CC on NLHE Strategy: Is this a Jopke?

For those of you new to me, I’m at my core a limit holdem player. I’ll normally play $10/20 or $15/30 live and up to $5/10 online. I’ve been exploring NLHE more and more, both my latest time in Vegas as well as online. At PokerStars, I’ll play anything from $0.25/0.50 NLHE to $1/2 NLHE, depending on how the mood strikes me.

None of this is going to be new news here, and anyone who knows me knows I’m no grand strategist, but here are some of my bits of enlightenment over the last few weeks:

• You can’t just be a set farmer, although it can be nice. When I first started toying with NLHE, I really just focused on set farming (meaning limp/calling with my small pairs looking for the flopped set). It feels pretty dirty, but it should be one of the main components of my game. This means calling raises out of position with pairs.
• Gapped sooted connectors are our friends. Opportunistically rather than doing this all the time. Here’s an example from this morning (didn’t sleep through the night): there is a min-raise to $2 in front of me, and I have 5s-7s and call from middle position with five seeing the flop of 10d-7c-5d. The min raiser checks to me, and I fire out $8 into the $10.50 pot. Tight guy calls along with the min raiser, then 7d peels off, the perfect card. It’s checked to me, and I make a weak $9 stab at the pot (min raiser only has $27 behind, but other dude has me covered). Dude bails, but min raiser moves in with Ad-2d. Obviously the flop hit me hard, but the implied pot odds of chunking $2 into a pot that I got $50 from can’t be overstated. The challenge is when to do this. Often, I’ll just do too much of this and give a bunch over to chasing.
• Don’t be stupid. Calling down with an underpair would fall into this category. Sure, you feel brilliant when you have the best hand, but that’s <10% of the time. I’m not brilliant when it comes to NLHE, so just avoiding stupidity is +EV.
• Avoid losing big pot. This is some good stuff spewing out here, I tell you what. Ways to avoid losing big pots: over-the-top-shovebot, chasing, bad kicker call on the flop, overplaying stuff.
• It’s OK to bet smaller. This is probably the most significant change gained through WSOP osmosis, that I don’t have to raise 3x bb to open every time, that I don’t have to pot every continuation bet, etc. That doesn’t mean lowering bets when I’m relatively weak, it just means that I’ve picked up more pots with less risk than I used to.

There you have it. Having said all of that, I am up around $1,500 in the last six weeks over maybe thirty-five hours of play. Not very many data points, but up about a $1/hand though regarding results. I’ve also been trying to work off my participation in the 45-SNG deal. I had a 2nd yesterday then two this morning for blanks, so I’m sitting at 8 points with ten to go (10 points for a 1st, 8 for 2nd, etc.). I’ll need probably 35-40 points to win, but I haven’t had any time to really devote to this unfortunately. My big change in attacking these again was taken from my WSOP experience, just fold fold fold basically.

Mookie tonight, and if you’ve never played in a blogger tourney, it’s a must. It really brings the fun back into poker, and I try to make it whenever possible. 10:00PM Eastern on PokerStars, password of vegas1.

I got an email from Lynette Chan saying that she was headed to LA, where she is originally from (see interview with her). She’ll head to Commerce as her stomping ground, which should be solid. I’m looking forward to my first Commerce visit sometime this year hopefully. I’m pulling for Lynette to become the next big thing, which would be just great. She’s a great young lady.

I’ve got about a zillion WSOP photos, and I need to figure out what best to do with them. I’m planning to have a few in my poker room (still awaiting the ribbon cutting home game), but I’m wondering if there is something else I can do.

I did some good client work when I woke up this morning, but I really want to have a productive day. We’ll see how it goes. I’m sure you’re following Linda’s trip, but send her plenty of support if you like. She’s a real pleasure to be with, at least for me. I know it’s sort of like meeting a rock star when you first meet her, but she is very gracious to any and everyone who tracks her down in Vegas. I know she’s getting some much deserved R&R.

Sorry my wisdom isn’t too wise, but there you go today. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope I make it to the Mook and see you there tonight.