CARDRUNNERS

What's Your Edge

Taylor Caby: Poker Blog

March 05, 2009

I've been in Vegas with Melissa since Sunday afternoon. I don't know what it is about Vegas but I've had the worst luck over the past year about being sick out here. I started to get nasty sinus congestion and a sore throat the night before we left. I pretty much have felt decent during the day but then once dinner time rolls around I start to feel horrible. I won't rant too much but basically I've been asleep by 9 or 10pm every night which is ridiculous in Las Vegas.

I got the chance to play some poker yesterday, 5-10nl at the Wynn. There was a 10-20 game going but there was a long list. 5-10 live was fine though, the game was filled with a few solid pros, a few mediocre but competent amateurs, and some very mediocre live pros. I played for maybe 2 hours before having to leave to get ready for dinner. I'm starting to get a lot better at live play though. You just have to play a different style -- lots more calling preflop, lots more playing off your image and reacting to how you think other people will play off theirs. People always say "table presence" is really important live. I would agree with that, I'm trying to improve mine. Guys like David Benefield and Gaucho are two examples of online players that I think have a very good table presence.

Another interesting thing about live play is that people don't have "stats" on you. It's extremely easy to accurately put a player on a range of hands when he's 6 tabling and running at some reasonable preflop numbers it's quite easily to know what he can and can't have in certain situations.  For example, let's say a multitabling reg who is 22/19 pf raises UTG+1. You call in position with 57s and the flop comes 842r.  This is a mediocre flop for you but it typically isn't a great one for him either.  There's obviously a few viable plays you can make here, but the bottom line is there are a few factors that make this situation just not that interesting and leave little room for play.

-The guy is never raising any hand that hit this flop hard besides 88,44, and 22.  You can put him on a range of hands from his stats and know that since he's a multitabling reg he's pretty much never getting too much out of line 100bb's deep to have other random 2p type hands.  Obviously, he's not going to have a set very often at all, either.

-As the guy on the button, you're never getting him to fold big pairs, unless you are a huge nit and he knows it.

-You can obviously raise or float, but you're max winning 100bb's here and you are mostly just doing this to stay balanced so you can get paid when you are doing this with a set or slowplayed big pair.  Yeah, it helps that you'll push him off a lot of his broadway hands that whiffed, but it's not a situation that is largely +EV vs a good opener.

These factors just make optimal online strategy much more straightforward and frankly more boring to play than a live game.  As soon as everyone in a particular hand knows reasonable preflop strategy and is aware how their opponents are playing, the edges become quite small (relatively speaking).  Now, I know this sounds crazy from someone who has always said that online poker is much more fun and interesting than live poker, but hear me out. Online poker IS more fun, mostly because you can play a ton of tables and get more action per hour than you can live.  The problem is that with the capped buyins and the abiltiy to quickly and easily deduce what hands your opponents are playing, 6max NLHE just isn't too terribly hard to play well. Obviously that is an oversimplication, it's much more difficult than most other poker games, but it's infinitely harder if you are deeper stacked or even didn't have access to vast amounts of statistics on your opponents.

I should be upfront when I say I am not against stats/HUDs being used for online play.  There is no good way to get rid of these programs and cheaters would use them if they were actually banned from play. If there were games with a max buy-in of 200+ bb's that actually ran consistently, online 6m nlhe would be a much better game.  That being said, I don't expect the sites to push for that because it's obviously bad for them to have huge buy-ins in relation to the blinds.

Anyway, it was definitely fun to play some live poker yesterday.  There were a few live pros that I think were quite seasoned at playing deep stacked and for the most part did a really good job of exploiting the fish and exploiting the mediocre regs, two very different skills. In the end I made one big hand, 66 on AA6 against Ax and stacked a guy for probably a 2700 pot.  I won about 1700 on the day and headed up to shower for dinner.

As an aside, definitely eat at Botero at the Wynn.  It's basically just a modern American Steakhouse. I've eaten there twice and both times it was awesome.  It's really just really fancy comfort food, with things like tater tots, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes with marshmellows, to go along with good steak and seafood.  I'm definitely not doing this place enough justice with this review, but hey, I'm no food critic. I will say this:  I predict this place will join Shintaro (deceased), Fix, Naked Fish, et al, as chic poker player dinner hangouts.  Seriously, if you are in Las Vegas, eat there.  I would go as far as to say Botero is my new favorite restaurant.

Good luck,

Taylor

Entry Tags: botero

Mar 5, 09 12:55:42

Wynn 5-10 players

Taylor,
Was there a live pro playing named Jackie? I play at the Wynn alll the time when I am in Vegas and am pretty cool with him. He is a younger looking asian kid who speaks bad english, sits very deep at 5-10 and 10-20 and plays very, very, aggro. He plays off his image very well and he is someone I think that knows how to play off his image to perfection.

whodey0544

Mar 5, 09 20:42:49

yeah - he was there. he was pretty good although i thought he was playing too many hands. he's definitely an experienced live player -- also he's the type of guy that really gets the games splashing around. even if he's a tough player i like a guy like that in the game so the rest of the table loosens up.

Taylor

Mar 9, 09 05:14:43

Interesting post. I like to play both live and online and its really interesting how different the games are. I really hate the fact that pple can have stats on you online, I think it takes something away from the game. Not much you can do about that though. I like the psychological aspect in live poker, you can sense peoples moods a lot better and I feel that people react a lot more to what you are doing and how they perceive your game. I feel that people take many things a bit more personally when you are face to face, they start playing more against you if you push them around a bit or manage to win some of their money or put a beat on them, even more so than online. I also really love all the banter at the tables :)

SubZero616