Secrets of the Amateurs

0/15 cashes so far this month - I suppose I was due a run like this. And then some, probably. But we'll see. I have tweaked the overall strategy here and there as a result. One point I omitted from the post below, is that one of the main aims of the flat-call-with-a-hand-in-position is not to let the guy off the hook when he's well behind. If, however, the chips are such that he has to call a pre-flop reraise anyway, there's less point, and you can go ahead and move in. Although there's still some merit in trying to elicit an unwise "squeeze play" from someone behind you. If you have a skim through Richard Brodie's blog, you should see why. Here, as I have said before, is a clever guy playing reasonably well, who happens to have a blind spot when it comes to game selection (or more likely is so caked up he doesn't care). Note how often he tries the squeeze play and the second guy calls to knock him out. More than once, for sure.

I also worked something else out last week which I came across elsewhere today. Basically I was on the button in a Crypto tournament with about M7 *, and it was folded around to me with QJs. I made a standard 3BB raise and the small blind, who was caked up to the eyeballs, moved in. I passed, rueing the wasted chips, the blinds went up and I busted. Even when I made the raise I had seen this guy reraise all in quite recently, but didn't want to call or fold or move in.

I now think I should have just folded. Sometimes, even online, you have a strong intuition when a late position raise is liable to be reraised. Someone in the blinds is caked up or aggressive or both. The steal reraise is another of these plays that is becoming common enough so that your decision switches from when to make the play yourself to how to combat it. How to combat it is simplicity itself. And no, you don't move in. You pick a range of hands that you're not going to put down to a reraise. With these hands you raise normally and call the reraise **. Everything else you just fold. I'm not going to tell you what the range is though, what do you want everything for nothing ;-)

Having worked all this out for myself I was a bit miffed to see Matt Matros make the same play (it's back a month or two). He correctly adds that making the call (with KJ in his case, against what turned out to be A8) shows people you can't be knocked off very easily and adds to your future stealing powers.

Apart from that, a couple of plus points coming up, I should be back on a 4 day week soon and I'll be off to St Kitts in less than two weeks, woo hoo ! I am also "taking a break" from writing poker stuff for cash and wasting my time on forums. Possibly, make that hopefully, a permanent break in each case. I might expand on why in due course. In each case, the blog is now the medium !

* M7 = 7 x (the antes and blinds)
** except if you think that player A is the likely steal reraiser, but player B wakes up. Which is (partly) why you don't move in !