Kudos to all the Grinders

A little bit surprised to find I'm having a hard time pushing myself past playing 5 hours a day, as far as trying to amp up my volume of play a bit. I've been taking breaks and playing in 1-2 hour stretches but I seem to hit a wall around 5 hours or so, where it's hard to force myself to keep grinding out hands. Which isn't the worse thing in the world, I guess, and still a decent volume of hands.

Knock on wood, but I've been on a tear the last week or so. I've tripled up my original buy-in at the site I'm propping at, plus should have a pretty nice payday coming from the prop payments. I've been playing 10/20 when there's a game, but a lot of the play is at 5/10, with a good chunk of heads-up and three-handed play thrown into the mix. The site's pretty low traffic, but the general skill level is pretty dang low, so it evens out a bit.

Trying not to get too far ahead of myself imagination-wise, as I'm barely a week into this, but so far things are pretty promising. Even if I play break-even poker the prop payments should be fairly hefty, and it's looking like it'd take some nasty variance for me to simply break even.

I actually managed to get a bit of work done on the project mentioned yesterday, as far as setting up the forum and configuring it. Still messing around with the organization and layout, but it shouldn't be too long before I have a beta version up and running.

Today has apparently been deemed the day of much running around and shopping and eraands and redmeption of gift cards. So it has been decreed, so it shall be.

So What Do YOU Want?

So all the recent driving time lead me to ponder many things in my monkey brain, which inevitably leads to plotting, which leads to me coming up with new projects to keep myself really, really busy with, constantly.

One of the things I was pondering got jogged a bit by a post from Quest of a Closet Poker Player and a comment from fairnbalancd.

I've been thinking about using one of my dormant domains for a site that's geared towards more collaborative, instructional stuff, but in a really nuts and bolts fashion. I shy away from silly Poker Boot Camp/The Crew/Hendon Mob connotations, but I think there'd definitely be some value in setting up a site for serious players to get better. No bullshit, no wearing of kids gloves, no stroking egos. Just very nuts and bolts content and tools designed to help you play better poker.

As far as the focus, it'd be a hybrid blog/forum site. There'd be a fair amount of posting of hand histories and reviewing of play, as well as posting and dissecting of PokerTracker stats. There'd also be the chance to get individualized coaching/mentoring/whatever cheesy word you want to use, as far as shadowing people as they play, reviewing play in general, and other such things.

In the beginning it'd be heavy on the limit HE side (largely since that's the only thing I can pretend to have any expertise in whatsoever), but there'd also be room to discuss anything you wanted, as far as MTTs, SnGs, NL HE, Omaha, Badugi, what the hell ever.

At the moment, I'm seeing as a semi-closed venture, as far as how open it is to the general public. I think it'd be doom to open it up to any yahoo, and quickly degenerate into 2+2 savagery, but at the same time I wouldn't try to be all that cool and exclusive. If you have a blog, cool, you're in. If you're in and know someone else who'd be interested, cool, they're in. That sort of thing.

There also might be the chance to offer rakeback and propping opportunities to members, later on down the road. There's also the potential to pool PokerTracker data and player notes and other such things, as far as fringe benefits for members, as well as member-only freerolls and bonus promotions and what-not.

It'd likely suck up a lot of time, especially in the beginning, but I'm cool with that, especially if I'm not working a day job. I'd likely strongly encouraging people to sign up via my affiliate links if they're trying a new site out, but that's not crucial. As for the individualized coaching stuff, I'm thinking about being a little more hard-assed in that regard, and requiring that people sign up via an affiliate link first, and that they play a minimum number of hands per month. It'd be a low number, like 100-200 raked hands, etc., just something to weed out obvious mooochers who want their play reviewed and want advice but don't contribute back to the site or otherwise make up for the amount of time expended on them.

Here's the part where I need input. First things first, would there be any interest in such a thing? (It's okay to say no, if that's what you think, as my heart isn't necessarily set on this idea.) If such a site was being built, what functions would you like to see, apart from a forum? Is private messaging important? Chatting?

Or, in a more general sense, what would you like to see in such a site, if it was being built from scratch? Are current sites like 2+2 and blogs and others missing the boat in some regards, or do you pretty much get what you want from the online universe, as far as improving your game?

Many thanks for any input.

Not Wearing Pants is Cool

Still at the in-laws, but we're finally rolling back into Austin later today. Travelling is fun and all but man, I'm pretty ready to get home, where I can activate the plan to stay home, play lots of poker, and not wear pants for the next five days, until I'm due back at the monkey factory.

Hopefully I'll be able to just completely check out at work, knowing the end is drawing near, and do nothing to attract attention to myself. Part of me would love to go out with a bang but it's lkely more +EV to just silently keep my head down, do the bare minimum of work to not draw any attention, and work on assorted other projects for the next few months.

Things are still rolling at the tables. Barring anything wacky, December's going to finish up as a pretty damn good month. Which is nice, as November wasn't kind at all, to the tune of a little over -$2,000 when it was all said and done. Sort of nice, in a backward way, to book a reasonably sizable loss for a month, shake it off, and get back to business.

I've also started propping the last few days, which has been interesting. It leads to a lot of heads-up and shorthanded play, which sort of segued nicely into the whole play a shit-ton of shorthanded poker experiment I'm currently undertaking. Can't really go into specific details on the propping publicly, but it's looking like I can fairly easily add another $10-$20/hr to my earn rate, without doing much more than playing 2-3 shorthanded tables at 5/10 and above.

'Tis kind of interesting, reading assorted mainstream articles here and there, announcing that the poker fad is waning, that retail merchandise is being deeply discounted and shoved to the back, ratings of televised poker are flat, growth of signups at online sites is slowing, all with the non-subtle implication that (insert Nelson voice) Ha ha, all you poker freaks are finally going to be relegated back to the dark, smoky regions from whence you came.

And there's some truth in that, all the way around. Anyone who thought that new people would keep piling into online sites and that televised poker would continue to add millions of viewers each year was (and is) crazy. Whether you use the "fad" word or not, poker grew at a completely unsustainable clip for a few years there, and is doomed to give back a lot of those gains.

That said, I think the implied assumption that things will now return to the way they were before the boom is just as crazy. If you haven't noticed, people like to gamble. Even when they can't physically make it to Vegas. And whether we like to admit it or not, people are addicted to gambling. And yes, indeed, poker is gambling.

Who knows where things level off at, but wherever you spread a game, you're going to attract the sharks, fish, and hopelessly addicted. And once you pass a certain critical mass of general awareness (which we shot past long ago), there's no turning back the clock and returning poker to a dusty little corner with a sparsely populated table and rocky, calloused asses. Whether you like it or not, poker is here to stay.

The Return to Internetlandia

While I like many things about life in the country, it better be accompanied by a decent high-speed Internet connection, or else I go nuts.

We managed the trek to Tennessee and back with no major explosions. Which is good, as it not only was the first time ScurvyWife set foot in Tennessee, but it was also the first time she met my extended redneck family, in all their glory. To be fair, they're not that bad, especially these days, as the deer hunting crowd has chilled a bit, and people have gotten a wee bit more open minded in general.

It also was nice to back for Christmas as an "adult", as far as being married, and actually being able to afford to buy everyone decent Giftmas presents, and all that jazz. Sort of a dumb thing to be proud of, but hey, there you go.

I did broach the subject of possibly being self-employed soon, and both my mom and dad didn't seem too shocked or surprised. They've always pretty much let me do my own thing with a minimum of hassle, so I didn't expect them to freak out too much as the possibility of their son playing poker full-time. It was also interesting as my dad told me a few stories I didn't know about my grandfather on his side of the family, who I only met a handful of times before he died seven or eight years ago. He was an engineer in the Army during WWII, and basically ran around Europe blowing up and/or building bridges to move troops around. What I didn't know is that he also was apparently a good poker player, and won enough money (and sent it home) to start up a successful business drilling water wells after he returned to the States.

(Of course, he also went on to gamble away a nice, lucrative stable life of profitably grinding away digging water wells by venturing out and trying to find oil, getting divorced because he was never around, living in a trailer and moving from state to state for most of his adult life, never striking it rich.)

But it was cool to hear the poker part of the story, as I never knew that, and just assumed I was the oddball of the family, as I didn't grow up learning to play cards with my family at all, as none of them are into such things or gambling in general at all.

Had a lot of dead driving time to ponder the whole full-time poker thing, and I'm going to give it a whirl. For most of the reasons mentioned previously, but also for the sheer hell of it. I never saw myself as someone who'd stay at a dead-end, unfulfilling job for five years and counting, for no reason other than the size of the paycheck received every two weeks, and lo and behold, that's exactly what I've become. Pardon my French, but fuck that. Absolutely nothing wrong with grinding until something better comes along, as we all have to spend a good chunk of our lives grinding, but if you have other options, well, that's a different story.

It helps that I'm running pretty damn well at the 10/20 shorthanded games this month, which is pretty much all I've played. I sort of backed into the decision to focus on getting better at shorthanded play, but it's one of the better decisions I've backed into, as I'm enjoying playing a good bit more, and thinking more. Doesn't soften the inevitable blows to the junk and variance, but it's making poker more enjoyable and engaging.

One interesting thing is that I've been solely playing on sites that don't support PokerTracker or GameTime+ or PokerAce, so I've been flying completely blind as far as tools go. Which kind of sucks, and I'm obviously choose not to do it that way, if I could, but it's also been nice to get back to the basics of having to pay attention and develop good reads and take good notes. Limit HE doesn't exactly lend itself to creative play for the most part, but getting off auto-pilot has been good for me, as far as slowing down and thinking things through, and not always playing hands the way I might normally default to. There's also some larger value to playing without aids, as far as forcing you to pay closer attention to the action, especially if you ever want to dip your toe into bigger live cash games one day.

I'm going to try to amp up my volume of play over the next few months, so that I get closer to what I'd need to be putting in if I were doing it full-time. Lately I've only been getting in 10-15 hours a week, which won't cut it. With telecommuting two days a week (and not giving a flying fuck about my production at work, for obvious reasons, as well as for it being a new year as far as out goals and what-not), it shouldn't be too hard to get that up to 30 hours a week, without stressing myself out too much. I may try banging out lots of hands Thursday-Monday, as that hits both telecommuting days and the weekend sweetspot, as far as juicy tables.

Congrats to the Puncher of Donkeys for taking down the FFL championship. After dominating the regular season my whole team decided to collectively take a simultaneous nap in the playoffs, bumping me all the way down to 4th in the final standings. Way to finish, you bums.

Outta Here for a Bit

Many thanks to everyone for the feedback and encouraging words on yesterday's post. Can't say I'm 100% pot-committed to the idea but I'm tilting, err, leaning in that direction.

Going to be out of the loop for awhile, due to traveling and visiting family and what-not for Giftmas. Everybody be good, gamble good, and don't burn the house down.

Just One More Day, Just One More Day...

One last day to kill at the day job before fleeing for the holidays. I'm taking off a week and a half to burn unused vacation days that I'll otherwise lose, which combined with company holiday days means I won't have to step foot in this place for about 15 days or so after today. To which I can only reply: sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

So I have to admit that I'm seriously considering giving the full-time poker gig a go, when I slip the surly bonds of the day job in a few months. I've tried to avoid that line of thinking in the past, for all sorts of reasons, but I'm reaching a certain point where I think it's equally foolish to rule it out. Especially as far as doing it as a three month trial run, after which I'll reassess everything and see where I'm at.

Reasons to Give Playing Poker Full-Time a Whirl for 3 Months When My Current Cube Monkery Existence Ends

1) I'm clocking in at 1.67 BB/100 at 15/30 and above, over 31,928 hands. I completely and utterly realize that's not the largest sample size in the world, and that I shouldn't draw any conclusions from it, for that reason. Completely understand that. That said, as much as it pains the modest side of me to say this, I know what I'm doing, and I just can't see that number dropping below .75 BB/100 (especially if you add in rakeback-propping), which is about what I currently make, on an hourly basis, playing 15/30 and above.

2) My eyes are pretty wide open. Grasp what a grind it'd be playing full-time? Check. Understand the realities of variance, taxes, etc.? Yep. Willing to simply grind online with no notions or desire of fame and taking shots at much larger games? Yep. Understand the horribly unfulfilling nature of clicking buttons all day? Yep. Have the ability to park my ass in front of the comupting box for ridiculous lengths of time? Yep.

3) I've saved enough money and have enough supplemental income streams from my freelancing/Web endeavors to simply not work for three months, at all. Aside from that, I'm adequately bankrolled to play 30/60, as far as what's currently in the online bankroll. There's absolutely no external pressure to make a single solitary dollar from the three months of full-time poker play, as far as paying bills and what-not.

4) Why the hell not? If there's any time in my life to do something like this, now is it. I can get health insurance via my wife's plan for pretty much the same price I'm currently paying. I don't sacrifice anything, as the only bright spot of my current job is the flexible scheduling and telecommuting two days a week. In the grand scheme of things, I really don't make that much money, nor do I have any career with this company or within this industry. If I were making $150,000/year or had an MBA or any other professional bankroll built up, then yeah, I'd have to ponder long and hard on turning my back on that. As is, there's really not much that I'm giving up.

5) I'd also have more time to devote to other personal business ventures, as I don't necessarily envision myself playing 8 full hours every day. The ability to generate some income from poker would make the potential transition to being self-employed that much easier and provide a bridge that would make the sudden cessation of a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks much less traumatic.

6) When I exit Cubelandia, my payout for our annual bonus + accrued vacation time will be close to three month's salary. So, in many ways, taking three months off to play poker is a freeroll, if you use a little imagination.

7) While not 100% gung ho, ScurvyWife has given the plan the official thumbs-up, if I choose to pursue it.

8) This sounds bad, but there's little danger in this resulting in poker becoming a grind for me, and not as much fun as it once was. That train left awhile ago, as far as the joy produced from simply playing poker. I like the competitive side of it, true, but there's not much simple pokery joy left to grind away.

Reasons Not to Give Playing Poker Full-Time a Whirl for 3 Months When My Current Cube Monkery Existence Ends

1) Stability. A guaranteed paycheck is very nice, especially when I supplement it with poker winnings and other income. It greatly accelerates the curve towards potential early retirement, especially since it's injecting principal more rapidly early on.

2) If even reasonably sucessful, the three month stint might ruin me as far as getting another similar day job, in the corporate world. This one I actually worry about, as a job like my current one is only barely tolerable because I've conditioned myself to accept it. Three months of not wearing pants and sleeping and waking up whenever I want would make it very, very hard to even grudgingly re-enter the workforce. This actually worries me more than anything, as the long-term goal is to one day get another job, at some point.

3) Stress. My life is really, really low stress right now. And pretty damn happy. Part of me wonders about the wisdom in rocking that boat, especially in relation to playing poker and exposing myself to potential stress-inducing events like dropping 150BB in a month, due to nothing more than plain ol' variance. I could get another day job, be much happier working for a sane, reasonable employer, and continue to motor on stress-free, as I've been doing.

I'm sure I'm missing a few, but that's basically the pros and cons rolling around in my head. Any thoughts or comments would be highly appreciated, as I'm sure I'm overlooking more than a few things. Any decision is still a few months off, so I'm still very much in the roll-things-around-in-my-head-stage.

Edit: helixx does raise the very good point about the potential con of a gap in my resume, if/when I do re-enter the workforce. I hadn't considered that, honestly, but it's sort of a weird simultaneous pro/con. I touched on this briefly in another post, but one potential plan that my wife and I have been discussing is living in Curacao/Belize/Costa Rica for a year or two, and the possibility (probably a small one, but there) that I could land a gig with an online operator based there, doing affiliate manager/SEO/content creation/player retention work. So while resume gaps could be a real concern, it also could potentially be a resume booster (or at least something that wouldn't hurt me to list), as far as taking time off to play poker full-time, given the nature of potential jobs I might be pursuing.

I also have the MFA gathering dust, and one potential way of filling a resume gap is through the trusty saved-up-money-and-took-time-off-to-write-the-great-American-novel river bluff that many people seem to respect, whether or not it's actually, you know, true.

I Hate You, Stupid Anonymous Man-Girl with a Puppy Dog Icon

Climbed out of the shorthanded hole in a big way yesterday, nearly tripling up on both the tables I popped open for one last session before bed. 'Tis a nice thing, indeed, to flop quads against an auto-capping maniac, especially when a third player gets caught in between.

One sort of interesting thing I've noticed with the shorthanded play is that I'm much more prone to fixate on one player, often to my detriment. It's no less annoying in a full ring game when the same lemur with a VPIP of 78% keeps taking your money, and you notice it just as much, but the opportunity to engage the lemur enemy and get your money back simply doesn't arise that often, given that you're playing a relatively small number of hands. So even if you start steaming in their particular direction you usually have time to settle down and get your head rearranged correctly.

Not so much with shorthanded play, though. Not only do you often not have time to cool off and settle down, but the odds are greater that you'll be involved with that same freaking luckbox that just hit three consecutive gutshots against you to take down huge pots. Since you should correctly be playing more marginal hands, and playing them faster, you're inevitably going to tangle with that doofus much more frequently.

So yeah. I've found myself occasionally tilting in a fairly specific way, making sub-optimal plays in an attempt to "punish" a particular player at the table. While this isn't the worst thing in the world, as far as one side effect being to isolate a weak player and get it heads up, it can create a negative feedback loop. You're simultaneously playing more marginal hands, playing them fast, and often not giving your opponent credit for when they really have a hand. Plus it's hard to play your A game, or even your B game, when you play pissed off.

The more poker I play, the fewer arguments I can find for slowplaying to ever be correct. Let's say you have AA and raise UTG, and only MP and the button call. The flop comes AA5, rainbow. I would wager a decent sum of money that against typical opponents you'll make more money, in the long run, by simply betting out, and continuing to bet out on each street. Either someone tries to make a move on you or look you up or they don't. The aggregate money you make on the relatively rare occasions they do is very likely > the aggregate money you make by occasionally inducing a river bet by checking it down.

I got Stewart Reuben's How Good is Your PLO? as an early Christmas gift, and the verdict so far is: not good at all. I sort of like the quiz format and self-deprecating writing style, although it's annoying that the pagination breaks it up in awkward ways at times. My biggest downfall with PLO is correctly manipulating pot size on the flop/turn, and I manage to mangle almost all the decisions in the book as far as jamming early in hands. I suck.

I managed to discover a pretty embarassing sum of money in a sportsbook account last night, that I somehow managed to mark the account as zeroed out in my spreadsheet, when, in fact, it was pretty far from zeroed out. This prompted me to go through all 172,192 of my online poker and casino accounts, leading to me rustle up an extra $200 or so in funds that I had no clue were lying about in the world. So if you're a degenerate like me, it might be worth your while to run a quick check of all your accounts.

On a related note, I'm also in the process of putting together a spreadsheet with all of my account info and logins, as far as Neteller and online sites. The plan is to compile it, print a hard copy, and then delete the original file, as it's obviously not the best idea to have all that info lying around together in a virtual world. The whole morbid point is to give the hard copy to my wife to secure somewhere safe, so that if an anvil dropped on my head tomorrow, she'd be able to identify and get to all the funds I have squirreled away in assorted places online. Call me crazy, but I can only imagine how difficult it'd be dealing with Party customer support, trying to convince them to transfer funds in her poor, deceased anvil-struck husband's account to her checking account, despite the fact that she doesn't even know my screenname, etc.

And just to cover the paranoid bases, I've been in the process of deleting all account-related stuff from my Web-based email accounts, just so that on the off chance that someone who gained access to my email account wouldn't be able to do any further damage, as far as logging on to financial or online gambling sites. Email accounts can get hacked and it's obviously not the best idea in the world to leave bread crumb trails to accounts where you have money, even if it'd be relatively hard for the average hacker to recognize and follow through on the opportunity to empty out your online poker accounts.

If you do use Web-based email for such things, at least be sure not to use the same password for your personal email when you sign up at gambling sites online. Maybe it's the evil schemer in me but if I wanted to cause some people some serious financial pain in highly illegal ways I'd bribe some schlep working customer service at online gambling sites to pass along all the customer email addresses and passwords that they used when signing up, as I'd bet that a fairly large number of them use the same password for their personal email account, and use their personal email account as a repository for all sorts of other passwords and logins, and so on and so forth.

The Great Shorthanded Experiment of December 2005

I continue to crank out a ridiculous number of hands of late (well, for me), trying to get the shorthanded monkey off my back. I'm still in the hole for the month, but it's a pretty shallow hole, and partly due to not running so well in general.

Yeah, I know, show me a poker player that's running well and in a hole. Shaddup.

I know it should be filed under "Good Things" that people will cold call three bets with 46d, then hang in there until the river, at which point they hit their gut shot, but it's hard to find much joy in filing when those hands hit, time after time after time. I suppose the lesson is that shorthanded play magnifies everything, both good and bad, due to an increased number of hands seen per hour.

About half done with Christmas shopping for the year, which is actually pretty damn good for me. I've been mocked at various times in my life for doing 99% of my shopping the day before Christmas, but hey, it works. And I'm a big fan of things that work. But ScurvyWife actually got her birthday/Christmas present back in June when she get her laptop, plus I'm making/have made coppery presents for other assorted people, so it's been a pretty easy Giftmas season, as far as shopping.

I'm going to start stabbing people in the eye if I have to hear any more talk about the "war" on Christmas, as far as the horrible, evil attempts by the heathens to secularize Christmas. Sorry, but fuck off. You don't get to bitch and moan about trivial shit like that when there are real, actual wars going on. Somehow I think Jebus isn't the type to cast you out into hell just because someone, somewhere said "Happy holidays" and you stood idly by.

Bring on 2006, Baby

I basically finished up any and all work I have remaining for 2005 yesterday, so we're looking at four straight work days at the monkey factory with absolutely nothing to do, whatsoever, other than to occasionally bang on these keys in a pitiful attempt to simulate actual work.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

The lemurs bested me last night, but man, there are some soft games at Doyles/Tribeca. It can get low traffic at times, though, especially at higher limits, so it's pretty hit or miss, as far as the quality of games, without a ton of alternatives if you can't find a good table.

I've been experimenting with a much more aggressive style the last few days, which has had mixed results. If you wade through all of the number-crunchin' exercises, the numbers are usually a bit surprising, as far as exactly how often a blind steal needs to be successful for it to be profitable, or how often a turn/river bluff needs to be successful, etc. It basically all boils down to the fact that it's good to be the one firing, especially if it's heads up, as most opponents will fold a high enough percentage of the time for it to be profitable, regardless of the actual cards that you both hold.

But we all know that aggressive poker is good, so that's not news, nor particularly helpful. So the real sticking point is correctly picking the times to apply pressure, when to give an opponent who plays back credit for a hand, and myriad other fine details that make poker the wonderful, complicated beast that it is.

Or, you know, you can just ignore all of that and just fire away, at juicy shorthanded tables, with loose passive opponents that like to cold-call too much and call to see the river.

Which isn't a natural style for me, at all, but it's definitely been eye-opening, and a good learning experience, as far as exposing leaks. Far too often in the past I'd fire, miss the flop, fire, miss the turn, fire, then close up shop on the river blank, either check-calling/folding or just checking behind. I tend to selectively remember all the times I couldn't push a calling station off third (or fourth) pair, and let that affect my river play too much, becoming way too passive, especially if I don't have at least A high.

Which is pretty horrible play, given the size of the pot at that point, and just how few pots I need to steal with one more bet, when an opponent folds a winning Q high hand. Especially when playing with loose passive opponents, who'll call down to the river because, hey, who knows, maybe they'll pair that J4s.

You're playing $10/20 6 max, and everyone folds to you on the button. You raise with J4o. SB folds, BB calls.

Flop is Q, 2, 7 rainbow.

BB checks, you bet, BB calls.

Turn is 10.

BB checks, you bet, BB calls.

River is 5.

BB checks. There's $105 in the pot. What do you do?

Or, more accurately, how often does the BB need to fold for a bet to be profitable? Guess what percentage that'd be, then we'll look at some maths.

A few quick ground rules, as far as number crunching. Since it was a rainbow flop with no obvious potential straights, we're going to ignore the possibility that the BB was on a straight/flush draw, and that our chance of winning with J high is 0%, so we lose every time the BB calls and we only win if the BB folds to a final river bet. If the BB check-raises, we fold 100% of the time.

If we bet on the river, it's a $125 pot, in which we've invested $70. Every time the BB folds to a river bet, we net $55 in profit. Every time the BB calls or raises, we lose $70.

If the BB folds 80% of the time, net profit is $30/hand.
If the BB folds 70% of the time, net profit is $17.5/hand
If the BB folds 60% of the time, net profit is $5/hand
If the BB folds 50% of the time, net profit is -$7.5/hand

Which is interesting, really, and not quite as bad as it seems at first glance, if you pull back a bit. One thing to keep in mind is that is pretty much the worst case scenario for your steal attempt from the button, since you didn't take it down uncontested pre-flop, on the flop, or the turn. Even then, all you need is for the BB to fold 60% of the time for an additional river bet with just J high to be correct.

One final thing to ponder is that at the point the BB checks to us on the river, we've already invested $50 in the hand. We can only win by betting. If we check or fold, our net profit is -$50/hand. If we bet an additional $20 on the river, we only lose more than $50/hand if the BB calls ~85% of the time. So we only dig a deeper hole for ourselves by investing the extra $20 on a river bet if the BB calls ~85% or more of the time when faced with a final river bet.

And it's also worth pointing out that the board actually isn't the best for you, either, as far as inducing a better hand to fold. If the river card puts up four hearts on the board and all you have is middle pair, no hearts, can you make that call on the river, faced with a bet? Can you make the call with A high, no hearts? Can you make the call the 50-55% of the time that you need to do to correctly punish the button in that situation?

Stepping back from the raw numbers, put yourself in the BB shoes. Even if you know the button is aggressive with steal attempts and call with a hand like K8o, how often are you really able to call that last river bet? Can you really consistently call it 50-55% of the time, which is the frequency you need to call it with to punish the button for his aggressive play? Can you even call it to the river, faced with a turn bet?

Which is my typically long-winded way of pointing out a very simple fact: I've been abandoning an aggressive stance too often on the river, when faced with an opponent that simply calls me down to that point. Remember, if it's heads-up, most flops (and boards, to some extent) don't hit either player hard. While you may think that the necessary 60% success rate of a river bet causing a fold is too high, the simple truth is that the majority of players won't call you down often enough on the river to punish you. And it's a truth you don't realize (or at least I didn't) until I willfully forced myself out of my comfort zone and started flinging chips.

That said, there are obviously situations where you need to deviate from that. If an opponent has proven that they'll never, ever fold to a river bet, only a very dumb monkey would continue to fire at them. You're not operating in a vacuum.

While it seems a little counterintuitive at first, I would wager that most successful ultra aggressive players actually, on average, pay much closer attention to action at the table, and are much better readers of players than their more traditional tight, selectively aggressive counterparts. Yeah, on the surface it merely looks like they're on autopilot, bombing pots at every opportunity and simply running over opponents, if you dig a little deeper you'll start to recognize that it's only against certain opponents that they behave that way.

So yeah, interesting stuff, despite spewing a few too many chips the last few days. It's nice to engage the brain again, and I'm liking the fact that I'm forcing myself to pay more attention to the actual tables, and think things through and really question some of my ingrained behaviors, instead of just grinding out hands on auto-pilot like I've been doing of late.

Highway to the Comfort Zone

Many thanks for the comments about Gonzo in the previous post. I think there's a lot of value in nearly every suggestion, and likely not one cut and dried answer. After pondering it a bit, I think I'd need one more person aggressively attempting to exploit his play to make it +EV for me to stay at the table, especially given my position relative to Gonzo. That said, it's also a matter of my personal comfort zone, as far as knowing myself and my ability (or lack thereof) to cap the flop and turn with Q high, knowing he's playing a random hand. If you're more fearless than I am, then it might be very +EV to simply isolate him and go to war, every single time, armed with the knowledge that he's playing a truly random hand.

Not too much else of note going on in my wee little world. Play a little poker, working a lot. Enjoying the trip reports from all you gotdamn Vegas attendees.

I'm going to have nearly two weeks off for Christmas this year, which'll be nice. Part of me is enjoying the fantasyland notion of just not, you know, bothering to come back to the day job at all. No exit interviews, no two weeks, no conversations with bosses. Just not, you know, ever showing up again. Not the most mature way of dealing with things and 99% not likely to happen but still nice to daydream about.

ScurvyWife and I watched Man on Fire the other night, which I thought was surprisingly good and entertaining. What's baffling me, though, is that the same director of that movie (Tony Scott) also directed Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Beverly Hills Cop 2. I mean, I love me some Top Gun (and I own the soundtrack), but I never would have guessed that in a million years, assuming that some hot new hip director was behind Man on Fire.

Blah. So very boring. Nothing to see here.

Shorthanded Play: How Would You Counter This Opponent?

You're playing at a $10/$20 6 max limit HE table. You're a good, aggressive player who plays shorthanded very well. You understand the principles and apply constant pressure to the blinds, defend your own blinds well, utlize aggression effectively, yada yada yada.

Four of your opponents are basically nondescript and are largely loose passive. They don't attempt to steal enough and don't defend enough. They aren't terrible but they prefer to limp and see a flop and don't drive the action. They won't often cold-call, though, as they like to limp in cheap.

Your fifth opponent, though, is a different beast. We'll call him Gonzo.

Gonzo sits down and tells the table the following five things:

1) I will raise pre-flop with any two cards if I'm the first in the pot, no matter what position I'm in. Every single time, no matter the cards I hold.
2) If anyone limps in front of me, I will raise with any two cards, except for when I'm in the BB.
3) If I'm first in with a raise, and facing a re-raise from a single opponent and closing the action, I will always simply call, and never re-raise, no matter what cards I hold.
4) If I'm faced with calling two bets pre-flop, 25% of the time I will re-raise, and 75% of the time I will fold.
5) If I'm in the BB and no one raises, I will always check. If I'm in the BB and it's one bet to call, I will always call.

He then follows through on the above, doing exactly that pre-flop. You know, without a doubt, that he will act in the above prescribed fashion, every single hand.

Post-flop, Gonzo is a very good player. He does nothing out of line post-flop and plays a good aggressive shorthanded game.

Gonzo is in the 1 seat, you're in the 4 seat.

The question, then, is how do you adjust your play to take Gonzo into account (and keeping in mind the fact that the rest of the table is generally loose-passive)?

I played with Gonzo for a few hours the other night, and have to admit that I was pretty flummoxed, so I truly am looking for feedback/advice. When I realized he was actually a pretty good post-flop player I was tempted to just get up and find another table, which actually might be the best answer.

My mental thought processes as the session progressed were something along the following lines:

1) That predictable, possibly tilting lemur is raising every single hand when he's first in the pot. And people seem to be getting out of his way too much, as the table's pretty passive. I need to isolate him with any halfway decent hands I have, as the blinds will eat me up otherwise. He's likely just an idiot that doesn't play well post-flop. The table's too passive to wait for monster hands, too, as the eventual pot might not be big enough to offset blind attrition.

2) Hmm. This is actually interesting, as I'm pushing too hard with marginal hands pre-flop, and he seems to play pretty well post-flop. The problem isn't so much Gonzo but when I raise with a marginal hand to isolate and one of the other players wakes up, either cold-calling or re-raising. Since I have to assume that the other players are somewhat aware of what's going on at the table, the next logical step is to assume they have a pretty big hand, so I end up feeling lost post-flop, unable to fire more bullets when the flop doesn't help me, especially when I'm first to act.

I also have to fight the tendency to let his pre-flop play influence my thinking, too, as I keep leaning towards assuming he's full of shit and doesn't have a hand, and am paying him off too much when he does have something. The fact that he simply calls any re-raise pre-flop is interesting, as it disguises his truly big hands, yet his play in general is getting lots of money in the pot.

3) Now I'm overcorrecting too much in the opposite direction, as far as waiting for big cards. I wish we didn't have two players in between us, as this would be easier if he were on one side or the other, preferably the right.

4) Another side effect of his pre-flop strategy is that he gets to see lots of hands free from the BB. While his rules of engagement don't include always raising from the BB, the table often defers to his general aggression and lets him in for free from the BB, when the button or SB would otherwise take a shot at his BB.

5) The always raising a limper no matter what is a bit of a double edged sword. While it discourages limping in front of him (increasing his odds of taking down the blinds uncontested with a raise) it does set him up for the limp-reraise when you have a big hand. Which is easy enough when you have AA, but the difficulty is in defining "big". Is Q9o big enough to limp-reraise with? Odds say yes, as he's truly playing a random hand, but that's taking me outside my comfort zone, as far as my ability to limp-reraise with that and play it aggressively post-flop, regardless of what comes on the flop.

6) This is more difficult than I would have thought, as far as exploiting such a transparent strategy that involves raising pre-flop with any two cards. The fact that the table is passive is the real crux of the problem, I think, as his strategy prevents normal blind stealing and only encourages real action from the other players when they have a big hand. He also seems aware that I'm aware of what he's doing, and applies pressure to me post-flop accordingly, under the correct assumption that I'm isolating him with less than stellar cards.

7) His results definitely yip and yaw all over the place, but he's picking up a lot of uncontested pots and gets paid when he has a big hand. I would think that he'd bleed too many chips from raising pre-flop with any two cards (and he very well might in the long run), but it does build decent pots that are largely heads-up, when the strength of his hand is always completely disguised. He's also good enough post-flop to dump or pump the hands he should.

So yeah. Long-winded way of soliciting thoughts on playing against Gonzo in the above conditions. Suggestions?

Welcome Back, Hungover Degenerate Bloggers

I would attempt to somehow craft an argument that I'm somehow better off for not having been in Vegas this weekend, as far as being well-rested and free from hangovers, but, umm, even I can't muster any pseudo enthusiasm for such a ridiculous claim. Congrats to Glyph for taking down the WPBT tournament. Nice job.

I managed to post a pretty damn good poker weekend and actually got a goodly amount of time in at the tables. In true flip-floppy fashion, most of my play was at the 10/20 and 20/60 6 max tables at Doyle'sRoom.

Yes, indeed, I have confessed on many occasions that I'm not the best shorthanded player in the world, but I started thinking about it, and reading about it, and I can't help but come to the conclusion that it's stupid to dodge it, just because I suck at it. It's pretty hard to avoid the fact that successful shorthanded play is more +EV than successful ring play, due simply to the fact that you see more hands, and have more opportunities to "succeed". If you're better than everyone else at the table, you want to play as many hands as possible, and be faced with as many difficult decisons as possible, as that's when your skill shines and is implemented.

If you see more hands, though, you'll inevitably be faced with more decisions, some of them quite difficult. So it follows that while shorthanded play will almost always be more profitable, it also requires a higher degree of skill, as you're routinely faced with hard choices and can't simply play on autopilot. The bar is actually higher shorthanded, as far as what you need up your sleeve to put it all together and play profitably.

It's that last one, ironically, that I think has been my biggest downfall in the past, as I'm really bad about multi-tasking while playing, doing any number of things in addition to playing poker. And honestly, I don't think that really matters, when you're playing 1-4 ring tables. Yes, paying close attention to players and reads is never a bad thing, and the multi-tasking obsessed likely sacrifice a little EV over the long haul, but the bulk your potential EV from ring games is pretty much exploiting the same situations, over and over and over. And by and large you can do that on auto-pilot after a certain point.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does sort of lead to the dread twins of boredom and stasis rearing their heads more frequently.

Shorthanded games, though, are pretty different beasts. Or should be, if you're playing correctly. With so many pots becoming heads up battles, reads become a lot more important, as you really do need to note if someone is a serial bluffer on the river, to the point that calling one final bet on the river with Q high is correct enough to be profitable.

It also follows that if you want to become a better poker player, you need to put yourself in a situation where you're faced with difficult decisions. If you play shorthanded, you face difficult decisions much more often. So the theory goes that you'll improve more as a poker player playing short than you will in ring games.

So that's all the good stuff. Like anything, there's also the not-good stuff, also known as bad shit.

Variance is pretty high, especially since you need to really amp up the aggression when playing short-handed. Put on your seatbelt, as it's a wild ride. You can't let the swings push you off what you know is correct play, no matter how far down (or up) you are.

You really need to have mastered the fine art of tilt control, as the perceived suckouts are more painful and occur with more frequency. One reason shorthanded play is so potentially profitable is that it attracts action junkies who aren't there to fold. A lot of your long term EV comes from exploiting that tendency and punishing people who play too many hands and play them too far. That said, players who play too many hands and play them too far are going to hit a decent amount of the time, in really frustrating ways. You're also getting more hands in per hour playing short, so the natural distribution of bad, annoying beats is also going to increase.

You also have to unlearn some lessons. Bluff check-raises suddenly become viable, as do bluff river raises on scary boards. Third pairs can become value river bets and slowplaying loses a lot of value, as people don't believe you anyway when you play fast, regardless of the board.

The biggest thing I currently struggle with (aside from avoiding the multi-tasking siren) is playing as aggressively as I know I should be. If the SB and BB are folding too often when you're on the button, you should open raise with any two cards and fire multiple later bullets, until they do something to make you stop. While I can absorb this intellectually, far too often I bail out in practice, unable to fire that turn bet, which is pretty key to the whole aggressively strategy, as far as causing the number of folds and uncontested pots you need to make such an aggressive strategy profitable.

I'm also not yet quite comfortable with my play against the obvious maniacs, as I far too often either degenerate into a mindless raising war with them or tighten up far too much, waiting for a monster to punish them with. Somewhere in there lies a middle ground I haven't yet found.

But yeah, 'tis interesting, and I'm enjoying exercising my poker brain again. There's not a whole lot of material out there specifically on shorthanded play, but you can find some decent stuff if you poker around. Mourn also just put up an nice intro guide, and PokerSweetHome also recently posted about shorthanded play, along with a collection of great links to other material on the Web.

Betfred Poker Bonuses

If you're a fan of iPoker network sites like Noble, Titan, Bet365, you might check out the current signup bonus at Betfred.

The Betfred signup bonus is a 100% match, up to $250. It's a 10x raked hand bonus, so if you deposit $100 and get a $100 bonus, you have to be involved in 1000 raked hands before you receive the bonus. If you deposit $250, then it's 2,500 raked hands.

Note that it isn't contributed hands, though, simply raked hands, which speeds up clearance a bit. That said, it'll still take awhile to clear, but you have the advantage of playing on an iPoker site, which has some truly bad players in general on there.

Here's the text from the site, as far as details:

"To start you off, we're offering a fantastic 100% bonus on your first deposit at Betfred Poker, up to a maximum of $250! To earn your bonus, simply make your initial deposit, then play the required number of raked hands according to the table below. Once you have completed the requirements, email us at support@betfredpoker.com to claim your bonus. Your bonus will then be credited to your account within 48 hours.

Please note: Only raked hands played at blinds of $0.25/$0.50 and above for pot limit / no limit, or stakes of $0.50/$1 or above for fixed limit will count towards your wagering requirements. A raked hand is where you are dealt cards in a real money cash game and the pot reaches a sufficient amount to be raked (see our rake structure here). You do not necessarily have to put any money in the pot for the hand to contribute towards your raked hand count. Tournament hands are not raked so only cash game play counts towards wagering requirements.

For every $1 in bonus money you need to play 10 raked hands, therefore to earn a maximum bonus of $250, a player must deposit at least $250 and play 2500 raked hands. The table below shows the corresponding number of raked hands depending on the initial deposit.

Deposit amount Bonus Raked Hands *
$25 $25 250
$50 $50 500
$100 $100 1000
$250 $250 2500

* raked hands required to receive total bonus award.

This bonus is subject to the general terms and conditions of Betfred Poker. Players can find out how many raked hands they have played by contacting our 24 hour poker support team on the 'Live Help' option from the poker lobby."

Ahh, the Sounds of Heads Popping

Want a sure-fire way to cause heads to explode in Austin, Texas? Mention "freezing" and "rain" in the same sentence.

I mean, come on, people. It's not like I'm from the frozen tundra of Drizzlandia, either, but light freezing rain (when the temperature was +60F yesterday) isn't the absolute worst weather calamity in the world. Your car isn't going to leap from the road and explode into flames. Call me crazy, but usually the current temperature has to be below freezing for, you know, freezing precipitation to be a problem.

And thusly ends my weather rant.

Lalalalalalalala-I-can't-hear-you-all-talking-about-Vegas-lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala...

An Exercise in Nut Peddling

Once again, I find myself in the throes of massive busyness, with poor poker getting shoved on the backburner. Well, that's not exactly true, as I have been playing a goodly amount the last week or so, just not my normal limit HE gig.

I've mainly been playing a single table of .50/1 PL Omaha ($100 max buy-in) at Doyle'sRoom/Tribeca. Just one lowly little table. That's it. On my second monitor. And almost always while I'm 99% occupied with other work, so I'm barely paying attention.

No moves, no reads, nothing tricky, just pure and utter nut peddling, on one table. Not very exciting poker, by any stretch of the imagination. So much folding that even the wee baby Jebus would crack under the pressure and finally get impatient and make a move with less than the nuts. If I don't have nuts or odds for a strong draw to the nuts, I fold. If there's a raising war pre-flop, I fold, even with AA xx. If I don't have position on the crazy that loves to build huge pots for the sake of building pots, I fold. If I have the nuts, I bet.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending, by any stretch of the imagination, that it's optimal play. But it's been an interesting exercise, as far as the combination of bad/crazy play at that level, plus the fact that people seem to choose to ignore the fact that I've folded 162,192 hands in a row, and still give me action when I've got the mortal nuts. I'm up nearly $1K in the last week, all from just that lone, single table, that I barely pay any attention to whatsoever.

Much of that is due to favorable table conditions, and one session in particular with a couple of well-funded drunk lemurs, but it's not the worst exercise in the world to subject oneself to.

One of the harder things for me to balance with limit HE is balancing patience with aggression, as my natural tendency is to lean towards the patient side, so I end up occasionally overcorrecting, knowing my tendencies, and sometimes force myself to play hands too quickly. I also constantly remind myself of the old mantra that to get action you have to give action, as far as justifying aggression that turns out to be unwarranted.

It's good to remember at times, though, that most people are there to gamble, and they want to find reasons to bet. In the right conditions you can sit down, afix a large, hand-lettered sign to your forehead that says "I Love to Peddle Nuts", do exactly that in very obvious fashion, and still get action.

Or, much more simply and with much less babbling, patience is a very valuable asset in poker. Couple it with good reads and selective aggression and hey, that dog will hunt.

In other news, all you other Vegas-attending bloggers still suck. Mightily.

Lying Calendars

I refuse to believe that it's December. Stop your lying. It was the beginning of November, like, two or three days ago.

Managed to seal the deal on my first substantial losing month in awhile yesterday. I'm fairly meh about it, as I was overdue, but it's frustrating in that I was flush for nearly the whole month, then hit a pretty wicked downturn the last 3-4 days. Can't blame anyone but myself (well, obviously), as I know better than to play 6 max with the crazies on networks like Prima and Tribeca, yet for some reason I continued to do exactly that, play 6 max with the crazies.

In the long run, those tables have to be crazy profitable, but I'm really not in the mindset to be playing that high variance game right now, as I don't have a ton of time for poker these days, so it reduces things to a bit of a crapshoot. Multiply that by playing 20/40 and, well, it can get ugly pretty quickly.

I don't have the exact numbers, but I think I ended up stuck a little over $2K for the month as a whole. Not good, obviously, but not the worst thing in the world, especially when I knew I was playing with fire and out of element. 'Tis frustrating in that I was up about $3K for the month right before Thanksgiving, but them's the breaks.

I do need to work on getting some focus back, though, as far as what I want and expect from poker play. Part of the reason I was playing with fire at the 20/40 shorthanded games was pure, unvarnished greed, as far as playing what I knew wasn't my best game simply because of the potential rewards. The problem, though, is that as long as I'm playing poker part-time (and investing profits pretty aggressively), I'm much better off playing the low-risk, grind-it-out game.

That mindset has served me very well up to this point, but for some reason of late I've gotten offtrack, trying to hurry things and to force the potential poker rewards into something they can't be, given the limited time I have to play. While I know that slow and steady is the way to go, I've let myself be distracted by the bling lately.

Compounded interest is a beautiful thing, especially if you're in it for the long haul. Let's say you start up an online savings account with ING or EmigrantDirect. You deposit $100 to open the account, and every month you deposit an additional $100 in poker profits. We'll just assume that for the lifetime of the account you get paid an average 4% APY.

So every month you just put $100 in the account and merrily go on your way, using the remainder of your winnings to increase your bankroll for bigger games, cash out some of it buy toys or pay for vacations, whatever. Do that for ten years and you'll have $15,131.65.

If you fund the account with $500 and dump an additional $500 into the account every month, after ten years you'll have $75,658.23. Just from wringing out $500 in profits from poker, each and every month.

Which, to my hoarding monkey mind, is a pretty damn compelling argument for grinding out profits each and every month at the poker table. You can play absolutely break even poker and still clear over $500/month in bonus money alone, if you have a reasonable amount of time to put in at the tables.

So yeah. Need to stay focused on the long run, grinding my way to a much bigger payoff at a later date. Slow and steady wins the race.

Icy Hot Pain Relief: Looking to Sponsor a Poker Player?

This aching junk update is brought to you by the fine folks at:


I realize it's perception more than anything, but it is odd how the beats and the junk-kicking seem to come in highly concentrated doses, in a coordinated, vicious flurry. Sat for two hours at a 10/20 shorthanded table in what should have been the best conditions imaginable, and all I had to show for it was a gaping hole in the bankroll and sore, sore junk. Played for a couple hours later that night, same result. Boo, poker.

Don't forget to hit up all those juicy Crypto monthly bonuses, if you're into that sort of thing. There's gold in them thar hills.

Is something happening in Vegas soon? I wouldn't know, as I'm simply sitting here, hands clapped over my ears, beating on a metal trash can with a ball peen hammer, screaming "Lalalalala I can't hear you lalalalalalalalalalalaala" at the top of my lungs.

(Someone actually showed up in my search stats a few days ago who came via Google, searching for "Lalalalalalala". Yes, indeed, search strings are always good for a chuckle, but you can usually tell what the general thrust of the search was, and what they were likely looking for. But what the hell could Mr/Ms. Lalalalalalala have been after? I mean, that's a lot of Las, more than just LaLa or something similar that could be a song, band, bar, etc. Seems like you're looking for something specific when you type in Lalalalalalala, yet also simultaneously doomed to get absolutely nothing useful back.)

Aside from the randomness of cards, I don't think my head is exactly in the best of places as far as poker goes. I'm having a hard time lately focusing and getting excited about the potential rewards for my poker labors, especially in the grander scheme of things.

It's been a bit exacerbated by recently paying myself the bulk of the profits from my business stuff on the side, as I'd just been keeping all the profits for the year in a money market account. But with the end of the year looming Mr. Accountant recommended we pay everything out, basically to zero out the books so that the corporation shows no excess income on the year and subsequently pays no corporate taxes on profits.

So, long story short, I just deposited the largest single check I've ever held in my grubby hands into our checking account. More than a year's salary at the day job. More than a couple of year's poker profits, assuming the rate I've been running recently would hold true for that time span, playing roughly the same hours.

All of which is very, very good, and I'm very, very happy and grateful for all of it. So don't get me wrong, I am in no way complaining or bemoaning my plight. It feels damn good to reap some of the rewards of my labors, as I've worked really damn hard over the last five years or so steadily building up stuff on the business side.

What's hard, though, and where I originally started with this, is that lately it makes me almost slightly resent the time at the poker tables. I feel like I need to put the time in, as extra income is always welcome, but poker can be a pretty hard way to make easy money (as other more famous poker pundits have pointed out.) I'm still not completely able to say, Oh, yeah, I dropped over $2,000 yesterday at the tables but hey, I'm a winner, baby, and I'll get it back. I mean, yeah, I can say it, and I've internalized it, but it still grinds at me, the paper loss, and affects my general mood and outlook to a degree that I don't like. And lately I seem to be questioning, more and more, if it's simply worth it, as far as the frustration and randomness, especially when I could be doing other things.

The real issue, I think, is the juggling of job/poker/business/life, and the relative weight of each of the balls. I can keep them all going, and am reasonably good at it, but they get harder to balance as the balls get heavier and/or lighter. Lately poker seems to be getting lighter, as I can't quite convince myself as successfully as I have in the past that the money I can likely make from playing 15-20 hours a week is worth it, especially when I could be doing other more stable/more profitable/more enjoyable things.

Which, in the end, is just a lot of babbling about nothing, really. I'm not really contemplating giving up on ol' poker, but I'm also not really happy with the current balance of things. Until I can heed the big flashing neon sign that says "Drop the Damn Day Job Ball Already You Idiot Monkey", I think I'm doomed to stay in the same holding pattern. Which, again, is a nice holding pattern to be in. Just a frustrating one at time.

Embrace Your Inner Donkey

Note to Bill Cowher: Sweet Jebus, that was one of the absolute worst displays of play calling I've ever seen. You're hanging in there, somehow, and you decide to go for an onside kick to start the second half? After you spot the Colts an easy TD for now reason with that gem, you decide to go for it on 4th and 4, and you go with the designed quarterback draw, with a gimpy Ben Rothlisberger (who isn't the most fleet of foot even when completely healthy)? That's the best you've got?

My junk is still sore this morning from all the kicking last night at the poker tables. I'd love to do the hip cool thing and say "I got stuck (insert a very large amount of money) but them got it all back, plus some, and then I took a dump and ruby-encrusted diamonds fell out of my ass", but sadly, that didn't happen. The horrible truth is everyone gets stuck at times, and there's not always a happy, silver-lined conclusion in the real world most of live in. Some nights you just turn off the computer and go to bed, junk aching, stuck. Such is life.

I did get accused twice of being a donkey, which is always fun. Once it was completely justified, as I was fairly pissed and called with next to nothing and no odds, and hit a runner runner flush. But the other time I was calling one more bet from the BB to close the action preflop with 59s, with six others in the hand. Flopped two pair and rivered a boat to take down an unimproved AA, who didn't think very highly of my pre-flop call, and spent the next fifteen minutes, umm, discussing it.

The interesting part isn't so much that hand, but the general idea that, assuming you're a smart monkey and playing well, you should likely be accused of being a donkey by average opponents on a fairly regular basis. It should likely happen most often regarding your play from the blinds, as that's probably the area where there's the most common opportunity to make the correct play, but one that looks donkeyish to the casual observer.

In the aforementioned hand (closing the action from the BB, calling just one more bet, with six others in the hand), I'd probably call there with literally any two cards. If you're disciplined enough to lay down the vast majority of hands after the flop (even when you flop top pair) and skilled enough to extract full value when the flop really hits you, you can and should call with some pretty junky hands from the BB, if you've got enough friends in the hand, and are closing the action.

You also should be regularly accused of donkey behavior on a fairly regular basis when you play overcards fast, get played back at by a bigger made hand, and decide to take one more card off, and get lucky and hit. Yeah, that's not optimal, as much of the value of playing overcards fast is in simply running over everyone and getting the field to fold, but what makes the play +EV in the long run is that you do, indeed, have overcards, and sometimes they hit and take out what was top pair.

Ditto for limping with small/mid pairs, when there's a raise from late position, with multiple callers, and it's one more bet to you, which you call, hoping to hit your set on the flop. Even if the flop misses you, you'll sometimes have odds to take one more card off, even if you're drawing to your two-outer, as long as it's just one more bet to call on the flop. Yes, it'll piss of Mr. AA to no end, especially if the flop is something like 8 10 Q, and you hang around for one more bet with 55, and hit a 5 on the turn. Yeah, it sucks, but if you're getting odds to call, you're getting odds to call. You may also pick up straight/flush outs after the turn, which in turn might justify a river call, giving you another shot at playing the "donkey".

Another good chance to play the donkey is in MTTS or SnGs, when you have a decent stack and are facing shoves by short stacks, whether pre-flop or during the hand. This especially happens late in MTTs, when antes and blinds are kicking in, as you'll often be faced with situations where calling with your mighty 73o is absolutely correct, as long as the pot is large enough and the amount to call is relatively small. Frustrating, especially if you're the short stack who finally gets a big hand, only to see it taken down by junk, but still the correct play.

So don't fear your inner donkey. Wear your occasional donkey accusations with pride. Remember, deep down inside, a donkey lurks within everyone. Pet him. Hug him. Feed him carrots and call him George.

And the Turkey and the Stuffing and the Football and the Poker

So yeah, good Thanksgiving vacation, all the way around. We were at the in-laws for most of it, which was pretty nice, as I was basically trapped with a laptop and nothing else to do but play poker and work on assorted projects, while watching much football.

Still running pretty well at the tables, but I've been playing with fire, playing 20/40 6 max. The swings are a little outside my comfort zone, plus I also, umm, sort of suck at short handed play, so I'm probably going to just cut and run while I'm ahead.

I have to admit that I was pretty surprised by the news than Nick Denton had decided to shut down Oddjack. I was obviously a fan (to the point of drawing heavy inspiration from the general thurst of it at oddsnark) so I'm not the most unbiased of observers, but it seems odd to just pull the plug like that.

I'm not even going to pretend to be anywhere near Denton's league, as either a blogger or businessman, but I think it's an interesting business example of attempting to monetize blogs.

People do indeed make money blogging. 'Tis a fact. But if you look at many of the profitable blogs and bloggers out there, the majority got there by doing something they enjoyed, first and foremeost, which resonated with other people, to the point that traffic grew large enough for the blogger to begin to profit via affiliate links and ad sales.

But the initial genesis of many successful (in a strictly financial sense) blogs is pretty simple: people blogging about something that interested them, which they could write about well, which they were willing to devote many hours to, for no reason other than they enjoyed it, with no eye whatsoever to ever profiting from it. Do that for a few years, do it well, and lo, you suddenly have lots of traffic, and behold, you find ways to monetize that traffic.

It's interesting, then, to see attempts to replicate that, as far as creating sites like Oddjack. I won't pretend to know the real motivation, but on the surface it seems pretty straight-forward: jump-start the profitable blog evolution process by hiring good writers in a hot niche, who will create loads of quality content that many people are interested in, that will profitably sell tons of advertising and/or sponsored links.

The only thing missing in the above recipe, that you see in other profitable blogs, is the time factor. Most successful blogs have been around for years and years. Or, according to Denton: "The moral of the story: it's easy to launch sites; much harder to make them popular."

Pardon my French, but, umm, no shit. Especially when you give them narrow, unrealistic windows of opportunity to be "made" popular. And when you define "popular" as "produces (insert very large number) of dollars of profit each month."

I guess I just find it a bit surprising that uber successful blog barons would operate in such short-sighted ways, especially after a lot of heavy lifting and foundation work has been poured. I'll be the first to admit that a difference of opinion there is likely the reason that I'm decades way from being financially independent and working a crappy day job I hate, but part of me can't help but think that's a jacked up way of approaching the Web, and content, and ways to profit from that content.

Just because something doesn't immediately make you $126,192,187 in profit doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, or invest time and money in it. That's ignoring part of the beauty of the business model of the Web in general. I still make money, each and every month, from sites I built back in 2000 and haven't updated in three years. Very tiny sums of money, true, but reasonably decent sums when you add them all up.

Aside from dollars and cents, it's just sort of generally disappointing that entertaining sites like Oddjack (which provided income for entertaining writers) can come and go so quickly in this day and age. On the one hand, it's cool that blogs have evolved to the point that sites like that could even be created in the first place, but on the other, it's sort of disappointing to see them created with such a narrow, pecuniary benchmark for success.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Things I am thankful for:

1) Awesome wives that put up with my degenerate activities.
2) Degenerate activities that allow me to click buttons and make money.
3) Poker blogs that instruct/entertain me at work/home.
4) Lemurs
5) More lemurs

Badugi Rules

HyperMegaGlobalCorp is going to get shortchanged on their pound of my flesh today, as somehow I think production is going to be very, very low. I realize it's a slippery slope but days before major holidays always seem a bit ridiculous at the workplace, as 1/3 of the monkeys are actually here, and only 1/8 of that 1/3 even attempts to get anything done.

I've been playing a ton of Badugi the last few days and really enjoying it. As far as I know, the Tribeca network (Doyle's Room is the best bet for a site on that network) is the only online site that spreads it. Badugi is a four card lowball game, aces low, but the catch is that your suits are also important. The absolute best hand is (no ranking for the suits themselves, so any A 2 3 4 of four different suits is the mortal nuts).

It's just like any other lowball game, as far as beating . Any hand of all four suits (which is known as a Badugi in general) beats any hand that has either a pair or two of the same suits. If you have a pair or two of the same suit, you essentially get to play only three cards, as you have to throw out the second matching card that makes the pair or is of the same suit.

So beats , since you have to throw out the in the second hand because it's the same suit as the 3, giving you just a three card hand that always loses to any four card hand.

beats , as you throw out the pairs and matching suits and are left with two three card hands, with the first one the better lowball hand.

As far as the action, every player is dealt four cards to begin with, followed by a betting round. Remaining players then choose to draw, up to four cards. There's a second betting round, followed by a second drawing round. Third betting round, third drawing round. Then the final betting round and showdown.

One interesting thing is that Badugi is spread at Doyle's Room as a Limit, Pot Limit, and Half Pot Limit game. It's the Half Pot Limit one that's interesting, especially in combination with the drawing nature of Badugi, as you get some pretty large pots going on a regular basis, with people still drawing on the final drawing round. The half pot structure keeps people in the hand, as in many cases everyone is still drawing, so the pots can get ginormous quickly, even at lower limits.

The math is a bit counterintutive if you're used to playing Razz and other lowball games, as it's actually reasonably difficult to draw to a Badugi. If you start with , you're pretty psyched, and are obviously going to pitch the K and keep the A 2 3, likely staying in the hand (and even playing it pretty fast) until after the last drawing round. The problem, though, is that you're actually only 49% to make a Badugi at all by the end, and even then it may be a poor one, with Q high, K high, etc. That's not to say you slow down with the above hand, just that it's more difficult than it first appears to hit your Badugi, which I think leads to inflated pots and lemurs throwing around chips more haphazradly than they normally would.

Like any lowball drawing variant, the real difficulty is knowing when to break a Badugi. If it's short-handed, your starting hand of might hold up, with any Badugi winning, no matter how high, so you can stand pat with that and raise it up. If someone draws one, though, and suddenly wakes up, playing back at you, you more than likely need to break the Badugi, discard the K, and try to draw to a better hand.

A 7 or 8 high Badugi is pretty damn good and will win a majority of the time, so you don't have to be going to showdown with the absolute nuts to win. Remember, the difficulty of getting four cards of low, different suits slightly inflates what you need at showdown to win, so it's a good bit different than Razz, despite other obvious similarities.

I may quickly change my tune, as I've only been playing for a few days, but so far I have to say that there's more dead, dumb money in Badugi than in any other variant I've played online. Yeah, you definitely get some dumbos at Razz and Triple Draw and Omaha that barely understand the rules, but nowhere near what I've seen at the Badugi tables at Doyle's Room. It can be hard finding a game at off-peak hours, but there's generally a decent number of tables running, especially at lower limits.

If anyone has more experience with Badugi and any strategy or tips, I'd be all ears, as I'm definitely still a newbie and there's not a whole lot of information out there written about it.

A Case of the Mondays...And the Tuesdays...And the Wednesdays...

March better get here soon. I'm not sure what the O/U would be right now, as far as making it until we get our annual bonus checks. What's grinding me down the most isn't the attendent corporate silliness that goes on at HyperMegaGlobalCorp, as I honestly find that more amusing than anything these days. What's grinding me is the fact that my day-to-day work is so mind-numbingly monotonous and unchanging, and has absolutely no consequence to anyone, either internal or external.

Although the little things do still make me laugh. We're on a big "Innovation" kick lately, but in the capital I sense. Which basically means that everyone is required to insert the word "innovation" approximately 17 times in any communication, and to roll out assorted programs to encourage "Innovation" but to never, at any point, do anything practical like actually consider adding new product features or examining any internal/external business processes.

As part of the Innovation Initiative, they're holding Blue Sky lunches, in which people are randomly invited to "brainstorm" and "build mind share leadership". I just got invited. Which is cool, as I need to do more stuff like that for my LDP (Leadership Development Process), to boost my L ratings. The invitation for the Blue Sjy lunch is very snazzy, professionally printed, and all that jazz. And the best part is that it comes with a decoder circle, as the text is written in code, so you have to align the decoder wheel to a certain key and then translate the letters.

Except the whole damn thing is written in code, and has two typos. It literally took me half an hour to decode it, and in the end it says something like "Join us for a brainstorming session in which we'll innovate and build mind share around a variety of topics that include a variety of business initiatives and opportunities to lead by winning and excel through the use of innovative, non-linear solutions."

The wonderful irony of that is the text that was encoded is, in essence, already disguised in corporate speak to the point of being well-nigh indecipherable.

In other news, you damn Vegas-attending bloggers really know how to rub it in, with cool announcement after cool announcment. All I have to say is that some poker site needs to step up and sponsor all of us non-attendees, who, you know, must spend the holidays with family and loved ones. Think of all the good will and positive press you'd generate by kicking a turkey our way, or some stocking stuffers, or even a damn Yule log.

Whinge and Moan and Ye Shall Receive

Well, kiss my grits...

Congratulations, you finished 2nd in the $20 + $1 NL MTT Speed Tournament. $967.85 has been awarded to your account.

I've also spent the last hour playing Badugi at BetOnSports Poker. It's on the Tribeca network, and the site with the best signup bonus open to US players is at Doyle's Room, if you you're looking to get a Badugi fix. It's like Razz on steroids. Or crack. Or steroid crack.

Obvious down side to Tribeca sites is that there's no support for either PokerTracker or PokerAce HUD. Obvious upside is that, sweet Jebus, are there ever some fishy players on that network, as almost all of the poker rooms (except for Doyle's Room)are dependent on casino/sportsbook offerings to bring in poker players. They also run some decent guaranteed tourneys during the day which often have a bit of an overlay.

Plus, you know, Badugi. Badugi badugi badugi...

Hey Look, a Post that isn't 123,172 Words Long

Pretty nice weekend, in ways both degenerate and non-degenerate. I managed to finally motivate and get the damn garage cleaned out, so I could buy some tools and assorted supplies to try to bang out (literally) some copper stuff as Christmas gifts for assorted family members and what-not. Rounded up most of the tools and supplies, except for, umm, the copper, which I should hopefully run get today.

Things are rolling pretty well in the poker world. I've been splitting time between 15/30 and 20/40, and running pretty well. I discovered that one of the sportsbooks I have a ridiculous amount of money in (waiting to clear the WR on a sportsbook bonus) has a poker room, too, which is automatically linked to your other accounts with them. It's on the Tribeca network, which has decent traffic, but most of the mid/high limits are short-handed. So I spent a few hours playing 20/40 shorthanded last night, which is just about the worst idea in the world, given the fact that I stink up the joint short-handed, but I was lucky enough to get slapped silly by the deck, plus for a good stretch of that time I had two monstrously aggressive guys/gals from Turkey sitting at the table, which often adds velocity to upward/downward swings.

Still coming up empty in MTTs. I feel like I'm playing decently but just not finishing up with anything to show for it. I need to be more aggressive with complete and utter steals in position late in tournaments. I know this, for a fact, yet can't make myself pull the trigger, waiting for a hand that falls more into the semi-bluff range than a complete steal. I'm probably going to resort to somewhat artificial measures, as far as attempting to steal whenever I look down and see that the clock on my computer monitor has a 7 in the minutes field, or something similar.

ScurvyWife and I saw the new Harry Potter movie on Friday (quit your giggling) which was pretty good, all in all. I'm not the hugest Potter-head in general, but it was entertaining enough, despite being a little long. Apparently many hardcore fans are upset by numerous things in the book being left out, but hey, it's a movie, not a book.

One of the unfortunate side effects of hitting up assorted sportsbook bonuses lately is that some are bad about selling email addresses, so suddenly I'm getting all sorts of quasi-spam from sportsbetting services that sell subscriptions to their picks. And I mostly ignore these, but I do find them humorous, as apparently all of these guys are consistently 8-1, 7-2, 9-0 on their picks, week after week after week, yet they somehow need to hawk their picks via spam for $29.95 every week? Seems to my feeble monkey brain that you'd be absolutely rolling in dough, stubbing your toe on diamonds and platinum bars scattered about your floor, if you could even successfully pick 60% of the games you wagered on. Apparently not.

FFL team got walloped by Donkeypuncher this weekend. I still refuse to believe the Bears are that good, but it's getting harder every week. They smack each other in the head with 5 pound weights at the FBI's firing range and still come out and thump Carolina, arguably the hottest team in the NFC. Wackiness.

Protecting Hands in Limit HE

Fair warning, this may be long (and that's coming from someone who has a tendency to be long-winded), as the basic idea I want to ramble about is pretty tightly coupled with a few other concepts.

One of the problems posed by any limit game is that you often find yourself in a spot where you likely currently have the best hand, but one that's vulnerable. Unlike a continuation bet (where you represent strength preflop and follow through when the flop misses you) situation, you're in a slightly tougher spot, as you usually don't have the luxury of simply folding when someone else wakes up and bets into you.

So, in short, what the hell do you do when you're playing limit HE and likely have the best hand, but one that's vulnerable? One thing to note that while the title of this is "Protecting Hands in Limit HE" it could also easily by "Playing Top Pair, Weak Kicker", as that's the situation that most often arises when you have a good but vulnerable hand.

These situations basically break down into two main categories:

1) You have a big pair/medium pair/pair/overcards and, after the flop, have an overpair or top pair, top kicker. The flop, however, is scary coordinated, usually two to a flush, or with multiple cards in the playing zone.
2) You have top pair on the flop, but have a very weak kicker.

I'm actually not going to spend much time on #1, as correct play with these hands is pretty easy. Basically you just go nuts and stay aggressive, until the board or other players give you reason to pause.

If you have and the flop comes , you can't slow down and start worrying about straights or the spade flush getting there. Your hand is almost always good here and you have to punish people aggressively playing draws here, trying to buy free cards on later streets. Yes, sometimes you're going to look like an idiot, when someone rolls over QJ at showdown, but them's the breaks.

That said, you still have to exercise common sense. If you're showing all kinds of strength and someone keeps playing back at you, slow down at a certain point and respect the fact they might, indeed, be able to beat your TPTK or overpair or even your set. All I'm really getting at here is that your decision in the above scenario isn't whether or not to press the accelerator in an attempt to protect what you think is the best hand, but how hard to mash the accelerator. Knowing to hard to mash is beyond the scope of this and so situation specific that it's crazy to try to address it.

The second situation (top pair on the flop, but a weak kicker) is more interesting and complicated, and the one I think gets misplayed most often.

You're in the BB with in a typically aggressive 15/30 game at Party. UTG raises, MP cold-calls, MP+2 cold calls, button cold-calls, SB calls, and you call. (You're getting odds to call with almost any two cards here, closing the action, and Q8s is more than enough to call with.)

Flop is

SB checks. What do you do?

Check, and fold to any bet. Yes, you have top pair, but that's about it. You're facing a huge field. Not only are you likely dominated by any other Q, but there's also no way to clarify your hand, as people will aggressively raise with draws here, both flush and straight draws. You also have almost no hope of improving, as you're still dodging the flush plus another 8 for two pair gives anyone with a J the straight.

Betting out here, with the intention of folding to a raise is just setting 1 SB on fire, for no reason. Checking with the intention of calling if it's just 1 more SB to call is just setting 1 SB on fire, for no reason, despite the pot size. Just abort the mission. The flop is horrible for you, in a field that size, despite the fact that you have top pair.

One thing to pay attention to in situations like this is whether pairing your kicker significantly improves your hand. Don't just assume that those are clean outs, as they can also put four to a straight/three to a flush on the board for your opponents, as well.

Let's use exactly the same situation as above (you're in the BB with ) but thin the herd. This time, only MP raises pre-flop, and only SB calls. You also call. (This call is slightly more debatable here but still correct.)

Flop is

SB checks. What do you do?

This is much more difficult. You only have two opponents, the flop is scary, pot is decent sized, and you have top pair, weak kicker. MP raised pre-flop and has position on you.

This is a good example of when you really need to sit on your hands a bit, take your time, and think a few levels deep here.

The first scenario you want to run through your head is whether or not this is a hand you want to take to showdown if the board doesn't get any scarier, as far as putting the flush out there, or a K or an A (potentially giving an opponent a higher pair). You also want to consider the possibility that your opponents might already have an overpair (in this case KK or AA), two pair, or a set, and the possibility that you're outkicked already by QJ, QK, and QA.

With two opponents (and one in the SB, who on average needs less to be in this hand) and a decent sized pot, the likely conclusion is that you want to take this hand to showdown, barring the board getting scarier. Against typically aggressive opponents, it's just too weak to meekly fold to one more bet on each street here. If it gets heads up, you likely want to continue even if the board puts the three flush out there, as the odds are high that just one opponent doesn't have the flush.

The question, then, is do you check or bet, after SB checks. If you check, though, you have to do so with the decision already made as to whether you want to check-raise in this spot. Enter another level of thinking and a detour, which is check-raising to protect vulnerable hands.

Check-raising in situations like this is a valid option because it both clarifies the hand and protects your hand when you do have the current best hand. While many people have the check raise in their toolbox for situations when they have monster hands, they sometimes overlook the value of the check-raise in protecting good but vulnerable hands.

What you have to be careful about, though, is remembering that your goal with a check-raise in this situation is to drive opponents out, not to build pots. And the crucial thing to evaluate is your position, before you even contemplate the check-raise.

In the above example, going for the check raise is likely a mistake. Remember, the SB checked to you. If you check, odds are MP will bet. If SB calls, what exactly is your check-raise going to accomplish? In typical online games, only the tightest of tight opponents will fold to one more bet in that situation, so it's 99% likely that both MP and SB will call. Not only did you not knock anyone out, but you actually built a larger pot to give people more incentive to chase draws. If SB instead folds to MP's bet, then a check-raise isn't bad, but it's also probably not optimal. More on this in later detour.

If you were instead the SB, and you check, BB checks, and MP bets, then by all means, consider the check-raise. Remember, if your goal is to knock opponents out with a check-raise to protect vulnerable hands, you have to be in position to force opponents to face two more bets, not one more bet. If you have position on some of your opponents, consider a check-raise to protect vulnerable hands.

Looping back to our main thread, let's recap the situation. MP raised pre-flop, SB called, and you called in the BB with ), the flop is . SB checked on the flop and the action is on you. You've ruled out folding unless the board gets scarier and don't have position to try for a check-raise. Your decision is to either check/call or to bet out.

Betting out is a much more attractive option than check-calling. But before you bet out, you have to use that big juicy poker brain, and already know what your response will be to different results.

The most obvious thing to consider is that MP will raise if you bet. Does this bother you, enough to the point that you'd rather check?

It shouldn't, because betting out is actually the best way to protect your hand in this situation. Remember, you've decided your hand is currently too good to fold, but it's vulnerable. Hands like that thrive on the least number of opponents, so you want to do everything possible to thin the field, especially when it's a decent sized pot, which makes it worth the effort. You've already determined that a check-raise won't knock anyone out, due to your poor position. The only other way, then, to face any opponents with two bets to continue is by betting out yourself, offering the pre-flop raiser the chance to raise again.

It took my slow monkey brain a long time to absorb the above concept, so you might read that again. It's pretty counter-intuitive at first, but the concept applies to nearly every poker variant, especially Stud. There are many situations that even if you slip on X-ray glasses and KNOW that the pre-flop raiser currently has a better hand, you still want to lead into them if there's a great likelihood that they'll raise, as the EV you gain from getting it heads up is larger than the money you lose when you don't improve.

If you're a devotee of Sklansky/Malmuth, you've likely read about this in regards to situations where you have middle pair, top kicker, but it also applies to good but vulnerable hands, too.

So you bet out, with no fear of a raise, which you'll call. If everyone just calls, so be it, you've already decided to take the hand to showdown. Getting raised also makes the decision to go into check-call mode for the rest of the hand a much easier one, too. That's what I mean by "clarifying" the hand, as it gives you additional information to lean one direction or another in your decision making.

But there's another option. What if you bet, MP calls or raises, and SB check-raises?

Even with just two opponents and a decent pot, I fold here if SB wakes up and check-raises. Some may call weak bullshit on that, but your real problem now isn't top pair, weak kicker but that you're caught between the player showing strength pre-flop and the player waking up and coming over the top. Even if they're both aggressively playing draws and your hand is best (which is a real possibility), you're never going to be closing the action and faced with the unenviable proposition of getting strung along calling if they go to war on later, more expensive streets.

Don't be afraid to abort and save your bullets for a better spot. Remember, your pre-flop call was thin to begin with, a flop bet is slightly thin, and there's no shame in avoiding spots in which you have a thin edge, at best, especially when out of position.

So we'll follow the most likely scenario. You bet, MP raises, SB folds, and you call. (The aggros might suggest a re-raise here but I think calling is superior, for reasons below.)

The turn is , putting on the board. You're in the BB with facing one opponent, MP, who raised pre-flop and on the flop.

Action is on you. Check or bet?

Now we have to shift gears. Our goal in protecting our hand was to get it heads up if possible. Mission accomplished. The turn also looks like a blank, so the odds that are hand is good increased. We still may have to dodge river cards, but all signs point towards our odds of winning this hand improving.

We're going to showdown now, come hell or high water. We're willing at this point to check-call on the turn, and check-call on the river. (While the Ah or Kh on the river might make it a really, really difficult decision to call, the pot's too big at this point to fold to just one more bet.) Since our hand is good but weak, we don't hate it if it goes check-check, check-check. We still don't know if MP has a bigger hand currently or is drawing and there's no good way to find out now. But do we still need to protect our hand by betting out here (despite the fact that we've been raised twice by MP) if our opponent is still on a draw, either the flush or straight draw or AK?

And that, my friends, is a really difficult question. I imagine if you polled the electorate it'd be a pretty split vote, as far as whether or not to bet out on the turn in our above situation to prevent someone aggressively playing a draw from seeing a free card by checking behind us.

I lean slightly towards the check camp, though, for a couple of reasons. The first thing you have to ask yourself is if you bet and get raised again, can you simply fold and lay down the hand? Because a lot of the value in betting in that spot isn't just in preventing a free card, but in potentially saving yourself 1BB by betting the turn and folding to a re-raise. (You save the 1BB because you're not check-calling on both the turn and river for a total investment of 2BB.)

If you can comfortably lay down your hand to a raise, then betting out is the best option. If you can't lay down top pair, weak kicker in that spot to a raise, 100% of the time, betting out is likely slightly more wrong than checking.

Here's the real crux of the situation. In a lot of cases situations where you want to protect hands morph into situations where you make more money by inducing your opponent(s) to continue to bet, even if they miss their draw. Especially if they miss their draw. You shift from trying to make them pay to draw to trying to induce them to bet, as your hand improved with the turn blank. As the hand progresses and they keep missing, you gain less value by punishing draws. It's similar to a way ahead/way behind situation where your hand is too good to fold, but not good enough to play it really aggressively. You can't comfortably bet or raise for value but you welcome the chance to call.

(Read that again, and take it in the context of aggressive, online games that most of us play in. Yes, mathematically speaking, what I just said above doesn't hold water. Because the pot's pretty big, the fact that they only have a 30% chance to hit their draw is still significant, as the 3 times out of 10 they do hit, they rake in a big pot. If a bet causes a significant number of opponents to fold, then betting is overwhelmingly the right choice, as you want to take down the sizable pot at all costs. If betting out causes 1 in 10 opponents to fold, then betting out is overwhelmingly the right choice, in a theoretical poker world in which 1 in 10 opponents fold to a bet in that situation.

The problem with that, though, is the reality of typical game conditions online. If you're playing in an aggressive online game where your opponent is raising you, on a draw, they're almost never going to fold to a single bet on the turn. Never. Even if they have junk. If anything, they're much more likely to re-raise than to fold to one bet, even with junk. If you can't eliminate an opponent by betting out and have a vulnerable hand, check-calling is a better option, in the practical world we play in. If you're in a real-world situation where you know that an opponent will never fold, incorporate that into your thinking, and throw out theoretical knowledge.)

So back again to our main situation, if you check to MP on the turn, he'll almost always fire again, even if he's still on a draw. The tendency and proclivity to bet when checked to here actually prevents him from taking off a free card. So, ironically, one way to prevent an opponent from taking a free card is by inducing them to bet.

Another advantage to checking with the hope of inducing a bet is that, assuming the river is a blank, your odds of successfully inducing a bet on the river increase dramatically, as lots of opponents will fire one last round on the river with absolutely nothing if you've checked on both the turn/river.

An additional advantage is a really obvious one, but you also could already be way behind in this hand, and check-calling limits the amount of money you're going to lose, especially if you have a hard time folding to a raise if you bet out.

The danger of checking is that they'll check behind you, take a free card, and hit their money card on the river. And there's no way around it, it is a real danger. Unfortunately we simply can't have our cake and eat it, too. If you add up all the factors (the possibility of currently being behind and not actually ahead, the likelihood of an opponent folding to a bet, the possibility of getting outdrawn on the river, the possibility of being ahead and inducing bets), I think a check is correct on the turn.

River is another blank, the . This one is easier, as we're almost home. Check here and call if MP bets. Even though the turn/river blanked you don't have enough for a value bet here, as getting raised causes you to throw up a little in your mouth and puts you in a really bad spot. Even if MP checks behind you still might lose to a junky two pair, or KQ, so you don't hate it if he checks behind you here, given you still just have top pair, weak kicker.

And that, finally, is likely more than you ever wanted to here me ramble on about concerning protecting hands/playing top pair, weak kicker. And remember that the standard caveat applies, as I'm by far not the best poker player in the world. A lot of words, I know, and a lot of individual decisions that might be bantered about and questioned, but I think there are some nuggets to be gleaned from the general ideas that underpin a lot of the thinking.

If nothing else, just take time to think through your decisions in difficult hands. Just because it's limit doesn't mean you shouldn't take your time, as there's no difference between thinking things through here and taking your time when faced with a decision for all your chips in a NL game.