Know your enemy

To play Texas Hold'em well means consistently making the correct decision: Check, Fold, Call or Raise. To know which option to choose you need to take in to account the following:

• Your hand strength
• Your opponents hand strength

Yes, poker is that simple. I assume you already know how to calculate your own hand strength, if not - read this first. To calculate your opponents hand strength you need to take in to account the following variables:

• Position
• Previous betting patterns
• Your table image (advanced)
• Your opponents table image
• Your stack size
• Your opponents stack size

This post will focus on identifying your opponents table image and how to exploit that image.

There are four main types of players that you are likely to encounter in the average  low to mid stakes single table Sit and Go tournament:

The Tight Aggressive

The rock. The mouse. The A-B-C player. These are by far the most common opponents you will come up against. They play based solely on their hand strength and are unable to adapt their style to the situation. This is the easiest player to spot at the table - they don't play many hands but when they do, they play them aggressively. It's unlikely to see this player coming in to a pot with out raising or re-raising first. They often play from position and almost always have the hand that they are representing.

While this player might seem daunting, the truth is that they aren't difficult to play against at all. The fact that they play such a straight forward game makes them the easiest player to read because their hand range is always so narrow and they never bluff. Their tight play also makes them the perfect target for blind stealing. I've won many tournaments off the back of repeatedly stealing blinds from tight players, the one time they play back at you is easy to let go because you know they are holding the goods. In the most extreme cases I've seen a tight player fold himself right out of the game by folding until all he has left is enough to cover the big blind.

While this is a solid style of play and an effective method of cleaning up the donkeys early on in a tournament, a successful player needs to be able to change between styles as the situation requires.

The Tight Passive


This player is similar to the tight aggressive but has looser starting hand requirements and lesser aggression. You will find them often calling raises from Tight Aggressive players out of position with hands like QJ. Their post flop game isn't any better; they will check/fold with nothing, check/call with a draw or a pair and check/raise with a straight or two pair. Their weaknesses are essentially the same as the Tight aggressive except this player will lose chips to lose calls and is rarely ever around long enough to bother worrying about.

The Loose Passive


The loose passive players are the real donkeys at the table - the genuine fish who seem like they have no idea of how to play poker. They'll play more pots then they don't and can be hard to read due to their wide hand range. Often the only way to win a pot against such a player is to actually have the best hand, there's no bluffing these guys as their calling standards are so low that more often than not you'll be looked up by mid-pair and made to look foolish.

A Tight Aggressive style is extremely effective against Loose Passive players.

The Loose Aggressive


The maniac. By far the most dangerous player to be in a pot against. What makes these players dangerous is that their hand ranges are as wide as the Loose Passive players, making them hard to read, and they combine this with aggression making the pots they play large - one wrong move and your stack can take a large dent.

There is a fine line between genius and madness and it can often be hard (and costly) to tell which side of it the players in this category fall in to. More often than not they tend to self destruct at some stage over the course of a Sit and Go when they try one too many crazy bluffs, but on the odd occasion they can end up gathering a large stack and running the table - this style is extremely effective against the tighter styles - especially when the number of players gets low and the blinds get high.

The general composition of a 9 handed $20 + $2 SnG is on average this:

The Tight Aggressive - 6
The Tight Passive - 1
The Loose Passive - 1
The Loose Aggressive - 1


Games Played - 11
ROI - 33.88%
Winnings - $82 USD

Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds

If your bank mistakenly gave you money on a regular basis and then one day, also mistakenly, took a percentage of that money back; how would you react? Would you storm the bank, call the manager a stupid donkey and then stand out on the street screaming 'hee haw' at the top of your lungs after you were ejected? Or would you just keep your head down, smile, and keep collecting cheques?

The lesson is simple, don't berate the fish. They are your meal ticket and the game would be a lot tougher without their dead money on the table.

Berating a fish has several negative consequences, while it might make you feel a little bit better in the short term it lets the table know you are on tilt, it lets the table know that you are an ABC player with no imagination who can't read an opponents hand range and worst of all - it might even cause the fish swim away. A much more rewarding strategy is to smile and wait for him to make that same weak call again. Remember - Sharks don't argue with fish, they eat them.

After my time off I was hesitant to dive straight in to the $20 + $2 games, but decided I had to be confident or else I'd already lost. Only two games so far but the early signs are good with one first place.

$20+$2 - 9 man SnG:

Games Played - 2
ROI - 104.55%
Winnings - $46 USD

Hiatus...

Thanks to my ever reliable ISP i've been without internet for 3 weeks; consequently, i haven't been able to play poker for 3 weeks either.

What i have done is used my time off to quantify the goals that i've made and work out a plan to get me from where I am now to where i want to be. Using a 10% ROI as a guide, I can make 7.5 USD per hour by playing two $50 + $5 tables at a time (roughly adjusted for the fact that a single game actually takes about one hour and twenty minutes). My goal is to reach or exceed that level of income by April 28th 2012.

Money or the Bag?

After treading water for quite some time I finally hit a lucrative upswing running 1 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 6 - 6 - 1, I'm now in the following situation:


Games Played - 163 
ROI - 9.93%
Winnings - $196 USD


And I'm now faced with another tough decision - the money or the bag?

I could choose the money, cash some or all of my profit out and buy something nice. This is a good way to keep focussed and remind you of why you play; or I could go for the bag - reinvest my money at a higher buy-in with the hope of being able to produce a bigger return.

I choose the bag. From now on I'm going to be playing the $20+$2 9 man Sit and Go tournaments until such time as I need to drop back down to the $10+$1 level to rebuild my bankroll or I've built up enough profit to move up another rung in the ladder.

The Boring Bits

Unlike it's heavily edited and largely fake television counterpart - picture players paid by organisers and sponsers to turn up, play a 'poker tournament' in where you compete for airtime in order to get more sponsers and 'tournament' invitations - real poker can be mind numbing at times. Especially at the low buy-ins where the way to beat the loose players that are found there is to play tight.

This sometimes means playing a table for an hour and not playing a single hand. Something I've questioned lately whether or not this can impact my ROI negatively - and how to counter it if it does.

I know I've been affected by boredom before, I end up playing marginal hands and chasing action that I know I shouldn't, this kind of play only serves to make your downswings more severe. I think it could also be a factor in my last 5 games in which I've gone 7 - 6 - 7 - 7 - 7, continually busting out this early is a sign i'm not being patient enough. Two ways I could remedy this imaptience is to move up to a larger buy-in or play more tables at once.

At the moment I can't move up a level as I'm currently sitting on:

Games Played - 152  
ROI - 3.74%
Winnings - $81 USD

Down from being up $140 only 7 games ago. I refuse to move up to the $20 buy-in sit and go tournaments until I've made $200 profit at this level and I'm due to get a nice upswing soon which should take me to this target if I can keep my impatience in check. 


So should I play more tables? Even if it was just two tables instead of one I would be able to increase my profit faster and therefore reach the next buy-in level in a shorter amount of time. The more I think about it the more I think I'm capable of doing it - I've seen what this $10 level has to throw at me and I'm not to concerned by it. Mastering this level is more about mastering your own game than the games of your opponents which are often terribly weak. The only drawback to playing multiple tables that I can see is that my ROI will take a small hit - I think I can absorb a small reduction while still keeping a positive return so I'm going to try playing two tables at once.

Although I have been getting bored, boredom wasn't the reason for this loss - Sometimes there is just nothing you can do.

The Downswing

The largely random nature of poker induces what are known as upswings and downswings. Downswings occur when you repeatedly lose regardless of the quality of your play. It can be incredibly brutal to endure and typically how a player handles his downswings will make the difference between being a winning player or a losing player over time. You're on tilt once you start questioning your instincts and your mindset changes from 'how can I maximise my profit' to 'how can I lose this hand'; you'll burn through your bankroll before you know it on tilt - learning to avoid it is key to making a profit playing poker over the long run.

Downswings are made up of consistent bad beats (A9 losing to
A3, KK losing to JJ), long runs of cold cards and repeated unavoidable situations (KK running in to AA). A downswing can crush your ROI, destroying the previous weeks worth of rock solid play without you even making a single error in judgement; the skills required to deal with this are patience and persistence.

The key to dealing with bad beats is simply to enjoy them. It might sound strange, but if you are receiving bad beats you are actually playing correctly. Think about it. To take a bad beat you have to get your money in with a better probability of winning the hand than your enemy - this is pretty much the idea of poker. So receiving a bad beat is like a pat on the back, it lets you know you are playing well and that if you continue to play well you can be sure that your fortunes will pick up.

Situations like  KK running in to AA on the bubble are inevitable, there are certainly times when you could lay this hand down but the majority of the time you're going to be happy to get your chips in with KK as you are far more likely to run in to a weaker hand than a stronger hand - particularly at the $10+$1 level.

On my recent downswing I took a week off in an attempt avoid tilt, during this time I decided to write this blog to keep me focused. Since playing again after making this blog I've had two third places, a bad beat on the bubble, one loss and back to back victories - one of which is broken down and examined here.

Games Played - 138
ROI - 5.28%
Winnings - $97 USD

Hello World!

This blog is going to detail the rise and/or fall of SnakesNDMartyrs in the world of online Texas Hold'em Poker.

Who is SnakesNDMartyrs? I am.
What is Texas Hold'em Poker? This is.

My goal is to replace my main source of income with poker proceeds within the next 2 years. Along the way I will detail key hands with the aim of not only discussing the strategy of Poker with you but also settling any strategic or mental weaknesses in my game with myself. Anything and everything relevant to my poker game will be discussed over the course of this blog.

Currently I play at FullTilt Poker, however this blog is not associated or affiliated with the site in anyway. I've played poker on and off for the past 5 years with only very moderate success, only recently have I decided to devote myself to the game and see how far I can get. I'm currently playing 9 seat $10+$1 Sit and Go games and my progress to date is:

Games Played - 132
ROI - 1.03%
Winnings - $33 USD

It looks rather poor at the moment I agree, but keep in mind my ROI has swung between 25% and -5% over the course of the 132 games and I'm currently on a downswing - the best place to start..