the.VALUE.bet

 

One of the most profitable plays in No Limit Holdem is the value bet, when applied corectly! A value bet is a bet you want to make when you feel you are ahead in a hand and can entice a caller(s) that would lead to a nicer payoff at showdown.

Good hands only come around ever so often, so it is necessary to extract as much of a return on your investment as possible when you have that opportunity!

Here is an example of value betting when you are ahead:

You are in a $1/$2  NL Holdem game and get dealt AK under the gun. You raise to $9 and get one caller from late position. The flop comes A73. At this point you have top pair/top kicker and probably feel confident that you have the best hand. A medium size bet, half the value of the pot, is probably what you want to bet. This looks (and actually is) a continuation bet, but it is also a value bet to entice an affordable call from the other player. It doesn't show dominant strength and as mentioned may just reak continuation bet enough to get the call. The turn comes K. Now you have top two. You may be inclined to check, hoping for an opportunity to check/raise but it is more profitable in the long run to bet out again with a medium size bet. If you check and get a check in return you just lost the opportunity to increase the value of your ROI in a favorable position with the strength of your hand. The river comes 2. The board is now A73K2. At this point you want to make a bet about one third of the pot. If your opponent calls, with top pair or a lower valued two pair, you have gotten paid off from each bet and take down a nice pot!

A value bet can also be used as a river bet when there is a question as to where your hand stands. And here is an example for that situation:

Again you are in a $1/$2 game. You have 10,8 suited and call from late position. You, the blinds and the button are all in the hand with no pre-flop raise. The flop comes 10,7,6. You bet out a "feeler"/"protector" bet of $5 (into an $8 pot) to see where your top pair stands. You get one caller. Now you are heads up. The turn is a 2. Again you bet out, $10 this time and get called. The river comes an 8. This makes for a scary board with any 9 making a straight. What to do now.... theVALUEbet! 

 If you check on the river there are two things that can happen. The first is that he checks as well, and shows down an inferior hand. In this case, you'll win no extra money. The second is that he fires out a medium sized bet, and you have to call with your top two pair. He then shows down the straight, and you lose the medium sized bet.

Now, if you do bet out, there are three things that can happen:
    The first is that your opponent folds if they have a poor hand. In this case you earn no extra money, and it's the same outcome whether you check or bet.
    The second situation is that you bet out, and your opponent calls with a worse two pair, or top pair. In this case you win an extra bet on the end, because if you had checked they would have checked behind.
    The third case is that you bet out, and your opponent has the straight and raises. In this case you can simply fold your hand, and lose the medium sized bet.

    As you can see, in situations #1 and #3 it's a wash regardless if you bet or check, but in situation #2, you actually earn an extra bet on the end. Because of this, you should always fire out in these situations, because it is actually more profitable to bet than it is to check.

Ok, so if you we look at each case:

1. Your opponent has nothing. Regardless if you check or bet, you're still winning the same sized pot.
2. Your opponent has a decent hand, but not the straight. In this case, if you check, you win nothing extra, but if you bet out, he'll call and show down the worse hand. In this case, betting wins you extra money.
3. Your opponent has the straight. If you check, they'll bet, and you'll lose a medium sized bet. If you bet, they'll raise, you'll fold, and you lose a medium sized bet. So once again, no difference.

chapelout.........GetSome.GIVEBACK.GetHome

some data status provided from pokersite.org

Canada Trip... Part II

    As I made my travel and stay arrangements for my trip I was able to arrive earlier than the plans for the tournament and stay longer than expected due to the awesome deals I aquired by flying out on a certain day and time and departing on a certain day and time. The original plan was to be there from Sunday through Wednesday, the days of the tournament. Because of the deals I was able to leave the Thursday before the event and come back the following Friday which gave me extra time to enjoy the trip and actually get to see the sites throughout the area.

    As a bonus to being able to participate in the Montrea Open Charity Event I also had the opportunity to finally meet the man who introduced me to the opportunity to play in the event and actually invited and sponsored my initial entry into the event.  I actually met him,  Jeff Burnett, online during a video contest to become Victory Pokers next Poker Pro. Jeff is the founder of a poker team called the BombSquad. He is also known as the "AceTenBomber".  If you would like to know more about Jeff I have already featured him in one of my earlier published posts.

    Back to the trip... another bonus to the trip was the opportunity to visit an awesome poker club in Kahnawake, Quebec. We spent about four and a half days at The Playground Poker Club. It was awesome! Jeff had made arrangements with Playground to expect the team to be coming in quite a bit while we were in the area. I cannot begin to tell you how nice the club, the staff, the restaurant and the food was during or visits there. 

Here are some photos of some of the characters you might see at the Playground on any given night!

Yep, That's Erik Cajelais. Had the opportunity to meet and play some cash game sessions with him, until he made his way into the high stakes games that is! Super nice guy though! I also had the opportunity to meet Gavin Smith, Andy Bloch and Marc Karam. And at the Monreal Open got to play on the same table as Huck Seed, Greg Mueller, Andy Bloch and Gavin Smith as well!

You cannot beat the food that comes out of the kitchen at the restaurant, The Rail, inside the club. We were treated like royalty with the food that was brought out to us throughout our entire visit. There was always something going on there. Cash games from noon til 6am, daily tournament schedules and special events that bring out even the big guns! I can't wait to get back out there again, and again! 

Here's a few shots of the BombSquad invading the Playground Poker Club.

And some photos of the team back in Montreal during the Montreal Open!

 

Well I guess that's it for tonight. Maybe soon I can get some info together on some of the squad and feature them here as well. Great bunch of guys and gals that came out for the event. And one that we will never forget but will NOT discuss, at least here in this forum!

chapel out for now...GetSome.GIVEBACK.GetHome

some photos provided by canadapoker.com and various facebook accounts

My Trip to Canada... Part I

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to take a trip to the Canada. I was there primarily for the opportunity to play in a charity poker tournament. The tournament was The Montreal Open, the major sponsor was FullTilt and the venue was the LeWindsor Hotel. 

 The Miriam Foundation was chartered in 1910 as Miriam No. 17, a local chapter of the national organization United Order True Sisters, Inc. (UOTS). On its property in Webster Groves, Missouri, Miriam founded and operated the Rosa Bry Convalescent Home and Rehabilitation Program from 1914 until 1956, when the program merged with Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

In 1954, Miriam began providing assistance to cancer patients and cancer-related organizations throughout the St. Louis community through Miriam Cancer Services.

Miriam School was established in 1956 to serve children with developmental disabilities. Following the establishment of Special School District and other public school special education programs, the Miriam School's focus changed in 1962 to serve children with multiple learning disabilities.

Miriam school
The mission of the Miriam School is to encourage children with multiple learning disabilities to recognize and successfully meet their potential. 

The Miriam School serves 96 children, pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in small, ungraded classrooms with a ratio of ten students per teacher. Children come to the Miriam School with unique academic, social and personal challenges and the professional faculty provides an individualized education plan and curriculum designed to meet each child’s needs.

Contact Information
Miriam Foundation501 Bacon Avenue
St. Louis, Missouri 63119-1512
phone: 314.962.6059
fax: 314.962.0482
Please contact Andrew Thorp or Sarah Scott in the Miriam Foundation office for more information regarding giving opportunities.

The site for the event was the Le Windsor Hotel.  

Historically it was Canada's first Grand Hotel.

Le Windsor, formerly the Windsor Hotel, is one of downtown Montreal’s most prestigious and historic landmarks, boasting two breathtaking ballrooms and Peacock Alley. Built in 1878, the Windsor Hotel was considered the palace of Canada. Its breathtaking ballrooms and the Peacock Alley have been, throughout its history, host to world dignitaries such as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Her Royal Highness, then Princess Elizabeth, Prince Phillip and Sarah Bernhardt and more recently, Tony Blair, to name but a few.

    Some of the attractions and sites throughout the area were breathtaking. The historical architecture, the nightlife views and the overall experience of the visit was awesome! Here are a few of the images of Montreal I had the pleasure of seeing and experience while there. 



This was my first trip to Canada and I have to say I am anxious to get back to see more!

I hope to be able to get back again soon and have the opportunity to take my family with me the next visit. When I left the states I think it was about 78 degrees. When I arrived in Montreal it was 9 degrees. This was at the end of March and through the first week of April.

The Integrity and Authenticity of Online Poker... Part III

Okay Kenny, here we go! This is going to be a tough topic to discuss because of all the angles that you can look at it from. But I will start with your question, or suggestion for this topic:

"I would love to hear your views on the integrity and authenticity of todays online poker, can a good player win or is it just for the donks?"

First, I will begin with my experience as an online player. I have been a live on the felt poker tournament competitor since 1999. I was introduced to the internet forums of online poker by my brother. I had some reservations about the whole deposit my money into an account which I have no idea where it's going and what might happen to it syndrome. But after railing a few tournaments with my bro and checking out some of the payouts he had recieved I finally decided to make my first deposit and play for real money.

I quickly realized that the majority of the so-called poker players on the internet were more or less just a room full of gambling idiots! Yes I said it... a bunch of gambling IDIOTS! But that's before I had learned any of the poker lingo and realized that I was speaking pokeretiquettely wrong. I should be calling them Donkeys! Okay, idiot...donkey... whatever!?! They are NOT poker players though! They are gamblers, and there is a huge difference between the two.

I have won countless low/mid-level entry sit and go's. I have won two freerolls with over 14 thousand players involved in each, one with just over 11 thousand, and I won the $100 US Online Poker Championship that consisted of  4,644 players who qualified for the event. Oh yea, you want to know if a good poker player can win online! My bad.

  Finding a person that has the traits of becoming AND maintaing the status of being a successful online poker player... IS RARE! Extremely rare! As mentioned before I have had some success playing online poker, but... I did not have the consistent and continued success that I thought I was capable of. Many...  most.... actually, the majority of good poker players will never reach or even realize their potential when it comes to online play. There is really no one reason why though, there are many, many reasons why! Collusion, manipulation of the programming, ghosting, selling off seats have already been discussed, and many other opportunities to cheat will always play against the online hopefuls. Outside of the factors that a player cannot control are the factors that one must possess, control and maintain in order to be successful. 
These are the traits that I feel are necessary for a good poker player to be successful, whether it is online or on the felt:
1.   Patience  2.   Discipline  3.   Reasonable Intelligence  4.   Attitude  5.  Experience
6.  Strategic Aggression  7. Confidence
But not necessarily in that order. The order of importance is going change from game to game, and event to event depending upon the venue, the players and many other circumstances!

*Reasonable Intelligence will be the foundation of a successful poker player. I'm not saying you have to be good in school, make good grades, have a degree or anything like that. I'm just saying that a successful player will be one who knows and understands the basics of the games and has the ability to understand and apply the mathmatics and variances applicable in order to make sound and solid decisions based on the variables that apply at any given time within the hand or the understanding of your opponents. You must be able to think, absorb and make critical decisions quickly. And these decisions are, for the most part... not based on factual information ... but on the understanding of the who, why and possible probabilty of circumstances that would allow, require or mandate the decision to be made. You can't just leave all your decisions up to a feeling or gut instinct you know!
*Discipline is going to incorporate most of the traits that have been mentioned and more. A successful player is going to be disciplined enough to be patient for the right cards to play, have the right attitude to hadle a string of bad luck and even shaking off the unfortunate collection of bad beats. Another area to have great disciplne with is managing your bankroll. I have already published a post about that area if you want to go back and read it as well.
*Confidence is also a necessary trait. And you have to be disciplined enough not to allow that confidence to emerge as anything other than that. Becoming cocky and developing an unwanted asshole rep is not something you want. I understand developing a table presence and not allowing someone or certain situations to push you or roll you over, but that again goes back to discipline! Confidence ultimately comes down to how a player feels, responds to, and adjusts to the decisions they have made. Whether it is pertaining to bluffing, applying strategic aggression or just accepting that the right thing to do is to lay it down or walk away. Being confident as to when, where and how to apply these staategies is crucial and requires total commitment and confidence in those decisions, and that confidence must be evident to those at the table. The tougher the decision requires the utmost of confidence and discipline.
*Experience! In order to develop the traits that I have dicussed it is obvious that you are gonna have to get out there, get in the game and gain as much experience you can in order to understand why you are gonna be doing what you are doing. We can sit here and discuss poker, poker strategy, the influences, variables and variances of the game until we are shriveled up and blue! Keep in mind though, the rules and objectives of the games don't change, just new concepts and applications of these concepts to the game so keep an open mind about the opportunity to learn something new any and every chance you can get!
 Finding a person that possessses and has been able to maintain these traits is a difficult find. Thus the reason you will always see the number of players within the poker community continue to rise and the reference to successful poker players remain at a minimal percentage of the total community. Those who are able to balance an intelligent foundation with discipline and confidence are most likely those who are going to become a long term profitable player!

Another angle to consider is what you deem to be successful. There are are athletes, scholars, business owners and poker players who have never been recognized for their long and enduring careers that have been profitable without ever winning the big game, being crowned the cream of the crop or was ever established as the leader of the industry.
Now days there are sooo many gamblers that call themselves poker players! Among the millions of players there are only gonna be a handful of players that are recognized as successful. But it really just depends on your comfort level of success. Personally, If I am able to continue to maintain a profitable return on my investments I consider myself a winner.
Well Kenny, I don't know if I was able to answer your question!?! Here is how I have come to visualize my chances at winning games and tournaments online. Imagine a white line drawn in the middle of the desert. On one side of the line you see a crowd of people who are casually intermingling while drinking and sharing the water they were able to obtain. They have plenty of room to allow each other their personal space also allowing the possibilty to even recognize some of them and even get a reasonable estimate of  the number of  people on that side. On the other side of the line is a mass of people that are unable to raise their arms above their heads without hitting someone and the crowd fades out into the horizon. The first group mentioned are the poker players you may run across in your future online adventures. The other group that faded into the horizon, well that's the mass of idiot gamblers, I mean donkeys, no I do mean idiot gamblers that will eventually thirst to death from lack of water they will never find in order to sustain the lifestyle they so desire but refuse to approach in a reasonably intelligent, disciplined and confident manner.






...chapeout!...GetSome.GIVEBACK.GetHome.

PlaySmart.BePatient.StayFocused.

The Integrity and Authenticity of Online Poker... Part II

In any game, competition or business transaction there is always a sense of honor, ethics and integrity established between the competitors and/or the associates involved. No other game is going to test the limits of the honor system more than the game of poker though. While the game has been established to bluff and out smart your opponents, the landscape of the poker community is held together by an expected moral code, a high standard of ethical play and a shared and expected desire to maintain the overall integrity of the game. 

A moral code in Poker!?! Absolutely!

A moral code is established by one's choice to weigh the options available and choosing right over wrong.  While playing in a live forum with players, dealers, floor managers and those on the rail surrounding you it may be easy to make these decisions. Most people with good sound morals are going to be able to make these decisions on the felt or while playing in the virtual world of online poker. Those who are lacking the ethical committment are going to have a harder time doing so, especially in the comfort of their own home while competing online and considering whether or not they would even get caught or weighing out the severity of the penalty if they did get caught.

Online poker is now a multi-billion dollar industry. And when there is money involved, especially the money involved in highstakes games and highroller tournaments on these online sites it is going to be tempting to waver a bit from the morals and ethical decisions one might general be inclined to choose while at a live event. 

One of the issues with the cheating within the online community is not necessarily how or why players are cheating. For the most part the how and why are obvious. It's the "who" that has created a lot of concern over te past few years. 

Aaron Angerman from PokerPages reports that some of the high profiled players and operational owners, board members and  network/site staff within the online community have become who they are due to the immoral and unethical decisions they made to acquire their money and status.

Justin "ZeeJustin" Bonomo, Josh "JJProdigy" Field, and Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi were just a few of the highest profiled online players who were reported, investigated and ultimately charged with violating the player rules and regulations and were suspended, funds withdrawn from and some even banned from certain sites. 

    Josh "JJProdigy" Field was the first high profile player to be investigated and subsequently suspended and banned from online sites PartyPoker, PokerStars and FullTilt for multi-accounting tournament events and cash games. Josh started his online play with PartyPoker at the age of 14. Within a few months he had increased his $100 starting deposit well into the six figure range. It wasn't until the teenager was 16 that he made his mistake. Josh had entered the $500k Guaranteed Tournament on PartyPoker and managed to outlast the field to take down $140k for top prize. The only problem was, "JJProdigy" had been eliminated from the field early on and the winner of the event was "ABlackCar". After boasting of his credentials as the winner of the event an investgation was started and quickly concluded that Josh had indeed won the event but by means that were against the rules, regulations and policies of the site, multi-accounting the event.Nearly $200k was recovered from his account and he was banned from the site.

Another case involving the same issues of multi-accounting came not long after the Josh incident and it involved 20 year old Justin Bonomo. Circumstances were different with Justin as he was reported and outed by his peers and other players who were sucspicious of his play. He too was investigated, lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and was banned from PartyPoker and PokerStars as well. Both of these players have apologized to the online poker community but have a long way to go to restore any respect from their peers. Both have blamed their bad decisions on their youthful ages and experience with proper and ethical decisions, (and greed!).

There are sooo many ways to cheat when it comes to playing on the online sites. "Ghosting" is when you are being informed by phone, instant message, texts, or inperson of cards, bets and upcoming intentions in the hand by other players at the same table. "Multi-Accounting"  events and cash games that gives a player obvious advantages, especially in cash games at the same table. "Seat-Selling" is another way some high profile players have been able to take down games and events as of late. An arrangement is made between the parties involved that would allow the better, more experienced and higher profiled player to buy a seat in a tournament late in the final stages of the event. This allows the player to by-pass the long grueling hours of getting to the point of the game where the poker playing skills of playing position, betting, bluffing and table/hand experience and strategic aggression to prevail for such a player. Especially when such player who is known as a higher profile player to have the opportunity to hide behind anothers screen name. 

The ultimate cheat(ers) though would be a group of players back in 2007 that were dominating events and games with astonishing success rates and practically no losing records. This group was using what is now known as a "Super-User" account. During a particular tournament on the Absolute Poker site several suspicious players in the tournament requested that the tournament transcript be investigated due to suspicious play from a player named "POTRIPPER". During the investigation it was discovered that the account was a "super-account" and had the capabilities of seeing ALL the hole cards from ALL the players in the tournament. The account was traced bak to Allan Grimmard aka AJ Green, the IP address was traced back to Scott Tom. Green was once Absolute Poker's Vice President of Operations and Tom was part owner of the company!

to be continued! okay Kenny, I'm finally gonna get to the topic you requested. hang in there and I will do my best to cover it from all the angles!

...chapelout...GetSome.GIVEBACK.GetHome.

data source provided from pokerpages 

  

   

The Integrity and Authenticity of Online Poker... Part I

There is NO DOUBT that this topic will be discussed through multiple posts and discussions.

So let's get this discussion started with a bit of history.

Online poker is the game of poker played via the internet. In late 1997 Randy Blumer decided to create and launch a forum for poker players to play for free on the internet. The intention was to gather the interest of the general public, advertise the opportunity to play online and then capitalize on the interest of playing for real money! After only a brief stint of the free play with play money and advertising in Card Player Magazine Randy introduced and launched "Planet Poker". It was January 1st, 1998 when Planet decided to provide the first real money game, and the game was a $3/$6 cash game. By the early summer of 1998 Planet Poker had a huge following and was only getting bigger. At that time nearly all the internet players were on dial-up connects. The "www" itself was still trying to work through it's problems and it was common that some connection problems took two, three hours and sometimes up to three and four days to correct. Can you imagine that happening now!?!

 

Technical problems were common and Planet Poker desperately needed to upgrade the enhancements of more features, a wider variety of games and most importantly a customer service and technical support team. As these issues were being discussed, planning, hiring and training put into place there was a crash within the system that required several days of "downtime" to correct and maintain before re-launch. Unfortunately for them though a new site Paradise Poker launced during their downtime and was able to scoop up a majority of the established players they had. Within ninety days Paradise was able to accumulate about 1500 players. It took Planet twice as long to establish their first four hundred. It wasn't long that Planet realized that the competition was now off the tables and now into the behind the scenes of the daily operations and options available to provide to the customers. 

 

Once the competition was established Planet Poker began to invest their income and resources into new capabilites for the site. But the gap between the two cardrooms in reference to number of players, game options for the players, graphic enhancements and player registration and deposits was pretty much insurmountable for Planet vs. Paradise. It wasn't until 2004 that Planet was able to establish a full and complete staff and provide the upgrades that were already available... not only at Paradise,  but now there were multiple sites available! At this particular time though a recent newcommer had taken a hold on the market and was averaging about 100,00 players a day, compared to the 1,200 at Planet, and about 10,000 at Paradise.

 

As time goes by online sites begin popping up as commonly as local Wal-Marts  and as quickly as your vacation from work comes to an end. 

As of March 2008, there are fewer than forty stand-alone cardrooms and poker networks with detectable levels of traffic. There are however more than 600 independent doorways or 'skins' into the group of network sites. As of January 2009, the majority of online poker traffic occurs on just a few major networks, among them PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the iPoker Network.

By February 2010, there are approximately 545 online poker websites. Within the 545 active sites, about two dozen are stand-alone sites (down from 40 in March 2008), while the remaining sites are called “skins” and operate on 21 different shared networks, the largest network being iPoker which has dozens of skins operating on its network. Of all the online poker rooms PokerStars.com is deemed the world’s largest poker site by number of players on site at any one time.

Okay, now that we have established the online poker community os sites, let's get into the controversy that has developed over the years about the integrity of the play on these online sites.

to be continued... chapelout

....GetSome.GIVEBACK.GetHome...

date source provided from wikipedia and pokerpages