Letter from Doke (3rd October 2011) EMOP Barcelona

Hi,

Doke here again. This week I headed to Barcelona to play the EMOP there, struggling unmanfully with a flu. I played day 1b, and early on nothing was happening for me. I'm a great believer that in slow structures with softish fields patience is a big virtue and you're usually better off trying to hang in there long enough for something good to happen rather than trying to force it when it's not happening.

Recently I've been trying some of the mental techniques I used to prepare for running to see if they help with the poker, and one area where I've noticed a definite improvement is in my patience early on. The biggest mistake I see predominantly online players (myself included) live is to get bored, play too many hands, and try to force things prematurely.

Anyway, it paid off on this occasion: I think I'd lost the minimum through my early period of card death/making the second best hand a lot, so still had 13k left when I was on the right side of a cooler. At 150/300, a loose player utg raised to 800, a loose Scandi flatted just before me, and I found aces in late position. I threebet to 2600, and after asking how much I had left the initial raiser threw in a clump of chips to make it just over 9k. The other guy unexpectedly flatted, I shoved, and now the initial raiser was annoyed to discover he couldn't reraise to force the other guy out as my shove represented an underraise (an elementary mistake you see online players make live more often than they should, particularly after taking the trouble to get an exact count from me). So he flatted, as did the other guy. The board ran out KT896 with three diamonds and they turned over queens and jacks. So a timely triple up. From there I moved up towards 70k without any major setbacks. Late in the day I lost with tens against a shorty's A5 to finish with 56k, around average.

Unfortunately day 2 didn't go to plan. I was card and spot dead for the first three hours and struggled not to fall too far back, kept afloat by the occasional well timed steal or resteal. I had just over 40k shortly before dinner, less than 20 bbs, when I got moved to a new table. First hand: I shove AJs and it gets through. Second hand: I shove sevens and runs into kings behind. I was left with a pile of small denom chips which represented just over 3 bbs. I was bb next hand so with over a third of my stack in (counting antes) and getting over 2 to 1 to call I was more or less committed. After a late position raise I checked one card to make sure it was higher than a 7, and seeing a queen reshoved. My opponent hummed and hawed as the dealer counted my mountain of small denom chips before announcing, "OK, I call", and turned over aces, which held against my Q9. An annoying end to my tourney about 40 from the money but no major regrets: I felt I'd done as much as anyone could given what I had to work with. The tournament itself was a massive success, with over 450 runners, an EMOP record that proves that the tour is going from strength to strength. Roll on the live final in Riga.

Mrs. Doke was struggling with the same flu so this curtailed our sightseeing a bit, but what we saw of Barcelona was absolutely brilliant. I also ran into Team Irish Eyes member Noel Keane on day 1 (he busted just after dinner unfortunately). Noel's an interesting guy with a very interesting background and "how I got into poker" story.

A number of readers have asked for more strategy in these letters so from now on I'll either talk through a hand I played myself, or answer "What would you do here?" type queries which you can send me at dara@irisheyespoker.com. This week's hand illustrates the math based approach my game is largely based on, but also I hope will illustrate that you don't need to know the math in detail, just the implications. The hand in question was late on day 1a here in Barcelona. After my triple up, I'd moved up to about 50k, but after a period of card death had drifted back to 30k when this hand happened. One opponent in particular was giving me a lot of trouble, threebetting me a lot, and apparently bluffed me off the best hand (tens) when an ace hit the river and he bet big in a threebet pot. Folded to me in the cutoff, I made my customary min raise with A3s when my nemesis was bb. This is my standard raise size for more or less all my range as it fits in with my overall smallball strategy. I had no reason to change it here because my opponent never seemed to fold his bb, but rarely threebet either out of position, so with two tight players between him and me, the most common scenario was I got to play a pot against him in position as the preflop aggressor, a profitable situation,
particularly attractive since this is a rare chance to do so (I'm usually out of position against him).

As expected, he defended, and checked the Q42 flop. Against many opponents I'd cbet this flop on the basis that I probably have the best hand and might get a very cautious opponent to fold better (like a bigger ace or pocket threes). Let's run through some math at this point:
(1) I have the best hand here unless my opponent started with a pair
(about 6%), hit the flop (about 30%) or has a bigger ace (11%). Knocking off a few percent for very strong hands he'd threebet means I have the best hand here 55-60% of the time.
(2) It's important to remember that there are always three good reasons to bet: to protect what you believe to be the best but vulnerable hand, to get a better hand to fold, or to get called by a worse hand.

Looking at these three reasons, against this specific opponent:
(a) it's difficult to imagine he'd fold a better hand than mine to a bet
(b) it's equally difficult to see him calling with worse
(c) if my hand is best now it's not all that vulnerable as there aren't many draws he can have.

A big reason not to bet here is a very aggro opponent will look at that board and rightly conclude I will have missed it more often than not, and be prepared to follow through on this read with a check raise bluff. If I get check raised here I'm in a pretty horrible spot where I could make a big mistake either by folding the best hand or calling when I'm behind. Furthermore, a very aggro opponent is likely to keep barreling and I don't really want to play a very big pot at this point with ace high, so more than likely I'm going to have to fold to the check raise. Even if I'm behind, I'm giving up a lot of equity if I do this as with my gutshot I probably have either 7 or 10 outs, or between 25% and 40% equity. So to save myself this spot, I just check behind. My hand has decent showdown equity (meaning there's a very good chance it'll be best at showdown) and several ways to improve so the last thing I want to do is put more chips in now only to get bet off the hand.

The turn is the perfect card for me: a 5 completing my straight. My
opponent leads fairly small here. Again, my reaction to this very much
depends on my read on the villain, and my history with him. If he was a cautious tight player who might be "betting for information" with a marginal hand that he will fold to a reraise, I'd prefer to flat call here (and hope he weak leads the river or makes a crying call to a small value bet), or taking a stab with air but giving up if I show resistance. But against a very aggro opponent far more likely to not only be bluffing but to continue the bluff rather than just give up, and less likely to give up on a marginal hand, I prefer the small non-pot committing raise, which gives him the opportunity to come back over the top if he believes he has the best hand but needs to protect it, or is on a bluff and believes I'm either bluffing or have a marginal hand that can't call an all in (here the history between us is important as he may think I'm simply fed up of folding to his bets and reraises and therefore more likely to be on a total move, or taking a stand with a marginal hand). My opponent briefly thought about it before shoving, and after I called tabled 52o for two pair.

It's important to note that while my decisions at every point in the hand were based on and supported by the math (particularly on the flop), they took into account opponent tendencies as well as likely hand ranges. Most good players would come to the same decisions without necessarily being aware of the math. Most players learn not by analysing the math in detail but observing situations and noting how other players play them, both to see what they can learn from good players and what mistakes bad players make that should be avoided.

I was struggling with the wifi in the hotel for most of my time in Barcelona, but got it working briefly on the Sunday, when I found out that Irish poker legend Padraig Parkinson had suffered a heart attack two days before. I sent him a tweet wishing him a recovery and apologising saying I was out of the loop due to dodgy wifi in Barcelona. Parky tweeted back asking whose dodgy wife, so clearly his humour is not impaired, which must be a good sign :)

I also heard the very sad news that my friend Sean Gregory passed away at the weekend after a long fight with cancer. Sean was one of the first to befriend me when I appeared on the scene, and he always had a smile and a positive outlook on everything which made him a real pleasure to be with, except at the table where he was one of the most ferociously difficult to play against LAGs in the country. A lengthy conversation with Sean in the Red Cow early on in my career gave me many telling insights into the intelligent LAG's game at a time when all my mentors were TAGs, and I would say Sean had as big an influence on my current online game as anyone. One saying of his in particular stuck with me - "Keep putting the worms out there and sometimes you lose a lot of little worms before you catch the giant fish that makes it all worthwhile". Like everyone else, Sean struggled with the variance and the highs and lows of poker, but his positive attitude always shone through, and I took it as one of the most genuine compliments I've been paid when he came to me about a year ago looking for advice on the online game. Sean had some considerable successes in the last year online and had his career not been cut short I'm certain he would have proven what a tremendous natural talent he was.

This letter is being written on a plane from Barcelona to London. The plan is to play an EPT side event or two before the EPT Country of the Year freeroll on Thursday, and then it's back to the online grind for a while.

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

Doke