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trackstar
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Joined: January 1st, 1970, 12:00 am

Poker Strategy

March 10th, 2019, 12:11 pm

So, I was in a poker tournament last night (really - not a dream, not a poem, not a very tall tale! haha).

And out of 25 original players, I made it to the final table of 7.

But then I was to the first go, albeit after quite a few hands.  :D

Two things about the game:

1) This was Texas Hold 'Em, where each player gets two cards of their own and the rest of the cards dealt are community cards in a 3-1-1 "flop, turn, and river."

2) The small blind, big blind, and minimum bet size went up every 20 minutes.

At certain points over the course of five hours, I had one of the largest stacks of chips on the table and was actually leading by a modest margin at one point (based only on eyeballing the stacks).

However, I am used to five-card and seven-card stud, where the cards are all yours, even though some are dealt face-up so all can see.

So thinking about how Hold 'Em changes the strategy, and especially bet sizing before the flop. This is when each player only has two hole cards and no one sees anything else. I was too conservative and the ones who stayed in went big on this at the final table.

Go big or go home.  And some of them did go home!  The winner won by a huge margin in the end.  The dramatic separation came when the blinds went to 4000/8000.

Will be reading a bit more on strategy in the weeks to come, but if anyone here plays, happy to have insight.

And even if you don't play, feel free to add creative nonsense, anti gaming diatribes, and music to the thread.

(Because I know you probably will anyway!) :D

Edit: Just to clarify - this was for a good cause and no one lost tens of thousands of dollars at these tables. So, no worries... Hehe.

 
Last edited by trackstar on March 10th, 2019, 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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katastrofa
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Re: Poker Strategy

March 10th, 2019, 12:14 pm

Image
 
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trackstar
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Joined: January 1st, 1970, 12:00 am

Re: Poker Strategy

March 10th, 2019, 12:34 pm

Cute! I did wear my faux leopard fur hat with the low brim - to good effect.

And this came into my mind as I played. My new poker theme song. 


The Battle of Evermore

Queen of Light took her bow
And then she turned to go,
The Prince of Peace embraced the gloom
And walked the night alone.
Oh, dance in the dark of night,
Sing to the morning light.
 
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bearish
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Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: Poker Strategy

March 10th, 2019, 12:36 pm

Tournament style no-limit hold’em is the only kind of poker I play, and I definitely prefer the live format to the online version. You have probably seen it already, but I find Aaron’s brief note called something like Building your wings on the way down, in the article section here, to be well worth reading. It addresses the question of how to play four fundamentally different sets of hole cards as an exercise in risk management and philosophy of life. Needless to say, it’s also very helpful to have some sense of the quality of the other players at the table. When the chatter is about the last time they played the Main Event you can be pretty sure the odds are stacked against you, in which case probability theory recommends “bold play”, which in this context probably translates into a very tight-aggressive strategy.
 
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trackstar
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Re: Poker Strategy

March 10th, 2019, 12:47 pm

...probability theory recommends “bold play”, which in this context probably translates into a very tight-aggressive strategy.
Interesting - that is exactly what happened. Fold, fold, fold, then big bets.

But sometimes when there was a showdown - neither player had anything much - a pair of twos beat Jack high at one point.

It was fun and I was invited to join a local house game. Of course they are probably always looking for fresh meat, but they play stud poker, so maybe once in awhile...