Beat cash games 6

	The majority of players at these lower levels will call far too much

So here we are at the end of our journey through cash game play. We’ve reached the doors of Valhalla and, hopefully, with piles of cash in tow. I hope the series has been helpful but until now a lot of it has been conceptual, so in this final part I’ll be pulling all the strands together to look at some in-play examples.

In an act of supreme self-sacrifice I agreed to play a session of online poker at PokerPlayer towers to give some real-life examples of the theory I’ve been discussing. The session lasted about four hours – played on only one table – and at the $0.50/$1 level.

Naturally, with over nine years of pokerplaying experience and the entire PokerPlayer readership as an expectant audience… I lost. The bare facts of the session are that I played 288 hands, saw the flop in 22% of them and ended up recording a loss of $51.25. The reality was that it was a pretty typical cash game session (not including the losing part, of course). I probably saw less playable hands than average, but not hugely so.

Self-assessment

Assessing my play, as I’d encourage you to do after every session, I wasn’t overly happy having overplayed top pair in a couple of pots. This isn’t like me and I think it illustrates the challenge of the game at these limits. There isn’t a huge amount to be gained by making moves as the majority of the players at these lower levels will call far too much. Your profit lies in extracting value from your good hands and not overcommitting on marginal holdings. As a result, if you go through a quiet period of cards and finally have a hand that connects with the flop it’s tempting to play it come what may, which will often lead to you throwing away the profit made from your previous grinding.

In this session, as in most I play, I chopped out more than my fair share of small pots. Most of your profit in no-limit Hold’em comes from making good decisions in big pots but you also need to ‘supplement your income’ by taking the small pots where no one has flopped anything. This is one of the reasons why seeing flops in position is so advantageous. For instance, if the flop comes down rainbow with one high card and everyone checks, it’s very often profitable to bet and take down the pot unopposed.

Nothing implied

Two of the biggest pots I won were with K-K (one of which is illustrated in the second example below – Betting for value). On both occasions my opponents overvalued their hands – once with A-Q (flopping top pair) and once with 9-9 (an over-pair on the flop). Doyle Brunson wrote that with hands like A-A and K-K you either ‘win a small pot or lose a big one’.

However, often at lower stakes this isn’t the case and you’ll win a lot of money with big pairs as your opponents will overvalue their hands and pay you off when it’s obvious they’re beat. The downside of this is that you will sometimes have to pay off a player when he has your big pair cracked. Judging these situations can be difficult but with experience you’ll get better.

Unfortunately, in this session there were few chances to make use of the concepts of implied odds we’ve discussed in these articles. This is for two reasons. First, I wasn’t really deep-stacked for much of the session as I was losing! Second, I simply wasn’t dealt many small pocket pairs or suited connectors in position. It’s important to remember that calling raises with these hands is a great play to have in your armoury but they rely on both you and your opponent having deep stacks, making it worthwhile to invest a few chips to potentially decimate a fellow big stack. Towards the end of play I got lucky in a hand (hey, if you can’t be good…) when I made a flush against an opponent with trips. I’d raised under the gun with 9-8 suited – a hand with great implied odds. Obviously this isn’t a conventional play but it’s a nice way to vary your game. I’d been forced to play tight in the second half of the session thanks to seeing few cards so I thought there’d be a lot of disguise about the play.

In that particular hand my opponent flopped trip Aces but failed to charge me the right price to get rid of me during the hand and then couldn’t get away from it when the flush card came on the end. Of course, I was very lucky to hit my hand but if my opponent had bet more he would have forced me to either muck my hand or, ideally, make a mistake by paying too much to draw at my flush.

Open to criticism

So my session ended with a slight comeback and the damage limited. The key thing is to try not to think in terms of sessions. If I’d stopped playing a bit sooner I wouldn’t have hit the flush and would have lost a lot more. If I’d continued playing another hour or two I could have turned the session into a winning one. None of this matters; only the decisions you make are relevant. If you make good decisions the money will come – and that’s a promise – you just don’t know when.

It’s important to understand that only by playing regularly and analysing your results will you improve. I’d recommend you become involved in some internet forums such as twoplustwo.com or pocketfives.com. These forums feature discussion of specific hands at whatever limit you play. You can post your own hands and have them dissected. Poker is so situational – it’s vital to have feedback on specific hands. In addition get hold of and study No Limit Hold’em: Theory and Practice by David Slansky and Ed Miller. It’s not for the beginner but it’s an exceptional book that any serious player will be able to use to increase profits.

That’s it, we’re done, and you should be off multi-tabling somewhere. If you’re on the same table as me please forget everything you’ve read. Play well, get lucky and let’s get the money together.