Thursday 20 June 2013

A Set of Poker Games


Ahoy avid non-existent readers of my blog!

I'm having trouble sleeping and since I'll be awake with nothing to do, I think I'll write a new blog post! It'll most likely be full of ramblings and nonsense but nevertheless, I hope you enjoy it and would find at least one thing interesting :)

I've always loved to learn how to play new games ever since I was a small. It didn't matter whether they were board games, card games, video games or what-not, I loved them all. I get so excited when one of my poker rooms update their client with new poker games. I honestly think that if I only ever played NLH, I'll go crazy and I truly do believe to become a better poker player, you really need to be able to play all sorts of different poker games.

Let's take a look at the new games which were introduced by FTP and PS:



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Limit 5 Card Stud
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Looking at this list, most of the new games that were introduced were community card games. Heck, the only one that wasn't, was 5 Card Stud. You know, that game that they played in The Cincinnati Kid, Shade and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Speaking of which, I can't help but to reminisce of the final scene of TNG.

TROI
What's the game?

DATA
Five card draw, deuces wild.

The door CHIMES.

RIKER
Come in.

The doors open and Picard ENTERS. Everyone reacts in
surprise, sits up at attention.

RIKER
(continuing)
Is there a problem sir?

PICARD
No, I uhh I just thought that I might umm...
join you this evening. If there's room...

Surprised but pleased looks go around the table.

RIKER
Of course. Have a seat.

Picard takes a seat at the table. Data gives him the deck of cards.

DATA
Would you care to deal sir?

PICARD
Oh... thank you Mr Data.

Picard starts to shuffle the cards.

PICARD
Actually, I uhh used to be quite
A card player in my youth you know.
(pause)
I should have done this a long
time ago.

TROI
You were always welcome.

  Smile :)

PICARD
So, five card stud, nothing wild.
And the sky's the limit.
 

Oh! That reminds me. I saw a 5 Card Stud satellite running in the lobby for 1 entry into the MiniFTOPS event #25 (5-Card Stud, $20 + $2, 6-Max). It only had 3 people in it and had a buy-in of $2.00 + $0.20. I thought it had good potential with the overlay so I bought in. By the time that late registration had finished, 2 players had been knocked out and we were 3-handed at the final table.

In 5 Card Stud, after the 5th card is dealt, you have 80% of the information about your opponent's hand revealed to you. To be honest, I think its one of the easier poker games to play. Despite my limited experience with both 5-card stud and with satellites, I managed to win it and so thats pretty much the height of my 5-card stud playing career lol


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No-Limit 5 Card Omaha Hi-Lo/ Pot Limit 6-Card Omaha Hi
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My friend once mentioned that he played a home-game of 10-card Omaha. When he told me that, I started to think of how crazy the action would be and started to imagine all of the possibilities. You could flop the nut straight with a couple of sets, a mega wrap higher straight re-draw, a nut flush re-draw and a countless number of backdoor re-draws. Its kind of difficult to imagine what the all-in equity of the hands would be like.

As much fun as that sounds, I highly doubt that I'll ever be able to get a serious game of 10-card Omaha going. No matter though!, as I got a little taste of what it'll be like when Full Tilt Poker introduced 6-Card Omaha. I've played a couple of hundreds of hands of 6-Card Omaha hi so far and I have to say, I love it!

To be honest, I was a little bit disappointed when Pokerstars introduced 5-Card Omaha. In this game, you do get the equivalent of 10 hold'em hands but starting hands just felt...incomplete. For example, you couldn't make triple paired hands or triple suited hands. I wouldn't go as far as to say the 5th card is a hindrance or useless or a dangler but it just feels out of place. Perhaps, I just haven't played enough hands of 5-Card Omaha yet.

6-Card Omaha on the other hand (to me) feels like the true extension of PLO. In this game, you get the equivalent of 15 hold'em hands to play with. You can have hole cards which contain triple suited aces, triple suited 6 card run-downs and triple suited triple paired hands or just a combination of a little bit of everything.

I'll pick out a few hands I played:

No-Limit 5 Card Omaha Hi-Lo

This was deep in a No-limit 5 Card Omaha hi-lo MTT. There were about 15 players left. I had an above average stack, in fact, I think I was in the top 5 of the field.

About the table: They were pretty weak, especially the cutoff player. I'd seen him play aggressively with crap but got lucky over and over again.

In middle position, I was dealt A269J, I could do with the ace being suited but against these players who were playing 80% of their hands, I think its safe to say this was a good starting hand. I chose to opened to 2.5xbb due to the antes and due to my stack size but they weren't going to fold anyway and yup, as usual half of the table calls.

I checked the flop for a little pot control and of course (the idiot) cutoff player decides it'll be a good idea to open shove on the flop. The SB calls and the BB calls which didn't bother me too much as I had them covered. What I had my eyes on was the side-pot of ((62,876 - 22,749) x 2 = 80,254 chips) which was being offered to me. In my mind, I was semi-freerolling as my low would most likely pick up the 40,127 in the side pot and as long as I hit a club or a T, I'll scoop the whole thing.


Worst. Turn. Card. Ever and thats that. This is as far as I've gotten in a 5 Card Omaha hi-lo MTT. Pretty anti-climatic if you ask me.

Pot Limit 6-Card Omaha Hi 1

To be honest, this hand played like a normal PLO hand.

I have a triple suited hand able to make K, Q and Q high flush draws. Theres not much to say about this hand to be honest. I had been playing pretty aggressively throughout this short-handed session. Which is probably why he thought I was full of shit when I check-raised the flop. When he called my flop raise, I pretty much thought he had the hand that he had.
- The paired 5 is pretty much useless in this case and in fact does hurt my hand.
- The K also doesn't do much except block KK for a higher set, blocks a wrap draw from completing and adds about 4% of equity from the backdoor flush possibility.
- The 84 picked up a useless gut shot straight draw on the turn, since he would've made a higher straight had it completed.


I could pretty much only rely on the strength of my top set. I don't think there are any 6-card omaha equity calculators out yet so I'm not exactly sure how far ahead I was. I can calculate it though, so lets see his outs:
- Any T or 6 for a straight (Th, Td, Ts, 6h, 6d, 6s)             6 outs
- Any club which isn't a J or a 7 (Ac, Tc, 9c, 6c, 4c, 3c)     6 outs
- 12 outs in total
52 cards - 16 known cards = 36 remaining
So:
(12/36) x 100 = 33.3%

As I said before, its like a normal PLO hand.

Pot Limit 6-Card Omaha Hi 2

This hand feels more like a 6-Card omaha hand, although the pair of Jacks in my hand become almost useless from the turn onwards.

This was a 6-max table which withered down to HU play.
My opponent: A passive donkey. He only had 4 moves in his arsenal which were: fold, check-fold, check-call and bet pot. The latter of which he didn't do often enough.

I picked up AJJ754 suited to the J and A on the button. I opened to pot i.e. 3bb and he calls. I flopped top 2 pairs, a gut shot straight draw and 2 backdoor flush draws. I make a standard C-bet and he calls.

Since he is a predictable donkey, I can rule out a straight with 34 with about 98% certainty due to him not donk pot betting or raising pot on the flop. The turn 6 didn't change the current nuts but it did vastly improve my hand which meant I could still safely represent 34 while setting up a legitimate bluff opportunity on the river should I brick my draws.

I had 2 pairs + an open ended straight draw + the nut flush draw on the turn, with that many outs, how could I not hit? 


A lovely 8d falls on the river giving me a disguised 2nd nut straight followed by a value bet. My opponent makes a higher set on the river and pays me off. A couple of hands later, I stack him and then get accused of being a bot lol ahhh~ that brings me back to my 888 poker days.

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7 Card Stud
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You know, it might seem stupid but I've always wondered what would happen at a full-ring (7 card) stud game if all of the players decided to stay in till 7th street.

What I mean is, with 8 players x 7 cards each = 56 cards = 4 more than a full deck of (52) cards. I happen to find the answer to this while observing a milestone hand in the pokerstars 100 billion hand promotion.

Boom! The last card is dealt as a community card for everybody to use as their 7th card.

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PokerStars 100 Billion Hand Promotion
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Yes! It was that time again when PS gave out free money! Unfortunately I didn't get dealt into a milestone hand but that doesn't necessarily mean I didn't profit from their promotion.

For the 100 billionth hand, they introduced something called 'Stake Share' where ALL of the players playing at the same stake and game as the 100 billion hand table would share $830K amongst themselves. I thought it was a pretty neat idea, so I got to work.

From my observations of previous milestone hands, I'd say about 90~95% of them were at Hold'em tables which only meant one thing:- I had to multi-table hold'em at all sorts of different stakes.

Here's a set-up of the tables I had open during the promotion. I started the session when there was about 10 million hands to go and played for roughly 3 hours 20 tabling like this.
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Top 10 tables:
From left to right:
2 tables of No Limit Hold'em $0.01/$0.02
2 tables of No Limit Hold'em $0.02/$0.05
2 tables of No Limit Hold'em $0.05/$0.10
2 tables of No Limit Hold'em $0.08/$0.16
2 tables of No Limit Hold'em $0.10/$0.25
(one table $0.10/$0.25 was substituted for a $0.01/$0.02 half way through the session as can be seen in the picture due bankroll reasons)
Bottom 10 tables:
2 tables of Limit Hold'em $0.02-$0.04
2 tables of Limit Hold'em $0.05-$0.10
2 tables of Limit Hold'em $0.10-$0.20
2 tables of Pot Limit Omaha $0.01/$0.02
2 tables of Pot Limit Omaha $0.02/$0.05
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It was pretty interesting playing NLH cash after such a long time. I started off losing a $20 pot at 10NL (KK>QQ AIPF) but after that, I won a $50 pot at 25NL (AA>AQo AIPF) thats when I realised I needed to keep some funds back to top up the other tables should they become short. Thats when I broke up my bigger 25NL table.

After the session was finished I ended up in +$$ playing NLH but -$$ playing PLO (Lost a big 65%-35% flip as usual). Which meant the whole session was about break-even.

The 100 billionth hand was dealt at a 6-max 5NL table. Which meant that anybody playing 5NL, whether 6-max or full ring had a claim of the $830K being offered. I had 2 of them open yet, I had been fast folding most of the hands when it got towards the 100 billionth hand. I didn't realise it took into account the number of VPPs you had made at the table within the last 49 hands.

So...my prize was:




Hahahahaha! $9.93 when they said the average was $87 per person. I guess thats what I deserve for playing like a nit.

Ah! Also, one of my horses came 2nd in the 100 Billion Special Edition Sunday Storm! He played amazingly and was awesome to rail!


I had 25 shares invested in MondSpieler for 2.5% of all of his action. With the added make-up from the previous event, each share came to $30.16!!


I withdrew $300 and transferred $200 over to Full Tilt Poker to balance my poker accounts. What am I going to do with the rest? Who knows, I'll probably lose it through investments or probably end up donating it back to the poker community through my poker playing.

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Observations PokerStars.fr
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Anybody who lives in the EU can sign up to Pokerstars.fr but the problem is that you're required to send a copy of some form of identification and a copy of your bank details. These are some real annoying hurdles to overcome to be able to play real-money games especially for lazy poker players.

I managed to do it though! and I took advantage of their 'La maison du bluff' promotion to receive €20 for free. My bankroll at PokerStars.fr now sits at a healthy €50.

Other than the obvious language difference, there are quite a few other differences which I've observed between PS.com and PS.fr such as:
- PS.fr requires you to input your date of birth everytime you log in.
- PS.fr offers (FL, NL) Hold'em and PLO ONLY. This is due to PS.fr only being allowed to offer poker games which can be played in French casinos.
- On PS.fr, there is no option to let you transfer real money funds to other players.
- PS.fr has most of PS.com 'Pros' albeit with just FR at the end of their usernames.
- Micro-stakes tables have a maximum buy-in of 100bb rather than 250bb.
- Earlier promotions on PS.fr? PS.fr had the 'Golden SnG week' one week PS.com.

The level of play is similar to micro stakes on PS.com as I expected but I just wanted to see what the fuss was about. Take this hand from a €1 45 man SnG I played in for example. On the very first hand I'm in the BB and am dealt QQ. Middle position limp, call call, 20bb raise, all in, fold and the action is on me. lol what? that escalated quickly. I thought about folding for a second but then I realised this was the micro stakes. I call.


I call, fold, fold, fold, call. Ah crap, first guy had KK the other guy....97o lol
 

 I came in a respectable 3rd place with my QQ. It seems to be like this all the time I play NLH on PS.fr, my JJs running into AA, my AAs being cracked by Q9o etc.

So, I'll leave you with this hand of 2PLO I played at PS.fr

Hehehe He was actually an okay player but I think I just got under his skin a little bit too much from previous hands. Oh...and this hand definitely did put him on tilt lol!

So readers, until next time!
Wishing you good luck at the tables, :)
BluffTwice