Had a really bad short-handed $20-40 session yesterday. Was playing with these 4 guys who were all friends and who joked around and who all went out to dinner together. It was just me and them. They played in such a way that I felt I had zero edge against them as a group, despite feeling they were playing bad individually. This was a weird feeling that I've only gotten a couple times before. I am ...
Archives for September 2011
Joe Hachem versus an amateur’s quads
In this hand, Joe Hachem tries to bluff an amateur off of quads on the river. While there are some legitimate reasons Hachem played this hand the way he did, all-in-all I think it was way too likely that the amateur had a huge hand. One of the factors in this hand was the amateur's willingness to talk about the hand and express concern about Joe's hand, which are pretty reliable indicators that a ...
Gambler’s Fallacy and why not to show opponents AA or KK
Talking about the Gambler's Fallacy in my last post, I was reminded of another poker application of this concept. The situation comes up frequently when you hold AA or KK, and you raise preflop and everyone folds. Some people will show their hands in situations like this, just because it's kind of fun to show big hands. It's also sometimes sort of a way to complain because the raiser didn't get ...
Gambler’s Fallacy in poker. Defensive chip handling tell.
I fell victim to the "gambler's fallacy" the other day at poker. The gambler's fallacy is the belief that because something out-of-the-ordinary has occurred, it will be less likely to occur again. Casinos make a lot of money on this idea with roulette, because many people have a natural tendency to say, "oh, it's been red 5 times in a row, better bet on black", when in reality, the chances of the ...
A hand using poker tells – an introduction to the book
A friend of mine told me I should have a dramatic hand to start the book with, to show an example of using tells in practice, and to get people's attention. I thought it was a good idea. I have a bunch of notes of hands I've played from a long time ago, and I thought the hand I finally decided on was a good one. This is from a hand I played in 2005 in Albuquerque, NM. Names have been changed to ...