Author: T

Hand 1

This hand is from the World Championship Final of the 1989 World Series of Poker, where the last two were Johnny Chan (winner in both 1988 and 1987) and 24-year-old new kid on the block Phil Hellmuth. If Hellmuth were to win, he would be the youngest winner thus far. If Chan won, he would equal Johnny Moss’s record of three wins and be the first to win three times in a row. Now sadly no longer with us, Moss had dominated the tournament in its early years. He won in 1970 (when the players voted on the champion) and again in 1971 and 1974.
Hellmuth had about a two to one lead in chips when the final hand was played. First to speak, he made it $40,000 to go. Chan called and re-raised $130,000. Hellmuth then immediately said he was all-in. Chan now had a tough call. He had about half a million dollars left, as against Hellmuth’s million or so with about $300,000 in the pot. But if Chan called and won, he’d be a solid favourite.

The hands were:
    Chan     Hellmuth
    AS,7S    9-9

This is similar to the decision Chris Ferguson faced against T J Cloutier. He is probably behind, but will be no worse than about 5/2 against to win it. The difference here though is that Hellmuth has an aggressive image, so Chan could easily put him on a hand such as a K-Q, in which case Chan would be favourite. Nevertheless, I think it was a marginal call since Chan had not made such a huge commitment to the pot that he could not pass. But then he’s got umpteen World Series Bracelets, which is umpteen more than me, so who am I to argue? Chan called. With a spade draw and an overcard, he’s about 2/1 against.
The flop was KD, KC, 10H with fourth street the QS. Chan would now be saved if the river was a 10 (two pairs), jack (straight), queen (two pairs) or an ace. But Hellmuth was delighted to see the 6S, and his two nines held up. So, on this occasion, the best hand on the flop won and there were no issues with bad luck as in the 2000 final. Phil Hellmuth became the youngest ever champion and since then has gone from strength to strength. He is now generally considered one of the strongest players in the world.

Hand 2

This hand involved Debbie Berlin, Dave (Devilfish) Ulliot and Ram Vaswani. This hand illustrates several themes and shows what happens when a strong hand comes up against another strong hand.

Ram raised the pot to £700 before the flop with pocket sixes and was called on the button by Devilfish and on the big blind by Debbie.

The hands were as follows:
    Devilfish     Debbie     Ram
    KH,JH         KC,10H    6S,6C

The flop was KD, 6H, 3H.

Debbie has a reasonable hand, hitting kings on the flop and she bet £500. Ram just called (he was slow playing his trips – a great hand), hoping to get some action behind him. Devilfish re-raised to £2500 with two kings and a flush draw with another very strong hand. Debbie folded but Ram re-raised again going all-in and Devilfish called. Devilfish has top pair with a good kicker plus four to the flush, but must suspect he is behind. However, there is now too much in the pot for him to pass and he knows he has lots of outs. The turn and river cards were a running pair of fours 4D followed by 4H), making a flush for Devilfish but a winning full house to Ram.

 

Hand 3

This is another hand with a similar type of confrontation with a strong hand matched against another strong hand. It is also an example of a semi-bluff that has gone wrong. Bambos and Simon Trumper were the players.

Simon, holding AC, 8C raised on the button and Bambos called with KS, QS.

The flop came AD, 8S, 7S.

Simon bet out with the top two pair. Bambos raised all-in with a king-high flush draw. He cannot beat a pair, so his hope is to win the pot on the flop with this semi-bluff. It’s hard to get someone holding the top two pair in Texas Hold ‘Em to pass, so not surprisingly Simon calls. Fourth street brought the AS, giving Bambos his flush but Simon a full house.

 

Hand 4

This hand involved Dave Welch who raised before the flop with pocket jacks and Dave (Devilfish) Ulliot. Devilfish called, slow playing his pocket aces.

The flop came AS, 10C, 5H.

Devilfish checked his monster hand (i.e. trip aces). Dave Welch, with two jacks, cannot have liked the flop, but he bet, in an effort to win it right there. He knew that if he got called, he was probably up against an ace, perhaps with a weak kicker, and he would definitely slow down after that. Devilfish called again slow playing his trips. Because there is no likely draw on the flop, Devilfish was quite safe in not raising. Dave’s raise before the flop indicated that he was not likely to have two small cards and hence a draw to a bottom straight.
Devilfish was trying to keep Dave Welch interested. If he had raised then, Dave would have undoubtedly passed. Fourth street was the eight of hearts, no visible improvement. Devilfish checked yet again and Welch wisely checked behind him. Dave Welch was hoping this hand was going to be checked out but he was out of luck. The river was the four of diamonds. The board now looked like this: AS, 10C, 5H, 8H, 4D.
Devilfish then bet enough to set Dave all-in. If he checked again here, he knew that Dave would probably just turn his hand over. So he had to bet. This was a tough call for Dave Welch. There was no likely draw that Devilish could have made, except for the remote possibility of the small straight, so it looked like he had an ace or was bluffing. I wouldn’t have liked to choose. In fact, Dave Welch even said to Devilfish that he had either a very strong hand or was on a complete bluff, which was a good analysis. However, Dave called and Devilfish showed his aces.

A word of caution

The very fact of committing the above observations to print may in itself change the behaviour of players and indeed, for purposes of deception, sophisticated players will often try to mimic the behaviours of less sophisticated players. Sometimes, for instance, a player would make a bet purposely using small denomination chips when holding very strong hands. This is done just on the off-chance that a more sophisticated player will erroneously make the sort of deductions which we gave in Example 1. If no one makes this sort of a deduction – well, you have lost nothing by trying.
On the whole, the above chip-handling behaviours are only applicable to less sophisticated players. However, this is not always the case and sometimes you will see established players making fundamental errors. By revealing these chip-handling behaviours, I have, in a way, ‘broken the magician’s code’ and told you how the card-reading trick is done. However, these are only a small sample of the range of chip-handling behaviours you will observe at the poker table. The challenge, for us all, is to interpret the behaviours and build up a repertoire of new card-reading tricks or analytical techniques.

Card-Handling Behaviours

Again you should be very attentive to how and when your opponents pick up and look at their cards. On the very simplest level, players are so careless sometimes that they pick up their cards in such a way that their neighbours cannot help but see what they are holding. These players are usually so poor that it is easy to determine what they are holding anyway, so I normally tell them to hide their cards. Sometimes, players pick up their cards and look at them as soon as they get them, whilst others pick them up just before it is their turn to act. Just one example will be sufficient to let you know how careful observation and deduction can be used in ‘reading’ or determining what cards a player holds.

Example: Have I got a heart or not?
Often the flop in Hold ‘Em will contain three cards all of the same suit, say KH, 7H, 4H . When this happens one or more players may look at their hands again. The reason for this is that the player may have one card of the suit and has looked for the second time to make sure. It is equally likely that the player has an ace but has forgotten what suit it is. In the case above, if the player has something like AH, 4S then this is a reasonable hand, but if he has AH, KS then this is a more powerful hand. In both cases, if you have a flush already made and bet into the player they will more often than not call you. Some rash players even consider these ‘drawing’ hands to be good enough to bet, raise or re-raise with.
It is possible that a player will have something like AS, KC against the KH, 7H, 4H flop, in which case he should proceed with extreme caution because if this hand is out against a made flush there is practically no chance of the hand improving to win.
By watching what the player does in this sort of circumstance (i.e. the three-flush flop) you can obtain a very good impression of what cards he holds and play your own hand better as a result. So, for instance, if you are the player holding the AS, KC against the KH, 7H, 4H flop, you might well be prepared to proceed with the hand if you see your sole opponent have a second look at his cards. In this case, the chances are high that your opponent has a four-flush and that you are a percentage favourite in the pot (you would have an approximate 65 per cent chance of winning).
Incidentally, it is almost never the case that a player will pick up and look at their cards a second time if they already have the flush made. This is because if a player has two cards of the same suit he will remember what the suit is and even novice players will realise that it is giving the game away to look at their hand. This is why if you do have the flush on the flop and you are playing against sophisticated players it is sometimes deceptive to look at your cards a second time, pretending that you have only got four cards to the flush.

 

Chip and Card Behaviours

One brief example will illustrate how chip- and card-handling behaviours can combine to give you clues about what a player holds.

Example: I’ve got to protect my hand here!
Many players protect their hands from the danger of the dealer accidentally throwing it into the discards by the simple expedient of placing a chip or coin on top of the two-hole cards. Indeed some players even have special (perhaps’lucky’) chips which they use solely for this purpose. If such a player ‘forgets’ to put the chip on top of his cards it could be because the cards are not worth protecting. In general, when this happens the player is going to pass the cards in any case, so there is not much useful information to be drawn from this sort of observation.
Sometimes novices or poor players who don’t have this habit of putting a chip on top of their cards will suddenly do so.You might even see the player take a whole stack of chips and pile them on top of his cards. When this happens, the player has almost invariably got a very good hand indeed (my money would be on two aces or two kings). Players in this circumstance may subconsciously get a feeling of paranoia that the dealer will rob them of a wonderful money-making opportunity by carelessly throwing their hand into the discards. Indeed there may be a different explanation for different players exhibiting this behaviour, but the important thing to bear in mind is that it does happen and reasonably frequently. If you observe a poor player piling chips onto his cards my advice is to pass unless you have the nuts.
However, as has been stressed at many points in this book, poker is a complex game and many players show feral cunning in the moves they make. So you should not take anything at face value. For instance, relatively sophisticated players who know about this type of card-protection behaviour may well stack chips on top of a worthless hand and then try to bluff you out of the pot.
More likely though is that a sophisticated player (let’s call her Player X) will attempt to set someone up in the hope of winning a big pot. Player X will pick another intelligent player as her quarry and, knowing that this player is observant, will always pile chips on top of her good hands. Player X will make a point of ensuring that the quarry/victim sees the good hand on completion on each occasion. This type of behaviour will be reinforced by constant repetition (perhaps even over a period of a few nights), until Player X considers that her victim has the strongly held belief that ‘Player X always piles chips on her good hands’. Then remarkably, when the two are in a big pot together, Player X will neglect to pile chips on her blockbuster hand and as a result will win a lot of extra chips from her hapless victim. Of course, this sort of trick should only work once against a good player.
This is only one example of how good players can set other players up for a ‘coup de grace’ (or perhaps it could be called a ‘coup de theatre’, because of the dramatic effect). So I would urge you to look out for this type of situation yourself.
Why does Player X pick another intelligent player as the victim? Why not a poor player? The reason is clear. It is because subtle play is lost upon poor players. They either don’t notice or, if they do, it goes right over their heads. It seems like a paradox but you cannot do anything tricky against poor players and you should think carefully before trying to bluff a poor player. We are not saying don’t try to bluff a poor player, just bear in mind that bluffs work best against intelligent players.

 

Previous article

 

Example 2: Little piles, little blinds
When the blinds for a tournament have reached, for example, the 600-unit stage, you will often observe a player building his chips into piles of exactly 600 units to make it easier to call the first bet. Then later when the blinds go up to 800 units this player will change the piles into stacks of 800-units value. This tells you something about the player. They are likely to be the type that calls much more often than they should, that is, in poker terminology, to be a’ calling station’. You cannot chase them out of the pot no matter how high your bet. It is best not to try stealing a pot or bluffing this type of player because the percentage chance is very high that you will be called. Conversely, if you have a reasonable hand you can try a bet because they are likely to call with a lesser hand.

Example 3: Don’t hide your chips
Often at the poker table you will hear the cry ‘Don’t hide your chips.’ This refers to the practice that some players have of hiding their high denomination chips behind several piles of smaller denomination chips. The explanation for this is often that the players hiding the chips are, both figuratively and actually, protecting their chips. This type of player tends to be ‘tight’ (that is, plays only very high value hands). So, if this type of player is in a pot with you be very careful. The percentage chance is high that the player will have a good hand.

Example 4: Big jar, small jars
As opposed to the type of player described in Example 1 who like to have small piles of high denomination chips, there are others who like to have big piles of small denomination chips. If the card room supervisor wants to change their small chips ‘up’ for those of bigger denomination, they want to keep the small value chips, ‘because it looks more’. They seem to think that large piles of chips are more intimidating and, to some extent, I agree.
The French psychologist, Piaget, did a series of experiments with young children where he asked them to compare the quantities of liquids in glass jars of various sizes. In one version of the experiment, two of the glass jars were tall and each contained the same fixed quantity of liquid. There were also two smaller glass jars into which Piaget poured the contents of one of the larger jars. Piaget asked the children whether the tall jar, which remained full, contained the same quantity of liquid as the two smaller jars. His findings were that, in the early stages of development, children considered it natural for the quantity of the liquid to vary with the shape and dimensions of the containers into which it was poured. In other words, they did not have a fully developed concept of the conservation of matter or quantity.
Piaget was interested in the developing thought processes of children, so it would be rash to compare the cognitive processing of supposedly sophisticated poker players to that of small children. Still, it is possible that there may be perceptual processes which might make players perceive tall stacks as containing more chips than several smaller stacks.
A tall stack of chips in front of a player does seem to look more daunting than several small stacks, even though the total value might be the same in both cases. This is particularly so if a player has the small stacks one behind the other. There is no real empirical evidence for this observation but it often seems that players tend to be less inclined to bet into an opponent with a tall intimidating stack or stacks of chips in front of him than they would be to bet into anyone who has stacked the chips into several small piles. Although this is tentative advice, I do think there is merit in stacking your chips high.

Example 5: Macho man
I have never observed this behaviour in women players hence the title. Sometimes a man, usually an inexperienced player, will call a bet, or more often a raise, in such a way that there will be a cracking or snapping made by the chips as he bangs them into the pot. This usually happens after he pauses for thought. This behaviour is almost always a sign that he has a medium-strength hand. If it happens before the flop, in a raised Hold ‘Em pot, this behaviour could indicate a fair hand such as KD, QS or AC, 10S or even 7D, 7C. Or, if it happens after a flop of say KS, 6H, 3H, it again would indicate a fair hand, perhaps KC, 9S or KC, 8S. This behaviour seems to me to be a non-verbal statement meaning ‘I have a good hand and I am going to make a stand’ (usually the player is mistaken in thinking he has a good hand). The player is also making a statement along the lines of ‘you are not going to get away with a bluff against me’.
If in the former situation you are the one who raised with a proper raising hand, such as QS, QH, then you have a big advantage because you are better able to put your opponent on a probable hand. If a higher card than your pair comes, you are in a much better position to gauge from his reaction whether it ‘hits’ one of his hole cards or not. Equally, in the latter case, if you hold say AH, KD (when the flop was K-6-3), then you can bet with impunity.
A characteristic of this macho-type of player is often that they do not like to be check-raised. They tend to take it as an insult or perhaps even as an affront to their manhood, and they almost always call if they have a medium-strength hand. In our opinion this is one of the few situations where it is advantageous to check-raise in a pot-limit or no-limit game.

 

Previous – Part 3

Poker is a complex and multifaceted game whose central facets are sometimes called the three P’s: patience, position (with regard to your proximity to the dealer) and psychology. In this series of articles I will focus on the last of these P’s which focuses on how to read the behaviour of your opponent: the psychology of poker.

Zia Mahmood, the world-class bridge player, is quoted as saying, ‘One of the reasons I love the game of bridge is that there are no absolutely right answers to anything. Bridge is not a game that can be played mechanically, according to a series of rules. You have to use not only your brain and your memory but your imagination and your creative spark to avoid the traps that lie in even the simplest position’. The same description could just as easily be applied to the game of poker and the ability to analyse the behaviour of your fellow players is one of the subtlest and most difficult aspects of the game to master. In order to improve your game, it is important that you are able to observe closely how players behave and understand what, in percentage terms, these behaviours are likely to mean. Let’s start with a few very simple examples – how players stack and handle their chips.

 

Chips

All casino games and some home games are played using ‘chips’ instead of money. In these situations the player would exchange his money for the same value of chips. There are a number of reasons for this, of which I will just give you two. Chips are easier to handle and count than money. Players can see at a glance whether an opponent has got a few or a lot of chips in front of them, whereas with a bundle of notes it is often impossible to know how much someone has. There is also a deeper psychological reason, seldom fully articulated, why casinos prefer players to use chips rather than money. When you exchange your money for chips, you have literally and figuratively exchanged something of real value for a playing token, for something that is once removed from money. I have seen people bet considerable sums at roulette and at the poker table using chips and, although it is a moot point, I sometimes wonder whether they would be so keen to make the same bet if they had to use the same fold-up money they used to pay for their groceries. There is a well known saying heard often in casinos and card rooms, that the person who invented casinos made a lot of money, but the person who invented chips made even more money.
Later on, we will examine the importance of ‘stack’ size – the number of chips that a person has stacked in front of him. A big stack will depending on the monetary value or denomination of the chips, generally be more valuable than a short or medium stack. The size of stack you are playing and the size of the stack held by your opponents, are major factors to be considered when making a decision at the poker table.

 

Chip Handling

Some players divide their chips into separate piles, each pile having chips of the same value, others make one or two very tall piles with the bigger denomination chips at the bottom while others try to build structures resembling the Great Wall of China. Players will also differ in terms of how they put chips into the pot and what denomination of chips they use in different betting situations. Mostly these behaviours do not have any meaning that are discernibly usefull but below are a few examples of chip handling behaviours which I contend either offer an insight into a player’s personality or give an indication of the value of the hand they are holding.

Example 1: Breaking the big note!
You may recall when you were younger, back in the days when to have a £5 note (or a $20 dollar bill for our American readers) was to be wealthy. In those days, if you had a big note, you did not like to ‘break it’ because once broken it tended to be spent much more quickly. The big note was something to be kept and prized. Some players treat their chips in this way. They are always wanting to give change, e.g. give you ten 100-unit chips for your 1000-unit chip and once they get the 1000-unit chip they like to hold on to it. (In contrast there are many players who are delighted to change big chips because a pile of small value chips looks more – see Example 4.) Watch this type of player closely because often, when they have a choice of putting small or large denomination chips into a pot the choice of chips can have a meaning.
They will often put their small denomination chips into the pot when they have a marginal or perhaps a drawing hand. Sub-consciously, they may consider that they are not breaking into their pile of valuable chips, so they can do no real damage and can afford to speculate on this occasion. To continue the analogy with the ‘big note’, in this case they are only spending their small change. When this same player ignores his low denomination chips and puts in large value chips, then beware – there is a very high percentage chance that the player has a strong hand. Their subconscious reasoning may be that ‘I will be getting these chips back anyway when I win the pot therefore I don’t need to put in small value chips. Also by putting in the high value chips the pot will be easier to count and the hand will be speeded up. I will get my reward sooner.’

 

Part 2

Semi-bluffs

This is an example of a player making a semi-bluff raise with a drawing hand. The hand is between Blackpool-based player Howard Plant and Peter (the Bandit) Evans.

Howard and Peter both call a flop containing KS, JH, 10S.

Peter has A – K and bets £400.

Howard has QS, 4S and raises to £1000 (Howard has a very strong drawing hand, he is drawing to both flush and straight); this is a semi-bluff raise.

Peter re-raises, putting himself all-in, and Howard calls.

Fourth street brings a KC giving Peter three kings and Howard still has his draw.

Fifth street is a 5H meaning that Peter wins and Howard’s draw has been unsuccessful. Howard’s hand was actually a slight favourite on the flop, but this example illustrates the fact that sometimes both players in a heads-up situation can play optimally and eventually the result is a matter of luck.

 

Judgement Calls

This hand features Howard Plant. His opponent this time is Charalambos Xanthos, otherwise known as Bambos, a restaurant and hotel owner, now based in London. Bambos is very calm and methodical at the poker table; nothing seems to faze him. This is an example of Bambos making a judgement call.

Howard bets £300 with 9-8.

Bambos raises to £900 with A-Q and Howard calls.

The flop comes K-7-6.

The board is completed with no more betting to make K-7-6-J-J.

Neither player has any sort of a hand, but Howard tries a bluff with a bet of £900 (it’s the only way that Howard can win the pot which by this time is worth a lot of money).
Bambos, however, calls with only an ace high to win the pot, Bambos demonstrated excellent card- and player-reading skills.

 

Slow Playing

This is an example of a player slow playing top trips. The hand is between Hamish Shah and Tom Gibson. Hamish is a stockbroker based in London. Although he’s been playing regularly for ten years, he says he plays mostly as a pastime. Tom is from County Kildare, Ireland, and is a former civil servant who currently lives in Dublin. Tom has given up the civil service and now plays poker for a living.

In this pot, Hamish has A-A and raises the pot to £100, Tom calls with A-J.

The flop brings AC, 10C, 7H and fourth street a 6S.

Tom bets £200 with his ace-good kicker and Hamish calls. Here Hamish is slow playing his monster hand (trip aces), but note he is taking a risk in potentially lettingTom draw for a flush or straight.

Fifth street brings a KS.

Tom checks and Hamish bets £200. Tom calls and Hamish wins the pot.