Ante Up Magazine

Avery Cardoza chats about his new novel, Lost in Las Vegas

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:38:00 +0000

Avery Cardoza is a leading authority on gambling and the founder of Cardoza Publishing,the largest gaming publisher in the world. He’s recently published his first work of fiction, Lost in Las Vegas, and talked about it and other topics on the Ante Up PokerCast.

You have such a rich history and we want to talk about that, but let’s start with Lost in Las Vegas. What prompted you to turn to fiction? I didn’t plan this book, this book just sort of happened. It sort of came out of a dark period in my life when a lot of things went wrong and one day I started writing and the book started forming. I had no plans to write the book.

You started writing this 10 years ago; what took so long to complete it? Writing fiction is a very difficult thing to do. This book, for some reason, was the most miserable experience of my life. I worked very hard on it. I worked 40-hour stretches; I’d work every day; it was just a terrible experience. So I can’t tell you why it was so difficult. It wasn’t something I planned; it just sort of came out of me.

The book follows the exploits of John and Ludo, two friends who remain optimistic about their trip to Vegas even after it starts less than ideal. Tell us a little more about it. Basically these two guys come to Las Vegas to have a nice little trip. … and everything goes wrong. They meet a woman, who one of them falls head over heels in love with instantly, and somehow she drags them through a whole other world. I’m sure that’s not happened to anyone, meeting some woman and then going crazy afterward. (laughs)

These guys are soon out of their element. One of them ends up in a poker game and they’re playing for a big dollar, and John thinks it’s a dollar, and then he finds out it’s a big dollar. (laughs) He loses all their money and they happen to be playing with a bunch of killers who just use this game to blow off steam. So these guys take all their money, their IDs, their credit cards, everything. … These are just things that could happen almost to anybody except that these guys are geniuses at it. (laughs) And it goes downhill from there.

Were the book’s crazy characters based on people from real life or just an amalgamation of characters you’ve met? In general there are certain things that were inspired by people. And I might have met a crazy woman in my day; I’ll leave it at that. (laughs) But most of the characters in the book are just figments of my imagination. They just came to me.

The book has been described as Pulp Fiction meets Pulp Vegas. The dialogue between John and Ludo had us thinking of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Was that the style you wanted to achieve? I wasn’t really influenced by any other book or movie. I used to be a big reader and at the time I was writing this book for 10 years I didn’t read any book, I didn’t want to be influenced by any book. I barely even saw a movie. … It’s just the way it came out of me. … I always wanted to write a novel, but I didn’t want to write a comedy. The irony is this thing people are calling it the funniest book they’ve ever read. (laughs)

Why is Mike Tyson in a lot of “Vegas trips gone awry” stories? I saw the Hangover and I thought they did a great job, very funny. But I wrote that (Tyson) scene eight years before they came out with the Hangover. … It’s just a coincidence. Mike Tyson is a Vegas figure and I used to live down the street from him actually. I don’t know him, but he just seemed to come into a scene. He’s part of Vegas and I thought that would be kind of fun. And that’s how he came about.

You wrote your first book, Winning Casino Blackjack for the Non-Counter, in 1981 when you were 24 and had been banned from every casino in Las Vegas. Can blackjack still be beaten these days with six-deck shoes and 6-5 payouts on naturals? Sure, you can still beat blackjack, and there are several ways to beat blackjack. Card-counting is at the heart of many of them. There are some very advanced and difficult techniques called shuffle tracking and there are a few other things that might be less than legal. But the game can be beaten; it’s a little more difficult now.

With so many poker books on the shelves these days, are there still poker titles that haven’t been written? Poker’s a deep game, and there’s a lot of good stuff coming out still. I think there’s a good poker book that can be written basically on the proper play from a psychological perspective and a math perspective. Ultimately the game comes down to math.

Let’s just talk about no-limit hold’em. And we could apply this to other games. When you make a bet, you want your opponent to call you, because you want more money in the pot, or you want to get rid of him. Let’s say you’re trying to get rid of the opponent and take the pot for free. When you make that bet, what’s the chances that this guy is gonna call you?

Now you sit there, you’ve played with him a little bit, you try to study him, you’re tying to read other people and you’re trying to block them from reading you. … So if you could really boil down the math and say all right, in this particular situation, against this type of player I have a situation where my opponent will fold seven out of 10 times. And it’s not an exact science because you never know, you’re taking educated guesses, but if you take enough educated guesses and study enough, you could start developing a situation where your whole game is really about betting. … When you play a good NLHE poker player, the cards are not the most important factor in a situation; it’s the dynamics revolving around is he gonna call me or not.

There's a new trend at the poker tables coming

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:36:00 +0000

The next wave in poker is weakness; weakness as strength, not real weakness; just the perception of weakness. The next change follows what Mohammad Ali said, “Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.”
A tight-aggressive style, which was once popular, was replaced with looser aggressive play. Once this new style took hold it was time to start thinking about the next change. Once change is solidified, new change occurs.

I would predict the response to this new form of aggression will be a newer tight-aggressive style that’s a more sophisticated version of what many of us learned. It is TAG with refinements. I call it STAG: Sophisticated Tight Aggressive Game.

Aggression is the current trend in poker; three bets, four bets, five bets. Betting with a wide range of hands.

We all know trends are followed by another trend, and in this case it’s one that compensates for aggression.

Kano, a marital arts master, said, “In short, resisting a more powerful opponent will result in your defeat, whilst adjusting to and evading your opponent’s attack will cause him to lose his balance, his power will be reduced, and you will defeat him. This can apply whatever the relative values of power, thus making it possible for weaker opponents to beat significantly stronger ones. This is the theory of ju yoku go o seisu.”
Using the power of the other person to beat them, much like in older forms of marital arts, is certainly applicable to the next change in poker.

The aggressive player looks and feels powerful; use that perception of power against opponents.
Some folks don’t feel comfortable playing four- or five-bet aggressive poker. It’s stupid to compete with a seemingly stronger opponent on his terms. Change the rules; use them to your advantage.
A simple hand shows how this works: The aggressive player in the cutoff seat has ; button has . The flop is three hearts. The cutoff proceeds to bet every street. The button calls until the river, then makes a valuable raise.

This requires great patience and vigilant eye to determine when you can turn the tables.

If aggression doesn’t come naturally to you, find your comfort zone and expand it by the judicial use of STAG. Timing and position are essential to this new style of poker.

Sun Tzu said, “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” Why butt heads when you can turn the enemy’s aggression against him?

Remember, however, if you become too predictable you’ll get trapped or earn small payoffs. Be prepared to change gears; change your style occasionally and play a more sophisticated type of tight aggressive play. And above all keep your head in the game.

— Dr. Stephen Bloomfield is a licensed psychologist and avid poker player. His column will give insight on how to achieve peak performance using poker psychology. Email questions for him at editor@anteupmagazine.com.

Poker tournament series need organization

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:34:00 +0000

The cover of our January issue proclaimed, “WPT Invades Florida!” and featured the winners of four World Poker Tour events in the Sunshine State during a two-month period.

It was a worthy cover, and validation that after being mired in financial troubles, the World Poker Tour has emerged as every bit the force it was before trouble begot its previous owners. The WPT’s new regional series is an answer to the World Series of Poker’s successful circuit. But managers and players are justified in wondering just how much is too much when it comes to tournament series?

It’s a point that crystallized further for me as I updated Ante Up’s Player of the Year website with the first qualifying events of 2012.
On Jan. 21, players had to choose between Choctaw Resort’s World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event in Oklahoma or Beau Rivage’s Million Dollar Heater Main Event in Mississippi. The events are far enough apart distance-wise that it’s hard to say they’re directly competing, but no doubt they draw from the same pool of players in the middle of the map.

More acute is the dilemma facing South Florida players. On Feb. 10, they’ll choose between Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood’s WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open Main Event or the main event of Calder Casino’s first tournament series, the Miami Gardens Poker Classic.

Fortunately, the spreading popularity of multiple Day 1s mitigates the situation a bit with casinos that are mere miles apart, like Calder and Hard Rock are, but all the same, I imagine players (and managers) would prefer signature events not overlap.

Sometimes even back-to-back events can cause concern. Take the WPT’s double-billing in the Tampa Bay area in December. Players didn’t have to choose between playing at the Hard Rock Tampa or Derby Lane because of the schedule. But did they have to choose because spouses and children were expecting something nice under the tree on Dec. 25 and only one in every 10 tournament entrants goes home happy?

Tournaments are status symbols for poker rooms. Rarely are they big moneymakers, at least not directly. But don’t think for a minute any poker room is happy taking a loss or breaking even on a major series. When you consider the time and effort required to plan and pull off a successful event, coupled with the ever-increasing need to guarantee larger prize pools and the hefty fees brands such as the WSOP, WPT and Heartland Poker Tour command, it’s hard to imagine anything else that causes more gray hair on the heads of poker room managers these days.

So what, if anything, can be done about series overload? Or should be done?

Let’s start with the second question.

Animal Planet would be far less entertaining to watch if cheetahs lived in one place and gazelles lived in another. If so, the cheetahs would lose their aggressiveness and gazelles would never improve their elusiveness. There’s something to be said for competition. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and that applies to tournament series as much as it does wildlife.

With a neat, tidy, never-overlapping tournament schedule, there’s less incentive for tournament directors to be creative and deliver on what players want.

It’s a fair point, but here’s the thing: Nature has a way of overcorrecting. It’s not just the weak series that disappear in that winner-take-all environment. Good, but not great, series could disappear as well before they have the chance to make it to that next level. And that leaves players with too few, rather than too many, options. That’s a bigger problem.

So let’s agree that we should be doing something.

COORDINATION BETWEEN ROOMS: We can start with what can’t be done. We can’t add a 13th month to the calendar. Or a 14th. So every time a poker room decides to get into the tournament series game, the calendar looks a little smaller and our problem gets a little bigger. We’ve been told Los Angeles poker rooms try to coordinate their series schedules. A similar movement was rumored to be afoot in South Florida, though it obviously didn’t prevent the Hard Rock-Calder February conflict. Perhaps there’s a role for the Tournament Directors Association or similar organization to play here. A calendar clearinghouse, of sorts, letting rooms lay claim to a block of dates in a specific region so potential conflicts can be headed off before they become conflicts.

BETTER PLANNING FROM BRANDS: Sponsoring organizations can do a better job of policing this as well. The WSOP has little overlap in its nearly yearlong series. Should the WPT look to do the same? I like Skittles, but I know if I eat one, I’m eating the whole bag. And then I’ll be sick. Sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad for you. The Tampa tangle in December is an early warning of what can happen when a brand competes with itself.

COMPRESS SERIES SCHEDULES: We’re starting to see this with some that schedule two events each day. Sure, it may force players to choose between events in an individual series, but I’d guess that players would prefer that to having to choose between two signature events in competing series.

BUY-INS FOR ALL LEVEL OF PLAYERS: Tiers of events can solve some of the problem, too. Not every series needs a $2,500, $3,500 or $10,000 main event. There’s a market (I’d argue a pretty large one) for a series that caps out at $500, with several $100 events leading up to it. That kind of series can complement a richer one in the same market at the same time, as it might attract groups of players to the region since there’s something for everyone.

In the end, it likely will take a little bit of all of this. Let’s hope it works. Hundreds of poker rooms in the United States don’t attempt poker series. We don’t want those who do to stop.

— Scott Long is co-publisher of Ante Up. Email scott@anteupmagazine.com.

DOJ opinion wasn't that encouraging for poker players

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:32:00 +0000

Much attention has been given to the Department of Justice’s opinion regarding the Wire Act and how it relates to online poker. Many herald the memorandum as the critical document that will lead state and federal governments to embark on the legalization and regulation of Internet gambling. Forgive the cold water of this article, but here’s the unfortunate truth: None of this is happening any time soon.

From a legal standpoint, the DOJ essentially said what all credible gaming lawyers have known for some time, which is the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and should not be relied upon as a general prohibition to Internet gambling.

Deep in the bowels of the DOJ a handful of lawyers were holding on to an antiquated interpretation that had long been rejected by federal courts. The memorandum, which was released this fall, merely was the official statement.

Now, to the politics: I sat on a panel last summer at the Global Internet Gaming Symposium and Expo in San Francisco and was asked to handicap the prospects of legal Internet gambling in the United States.

I was in the minority with senior officers from major casino companies pontificating that no later than 2013 would there be legal Internet gaming, particularly poker, in the United States. My view was that gridlock in Washington, D.C., would get worse, a Republican Congress would prevent anything from passing in 2012, and a Republican president would never sign such a measure if elected in November.

My advice to the industry was to plan to walk in the wilderness for another 5-10 years if you’re expecting the federal government to authorize Internet poker.

I felt it would have to happen at the state level, but that it wouldn’t happen in the near term by any meaningful state with the population needed to generate a truly liquid Internet poker industry.

The problem (and political reality) is the states are as dysfunctional as the federal government when it comes to tackling such an issue. Incumbent gambling operations can’t agree on how to divide the pie. For a first-hand example, look to California and the past couple of years of failed efforts to pass an Internet poker bill.

Overlay the efforts out of Las Vegas to essentially define the market players in advance so the entrenched gambling behemoths can control the pie if it’s ever served up by the federal government or even a sizable state, and you have a recipe for gridlock and status quo.

As I apologized at the beginning, sorry for the cold water, but the big news about the DOJ memo is overblown and will be forgotten in a few months. If you’re good in live games and have a favorite poker room, you can smile and know that nothing is coming soon via the Internet to take the pigeons from your table.

— Marc W. Dunbar represents several gaming clients before the Florida Legislature and teaches gambling and parimutuel law at the Florida State’s College of Law. Follow him on Twitter (@FLGamingWatch) or his website (floridagamingwatch.com).

When to slow-play a big hand in pot-limit Omaha

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:31:00 +0000

When is it correct to slow play on the flop in pot-limit Omaha by checking behind in position? The answer is rarely. For the most part it’s correct to never get tricky in PLO because you need to balance your ranges so often that betting tends to be the most optimal play in the long run.

Imagine you’re heads-up, in position and looking at a flop of 10-9-4 with two hearts and you hold 10-10-x-x. You should never really check behind in this situation for a few reasons: If your opponent has a set then you’re missing a golden opportunity of getting it in as a huge favorite.

If your opponent has a draw, you’re making him pay for that draw if he calls. If he check-raises with his draw we can get it in as a favorite most of the time.

Balancing your range: So when SHOULD we check behind? Most people would argue the exception comes when there’s a locked board (e.g. a flop of A-4-4 when we have A-A-x-x.

The logic in checking behind is: Your opponent usually doesn’t have much and you can possibly get him to bet into you on the turn with nothing.

Most people are hoping for that incredibly slim chance that the turn is something like a king and your opponent has K-K-x-x, but relying on coolers like that is not the way of the optimal ninja, now is it?

Even on this locked board I’d still not slow-play in most scenarios, and here’s why: If your opponent has a four, he’s not folding and you’re missing massive value on later streets.

You need to balance your range. You should be continuation-betting with most of your hands in this spot. Your opponent can still make a move on you with air and may even reverse float with a hand such as K-K-x-x or Q-Q-x-x.

The reasons for betting are better than the reasons for checking behind. Of course there are millions of scenarios in PLO, and checking behind is probably optimal against an insanely aggressive opponent known to barrel off his stack, but sticking to this rule will do you right most of the time. I know it’s not groundbreaking advice to bet when you have top set, but it’s pretty important to freshen up on the fundamentals of why you’re putting money in the pot.

— Jay Houston is a Team Pro with DeepStacks and a PLO specialist who crushes the mid-stakes online cash games.

The Art of Losing isn't hard to master

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:29:00 +0000

Attention tournament players: You’re in a tough business. I recently asked a fellow pro what he thought a good winning percentage was in tournament play. He said if you cashed 15-20 percent of the time consider yourself a winning tournament player. He said most tournaments pay the top 10 percent so cashing is difficult.

I have a different outlook when it comes to tournament play: Knowing you must beat 90 percent of the field to cash tournaments can become expensive.

When you factor the low-end payout is usually only 1 percent of the prize pool you must seriously think about where your money may be better spent. Of course, the lure of the big payout is the major attraction.

My friend Joe Conti played in the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event and finished 666th, the last player to cash ($21,230). The player in 667th place (the bubble) got nothing. Joe earned a nice payday for the $10,000 entry . . . or did he?

The prize pool of $64,431,779 was divided among the 666 players like this: 604-666 earned $21,230; 541-603 earned $23,160. Having beaten more than 90 percent of a field of 6,844 entries the payoff was only about double the buy-in; not what you would call a good return on investment for the achievement.

Even the large fields don’t seem to be a major detractor to a determined player. The risk-reward ratio seems worth the challenge, and the allure of fame and fortune certainly add to the fascination.

But most players won’t enter the WSOP main. They will, however, enter many low-priced tournaments, which can quickly eat up the average player’s bankroll. It’s only a $100 or $350 tournament, which doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but seldom do these events offer the proper ROI.

In cheaper tournaments the rake can be large compared to the ROI. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for the house making money, without the house we wouldn’t have a safe place to play. But the average player doesn’t realize the price to chase a small payoff. These players often don’t have the skill required to go deep in tournaments. The proof is in the results. Over the years I’ve made a study of many players, professional and amateur, and a consistent pattern evolved: The better players make the money, while the unskilled players fall by the way side.

I’d like to think an average player who would like to protect his bankroll would be inclined to play cash games at a comfortable level. Cash games, when played properly, ensure an enjoyment level that’s seldom enjoyed in tournament play. Every cardroom offers a variety of games and limits. Tournament play is for the player who has an iron will and can accept rejection consistently. The art of losing isn’t hard to master for the unskilled tournament player.

— Antonio Pinzari is the former host of Poker Wars and has been playing poker professionally since the ’70s.

Good reads and dynamics are key to poker success

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:28:00 +0000

There will come a time when you will have played quite some time with certain players. You’ll know their styles and views on the game. It’s important to keep tabs on this history, which should dictate future lines of action. These reads are the most important aspect of live mid-high stakes poker.

Playing ABC poker and making use of concepts such as hand selection and position are all one really needs to beat the smaller stakes.

When moving up, though, the dynamic between players is of utmost importance. It’s the primary reason why I play poker. I may sound insane, but I think it’s a thing of beauty. Crushing people becomes an art. The creativity involved in constructing ranges and execution is tantamount to that of an artist. It’s a matrix of prior hands played together, your perceived image, timing, everything really. When playing small stakes, I think it’s OK to play your hand in a vacuum.

“I have a big hand on a draw-heavy board, therefore I bet.” It’s simple. Like painting by numbers. But when you move up it becomes, “I think he thinks I’d be betting on this draw-heavy board if I had a hand worth protecting, therefore I bet with six-high trying to represent a made hand.” Pretty cool, huh?

I’d like to give you an example of an interesting dynamic I had while playing cash games on the recent Ante Up Poker Cruise with fellow columnist Lee Childs. He’s a solid player and I respect his play a lot. It just so happens I was seated on his left in our cash-game sessions. On the ship, Lee liked to open preflop a lot. He c-bet close to 100 percent and profited tremendously from doing so.

I decided I was going to three-bet him as much as possible on the cruise. Doing so with a polarized (really bad hands and really good hands) range helps me get paid off when I have two kings or two aces. Also, it makes my decisions easier because I know what I’m going to do if he plays back: fold junk, but continue with my value range.

I wanted to give the illusion I was some aggro-20-something who’s heavy handed when it comes to three-betting. I knew he’d adjust; that’s what great players do. I told myself no matter what I had when he decided to take a stand I was going to pile it in. I figured he would get semi-tilted that I was three-betting any two cards and play back at me light.

We played one pot heads-up where I had 7-4 suited and he (said he) had 10-2. It went raise, reraise, re-reraise. Now if you look at that hand in isolation you’d think we were both nuts. But looking at our history it makes perfect sense. Remember, the dynamic of a situation affects hand strength. Things become relative. If one of us had J-J we’re getting the money in, happily. Against a different player folding J-J preflop to the fourth bet is standard.

Set up interesting dynamics, then exploit them.

— Mike Wolf is a team pro at surebetpoker.net. Email him at MichaelJWolf33@gmail.com and follow his adventures on Twitter @mikewolf7.

If they need to vent, they are likely weak

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:25:00 +0000

Recently I sat with a few poker players who had come up to me to say hello. While there I took the opportunity to validate something I suspected. I asked, “How many of you have ever heard of ventilators?” There were some chuckles; one guy asked if that was anything like a little battery-powered fan with a squirt bottle. Another said he thought I had mentioned it somewhere but wasn’t sure. It was confirmed: Most people really don’t know about ventilators and that’s almost forgivable except for poker players and law enforcement officers.

Humans are interesting, so interesting that thousands of books have been written about human behavior, cataloging and explaining the things we do. One area rarely written about is how humans relieve social anxiety or situational stress by the use of ventilators.

Even the great zoologist and anthropologist Desmond Morris spends little time exposing this feature that we exercise with greater variety than any primate. I have talked to professional poker players about ventilators and they never mention it except, of course, once I point it out and then they remember, “Oh yeah, of course, so and so does it.”

Before I list the ventilators let me first say I do recognize that we ventilate ourselves all the time if the temperature becomes significantly warm. However, the presence of others in close proximity can cause us to ventilate ourselves also, as can a difficult college test or an interviewer’s piercing questions. In these cases, you may find yourself ventilating your shirt by pulling or tugging at it away from your body. We do this to relieve physical as well as psychological discomfort.

About 35 years ago when I first got into law enforcement, I began to observe that suspects often ventilated themselves while the innocent did not. This served me well, not in detecting deception, but rather, in seeing which questions caused the suspects discomfort such, “Where were you last night?” I used it to gauge comfort and discomfort; the same as in poker, because ventilators suggest there are issues (e.g., hot room, someone sitting too close, don’t like what you just said, don’t like my hole card or I am bluffing).
What can cause psychological discomfort at the table? The same things as in life: insecurity, doubt, fear, apprehension, a sense of weakness, vulnerability or anxiety; all the things we associate in poker with being weak or marginal or with reluctantly being forced to act.

Because ventilators are associated with physical or psychological discomfort they can be reliable for the careful observer. Here are five ventilators you can look for while playing. When you see these ventilating behaviors, put them in context. By that I mean do they show up when someone is forced to call or raise or when they have gone all-in or perhaps while deliberating? Chances are something is bothering the individual and with all of the other information you have gathered at the table, this may give you a significant advantage in discerning what the other player is thinking, feeling or fearing as they contemplate their next move or after going all-in.

• Look for players to run their fingers through their hair multiple times in quick succession. Women incidentally are less likely to do so.

• Players who wear hats will lift their hat completely off the head or angle it upward in such a way as to let in air.

• Female players ventilate slightly differently than men when it comes to hair. If they have hair down to the neck they will lift up the hair at the nape of the neck brushing the hair upward, an effort to allow air to cool the neck.

• Look for players who pull on their shirt buttons or the front of their shirt by lifting it away from the skin. This may be repeated by both hands lifting up the shirt simultaneously just above the pectorals. The lifting of the shirt allows air to flow beneath the fabric cooling the skin.

• Pulling at the collar is also often missed. This tell (behavior) was popularized by comedian Rodney Dangerfield, who would immediately tug at his neck collar when he was verbally getting into trouble.

These then are just a few ventilators you can look for at the poker table. Because ventilators are associated with physical or psychological discomfort, in context, they should give you a good read at to whether a player is marginal, weak or threatened. For additional poker tells or to learn more about ventilators please check out my book 200 Poker Tells.

— Joe Navarro is a former FBI agent specializing in human behavior. He is the author of the international bestseller What Every Body is Saying and 200 Poker Tells. Follow him on Twitter at @navarrotells. Additional information available at joenavarro.net.

Good poker instruction is invaluable to your bankroll

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:23:00 +0000

A common theme I hear from my students is how much they gain from a couple of hours of dedicated hand analysis or lecture vs. the many books they’ve read. As an instructor, there’s nothing better than learning of a success story soon after a training session, hearing how they implemented the strategies into their game and how much it helped them. This is what makes the process so rewarding for me.

As poker players, if we don’t invest time and money into training (group sessions or one-on-one), we’re doing ourselves a great disservice by not elevating our game as high as it can be. The past couple of training sessions I’ve done have really helped me get a stronger grasp on this. I taught an Inside the Minds session at the Borgata and I ran a couple of small-group classes on the last Ante Up cruise. After each of these sessions, there were more than a few students with immediate success.

After the class at the Borgata, the students entered a nightly tournament and out of 193 players, six of the 18 players in the money were from our class. One student cashed in six of her first nine tournaments after the class, with four final tables, capping it off with a second-place finish in a World Series of Poker Circuit ladies event. We also had a student win $7,000 in a nightly tournament just one day after taking the class. And my favorite testimonial from the cruise was when one player complained about how much better his opponents got after taking the class and how it really cut into his profits. That’s the kind of bad-beat story I like to hear!

If you want to get better, you need to get training. There are a lot of knowledgeable instructors out there and most of them teach because they want you to get better. When I do my sessions, I’m at my students’ disposal and the only time they leave with questions is when they don’t ask them. The guys I work with feel the same way and teach because we want you to crush at the tables. I’m looking forward to the next Ante Up Poker Cruise in March where I will be running a few classes and then will be heading to the Borgata in April to teach a couple of Inside the Minds sessions there. I will have a star-studded cast of instructors joining me there, so if you’re looking for some high-quality instruction, please check out the details at facebook.com/insidetheminds. If you can’t make it on the cruises or Borgata, look for classes in your local area or check out some of the training sites online. Set your ego aside and let those of us who have spent lots of time and money making mistakes help you bypass all of that. I can assure you it’s much less expensive than just doing it all on your own. Decide to Win!

— Lee Childs is a professional poker player and coach. He’s the founder and lead instructor of Acumen Poker and Inside The Minds. Check out his sites at acumenpoker.net and facebook.com/insidetheminds.

You need basic poker hand-reading skills

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:20:00 +0000

When you’re in a tough situation at the poker table, it’s necessary to sit back and put all the pieces of the puzzle together to come up with an optimal decision. While you may end up losing the hand, as long as you figure out your opponent’s range with fairly high accuracy, you’ll win in the long run.

This hand took place in the $10,000 WPT event at the Hard Rock Hollywood in Florida. I had been playing a fairly loose aggressive game during the first level, though I wasn’t playing overly crazy. The blinds were 50-100.

I raised with to 300 from early position, the cutoff, button and both blinds called. We were all deep-stacked with around 30,000 chips. The flop came . The blinds checked to me and I bet 850 into the 1,500 pot. Everyone folded to the small blind, Ali Eslami, who called. Ali had lost a few small pots to me earlier in the day so I thought he might be trying to win his chips back, which is almost always a mistake. At this point, it’s important to try to nail down your opponent’s range. He could have a queen, jack, four, or an open-ended straight draw. I think we can discount hands such as Q-Q or 4-4, as he would probably raise the flop, so in general, I think his range is fairly weak. It’s also worth noting he may decide to float here with something like A-10 or maybe even air like 5-5.

The turn was the . He checked and I bet 1,600. He made it 4,100. Here, he’s trying to represent a monster, like a set, which I already ruled out, a straight, which does make sense, or nothing.

Since there are few combinations of straights and a lot of combinations of nothing, I think we have a pretty easy call because if I raise, he’ll fold all of his bluffs and continue when he has a monster. It’s important to not force your opponent to play optimally by (essentially) turning your hand face up, which is what most amateur players would do in this spot.
We’re calling here not because we’re scared we’re beat, but because we don’t want to force him to fold all of his non-nut range.

The river is the , putting a one-card straight out as well as a backdoor flush. He bet 5,850 into the 11,400 pot and I made a fairly easy call. Though a ton of draws got there, it’s unlikely he would show up with too many of them because I have the JD in my hand. This means he could not have JD-10x and the pair of jacks plus backdoor flush-draw hands. I was also getting 2-to-1, which is always nice. Interestingly, if I had in this spot instead of , I think this would be a close spot because he could have many more combinations of straights and flushes. It’s always important to remember to take hands out of his range when you have a key card in your hand. When I called, he quickly mucked his hand.

Hand-reading is a skill every poker player must develop. If you find yourself constantly confused about your opponent’s holding, you’re not thinking during every hand or you’re not paying attention. Pay attention to every hand at the poker table, even when you aren’t involved. I often see players playing on their phones or watching TV when they aren’t involved in a hand. This is a huge mistake. If you have more information about your opponents than they have about you, you will find the money coming your way in the long run.

— Jonathan Little is the Season 6 WPT Player of the Year and is a representative for Blue Shark Optics. If you want to learn to play a loose-aggressive style, which will constantly propel you to the top of the leaderboards, check out his poker training website at FloatTheTurn.com.