Lights Out Poker: POW- Pearls Of Wisdom

Ed Reif Online Poker Quotes Sponsored by his badbeats taken at Riverstars (Poker Stars) and Full Tilt.

Pain For Sale: Too much respect for money makes you a bad NLH player:
"When you lose, you lose money, when you win; you lose the value of money."

Eating What You Kill Is So Money but it's not personal:
"We’re not playing together, but we're not playing against each other either."

Get Your Freak-onomics On: When you don' have good cards, somebody else probably does:
"You can't lose what you don't put into the pot."

SHIP IT HOLLA-
I wasn’t born with the math gene, in fact, I am a math atheist: but after "beasting out" both on The Theory Of Poker and The Mathematics of Poker, I realize that poker is less an exploitive strategy, and more an optimal one. Once having said that, we don't need to deify poker math and won't bring its math to the game ---we bring strategy to it, an optimal strategy, independent of opponents actions and tells. Online players "Get it", but the 2008 cash game specialist is no miraculous exception to the Power of ,not only NOW, but also the Power of NEW, New Americon Poker.

It's Ready, Fire, Aim---unloading three bullets--- flop, turn AND river, into a pot, holding Squadush-"nothing", “zilch” or “zero" and taking it down.

It's blink---the power of thin slicing, of thinking without thinking, the wisdomm of crowds and the abilty to mind read. It's the ambassodor of NLH's Mike Sexton's adage "You think long, you think wrong" Jamming the pot 10X with selective aggression.

It's last in, not first in money.The Power of New Americon Poker is about being the last in the pot. It too can be an extremely effective way of accumulating chips in spite of your hole cards, not because of them. Lights Out Poker is about playing 'in the dark': betting that your opponents DON'T have the cards rather than that they do.

The "NEW" way to lose NLH ASAP is the OLD way heated up in a microwave instead of a crock pot. No boiling the frog here.

Although mathematical formulas are unexploitable with optimal play, Big Stack vs. Short Short Stack, for instance does't give you a mathematical privilege---it's a psychological strategy of smashmouth leverage--- making small(ish) bets and using the threat of future bets to take pots down without actually risking a lot of your own chips, and, more importantly, Big hands for big pots--not committing your big stack with weak small hands. This is in the spirit of the Small Ball Strategy of Daniel Negreanu.


This has forced online players to re-think the assumption that "Cards are there for bad players" and more than that, it is has rocked the tournamnet world regarding the mantra that "NLH is about playing the person more than the cards" and "taking advantage of their mistakes".

An Aggressive game is a game of strategy and deception. A passive game is one where money flows from bad to good players. A loose game is a game of money and odds; a tight one is a battle for the antes.


Opinions are like...well This is a fact: The really powerful starting hands---High card value, suitedness and connectedness---have multiple ways to win.


Making the right mistakes— If you are a good player and you get it in good, bad players are going to draw out on you more than your hands are going to hold up because they are more often than not putting their money in with the worst of it.. Shuffle up and deal with it.

You play a hand only if it has a positive expectation- Probability is the chance of a favorable outcome. Odds are probabilities restated as a ratio of favorable to unfavorable outcomes.


Make probability based decisions--How many outs do you have? What are the immediate odds-pre flop, flop, turn and river? What are the long shot odds for you and your opponent, once you put him on a range of hands?


Preflop, a pocket pair only has 2 outs to improve, overcards have 6 to draw to the nuts.This is not even taking into account straight and flush draws! That means over cards are at least a 3:1 favorite to improve and win the hand. There's wise: If you are going to be on a draw---draw always to the nuts! and otherwise: you could be drawing dead if the board is paired and you're on a straight or flush draw, but your opponent's already filled up.


Any Rounder knows--No Lmit Holdem is 100% Skill and 100% luck. Any Flounder can get lucky once 100% of the time. When you treat No Limit Holdem as only a game of chance instead of skill, it is not a law of probability, it's a fact for games with negative expectations: Risk of ruin is 100%!




NLH is too random to be left up to chance--Expected Value and Variance---weighing all the possible outcomes, weighting the more likely outcomes, and coming to a conclusion---play a big part in the decision process. There is therefore, never a certain prescribed way to play a hand, just a way to think about them. There's the expected result, based on analysis, and the actual result, based on events.


Playahs vs. Ballas

For the poker Balla, nothing is better than when that average Joe Playah sits down at a poker table. Why? Because he just sat down with money he INTENDS to lose! There is no more +EV situation, and most tables in a live poker room are filled with players exactly like that. That’s what makes live poker so profitable, guys who got their POKER Ph. D. from ESPN’s WSOP coverage.

NLH math nuances are probabilities and odds. Playahs look for opportunities that the money paid off is greater than the odds of winning the hand. It's a $400 pot and a $50 call with your flush draw - that's 8-1 for a 4.5-1 call. Of course you stay in here.

The key is that it doesn't matter if you get paid off now or later. As long as you make this play each and every time, you will make money. On the other hand, if the pot is offering you a 2-1 call on your flush draw, you should be folding this hand every time. Each time you call with these odds, you’re losing money even if you hit your hand right now.

Know Percentages. There is approximately a 1 in 8 chance of hitting a set when holding a pocket pair. The chance of completing a flush draw at the flow is around 33%.

Know Outs. They are un-dealt cards that will improve your hand. Keep track of how many cards can help your hand and think of them in terms of a percentage. To calculate the odds, count the number of outs, multiply by two, add two, and the answer will show the percentage change of hitting one of the outs to improve your hand.

Know Pot odds. They go hand-in-hand with outs. Unless outs are converted into intelligent betting that considers the financial return versus the risk of decisions, they don't mean anything.

I met David Sklansky’s (then) Russian girlfriend at the Hustler Casino in Garden Grove, CA in 2000 something, when I first started playing holdem back in the Chris Moneymaker era.

Ivana Playpoka'alot told me some cool stuff David told her —that “Ace rag is poison”. You will rarely be able to create a large pot playing A9 unless you are beaten. (and the unwillingness for novice players to throw away a poker hand that contains ace high to their peril); and Never play “Suited Garbage”... I went to the book store and read TOP, and Sklansky’s assertion: “Every time you play your hand the way you would if you could see your opponent's cards, you gain, and every time your opponent plays his cards differently from the way he would play them if he could see your cards, you gain”. It made sense then, but it doesn’t now.

The Fundamental Theory of Poker is a theory which is not about poker. Instead it is a theory about the results of poker. In other words, you cannot use the Fundamental Theorem of Poker to solve any actual poker problems. It’s good for finding out whether I was lucky enough or not to be holding any two cards against an opponent.

I wrote about this in my last post: The Power OF NeW-Americon Poker.

The Secret is about the law of attraction and results—the secret of poker is the complete opposite! And opposites attract!

The way to get better is to think about process not results—focus on better decision making and ignoring short term results.

ABC players are by the book- This is your brain on French fries-- Especially when it comes to Aces:AA,AK,AQ,AJ. It's dead information, like milk with an expiration date stamped right on the carton.

Got Milk? TJ and Doyle do...and what an utter delight for FISH , the last ones to know they are swimming in its waters.

Aces are the only hand big enough to go broke with in the early stages of a tournament-T J Cloutier

When an ace comes on the flop...unless the board is paired, the next card can always make a straight.... No other card has this flexibility that the ace has..- Doyle Brunson

The TOP book says AQ is better than 7 2 off suit and yet the chances of winning a pot strongly shifts away from card play when the flop misses both hands, as it does 60% of the time.

Game theory is the more ‘down-to-earth’ approach dealing with one case at a time, especially when Lift Ticket plays with ATC, any two cards- if they don’t know what they’re doing how can you!

The hand that has the highest potential must be a hand that gets played in different ways and in different situations. It's going to be somewhere between the hands that are rarely folded, and the hands that are rarely played. Aces are almost never folded before the flop, so we know they cannot be the most profitable hand.

Therefore:Stop Waiting For “Better Spots” To Get Your Money In! Pick a favorite hand--commit to it and play it strong.

New Year's Resolution---NOTES TO SELF: Never complain; never explain….Analysis is paralysis...Raise more than call…Never Limp, Never Call…Fold more than raise.

On Bluffing: I have the habit of showing my cards. My bad...

Keep players in the dark so that when you spike the bluff, they have that deer in the headlights look---frozen disbelief.

Heads or tails? In the dark both are correct. If I turn on the light, I "collapse" the superposition, and force the coin to be either heads or tails by measuring it. Never show your cards. Why lose bluff equity? My secret is I keep secrets.


On Tells: I'm too obvious-

I bet my chips fast when I have a hand, and slow when I don’t have one. Duh!
I look at my cards before it’s my turn.
I am not consistent with my movements.

No Limit Holdem Strategy Poker Ed Reif Game Theory Math of Poker Poker Stars Full Tilt