It's pretty clear from all of this that you can't be a one-dimensional PokerStars player always bluffing or never bluffing. And you didn't have to know about an arcane branch of mathematics called game theory to tell you that. Even if you bluffed once in a blue moon, or refrained from bluffing only every once in a while, you'd create opportunities for your opponent to make errors by forcing him to decide whether or not you held a legitimate hand.
If your opponent will raise only with A-K, a pair of aces, or a pair of kings, chances are greater that he raised with A-K, since there are 16 ways to make A-K but only 12 ways to make a pair of aces or a pair of kings! You can do some other useful calculations with what you've learned thus far. For example, since there are 1326 possible two card holdings, but only six ways to make aces, try your hand at this problem.
With a table full of Solid PokerStars players, there was one big winner: Seat 5 won $5,630 while the two biggest losers lost $4,968 and $4,226. This is a difference of $5.30 between the biggest winner and biggest loser. Once again, with a zero expectation, a table full of players who played fairly well never got into the long run. Just for the fun of it, I ran one last scenario.
The flop was Qs 10d 8d. Seidel bet $50,000. Chan called. The turn card was a complete blank, and both men checked. The fifth and final card was another blank. Chan checked. Seidel held a queen in his hand, giving him top pair, albeit with a weak kicker. He thought for a moment that Chan might have a queen with a better kicker. But by checking on the turn and on the river Chan passed up his final chance to bet!
If it's the kind of flop which provides some help to your PokerStars opponents, enough so they might stick around in hopes of outdrawing you if they can see another card for no more than a single bet, then a raise which forces them to fold is correct. If your raise forces seats eight and nine to fold, you are heads up against the blind, and you have the added advantage of acting last on the turn and the river.
Don't pay attention to money management proselytizers, who advise you to set "stop-loss" and "stop-win" limits by quitting once you've won or lost some predetermined amount. It won't do a thing for you. If your bankroll is short, either step down in limits or tighten up significantly on your play. If you're a winning player, you'll eventually win the same amount of money it will just take a few more hours at the tables to get there.
Read books. All of them. Even if you get just one or two good ideas from a PokerStars book, it's an investment that will pay for itself in a relatively short period of time. I have a large library of poker books, and I don't consider any of them to have cost me money. They are investments that have repaid the money spent to acquire them many times over. Books aren't all there is, either.
Instead, play would continue shorthanded, until there was one winner at each pokerstars table. These table winners and those finishing second at each table would move on to match play. Match play was a double-elimination format, with the proviso that each second place table finisher entering match play was deemed to have one loss. Brackets were established so that winners played winners and losers played losers.
Instead, the results you achieve are wholly dependent on the choices your opponent made. You are no longer in charge, and that's a bad thing. Your playing strategy has allowed the locus of control to pass to your opponent, who, by virtue of his decisions about whether to call or fold, is the one who determines how much you win or lose.
- It's a simple case of multiplying four times four. The reason you can't simply multiply when calculating how many pairs of aces can be extracted from a four-ace universe, is that aces can't combine with themselves. If you've been dealt a hand like A A , you're playing with a bad deck! Since there are only six ways to make a pair of aces, there are obviously only six ways to make a pair of kings.
- That's exactly what happened, even though the expectation for each individual PokerStars player was still zero. The big winner took in $9,918. There were two big losers: Seat 4 lost $5,300 and Seat 5 lost $5,268. That's a difference of $7.61 per hour. Once again, even after an entire year of simulated play, the Fish never got into the long run, even after 60,000 hands.
- Here he was 12 months later, with a chance to win back-to-back titles. But he'd need some magic to accomplish it. Seidel, a former commodities broker from New York City left Wall Street for the life of a professional poker player, and now he had a big chip lead on the defending champ. At this point in the tournament, the blinds were $10,000 and $20,000. Chan called Seidel's big blind, making the pot $40,000.
