OSU is coached by Eddie Sutton who teaches defense. Pressure defense to be exact. My high school coach patterned himself after Coach Sutton, and Sutton’s law can be translated into poker just as almost anything a person can sense. Sutton’s idea is that a good defense can stop a good offense. Okay, maybe he’s […]
Doug’s game has been the most consistently difficult game I’ve played in. I don’t feel outmatched talentwise, but there are a few factors that make this game tougher than most. Doug, for one, used to be a semi-pro. In the early-80s, he was out of a job, had a mortgage and a newborn and played […]
The striking fact about AK it’s not a very big favorite over even 7-2, in the 2:1 range. It does have any other Ace dominated except a pair of them, which is a great situation to be all-in before the flop against any other nonpair holding. In low limits, AK is hard to maneuver. If […]
Back when antes used to be the norm in home games and there were seven of you, it cost a buck a hand. Sometimes we would play where the dealer antes for everyone so that we didn’t spend all night barking at people and trying to remember who anted. In 4-8, with 2/4 blinds, as […]
Bad Cards Of course this is the best opportunity to try to make a hand with something no one can see coming. But I’m not sticking my neck out any further than the amount of the blind. It’s terrible position. Even if you are certain that the only player in the hand, who raised, is […]
The most important thing to remember is that you are in the worst position on the table. If five people see the flop without a raise, and you have KK and J-high flops and you lead out, the guy in last position is priced in for a gutshot with everyone calling. That’s not what I […]
If the plan is to maintain the same amount of chips when you’re not playing, this blind strategy is the way to protect your stack. 18 bucks an hour is not that much. If you never play your blinds and sit there for 3 hours, you’ve lost about fifty bucks just in the blinds. Of […]
Here’s a fundamental: blinds are not yours. It’s table tax. In a 4-8 game table tax is 6 bucks a round. At the cardroom where I play they average a little better than 30 hands an hour. So you owe 18 bucks an hour for your seat. Now it doesn’t mean that you can’t win […]
I decided when I started writing this journal that I would only write in this section when I was losing, not having just lost, but on a skid. A skid as it’s used here is a run of losses that ends up seriously crippling your proceeds for the month or actually has you down, either […]
In a previous post, I talked about some of the bookkeeping tips for poker winnings and tax accounting. That got me thinking about another kind of bookkeeping resource for poker grinders. Admittedly, I was single and semi-slobbish when I was a pro player, but contrary to the stereotype, I knew quite a few pros who […]