point in the tourney this would be standard play for someone with medium pockets; you hope your opponent backs down, but if not you might flop a set or outplay him if the flop is scary and you have position. So that was my read -- 99, TT, or JJ. The conservative play would be to fold; why risk over half my stack to see a flop when I'm one position away from the money? But I had a more aggressive plan: call, and if I pair up (or even if a king comes), push all-in and see what happens. So I call, and the flop is T33. My post-flop plan has failed; in fact, I see a card that could have given him trips. I push anyway, he calls, and shows us all his pocket jacks. Only two minutes earlier I was in good position to cruise to the final table, but instead I finish in 19th place out of 180, which pays zero. I can't recall a time in my life when I wanted more desperately to rewind time 10 minutes than in this $4 online poker tournament.

Neither of these plays started out as The Mistake, but as I received more information later in the hand, I failed to adjust to accommodate it, and that's when the Mistake occurred. To be specific: I had a plan to steal the blinds or see the flop cheaply. When that plan failed, rather than abandoning it, I turned it, on the fly, into the "Risk My Entire Tournament On An Unpaired Ace" plan. Adrenaline sent me on tilt, and rather than asking the usual boring, disciplined question "Is my hand the best at the table?" my fishy side screamed "What exciting thing might happen to crush my opponent's made, monster hand?!!"

So that's my contribution to Poker Nerd's list of leaks to plug to avoid making The Mistake: much as you have a plan for the tournament and need to stick to it, you need to have a plan for each hand, including an exit strategy, and follow through when the exit conditions become true.

P.S. I am Poker Champ.

I started playing online poker about four months ago, and have logged around 300 tournaments since then. I'm net profitable (11% ROI, 30% ITM), but the nagging question remains: am I a donk? Mary asked me this question the other day -- phrased more positively and tactfully -- and here was my answer.

I'm not yet a good player, but I'm not a donkey, either. I often feel that I'm acting as a hit man for the stronger players at the table; I take tremendous risks (e.g., calling a short-stack's all-in with AJo) to knock out short stacks or at least keep them weak by stealing their blinds, while the big stacks wait for premium hands to further strengthen themselves. Of course they'll kill me, too, if they have the opportunity; there's no allegiance at the table. But eventually, if all goes well, we all cross the bubble, at which point I generally get immediately knocked out, winning second or third place for my trouble.

There are many exceptions, of course; sometimes my risks pay off big and I'm the big stack when we reach the money, and sometimes my heads-up play works well against a specific chipleader and I knock him off after a vicious uphill battle. And, of course, most of the time (70%) I just lose.

So it was with this mildly positive self-appraisal that I went to Las Vegas for one night this week. I entered two tournaments (Caesar's noon $80, and Monte Carlo's 9:00 a.m. $40). I got knocked out nearing the second break in the $80, and made it to the final two tables in the $40. I made it a point to take notes afterward and analyze my play while relaxing in the hotel room. I was disappointed to discover that in almost every key hand, I made serious mistakes, even obvious ones. Sometimes, of course, I drew out on the other player and was rewarded for my errors, but overall, my inexperience caught up with me quickly.

Examples:

• Early in $80, blinds 25/50, I have about $3,000 in chips. I'm on the button and raise my ATs to 3x BB. Blinds fold, MP limper (a solid player who hasn't yet shown down a hand) calls. Flop comes A4A rainbow. MP checks, I bet $1,000. MP thinks for about 5 seconds and moves all-in. I ask for a count, find out he has me covered, and I fold. At the time I figured he had ace with a better kicker. I now think this was a mistake and that he had a high pocket pair. At the time I didn't want to go out of the tournament out-kicked on an ace, which to me felt like a rookie mistake. But (a) it was unlikely that he had an ace given that there were three exposed to me, (b) he probably would have reraised me preflop with AK or AQ, so it's more likely he had high pockets, (c) even if my read was correct, there's still a chance that we'd chop if a high nonpairing card came on the turn or river, and finally (d) even if he did have me outkicked, I had a 6% chance of making a full house on the river. My $1,000 bet probably looked like a bluff -- wouldn't I try to slowplay trips? If that's how he perceived it, then I trapped him without even realizing it, and let him walk away with half my stack.
• A few minutes before the first break in the $80, blinds $50/100, I have $2,700. Dealt AKs on the button, folded to me, I raise to $300. SB calls, BB folds. Flop QT9. SB bets $600. I think for a bit and call. Turn Ace. I figure he has KQ, AQ, KT or AT, which should indicate that I need to be very, very careful about this hand, but for some unknown reason I go all-in. He thinks for a while out loud: "well, you don't have a straight, because if you did, you'd have put me all-in on the flop. You called my earlier bet, and the ace helped you, so you must have AQ. I can beat two pair. I call." (Excellent analysis, by the way; I felt terribly, terribly outclassed at this point, and I knew I was dead because he was afraid of a straight but not afraid of two pair, so he must have flopped a set). Sure enough, he turns up pocket 9s and is ecstatic to see my crappy Big Slick. His joy turns to vicious frothing rage when the river brings a Jack, completing my gutshot straight (one of only six outs). I double up and he's screaming at anyone who would listen until the end of the 15-minute break.
• My death hand in the $80: Blinds are $200/$400, and I'm down to about $1,800 and waiting for any hand to make a move. Late position, K9s, I push. Big blind calls, MP moves all-in, BB thinks and calls. MP has AJs, BB has KQo. Flop brings a 9, which has me excited, and it holds up... until I realize that BB caught a runner-runner-runner-runner heart flush with her Queen, and I'm out.
• In the $40, I made exactly one voluntary move during the game. Blinds were $100/$200. With about $4,000 in chips, I preflop raise pocket 7s in middle position, button calls. Flop KQ4 rainbow. Check, check. Turn T. I check. Button bets $600. I check-raise, moving all-in. She thinks a good 20 seconds and folds, then says to her tablemates that "they wouldn't hold up with those overcards." I did think she had either an ace or low pockets (if I had to guess, 8s, and her post-hand comments confirms this was probably right).
• My death hand in the $40: after being nearly blinded away, I push AKo with about $1,800 in chips. Two callers: pocket jacks and AQ. Flop brings a jack and I'm out.

There were other hands, most of which were preflop raises followed by credible flops followed by big bets that took down the pot. But the more I analyze the key hands, the more errors I find in them. (I'm excluding the death hands; I think they were reasonable choices given that my M was so low.) Granted, this is an extremely small sample size compared to the nearly 15,000 online hands I've played, so it's tempting to chalk the poor results up to bad luck. But on the other hand, I haven't thought as much about any of my online hands; for all I know, I'm making gross errors like these all the time, but not enough to cost me more than my buyins.

Other observations:

• When recalling a hand, I don't easily remember my position. I need to deduce it from the order of the bets and the assumption (for example) that I'd never play ATs early in a tournament except on the button. This proves that position isn't important enough in my mind. I need to pay more attention to position, so that when I recount the story to myself in my mind, it starts out "I'm in the cutoff...." rather than "I look down at my cards and see KQ of diamonds..."
• I make an effort to watch other players, but at this point it means almost nothing to me. I did see one shaky-hands tell from a guy who turned over queens, and an excited grab at chips by the button, which I judged a genuine gesture that caused me to fold my AJo preflop (and he did indeed go all-in). But most of the time, I just see people looking at their cards and thinking about what to do. Maybe that's all there is to it.
• Calculating pot odds is not very hard, but you have to pay attention to every round of betting, because unlike online play, there isn't a figure hovering magically above the pot at all times.
• I'm amazed how often people talk about their hands afterward. The more interesting the hand appeared to be, the more they talk about it. This is great!

All in all, it was a learning experience. I feel more like a donkey than I did a few days ago. But I care enough about my play to do post-game analysis, I'm finding all sorts of leaks, and I'm willing to change my strategy based on what I've learned. If I keep this up, I know I'll improve enough to someday be a threat.

Updated 05/12/2006: I was misusing the term "3-bet," which means raising someone who raised someone else, not betting 3x the big blind.

How many people must be in a room with you before there's a better-than-50% chance that at least one of them shares your birthday? (Same month and day, not necessarily same year.) Most people would answer "uh... I guess 183 because that's more than half the number of days in a year." It turns out that, according to the so-called "birthday paradox," the answer is actually only 23. The reason is that people forget to include the chance that all of you share the same birthday, or that all but one of you were born on the same day, and so on. Although all those chances seem small, they add up to a lot, and that's why you need so few people in the room before it's likely you'll find at least one.

A fun application of this principle tells us how many online poker tables you must play at the same time to have a greater-than-50% chance of always playing at least one pocket-aces starting hand at any given moment. The chance of being dealt pocket aces is 1:220, or one out of every 221 hands. So you can think of this as each hand being a birthday in a year of 221 days. The math works out to be this:

• 2 tables: 0.45%
• 3 tables: 1.35%
• 4 tables: 2.69%
• 5 tables: 4.45%
• 6 tables: 6.62%
• 7 tables: 9.15%
• 8 tables: 12.03%
• 9 tables: 15.21%
• 10 tables: 18.67%
• 11 tables: 22.35%
• 12 tables: 26.21%
• 13 tables: 30.22%
• 14 tables: 34.32%
• 15 tables: 38.48%
• 16 tables: 42.66%
• 17 tables: 46.81%
• 18 tables: 50.90%
• 19 tables: 54.90%
• 20 tables: 58.78%
• 21 tables: 62.51%
• 22 tables: 66.07%
• 23 tables: 69.45%
• 24 tables: 72.63%
• 25 tables: 75.60%
• 26 tables: 78.36%
• 27 tables: 80.91%
• 28 tables: 83.24%
• 29 tables: 85.36%
• 30 tables: 87.28%

So there you have it: play 18 tables simultaneously, and there will be a 50% chance that you'll be playing pocket aces at any given time. Play 30 tables if you want to be guaranteed* to be doing so.

*"Guaranteed" defined as "better than the chances of aces over the hammer," because we know AA always beats 72o.

According to Wikipedia, extended sensory deprivation "can result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and antisocial behavior." These are the same words I use to describe my hold 'em tournament play. I start out resolving to play solidly, which usually means folding almost every hand. Forty-five minutes later, I'm quietly going nuts. To punctuate the boredom, my mind begins spinning yarns about the other players, desperately searching for a reason why my 5-6 suited in the big blind is worth playing against that guy who raised UTG. Like Professor Eddie Jessup in Altered States (well, except for the drugs), the lack of stimulus makes me... different.

Enter multitabling. Multitabling is unique to the online variant of poker. It's exactly what it sounds like: you sit down simultaneously at multiple tables (in different games, of course) and play them in turn. It helps to have a big monitor so you can tile all the tables rather than cascading them (amazing example here).

Besides amplifying your earnings (or losses) per hour, multitabling changes your play in several ways. First and most obvious, you can't easily profile your table mates when you are flipping among four different games at once. So your decisions are more objective; for all you know, the guy to your right might be stealing your blinds for the sixth time in a row, but you'll accept it like a gentleman because you're completely unaware that it's happening. Along the same lines, you'll miss the fact that the rock sitting across from you just led out big with his first hand in over an hour, and maybe your pocket jacks aren't the best all-in reraise at this particular point in time.

But most important for me, multitabling replaces utter boredom with constant activity, and I've found that this environment improves my play. Rather than looking for a reason to play a hand, I'll find any excuse to get out of one so that I don't have to return to that table for another 45 seconds. I'll fold AJo on the button when MP raises 6x BB preflop; at a single table, depending on my state of mind, I might have pushed that hand. For strong hands, I tend to be more aggressive in order to end the hand quickly, which increases my fold equity. Overall, I suspect I'm getting less value out of my hands -- for example, PokerStove says AJo's a 51-48 favorite against a player with a starting range of any Broadway/any pair, and my strong hands lose value-betting equity if I take down the pot early -- but my variance drops, which in a $6 SNG often gives me just enough fuel to make it across the bubble and into the money.

Multitabling does have a significant downside: it completely occupies your mind, body, and soul for a full hour at a time. I am unable to look away from the screen for more than about five seconds, and I can't carry on anything resembling a coherent conversation with anyone in chat or in person. It's mentally exhausting, and you can't go to the bathroom in the middle unless you want to pay the price of folding at least four hands. But poker's all about the money, and MTing means more dollars per hour. Until I find something better, it's the only way to play.

Tonight I was at a 6-handed no-limit hold 'em table (ring, not tournament). We were all having a nice time when a guy sits down with the max buy-in and starts going all-in on every hand. I mean every hand. A couple people lost their entire stack to him. The chat area started spewing messages with people screaming at him, calling him names, and so on. Eventually everyone left but me and him.

By this point in the story, you of course know what I did. I sat with him for 43 hands, folding all but five monsters: 77, K4o, K8o, JJ, AKs, and QTo. (OK, Kxo is trash, but in heads-up against a random hand it's still a slight (52-48) favorite.)

I busted him out, taking his money and that of the players he busted. He left after that. If only poker against sane players were this easy.

Tonight I'm going to live blog my entry into a satellite tournament for the World Series of Poker main event. This is actually the second level of this satellite. I entered a freeroll tournament on PokerStars last week for 100 FPP (think frequent-flier miles; same idea) and won entry into the second-level satellite, worth 1,000 FPP. I wasn't going to enter this tournament, but after some back-and-forth with PokerStars Support I learned that these are special FPPs, not good for anything but tournament buy-ins, so I'm taking the plunge.

At the moment (58 minutes before the tourney starts), there are 179 entrants and one winner, so assuming the number of entrants triples by the time it starts and that I'm of average skill and luck, I have only a 0.18% chance of winning. But that's the last of the loser talk. I have Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive queued up in Winamp and am ready to rip up the field.

The event starts at 8:00 tonight Pacific time; it's tournament #21469777 and I'm Sowbug. Stay tuned for further updates....

4 min before start, and 396 players. My chances are all the way up to 0.25%!

Knocked out on the bubble on my warmup 1-table SNG. Hope that's not an omen.

Here we go! Table 11.

First hand, 3 people all-in on flop, they chop to a board straight. One trips, one TPTK, one AK. Mostly OK to bet those, but all-in?

Wow, two of those guys all-in again, AA vs. two pair. One's nearly gone.

Here I go, T9s calling his all-in.

.... and I'm down to t52. Two pair against his flopped straight and he moved all-in on me. I figured TPTK or high pockets. OK, fine, but did I have to call him?

Not dead yet, but down to t208. This situation obviously sucks, but my M is still almost 7, so I can wait a couple more rounds and double up.

I know I can work my way back to health. I've folded K9s and A7o in late position. Waiting for a monster starting hand. It will come in time.

First I was afraid, I was petrified...

AQs, let's try to see a flop.

Nope, was raised & I folded. Now t138. Flop was A47... Would have tripled up against AJ & AT.

Folded AQo UTG. Amazing, I'd have QUINTUPLED up.

Folded A6s in BB after big early-position raises. t108.

SB brings 48o. t93. Blinds up, M now 2.

320 players left. Must outlast only 319 of them.

The guy who cripped me is up to t6813 after his two pair knocks someone out. :)

BB, J3o, lots of limpers...... flopped middle pair. Nope, didn't happen. t63.

SB, 96s. limpers, right odds.... called. Aw, horrible flop. Great, my M is sub-1. t33. I get to see at most 12 more cards before I'm blinded out.

8 more cards.

This is it. Pocket 9s. Three callers. I'm very dead.

Sowbug finished the tournament in 217th place.

One of the callers made trip aces. The other guy had me beat, too, with two pair.

END TRANSMISSION

Update: I felt so dissatisfied with my early flameout in this tourney that I entered a $4.40 180-player SNG and busted out 10th -- in the money, though just before the big money. My 2nd-best MTT finish to date! (best was 39th out of 1386 in a $3 tourney.)

If you play Texas Hold 'Em, you should buy a copy of Phil Gordon's Little Green Book : Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold'em. It's not a complete guide on how to play the game, but it's an excellent cookbook of recipes to improve your game. My favorite tidbit: the Rule of 4 and Rule of 2, which help you quickly calculate odds of hand improvement. Example: you've flopped an open-ended straight draw and want to know the odds of improving to a straight by the river. There are eight cards in the deck that could make your straight, so by the Rule of 4 you'd multiply 8x4 and conclude that your odds are approximately 32%. (They're actually about 34% but it's close enough to make a quick judgment whether pot odds justify a call.) Likewise, the Rule of 2 applies after the turn card. If you haven't made your straight draw by the turn, multiply that same 8 out cards by 2, and learn that your chances are about 16% of making it on the river. (Again, it's actually 17.4%, but it's close enough.)

Buy the Little Green Book today!

In Hold 'Em Poker, David Sklansky shows how you can make educated guesses about the hole cards your opponents are holding. He gives a couple examples that are fun to read, because you do correctly guess them, and they make you feel like a magician. So, in my attempts to escape from the Texas Hold 'Em fish pond, I'm collecting examples of easily readable hands. Here's the first, which I picked up from a recent tournament. I'm Sowbug, and based on my read of BB's hand, I quickly folded. (Thanks to Deacon for the hand converter)

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney,
Big Blind is t20 (9 handed)

MP3 (t1500)
CO (t1490)
Sowbug (t1470)
SB (t1020)
BB (t1590)
UTG (t2190)
UTG+1 (t1500)
MP1 (t1400)
MP2 (t1340)

Preflop: Sowbug is Button with 7c, Ac.    
5 folds, CO calls t20, Sowbug raises to t60, 1 fold,
BB raises to t120, CO calls t100, Sowbug calls t60.

Flop: (t370) Kd, Ah, Jh (3 players)
BB bets t100, CO calls t100, Sowbug folds.

Turn: (t570) As (2 players)
BB bets t100, CO calls t100.

River: (t770) Qc (2 players)
BB bets t300, CO raises to t600, BB raises to t1270,
CO calls t570 (All-In).

Final Pot: t3210

What did BB have? And what did CO have? It's easy to guess both BB's cards; CO's is a little bit harder (actually, one of them is quite easy, and the other is irrelevant).

Update 3/13/2006: I waited a long time to return to this hand in the hopes that I'd forget the details and get a chance to reevaluate it. Sure enough, my memory of the result was lost in the mists of time. Today's guess was BB had an ace with a high kicker, possibly two pair, and that CO flopped a set. BB's raise preflop would have been appropriate to reduce the number of players, and CO was hoping to see the flop cheaply and wasn't willing to fold preflop even after seeing BB's moderate strength. The turn card was a nightmare for CO; BB would have improved either to higher trips or a full house (beating CO's XXX-over-AA full house), and CO in disbelief went on tilt, pushing all-in to get the hand over with.

My read of BB was correct; he had AK and ended up with a full house. CO, however, had pocket 10s and made his straight on the river -- incidentally, he should have folded after the flop once three overcards came, and was unlucky to river his inside straight draw that kept him in the hand. Both players probably believed they had the winning hand at showdown.

My only mistake was calling the BB's raise preflop. Once the BB showed strength in this fairly tight game, I could reasonably have concluded he had me out-kicked on an ace.