Secrets of the Amateurs

I had a bit of a "lightbulb over the head" moment this morning after yesterday's bustout hand (detailed here). I'll probably come on to it later in more detail but basically I've become rather too fond of mathematical all-in type moves which are all very well on the internet but when you're playing live, as Fox says, if you know what the other guy has then you can throw the maths book out the window (or defenestrate it, just for Neil). This hand yesterday, looking back it's a bit embarrassing how obvious it was that he had a big hand, given his actions. Doh.

For now though, it's interesting to note some of the technical differences between internet and live play. Namely : a smaller bet will often get the job done ; continuation bets take it down more often ; and about 3/4 of the field have no conception of steal reraising whatsoever. And it's pretty easy to tell which 3/4 (being old is a good pointer).

So if you're confident that no one's going to take liberties behind you, or even if you think one guy might but you know you can safely respect a raise from the others, then shoving all in suddenly becomes a completely unnecessary risk in a lot of situations where it would be the order of the day online. In addition, you now have the option of raising with complete filth and folding to a reraise, at least while your image is good. All this leads to a more "smallball" style which is certainly fun to play around with. I'll have a bash with it this week and see what happens.

[1] Except with a small window of hands which would have to call a reraise for pot odds and would rather force out the extra reraising hands.