Evaluate, Decide, Act, Sleep in an Aluminum Tube

 Am sitting in the Kahului airport in Maui, waiting for my Boeing to arrive, so I figured I’d get a little caught up on my blogging. Forgive the rambling nature of this post, but I’m both wired and tired, just waiting to step into that big aluminum tube, strap down, and jet back home. It’s been a long, tiring week, with little actual poker played, but I have been thinking a fair bit about the game in my spare time. For example, I’ve been reading a very good book on the subject these past few evenings late at night as I try to unwind prior to sleep. 

The title of the book is “Professional No Limit Hold’em,” by Matt Flynn, Sunny Mehta, and Ed Miller. The book is geared toward solid intermediate-level players who want to take their game to the next level—i.e., earn a living at the game. While that goal is certainly admirable, it’s a bit of a stretch for the material included between the covers. On the other hand, however, the book really does a very good job of describing some key fundamentals of hold’em and applying them to advancing your game. 

The authors are all very good players, too, with excellent credentials. Ed Miller is the same guy who co-authored the classic beginner’s book “Small Stakes Hold’Em” with Sklansky and Malmuth. Mehta is an online pro who makes his living by routinely playing 16 tables at a time of 6max $1/2 NL ($200 buy-ins) on ‘Stars. Flynn, in contrast, is the only amateur among the three, but he’s actually the guy who I think may have the best overall grasp of the game and experience playing live. 

I said a few posts ago that I was listening to Deuces Cracked pod casts on my smart phone, and just coincidently one of the lectures/interviews I recently listened to was an interview of Flynn. He’s a rich dermatologist who plays high-stakes NL in his spare time. Now, honestly, this doesn’t normally strike awe in me, but after listening to an hour of him talking turkey, I realized that the man does have a solid grasp on the game. I was thoroughly entertained by the pod cast, and I definitely learned a few new things. For instance, Flynn went into a long discussion on blind stealing, how it is profitable in the long run if applied properly, how to vary your stealing bet sizing based on the opps’ stats, when not to steal (e.g., against short stacks), etcetera. Great stuff. 

Anyway, back to the book. This is another really good reference tome for the serious amateur like myself. The chapter on Position was particularly excellent, and I definitely learned a few things. For instance, the chapter hit on the whole notion of Position = Information = Power, which of course I already knew, but the authors also did a great job explaining that Position has a very important secondary benefit in NL games—i.e., allowing the person in position to ultimately control the size of the pot. They argued convincingly that this aspect of playing position poker was nearly as important as the information aspect. In Limit games, pot control isn’t very key to success, but in NL it can spell the difference between a badly losing player and a winning player. The name of the game is Win Big, Lose Little, and a powerful tool to achieve this goal is controlling the size of the pile of money in the middle. Having position allows you to slow down or speed up the rate at which money goes into the middle, which then can be applied depending upon whether you think you’re ahead, behind, or unsure in a hand. 

The book is full of this kind of concept, but it also has a number of excellent practical examples and situations that are discussed. Other unusual topics covered are things like “committing to a hand,” risk/reward analysis, stack-to-pot ratios, effective stack sizes, and my personal favorite: small stack bullying. I’m currently about halfway through the book, and am looking forward to the rest. Like I said, all good stuff…. 

 

…In other poker news I’ve been spending a fair bit of time thinking about how to best teach poker to someone new to the game. Besides recently picking up a student of sorts that I’m trying to help, I’ve also been thinking of a wider audience for this information. Where does one start to learn poker in a systematic manner? How do you convey the key principles of the game to a newbie who is more interested in just jumping in and playing then learning some solid foundational stuff first? What’s important and what’s not to convey to a beginner? How do you get someone to stop gambling and instead want to play a game of odds and skill? How do you build on this as the student progresses? 

I’ve actually spent some time roughing out some ideas on the subject, and am now trying to decide what to do with this info. Maybe just a series of slides that start at the basics and work up through the different levels of the game. Or maybe an introductory e-book. Or I might even try to take it further and develop a few training videos or pod casts. Who knows? It may sound pointless and/or boring to most people, but I enjoy the process of teaching and explaining, so I figure why not combine this interest with my passion for poker? I’ve always been a firm believer that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it to someone else. Well, this definitely fits that bill. Again, who knows? Ah, it seems that they’re calling my gate, so it’s time to shut this down and strap into that big jet airliner for the trip home. More later after I’ve finally gotten some sleep and my brain is back to normal… 

…well, I’m back—this time from the SW terminal at LAX. It’s 4:45am and I’ve got a few minutes before my next flight. Seems I picked up some kind of sinus thing somewhere over the Pacific. Great. I hate biz travel. Anyway, back to poker for a few. I was talking about teaching poker to a newbie. One of the things I’ve been pondering is the play of a game and, more to the point, the elements and process of playing a hand. In its simplest guise, I’ve come to the realization that a poker hand is just a series of three things performed over and over: Evaluate, Decide, Act. Let me explain:

It doesn’t matter whether it’s preflop, flop, turn, or river, in the Evaluate phase of a hand, you are simply evaluating where you stand relative to the other players and the money currently in the pot. I.e., how strong are you relative to the competition and what is the risk/reward ratio given that evaluation. In other words, you sit down and are dealt a hand. The first thing you do is evaluate your hand strength and situation. For beginners, this is usually just asking the questions: “what are my cards, what is my position, and what pot odds are being offered?” 

As we then proceed into the Decide phase, beginners are mostly just looking at fit-or-fold decisions. In other words, this step is the process of deciding whether to continue in the hand or not based on the previous Evaluation of the situation. 

Then, once a decision on whether to continue or not in the hand has been made,  the Act phase for a level-1 player is just the act of checking, betting, raising, or folding based on simple ABC poker; i.e., bet more when you’re strong, and bet less, check or fold when you’re weak. Beginners often start in Limit poker, which makes this part very simple to implement. 

Now, as you progress in skill and abilities, the Evaluate/Decide/Act phases each take on more and more heft and importance. For example, Evaluate morphs from the simple "what are my card/position/pot-odds?" questions to significantly more complex logic, such as evaluating board texture, player types, implied odds, game texture, hand ranges, tells, bet size reads, etc. In other words, the more skilled you get, the more information you can gather and use to evaluate where you stand relative to the opposition. 

Similarly, the Decide phase goes from simple fit-or-fold decisions to more complex decisions, including deciding whether to steal or not, should you float, or maybe isolate, or whether to c-bet, 3-bet, set-mine, bluff, reverse steal, etc. In other words, it's just basically deciding what course of action will allow you to to extract maximum value from a hand (including the decision to fold, which maximizes your value in the sense that you minimize your losses) based on your previous evaluation. 

The Act phase also gets more involved as your skill level increases. This part really focuses strongly on the act of bet sizing, such as optimizing bet sizing, building pots, checking on later streets, pot control, and essentially just acting on the action that was decided upon in the previous Decide phase. 

Evaluate your situation and relative strength. Decide what course of action is called for. Act in a manner that maximizes value or minimizes loss based on the decided course of action. Then rinse and repeat on the flop, the turn, and the river.

Boy, poker sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Of course the devil is in the details, but as a basic rubric for the play of a poker hand, this seems like what I actually do whenever I’m playing my A-game. Whether it’s a single Rush hand, or the final HU hand of a MTT tournament, good players are constantly Evaluating, Deciding, and then Acting in a way that benefits them the most.

Or at least that's the way this bug sees a poker hand.

Okay, gotta run. They’re calling my next giant aluminum tube…..

All-in for now….

-Bug