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Bad actors
Published 15 oktober 2008 16:07Hi everybody. Today I saw a famous poker phenomenon during an episode of High Stakes Poker. It appeared on episode 1 of season 2 of this well known TV-show and it showed how you can fail in making the maximum profit with a very good hand by using your mouth too much.
The reason I immediately recognized it, I have to admit, is because I still make the same mistake a little too much in live games. The situation involved one my favourite poker players, Daniel Negreanu, and probably my least favourite professional player, Phil Laak. Daniel made a pre-flop raise with QJ suited and Laak calls with AQ offsuit. Oh yeah, as a big suprise Sammy Farha was also in the hand with (a decent!) hand: 67 suited (spades). The flop came QdJd8h and Daniel made a continuation bet with top two pair. Sammy folded and Laak raised with his top pair top kicker. Then the bad actor in Negreanu came to live. He mumbled something like “Oh boy” and subsequently started an elucidation about ‘the brutality of this game’. While Gabe Kaplan amused himself with this bad acting of Daniel, mister Negreanu made a big reraise. Phil folded the hand after some consideration, clearly not happy with what he had heard. Negreanu missed a lot of extra money by this way.
By the way, if you watch some High Stakes Poker soon, remember this little trick to amuse yourself: when Kaplan and his co-host AJ Benza show up for their introduction or conclusions, hold your hand in front of Kaplan so you can only see Benza. What you’ll see next is some excellent fake laughs by Benza, acting on such a bad level Negreanu can’t even dream about 
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Playing poker is to reduce your amount of decisions
Published 26 september 2008 20:22Sounds quiete philosofical, doesn’t it? This old wisdom crossed my mind when I was watching an episode of NBC’s Poker After Dark. It was an episode of season 1 and it was mister Phil Ivey himself who forgot to apply this important rule, which he immediately admitted during his little chat with Shana Hiatt.
Ivey was accompanied at the table by Jennifer Harman, Jennifer Tilly and Patrick Antonius (if you don’t really know this guy you should definitely watch the EPT-event in Baden (2005, season 2) where he plays an outstandig tournament, ending up as the winner). So it was shorthanded and the blinds where already gone up a lot of times. Ivey had a decent stack thanks to his famous small feelerbets pre-flop and the continuation bets after the flop, mostly ending the hands right there. Tilly was shortstacked and had shoved all-in a lot of times (each time with a very decent hand though).
A very important lesson for beginning players was illustrated in the following hand:
Harman limped under the gun with 22, Ivey was on the button with A3 suited (a very strong hand in a shorthanded game). He also chose to limp and Tilly shoved again on the small blind (with 99, but ofcourse Ivey didn’t know that). Antonius folded rags on the big blind and Harman didn’t feel quiete comfortable with her ducks and folded. Now the decision went back to Ivey, who had to commit another large part of his stack to call Tilly’s all-in. After some thinking Ivey decided to fold. Now what went wrong?
As Ivey declared to Hiatt he made a mistake by not raising with A3 suited on the button. If he had done so, he would have commited a larger part of his stack to the pot. That way, he would have saved himself a decision because if Tilly would have gone all-in anyway (most likely with 99 but again, Ivey does not know that: Tilly had shoved a lot during the previous hands), he should always call because of the fact he is pot-committed and because of the strength of his hand.
So by anticipating on what could happen in the near future, you can reduce the amount of important decisions you have to make. In that way, pokerplayers are almost similar to human beings.