Defying The Odds

By Eric Raskin

I’ve written in the past that I don’t like to tell bad-beat stories. But every now and then, I can’t help myself. So here goes with some bad-beat bitching.

(And for the record, this isn’t technically a bad-beat story; it’s a bad-beats—plural—story. It’s about a mind-boggling series of bad beats. So that’s why I can’t help but write about it. Anyway, on to the story.)

As I’ve mentioned in other blogs and editorials, my bread-and-butter is online heads-up sit-n-gos. I’m drawn to them because (a) heads-up is arguably the strongest part of my game, (b) they don’t take a major time commitment, and (c) there’s no sitting around waiting to play—I’m seeing flops nearly every hand and I don’t need to be in patient mode. And let’s face it, poker’s a lot more fun when you don’t have to be in patient mode.

Anyway, while I’d never claim I played “perfect poker” (at a WSOP Academy that I attended, Greg Raymer made the point that it’s impossible to play “perfect poker” for any extended period of time), I really was in the zone in this match. My opponent was folding to all of my bluffs and calling all of my value bets, and I was staying out of dangerous situations. Maybe the cards were just cooperating with me a lot, but as best I can tell, I was playing damned well and outmaneuvering him at every turn.

We each started with $1,500 in chips, and by the third level of blinds, I had him whittled down, holding about a $2,500-to-$500 advantage. Then I picked up a beautiful pair of aces. Even more beautifully, he pushed all in with A-8 of diamonds. Unless he had been unsuited, you simply can’t find a better pre-flop spot than that. I was an 88% favorite to end the match. But he turned a diamond flush and doubled up. Tough beat, but not the end of the world—it happens.

The next time we got it all in, I had about a $2,200-to-$800 chip lead. I was holding J-8 and turned a queen-high straight when a nine hit, and we got all the money in with my opponent having turned two pair with his 9-3. I can’t blame him for getting it all in there, but the fact is he was a 91%-9% underdog. Of course, he spiked his four-outer, hitting a three on the river to fill up.

Now he had the chip lead, but again I whittled him down and had him outchipped $2,100-to-$900 when we got it all in again—him holding A-2 suited, me holding pocket queens. I was a 68%-32% favorite this time, but he flopped an ace.

I crunched the numbers, and do you want to know what his chances of surviving all three all-ins were? Three-tenths of a percent. Yes, that’s right, in 997 out of 1,000 matches, I would have finished him on at least one of those three hands. In three matches out of 1,000, he survives. Un-friggin-believable.

And of course, the first time I got it all in with my tournament life at stake (down about $2,000 to $1,000), I lost. It was a coin flip, my deuces that I pushed with against his somewhat loose call with Q-J suited, he was a 53%-47% favorite, and he turned a queen to win the match.

Adding in that coin flip, he had less than a 0.2% chance of winning all four all-ins.

I told you it was the kind of bad-beat story that I just couldn’t help but tell.

Hopefully, I used up all of my bad luck for the week in one match.

And hopefully I haven’t jinxed myself by breaking the “no bad-beat story” rule and venting about it.

The Editor’s Blog, Daniel’s Small Ball And Gus’ Big Ball

By Eric Raskin
August 26, 2008

If you really want to twist the poker side of your brain into knots, try reading Daniel Negreanu’s new instructional book, Power Hold ’Em Strategy, at the same time as you’re watching Gus Hansen play in classic “Gamblin’ Gus” fashion on the WPT Season Six Championship, which premiered on GSN this week.

Daniel’s focus in the book is “small ball” (when I finish reading it, I’ll pen a comprehensive review for the October issue of ALL IN), and anyone familiar with Daniel’s teaching already knows how it works—you keep the pots reasonably small in most situations, chipping up gradually rather than trying to just get lucky and double up and build your stack all at once. Gus, in a certain sense, plays some small ball also. But he plays a madman’s version of it, being willing to take unusual risks to win enormous pots. At the WPT Championship, he made some almost reckless calls and shoves, and it worked for a while when he spiked the cards he needed, but it eventually stopped working and he ended up finishing second to David Chiu.

Not long ago, I read Gus’ instructional book, Every Hand Revealed, as well, and while it showed that there is usually a logical base behind his moves, he also makes an occasional comment to the effect of “I’m not sure why I did that, looking back it didn’t make much sense.” That’s the kind of thing you’d never hear Daniel say.

I’m not trying to imply Negreanu is a better No-Limit player than Hansen. They just have different mentalities. Really, their approaches are rooted in some of the same philosophy, but Daniel is generally more willing to fold if he believes he’s behind, whereas Gus is more willing to contribute to a large pot even if he needs to catch a card. Both approaches have proven successful.

But trying to process both at once, by watching Gus while you read Daniel, is a tall task indeed. I know whose approach I find myself using more—and let’s just say it isn’t the one that recommends calling a hefty all in with 10-9 suited while there’s a big stack still waiting to act behind you.

The Editors Blog The WPTL Makes Its TV Debut

By Eric Raskin
Aug. 19, 2008

A few quick thoughts on the surprisingly entertaining first-ever televised WPTL (World Poker Tour Ladies) tournament that premiered on GSN last night:

It’s interesting to see the contrast in looks when six women have to earn their way to a WPT final table vs. when the WPT picks out who the six will be …

The broadcast included a WPT executive noting that women are the fastest growing segment of the poker population, which has become one of those oft-repeated statements that nobody ever seems to back up with facts. Just once, I want to hear someone say that, then provide some hard data to support it. But as far as I can tell, the entrance of women into poker is not currently moving at a faster rate than the entrance of men. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, I just want some proof. The estimation that only 3% of the WSOP Main Event field this year was female leaves it unclear at best.

Say what you want about Nancy Todd Tyner’s poker skills, but you have to give her credit for creating an image and using it to her advantage. Everything about the way she looks, dresses, and acts screams “donkey,” and when a talented, experienced player like Vanessa Selbst starts losing to someone whose game she doesn’t respect, the result can be serious tilt—which is exactly what Tyner produced. Selbst truly believed she couldn’t be outplayed, she could only be outrun, and that led her to make mistakes she wouldn’t have made if she’d ignored Tyner’s exterior and viewed her as a capable player.

In the end, Selbst embarrassed herself a bit with her utter disrespect for Tyner, including some snide comments. But there shouldn’t be a double-standard here; when a male player gets whiny and abusive, like Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, etc., we criticize him but we also suggest that it’s good for TV. The same goes here. Maybe Selbst wasn’t ladylike, maybe it was uncomfortable at times, but the flying sparks made it a little more gripping to watch.

The Editor’s Blog–Poker And The Olympics

By Eric Raskin
Aug. 14, 2008

With the Beijing Olympics in full swing, this seems as good a time as any for me to weigh in on the talk that occasionally crops up about making poker an Olympic sport. My opinion on this matter is very clear: There’s no friggin’ way poker should be part of the Olympics.

Look, I love poker. I play a ton of it, I watch a ton of it, and it ultimately pays my bills. But it simply isn’t a sport. It’s a game. The argument that it requires physical endurance and is therefore a sport is flimsy at best. Hey, studying for exams in college required a lot of physical endurance, but that didn’t make Econ 101 a sport.

My father is a world-class bridge player, and I remember him telling me in ’92 that bridge was being considered for the Olympics. The mental image of my out-of-shape dad wearing a red, white, and blue warmup, walking alongside Michael, Magic, Larry, and the rest of the Dream Team during the opening ceremonies, was just too much to handle.

And it would be similarly absurd to see poker players competing in the Olympics. International competition in poker is wonderful, but the idea of someone who can’t even necessarily do a sit-up getting a gold medal draped around his neck is ridiculous.

On a side note about the Olympics, the Michael Phelps watch has been pretty absorbing … but if it’s a race he’s not involved in, I have to say, swimming bores me. It seems that around the country, Phelps has increased interest in swimming, and that’s great for the sport. (Yes, swimming most definitely is a sport.) But in my household, he’s increased interest in exactly eight races, and that’s all.

And lastly, on an unrelated side note, don’t forget about the ALL IN Free Poker Challenge tonight at 9:00 EST. Thanks to our friends at Wicked Chops Poker (www.wickedchopspoker.blogs.com) and Tao of Poker (www.taopoker.blogspot.com) for giving us a little plug this week. Definitely add their blogs to your daily surfing list if you haven’t already, and then join us tonight to win your share of $2,500 in cash and prizes in the free roll.

The Editor’s Blog–Feeling Good About Bad Beats

By Eric Raskin
August 11, 2008

A lot of poker players have a “no bad beat story” policy—they won’t tell the tales of their own bad beats, and they sure as hell don’t want to hear yours.

I mostly agree with that policy. I don’t want to hear the bad beat stories of random strangers, and I don’t want to subject them to my own. But my exception is that I have one close friend with whom I routinely discuss my play and his play after a session, and we’re allowed to vent about our bad beats with each other. Hey, when the beats are particularly brutal, it’s unhealthy not to tell someone.

Anyway, I won’t subject the allinmag.com readers to my bad beat stories, but I will just say that I had a two-day stretch last week where the beats were coming non-stop and, even though I’m very conservative with my bankroll management—I never put more than 5% at risk at once, and usually it’s more like 2%–I lost almost 15% of my bankroll at a particular Web site in just a couple of days.

Lately, I’ve been focusing on heads-up sit-n-gos, and it was just game after game where I got my opponents all in, frequently after the flop with five outs or less, and they just kept hitting their outs. It’s tough to beat an opponent twice in a heads-up match, and that’s precisely what you have to do when he sucks out and doubles up into the chip lead; you have to start over and find a way to beat him a second time. (And you have to pray that he doesn’t get lucky again and force you to beat him a third time.)

But here’s the thing: When I’m taking an inordinate amount of bad beats, after I get over the initial anger, I start to feel good about my game. Only superior players take more bad beats than they dish out. When I’m on a run where I’ve been the one administering the suckouts, I have to take a step back and assess what I’m doing wrong to get myself into those situations. You can’t evaluate your game based on wins and losses. You have to evaluate it based on how you’re playing. And if you’re being victimized by one bad beat or another, yes, it’s frustrating, but it’s also a sign that you’re making a lot of correct decisions.

Speaking of decisions, here’s one that may or may not have been correct—judge for yourself. In a heads-up sit-n-go, with blinds at $15/$30 and about $1,000 in my stack and $2,000 in my opponent’s, I was dealt two black aces in the big blind. My opponent limped. Not wanting to lose him, but also wanting to build a little bit of a pot, I did something I rarely do: I min-raised. It kind of telegraphed the strength of my hand, but what the heck, there’s nothing wrong with playing that way on occasion, as long as you mix it up and don’t do the exact same thing with aces the next time. He called the extra $30, and we were off to the flop.

The flop came Q-7-3, all clubs. With the ace of clubs in my hand, I figured I probably had the best hand at that moment, and if I had been miraculously outflopped, I definitely had outs. I bet $60 into a $120 pot, and my opponent called. The turn was an offsuit jack. Same situation—I could be up against two pair, but most likely I had the best hand, and I certainly still had a nut draw. This time, I checked, hoping to look weak and draw a bet out of my opponent. He bit (or so I thought) and bet half the pot, $120. I came over the top, raising to $450. He put me all in for just a few hundred more, and I made the automatic call. He tabled the 9c-2c, I didn’t hit my club on the river, and that was that, game over.

This wasn’t a bad beat, mind you, and I’m not complaining. From the flop on, he had the best hand. But I’m curious for feedback: Could I have gotten away from the hand at any point? Obviously, a bigger pre-flop raise would have been advisable in hindsight. And if I’d just check-called all the way, I could have kept the pot small and held onto some chips. But all in all, I think it was one of those hands where I was almost destined to go broke. Opinions, however, are welcome. You can post a comment below and let me know what you think …

And keep those bad beat stories to yourselves!

The Editor’s Blog — Appreciating The Genius Of Hellmuth

By Eric Raskin
August 4, 2008

I’ve met Phil Hellmuth several times, interviewed him a few times, even hung out with his parents once, and of course, I’ve watched him play hours upon hours of poker. And I still don’t quite know what to make of the guy. I can’t quite figure out where the shtick ends and the human being begins, and when he opens his mouth, I often find myself cringing over his social awkwardness while at the same time hanging on every word.

It took my wife all of about 30 seconds of watching him on TV to figure him out: “What a tool” was a her simple assessment. For me, it’s not that easy. Yes, he does come off as a tool most of the time. But he’s a tool who’s manipulating us all.

In any case, whatever direction the debate over his personality takes, there can be no debating this: The man is a sheer genius at the poker table. His dominance against elite players Ted Forrest and Chris Ferguson on last week’s special “Heads-Up Challenge” on Poker After Dark was all the proof you needed.

The common, clichéd knock on Hellmuth is that he only seems great when he’s picking on bad players, but surely nobody would label Forrest and Ferguson as such. Against both of them, Hellmuth was always a step ahead. “The Poker Brat” does his homework on his opponents, and always comes in with a game plan suited to not only the other man’s style of play, but also to how that other man perceives Hellmuth.

Phil’s call on the turn with third pair against Forrest, in the hand that ended their match, was utterly brilliant. I’d say at least 80 percent of all top pros would make the laydown in that spot, and another 15 percent would push all in and fail to bust Forrest. Few could make the flatcall, as Hellmuth did, and wait for the river to finish the job.

In his first match against Ferguson, Hellmuth got lucky to draw out by making two pair (fives and sixes) on the river against Chris’ pocket queens, but there was no luck involved in his all-in river raise. That was just a great read telling him he had the best hand and was up against a hand that would pay him off.

The rematch with “Jesus” was as one-sided as it gets. There’s no such thing as playing “perfect poker,” but from the hands NBC showed, this was damned close to perfection. Nothing Ferguson tried against Hellmuth worked; Phil always had an answer, and was always plotting his next move before seeing the next card.

The bottom line is, we can rag on Hellmuth all we want, especially when he makes an embarrassing mis-read, like his famous two-fisted chip shove with a dominated two pair against Barry Greenstein on High Stakes Poker a couple of years ago. But deep down, most of us wish we could understand No-Limit Hold ’Em strategy the way Hellmuth does. Not that his ego needs this stroking from me, but Phil, you deserve everyone’s respect at this point. If not as a person, then at least as a poker player.

The Editor’s Blog — Poker On My Mind And My DVR

By Eric Raskin
July 31, 2008

In advance of allinmag.com adding regular blogs from some of your favorite poker pros (negotiations are ongoing, but we should have some blockbuster announcements soon), you’re stuck with the Editor-in-Chief of the ALL IN magazine kicking off the blogging. A professional poker player, I am not. What I am, however, is a professional writer and editor who loves poker, plays it at an assortment of levels and in an assortment of venues, and watches an unhealthy amount of it on TV (especially for a guy with a 19-month-old daughter who ought to be playing the role of attentive father a little better). And that TV watching is what I’ll focus on in today’s blog.

With the return of the World Series of Poker to ESPN’s airwaves two Tuesdays ago, not to mention new episodes of Poker After Dark every night, we’ve all reached that point where our DVRs are filling up faster than we can drain them. Add in World Poker Tour, and you’re talking about nine hours of new poker programming each week (okay, more like 7.5 hours without commercials), and as the editor of a poker magazine, I feel an obligation to watch it all. (It doesn’t hurt that I enjoy watching most of it.)

I’ll discuss the WPT and WSOP coverage some other time, but for now, I want to focus on Poker After Dark. In terms of personality and chatter, this week’s “Heads-Up Challenge” has been as boring as it comes. And yet, I’m still riveted, because the play has been excellent. It also doesn’t hurt that heads-up sit-n-gos are my bread and butter, and therefore I find myself watching Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, Ted Forrest, and Paul Wasicka play with an eye on how the decisions they make can help my game.

Obviously, you have to feel bad for Wasicka, who played just about perfectly against Forrest and got unlucky twice when calling all-in with the best hand. Meanwhile, how about Teddy throwing some insults in the direction of his highly respectful opponent—calling Wasicka “methodical” and then snarkily clarifying that it wasn’t meant as a compliment? Maybe that was meant to take Wasicka out of his patient game and encourage him to make a mistake. Or maybe Forrest just hadn’t gotten any action in a while (double meaning fully intended).

Easily the hand of the week, so far, was the hand on which Hellmuth eliminated Forrest. Forrest check-raised with fourth pair on the turn, and Hellmuth made a tough but tremendously sharp call with third pair. Forrest, sensing Phil’s hesitance, made up his mind to push all in on the river, expecting Hellmuth to have to lay down, but Hellmuth hit two pair, making his call automatic. So yes, Hellmuth got a little bit lucky on the end. But, love or hate the Poker Brat, you have to respect the read and gutsy call he made on the turn. As Hellmuth might say, you don’t win 11 bracelets by accident, boys and girls.

More blogging to come next week. For now, good luck to everyone who plays in tonight’s ALL IN Free Poker Challenge, where the grand prize is a spot in a WPT Boot Camp getaway, a prize valued at nearly $2,000. Yeah, I’m a little bit biased, but this is, bar none, the best free roll you’ll find anywhere on the Internet.