Filed under: Poker
The poker boom of the past six years has brought legions of people from every corner of the globe together to the green felt pitching both playing cards and astronomical sums of money at one another.
The majority of the craze has been centered around No Limit Hold’em, also known as The Cadillac of Poker. In no Limit Hold’em, players can wager all of their chips at any point in a hand, creating an abundance of rags-to-riches stories that keeps the influx of new players to the game constant.
On the other hand, the structure of No Limit Hold’em also allows for you to go broke the first hand of a tournament.
Understandably, good Hold’em players believe that No Limit fits their strengths, as they can set themselves up to take all of an opponent’s chips in one fell swoop. No Limit is a game where you can maximize value on every hand and become chipleader at any time. This enticing feature of the game is hard to resist. In fact, it can be intoxicating.
Once again, there is a down side. There is no better feeling than getting dealt pocket aces and subsequently seeing your arch nemesis at the table shove his whole stack of multicolored chips at you. The correct play here is to ALWAYS call, no matter what it costs, as you have the pre-flop nuts.
As a poker player, you know there is no worse feeling than that which brews inside of you when your opponent, with Ace-King, hits two kings on the flop and has you drawing to one card for the win. This kind of hand is especially infuriating knowing that you could have gotten away from your hand on the flop if you hadnt invested everything you had, mathematically correctly, preflop.
As with many drunken nights, your day of cards ends on a sour note, where you’re not quite exactly sure what happened or what you did wrong.
However, if you can stumble out of your drunken No Limit stupor, there’s another game out there in which consistency wins (Imagine that!) and good players are rewarded on a regular basis (No way!).
Welcome to the wonderful world of Stud.
Look it up. Check out the rules courtesy of Pokerstars.
Now that you have an idea how to play, listen up.
Stud is played in both High and High/Low formats. In Stud High, each player is dealt seven cards; two down, four up, and a stealthy seventh card face down to finish it out. Each player has their own seven cards by the end, using five to make their best possible hand (which is ranked the same as Hold’em).
In Stud High/Low, reaching a high hand is no different. There will always be a high hand. In High/Low, however, players are also vying for the best low hand to claim half of the pot. For example: A,2,3,4,5 is the best low hand possible, suited or not. But, if that same hand is suited…you have both the straight flush and the nut low. Bar any higher straight flushes in the hands of your opponents, you will be sticking a flag of whatever nationality you are into the pile of chips in the pot and claiming full rights to them. Taking both the High and Low pots like this is known in the poker world as a “scoop.”
A “scoop” is a rare and incredibly valuable gem in Stud High/Low. Most hands are chopped, so you only make money with half the pot if there are more than two people involved in the hand. Some of the best examples of hands that you might scoop with are 2,3,4,5,6 or 3,4,5,6,7 as you have both a straight for the high and a powerful low hand to boot.
Both versions of Stud are traditionally played in a fixed limit format, where there is a maximum amount you can wager each betting round, which is constant through the first four cards and doubles from fifth street on. Strategy-wise, the idea is to draw to a hand until fifth street and then figure out where you stand by the time the price to continue doubles.
The thing about Stud is that it’s very, very hard to commit all of your chips to any hand until at least six or seven levels have passed! Accumulating small and medium sized pots is the name of the game in Stud. Consistently building pots when you’re ahead and ditching hands early when you’re behind allows you to slowly build your stack up without ever being involved in a monster pot.
Yes, monster pots are nice.
However, monster stacks are best.
Getting from the starting line to being a serious contender for the money is the goal in a tournament. Being able to get to this point without ever having invested more than 40% of your stack is such a huge advantage for good players. How many times have you seen the worst player at a No Limit Hold’em tournament run the game because they got their money in really bad and sucked out for a table-shattering pot? My guess is a TON.
This phenomenon doesnt happen in a Stud game, as you have to put your money in little by little, partially knowing where you stand in the hand at all times. For example, in No Limit Hold’em someone can believe that their pocket nines are good preflop and reraise their opponent all-in. After all, he has no idea what the other person is holding, and can at least represent a huge hand and induce some big folds.
Take that hand to Stud High, where Player 1 is dealt 8,9,9. Player 1 is first to act, so he leads out the betting. When Player 2 re-raises Player 1 with two unknown hole cards and an ace showing, Player 1 can already assume he’s beat. As you can see, Player 1 has no bluffing power here, and his only option to win the pot is to give his opponent chips little by little in hopes of catching a nine or two pair (if that’s even good).
As you can see, as Stud hands progress you gain valuable information on the other person’s hand, letting you evaluate where your own cards stand without ever having to risk your whole tournament life on an inkling.
There is no big-bluff-turned-suckout option for bad players in Stud. If they are coming into a hand from behind, they’re going to knowingly be behind the whole time, draining chips little by little to the bettor. This is why consistency wins out more in Stud than it does in Hold’em.
Another beautiful element of Stud is that there are certain points in hands where you know that you can’t lose. If you have A,2,3,4,5 with four diamonds and nobody is showing three cards 5-or-lower, you KNOW that half of the pot is yours, and you’re freerolling for the 2nd half of the pot with the flush draw. There is never this absolute certaintly in No Limit Hold’em other than when you have the actual nuts. What is the nuts in Stud (especially High/Low) is always changing, and is always dependent on the cards your opponents are holding. If you have a flush on 6th street and nobody else around is showing three cards of one suit or a pair, you MUST currently have the best hand. Every time. In Stud, your hand can be judged based on the combination of your cards and your opponents’, and you don’t have to have the stone cold nuts to know you have the best hand.
Stud is a game of inches and players have to work for every pot, re-evaluating their holdings at each of the seven stages of every hand. Good players evaluate the strength of their hand correctly more often than average players and average players correctly judge their holdings more often than bad players. Therefore, as Stud tournaments progress, the bad players are generally weeded out and the good players end up at the final table, as they have played their marginal hands better throughout the tournament.
Picture a chess match. No Limit Hold’em is like a chess match, complete with all of the pieces. You have your pawns (small bets) , rooks (check-raises) and bishops (semi-bluffs). Oh…and don’t forget the queen (all-in). Of course, the king represents your tournament life.
Stud, on the other hand, is like a chess match where every piece is a pawn. You have no big moves to pull; every piece (bet) is equal. It is the player who better utilizes the pawns (or chips) in front of him to whittle down at the opponent’s arsenal that rises to the top. There is no three-move checkmate in Stud and you have to work your opponent into oblivion little by little, cutting your losses when you’re behind and maximizing profit when you’re ahead.
If anything, I hope this article hopes you see why both Stud High and High/Low are battles of wit and intelligence, compared to the hyper-aggressive shove-fest that many No Limit Hold’em tournaments turn into.
I spoke with Full Tilt Pro Alan Boston in January and he put it best when he simply said, “Bad players can’t win at Stud.”
That blunt statement meant a lot to me, as I realized that bad Stud players give up inches all day without the chance to regain a foot like Hold’em players can in any one hand.
You can play like a genius and win the small pots all day in a No Limit Hold’em tournament, yet be eliminated in one hand gone wrong. If you play like a genius and win all the small pots in a Stud tourney, it’s going to take a series of losing hands to be eliminated. As a poker player, I feel a lot more confident with my ability to not lose a series of hands than I do with my ability to not lose one hand.
As we all know, in No Limit Hold’em, sometimes all it takes is one hand to spell disaster.
I like to give myself a buffer zone with my tournament life and have the best possible chance to win a tournament, which is why I love Stud (and you should too).
Filed under: Poker
With the global economic picture swirling deeper and deeper into uncertainty and your 401k shrinking at a faster rate than a wool sweater in the dryer, we are all looking for a way to make some extra cash.
Since Chris Moneymaker’s remarkable 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event, in which he parlayed $40 into an outstanding $2,500,000, both brick-and-mortar and online card rooms have seen business skyrocket to unprecedented levels.
If you can toss a lasso and wrangle the dead money that is making its way to felt, you could literally be a millionaire tomorrow.
Ask Taylor Caby (GreenPlastic), co-founder of Cardrunners.com, who turned a $35 initial deposit on an internet poker site into six digits in a very short period of time.
Or Phil Galfond (OMGClayAiken), who turned $50 into actual millions (yes, count them) of dollars by playing internet poker. He now plays the highest nosebleed stakes on FullTiltPoker.com with the likes of Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, and Patrik Antonius.
No limit Texas Hold’em has been the vehicle to wealth and poker notoriety for many young, budding card sharks. No limit hold’em is known as the “Cadillac of Poker” because of it’s fast paced nature, where your whole stack of chips can go into the middle of the pot at any time. This game can leave you with two, three, or even nine times as many chips at the end of the hand as you had when you started. But of course, one inherent risk of no limit holdem is that you can lose all of your chips in any single hand.
Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson is considered the Babe Ruth of poker, the godfather of poker, and simply the best all around player the game has ever seen. Only Phil Hellmuth sports more bracelets around his wrist than Brunson, but what Brunson lacks in total bracelets to Hellmuth (1), he more than compensates with the level of respect he is given by every aspriring and established poker player alike.
Doyle Brunson started his quest for poker greatness in Texas, going on the road with Amarillo Slim and notable others, cleaning up card games in dusty, smoky back rooms in their travels. However, even Doyle self-admittedly went broke over 100 times in his early years. There are a lot of factors that go into ending up with an empty wallet, but I feel that the inescapable devil that is variance in no limit hold’em is one of the largest factors. Variance accounts for all the times you put your money in good, and get sucked out on by an inferior hand.
As a poker player, you have to account for the fact that odds won’t always hold and no matter how many times you play the big pots with 80% chance to scoop the chips, you can’t and won’t win every time. Going all in with pocket aces preflop, and seeing the pot get pushed in your opponent’s direction is a bad beat or, in a word, variance.
The goal as a poker player is to work around variance, and get the most value out of your hands when you have the best of it, and spend the least amount of money with the worst hand. Every hand should be played as if it were being played 1,000,000 times, to ensure that the way you’re playing it will make you the most money the largest percentage of the time.
The point is, in no limit hold’em, you can flop what you know to be the best hand (top set, etc) and have no option but to pay everything you have in your stack to see the hand through to the river, knowing 100% that you have the best hand at the time. When your hand gets cracked by a flush that hits, an overpair that nails a two-outer for a higher set, or any other funky combination, all you can do is sit back, whimper a little, and wish you were able to play the hand without investing all of your chipstacks.
Alas, there is a way! Although the majority of new poker players are flooding to no limit hold’em games by the thousands, there is an abundance of other games out there that the betting limits are capped and more consistent, smaller wins are the only way to accumulate chips at the end of the day. Some examples are Limit Hold’em, Limit Stud Hi/Lo, Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, Badugi, Pot Limit Omaha, Razz, and 2-7 single or triple-draw. These games allow the better players to win more often, as the bad players need to put their money in chip by chip, rather than running an intimidating bluff for a massive amount of chips as is typical in No Limit Hold’em.
A bad poker player is, in a sense, a suicidal person. If you were going to shoot yourself, one quick shot to the head is the easiest way to go about it. This is similar to a bluff in No Limit Hold’em. If you give this suicidal person a plastic knife and the only way to kill themselves is by repeatedly stab themselves little by little, he would have a lot less incentive to kill himself (or, shove his chips in the middle from behind). This is why I have found a safe haven in the tournament form of these limit games. First of all, the learning curve for these games is far behind that of No Limit Hold’em. You will find much less seasoned players in these games, as many people are just being introduced to them. Also, as far as tournaments go, the payscale is the same and your expected return on investment is the same in a Limit Hold’em tournament as it is in a No Limit Tournament. The difference is, you never have to lose a big pot in Limit Hold’em, and you never have to leave your fate to a coinflip, which is absolutely and utterly inevitable in a No Limit Hold’em tournament.
This game is about finding your edge. Mine lies in games where skill reigns king, and bad players keep losing. Too many genius poker minds go down in a fiery ball of flames by playing No Limit Hold’em, a game in which you can do everything right every hand and still have nothing to show for it.
I will be writing strategy segments on each of the aforementioned games in this blog and I hope you stick around to see the benefits of learning the ins and outs of each and every game, as it will help you understand where you can find your edge in poker, which ultimately leads to more money in your pocket, especially considering the paltry state of our economy.
