Jugar un sólido poker ABC no es suficiente
Original source/Fuente Original:
http://lasvegaspokersource.com/?p=1738
Many people wonder what it takes to get to the top. To be Phil Ivey, to be Tom Dwan, to be one of the new-age “internet kids” who seem to be making constant life-changing scores. There is no book you can read that tells you the secret. Sure, every pro out there writes a strategy book. And there is merit in the material – obviously they became successful somehow, right?
Muchas personas se preguntan qué hace falta para llegar a la cima. Para ser Phil Ivey, para ser Tom Dwan,para ser uno de esos "chicos de internet" de la nueva era que parece que sus vidas cambian constantemente con sus puntuaciones. No existe ningun libro que puedas leer que te diga cual es el secreto.Por supuesto, cada "pro" ha escrito un libro de estrategia. I hay merito en el material -obviamente ellos se han convertido en jugadores de exito de alguna manera,no?
But, do you ever notice that new names and faces keep continually emerging? Suddenly all the people who have made poker a career and have written books and become famous start to fade out of the limelight in favor of whoever is the new “fad.” By the time a pro’s book gets published, there are five more new ways to think about the game.
Pero,te has dado cuenta que nuevos nombres y nuevas caras estan emergiendo continuamente? De repente, todas las personas que han echo del poker su carrera y han escrito libros y
se han echo famosos han empezado a desvanecerse en la sombra a favor de quien es la "nueva moda". En el momento que un "pro" publica un libro,hay cinco nuevos modos de pensar sobre el juego.
Have you really ever sat down and seriously put thought into why this might be? People who find success often stick with their methods and procedures. A kind of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” mentality. Do these players do well for themselves? Sure. They probably break even or barely get by. Once in awhile they’ll make a final table or win an occasional title.
Te has sentado nunca a pensar seriamente porque puede ser esto? Las personas que encuentran el éxito a menudo se adhieren a él con sus métodos y procedimientos. Una especie de mentalidad como: "si no está roto,no lo arregles".Estos jugadores lo hacen bien para ellos mismos. Claro. De vez en cuando hacen una mesa final o ganan un titulo ocasionalmente
But they start to fall off the map in favor of the players who seem to have this “cutting edge” to them. How is it that someone like Tom Dwan, who’s been playing poker for only a couple years, has the competency to compete at the same level as someone like Phil Ivey, who has been playing poker probably five times as long?
Pero empiezan a caerse del mapa a favor de los jugadores que parecen tener esa "sabiduria mordaz" sobre ellos. Cómo es que alguien como Tom Dwan,que ha estado jugando al poker solo un par de años,tiene la capacidad para competir al mismo nivel que alguien como Phil Ivey,que ha estado jugando al poker probablemente 5 veces mas?
It’s because poker is an ever-changing game. The same basic rules of the game apply, but can you really expect the way you played five years ago to hold up in today’s poker world? No way! I’ve been playing poker for over six years. When I was first learning, I played pretty “by the book,” standard – never did anything crazy or unpredictable.
Es porque el poker es un juego que cambia constantemente. Se aplican las mismas reglas básicas en el juego,pero, puedes esperar que la forma en que jugabas hace cinco años puede sostener el mundo del poker hoy en día? De ninguna manera! He estado jugando al poker durante 6 años. Cuando primero estaba aprendiendo, jugaba mucho"como el libro",estándar- nunca hacia nada loco o impredecible..
Made all the “right” moves, but I was a losing player. How could this be?! Many of you are in this boat right now. You haven’t ever adapted or changed your game. Well, here is some news for you – the game evolves, the thinking players adapt and figure you out and eat you alive.
Hacia todos esos "buenos" movimientos,pero era un jugador perdedor.Como puede ser esto?! Muchos de vosotros estáis en este barco ahora mismo. Nunca habeis adaptado o cambiado vuestro juego. Bueno, aquí hay algunas noticias para ti - el juego evoluciona,los jugadores piensan como adaptarse y descubren como juegas y te comen vivo.
That’s all there is to it. Have you ever seen two cars drive at each other in a game of chicken? Who will budge first? Who is the weakest link? Someone has to have the will to keep plowing forward and someone will end up swerving. You must possess the aggression that gets the opponent to surrender. Poker is like a big game of chicken.
Eso es todo lo que hay que hacer. Alguna vez has visto 2 coches conducidos el uno contra el otro en el juego de la gallina? Quién va a ceder primero? Quién es el eslabón más débil? Alguien tiene que tener la voluntad de seguir adelante y alguien acabará girando. Tu tienes que tener la agresión que hará que tu oponente se rinda.
El poker es como el juego de la gallina.
So how do you adapt and evolve to become one of these winners? Well, after reading a lot and watching multiple poker videos, I was able to conclude that I was still not doing the following things at a high enough level:
Entonces, como puedes adaptarte y evolucionar para ser uno de esos ganadores? Bueno,después de leer mucho y ver un montón de videos, he llegado a la conclusión que todavía no estaba haciendo las siguientes cosas a un nivel suficiente mente alto:
1) Being aggressive enough
Siendo suficientemente agresivo
2) Targeting the correct opponents at the table
Escogiendo los rivales correctos en las mesas
3) Picking out obvious edges/re-steal spots
Escogiendo las situaciones que era obvio que podia re-robar
4) Using three-betting and four-betting correctly and, more importantly, often enough
Utilizando el 3bet y el 4bet correctamente y, más importante,con al frecuencia suficiente
You can’t have a fear of busting to employ the tactics above. At all times, you must be pushing edges. And if you’re wrong, you’re wrong. You can adjust and change strategy – well actually you MUST adjust. It’s not really just an option.
You have to start by knowing who you’re up against.
No puedes tener miedo de arruinarte empleando la táctica de arriba. En todo momento,tienes que estar presionando al rival. Y si estás equivocado,estás equivocado. Puedes ajustar y cambiar de estrategia- bueno, de echo tienes que ajustarla. No es simplemente una opción.
Tienes que empezar sabiendo a quien te enfrentas.
In person, you can identify the hoodie-wearing internet pro who will be aggressive, the sweet elderly lady who may likely sit and wait for queens or better, the rich guy in the shirt and tie who is likely to be pretty methodical and conservative and the loudmouth obnoxious jerk who loves to raise every hand and try to bully and play table captain.
You do not have the physical advantage online. So how can you profile internet players?
Two different ways:
Hunt down their track record. Subscribing to Bluff Magazine’s PokerDB (http://thepokerdb.com) is a perfect tool.
You can cut and paste a hand history into the box and it will pop up results on every player at your table – number of tournaments they’ve played on that particular poker site, average buy-in, amount of money they are up or down, and their overall ROI percentage. Having this information on your opponents is of vital importance.
I am far more likely to make a move against a player who has 1,500 games under their belt and it up $26,000 than I am a guy who has played 20 tournaments and is down $600, an obvious rookie to the game (not a thinking player, only concentrates on their two cards, can’t find the “fold” button against you).
As much as you DO want to play against bad players, you do NOT want to try making fancy moves against them, it simply will not work and will aggravate you in the process.
Another way of knowing your enemy is to use tracking software. I’m not incapable of playing without one…obviously when you go live, you don’t have it as a crutch. BUT, in all fairness, patterns and tells are not only easier to pick up on in live poker, but you’re also only playing one table at a time, so focusing on these things is easier than multi-tabling online.
In a live game, I have plenty of time in between the hands I choose to play to study and take mental notes (or sometimes I even type them into the notes section of my iPhone) on the habits of your opponents.
Online, if you multi-table (I typically play 6-8 games at once), then you can rely on the tracker to reveal some of these aforementioned “spots” and “edges.”
I use Hold’em Manager and it lets me know important tendencies about my opponents so that when I have to jump over to make a decision in a hand, I can do it quicker. I suppose it’s kind of like a Cliff Notes of poker. A summary of what can be expected. Poker Tracker is excellent as well, and I have used both. I simply prefer Hold’em Manager of the two.
So the time came for me to mix it up find out what it was like to play uncomfortably for awhile. I jumped into some super low stakes tournaments to experiment.
A good place for this is Full Tilt’s $3 90-man Kos.
It’s a 3000 chip structure, so you a great stack size to work with and I didn’t care about the $3, unlike if I were employing these tactics at the higher stakes. So the goal was to experiment, practice and fine tune. Then eventually implement the strategies into my regular buy-in games.
I started by trying to three bet as much as possible. Essentially, in spots I would have formerly just called, I re-raised. So if I had a medium pocket pair, or suited connectors or a hand like AQ and someone raised ahead of me, I re-raised them as opposed to just “calling to see the flop.” I was super-surprised by the amount of times I either got a fold or just a flat-call.
I went in fully expecting to get either 4 bet or straight up shoved on a lot of the time.
Here are the beauties of this tactic:
1) It is far more profitable than a standard steal. Once an opponent folds to your three bet, you pick up their raise AND the blinds, so the pot is sizeable even if it doesn’t get to a flop. You’re only picking up 1.5bb (and antes if any) when you are the raiser on the steal, but you pick up that same amount plus your opponents 2-5x raise (depending on who you’re up against).
2) When you get flat-called, you can typically remove big hands from your opponent’s range. Put yourself in their shoes. If you have a monster like AA, KK, QQ or even AK and you open and someone raises, you are likely to four bet them for value preflop.
After all, if they’re willing to re-raise you, they obviously have a hand of merit and you can probably get more money out of them, right? So unless you’re trying to be sneaky (which obviously still IS possible, but not likely), you aren’t flatting in this spot. So, when I 3 bet and I simply get called, I am looking to scoop that pot away on the flop every single time.
This goes for in position AND out of position (more on positional strategy later). I can honestly tell you that 9 of 10 times that I get called in this spot, they will check, I’ll put out a nice sized continuation bet, and they will fold. It is very rare to get any opposition in this spot.
I can’t actually remember an instance off the top of my head where an opponent check-raised or check-shoved on me there.
3) If they DO have a monster in this spot (at least at the low and middle stakes), they define their hand against you pretty quickly with either a four bet or a shove preflop. So then it is pretty easy to fold your pocket eights (or any hand that is not AA/KK/AK for that matter).
Now, given these conditions, it becomes obvious to see that you do not need to three bet ONLY your good hands. Let’s say I have K6 in this spot. If I make the same play, and follow the same guidelines as above, then an argument can definitely be made for three-betting with any two cards.
However, there are clearly things you are going to consider before making these moves.
1) Your opponents image – this is where stats come in handy. A person who is super active and raising a lot is a perfect candidate for this. Why?
Because they have a wide pre-flop raising range in the first place, meaning the likelihood of them having anything that they’ll play back at you with is reduced. I’m doing this to the guy raising 18% or more preflop. I am NOT doing this to the guy raising 3-4% preflop. Knowing who this move is best made against is where to start.
2) Your image – if you have been super active and aggressive, then you will likely be a four-bet target.
This is why I suggest not going uber-aggro with this move; yes, use it more frequently than you ever have, but for game flow reasons, you have to also be able to change speeds on your opponents so that you are not the one bleeding chips with any two cards.
3) Your position – I equally love this move both in late position (cut-off/button) and out of the blinds. When you do it with position, the scenario above occurs often – they check, you bet, they fold.
When you do it out of position, you get to act first.
You are exploiting the person who is quite obviously raising late with intent to steal blinds, and when they call you, you get to fire first. Again, in 9 of 10 instances, they fold the flop. Not only that but if that late position raiser has a high aggression factor, then it is also a good spot to check any flop, knowing he will stab at the pot, and go for the check raise. It puts your opponent in such an ugly position.
Pushing these edges and applying maximum pressure on your table has no downside for you. It’s your opponents who are in a miserable situation where you’ve forced them into decisions and kept the ball in your court, making it very stressful for them.
4) The value of your hand – this is actually the last consideration you need to make, since the move can effectively be pulled with any two cards against the right targets.
But let’s just say you’re sitting in the small blind with 69os. This is a clear three bet steal spot. You want to take the momentum away from that late position raiser and scoop the pot.
In this scenario, you’re primarily looking for (and happy with) a fold. In addition, you have the easiest decision in the world if that raiser decides to four-bet you. That hand hits the muck and you try again later against someone else, or maybe still against that same opponent, after a bit of backing off on your part for the sake of game-flow.
But what if your hand can stand to see a flop? Then maybe you ought to reconsider three-betting. Why? Let’s say you have a KJs or 910s type of hand, or a pocket pair like 99.
Especially in position, you don’t mind playing a flop with these cards. They have a bit of value, as the late position raiser has a wide range and you are likely already ahead OR can make a variety of hands with your hole card combination. Seeing a flop and playing it out is likely to be very beneficial to you.
Three-betting may not be. What if you three-bet your KQ and you get four-bet? You just got put in a pretty bad spot, because you aren’t continuing to a four bet with KQ, but if you had simply flat-called, you would have had the opportunity for post-flop play with your hand, which does have value.
So you actually made it hard on yourself. Whereas it’s easy to fold to a four-bet when you have three-bet a hand like q4s or k8os, you’ll be kicking yourself for having to simply toss away a decent hand.
Three-betting and four-betting can/are obviously used at all stages of the tournament, but they are most effective late.
The majority of players experience my same former issue – they tighten up as they run deep.
After all, they’ve invested this much time and are getting so close to the money; better to eek in and end up with something rather than nothing right? Wrong. This is the time to turn on a raging case of three-betting/four-betting.
No one wants to bust.
Why should you care? Sure, there are the above reasons/excuses but let’s think about it logically and in the big picture for a moment.
I am playing a $10 Full Tilt tournament where I will get $17.16 for a min-cash if I can hang on and survive just until the bubble bursts.
Then the bubble bursts and I am forced to shove my first two decent cards with no fold equity and am disappointed when the guy with 2 bazillion chips snaps me off with his marginal hand (you’ve all heard it or said it…”I can’t believe he calls my all in with j10 there.”) What does he care?
It doesn’t affect his stack, because he spent time abusing the table and building an empire so he can suck up your stack OR double you up without as much as a second thought. He did what YOU should have been doing, which is exploiting this mentality and putting yourself in a prime situation to not stress near the bubble trying to earn $17.16 and instead shooting for the win of $3,775. If he busts, so what?
He lost a $10 buy-in.
Many of you have blown ten times that amount on a night out or on a craps table. You have to be focusing on your risk vs. reward. Wouldn’t you rather gamble your $10 a bit more in the late stages by playing back and trying to propel yourself toward $3,775??? I know I would.
Start looking for the targets. Super-active players. Late position raisers. Employ these three bet tactics against them – with good cards, without good cards. In position, out of position.
I have found in the past month that I catapult myself to the top of the Leaderboard, just like I’ve always done, but the difference is now I keep myself there, instead of dwindling down and fizzling out. It will feel risky and uncomfortable at first, that’s why I recommend it at low stakes.
But when you move it into your game and see the benefits, you will wonder why you waited so long to implement it.
