Letter from Doke (18th Oct 2011)

Hi,

Doke here again. I played absolutely no live poker this weekend, which
meant I got to put in some quality hours with my one true love: online
poker :)

I had a very good week, twice chopping my favourite nightly
tournament, the €10k gtd on Irish Eyes that starts at 8, as well as
winning a number of other tournaments and making more than my fair
share of final tables. The €10 rebuys on Irish Eyes in particular have
been good to me. I'm convinced that the nightly €10k on Irish Eyes is
the softest online daily tournament anywhere with a buyin of more than
€50. My friend Kieran "Croc" Walsh railed me the first night I chopped
and commented afterwards that the standard was lower than you'd expect
in a $5 rebuy anywhere else.

Since I didn't play live this week, no particularly interesting hands
spring to mind for this week's bit of strategy. I was watching Late
Night Poker during the week. Luke Schwartz was running like God in his
heat and got headsup with a big chiplead against Roberto Romanello.
Vicky Coren in commentary suggested that with such a chiplead, he
should just shove every hand. This is truly horrible advice! Dan
Harrington correctly pointed out once that the skill in poker more or
less boils down to using all the available information to assess your
odds of winning the pot, and comparing that to the odds you're being
offered. If you think you're 2 to 1 against winning the pot, you
should fold if you're only getting evens, and call if you're getting 3
to 1. Saying you should shove any two just because you have way more
chips is the same as saying you should go around offering people odds
of 2 to 1 on a coinflip just because you're much richer than them.
There are spots where shoving any two is okay, but they generally
involve a combination of much shallower stacks (less big blinds) and
an inept opponent who will fold too much when shoved on. Shoving every
hand just removes all skill from your own game while allowing your
opponent to play perfectly. Since he knows your range is any two, all
he has to do is assess what chance his hand has against a random hand.
On the final table of an online turbo a while back, I snap called a
shove from the small blind with J6o in the big blind. A number of
people railing asked me how on earth I could make such a call. My
answer was that all available information (my statistics for the
player in question) suggested he would shove here 100% of the time if
folded too, so his range was any 2 cards. While J6o is a below average
hand, it has about 48% equity here (48% chance of beating a random
hand). This was way more than the 40% equity I needed to make the call
(I was getting a price of 6 to 4 on the call) so it was actually a no
brain decision. In fact, in this spot, I'd have called with a lot
worse. The worst hand I'd have called with is Doyle Brunson's
favourite, t2o, as this is the worst hand that has 40% or more equity
against one random hand. The fact that my opponent's random hand in
this case was J5o was all the sweeter.

My next major live outing is the Winter festival next week, but before
that I'll probably pop into the Fitzwilliam some night.

If anyone is interested in playing the €100 Freeroll on Irish Eyes this Wednesday evening at 21.00, the password is 27off42

Good luck at the tables - unless I'm at the same table :)

Doke