It is actually warm here and that means golf season is coming. As some may know we joined Baltimore Country Club (BCC) late last fall after ten years at Hayfields CC. BCC is the preeminent club in the area with 2 very good golf courses, great facilities and lots of stuff to do for the kids and whole family. Really excited to get out there and slap it around. Again not much play until after tax season but I can hit some balls, etc. and prepare for the Maryland State Team Matches which unfortunately start the first Saturday in April. I enjoy the matches but they start at the worst possible time for me. Makes those weekends very long as I usually get in abt. 6 a.m. work til 11:30, go to the club to play the matches at 12:30, head home to say hi to the family at around 5:30 then get back in the office from maybe 7-11 doing more tax work. I'll write more about this as it approaches.
Finally, I read a blog post that Phil Hellmuth made on Cardplayer.com recently. Here is the link:
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/blogs/article/4966
Just...Wow. This is fucking retard speak. Before I begin and you say "Woods who the fuck are you to critique PH?", let me state the obvious: PH has eleven WSOP bracelets and I have as many as my 6 year old daughter. He has made his living playing tournament poker (primarily) and developed a brand, etc. around that. I have won a few small daily tournaments in AC and basically my tournament record is bullshit compared to him. Many people think he is a jackass but nevertheless he has been quite successful historically. Having said all of that this blog post makes me want to punch my monitor. Repeatedly. Hard. Til it breaks so I don't have to read it again. SO here goes my response to Mr. Hellmuth.
So he lays out three options with his KQ suited: limp (retarded), raise to 3 times the big blind with the intention of maybe folding and maybe calling depending on his read (WTF is he smoking here), or shipping it all in (obv I and most would say this is the best option).
Limp: Ok this is really really weak and basically sucks ass. What do you do if someone raises behind you. You fold? You call? Huh...very weak line. Depending on the stacks, etc. it is possible for someone behind you to raise with 77+, ATs+, KTs+, KJo, etc. In fact big stacks would probably raise much wider than this if there are a bunch of limpers in the pot. So he is basically giving up any control of the pot to anyone who wants it and then he will rely on reads to decide what to do. I have a real hard time believing you can read a hand pre-flop. Does a raise with JJ look that much different than a raise with AK? Sometimes you can see that a player is excited to get his chips in, etc. but generally reading a hand pre-flop is very difficult. Now to his credit this will save his tournament life at times if there is a ton of action behind him and it is obvious there are huge hands there but that doesn't happen a lot. He wants and needs to be in pots with hands like 77-JJ; KT, KJ, QJ, QT, JT and really even hands like AJ, AT are hands that given the dead money in the pot he is without question getting the right price to stick his chips in.
Raise: Ok this is reasonable if he intends on calling all-in to a re-raise. Often times with thinking solid players, a raise like this looks stronger than an all-in push. The thinking is "ok he is putting in 30% of his stack from early position, he must be strong". Most good players would assume that he is going all the way with it and not folding if they put him all in. Contrast this with an all in push which looks a little like desparation. Phil says this about raising:
This option is not a good one, but it does give you the chance to fold your hand when you're reraised; thus giving you a chance to save your last $4,600.Go fuck yourself for even writing thisl! He does later say that raise-folding would be very rare but to even think about this is just mind boggling. He or anyone should never, ever, ever be raise folding this hand. If you raise to $1,800 with a hand as strong as KQsuited and then fold to a shove you are essentially turning that hand into a 7-2 bluff. In other words, if you were inclined to bluff with 7-2 then you have essentially treated KQsuited as equal to that hand by employing the same shitty strategy. Raise call is ok...Raise fold is sulfuric acid on nutsack bad.
All-In
This is how I and I think most good players would play this hand. There are essentially three possible outcomes to this:
First if everyone folds you pick up the blinds and antes and increase your stack by nearly 25%. A lot of marginal hands might fold if you ship. Hands like 55, 66, etc. might fold. Also hands like AT, A9, etc. would probably not be thrilled about calling off here. Good result.
Second you may get called by hands that do not have you dominated such as 77-JJ, KT-KJ, QT-QJ, JT and perhaps a few others by big stacks. In all of these cases you are essentially in a coin flip for more than a double up. Very good result. In fact, a hand like AT, AJ, etc. are only approx 55-45 favorites over you. Given all the dead money in the pot that is a good price.
Third, this is the only bad scenario...someone wakes up with one of the 4 hands that crushes you (AK, AA, KK, AQ). Well that just blows doesn't it. But this doesn't happen that often as we all know. If it does, you dtill can win the hand although admittedly you are a severe dog to do so. Bad result.
So in the full universe of potential hands that you don't want to see there are 4. And you have 2 of the card combinations that make up 3 of those potential hands.
So this pre-flop strategy he speaks of basically sucks. Stick it in or raise and call a re-raise if you must.
He then attempts to justify the pre-flop play based on the miracle flop he got.
By the way, if I had moved all in pre-flop, then I would have won $1,575, but my limp had won me an extra $4,900! Again, I wouldn't recommend the $600 call to anyone other than a top pro, but it worked pretty well for me, at least this time.This is being results oriented entirely and anyone who has played any degree of poker knows that results almost don't matter in the short-run. There is luck involved in any one hand or tournament or even series of tournament. The skill eventually rises up and that is why the best players like DN, Ivey, etc. are so often at final tables, etc. An example: a guy raises in front of you, you reraise with 22, he three bets you and you 4 bet ship with your 22. He calls and shows AA. You flop a 2 and win a big pot. From a results orientation you played it right apparently? Does anyone really believe that 22 played this hand well though? Doubt it. 22 got lucky and hit a 2 outer as an 80/20 dog.
What Phil fails to realize in this results orientation is that even if he did ship and get called by say AJ, he is not a big dog and given this miracle flop hitting he more than doubles up and now has over 20 BB to actually play a little bit. As is he picks up an extra $4,900 which is great but perhaps not as great as it could have been.
As I read this I actually had to check the calendar and make certain it was not April Fools Day. I just can't believe this is the thought process of a well known pro.
End of rant...go ahead and tell me where I am wrong please!
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