HammerBlog

July 05, 2006

And I'm free ... freerollin' ...

Having played more than my fair share of freeroll satellites lately (hey, they're cheap - when a donkey makes a horrific call to crack my hand, I can't complain much), I've made a few observations about them that may help you survive them.

1. Don't play the early stages. The first few rounds bring nothing but misery. If you do play, understand that it will suck out if it can and your monster starting hand will likely get cracked. I'll spare the gory details of bad beat stories, but I've had aces cracked by 7-6 off-suit hitting a full house and a big pre-flop bet called by 7-4 off-suit. I just pushed with A-J suited before the flop and was called by 8-2 off-suit which won when a deuce hit the river. That's the level of donkery we're talking about.

2. If you must play the early stages, understand that there really is no playing involved. Follow a straight push and pray mantra. If it's good enough to play in those early to middle stages, it's good enough to push with since you'll be getting callers with any paint or ace-rag combination and possibly less. You might consider shading starting hand requirements down to the low end of what you're comfortable with - suited J-9, J-Q, J-10 off-suit, 9-10 suited, etc. Your opponents will be playing any ace, any king and so forth. They will also be playing hands that are worse, believing that any two cards can win. As long as you're comfortable with three and four-way action, feel free to roll the dice and hope your cards are live. If you happen to have ace-rag or king-rag, you're likely to be dominated by someone.

3. Don't think about your hand. Your decision is push or fold, at least until the field is drastically reduced. Don't calculate pot odds, don't calculate implied odds. If you call, someone will go all-in. If you bet, someone will go all-in. The action happens before the flop in all but the most extreme cases, removing all decisions and opportunity for mistakes. Your only thought should be about whether you think your cards are as good or better than what everyone else is holding.

4. Although this may sound contradictory and crazy, TRY to play dominated hands. In general, it means you'll have at least one live card. It's almost better if you play the off-suit gapped rags you wouldn't touch at any other time because it will generally give you two live cards to everyone else's paint-rag.

Freerolls can be fun as long as you don't take them too seriously. My best freeroll performances have come when I'm multi-tabling and focusing on another game and only check the freeroll when I have to raise, call or fold. In my best performance, I had become the chip leader simply by pushing and folding and minimizing the window again. I honestly wasn't paying attention. That says something about the quality of play, but there is also opportunity in freerolls - as long as you don't mind bad beats. After all, you're only getting what you pay for.

Posted by puckett at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2006

Hold on, this will only take a second ...

Well, as part of me feared, I got knocked out of the blogger tournament pretty early in. I watched 10-20 hands of dead money chasing pots with 7-8h, 9-3o and even 7-2o (which called the big blind, called a bet or two on the way and rivered a backdoor flush to win) and when I found K-10 in my hand and Q-9 on the board and I had raised pre-flop, I continued betting. Well, someone to my right re-raised to twice my post-flop bet and, based on their play so far, I figured that they were bluffing since they hadn't raised before the flop with their hand, so I re-raised all-in. Sure enough, they called and turned over K-Q. The turn made a set of queens and the river made a full house. I'm not hugely unhappy with my play because a lot of players are sitting out and watching limpers call with any two cards no matter what you bet is a little frustrating so it simply wasn't fun and my odds of making the prizes were slim (top 1 or 2% get anything at all of a starting field of 2249).

[Does this sound like rationalization for failure? Perhaps. Maybe I wasn't motivated to play in this and let my frustration with the quality of play get the best of me. Maybe I subconsciously knocked myself out. I'll ponder that.]

Right now, I'm watching Matt play heads up at a table of nine because seven people are sitting out and have been since the tourney started. His pocket jacks just got cracked by someone who raised pre-flop with K-6o.

This tourney is great marketing and promotions for PokerStars, but the quality of play is abominable - I mean, who in their right mind with even the most basic knowledge of poker calls the big blind with 9-3 off-suit? It's like watching Colin Quinn on Celebrity Poker Showdown - any two hole cards will do. 9-3o is a betting hand, right? I mean, a 9 is a good card, it can only be beaten by an ace, a king, a queen, a jack or a 10 - what are the odds that any of my opponents are holding any of those?

Seriously. This may sound like sour grapes, but it isn't - my warmups for this, in which I focused on solid, tight, aggressive play, made me money. I spent yesterday reading Gordon and Sklansky and had a chat with Andy Bloch very early this morning in which he gave me a couple of good MTT strategy tips and those can only be good things. In other words, my preparation was worth more to me than anything in the prize pool.

And frankly, the hell with the prize pool - I would have had to make it to 50th to get something I wanted (a $215 buy-in) and then get knocked out by 41st to keep it and NOT get a bloody iPod (this is a poker blog, I'll keep my bitching about Apple's walled garden offline but seriously, buy Creative MP3 players - they cost less, play anything and don't lock you into iTunes). If I didn't, I'd have to make it to 20th to get another buy-in. I just wanted the experience.

And frankly, maybe some of it is sour grapes because this entire thing left a bad taste in my mouth. I just watched someone switch from sitting out for the entire tournament to going all-in pre-flop with A-10c in the pocket. Matt called him and flopped a set of 8s to knock him out, begging the question of whether river justice has a twin called flop justice because, given the circumstances, Matt deserved to win that one. It's just annoying because I'm watching bad players make bad moves and win because of it. I'm back to the knowledge that good players rarely suck out but frequently get sucked out on.

At any rate, I'm done griping. Dave, Matt and a couple of other HammerBlog readers and contributors are still in the thick of things - Matt's actually one of the chip leaders at the moment. If I don't get into a side game, I may post another update later on.

Posted by puckett at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2006

Just when you thought "Hee Haw" was only a TV show ...

I was in late position in a turbo SNG last night and found myself with A-3s. After the table folded to me, I bet 3.5x the big blind, ready to take the blinds. The big blind called me. After pairing my 3 at the flop and with nothing too scary on the board, I made a pot-sized continuation bet which, at this point in the game, represented about 1/3 of the stack. The BB called again. At the turn, I bet and the BB went all in. Due to the passive play so far, the lack of any draw on the board and calling big bets, I put him on a bluff - an overcard or two, no pair, trying to take the pot, so I called and he showed 7-4 off-suit. He had paired his 7 at the turn, but had already called 1/3 of his stack with no pair and no draw.

Annoyingly, I couldn't catch up. I'm not calling it a bad beat, just grousing about the crap people will play passively. Hell, if you're going to play rags, BET the damned things.

Posted by puckett at 10:07 PM | Comments (0)