Does anybody else here plays poker online? I know there was a thread a little while back where TigerJimmy was talking about it, but I wasn't playing then. I started a few months ago as a way to stay in touch with my father, who flies planes oversees (easier to get me to play poker than him to play Diablo, Wow, etc. ).

So now I'm playing pretty regularly and winning more than I lose at small stakes games- just wondering if any other emepggers are
playing.

Can't play poker worth a damn. Didn't take long to learn that.

lol, well you are welcome to play with me anytime then

I've been meaning to make a post about my experiences with online poker since that old thread you mentioned. Several people were interested, but I never took the time to write it out. So, I'll write about my experiences here. I'll also write about how a pro poker player sees the game, and how to become an expert. This could end up being a long post.

My GF and I play poker for a living. Almost all of our play is online Holdem for a variety of reasons I'll explain.

Prior to becoming poker players, my GF and I had played professional blackjack for a year and a half. It was a lot of fun and good money, but I started getting barred from casinos. While counting is not illegal, the casinos will not allow anyone to play if they have a mathematical edge in the game. If they detect you are a winning player, they inform you that you are no longer allowed to play. On one of our trips, we saw the 2003 World Series of Poker on TV in our hotel room. It was exciting TV, and we could see that Holdem was going to become very popular as a result of this show. Since they were barring me from blackjack and I was almost certainly already in the infamous Griffin Book, I could see our days as pro blackjack players were numbered, or at least become much more difficult. I decided to research poker, and especially Holdem poker.

I learned a few very important things about Holdem quickly. First, you are playing against other patrons, never against the house, so the house doesn't care how good you are. There is no risk of being barred for being an expert poker player. Second, it is possible to play poker with a consistent edge. In fact, the edge is significantly larger than our blackjack edge, and the variance is considerably lower. This has tremendous implications for the professional gambler, as I will describe below. Third, you can play poker online, playing multiple games simultaneously in different windows. This means that you can play a lot of hands. This is an important factor, and I will talk more about it later. Fourth, there are resources available to learn the proper strategy.

Actually, it turned out that almost all of the resources available to learn poker strategy are complete garbage. Getting in to it seriously, though, I was able to figure out where to get the good information. In the process, I read almost every poker book written, and there are a LOT of them. Fortunately, 99.9% of them can (and should) be completely ignored.

From the beginning, I had a different view of poker. While I had played as a kid, like everyone, my blackjack experience caused me to have a specific goal. I was not interested in playing for amusement; I wanted to play poker like I played blackjack -- a perfect mathematical game that guaranteed me an edge. To understand what that means, you need to understand what an "edge" is to a professional gambler. It is related to a mathematical concept called "expected value", which pros call EV.

All gambling games have a random element in them. This random element makes the outcome of any one particular hand unknowable, but if one understands the probability of various outcomes, it is still possible to quantify the outcome, even if it is unknown. This is called "expectation", or "expected value". Let me quote an example from the best Holdem book out there, Small Stakes Hold 'em, by Ed Miller:

Quote:
Expectation is the amount of money that you will win or lose on average by making a wager. Say you and a friend agree to bet on the outcome of a coin flip. If the coin lands heads, he will pay you $1. If it lands tails, you will pay him $1. Your expectation for this bet is zero. You expect to win $1 half the time and lose $1 the other half. On average, this bet is break-even.

To calculate expectation mathematically, you must take an average of all the possible results, weighted by the likelihood of each one. In this case, we have two results: +$1 and -$1. Each result has a likelihood of 1/2. Thus your expectation (referred to as "EV" for "Expected Value") is 0.

0 = .5(+1) + .5(-1)

Let's say your friend decides to pay you $2 for heads, but you still pay only $1 for tails. Now your EV is $0.50.

0.5 = .5(+2) + .5(-1)

The key to winning at poker is to be able to always choose the play that has the highest expectation. In some cases, this means choosing the play with the least negative expectation. The goal as a serious poker player is to maximize your expectation over a series of decisions. This is identical to how one plays professional blackjack, incidentally -- the count model gives the highest expectation play for every situation. Poker is vastly more complex than blackjack, so it is not possible to pre-compute EV for every possible situation as it is in blackjack.

Here is a Holdem example: suppose on 4th street (after the turn card has been played, so there are 4 community cards dealt), you have 4 cards to a flush, and the Ace and one other card of that suit is in your hand. We have one opponent, and he bets into us. We want to know what to do, so we need to compute our expectation. Computing expectation involves two things: understanding the probability of the possible outcomes, and understanding the payoff of each outcome. In this simple example, we assume that we will lose if we don't make our flush, but we will definitely win if we do make our flush. That means, if we make our flush we win the pot, if we don't make our flush we lose this bet.

It turns out in this case we can compute our chances of winning almost exactly. We have seen 6 cards in the deck (the 4 on the board and the 2 in our hand). That means there are 44 cards that we haven't seen. There are two cards of our suit in our hand and two on the board, so we know that the remaining 9 cards of our suit are mixed in with those 44 unseen cards. The odds, then, of the next card being a card of our suit are 9/44, or about 1/5. If the pot is larger than 5 bets, we have a positive expectation and can call profitably. Assume that the pot contains $100 and it costs us $10 to call the bet (not an uncommon situation). Then 4 out of 5 times we lose $10, but 1 out of 5 times we win $100! If you did nothing but place bets like this all day long, you would be guaranteed to make money. Look at our expectation:

$12 = .2(+$100) + .8(-$10)

In the long run, we profit $12 for each situation like this. Notice that we are still losing most of the time. That doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is do the payout odds we are being offered exceed the odds against us winning?

Playing poker well means being able to determine the answer to that question in a huge variety of situations, almost all of which are much more complex than this simple example. Many situations involve probability-weighted logical deductions about opponents' holdings. Our simple example didn't need to consider this because we were drawing to to the "nuts" -- an unbeatable hand. In most situations, we can't know our exact odds of winning because we can't see our opponent's cards.

Logically deducing our opponent's hole cards is called "hand reading", and it is a beautiful and fascinating intellectual challenge. Hand reading turns every single poker hand into a logical puzzle. If we could become perfect at hand reading, we would always know our opponents hole cards, could always compute our odds of winning exactly, and would play "perfectly". This unachievable ideal is what provides the enjoyment to a serious player. It is not fun in the sense of a "thrill" of gambling that most players experience, it is the fun and satisfaction of solving a really complex puzzle.

One becomes a serious poker player when they make the mental shift away from mere entertainment and begin to try to maximize their EV and play in a profitable way.

Poker is a strange game. The rules of the game are such that in the short term one can make poor EV decisions and still win, or make great EV decisions and still lose. This is due to the randomness of the game and how the rules are structured. In the long run, however, it is impossible to win without making EV-centric decisions, but the long run is really long. People can (and do) play incorrectly for thousands of hands and win simply due to the high fluctuations that occur in the game.

The balance between skill and luck in a game has a mathematical term: variance. It's actually a statistics term. The best gambling games have a high variance which means that a player can do everything wrong and still book a huge win -- if they are lucky. Craps and blackjack are both extremely high variance games, but the rules are such that in every single situation the house has +EV on every wager (the exception being a card-counter in a good blackjack game). The high variance means that short-term results will be almost entirely a matter of luck, while long-term results are entirely a matter of skill (which is just another term for EV). This messes with the human learning process, which seems unable to handle true randomness. Humans are constantly looking for patterns, even where they don't exist. The variance also provides another thing that screws humans up: intermittent reinforcement. Combine this with the silly and romantic notion that some people are "naturals" and you've got the reason why millions of people gamble. Don't be fooled by all these things. I promise you that if you have not studied how to make +EV decisions in poker, you are NOT a winning player and your winning has been variance. That sounds harsh, but its true. You can't beat blackjack without counting, and you can't beat poker without playing a tight game focused on EV.

The discussion about EV explains why I am attracted to online poker. If one is making consistently +EV decisions, the only limit on how much you make is how many hands you can play. In a live poker room, a fast dealer will deal about 35 holdem hands per hour. Online the shuffling, dealing and pot-pushing are instantaneous. Games range between 60 and 100 hands per hour. Since playing a +EV game of holdem means playing around 17% of your hands, in a live game one will only play 5 or 6 hands per hour. Remember that you lose 4 out of 5 turn flush draws and you can see how a lot of time can pass before you make any money. But online, you can play multiple games simultaneously. I routinely play 5 or 6 games, which means I almost always have an active hand to play. It also means that I'm getting well over 400 hands per hour. My hourly rate is thus over ten times higher than playing in a live game. What all of this means is that it is possible to make a living in the lower limit games if you play online. To play live games professionally, it is usually considered impossible below $15/$30. In comparison, I know a guy making $11k per month playing $3/$6 online thanks to multi-tabling.

There is another major advantage to online poker. Every time you play a hand of poker online, a text file called a "hand history file" is stored on your computer that contains all of the events of the hand. There is a fantastic piece of software called Poker Tracker that reads these files into a database. Not only can I review every single hand I've ever played online, but I can view statistics about my game to look for areas where I can improve my EV. Most importantly, however, I also have statistics about my opponent's play. Using another bit of software called PokerAce HUD, I can display these statistics as an overlay on the tables while playing, which provides me with so much data on my opponents it's staggering. I know how many hands they play, how often they raise, how often do they fold each street, how often do they go to showdown, when do they checkraise ... it goes on and on. In a live game I need to keep track of all that myself, and that's a lot of work.

To become a winning poker player, there is only one place to start. It's with the book I mentioned above, Small Stakes Hold 'em, by Ed Miller and David Sklansky, which is referred to as SSHE among serious players. David Sklansky is a name you're going to get to know, because he is THE authority on the mathematics of poker. He is the author of what is considered the most important book on poker, Theory of Poker, which should be the second book you read (after re-reading SSHE about a dozen times).

If you play as described in SSHE, you will be able to beat online games up to about $3/$6. That's because these games are mostly "money and odds" games where hand reading is not so important. Beginning at $5/$10, hand reading becomes much more of a factor, and this takes experience. One caution, ignore the "loose" preflop strategy in SSHE if you're playing online. Online games are tougher than live games and considerably tighter. Use the "tight" preflop recommendations.

SSHE, Theory of Poker, and Holdem Poker for Advanced Players (also by Sklansky), are all published by 2+2. 2+2 hosts a BBS dedicated to the discussion of poker strategy. It is THE place to learn poker, and is the only resource you'll need other than SSHE. It is possible to learn how to beat middle-limit and even high-limit games by reading and contributing to the 2+2 Forums. It is widely acknowledged that the best players in the world are almost exclusively "2+2ers".

Before you set up a lot of online poker accounts, you should be aware of something called "rakeback". Poker sites pay a commission to people to attract new players. The commission is a fraction of the rake you generate as a player on the site. The people collecting the commission are called "affiliates". Some affiliates will share their commission with you if you sign up under them. Since they are paid a percentage of your rake, this is called a "rakeback relationship". Poker sites officially forbid rakeback, so its an under-the-table deal. It's also worth thousands a month -- on top of your winnings.

Last year I saw Charlie Rose on PBS interview the amazing poker player Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Ferguson said, "I think poker has a lot to offer someone." I agree 110%. It can be very emotionally challenging, and it is a tremendous intellectual challenge. I got some coaching from Bob Ciaffone, a professional poker player, Life Master bridge player, and International Master chess player. He told me, "Holdem is more complex than either of those other games." I didn't believe him at the time, but as you learn more and more about the game, it just becomes more complex and fascinating.

Barry Greenstein, considered one of the best (if not the best) cash-game players in the world, describes three levels of development of a serious poker player. First, one masters the math, odds, starting hands, and other fundamentals. At the first level, you pretty much play every hand and situation in a consistent way. Second, one adjusts their play based upon their opponent in the particular hand. Third, one learns to randomize how they play the same hand against the same opponent, since the opponent is now good enough to learn your consistencies and read your hands with a high degree of skill.

SSHE will get you to the first level, which is enough to beat any small stakes game. The 2+2 Forums and experience will get you to the second level, which, according to Greenstein, is enough to win up to $300/$600. Above $300/$600 is the realm of the truely world-class players -- and they don't discuss their strategy much. If you want to know what that's like, read a great book called The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King, by Michael Craig. It's a great book and a really interesting look into the best players in the world, whose "normal" game is the Bellagio $4000/$8000 mixed game. The book tells the story of the pros taking on a billionaire banker who wanted to play big -- $100,000/$200,000 limit Holdem.

You should buy Poker Tracker and PokerAce HUD immediately. I have some charts from SSHE you can print out, and some articles, and links to the best 2+2 articles. Send me an email to jrcampbe <at> visi <dot> com and I'll share this stuff with any of you guys.

It is possible to make a TON of money playing online poker. I could regale you with many examples of people I know personally. It's a great hobby and a great challenge. I hope this helped some of you guys get going in the right direction.

I'll watch this thread in case anyone wants me to go into more detail on any of this stuff.

Best,

Jim

Great post- it's very interesting to read about your experiences playing poker for a living.

What site do you play on? I've been playing on ultimatebet, but recently there have been things that have irritated me there. I really don't see myself switching, but I'd like to know what other sites are out there and what their strong points are.

I don't ever see myself playing poker for a living. At the end of the day, it's fun for me and I'd like to keep it that way. I can see how playing multiple hands, limit hold em could be so profitable. However, I'd probably be miserable doing that!

I've been playing mostly tournament style NL hold em- and at that mostly sit-n-go tournaments. I've done reasonably well in bigger tournaments, but fields are so large in the $5 buy in games that it just takes a lot of slogging through hands to get to the big payouts. The $20 and $30 buy in games are a lot better field sizes, but I can't really afford to play those too often with my current bank roll.

The aspect of NL hold em that I really enjoy is being able to control the odds, not just react to them. Thus, if I read another player is drawing to a nut flush I can bet enough to make a call wrong. Often in the lower buy in touranments ($5 and $1) people will call anything for a nut flush, and while it stinks when they hit it, you clean up when they don't (which, as you point out, is the majority of the time). The difference in NL is that I've set the odds for them so that they're consistently losing money rather than winning with those calls. I read the two books by Harrington for tournament style hold em, and they have definitely made me into a winning player. Of course, they are focused only on the single game, but for NL Hold Em tournament style, I can't imagine there's too many other good books out there. He definitely explains odds, how to calculate them and how to control them so that you make plays unprofitable for other players. I've also adapted some of the strategies a little to NL Hold Em ring games, but I don't really enjoy those as much. At least in a tournament when someone draws out against you when they didn't have the odds you have the opportunity to come back. In a cash game you just lost a lot of money and that player (who you just learned something important about) might leave the table before you hit another good hand!

I normally play a pretty tight game, but since I'm playing tournaments that changes things a little. I generally start out tight, only playing the top 10 or so hands, but start loosen up as the table tightens, and then tightening up as it loosens. Both Harrington and Ferguson have said this is the key to winning NL Hold Em tournaments, and I can say with out a doubt they are correct.

My biggest frustration with online poker is how quickly they raise the blinds in these touranments- and after playing on a few different sites, ultimatebet seems better about it in their sit-n-goes than most of the others. I find that the other sites quickly devolve into all-in show downs even with several people left at the table, whereas at UB it only starts to happen when you get down to the final 2 or 3 people (when you're already in the money anyway).

The other game that I play is 7 card stud, only because it's what I used to play and I enjoy it. I'm not as good at it, though, because I haven't had a resource like Harrington's book to give me any insights. Pretty much I use the strategy of "only open with a strong hand and fold if I don't have at least two pair by the fifth card" and it works well enough.

Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun, and unless I'm experience a LOT of variance, am playing winning poker- mostly tournament style. Of course, I also understand (thanks to Harrington) the concept of calculating and controlling odds. I no longer make those calls for flushes that aren't profitable- and I'm not even tempted any more. I am up about 8 times what I put in in early January, so that feels good. Of course, it's all small stakes so I'm not earning any real money, but I'm having a blast.

I think I've worked out where we're going wrong our our occassional empeg holdem friendly - you didn't mention anything about copious quantities of beer and spliffs!

Rob

That's an absolutely fascinating and informative post, TigerJimmy. Thanks!

Some questions:

1. I'd be scared to play online for real money because I don't know which sites are reputable. I don't know if I'd be giving my credit card number to some site based in another country that's going to just take it all and leave me with no recourse. How can you tell if you're dealing with someone reputable?

2. How does a professional gambler handle tax returns?

To answer question 1- you don't usually give the sites your credit card directly. You can go through a paypal-type middle man which makes it safer and easier. I've used FirePay and have had no issues.

Most of the bigger sights seem to be very reputable- ultimatebet (where I play) has a some big names from the poker world endorsing it, so there would be a lot to lose if they started playing fast and loose with people's money.

UB has been very good about refunding money when technical issues arise (a tournement freezes midway through) except for recently- they just did somekind of server upgrade and have been swamped with technical issues. This, in turn, has made them slow with responding to emails and such. So I'm actually trying other sites until they get things straightened out. So far I've tried FullTilt (which I hated) and PartyPoker (which was OK). I've had such good experience with UB that I'll be back as soon as it's all working and stable again.

The one issue that always comes up is random number generation. There are ALWAYS players complaining when cards fall against improbably odds, not realizing that if you play enough hands, the improbable is certain to happen. From what I've read, some sites are better than others about random number generation- though I have to believe that by this point most of them would have it figured out by now. If you want a real interesting read, go to www.ultimatebet.com and read about the way they do random number generation. It's pretty cool (I can't link a "gambeling" site from work so you'll have to find it on your own).

It would be very cool, however, to play some games with empeggers if anybody was ever interested. I've played a few games with people at work and it's always more fun that way.

One thing I will say to those who might be interested in casual play- the "play money" games are NOT FUN AT ALL. Don't even waste your time. Best case is that they will teach you how to play the game very badly and you'll lose a lot of money if you ever trying playing in a real money game with those bad habits.

...rather: 2) How does a professional _online_ gambler handle winnnings? Online gaming for money is still illegal in most states, even if it is poorly or not enforced. Feel free to not answer my question, of course! ;-)

I recently read about poker bots (programatically perfect software players), what's your experience (if any) with that? Last I read it was described as the greatest threat to online poker gaming (The Economist a few months back, I believe).

-Zeke

Well, you could at least have it fold all the hands you don't want to play. Also, you're using a pretty fixed algorithm in order to win. There's no reason you couldn't program that into a computer, or, again, at least enough that it knows when to hand it off to a real person.

Well, I'll try to add my $0.02 to these comments. First I'll tackle the limit vs. no-limit and tournament vs. cash game discussion.

I play tournaments when I judge they are positive EV for me compared to the amount I can win in cash games in the same time investment. I also play "no-limit" in live games wherever possible, if the money is deep compared to the blinds (I'll explain this in detail).

Harrington's book excellent, and it is the best thing out there for no-limit. The whole first volume and first chapter of the second volume apply just as well to cash games as tournaments. It's a great book, and I have no doubt that you are beating the small NL games after studying that book. It is an EV focused book and everything I said in my first post applies to this as well.

These days, NL is almost always played with a "capped buy-in", which technically means it isn't NL at all. It's a kind of spread-limit where you can bet anywhere from the big blind amount up to the maximum buy-in. Notice that tournaments are *identical* in this respect, you never have the option of buying in for ten times as many chips as everyone else if you wanted to, which you *can* in a true NL game. The only true NL Holdem game I am aware of is spread at the Wynn in Las Vegas -- everything else is this crippled capped buy-in version.

There is an important reason for this, as well as some important implications for an expert player. The reason why capped buy-in games predominate is because "true" no-limit (with no buy-in caps) allows an expert player to have too much edge over average or even good competition. Prior to the recent surge in popularity of NL Holdem caused by the TV coverage of the WSOP, no-limit holdem was not played, except for in that tournament main event. All the amateur players had been busted and no-limit games were no longer spread. It is widely believed among experts that no-limit is bad for poker, because it throws the balance of luck vs. skill too much in favor of skill; the recreational players don't stand a chance when the "money is very deep".

True no-limit poker is a game of implied odds. To use your example of overbetting the pot to force out flush draws, in a real NL game with deep stacks, I can call this overbet on the flop, provided that you still have lots of money in front of you. Now if I catch my draw, you'll make another pot-sized bet and I can set you all-in, or I can wait until the river to do this. The odds on the flop don't mean nearly as much when the money is deep. How do you like your set when you get check-raised all-in on the river when the 3rd flush card comes? A tough NL player can do this as a bluff, too.

With capped buy-in games, you NEVER have to deal with these difficult and highly skillful decisions. The money simply isn't deep enough. They way the game is played today, the so-called NL games are usually played with two betting rounds. Often all the money is in preflop. What doesn't go in preflop goes in on the flop. You should probably be playing that way in a capped buy-in game, too, in most cases. Even if there is some money left by the turn, usually it isn't much and the pot-size makes a call pretty much automatic with any kind of hand. What this does is diminish the advantage of the expert for three reasons: he can't use his superior hand reading ability for profit on later streets, he only has two betting rounds (in most big hands) to profit from his better judgement, and it diminishes the importance of position (once you're all-in position is irrelevent). Basically, capping the buy-in puts more "gamble" in the game. When the money is really deep, though, and the expert can make a huge bet on the river because there is still a lot of money left, then it's a whole different ball game, to say the least.

As a matter of fact, there is a strategy for NL games called the "Short-Stack Strategy" that relies on getting all the money in preflop or on the flop. It is extremely effective and profitable, and can be learned in about 15 minutes. Ed Miller gives the outline of this strategy in his second book, Getting Started in Holdem, and there is an excellent detailed analysis of it on the 2+2 forums. Basically, it relies on a guranteed preflop +EV situation, and totally eliminating implied odds of your opponents.

Online tournaments are always short-money affairs, except for a few major large buy-in events which may start out a bit like a deep money game. The Sit-N-Go's are particularly short stacked. Because of this, it is extremely easy to protect your hand with a pot overbet (because there are no implied odds, nobody can profitably call short), and in my opinion, it becomes a very simple game to play. Ferguson and Harrington have both said that the #1 tournament poker skill is knowing the end-game strategy for very short-money preflop all-in moves. Harrington explains how to develop that strategy in his section on what he calls "Structured Hand Analysis" in Volume 2. The shorter the money, the more quickly it becomes necessary to make these "low m" decisions. I was working on a multi-dimensional parametric model of that, but I haven't spent time on it recently since I don't play many tournaments anymore. In my opinion, there is way more money to be made in the cash games, and with much less variance, meaning a smaller bankroll is required.

Because of these issues with NL poker, capped buy-in or not, the long-term future of Holdem is limit. Limit is a vastly more complex game (compared to capped buy-in NL), for reasons you suggest -- you can't easily protect your hand with an overbet. You've got to do some complicated things to protect your hand in limit poker. "Real" NL Holdem probably is the "Cadillac of Poker", and is definitely a very, very complex game. But that is NOT the "NL Holdem" that people play today, and the difference is enormous.

All poker is about playing the players by the time you get to an intermediate level of play. That is definitely not only the case with the NL games. In fact, because of the way the NL is played today, and how easy it is to get an edge, it could be argued that adjusting for opponents is more important in limit holdem, because you are sure to have 4 betting rounds to employ this information.

Regarding the legality of online poker, I think it is very much a grey area. It doesn't really matter for taxes, though. You are still required to pay taxes on illegal income in the US. Most pros I know declare the winnings as "other income". There are accountants who specialize in gambling taxation.

Many people are concerned about poker-playing computer programs before they become serious online players. There are a few poker playing "bots" out there, and they can win in small-stakes games for a small amount. I'm can't be certain, but I believe I encountered one once. My experience was similar to what others have reported on 2+2: the bot is pitifully easy to play against, and relies on an extremely weak-tight "nut peddler" strategy. It's really easy to stay out of the way of this kind of thing. I've read game theory papers about certain poker situations and the general consensus is that a really tough bot that can play well in more than just heads-up (2 player) situations is beyond the existing mathematical understanding of the game. The game really IS that complex.

However, let's consider: what would happen if someone programmed an awesome, world-class, unbeatable bot? It would be no big deal. To understand why you need to understand how you make money in a poker game. You make money from other players making -EV decisions. The sum of everyone's expectation must be zero. If we have a +EV situation, it's because someone else has a -EV situation. This is referred to as the "Fundamental Theorem of Poker", a term coined by David Sklansky. All it means is this: we profit from the mistakes of others.

If all 9 opponents in a 10-handed game were these "killer bots", then sure, we couldn't win since they would play perfectly and make no -EV mistakes against us. If there were 1 killer bot in the game and 8 fish, then the game would remain hugely profitable. We wouldn't make money from the bot, but who cares? We're there to make money from the fish! Having a killer bot in the game would be NO DIFFERENT than having another expert player in the game. This is no big deal -- it's just close to zero EV for both of us.

It is often said that the most important poker skill is game selection. You want to play in games with poor players who are making lots of technical mistakes, and avoid games filled with players who don't make many mistakes. The bots don't change that at all.

Even though I believe bots are irrelevant to the game (they are weak, and wouldn't matter even if they weren't), the online sites see this as a PR concern, and take measures to detect automated playing. Most big cardrooms have something similar to those "bot proof" squiggly letter systems you see on some web sites. If your play matches a bot profile (by playing 24 hours nonstop, or other metrics) then you need to type in this machine unreadable letter sequence. There are actually lots of anti-cheat software precautions they use. They are much better able to detect and stop multiplayer collusion than a live cardroom is, for example.

As far as what sites I play on, most of my play is on Party Poker, but I also play on Bodog, Pacific, Eurobet, Interpoker, and Paradise Poker. They are all reputable. Party Poker is definitely the most popular and probably has the best software. Eurobet or Pokerroom have a client that works on Macs. The rest are Windoze only, unfortunately. I think all the big sites are reputable. Party Poker is a publicly traded company and has bigger fish to fry that stealing the money on deposit. Like Jeff said, you use an online bank account similar to Paypal. All the poker sites accept Neteller, which is kind of the standard. I use Neteller, Firepay, and Moneybookers, depending on the situation.

Jim

In general, the games get tougher as you move up to higher stakes. The free games are no fun because the players don't seem to care about the results.

One poker author said, "poker is not a card game played with money, it is a money game played with cards." Money is the whole bidding system. When the bidding system has no value, the game becomes pointless.

There are place where you can play for .01/.02 (one penny, two pennies) and while the competition is bad, you don't get the silliness of the free games.

Chris Ferguson actually started with a total bankroll of $1, playing .01/.02 and moving up as he won, never wagering more than 10% of his total bankroll. He has never been busted, and he is worth many millions today.

Jim

Jim

Quote:
However, if I used that then I'd be missing valuable information from watching the other players (more important in tournament games than ring games).

You've got this exactly backwards, Jeff. The information about your opponent's play is more important in cash games. In tournaments, tables break frequently and you don't get to play with any particular opponent for very long. On top of that, the money gets short fast and then the play is pretty much mathematically driven (at low m numbers). In a cash game, you can play with that guy for hours and hours, over many days or months or years. Knowing how he plays in detail translates into enormous profits.

I'm not saying that it isn't important to understand how they're playing in tournaments. It is very important. But it is absolutely not more important than in cash games.

In tournaments, it is more important to *quickly* assess an opponent, but you will almost always have less information on him than you would in a cash game. You can typically make much more sophisticated reads and plays in a cash game for this reason. In tournaments, you are more often forced to go with the percentages simply because you don't know the players that well.

FWIW,
Jim

I see the subject of bots has come up, but is there realtime card counting and graphing software available?

One question: why limit hold em over 7 card stud? I've always enjoyed 7 card stud over hold em, and when I'm going to play a limit game I'm gravitating toward 7 card stud. I guess the answer doesn't matter too much, since I'm more interested in having fun that winning a lot of money, but I'm interested in your perspective as someone doing it at your level. It seems to me that both games have a pretty even ratio of knowledge of player's hands (the big difference being that stud gives you more knowledge of what others DON'T have, as well as what is not available for your drawing hands).

Yeah, that's the reason. You make money from people who are making incorrect decisions.

I was also going to mention, and I forgot, that there is an excellent reference for 7-stud, since you mentioned you were having touble finding one: 7 Card Stud for Advanced Players, by Ray Zee, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmouth.

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I downloaded the two programes you mentioned and am slighly overwhelmed, though it looks like there is some great information there. My favorite feature so far is the pop ups that show mucked hands. I'm ALWAYS digging through the history to see these hands, so that feature alone is worth the purchase. However, as far as the statistics on the players go, do you have any insights on what the most important ones are and how to read them?

I'm glad you like these programs. I agree, the hole card thing is just awesome.

These are the key stats I consider:

Preflop VP%IP and Preflop Raise percentages give you an idea of whether you need to respect this player's raise. Note that a player can be a loose player but a very tight raiser, playing 70% of his hands but only risking a raise with AA or KK. These stats tell you that. You can easily fold to these guys when they raise.

Also preflop, in a steal situation I look at the defenders FBBTS, and FSBTS (folded BB to steal, folded SB to steal). I don't have this on the PA HUD overlay, but it is in the list of stats that pop up when I click a player. There is no sense running a steal with K5o against players who will never fold their blinds. On the other hand, if you've got a good seat with bad players to your right and two tight players to your left, sometimes you'll have a situation where when you have the button the blinds are folding 80+% to a steal. I will literally raise first in on the button with any two cards in that situation.

Postflop, I look at Postfolp Aggression to determine how likely the raise or check-raise means anything. Players with PFA above 1.5 will check-raise draws, and you need to discount their aggression a bit. When a weak, passive player with an aggression factor of 0.3 check-raises the turn, he's got himself a hand.

Other key postflop stats are Went to Showdown and Won $ at Showdown. If a player's Went to Showdown is high (above 45% say), and his Won at Showdown is low, like 40%, this means he is showing down too many weak hands. Against this player you value bet relentlessly, because he'll pay off with weak hands. Don't check behind on the river. If the stats are way off the other way, like 20%/70%, then he's folding too much, and you can run a semi-bluff with a big draw and push him off a hand, bet scary turn cards, etc. You exploit his weakness by making him fold when he shouldn't.

In general, the stats help you find where your opponent's game is away from optimal, then play in such a way that allows them to make serious mistakes that they are already predisposed to making. You don't try to make calling stations fold by bluffing. If anything, when they do it you are moving their game toward the optimum. You want to encourage people to continue to play away from optimum and even increase the chances for doing it. Against a habitual bluffer, just keep check/calling him and let him bluff his chips off to you. Against a rock, you occasionally check-raise bluff the turn to exploit the fact he folds *too much*. The stats tell you where their game is suboptimal.

Those 5 are the key stats: VP$IP, PFR, PFA, WTSD, W$SD. Also, for the postflop aggression, click the "More Details" button on the General tab and make sure you are NOT including preflop play in the postflop aggression statistics.

I guess I have one more key stat, which is particularly useful in NL games. It is the "Folded to Continuation Bet" stat. When you raise a limper preflop with AK, it is nice to know how often he folds to a "continuation bet", a bet on the flop when you miss. I keep FTCB on the overlay because occasionally you'll see someone way out of whack, like 85% and you can pick up lots of pots against them by just betting the flop.

I also display the number of hands I have on each player. Folded to Steal and Folded to Continuation Bet are statistics that don't converge until you have several hundred hands on a person, while things like VPIP, PFR and PFA are usually fairly reliable by 100 hands.

I have my PA HUD setup to give me street-by-street stats on players when I click on them. I can email you my PA HUD setup if you want so you can see how it works. Or I can send you a screenshot if you want (or post it if others are interested).

Hope this helps. Get a hold of me or reply here if you have more questions.

Jim

Yeah, actually, 7-Stud is more tiring to play because you've got to keep track of all the dead cards because they can drastically effect your drawing odds.

It is also nice to be able to see the last card, which you don't in 7-stud. In some cases (almost always multi-way pots) you can fold for 1 bet on the river when the draw completes where in stud you're going to have to pay off because you don't know if he caught.

The biggest games are played as "mixed" games, so the world-class players need to know all the games. A common variant is HORSE, which stands for Holdem, Omaha/8, Razz, 7-Stud, and 7-Stud Eight or better Hi/Low split. Lately, 2-7 Triple-Draw Lowball is being played instead of razz. Anyhow, these guys play a complete table orbit of one game, then switch to the next in rotation. It's not good enough to be an expert at one game, though most of them are best in one game.

By the way, have you noticed how the TV shows make "reads" out to be some odd psychological nonsense like noticing if a persons eyebrow twitches? Most reads are simply logical deductions of your opponent's holding based on how they play and what the action has been thus far in the hand. There is a great example of "hand reading" on Howard Lederer's web site.

Also, you may want to pick up Roy Cooke's, Real Poker II: The Play of Hands. This is one of my favorite books. The entire book is examples of Roy working through the hand reading logic. Pure gold.

Jim

I'm not sure I understand your question. For poker there is Poker Tracker, which keeps real-time (actually near-real-time) statistcs on the play.

Card Counting software would not be helpful because online blackjack games are not countable. They are typically "reshuffled" after only a few hands.

Jim

Wow- you are the man. Thanks for all of that- I'll be exploring these stats quite a bit. I'd like to see your HUD setup, but after I've played with it a bit and understand the values more. I don't understand what a lot of the abbreviations mean, and I'm not sure on the significance of the ones I do get. However, your post really helps a lot in both respects- and it's nice to start with a few stats I understand and move from there. Of course, these are all the things I watch anyway, but this program is a lot better and remembering than I am!

My current practice has been to write notes on players when I notice specific things. Those are, of course, one-time events though and may not represent a players tendencies. But it's the best I've been able to do up until now.