My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome

[Jezza]

Re: My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome Excellent thread guys, many great posts. Have not been around for the past few days, and it seems every hand has been answered in fine detail, however I will go back through the hands and go through some points that I notice...... The inside straight draw.... It is usually a bad play to draw to an inside straight, however there are times that it can be good gamble - there are some factors that have to be taken into consideration before doing so tho. 1) You must be drawing to the nuts - it is a horrible play to chase a 9% chance on the next card and to be possibly drawing to a second best/losing hand - if you are going to play such a long shot make SURE it will be the top straight if you hit it - and there is no paired board or flush draw there at the moment. 2) Both your opponent and you must have a mountain of chips infront of you. This is called implied odds. You can forget "pot odds" most of the time in this situation (unless your opponent is all in for such a minute amount you have the correct odds to draw anyway) - what you want is to bust someone. It is no good paying 20 to hit and win a 100 because of it. If I was to call 20 on an inside straight draw I would probably want my opponent to have 400 at the back and me be able to match it. 3)You must think your opponent has a very good hand, or at least is a bad enough player to "overvalue" his hands enough. If rule 2 is correct, then rule 3 must be in place foir you to get the chips. The inside straight is very disguised if you do hit it and if you do and your opponent has top set or whatever, then you can probably get the lot. Without seeing the actual figures for the hand paul or knowing the player its hard to say exactly how bad or good the play was, but in general that is definately not the sort of thing you would want to attempt. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The hand you reraised with pocket 10s... Mixed feelings about this hand! I would definately not have reraised preflop here, you can probably give the other guy credit for a good raising hand and this almost certainly means jacks thru to aces or perhaps AK if you are lucky. However it is fine to play to try and flop a "set" of 10s and break the guy if he does have an overpair thus you want to just flat call his raise (he cant know what you have then) and not reraise, by reraising you face the distinct possiblility of being reraised yourself and having to fold or just putting in more money whilst you are behind. However you did extremely well when you flopped the top set and led at the pot right after reraising preflop. Firstly there was an obvious draw out there, you cant let anyone draw for free which a check would allow and a heavy bet is definately required. Secondly, and more importantly, SO MANY BOG STANDARD PLAYERS routinely check after flopping the top set, this is not really bad if you have 99 the flop is 9 6 2 with no draw and you have just limped - infact it is correct to slowplay on the that flop 95% of the time, but after reraising preflop it is obvious what you have. Any time someone reraises and the flop comes K 8 2 and they check THEY HAVE POCKET KINGS I CAN GUARANTEE IT! By leading at this flop a good player will not give you credit for what you have and you might get paid by weak hands. I like your bet and you extracted maximum value at least. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The hand you called an all in check raise on the flop Q 8 3 holding QJ I dont like this call at all. The only hand you are beating is precisely Q10 (which luckily enough he had!). A check-raise all in on the flop like this is either one of two things usually 1) A drawing hand or 2) a very good hand. There is no draw on that board that he would go for probably so we have to give him credit for a hand. As I said before you are only beating one hand precisely and the likeyhood is he has better - you dont want to back your entire stack usually with top pair let alone top pair weak kicker unless it is you yourself that is making the move. I would only call a check raise like this on a cash table holding QJ without a draw on board off someone who I knew was a TOTAL fud. Jez

[Sir Puntalot]

Re: My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome Cheers Jez, I am taking notes. :ok

Does the book have a section on dominated hand theory? It should have. If you have not read this section yet read it before you play another game. It is perhaps the most important thing for a begining poker player to understand.

Just had a look, sure does Dave, it doesn't start until page 253, and I'm only on page 70 at the mo. :(

[Dave Mardell]

Re: My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome

The inside straight draw.... It is usually a bad play to draw to an inside straight, however there are times that it can be good gamble - there are some factors that have to be taken into consideration before doing so tho.

A recent example of this occured in a tournament i was playing. Limped in from the big blind with QJo after no raise and 4-5 players in the pot. Flop came down 689. Needing a ten for a straight i didnt like it much, prepared to fold really. Guy next to me bets the pot (200 and about a 6th of my stack). Checked the fold box to fold in turn. Suddenly everyone else in the pot called this big bet and I scrambled to untick the fold box just in time to have a think.... I didnt have pot odds still only 5/1 but it occured to me that someone out there likely had a seven in hand and was trying to hit their up and 6789 draw. It occured to me that if they hit their ten they would love thier hand and I would have the absoloute nuts, and id get paid. So i gambled and called. Luckily for me the turn was a 10, i checked, the lone seven made a huge bet, i reraised all in and without so much as pause for thought the guy called. Nice :)

[Carl]

Re: My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome just been playing on party poker. started @ 1000 ended up cleaning up and coming home with 75000. :nana only play money tho:sad. getting the hang of this

[Sir Puntalot]

Re: My Poker Novice Diary - Comments Welcome Made the step up from $0.50/$1.00 to $1/$2 tables this week, and had 2 winning days out of 2, almost doubling my bank each time. :nana Not getting too excited tho. ;)