Death by a Thousand Cards

/crabbiness on/

Now that the WSOP is over (well, at least until November), it seems everyone and their uncle wants to report on how they busted from the series. It doesn't matter if it was the $10K Main Event or a $200 daily deepstack event-- I've read about a dozen articles and have listened to a number of podcasts about all manner of people that played in Vegas over the past month and a half, and a  majority of them are saying basically the same thing when explaining why they busted from their respective tournament: "I was card dead for hours" or "I had a great table but the cards just didn't come" or "I was blinded down by a cold deck" or "The deck was colder than a witches tit in a brass bra an IRS agent's heart."

This is all fine and good, but these descriptions all strike me as nothing more than glorified bad beat stories. Oh, look at me. I lost because the cards didn't come. Boo hoo.

Is there anything more sad/pathetic/boring than a bad beat story? My old poker coach literally used to demand a dollar whenever/if I whined about a bad beat. News flash: We all get bad beats and coolers. That's just poker, folks. You agreed to the possibility when you signed up for this silly game. Yes, in a tournament a bad beat or cooler often means your tournament life comes to an end-- but again: you knew that was a possibility going in. Quit whining about it. The cards weren't coming, so you made the mistake of waiting until you were blinded down-- and only then made a stand. And then lost. And then had to leave. And then blogged about your bad luck.

I repeat: boo hoo.

The truth for most of these folks is that they let themselves get blinded down waiting for those mythical cards to come. Maybe I'm just cranky this morning, but I really don't have patience for people who blame their tournament bust-outs on being card dead. Cards don't matter (much) in big tournaments. Phil Ivey gets coolered just as often as you do. Phil Hellmuth gets bad beaten just a much-- in fact, probably more often than you. Vanessa Selbst goes card dead just a frequently as you. Annette O. sometimes plays without even looking at her cards.

And guess what? These pros all still manage to go deep and win.

Let's repeat that hidden gem again: your cards really, truly, honestly don't matter much. Seriously.

Uh, okay Bug. What exactly does matter? If my cards don't matter, what does?

Answer: Situations.

The thing the Phils and the Vanessas (and of course the cute-as-a-button Annettes) do so much better than you or I is they wait for situations, not cards. In fact, they actively seek out situations to attack. They aren't waiting for magical cards; instead they're actively probing for weaknesses in their opponents. They're looking for situations, not cards. They're chipping up. They're slicing and dicing. They're paying attention and REDi'ing and attacking and putting their opponents on the defensive. They're doing this constantly while you and I wait for the deck to heat up. The pro's cards don't matter. Instead, what matters are the cards of their opponents. They literally are making their opponents wait for the mythical cards while they themselves build their own stack by taking advantage of situations.

Now let's repeat that gem: They are NOT waiting for cards to come. If they bust, it's because they were situation dead, not card dead.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Now back to your regular programming.

/crabbiness off/

All-in for now...
-Bug

Nice Start to the New Year

Took down a solid 100-player MTT on Bovada today. I got lucky once (TT over JJ), and won a couple of flips, but the main reason I believe I did so well was serious aggression, and even more serious chip accumulation (see New Year's Resolution #5 here). I also attacked the bubble like a madman, especially when there were two or more short stacks left to act and the action was on me. Went into the final table with a decent chip lead and never looked back. Woooooooooooooooot!

All-in for now....
-Bug

So close, yet so far....

Went pretty deep in a 99-person $20 buy-in deepstack event this afternoon. Took a bad beat near the end with my KK 3bet all-in getting called by 55. Then it was push-fold mode with my tiny 4BB stack for the remaining ~10 hands or so. Not really complaining, but... well, sigh.

All-in for now...
-Bug

Hand Analysis: Jacks Early in MTT (part 1)

The following hand came from Volume 1 of Winning Poker Tournaments: One Hand at a Time. This was one of the "collective" hands in the back of the book, where the problems are given to each of the pros without benefit of consulting each other. They each independently come up with and answer and then compare them. On this particular hand, they each arrived at the same exact answer. Let's see if I do, too.

Setup:

• Very first hand of a moderate-sized, $300 buy-in MTT.
• Eight-handed play at your table.
• Everyone has T3K.
• Blinds are 10/20.
• You're in the cut-off (CO) seat.
• Mid-position player open raises to T60.
• Action folds to you.
• You have Jd-Js.

Reads:

• Basically, we can assume we know nothing about our opponent in this hand. This is the first hand, and he could be a nit, a maniac, or somewhere in between. Therefore we default him into "ABC" player category unless and until something tells us to do differently.
• His range could be as tight as 55-AA and KJ+, to as loose as 22-AA and T9+
• We have three players yet to act.

Estimate:

• Our hand is ahead of  opp's range. Maybe as strong as 66% equity, but perhaps as weak as 55%, depending on range assumptions.
• We have unknown fold equity against this player.
• We're 3000/20 = 150 big blinds deep.

Decide:

• We have a value hand.... but we don't really know how strong of a value hand. So let's treat it like an SDV hand.
• We don't want to built a big pot early in a tournament without a good reason to. I.e., we're deep stacked, and we should be reluctant to stack off preflop with only a pair, even one this strong. This is especially true against an unknown player. In other words, caution is the better part of valor.

Implement

• If we raise, we could fold out many of the worse hands in villain's range, which decreases our equity. 
• We also might have to fold our own hand if we get re-popped and we're not getting the right implied odds to call to set-mine.
• If we call, there is a risk of getting squeezed by one of the remaining players yet to act. That said, ourr hand is fairly well disguised. We could have enough implied odds to treat the hand as a set-miner, but more likely we could also go into check-call mode, especially if over-cards don't come on the flop.

Answer: Call and proceed with pot control caution.

Calling was actually a slightly surprising answer to me, but I think it's correct, and it also agrees with all three of the authors' answers. If we were later in the tourney and not so deep stacked, I suspect the answer would skew toward raising. Similarly, if this were a cash game, a raise would definitely be in order, mainly because this bug is a sick thin value bettor.

In an MTT, however, with deep stacks and zero knowledge yet of our opponents, and with our tournament life always on the line, it's better to call early in the game and play more cautious/pot-control-ish.

On to Part 2 of this hand...

All-in for now...
-Bug