Texas Holtem Poker

Does anyone have any information on any WSOP satellites in the Midwest (Iowa,Missouri,Kansas,Illinois). Also, when do the WSOP satellites start inLas Vegasand when will they be advertised as such or are they? What about any Super satellites?

Answer 1:

The only ones I know about are at the Miss Marquette inMarquetteIowasoon to be known as the Isle of Capri, Marquette. The 7 card HL started today 3/11/00 at noon, Omaha HL is next Saturday 3/18/00 at noon and Hold’em is Saturday 3/25/00 at noon. Call the poker room at 1-800-4YOU-BET for more information.

Answer 2:

I believe the Horseshoe in Tunica had satellites for the WSOP last year or the year before, before the split-up I assume. This is probably where the confusion is coming from.

I’m sure it has been discussed at length, but I am in a ridiculously heated argument about the chances of winning a freeze out event, such as a satellite
if you have half the chips and one opponent as opposed to having half the chips and four opponents. Assume each player is of equal skill. I think the chances of winning by the player with 50% is roughly the same in each case.

Answer 1:

There might be a slightly worse chance against many opponents, because they can go all-in and win some pots where they might otherwise have folded. But the factor isn’t significant. My guess is that the other side of the argument is just the opposite — that the small stacks have less of a chance than they would if they combined their assets. That would be wrong.

Answer 2:

You don’t have to beat three opponents to beat three opponents. You can wait and just beat one.  But, since you don’t have to wait, you can pick them off when the opportunities arise, it must be easier to beat 3 than to beat 1.

Answer 3:

I know it sometimes seems that way, but the chances cannot become worse no matter how many ways you divide the same amount of money among equally skilled players. And the chances cannot improve if you consolidate that money in the hands of just one player. That comment is aimed at a winner-take-all tournament, but is also true of proportional payoff tournaments where — in fact — dividing the money equally among many players would improve your expectation of profit, often significantly.

Let’s say it’s a $200 buy in limit hold-em Tourn. You have about $8000 and the blinds are 500-1000 and you are playing 1000-2000. You have been stealing the blinds.  The table is playing tight because everyone is almost in the money. Everyone folds to you in the sixth position. You raise with crap and then a tough turn player re-raises you. The blinds fold so you are heads up. You call his raise. What do you do if you flop nothing? Do you check raise him? Or fold when he bets? You flop a pair? You know that he suspects you might be on a steal so he might be on a steal himself.  Both your stacks are about equal.  Do you bite the bullet and call him all the way?

Answer 1:

I think you have a series of mistakes here. Your “steal” off the button should be with some kind of hand maybe Ax or Kx at a min. Your call of the raise is a mistake. Any further calling or raising in this hand is a compounding of the original mistake. You got caught stealing give it up and live to fight another hand. You are at a critical junction of the tournament – you didn’t say how many left but sounds like less than 15. This is where you have to manage your stack and make the final table with as many chips as possible.  I’m not saying whimp out but be aggressive with “real” hands.

Answer 2:

I don’t know what a tourney expert is, exactly (But I’m currently ranked #1 on the IRC tourney circuit). In my opinion in this situation you should fold against the raise BEFORE the flop. Either your foe has read your blind stealing correctly and has a better draw, or he has a high pair and doesn’t care what you have. Better preserve the rest of your stack at this point, shift gears and now wait for a decadent hand (or the blinds) before betting out again.

Answer 3:

I don’t know what a tourney expert is either, and I seldom play in tournaments so I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify in any event. But, the advice to fold when he re-raises pre-flop is right, I think. What I think is that this tough tourney player has you pegged as hardheaded and somebody who just isn’t going to give it up so he’s quietly waited for a chance to just trap you for as many bets as he can. He’s probably expecting you to bet the flop and turn no matter what and I’d guess you’re going to get raised on the turn — he’s got a big pair I think. Give it up right away.

It seems to me in my limited experience with Pot Limit Hold’Em that big pairs are the bread-and-butter hands because you rarely get the pot odds for drawing hands. Should you play stuff like Ax and Kx (and maybe even Qx) more often and low-to-medium sequenced hands somewhat less? Am I all wet?

Answer 1:

In my (also limited) PL experience, at least in the game where I play, pot odds for drawing hands often exist. The game is very much a trapping game, where even though big pairs, top two etc. may win most of the pots, suited aces, suited connectors and the like often win the largest pots. There’s a lot of limping or small raises with several callers pre-flop, and it often pays to
play hands that will win big if they hit.

Answer 2:

I doubt you’re “all wet.” Remember your position becomes vital in Pot Limit, maybe as important as the cards you hold – for instance if you are in late position and a bunch of people have limped in, you can bang in a pot size raise and completely destroy their drawing odds. My favorite situation in pot-limit is holding a nice big pair (or better still two pair) with a bunch of players drawing to a flush and or straight. Sure, about 35% of the time they’ll get there, but 65% of the time they won’t, and you can charge them huge amounts of money for the those two cards. This is a gross simplification, but Pot Limit and No-Limit are aggressive, big card games. Obviously Doyle Bruson stressed the importance of using small connectors, but that playing strategy was coupled with exceptional reading skills, relentless aggression, and what he himself admits is pretty much an instinct for when he’s beaten/has the best hand. For us mere mortals, selective big card aggression is a good way of getting the money. Therefore, I’d be cautious of playing Ax, Kx, unless you have a good read on your opponents.

Answer 3:

It seems pretty clear in context that “suited aces” here refers to Ax suited, not two aces of the same suit.

If somebody were to tell me all I had to do was beat Mitzy (not her real name) in a heads up match to get a seat at the WSOP $10,000 Final Event, you would have to get a huge deep bowl to handle all the saliva I’d generate. Well, that’s what happened, but I couldn’t convert.  Talk about tripping at the one yard line. Now I know how Kevin Dyson felt in the Super Bowl’s last play. I’d won a one table satellite on Wednesday to qualify for the one table satellite today. It got down to heads up, Mitzy and I. Both had the same amount of chips (around T-10,000 each)  Upon looking back there was one hand very early in the match that could have turned things around if I’d wanted to gamble a little. I opted not to since I figured I could outplay her later. I never got a chance to come up for air. I had the button and T-300 small blind. Mitzy had the big blind of T-600. We were even in chips, at T-10,000 each. I had Kd-9h.  No raise pre-flop. Flop come Qd-9d-6d.  She bet T-1700. I folded after some thought. Would anyone have done anything different with this hand, and why?

Answer 1:

Without giving it much thought, here are my thoughts anyway: (As usual, everything depends on knowing your players, but let’s assume I was asleep at the final table, and wasn’t watching Mitzy). I don’t put her on A-Q (and consequently not on the Ad), nor K-Q because there was no pre-flop raise. Also Q-Q is out. You’ve got a 9, so she probably doesn’t have pocket 9s. She could have pocket sixes, but heads up that probably deserves a raise as well, depending on all of the previous action and tendencies. Even a lone Ace could dictate a raise here. Personally, if I’m Mitzy and I’ve got two diamonds in the hole, I would probably check the flop, trying to trap you (Of course,
I could get killed by this, but such is life). T-1700 is kind of a weird size bet. There is T1200 in the pot, and you each have about T9400. I don’t know what the bet size means. Again, perhaps past actions need to be considered. All of that being said, personally, I like your hand. You may be leading at this point, and if not (say she has a Q-X), you’ve got nine diamonds, two nines, and three kings twice for your outs. She does not have half her chips on the pot yet, so she is not necessarily pot committed. Me? I re-raise. Probably T1700, but perhaps even my whole stack. Just my opinion. I haven’t played heads up that often. That’s one of the problems with tournament structures. They lend themselves to deal making, and many people do not get much heads-up experience. The last time I got heads up in a tourney of any consequence, I got decent cards, jammed twice in three hands, got called both times, and won. I think you have to take control heads up. Give me your hand against another random hand, and I’ll take my chances!

Answer 2:

That is precisely why, if the day should ever come that I have the pleasure of meeting you, it will have to be AWAY from the table, Mr. Caro. I know I could never figure out WHAT you were thinking, and even if I could, it would probably scare me too much!

Answer 3:

You should have raised here. This is a strong hand heads-up, and putting constant pressure on the BB will take the initiative, collect a large share of the now-significant blind money, and give you more information about her hands. Move all-in, (except against a passive, predictable player). This is a likely spot for a bluff. If she only has top pair, you are about even with her. Even if she has a small flush, you have a decent chance.

The only local card room that I have time to play at on a regular basis only offers low limit hold’em at 2-4 and 3-6. Despite listening to every detail mentioned by Lee Jones in his book (that Mike Caro endorses) about how to beat the low-limit players who see to many flops, call too many bets cold, and in general make way too many wild draws, I can’t beat the 2-4 game. At 3-6 I come out ahead a lot, usually at least 150% of what I start with, but only if the best players are at a different table. If an extremely tough game hits at 3-6, the best I’ve done is break even. The card room has a fairly large 40k jackpot that they rake for, plus it is an ‘Indian gaming’ casino so they rake a few cents extra for that. Can a solid, disciplined tight but aggressive player ever beat 2-4 hold’em?

Answer 1:

There are very few winners in low limit Poker. The overhead is just to hi. I play low limit for the fun of it. I have to win $12,000.00 a year just to break even this is based on playing about 100 hours per month or 20 hours per week.

Answer 2:

Game selection is all important in situations like this. IMO games with more them 3 maniacs are really hard to beat if more than 3 you might as well play roulette. This goes for ANY limit. My ideal game has 1 or 2 maniacs, some but not a lot of pre flop raising and some good players who can fold a good hand.  If the mix is right I WILL WIN unless the run of the cards is really against me. Be selective and begin to recognize when a good game turns bad it doesn’t take much to turn the tide one or two player changes can turn a
table upside down.

Answer 3:

If you don’t want to play with 9 maniacs you might re-examine your notions of whether there is such a thing as superior play. Variance may rise but ev will rise faster as more players playing poorly enter the lineup. Long term in roulette is totally shot-less but in poker the more maniacs the more like “the house” you become.

Recently the Station Casino in Kansas Cityraised the rakes:
1-5 Stud from $3.50 max to 5.00
3-6 Hold’em from 3.50 max to 4.50
5-10 Hold’em from 3.5 to 4.00

The employees say that the decision to raise the rake came fromLas Vegas. Are these the normal rakes inLas Vegas, or is the Station putting the screws to us again? I’ve always felt that the Station Casino here saw us more as suckers than valued customers. That attitude may work in Vegas, but does set well with us in the Mid-west. So, my question is are we getting screwed here in K. C. or is this normal and acceptable raise in the rake.

Answer 1:

Yes you are so are we here in Vegas the Casino won’t it all so just relax and enjoy yourself. In the big clubs the rake is 3.00 at Sam town it is 2.00 But at some it is more.

Answer 2:

Screwed.  Especially if there’s a jackpot rake in addition, and you tip $1 per pot.  It’s hard enough to beat 1-5 stud with a $2.50 rake and $0.5 tip, $7 from each pot is crazy. The 5-10 game MAY be beatable, but probably not. If it’s a maniac’s game where you can sit and play like a rock yet still get action, you can probably do ok (though you’ll be bored to tears). Better yet, save your money and head toCaliforniaor Vegas a few times each year. One possible advantage to an insane rake – it will tend to keep smart players out of your game. Including you, perhaps.

Answer 3:

I played in a $10-$20 private game recently that had a $7 chop. $2 of this rake was supposedly going to pay for a $3,000 Royal flush bonus, but the only people who have won this bonus so far have been other dealers who owed the houseman money. You should be upset about the rake increase, but I believe the higher limit games are beatable even with the increase you describe in the chop.

Loose spread limits $2-$10 7Stud game – nine players.  I have (live) trip nines onThird Street.  Player to my left opens for $2.  $8 in the pot when it gets to me. I don’t like to slow-play trips less than Jacks so I raise $10. Three fold to the woman across from me. She is showing a ten and two tens are showing on board. She raises $10. This is how she normally will play Aces or Kings - a slow-play then a raise. Two callers between us and I call. Should I have re-raised? She catches a Jack, I catch a (live) blank.  She bets 10. Two callers. I decide to try to isolate her and raise $10. She re-raises. Other two players fold. $138 in the pot. I have $35 in front of me. Raise and she takes me all in. I show trip tens, she show trip jacks, nobody hits, she takes the pot. This was an extremely live game. Should I have been less aggressive and waited for a better opportunity? Should I have played her for trips when she caught the live jack despite the fact she will play a big pair and two pair the same way?

Answer 1:

I don’t mean to be flip or sarcastic but “pobrecito llorando”! The hand you describe very likely had no other probable outcome except possibly if you played a little softer she might have won a larger pot because of some players your raise drove out. These things happen, will continue to happen and although we can’t do anything about that we can control our response to them. Empathy yes, sympathy no. If you are really upset by bad beats, take up another activity.

Answer 2:

Normally, a re-raise here would totally give away your hand, but after 2 callers cold call 2 full bets between you and the re-raiser, I’d pop it again here. This might have knocked out one of the callers or both, and that’s ok in this spot. You know you’ve got the best of it here, and you’ve got players willing to throw the money in, so I’d 3-bet it and see what happens. I doubt you’d lose both callers in the middle, and you’ve still got to like your and.  Roysays play ‘em fast, and I think this was a good time to do it. Still, you didn’t know what her next card was going to be, although you might have been able to take a shot at it after you saw her reaction if you’d made it 3 bets. I would have figured her for AA after she re-raised as she might have read you for a high pocket pair. I don’t like how she played the hand, but in low limit stuff like this, be prepared for it all. This woman is one of the many out there who make this game +EV for you. Shake it off.

Answer 3:

I agree with your raise with the rolled up 9′s.  You have excellent position to the right of the bringing and the pot is un-raised up to you. Your raise could mean anything in that situation. It could be a steal attempt, a pair of 9′s or a pocket pair.  Nobody will put you on a set at that point. If you re-raise the 10, it would SCREAM pocket aces. I think the isolation play should have come on 3rd and NOT 4th. Now then, if she catches the J on 4th and bets out or heck raises you, you can safely put her on a set since the 10′s are all
but dead. If you decide to dump the hand at this point it would cost you 3-4 bets and not your whole stack. In an extremely live game it is a good idea to slow play NOTHING.Bet ‘em when you got ‘em and muck if you don’t. A better opportunity? What better opportunity?  What can you be aggressive with if not rolled up trips? The two pair is highly unlikely because of the two dead 10′s so the logical conclusion is trips. A re-raise on 3rd would have better defined the hand, so that if she bet at you on 4th it would have been a fairly easy laydown.

I read in Caro that it is not profitable to raise inTexaswith a pair ofQUEENSin first position when there are 9 players behind you. I cannot see why? The risk somebody has a better hand (AA, KK) is about 4, 5 %. The chance that somebody has an approximately equal hand (AK almost 50%) is about 13 % the chance you have the best hand before flop is AT LEAST 82. Is that not enough to raise? In all other poker games it is, why not inTexas. I cannot understand how he came to his conclusion. According to my own computation QQ is a clear raise in all positions in all types ofTexas(Limit to No-limit). Has Caro committed a mistake, or have I? P.S. Caro says that it’s NOT PROFITABLE to raise QQ, but you should do it as “deception”. My question is still the same, how come it’s not profitable to raise when you are a 82% favorite?

Answer 1:

If he said it is not profitable he is clearly wrong. If he said it is not AS profitable as simply calling, he would be right in many types of games. Even if he did say the first statement, I’m sure he meant the second.

Answer 2:

I’ve got no idea about whatever simulations have been done to support the raise or call decision. But while being an 82% favorite pre-flop is an important consideration, it doesn’t necessarily mean raising increases profits. While the raise clearly won’t chase out the better hands (those 18% of the time they’re present), it will chase out weaker hands. Against weaker hands, it doesn’t seem impossible that it’s more profitable to wait to push your QQ until you see a flop with no Aces or Kings. Perhaps the pots you’ll gain by, for instance, chasing out hands like Ax with a raise will be a smaller factor compared to the EV you’ll get in those situations where a non-AK flop gives someone else top pair, & of course larger still on flops like AQ4.

Answer 3:

It’s perfectly correct to raise under the gun with queens. I frequently recommend calling, but that has built-in danger, especially for some beginners and for players likely to be bewildered by the implications of how opponents respond. In hold ‘em before the flop, the deciding factor in whether or not to raise has less to do with the relative strength of your hand at the moment than it does in seven-card stud. In hold ‘em, your hand is largely defined by what happens on the flop — three cards all at once. I tend to weigh the value of raising less heavily than some other experts and world-class players, I concede, though, that raising might be the tactic you should choose the majority of the time from a game theory standpoint against perfect opponents. I’m not sure about that, though. And just-calling may be wrong, depending on your image and your lineup of opponents. I don’t know what the “raise for deception” advice meant, but my guess is that I was recommending a strategy wherein you should usually call, but should occasionally raise so that aware opponents are put off guard.

I’m sure this is a common question, but I couldn’t find the answer. What percentage of the time in an Omaha hi-lo game is a low hand possible? That is, what percentage of the time are there at least 3 different cards of 8 or less on the board?
Answer 1:
About 60% of the time.
Answer 2:
It depends on how tight or lose the game is. The looser the game, the more low hands there are, at about 61% for very loose hands. The tighter the game, the fewer, at as low as 39%.
Answer 3:
The answer to your question is: 1,561,728/2,598,960 = 0.6009 = probability low is made possible by the cards on the board. Or, as Andrew Prock has pointed out, about 60% of the time the cards on the board enable a low. In other words, the odds are about 3 to 2 in favor of a low. That is if you haven’t seen your cards. However, if you are sitting in a game looking at the four cards in your hand, the odds of low are no longer 3 to 2. For example, if you are looking at KQJT in your hand, then the odds of more low cards appearing on the board increase a bit, to 1,174,656/1,712,304 = 0.6860, making it a little better than two to one that the board will enable low (alas, for one of your opponents). On the other hand, if you are holding A234, then the
odds (in favor of the cards on the board enabling low) drop. The reason is that instead of a 52 card deck with 32 low cards, the deck becomes a 48 card deck with only 28 low cards. The odds of your own hand (A234) making a low become about 11 to 9 (as I recall). If you are familiar with the pre-flop raising and calling tendencies of your opponents, and thus are able to put them on hands, or if someone flashes their cards, then this, combined with your knowledge of the four cards in your own hand, should cause your estimation of the probability of low to be modified. Perhaps that is what Chuck Humphrey meant. Of course, once the flop comes down, it is a whole other ball game. Thanks to fellow posters Barbara Yoon and David esJardins for helping with my probability education and to Steve Badger for helping with my Omaha education. The closest any Omaha book (and my wife thinks I have them all) comes to this answer, as far as I know, is at the bottom of page 54 in Bob Ciaffone’s Millennium edition of Omaha Holdem Poker.