Is Poker All the Same? NLHE vs Razz

I’ve had a little flurry of play the last couple days, with a game going while I work on some work stuff. I’m really a limit holdem player at my core, but I’ve been experimenting with Razz more as well as have been playing a good bit of NLHE. With that, as always, some questions that I need help with.

Since the Mookie moves to FullTilt (bonus code POKERWORKS) next week, I’ve started playing there again. By donking around playing HORSE, I’ve become enchanted with Razz more and more. In case you’ve never played, Razz is a stud game (two cards down, four up, and last one down) where you are trying to make the lowest poker hand, although flushes and straights don’t count. Well, one of the biggest problems for me in Razz, actually here are the several problems I have:

• Play too much: common to all poker, you have to play good starting hands. The problem is I want to play and learn, so most cards look good. Sure, I come in with a king plus an 8 and 10 as my down cards. But I’ve seen 8 high win, so I’m actually looking pretty good, right?
• Chasing: I just got reprimanded for chasing, but I thought that’s what razz is. It is a constant game of looking at what you need and what everyone else has, then deciding if you have the odds to stay in. Trouble is, I really don’t figure out any of the odds as it would just deter me from chasing.
• Bluffing: Alot of times, you can figure out what someone has in the hole then bluff at pots. A raise pre-flop often puts A-2 or A-3 in the hole, so if an ace shows up the raiser probably has paired his hole cards. The problem with bluffing comes when the raiser either has the nuts or I have a set or two pair. I haven’t bluffed with a full house yet, but I’m trying.
• Stupidity: It seems to haunt me in all forms of poker. I know most people complain about how stupid everyone else is, but for me it’s more like watching It’s a Wonderful Life to witness how stupid my mouse acts with me sitting next to it. I’ll know someone is in bad shape; of course, I’m in worse shape with two kings and a queen on the board. It’s hard to bluff when the opponent can see I have no hope of winning the hand unless kings are wild. Which they aren’t.
• Losing:  Sometimes, it takes losing so many hands to finally win a hand that it’s exhausting.

As a limit holdem player, my forays into NLHE have been a healthy excercise. Unfortunately, I ran into someone yesterday who didn’t subscribe to the Paul Wasicka theory of laying down draws. Here’s the hand, and you guys tell me if I should have done anything differently. I bought in light at a PokerStars $200 max $1/2 NLHE table and sat around $105 after an hour or so. This was a tight McTight table, and I’d fallen into step playing less than 15% of the hands. A courteous twelve-tabler was a couple to my right. Now, I know most of us would quit this table, but I’ve never seen a challenge I wouldn’t tackle (and I doubt it would have changed much). I’m playing my last orbit (fatal decision obviously), and I’m dealt black aces in the small blind. There is a limper and a middle position dude raises it to $8 (his third hand). I re-raise to $18 (the logic: of course, I’m trying to double up rather than take down the pot). He calls, and the flop comes 8d-5h-6h, I bet $21, he moves in, and I Hellmuth-instacall. Next two cards are 8s-10h, he shows the 8h-7h, and my aces are cracked to trip 8′s with a flush kicker. So, All-in (my 8-year old who shares a name with a certain WSOP Main Event final tabler) comes into the room, I whip out the PokerTracker replay, stop it at the flop bets, then ask him what the guy had. “8h-7h, it’s so obvious Dad.” After hugging my little prodigy, we head up to watch Tsunami 2004 that I’ve TiVo’d (he’s in the midst of some sort of ongoing anxiety attacks about weather). It’s so obvious Dad…well, of course he would have shoved pre-flop, but…I don’t have any problem with the hand, nor any issue with the way it played out. One question I have is that after staring at the screen for about twenty seconds, I left the table. Is it best to run away like a scared kitten after busting out or is it better to re-buy, play two hands, then leave with your honor intact? Unsure here. I ran away like a schoolgirl who’d skinned her knee.

That’s the wisdom for the day.  Back to cranking away, all the while trying not to lose the $70 buy-in I made at $0.50/$1 razz.