Eric Rizen Lynch

Ask Rizen - The Better Late Than Never Files

Had a pretty goot night Friday night but took Thurs and Sat off. On Friday night I got 5th in the FTP $55k for abotu $4200, 5th in the FTP $20k for $1200 or so, and 9th in the UB $20k for $800 or so. I also cashed in the UBOC event for around $900. I felt I played really well on the night, and it would have been nice to have won one of the events, I can't complain about an overall good day.

Here's a better late than never 'Ask Rizen'. Since the last time I did one of these the blog has picked up syndication on www.bluffmagazine.com so I'm going to give a real quick explanation of how this works. You can send questions to rizenpoker@gmail.com with the subject heading 'Ask Rizen' and they will filter into an inbox that I will then post answers to every Friday (or in this case, Sunday).

Q: When someone raises and you have aces, do you like the idea of flat calling to induce more callers/people to raise behind?  My point is I was balancing the idea of having more people call which means bigger pots, but more variance.  Is there a certain stack size where you choose one play over the other?

A: If i flat call with aces usually the idea is to induce a raise, not more callers. With aces I really want to be heads up or three way, but no more than that. It's just way too high a variance play to induce five or six callers with aces. As far as stack sizes go, i'm more willing to call and risk getting more callers the shorter my stack is. The bigger my stack is the more likely I am to just try and take it down early in the hand. This is partially because of the reverse implied odds we give when our stack is big, but the main reason is if i already have a fairly big stack I'm usually being fairly aggressive anyways and can often build a big pot by just playing my hand aggressively. With a shorter stack, I'm much more likely to take gambles to try and build it into a bigger stack.

Q: This is a follow up to your article about Flop Texture/Continuation
Bets. What general philosophy do you have on the turn and river when you
miss the flop, then you put up a c-bet and are called?

A: This is highly player and board dependant. It's very important to pay attention to your table, because there are a lot of players who will call lots of flops then fold on the turn, and there are players that generally become fairly committed to the pot if they even call the flop. You also have to take board texture and position into account. Players will call and play back at you much more lightly when you raise from late position than early position. Also, if the board is coordinated like Jh-9h-2c it is much more likely that someone is peeling a card with a weak hand or a draw than on a board like Kc-7h-2d. People like to peel on raggy boards like 8d-5c-5h as well, so those can be good boards to follow up on the turn with, especially if a big card like a A-K-Q comes out on the turn.

Q: I'm shortening this original question by a lot for the sake of space, but it basically boils down to 'Am i costing myself money by not using Poker Tracker and Poker Ace HUD while I play?'

A: Yes and no. I think Poker Tracker is a GREAT tool and invaluable for both the way it tracks your results and the fact that you can easily review hand histories later. As well as some of the sorting features you can use. That being said, if you have another simple way to track your results you can use something like the replayer at www.pokerxfactor.com to review hand histories. Poker Ace HUD on the other hand is a good tool, but a mixed bag in some ways. It's nice to have all your Poker Tracker statistics right there in front of you on the table, but at the same time it's mainly useful for tracking large outliers. For example is it really helpful to know a guy is 25/20 vs 23/18 in a ring game? Not by a lot. But it is nice to immediately know a guy is 40/5. You can usually figure this stuff out in a few orbits anyways though if you're paying attention at all. Also, a lot of players use it as a crutch for either not paying attention or not taking good notes.

I guess the short answer is that I think some sort of results tracking software is absolutely a must, and Poker Tracker is by far the best I've come across. Poker Ace HUD *CAN* be very helpful as well, when used properly and not as a blunt instrument guiding all of your decisions but rather helping you identify statistical outliers very quickly and perhaps helping influence some of your much closer decisions.

I'll answer more questions next Friday. You can e-mail me at rizenpoker@gmail.com to have your questions answered.

-Rizen