The Free, Online, Concise Guide to No Limit Texas Holdem Poker is now available, free, for viewing or download.

The Free, Online, Concise Guide to No Limit Texas Holdem Poker is an e-book. It is available at SmashWords for online reading in HTML or JavaScript, or you can download it for Kindle, Epub, PDF, RTF, LFR, or Palm Doc formats. Alternatively you can read on this site as a series of web pages, starting here. The advantage of the web page version is that it includes a 40 minute embedded video of me playing poker while pointing out examples of starting hands to play.

The Free, Online, Concise Guide to No Limit Texas Holdem Poker includes:

• Playing styles; their advantages and vulnerabilities, how to play against each style and some recommended starting hands to play, and then
• the mathematics of poker including outs, odds, percentages, pot odds, and implied odds. At the end I include
• additional suggested readings once you are comfortable with the basic material. As an appendix I’ve included sections covering
• rules, game play, poker hand rankings and terminology and definitions, for those of you who are brand new to the game.

I developed this book from various beginner-oriented blog posts that I made over the years and added additional material so that you could have a complete poker guide for beginners.

And it’s free.

I see people trying to make a couple of bucks selling their version of “How to play Wining Poker” (I don’t know if that’s an existing title or not. If so, I apologize, but there are hundreds of them with similar titles), but I don’t see the point because all this basic information is available free for people who take the time to research and learn. I’ve collected the information myself over the years, tested it, proven that it works, and offer it back to the internet world.

Here’s a player that I found interesting. Recent contributor as a poster, seemingly beginner-ish level of poker knowledge, yet sporadic references to playing levels as high as $400nl.

• PTR says -$2,000, bb/100 of 0.13, hands tracked 135,000.
• Tracked since September 2008, Career peak April 2009, Worst day -1,000 April 2010

The bulk of his playing has been at micro level 6 max tables;

• 8,000 hands at $2nl 6 max, +1.7 bb/100
• 75,000 hands at $5nl 6 max, +2.5 bb/100
• 25,000 hands at $10nl 6 max, -1.5 bb/100
• 12,000 hands at $25nl 6 max, -2.0 bb/100

This would explain the beginner-ish posts; he beats $2nl and $5nl, loses at $10nl and $25nl. In spite of the fact that PTR has 135,000 hands on him I don’t expect that much thought on his part has gone into those hands. Then the weird games,

• 4,000 at $50nl HU, -$500
• 3,000 at $100nl HU, -$400
• 500 at $400nl HU, -$400

all played some recently, and,

• 600 at $ 1,000nl HU, +$700, last played 2008
• 500 at $100nl FR, -$280, last played 2009
• 400 at $600nl HU, +$10, last played 2009

not so recently.

In other words he’s all over the map with mostly HU (one FR) shots. He has some idea that HU is how you gamble or take shots when you come into some spare cash or something. PTR says he’s way too passive playing HU which you would expect given that he’s playing most of his hands at micro levels.

I had the realization that if you believe in something, and a group of people believe otherwise, and these people gather to tell you that you’re wrong, it’s logical that you would see these people as “clique-y” and maybe see their gang mentality as “high-schoolish”. Classic conspiracy theory?

~

Fred joins a poker discussion group. Fred starts a topic such as “Is it easier to win at higher stakes?” and then proceeds to describe how he keeps losing to suckouts and bad beats. Fred hypothesizes that it might be easier to win where players play more reasonably and don’t call and chase with garbage all the time, players who “know when to fold, who understand what I’m representing”. Pretty common story from a player who doesn’t understand odds, doesn’t understand Sklanksy’s Fundamental Theorem of Poker which says that you make money when you opponents make mistakes, doesn’t understand variance, doesn’t read his opposition well, lacks patience, and has an inflated view of his skill level.

Experienced players try to help. Sometimes it sinks in, sometimes it doesn’t. In this particular case Fred adds comments like “If you guys can win at poker, then I can win more.” “I don’t use a stats program, but I’m sure my won $ at showdown is 75%”, and continues to insist, “I get sucked out on with my big hands over and over again.” Someone mentions that the rake rate is higher at lower stakes and Fred adds that to the likely sources of his losses.

After repeated attempts to explain some basic poker to Fred, the experienced players resort to sarcasm, suggesting Fred is indeed the unluckiest person in the world, and sure, take your entire paycheck and sit at as high a buyin level as you can, just let us know what table you’re on and we’ll join you. Fred responds by pointing out the childishness of sarcasm and how unfriendly the comments are. Anyone continuing to try to reason with him is accused by Fred of not reading what he’s said; he knows what he’s doing, he knows he’s getting drawn out on and that’s why he’s losing money.

Finally one or two people are as blunt as they can be, telling Fred you are a bad player, you are arrogant, have an overinflated ego and you don’t listen and as a result you will never improve. Fred gets upset and begins calling the group clique-ish and accuses them of not helping and of having the mob mentality of high school students seeing someone being picked on. Moderators, if available, step in and tell Fred to cool it. Fred attacks the moderators. Moderators threaten banning. Fred either gets banned or leaves of his own accord.

~

Who is Fred? Fred is any number of people who cycle through the world of poker discussion. There are variations on Fred; new versions seem to appear every other month, asking the same question, receiving the same answers, getting support from others like him who also dream of playing with people who “know what they’re doing”, where they will really get to show their poker “skill”, and along the way, tiring out the regs who really do want to help. Some Freds never change, but a few will gradually open their eyes, put aside their insecurity/arrogance and start to listen and begin to improve. It’s those Freds that keep some of us offering help to all of them, hoping that one or two might actually listen.

Well, I’m not really designing a poker bot, per se. But it’s an approach that I’m planning to use for a while.

A respected (by others besides myself) poker friend of mine once suggested establishing a goal for your poker sessions, such as, focus on opportunities to float. Then you would keep an eye out for those specific situations as they evolve and spend a little more time on evaluating them. For example you may even start with preflop; there’s a raise in front. Is this player type likely to be easy or difficult to float if we get to the flop/turn? Then you can still reject the situation based on your cards, position, or opponents behind (maybe someone behind likes to squeeze so if you just call preflop you might be creating a squeezing opportunity for him).

Anyway, it’s a focus. Much like a soccer coach might say “use this scrimmage to focus on passing with your left foot”, you play your session with a focus on your target. For my target I am still concerned about my emotional reaction to poker situations. I’ve written from many different perspectives about not caring about short term results, about emotional bankroll, about Zen attitudes, about “me” versus my poker persona but I still note my heart rate increasing when I get AA, I still find myself calling min-raises with nothing and no real plan simply because I find min-raises annoying, I still find myself paying off bad players when it’s fairly obvious that they actually have something this time.

This is where the “poker bot” comes in. Rather than just tell myself to keep at an even keel I’m planning to ask myself, “What would I want the poker bot to do?”

If I were designing a poker bot, what should the programming choose at this moment, given the cards, stats, position, and using everything that I know about poker? How would I want the poker bot to act?

This is something similar to recording a video as you play for the purposes of instructing a beginner (which I’ve done and found the process instructional for myself). So if you imagine that your play is being recorded, and you will give the video to a programmer to use to write a book for a beginner, or to program a bot, or for a beginner to learn from, what do you want to happen? What do you want the bot to do, over and over again in this situation? Or, what do you want your student to do, over and over again, in this situation?

I think I’ve written about this before, but I’ve been playing a lot of $10nl Rush Poker and seeing some awful plays, so for beginners I want to emphasize something, and that something is POSITION. Position at the table can make all the difference as to whether a hand is a good play or a bad play.

Take a type of hand and evaluate it by position. A2 to A9 where both are of the same suit.

• In early position at a good 7-10 player table, by default  it’s a fold.
• In mid position by default it’s still a fold.
• In late position when no one has opened, as a default it’s a raise to take the blinds and to play position if called.
• In late position when there are multiple limpers, it could be a call to flush-mine and to play the advantage of your position, or it could be a raise  to squeeze the limpers, take initiate, and to play your position.
• Behind a raise, it’s a fold.
• In the small blind unopened, it’s a raise.
• In the small blind with multiple limpers, it could be a call, or a raise to take initiative
• In the big blind it should be a check most times, or a raise if only the small blind or the button limp.

These should be the default choices. Ax suited where x is smaller than a ten, fold, fold, fold. Unless you get it in late position or the blinds.

But there’s a lot of considerations that aren’t included. For starters, player reads. If one of the players behind you is very aggressive you might choose to fold rather than raise or call because the aggressive player may raise. If the two players who limped ahead of you like to limp, then call raises and don’t fold to continuation bet, you may be wasting money if you try to raise them off their hand. If the player who limped from early position likes to be tricky, they may have limped AA/KK and are waiting for someone to raise them so that they can raise over top.

Or stack sizes. If you raise from late position into a player in the blinds who has 10 big blinds, they may shove over top of your raise with a wide range of hands and you don’t know if your hand is better or not. Or if you yourself have only 10 big blinds you can’t raise and fold so you might as well push all in. But if it’s a tournament and you are nearing the bubble, you might choose to fold and not play rather than take the risk of facing a raise or being dominated by a hand that has an Ace with a better kicker.

And if you are confident in your post flop play then Ax suited can be an open raise from any position, including early position, as long as you do it occasionally to mix things up. But a raise, not an open limp. And don’t do it all the time because then you’re raising too often. If you want to play more hands then open all pocket pairs and suited middle connectors before you go to all suited Aces because these other hands won’t be dominated when they catch the flop.

Let’s take another group of hands. KJ/KT/QJ/QT/JT/J9 type hands.

• In early position at a good 7-10 player table, by default it’s a fold.
• In mid position depending on the players behind it could be a raise or a fold.
• In late position when no one has opened, it’s a raise to take the blinds and to play position if called.
• In late position when there are multiple limpers even if your cards are suited you probably don’t want to flush mine since you don’t have the Ace. It should be a raise to pressure the limpers, take initiate, and to play your position, or fold if you don’t feel that you have enough fold equity.
• Behind a raise, it’s a fold, unless you think that you can outplay your opponent post flop.
• In the small blind unopened, it’s a raise.
• In the small blind with multiple limpers, it could be a call, or a raise to take initiative
• In the big blind it should be a check most times, or a raise if only the small blind or the button limp.

I highlighted the things that I think are different but most of it is the same as the previous type of hands. With two big cards you have a better chance of flopping top pair but because you don’t have AK you also risk being dominated. Brunson labelled these “trouble” hands because they can get you into a load of trouble.

Again, fold, fold, fold until you get into late position with these hands.

(From the archives)

There used to be a good short stacking strategy on a site called donkeydevastation, but the other day I went to look for it again and the site no longer exists. I think there were a couple of articles on playing both 10BB buyins as well as 20BB buyins.

~

I started playing short stack strategy after a run at playing Full Tilt‘s super turbos. In these sit and goes each player starts with 300 chips and the blinds are at 15/30 and rise every 3 minutes. There really is no room for postflop play because you start with only 10 big blinds, and unless you get some idiot limping into your big blind or you get two early big stacks playing each other, it’s all push/fold.

Playing the super turbos led me to become very tight preflop in the early stages:

• unwilling to call shoves in the early orbits without AA/KK/QQ/JJ/TT/AK
• unwilling open from early/mid position or to shove over limps without 99/AQ or better because players will limp JJ down to 22 or any ace and then call a shove
• playing position (opening with progressively weaker hands if the pot is unopened or the table gets shorter)

Once the game gets a little further along the blinds rise, the table gets shorter and I start to get some reads then I will start to get a lot more active. Or at least I try to. Sometimes the timing doesn’t seem to be there and I get a marginal shoving hand but someone else opens so I fold instead.

Then I took this playing style to short stacking $25NL, buying in for the minimum of $5 at 4 tables at a time. Largely I use the same preflop strategy that I use when full stack at $25NL; raising based on hand quality and position.

• Early: AQ/TT and up
• Mid: AJ/99 and up

And then from the hijack to the the cutoff to the button and small blind there is a fast increase in hands I will open raise with. By the time it gets to:

• Button or small blind: Any ace, any pair, any two big cards, any suited connectors or gapped suited connectors.

How wide I open my raising hand range in late position depends on the players behind me. If I see that they often open call raises I will wait for better quality hands. I don’t want to see a flop, I just want to steal the blinds.

The difference between my full stack and short stack preflop strategy is that I will not open limp mid pairs from early/mid position hoping for a cheap flop to catch a set because I cannot call a raise. And I will rarely limp behind with mid pairs or suited connectors either unless there are at least two or more limpers already in. Essentially the only limping I will do is completing from the small blind, and even that has to be good odds with a hand that has drawing value. I will not call raises with these hands because I do not have implied odds. In other words, the times that I hit my set will not repay all the times that I won’t hit my set. This is because my stack is too small to recover enough winnings when I do hit the set.

The other preflop strategy difference is that I rarely raise or 3bet to punish limpers or to isolate a weak player. This is because I do not have the stack to defend a 3bet after the flop or to defend a raise over limpers. The pot becomes too big so that my remaining stack is smaller than the pot on the flop, with two more cards yet to come. The only thing that I can do is overbet the pot and shove (unless I have AA/KK and want some action, then I’ll raise hoping for one caller).

The other key is to guess how your hand compares to the range that you put your opponents on. If I’ve got 99 and someone open limps, I expect them to have either a lower pair or overcards, and I’m willing to get it all in preflop. If, on the other hand I open raise AQ from early and a tight player reraises me, I’m at the bottom of the range of what I should have. If he knows hand strength and position he’s got JJ/AK or better and I should fold. But, if he’s loose and or overly aggressive then he might have any Ace or two big cards and I can push all in.

The problem for me comes with AQ/AJ/99/TT in late position with a raise from mid. I’d be willing to call behind or to raise with a full stack, but with a short stack and if there is no indication of a loose or aggressive opponent I’m not sure whether I’m ahead or behind at $25NL and I don’t have a stack to find out.

At $25NL some players will be liberal raising short stacks, though some will be hesitant because $25NL lacks aggression and some players never 3bet. Instead, they might call and then try to put you all-in on the flop.

Many players who buy in short don’t know how to play; they buy in short just to limit their potential losses, and players will assume that because you bought in short, you are one of these players. This is where the biggest part of my winnings seem to come from. Players with otherwise decent statistics making some truly awful plays, though, these are also often when I’ve re-raised and they’ve called, so inability to let go after putting money into the pot could also be a factor.

~

All of this assumes some other basics, like no minraising preflop, c-betting most flops against single callers (I’d shove many on the flop because of my stack size, except if I have a hand I want to entice them to call), and leaving the table after getting more than 26 or so big blinds because the strategy no longer works if your stack gets to big. If you’re playing at a major site then there are plenty of other tables to move to. It’s a simplistic, tight, aggressive approach but it seems to work, at least at $25NL. It requires a lot of patience though because you play very few hands, and if the cards/situations are not coming sometimes my VP$IP sits below 10% at any one table. which means that other than from the big blind I’m playing less than 1 out of every 10 hands. Hence one of the advantages of playing multiple tables is that I don’t get bored or anxious and start playing more than I should.

The next step will be trying this at both higher and lower levels to see the results.

I do feel as though my postflop play is suffering because I am rarely playing those streets but my preflop play is tightening up and getting more sharply defined. I’ve heard claims that this is a good approach for beginners because of the simplicity, but I’ve made previous attempts at this and was unsuccessful because I lacked the situational reading ability, the discipline and patience, and the real understanding of what the short stack means in terms of lack of implied odds for myself and the opportunity to pressure other players because of the implied odds that I deny with the short stack.

“Sticking your neck out” = Raising, especially preflop?

I’ve always used this blog to track little thoughts that come into my head. Yesterday I was playing a form of poker that I haven’t played for a while. Often when I play something unfamiliar or that I haven’t played recently there’s more anxiousness and decisions aren’t so simple.

So I use those opportunities to re-experience a beginner’s perspective, at least to some level, and one of the thoughts that crossed my mind was “stick my neck out”. It’s a good phrase. The visual image that comes with it is guillotine-like, as if you extent your neck and risk having your head chopped off. Sometimes I view it as if I’m sticking my head out of a train or car window and risking getting chopped by a pole as we fly past.

And that’s what it can feel like. You raise and you’re sticking your neck out. When you don’t know your opponents well, when you don’t have confidence in your reactions to 3 bets or to play on later streets it can feel as if you’re putting your head into a dangerous area. Raise preflop. Miss the flop but continuation bet, Ugh, he calls, now what? It starts to feel as if the rest of my body is now being dragged out into danger too.

And those of us who experience the spew form of tilt have an additional fear, even if we are experienced. At any moment that tilt monster can rise up, fuelled by frustration, anger, incredulousness, arrogance, alcohol, and cause us to lose precious dollars that we worked so hard to grind out.

I was trying to set up a new blog for someone and couldn’t get the WordPress category slug to be the usual default. Instead it changed to “category-2″. This was a problem because I wanted the permalinks to go by category first, so having the link be “category-2″ was messy. Trying to manually correct the label didn’t work.

This implied that I already had a “category” category which might have been possible since the blog was originally begun on wordpress.com and I exported the history and imported it into the new blog. I checked and couldn’t find one, but maybe I had already deleted it so I went into cpanel to look. I found the wp_links table in phpmyadmin but still couldn’t correct it. Then I found the problem.

In the wp_links table it listed both categories and tags. There was a pre-existing tag for “category” as well as a matching slug. Ah ha! I went back to the blog, found all the posts with that tag, deleted the tags, then went back to cpanel and was able to change the category slug.

So, moral of the story, WordPress puts both categories and tags into the same table. If you run into duplicates, it adds a dash and a number to the slug. If you want to reset the slug count, you might need to check the tags as well.