Inducing the Allin in Large Pots

A little while ago Kajagugu did a few posts on inducing a squeeze play from another player acting after you when you actually have a strong hand, and I always enjoy reading how people like to induce certain actions from their opponents at the poker table. Now, to be clear the squeeze-induce is not a play that I really ever try, as I think you have to have such a great read that another player at the table is inclined to make a big raise with a less then premium hand that this is just not feasible in most cases. But, there are tons of tricks that I regularly employ at the tables to get my opponents to take or not to take particular actions. One of my favorite types of inducement has always been getting another player to move in on me when I have a strong hand.

Inducing the all-in has obvious value in no-limit holdem tournaments. To be honest, all-in inducement is probably the way I have eliminated most of the players that I've played against in the nlh tournaments you guys see me in on a near nightly basis, and it's something that I use especially frequently in the blonkaments, mostly because the majority of the bloggers are so dam easy to manipulate. More than anything else, I think my position, the size of the current pot and the amount of chips left in my target opponent's stack are the three most significant factors in deciding how to get my opponent to move allin on me when I believe I have the best hand. Let me give a few examples to show how I like to get opponents to move allin on me:

1a. Opponent's stack is less than half the current pot; I am out of position. Example: I have 8000 chips and my opponent has 4200 chips. I have AA and raise the 600-chip blind to 2400 preflop in middle position, and only my opponent calls from the button. This puts 5700 chips in the pot, leaving me with 5600 chips and my opponent with just 1800 chips, and we see a flop of Q94 rainbow. Here, with 5700 chips in the pot, and with my pocket Aces almost surely ahead on this flop, I want that guy's last 1800 chips. But if I bet out 1800 (or 1799, who are we kidding) here and he has a hand like AJ or even AK, he might fold and try to hold on for a better spot now that the flop is already out and has missed his hand. But, if I check here instead, the odds are very high that he will move in his last 1800 chips. The pot is so big at this point, and his stack is so small in relative terms, that he almost has to move in here to hopefully move me off my hand for his last 1800 chips, even the guy with the exact same AJ or AK hand that I mentioned above. Now I can call with confidence and I've gotten the last of my opponent's stack with him doing all the work for me.

1b. Opponent's stack is less than half the current pot; I am in position. Example: I have 8000 chips and my opponent has 4200 chips. I have AA and raise the 600-chip blind to 2400 preflop in middle position, and only my opponent calls from the big blind. This puts 5700 chips in the pot, leaving me with 5600 chips and my opponent with just 1800 chips, and we see a flop of Q94 rainbow. Here, with 5700 chips in the pot, and again with my pocket Aces almost surely ahead given this fairly raggy flop, I still want that guy's last 1800 chips. But here, my opponent acts first, and let's say he checks (since this is after all an exercise in inducing the allin). If I bet my opponent's last 1800 chips here, then I'm in the same situation as above, where he might call but he might be tempted to fold. Instead, I like to check here in this spot, given that the flop has no reasonable draws and a free card should not hurt me too badly here. I would esimtate that a good 80 to 90% of the time in this spot, my opponent will lead out allin on the turn card, again because the pot has grown so large compared to the size of his stack, and now I have shown weakness by checking the flop, so once again my opponent thinks he might be able to steal the entire pot, but only by moving in the remainder of his 1800 chip stack into the 5700-chip pot.

2a. Opponent's stack is between half the current pot and the full size of the current pot; I am out of position. Example: I have 11000 chips and my opponent has 7200 chips. I have AA and raise the 600-chip blind to 2400 preflop in middle position, and only my opponent calls from the button. This puts 5700 chips in the pot, leaving me with 8600 chips and my opponent with just 4800 chips, and we see a flop of Q94 rainbow. Here, with 5700 chips in the pot, and with those pocket Aces that I have to figure to be ahead on this flop, I again want to devise a plan to get this guy's last 4800 chips. Here, unlike in Examples 1a and 1b, my opponent's stack is not so small compared to the size of the pot, so he is not nearly as likely to push them allin just by me checking the action to him on this flop. Instead, here, I like to use the small-bet instead of the check, both to get a little bit more money into the pot, and to give off the impression that I do not love my hand and might be able to be pushed off of it by a significant raise (that will cost the opponent his entire stack to effect). So here, with 5700 chips in the pot and 4800 chips left in my opponent's stack, I might bet something like 1800 chips here.

This decision to select the exact number of chips to bet is not a cavalier one, and requires I think careful consideration from both directions. First, I don't ever want to be the donkey making the post-oak bet that just screams out that I want to be raised. I mean, that might work against the absolute simplest of opponents, but against any kind of real competition, if you bet out only 600 or 800 chips into the 5700-chip pot in this spot, you are either going to get a skeptical call or they are going to fold. I might fold a shitty hand in that spot if I am the opponent, as I can only assume that you want to be raised and expect me to raise you when you make a tiny bet like that relative to what's already in the pot. So in this case I like to go with a bet that is smallish enough to still indicate weakness to my opponent, yet is large enough that it won't stand out as downright silly in a pot of this size. 1800 chips or so seems about right for a few reasons. #1 it is roughly a third of the pot, which is right around the minimum size bet you'll ever see me make in any sizeable pot or else I risk looking too post-oaky and not making a serious attempt to take down the pot, which is just not the way I play or I advocate others playing the game. #2 and more importantly, 1800 is a bet that can plausibly be raised allin by my opponent where he may think he can take down the pot with such a raise. In other words, if I had bet 2800 chips here instead of 1800 chips, then my opponent's allin reraise would only add another 2000 chips on top of what is then nearly 10k in the pot, which is a raise that I am obviously going to call. Now he's not going to bluff or raise-light in this spot since he knows he has no fold equity. But with 1800 chips, that will leave him with a plausible raise of 3000 more on top. Now, even though I still probably call with any kind of a solid hand there, if I happen to be bluffing or in there with a hand like 3rd pair or just an inside straight draw or something with a limited number of outs against a made hand, he should have reasonably high confidence that I will fold to his allin reraise of his last 3000 chips on top.

Note as well that if I am in position in the above example (2), and my opponent checks the action to me on the flop, I will once again often try to make this same smallish bet on the flop there, for all the same reasons and in hopes of the same results as described in the example above. My overall point here is that, if the relative stack size of your opponent is at or below the size of the pot, and I believe I have a winning hand after the flop, there is often ample opportunity to goad an opponent into moving his chips into the pot, either by checking where my opponent is clearly committed to what is a substantial pot size, or by betting smallish where my opponent may need a bit more convincing to try to take down the pot after I can portray to them a sense of weakness or at least of unease about my own hand being best. Of course, when the chip stacks of the players involved are much larger than the current size of the pot, it often becomes impossible to use normal trickery to get people to move in their chips against me without them holding the nuts. Perhaps those situations can be the subject of a later post.

Hope this is helpful reading for some of you out there. In the meantime, don't forget to register for the Mookie tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt. Password as always for Mookie's tournaments is "vegas1". Tonight I can promise some solid donkery with my own stack as I have been bounced off of every virtual wall on full tilt poker on most of the nights of the past couple of weeks, so come by the Mook and hope you're at my starting table to take advantage of the tiltiest and donkiest player online. See you tonight at 10pm!

6-Max NLH Cash -- Betting Tricks

For starters, let me say that I did not play the WWdN last night, the tournament that first got me interested in playing with the bloggers and that eventually led to me starting up this blog itself. And it feels goooood. Too good. Too good not to wake up remembering how someone who can't even spell poker made a horrendous call against me. Too good not having the memory of some rediculous set of cards hitting the board to take my better hand and make mincemeat of it in a key spot. Too good to have no negative feelings at all about what happened to me or how I played in general among the ghey little group of bloggers with whom I spend so much of my time online at the virtual tables. I know it shouldn't feel that good. But it does. All of which is to say that it is clear to me that taking the night off from the blogger tournament circuit was a good thing. No evening blood boiling = no morning mental hangover for Hoyazo.

And don't get me wrong -- I did play a bit of poker last night. After watching a good first-season X-Files episode on dvd with the Hammer Wife, I fired up the new laptop and surveyed the night's mtt scene on full tilt. I eventually settled on the 10:30pm ET FTOPS Main Event satellite for a $26 buyin, which ended up sporting I think 60 players, including fellow bloggers Kajagugu and NumbBono and awarding FTOPS ME seats to the top three finishers. Although I did not win the seat in this thing, for the second straight night I ran deep, only falling in a huge allin preflop pot against the chip leader when my JJ failed to hold up against his AK. Why people with chip leads persist in calling allins from significant stacks with just AK remains a mystery to me, but in this case it worked out for him and IGH in 12th place for the second straight night in an FTOPS satellite. So that brings the total spent on qualifying for FTOPS even up to $52 over two days, but frankly both of those buyins were won with tokens acquired in $13.75 heads-up token sngs, so it's really more like $27.50 spent so far to try to get in to the big-buyin FTOPS events.

OK on to today's poker topic, which is cash games, and some of the tricks I see and like to use myself at the cash tables. As I have alluded to on a few occasions on the blog recently, I've been taking some time almost every night to play some cash games, mostly focusing on $.50-1 6-max nlh as suggested to me by Raveen a few weeks ago. And it's been going well overall, with my only big losses along the way coming from suckouts and from horrible river cards that completely ruin what was otherwise a nice play building up by me. What I'm finding in my own play in these cash games, at least at this level, is that I am making the majority of my profits not from playing super-tight starting cards and by always folding one pair on the flop, but rather by playing my opponents far more than I'm playing my own cards (and also playing good starting cards, don't get me wrong). Today I wanted to show you guys two hands from my cash game play last night, review some of the potentially subtle trickery I see going on, and ask the question of the cash game regulars out there, is this how you guys are making your money playing cash?

Hand #1: We're about 30 minutes in to a session at $.50-1 6-max nlh. I'm in the big blind with A7o, and the action folds around to the small blind, who thinks for a moment before just limping. Now, early on in a tournament I might be tempted to just take a free flop with this hand, planning to outplay my opponent on a later street or hoping to flop an Ace and maybe play it slow enough to get another bet or two out of my opponent. But in cash games I've found it much better business to just play it fast when I have reason to believe I'm ahead on the flop, and when I can lose actual cash money if I get sucked out on later in the hand by just checking along in the earlygoing. So I raise just about the size of the pot, and my opponent calls my raise to see a flop heads-up:



The flop comes Q64 rainbow. So I've missed the flop entirely, but in all likelihood since my opponent called a near-pot raise preflop and thus probably has some kind of high cards, he has likely missed it too, and in my mind my A7 is likely to still be best here. My opponent thinks for a while and leads out a little less than the size of the pot. Now, this guy has watched me c-bet on several occasions when I was the bettor or raiser preflop, so I figure him for a steal here, at most with one of the lower pairs on the board but more likely with just two high cards that are overpairs to the lower two cards on the board. Thus, going with my read, I go with the reraise here:



My opponent then does something that I seem to see all the time at the cash games, at least at this level:



Yep. The dreaded min-reraise. But in my experience, while in tournaments the minraise in a sizeable pot often indicates strength and an attempt to elicit a call or a reraise, in cash games at the level I am playing them, more often than not I have found this to indicate weakness, and probably a steal attempt. If the pot or the raise from my opponent had been a bit bigger I might have felt differently, but in this case, I'm thinking why not raise it up to 45 or 50 bucks if he really has a good hand and wants to get rid of me right now. Raising me just the $15 on top of the $15 I had already put into the pot just smacked of weakness to me, of a guy who was putting me on a steal-raise and who wanted to get me to lay down my garbage and give him a nice sized pot. Think about it -- I raised the pot from the big blind only after he had open-limped from the small blind, and then the flop had come by all rights pretty dam raggy with just the Q64 rainbow. Unless I just happen to have a Queen in my hand here, which is not so likely given my preflop raise, then my opponent, whom I had observed to be a thinking kind of player, is fair to assume I might be bluff-raising him here. It's a bit of an aggressive move for me to be making, but at the same time it's not all that uncommon at a cash game in my experience.

So, still putting my opponent on a bluff-reraise here, I decide I am going to go ahead and re-reraise him to now make him think I obviously must have a hand. There's enough in the pot at this point that it's worth it for me to take down now, and since I don't possibly put him on a pocket pair, AQ or KQ due to his preflop open-limp from the small blind, and I don't put him on Q6, Q4 or 64 either due to his calling my preflop raise, I just don't see what he could have that would justify his calling another re-reraise from me here.

Plus, and you can see the beginning of this in the image above, I also two other semi-tricky moves that I have found very profitable and effective over time, both in cash games and in tournaments, but especially in the cash games (at least at the $100 nl level). I want this guy to think I actually have a good hand here. Unlike his preflop action, I actually did raise it up preflop, and I raised him right away on the flop as well when he led out with a bet, so unlike him, I've actually played this hand all along like I could have QQ, 66, 44, AQ or KQ. So, the first ploy I made use of is I let the timer click all the way down to just one tick left in the timer bar before I raise. As Don was just writing about the other day, the tick-down followed by a big raise almost every single time means the bettor is strong. So, I used this move while running a complete bluff, and I combined that with another form of deception that I also see commonly used in the cash game scenario: I reraised him big, but just barely not quite all of my chips. By leaving just a few chips in my stack -- not enough to seem at all like I'm leaving myself an escape hatch, mind you -- I've given the impression that I'm trying to appear a bit weakish, which along with the timer tick-down move, I am hopeful will give the overall impression that I am actually quite strong. So, I re-re-reraise my opponent with air here to $63, leaving myself just $7 left in my stack, after deliberately letting my time clock tick down to just one second left before acting:



And my opponent insta-folds, indicating to me that I was right all along. This guy had nothing and was just putting a move on me, which I thwarted by sticking with my read and by using some tactics that I often see used -- and more importantly, that I know my opponent often sees used -- by strong players who desperately are trying to elicit calls. That was a fun hand right there.

Hand #2: This hand took place on the same table as the above hand, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, and I am once again in the blinds, this time the small blind, with JTs. UTG limps preflop for $1, and I call the limp myself for just another 50 cents with a great multi-way hand. Then the big blind makes a move that I have personally observed him do at this very table at least three times, which is to pot-raise a bunch of limpers preflop when he acts near the end of the action. Having watched him do this on multiple occasions and take down pots without even having to show anything down, to me this raise meant absolutely nothing about the strength of his hand, and I honestly believed from observing him that he would make this exact same move with 42o (forever called the "Waffles" in my mind) as he would with a nice pocket pair or whatever. So I like my JTs against that hand range, so after UTG folds for the raise, I make the call and see a flop with a little over $10 in the pot:



The flop comes K43 rainbow. Another non-threatening flop, and frankly another one where my read so far in the hand tells me I am likely to be ahead. But rather than get crazy betting out against a big stack at my table with just Jack-high, I opt to go for the check on the flop here, and see what my opponent wants to do with the hand, although I put him on nothing good and don't see it as likely at all that he has a King or any kind of a pocket pair based on my preflop read thus far in the hand:



My opponent on the big stack bets out $7.95 into a $10.45 pot. This bet struck me immediately was another example of a trick which I see used all the time at the cash tables -- again at least at the lower limits where I've been playing, maybe not at the higher limits because it's a recockulously ghey move -- but his bet of $7.95 seems to be sized at a number that happens to look like a ton of chips in the graphics on-screen. I've seen many doofuses online in cash games try to make use of the way certain bets appear, by betting a big-looking amount like something with 95 cents attached to it, so that the bet appears physically more intimidating on-screen and thus is more likely to elicit folds from one's opponents. 95 times out of 100, especially at this level, when such a bet is made it is often done out of weakness, in that if you secretly wanted your opponent to call, then unless you're some crazy level-5-thinking mofo stuck playing $100 nl, you would make a bet that looks smaller, and thus less scary to call, on-screen rather than a scary-appearing amount like $7.95 with its two large stacks of chips. So, I take his particularly-sized flop bet here as weakness, which goes right along with my preflop read of possible weakness with the meaningless, automatic raise-the-limpers move that I'd seen him using all night at this table thus far. Thus, acting on my read, I reraise him big right here, representing a nice hand here with a raise of a little more than the size of the pot. Again, a minraise here I think might be viewed as weakness by many players, especially with the pot small like it is so far at this point in the hand, and I want to clearly portray the opposite, like I have a King or a big pocket pair or something like that. So I reraise him solidly right here on the flop:



My opponent thinks for a few seconds, and then calls. No further reraise, which I definitely would have expected if he was actually strong, given the size of the pot getting up there after my good-sized raise. So at this point I am so totally not putting this guy on a King or any other good medium pair or anything. I'm not sure why he called, but again at this level you run into people all the time who can't lay down for just one bet or one raise when they're caught stealing, even if they have nothing. They just hope they will get one more chance to make a big steal later in the hand, or that they'll maybe hit a miracle card on the turn or river. So he calls, I'm still pretty sure I'm ahead here or at least that I have my six Jacks and Tens as outs, and then turn card brings me a pretty Ten♥.

Now I've got second pair decent kicker in a hand where I never thought my opponent had a good piece of the flop, and now in case he might have been sitting on a draw, or a 3 or 4 in his hand for second or third pair, now I'm fairly sure I've taken the lead here. The pot has $50.35 in it at this point, and I want to bet here and bet enough to get this guy to lay down whatever he has -- be it a draw, a pair and an overcard like A3 or A4, maybe a low King that he might otherwise stick around with to beat me. However, once again I want to use a tactic that I think makes it more likely that my opponent will fold what I believe is a weak hand, and in this case that means betting enough to scare him off, but also betting not-so-much that it looks to my opponent like I may be trying to suck him in to making a call. I thought it over, and here was my decision:



$37 into a $50 pot. It's clearly enough to easily price out any draws, and yet my goal here is to also make it look like to my opponent like I might actually want him to call, maybe because I've got top pair and a nice kicker, maybe I've made two pairs, whatever. But I think the bet sizing is key here, because I can't bet so little that my opponent can profitably draw a card to the river at either a straight or a flush draw (or both) or even at some kind of two pairs given what I'm holding, and I don't want to bet so much that my opponent suddenly thinks his K2 or whatever might be best because I'm clearly just trying to chase him out of the pot here. To me, a bet like $37 screams out that I am strong, and that's exactly the impression I want to leave my opponent with at this point in the hand.

He folded:



and I took down a $50 pot. Not a huge dollar amount in absolute terms, but a half a buyin is half a buyin, and I'm not complaining.

So what is my point of all this post today? Number one, I thought it might be interesting to show some of the betting tricks that I see other players using with some regularity at the $100 nl cash tables, and to show how I use some of those common bet-sizing and bet-making tricks against thinking players to my own advantage, be it whether I have a strong hand and want a call, or a very weak hand and desperately want my opponent to fold.

Number two, I would really like to get the opinions of the cash game regulars out there about these betting tricks. Although I've played a bit at $200 nl (mostly to little success, as I am forever The Man Formerly Known as Cash Game Donkey), in general I do not play at the higher limits in cash games. And, my strong assumption is that this kind of bullshit, while very profitable at the lower levels, is going to be absurdly useless and ineffective as the betting limits progress above the $100 nl level. Frankly I cannot even imagine someone sitting down with $400 at a no-limit holdem cash table online, and proceeding to make scary-looking bets like $9.99 in an attempt to freak opponents out into folding. Similarly, I assume that using bet sizes like I outline above, or even more, allowing the timer to click down right near the end before making a bet, will be picked off much more frequently at the higher limits than they seem to work fairly regularly at $100nl. Among the readers who play at these higher levels, is this your experience as well? Do you guys use your own little betting tricks like these, or do you see them with any regularity at above the $100 nl level? I would love to know your thoughts on this point. In fact, generally speaking, do you higher-limit cash guys find that you're making a lot of your profits on plays like the ones I've described above? Or, rather, are the majority of your profits coming from hands like the ones profiled often on Lucko's blog, where you've actually made very strong hands and are finding ways to get opponents to pay you off? Again, this is something I would love to know, as I've had a lot of success against $100 nl 6-max over the past month or so, and may contemplate moving up levels in the near future if I continued to experience the success I've seen so far in my cash game play.

Tonight is the next Mookie tournament at 10pm ET on full tilt (password is vegas1 as always), also the latest BBT tournament where the points leaderboard is really starting to take shape. Come by and try to knock down current BBT leader Miami Don, and try to take out current "undefeated" 7-for-7 BBT points-makers BuddyDank and jeciimd before they hit the point. And while I'm on the topic, make sure to check out Iakaris's blog and jeciimd's blog, as the two invisible writers have actually returned with some actual blog posts over the past few days, much to my enjoyment and probably to yours as well. If nothing else we want to send some traffic these donkeys' way to help encourage them to keep up the posting, for however long the recent trend can last. Anyways, so make sure to show up for the Mookie tonight and get your game on in the biggest blogger tournament week in and week out. Normally I would attack your manhood here and make some veiled threats as far as what you all are if you don't play the Mook tonight, but to be honest I don't think I will be able to make it tonight due to some other plans I already have going on for this evening. If I can get in there I surely will, but don't count on me for some easy dead money in the first few minutes of the tournament tonight because I doubt I will be back and online in time for the tournament start. But I should be there for the Dookie and maybe for some more FTOPS satellite action as well later in the evening if all goes as expected this evening. Best of luck to everyone in the BBT points chase tonight, and I should see you later at the virtual tables.

Lost, March Madness, and Negreanu's Preflop Bet-Sizing Mistake

No rant for today (it's been a while since I had a good one of those, I'll see if I can fire something up for one day next week. Quick...somebody piss me off!), but I do as usual have a lot to get to, both inside and outside the world of poker.

For starters, yes I was always planning to comment about this week's Lost, but it just didn't fit in with the plan yesterday and, despite what you all may believe, I actually do try to keep these things relatively short (for me, anyways). Anyways, I have to agree with the general consensus that Lost on Wednesday was great. I won't quite say it was the best episode ever, as I have heard and read many other viewers say over the past 24 hours or so, but no doubt I thoroughly enjoyed it. It seems that the writers are finally really back in their stride this year, and almost week in week out the show is back to its old formula of interesting flashbacks, good storylines with actual meaningful plots, and Lost's particular brand of answering questions but raising five more almost every week. For example, it was great to finally learn how Locke ended up in that wheelchair. And what a phucking asshole that dad is, huh? Unreal. And Locke destroying that submarine was certainly interesting to see, although to be honest I don't see why he would do that in reality. I mean fine, maybe he doesn't want to go back, but there's no reason why he couldn't stay there with the Others -- Ben already seems to kinda like and accept him to some degree -- and yet still allow his friends to return to civilization. But wtf was Ben talking about with all that stuff about the box that opens up to reveal whatever you want to be in it? Huh? And what on earth (if that's even the right question) is Locke's father doing in that room at the end? And another thing -- is Ben or is Ben not the leader of the Others? At first when they caught him he kept talking about the leader. Then we see him barking orders in flashbacks and in the present. Then someone suggests there might be another leader ahead of him, and there is this other guy recruiting Juliette for Porject Dharma in the flashbacks, and seemingly ordering the murder of her ex-husband. Then we see Ben's power in even getting that judge lady Isabelle or whatever her name was to stop the trial of Juliette by overrulling her just by writing some orders down on a piece of paper, and it seems like he might actually be the leader after all. Then Mikhail a couple of weeks ago laughs when they suggest to him that Ben is the leader, and is clear that he's talking about someone who is above Ben in the pecking order. Now this week, Ben once again appears to be in charge. What the fug is going on with those people?

This is what I mean about what makes Lost so great IMO. They are just so good at giving you just enough information in most episodes to whet your appetite -- enough to keep you going and make you not be able to wait for next Wednesday night. Personally, I'm basically counting down the hours to the next Lost starting usually around Sunday evening, when the kids are asleep and I'm starting to think about the beginning to another long week of my "other" job (other than playing poker) in the office. In many ways looking forward to Lost is one of the things that gets me through the first couple days of the week, in that I probably think about it almost every day at some point and look forward to my next daily dose of just-enough-information-to-get-by. I'll tell you one thing that jeciimd pointed out to me in the girly chat that I think is just about the most on-point comment I've heard this week about Lost -- remember back within the past couple of months, when all anybody ever wanted was for the damn writers to get back to the old island and give us all our old characters back that we know and love? How long ago was that? 4 weeks? 5 weeks? Well look at it now. When I see the scenes from next week and see Sawyer yelling at somebody, Sun slapping Sawyer, etc., I have to admit, I'm kinda bored by that. I wanna get me some more of the Others! That's the interesting shit nowadays on Lost, don't you think? Great job by the writers on making that transition since the show returned to air early in February. Awesome episode this week, and it seems like mostly everyone agrees.

Well it's Friday in late March, and that means we had another batch of March Madness games going down on Thursday night, as half of the Sweet 16 turned into the Elite 8, with the remaining 8 teams playing down to 4 more to round out the Elite 8 after Friday night. Thursday saw Ohio State try its best to lose once again, this time going down by 20 points just before the end of the first half (its largest deficit at any time to any team this entire season before Thursday had been 9 points), before finally deciding to be ballas in the second half, quickly pour it on early and often and basically tie the game up with about 12 minutes left, after which time the teams battled it out, seesawing back and forth in what ended up being a really great game. In the end OSU pulled it out, sending a very disappointed but I think overmatched Tennessee team to the rail after a hard-fought loss, so OSU moves on to face John Calipari's Memphis Tigers, victors over upstart Texas A&M last night in a game that a whole bunch of bloggers were picking to go A&M's way. That was another great game (what else is new for March Madness?), which saw two free throws with just seconds left ice the 1-point victory for Memphis, running its incredible winning streak now to 25 consecutive games as they head into one of the great matchups of the tournament with Ohio State and monstrous "freshman" Greg Oden. And I put the quotes around the word freshman there because, and let's be honest here, Oden looks old enough and scary enough to be my phuckin grandfather, let alone my father. I can only assume he was held back 5 or 10 times in grade school or something, because that guy grows a thicker beard than me in about a 5-hour timespan, he's obviously about a foot and a half taller than me, and he just has the look of someone who's been everywhere, done it all, and is ready to kick some serious ass. Most 17-year-olds I know don't quite have that look about them that Greg Oden has. And what a block to preserve the victory last night for his Buckeyes.

In the other bracket, UCLA eliminated Pittsburgh in a matchup of UCLA coach Ben Howland against his former team, and he was able to lead the Bruins to an early lead that they just never gave up throughout the entire game. Pitt played admirably I think against a UCLA team that was undefeated for a while and was the #1 team in the country for a good portion of the season before faltering a bit at the end there, and so departs the last Big East team left in the tournament other than my Georgetown Hoyas who will play tonight. UCLA's win sets up another awesome matchup on Saturday, this one against regional #1 seed Kansas who held on for dear life for a 3-point victory against the Salukis of Southern Illinois. The Salukis put up a great fight and really put a scare into Kansas on a couple of occasions when they looked like they might be ready to take a nice lead in both halves, but in the end the all-around talent and tremendous coaching of Bill Self enabled Kansas to hold on to round out Thursday's slate of winners and set up two much-anticipated matchups for Saturday afternoon / evening. That's one good thing about there being very few upsets of the high seeds so far this year -- lots of great matchups of #1 and #2 seeds like Ohio State - Memphis and UCLA-Kansas to look forward to on the second weekend of the Big Dance.

Moving to tonight's games, first you've got last year's national champion Florida favored by 10.5 over midmajor darling Butler. I definitely pick Florida to win this game -- I had them beating Old Dominion in this round in my bracket because I had identified the sub-bracket with ODU and Butler as weak because the high seed, #4 Maryland, is one of these overseeded bloated ACC suckjob teams -- and I think the switchup to Butler will make it perhaps a little harder for Florida. But in the end Florida has the talent, the coaching, and after last year the experience to win this game tonight. That line is kinda big to me so if I had to pick a side I would have to go with Butler, but in reality I would probably avoid betting this game at all if given the choice (hopefully you have the choice). For entertainment purposes only, of course.

Next is a little team I like to call the Georgetown Hoyas battling it out with #6 seeded Vanderbilt, and as I mentioned earlier this week, this matchup looks fairly lopsided to me on paper. Of course that's why you always play out the games, but with Vanderbilt not even starting a center, and with their tallest player standing at just 6-foot-9 (on his tip-toes even), 7-2 Georgetown center Roy Hibbert ought to have a field day against this team. And the Hoyas have been real tough in almost every game this year when Hibbert was able to get his game on in the inside early. My Hoyas are favored by 7.5 in this game, and again I do think that is a fairly good line but if I had to pick it for entertainment purposes only, I would pick Georgetown to slightly best that spread and be one of the few teams to avoid a close game in this round of the Big Dance.

Oregon is favored by 3 points over surprising #7 seeded UNLV tonight in the first of the two late games, and even though the line opened at 2.5 and has now risen to 3 points, it seems to me that most people I know are jumping on the UNLV bandwagon, including several blogger types. Me, I'm sticking with Oregon. UNLV had a good little season this year, but Oregon quietly had a great season, not only compiling a 26-7 regular season record, but winning the Pac-10 tournament and winning its last 6 games heading into the NCAA Tournament in the process. And, they showed they can beat good teams, both at home and on the road, including big wins at Georgetown, Arizona, Washington State and USC, at and home against UCLA, Arizona and Washington State to boot. I see Oregon, another very well-coached team, ending the quasi-Cinderella season for UNLV tonight in a mid-single-digit victory, so I would lean towards a slight cover of the spread for UNLV in tonight's game.

Last tonight is UNC favored by 8.5 over USC, and this one is another real mismatch the way I see it. I think Carolina is better both inside and outside than an overmatched USC team that I am surprised has even made it this far in the tournament. Even though it's a fairly big line, I'm thinking Carolina is likely to win the game and cover this spread by the time the final whistle blows. I've had the feeling that Carolina and Georgetown have been set on a crash course to meet in the Elite 8 ever since the brackets first came out, and I don't see either team losing tonight in their Sweet Sixteen game as I think both teams are clearly better, stronger, faster and better coached than their respective opponents. And did I mention that if Georgetown wins the game tonight, I am going to the Sunday game at the Meadowlands, hopefully to watch that power UNC-Georgetown matchup live and in the flesh? Bring it on Tarheels. We'll break you just like Jeff Capel when he hit that halfcourt shot off the backboard to send the Duke-Carolina game into triple overtime back in 1994-1995 when Duke was so awful while Coach K(issmyass) was in the hospital and recovering from back surgery.

So that's it. After going 1-1 with my two picks last Friday, tonight I am giving up Butler plus 10.5 points, Georgetown minus 7.5 points, Oregon minus 3 points, and UNC minus the 8.5 points. So three favorites and just the one dog -- Butler -- on the entertainment purposes only picks for tonight, and even that dog I do think will lose the game overall, as all four favorites look to me to be poised to advance just like we saw in last night's games.

OK I did want to make one interesting poker point today before I sign off. You may recall me mentioning earlier in the week that I had recently bought a whole new spate of poker books. One of those was Daniel Negreanu's Hold'em Wisdom For All Players, a book I was hoping would be chock full of secrets and little tidbits as to exactly how Daniel reads other players so well and does what he does best, taking cheap flops with less than premium hands, and then making the best when he thinks he is ahead or his opponent his weak, and knowing when to fold 'em otherwise when he's just not feeling it. Instead, sadly, what I've found here about halfway through the book is largely a watered-down, thinned-out skin-n-bones poker text that barely even scratches the surface of anything that any of us would consider "advanced" poker concepts. I can't believe it. Why on earth would Daniel Negreanu bother writing such a lowest-common-denominator book on holdem like this? Having of all people Daniel Negreanu write a poker book on this simple a level is a bit like hiring Frank Lloyd Wright to design your kid's diorama-in-a-shoebox project for his second-grade class. I just don't understand it.

Anyways, one point Daniel makes in the middle of his book really struck me as downright bad advice, and I'd love to get your thoughts on it. In Chapter 13, Daniel basically advocates using bets between a third and three-quarters of the pot on the flop, and suggests that betting more than that will not likely change your opponents' decisions as to whether or not to call/raise or fold, but will just drain more money from your stack when you do end up losing the hand. To me, Daniel could not be more wrong about this. Now, as Sklansky points out very intelligently in his recent no-limit holdem book, bets on the turn can very sensibly be less (in relation to the size of the pot) than your bets on the flop, because on the flop you have 2 cards to come, and thus your opponents will have higher chances of making their straights, flushes and other drawing hands because they still have two chances to make them. Thus, Sklansky argues, your bets ought generally to be of a sufficient size on the flop to deter those players from drawing to their hands, in consideration of the fact that they still have two cards to come. On the turn, however, Sklansky correctly argues that now, with just one card to come, a much smaller bet (in relation to the then current size of the pot) is often sufficient to effectively price your opponents out of their draws, because your opponents will be facing much longer odds to draw to whatever hand they might be sticking around to try to hit. By completely ignoring this entire analysis and any mention even of this distinction between bet-sizing on the flop and bet-sizing on the turn, I think Daniel misses a key point here in the book and ends up giving advice that is truly terrible when applied to the most important situations in most holdem games.

As an example, imagine I have K♣K♠ and raise it up 3x. Two opponents call my 3x raise, and we see a flop of T♥9♥4♣. I like my hand here, and I'm fairly sure it's the best hand out there right now. However, with the Ten and 9 out there, a straight draw of some kind is not just possible but probably downright likely. And with the two hearts as well on the flop, anyone with two hearts in their hand is going to be tempted to draw at that flush as well. Now why on earth would I ever only bet a third of the pot here, or anything close to it even? As Erick Lindgren points out in his book Making the Final Table, draw-heavy boards call for larger flop bets than boards with no draws on them, and this is a perfect example of why. Let's say there's 1000 chips in the pot when the above flop falls and I've got the two Kings in my hand. If a player is on a straight draw or a flush draw, with two cards to come both of those hands are basically around 33% to win. That means they are 2-to-1 against filling if the players stay in to see both cards. At 2-to-1, that means that even if I bet the full amount of the pot here (another 1000 chips), then they will each be faced with calling 1000 chips to win 2000 chips, or 2-to-1. So, even by betting the full amount of the pot, I'm really only able to make chasing the draws here marginally inadvisable for them (it still is somewhat inadvisable because I am counting their odds of filling the draws over two cards, even though in reality I have the ability to bet again on the turn if no draws are filled by the turn card, but still). Now why in the world would Negreanu be recommending that I only bet, say, between 300 and 700 chips on this flop? That recommendation makes no sense at all IMO, and I can't believe Negreanu has allowed his name to be attached to that kind of a statement.

Now, you tell me that on a flop of Q72 rainbow, with 1000 chips in the pot, a bet of 500 ought to be enough to take it down when I hold pocket Kings, and I won't really argue that (though even still, his recommendation of the low end of a third of the pot is still I think far too low given what the donkeys out there tend to draw at on a regular basis in my games, and this is in both live and online play). But half the pot on a totally ragged, unsuited flop, that makes some sense. But recommending in his book that people just keep all their bets on all streets between a third and 75% of the current pot is generally terrible advice to be giving as far as I'm concerned. The much better advice the way I see it is a combination of Erick Lindgren and David Sklansky's from their respective books. Lindgren on flop bets, that draw-heavy boards call for larger, closer to pot-sized bets, while boards with no likely draws can be closer to 40-60% of the pot and should accomplish the same goal of chasing others out with less risk. And then Sklansky on turn bets, where he correctly points out that at that point in the hand, with only one card to come and therefore when players are facing just 17-19% chances of those straights and flushes filling on the river, you can bet more like a third of the pot, which itself is already enough to make those bad calls for your drawing opponents to chase. Think about it -- if your opponents are facing draws of less than 20% with one card to come, then their chances of hitting on the river are slightly more than 4-to-1, call it 4.1 or 4.2-to-1 for most straight and flush draws. So, if there are 1000 chips in the pot after the turn card is out, a bet of even 300 chips -- just 30% of the pot -- means they will have to call 300 to win 1300, which already prices them out of making the call if they know what they're doing. So that's the advice I'm giving on bet sizing in the poker book that I'll never write -- close to the size of the pot on draw-heavy flops, and closer to half the pot on no-draw flops, and around a third to half the pot on most turns. And to me that is far, far better advice than the generalized drivel that Negreanu includes in chapter 13 of his book. Does anyone disagree with this thinking, or think that Negreanu is right when he goes on about how "real professionals and those who aspire to make their games better" play small-bet poker, but the amateurs are the ones who bet close to the size of the pot on the flop? I think that's redonkulous, and for a guy of the skills of Danny Boy to makes those statements in print for all to see for all of time, I think he should be embarrassed.

Friday night. That means I'll be watching my Hoyas stomp all over Vanderbilt, while I hopefully satellite my way into the midnight bracelet race on full tilt. Wish me luck, on both fronts!

Oh and don't forget the latest WPBT event, Event #3 (Razz) is on the slate for this Sunday evening. Columbo's blog says this event is scheduled for 9pm ET on Sunday, but as of last night the thing was listed on full tilt for 8pm ET. Either way, make the time, make sure you check to see if it is changed from the current 8pm ET setup, and either way go get a token and play in this $26 buyin (tier I token) tournament for bloggers only. Come on, you know you don't want to miss Razz, easily the most frustrating of all the poker variations. This is an event that I won last year in the WPBT, and I plan to be there to take the thing down again on Sunday. Now if you haven't bought in yet, go play one of those $13.75 buyin heads-up sngs on full tilt and win yourself a token for half-price. See you Sunday night for the WPBT Razz tournament!