Oct 03, 2009 – 04:10AM
I waited until it was officially 'Saturday' to post this as I figured if I updated the blog twice in one day people's heads might explode from shock. This is a typical 'Friday' Ask Rizen post with all of the questions having been submitted from users over at PokerNations. There is a running thread with submissions that can be found here and as always please feel free to use the form on here or e-mail rizen@lockpoker.com with subject line 'Ask Rizen' and I will feature them in a future segment. On to the questions!
Q: Online sng's seem to have increased significantly in difficulty over the past year or two.
Do you believe this is a related more to
1. the UIGEA thinning many of the fish from the online ranks (i.e. they're less informed about the legality of the situation)
2. the expansion of player knowledge on game theory and sng strategy
3. the global economic situation pushing out more recreational fish and leaving behind more hardened grinders
A: Can I say all of the above??? Quite honestly in the case of SnGs I actually think #2 is the biggest reason, but certainly #s 1 and 3 have had a significant impact. The fact is though, SnGs, particularly the turbo variety, are more or less 'solved' and players of high skill levels have VERY small edges over one another given the flat payout structure and the escalating blinds. There are certainly still players who make very good money playing SnGs but I think there are much easier paths to profit at this point in time.
Q: I read in a poker mag that some players are now looking at early stages in a mtt torney ie first 5 blind levels to get chipped up rather than keep the tight image, and risk it all at later stages of a tourney do you think this is true or would you advise sitting back until you can assess the table and your opponents
A: I think a lot of this really depends on where your individual strengths and weaknesses lie. Most players who advocate for playing very actively in the early stages of a tournament use the argument that you want to get the chips from the bad players before they bust out and you have to try and take them away from the better players that presumably are the ones that pick up these chips.
Players who advocate the tighter, more 'Harrington-esque' approach use the argument that if you have a significant skill advantage, going broke during the early stages of a tournament is catastrophic and you are better off building a tight image and waiting until the blinds/pots become more significant to pounce.
I often choose my approach based on the table I am at and the overall difficulty of the tournament. In tougher tournaments where my edge is presumably smaller and there are fewer bad players, I will often go out of my way to play pots with the poorer players early on, even if this adds significant risk to me busting out the tournament. For example, if I'm playing a $5k buy in at the WSOP the fields are usually tough and usually only a couple of bad players are at any given table. Taking a little extra risk and trying to accumulate chips from the poor players before they give them to someone else takes on more importance there IMO.
On the other hand, in softer tournaments (like the mian event) there are an abundance of poor players, and passing on early opportunities rarely costs you too much, particularly if they are thin, as there are almost always 3-4 (or more) poor players from whom you should be able to accumulate chips from at any given point in the tournament.
I guess to summarize I don't really believe either approach is 'better' than the other, but that it comes down to the individual style of the player. Some players play better with big stacks, other know how to work a short stack extremely well. Play to your individual strengths as well as your given table's weaknesses and don't force any one given strategy. There are many paths to success in poker, and often times your ability to implement a given strategy can be more important than the strategy itself.
Q: Raise or Call?
Your stack 62k Opponent: Dave "the DevilFish" Ulliott 48k (Crafty, Dangerous, Explosive...I mean he's the Devil)
Blinds: 200-400 50 ante
Position: Your in the HI-Jack Fish is in the BB.
Situation you've put you've elected to put yourself in: Your Hand: 8/6 of spades.
Established a strong image and now looking to exploit and begin dominating the table. You raise 1100 and BB calls. The flop falls 5/6/7 one spade. The fish leads for 2k. Do you call or raise in this spot?
A: I've only played with 'DevilFish' once in my life, so I'm making a few assumptions about his play from limited experience and what I've heard. If it's a full 9 handed table we have a 2850 pot at this point and he's leading for 2k into us when we raised pre-flop. I think at this point his range can be pretty wide. This probably looks like it is a very bad flop for our range. Even if we have an over pair we can't stand a lot of heat on this board. So he could be completely bluffing. He also could be leading as a semi-bluff with a dry 8 or even 4. I also think he can have a lot of two pair (and perhaps even set) type hands in his range here. I also think 'DevilFish' is perfectly capable of leading a straight here. That's a pretty wide range of hands, and with the exception of 98 we have a hand that could be ahead, and is pretty live when we're behind. I'm also assuming that the board is rainbow and not two tone since you specified one spade.
I'm not really looking to raise here very often since we have a decent hand with a decent draw. I'm pretty content keeping the pot relatively small and playing position with a hand that may be the best against this sort of player. I'm definitely never folding here, particularly against a known aggressive/tricky player who could have a wide range here.
Q: Second question:
If you call: The turn brings an off-suit 8 but your opponent in less then 2 seconds leads again for 5k not even considering. Do you simply fold, call or raise in this spot?
A: The pot size at this point should be 6850. If we consider the range we give him from the previous street (bluffs, two pairs, sets, dry 8s, dry 4s, and made straights) as well as how quickly he acted, I actually believe that this may be a good raising opportunity. While it's possible a crafty player such as 'DevilFish' can act this quickly when he has a 9 or T9 here, most players, even good ones, would hesitate a little trying to figure out how much to bet if the 8 was really a good card for them. Most of the hands in his range don't include 9s, and even if he has a 4 it's going to be VERY difficult for him to call a raise here. The only argument I can make against raising here is that we do have two pair, which is ahead of a significant part of his range, and if we flat call we could potentially induce another bluff out of him on the river.
That being said, I think this is a situation that given the pot size (11,850 after his 5k, he should have roughly 40k behind) that just taking this pot down now is beneficial, plus we can often make him fold better hands than ours here (dry 4s, 87, 55, 66) that we can't beat in a showdown. We could easily have played 99/98s/T9s this way so I think if we raise here, especially given the strong image we've established, that we're very unlikely to get re-raised on this turn by anything less than a 9, although you can't count it completely out against 'DevilFish'. I really like raising here as I feel it prevents us from having to make potentially difficult river decisions in a fairly inflated pot (if we call here pot should be 16,850, if the river is a brick an dhe bets ~12k it's a pretty disgusting spot for us), plus we get the added benefit of folding out a lot of hands we can't beat in a showdown here. I probably raise it to 15-17k and fold if he shoves.
Q: Third question:
If you elect to call again on the turn. The river brings an off-suit King and your opponent leads for 6k and the pot is over 20k. Call, fold or raise?
A: Unless my math is off the pot shouldn't be any larger than 16,850 at a 9 handed table or 17k at a 10 handed table. Part of the reason I don't like calling on the turn is because of how difficult this decision becomes. Once he three barrels his range should be pretty polarized to straights and bluffs. I suppose it's possible he's betting random two pairs and sets here, but I think most of the time he either has nothing and can't win the pot any other way or has a straight of some sort. If the pot is ~17k and he's betting 6k we're getting 23k:6k or roughly 4:1 on a call here, and he has to be bluffing over 20% of the time here to make calling profitable. If my math is wrong and it is over 20k here then the % of time he needs to be bluffing goes down here.
I almost want to say I really feel like he has a 4 or air here a lot as he seems to be trying to set you up to make a crying call with a set or something. Given that you called the flop/turn (although I don't know how much you deliberated on those decisions) I don't think it's super likely he thinks your folding here, but he doesn't have to be bluffing very often here to make calling profitable. My initial inclination is to fold here, but I think it's pretty close and isn't a huge mistake either way. Without knowing more about how 'DevilFish' players I think if he really wanted us to fold here he would probably bet a little more (although that's precisely why it may be a great bluff) on this board.
-Rizen
Oct 02, 2009 – 15:10PM
Lock Casino is Launched! Innovation is here!
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LOCK
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For additional information, please contact:
Jennifer Larson
jennifer@lockcasino.com
www.lockcasino.com
Sep 16, 2009 – 16:09PM
ABERDEEN, New Jersey (September 14, 2009) – Lock Poker, a rapidly growing and innovative online poker room on the Cake Network has expanded its Pro Program yet again. Following last month’s promotion of Eric ‘Rizen’ Lynch to Director of Product Development and the addition of 10 top North American players, Lock is expanding its roster internationally.
This most recent round of signees features 12 elite online pros from around the globe. Leading the way are Stephen ‘allinstevie’ Devlin (Ireland, UK), Bjorn Andre ‘bjolla’ Hovden (Norway), Dan ‘Ladbrokes/danloulou’ Smyth (Ireland, UK), Vincent ‘Diamond8’ Gabel (Belgium), Elmar ‘EmmiV’ Masson (Iceland), Joe ‘Conno!!y’ Connolly (UK), Francisco Costa (Portugal), Robert Jan Hoogendoorn (Netherlands), Brendon "brendoor" Rubie of Australia, Maximilian Bassil (Norway), Bolivar Palacios (Latin America) and Jose Raul Severino(Latin America)
"Online poker has no borders. It is a global community, we are very excited to reach out to the entire world with our product,” remarked Jennifer Larson, owner and CEO of Lock Poker. “We have a true partnership with these players and understand the value of each one of them. With Eric "rizen" Lynch and Lock PRO driving our product we are confident we will have the best online poker experience worldwide"
Lock VP of marketing Derrick Maloney was quick to add “We have a very different approach, not only with respect to the partnerships we have formed, but in the way our pros will reach out to our customers. As we roll out our Pro Program initiatives, we believe the poker world will be intrigued and find many compelling reasons to play at Lock.”
All 12 players, as well as Eric ‘Rizen’ Lynch and the 10 American signees are clients of Poker Players International, the world’s largest poker agency. PPI founders Eugene Castro and Randall Kasper once again expressed their enthusiasm with respect to the signings as well as the direction Lock Poker is headed.
“We are proud to Lock arms with a room that is passionate about the player experience and is willing to explore uncharted waters . Lock and PPI are clearly of similar mindset, and we together hope to bring some new lifeblood to the poker world. Time for change” remarked PPI’s Agency Leader Randy Kasper.
For additional information, please contact:
Randall S. Kasper, Esq.
randy@pokerplayersinternational.com
732.522.1627
www.pokerplayersinternational.com
DerrickMaloney,VP, Lock Poker
derrick@lockpoker.com
778.772.6328
www.lockpoker.com
Sep 14, 2009 – 17:09PM
I've still been playing lots of Pot Limit Omaha lately. I got off to a GREAT start for the month but have since gone on a downswing. Oddly, i've been having more success at 2/4 than 1/2 this month. All told I'm down like 4 buy ins, which in PLO isn't too significant. In fact several times yesterday I was actually back up to break even for the month. I've been doing a lot of end of day study, going back and looking at all my big pots and I think i've found and plugged a few leaks. I suppose we'll find out as time goes on :)
Q: I saw Phil Helmuth crying on TV about losing to ten-queen offsuit like its a bad hand that the person should not have ever called, but statistically, is ten-queen a good hand or not? It ranks higher than most of the cards in the deck, an 11/13 + 9/13 is the way I look at it for a total of 20/26 despite being unsuited, it still runs hard against 8 pocket pairs... sure its not the greatest, but it ranks pretty good, doesn't it? Why was he crying? Is Phil on drugs? Does he have emotional psychological issues? Or is he right about 10Q being bad?
A: I'm not a psychologist or even remotely qualified to talk about Phil's emotional issues or potential drug use :) That being said, QT can be a good or a bad hand, it's all pretty relative. If you played QTo from UTG in a full ring MTT, it's a pretty poor hand in a lot of situations. If you raise in early position with it the most likely hands you get action from are ahead of you and you'll be out of position most of the time, which in and of itself makes life difficult. In late position though, QT is a fine hand if it's folded to you, and most players I know would definitely play it. Like most poker questions, 'it depends' is the right answer here. In certain situations, QT is a great hand, in other situations, it might as well be 27o.
Q: Do you focus on Poker Equity (Call and Fold) situations for tournament play more than say other factors like agg/loose, pot odds, and stack sizes?
A: Hopefully I understand this question correctly. For tournament play there are many things I take into consideration. I'm not sure I could give a specific order to it. I mean obviously I focus on my relative hand strength, but I also focus on table dynamics, stack sizes, pot + implied odds, players already involved in the pot or yet to act, and probably other factors I'm leaving out. No one particular factor outweighs all others, but I personally focus a lot on table dynamics, stack sizes, and who is in the pot probably more than the rest (including relative hand strength).
Sep 04, 2009 – 15:09PM
Played some PLO yesterday for the first time this month. So far a good start to the month. Been giving 2/4 a try for the fourth time, but this time got off to a good start with a 3 buy in upswing and felt like I was playing pretty well. I'm still keeping the 5 buy in stop loss on for 2/4, but hopefully this will be the month 2/4 'takes' although if my win rate isn't at least half of what it is at 1/2 then it really doesn't matter. Provided I keep at it the entire month I'll have to compare win rates at the end of the month and see which is more profitable.
I also played the first WCOOP event yesterday on Stars. Played really well, staying at around even for quite some time, then flopping a set of 8s and getting up to 7k. I then flopped a straight vs a guy with bottom two pair who didn' t know how to fold and went up to about 12k. I was stuck there for quite a while until a very poor, aggressive player raised the button with TT. I had JJ and 3 bet, he 4 bet all in and it was quite an over bet. After some thought I called but the river was a ten and that took me back down to ~3k. Ran AK into AA shortly after that and didn't manage to get there. Luckily there are A LOT more events so looking forward to playing well and making some deep runs! Now for the questions.
Q: I do a lot of reading and prefer MT tourneys. I'm 74 years young and in good health. Poker is my passion, though I don't aspire to turn pro. What suggestions can you give me to improve my game? I would like to compete in MTs up to 1,000 buy-ins at AC or elsewhere.
A: Honestly it sounds like you're already taking what my biggest suggestion would be to heart, and that's always be looking for avenues to improve. A lot of it depends on what kind of learner you are. If you are a book learner there are lots of good books out there. If you've already read Harrington on Hold Em Vols. I and II and my book, then next ones I usually recommend are 'The Poker Tournament Formula' (both 1 and 2) and 'Kill Everyone'. 'Tournament Poker for Advanced Players' is good as well, but some of it is a rehash of what's in Harrington on Hold Em. If you're a visual learner the video training sites are all GREAT tools, and obviously I recommend the one I teach at, PokerXFactor.com, but there are a lot of really good ones out there. Poker forums can be very helpful as well if you can sift through a lot of the riff raff.
Q: My question is how do you cash out your online poker winnings if it is still illegal to play online in the US? I play quite a bit and have been pretty successful but since the laws changed i am leary to play for higher stakes. I don't want to get to deep into it and win a lot and find out that I can't cash out. It is obviously possible, I would just appreciate some information on subject.
A: First, let me preface this by saying I'm not a lawyer and law is not my specialty. That being said, PLAYING poker in the US is not illegal. The law change in effect makes it illegal for the banks to process money to and from gambling institutions, is the way I understand it. At the very least, if my profession were illegal there is no way I would publicize myself so much, and neither would any of the other US players. As far as cashing out goes, I've never had any significant issues. It can take a while, and I've occasionally had a check bounce when a payment processor goes down, but by and large I've always gotten my checks and been able to cash them within 2-3 weeks, often faster. I often request a check every week, so I've had plenty of experience with it.
Q: I am posing a question which no doubt will be met with blanket denial by those who have the ability to address such matters. The majority of the responses will tell me that I must have terrible "leaks" in my game. Others will tell me that I am imagining things. I have played online (at several different sites for years now), and I have played live for far longer than that. I have been aware for some time now, through my own experiences, and through word of mouth (from countless players more experienced than I) that online software is designed to create larger pots for larger “rakes”, and to favor larger stacks as a means of keeping the tournaments moving at a good pace. This bias toward the large stacks becomes more apparent as the level of play decreases as one is more often faced with challenging the larger stacks where they have already put you all in (if one chooses to call) or almost certainly will call you if you push in simply because they have more chips than you. This becomes a very frustrating situation when I have to not only play the opponent but the SOFTWARE as well. This severely limits my options. In many cases I wind up folding hands where the odds are heavily in my favor regardless of what the opponent might be holding because experience tells me that the hand has virtually no chance of holding up. I am not only speaking of situations where I have the smaller stack. I will use my experience to my advantage when I have the edge in chips as well, but I then feel bad for the other player(s). Point is, I'm totally tired of the disproportionate number of times I see people getting knocked out, or lose a cash pots, by runner runner straight, runner runner flush, the miracle “one outer”… or one of my favorites – when four cards of the same suit hit the board; which, quite frankly, happens with a frequency I have never EVER seen in all my years of live play. One guy online once joked that the four suited cards on the board happen about every four hands. And he wasn’t far from the truth. I joked backed “The only thing that hits more than four suited cards are QUADS”. And I wasn’t kidding. I see multiple quads every day. Even today I saw quads 3 times, and yesterday I saw quads an amazing 8 times.” I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not. And any online player will know exactly what I’m talking about. The thing is, I can go a half a year or more playing live and not see quads.
Straights and flushes hit so often that I sometimes have to look down to make sure I’m not at a Omaha table. No joke. And you need only to play close attention to the “chat” to see how many countless people are complaining about the same thing. Today at a hold ‘em table I saw some guy say “You gotta be kidding me, three flushes in 6 hands?!” And that same guy won with ONE of the flushes.
After a while, one can see things coming. People say "I saw that coming"; at the tables all the time. How else do you explain someone going all in 6,7 8 times in a row with garbage getting called by people holding real cards and winning every hand? I also realize that the way the online software functions at present presents an attraction to those who like lots of big hands and big pots. And poker sites love loose players… the higher the pots, the higher their rake, the higher their profits.
I once had a representative from one site tell me that they get “so much player traffic” that it doesn’t make any logical sense for them to program the rng (random number generator) to generate higher rakes.” To which, I replied “You’re joking right? Online gaming is a business and the number one objective of any business is to MAKE MONEY.” I then mentioned that the LUXOR in Vegas is a very poplar casino that sees an amazing amount of foot traffic every year. But you don’t see the LUXOR tweaking their slot machines so that they all payout fairly and evenly. By the way – slot machines?? Also run off of a random number generator. The LUXOR knows (like every other casino in Vegas) that the slot machines are huge cash cows and, despite how much traffic their casino gets, design their slot machines (and everything else in the casino) to suck as much money from it’s players as possible.
So here’s my question, and I think the entire poker community is crying out for an answer. What is the collective professional opinion of online rng’s? Are they realistic? Are they fair? And do the pros also question the “true” randomness of the cards they’re being dealt?
No one would know better than a pro, and no one could contest the skeptics better than a group of pros stating their honest opinions on “online rng’s.” In fact, my friends and I wish there was a “pro” survey of all the sites online and a collective list of sites that had the most realistic and fair rng’s on the net. One can dream.
Being an online player yourself, I really hope you answer my question… not just for me, but also for the many players out there with the same concerns that I have.
A: I debated if I should post this one or not, but I hear this sort of thing a fair amount. I know when the poster asked the question he was truly hoping I was going to say 'YES, it must be rigged!'. The truth is though, I've been playing poker online and live for nearly 6 years now and I've actually seen CRAZIER things live than online (quads over quads, quads beat by straight flush, etc). Let me address a few points specifically though.
First, you say that the software is designed to create larger pots for larger 'rakes'. Pot rakes are capped, so at a certain point they don't rake any more money, which somewhat debunks the idea that that would be a good thing. It would statistically be best for the sites for more pots to be small, but still big enough to be raked. The problem (at least from the poker room side) for sites is that you really don't want large sums of money moving from one player to another, because if a player goes broke that's bad for you. In an ideal world every player would pass small amounts of money back and forth until they were all slowly bled by the rake. While it seems as if there would be incentive for the sites to create large pots to generate rake, in the long run, artificially creating large pots would actually be a money losing endeavor by sites because the huge swings would cause players to go broke too quickly creating a smaller player pool for less games and eventually less rake. There really is very little incentive for a site to do this. I can't say without 100% certainty that no site has ever done this, but it just doesn't make financial sense.
Second, you mention that larger stacks always win in tournaments. I've actually heard most people argue the shorter stacks always win to keep the bad players alive! I've heard tons of variants of this story, and the fact that they're all different probably means in reality it's pretty balanced. I will admit there would be a general incentive to end tournaments earlier, but from what I've seen I seriously doubt shorter or bigger stacks are favored in all in confrontations.
I think one thing you're noticing (and I'm sure you've heard this before) is that you simply see more hands online than live, so you're going to see more things. When I play live, a good dealer can get in 30ish hands per hour, maybe 40 if the entire table is moving quickly and tight. Online, I can get in 60/hr pretty easily, and I can play 4+ tables at once too. So 30 hands/hr versus 240 hands/hr I should be seeing crazy things happen about 8x as often.
Lastly I would also like to mention that I've honestly seen more blatant cheating live than I ever have online (mostly in the form of collusion and chip dumping), and I have personally never seen this, but I've heard lots of stories of dealers palming chips or dealing from the bottom of the deck in certain instances (although rarely in actual casinos). I personally trust the online game more than the live game in terms of actual game integrity, although honestly I believe both to be honest enough I won't hesitate to play either.
I realize that what I'm saying is not going to convince you to change your mind, but I share this based on the person experience of someone who has played professionally, with success, both live and online. I do not adjust my game any differently be I playing against a live dealer or an RNG, I only adjust based on the different players. If you don't trust the game than you shouldn't play online, but I see no reason to believe in any of these conspiracy theories I often hear because most of them make little sense from a longer term business perspective, even if some of them might make some sense in the shorter term.
-Rizen
