Grubby at PokerWorks

There are some really good players playing the 6max games at Full Tilt.

By good I don’t mean they only play good hands and don’t suck out, I mean they keep me guessing. They’re just as likely to raise with AA as they are to raise with J5o.

Sucking out is just a side benefit.

Shorthanded limit poker is real poker to me. Always has been. Anyone can go all-in in no-limit and force you to fold. Anyone can call an all-in and get lucky.

But not everyone can raise the flop, check-raise the turn, and fold to a 3bet.

Shorthanded is where multi-level thinking comes into play. If I were good enough, I would be using this in no-limit, but it’s clearest to me at 6max. It’s here I’m aware of my image, of how I’m perceived when I raise too much, when I steal the blinds too much, when I don’t protect my blinds enough.

So in these final days of online poker in the U.S., I’ve been trying to improve my game by playing these players.

If anyone were to watch me play these 6max games, they’d think I’m a complete fish.

But I’m playing the player and watching carefully their patterns of play in order to exploit them later. And by later, I don’t mean in my next buy-in but at a later date. The 6max community on Full Tilt is small with many of the same people, and jotting down quick notes on each is immensely valuable when battling them in future matches. (Though I don’t doubt that part of the reason I’m seeing the same players is that people have put me on their buddy lists, having seen me raise with suited connectors or check-raise the flop without even Ace high.)

I don’t believe a bad player is one who draws out or who gets lucky or who plays crap or who never folds.

A bad player to me is one who plays the same way each time to the same players. A player who doesn’t adjust. An observant opponent will pick up on a player who tends to raise the button. A good player will be inconsistent, selectively raising, sometimes just flat calling with the plan to outplay on the flop.

Getting this information on these players sometimes means dropping a buy-in or two just to pull up the last hand history to see what they raised or reraised with preflop and in what position. If I know they 3bet with a draw, it goes in the notes. If I see them call a raise and bet out the flop with a medium pair, it goes in the notes. If I see them fold to a turn check-raise, it goes in the notes and I stalk them.

Notes are more valuable on the good players than the bad.

People who say that ring games are becoming rock gardens may be right, but it’s up to them to loosen up their table to the point people are calling raises with less-than-stellar hands.

I don’t just call a raise with crap, I reraise.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.