Page 10 - December 2006 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Jim Mercurio: Poker
Thinking Outside the Box:
ADenying Odds is Better than Being in Denial
lthough poker is supposed to be a game of excitement and risk, often we make the same mistake we do in life and start playing by rote. Sometimes, it’s important to challenge conventional wisdom.
Lately, I have been rethinking a poker concept. Due to some conversations with players and even some members of the newsgroup rec.gambling.poker, I have started to ponder pre- op raises in low-level no-limit games.
I have usually played the by-the-book, tournament- style small-ball poker where a raise is three–four times the big blind. In low-level tournaments, that raise is usually respected—especially at the early stages—because it often
four callers and then the op comes 257 rainbow. If someone bets $80 into a $100 dollar pot and if you decide to call, you might as well just shove in the additional $100. If your opponent has a set of 5s, you
status. e nature of the game, the level of the players and the buy-in cap make
this often an inevitable conclusion. So let’s think about an alternative.
With the blinds at $3 and $5, what if your pre- op raise with queens is $50? In theory, this is too much because you are chasing away worse hands and
represents as much as 10–20% of the average stack. In the low-level
have laid him amazing odds. For his initial $20 bet, he has won $280, odds of 14:1—which is enough to over come his
“In the long run, skill will win out,
but with four callers, you will end
where the blinds are 3–5 up getting a lot of bad beats.” 4:1 pre- op underdog
inviting in the few hands that are ahead. But did you catch that?“In theory.” In reality, when you raise to $50, you often get a caller or two, sometimes with hands as weak as 78o, a hand for which the maximum implied odds of 4:1 is not enough to call.
If you are in position and the caller pushes the rest of his money ($150) into the pot, you have the option of getting away with only losing $50. Or if you make
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cash games around LA,
and starting stacks are
exactly $200 (my assumptions for all of these hands), a raise to $15 represents only 7% of an average stack, which often leads to four or more callers.
In the long run, skill will win out, but with four callers, you will end up getting a lot of bad beats. Let’s say you have Aces and raise to $20 pre- op and get
Page 10
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
December 2006
Poker: Wired Aces and River Rats