Oreo Man Speak, You Listen
The Oreo man had a nice post today. These are the questions I constantly ask myself when talking to players like Joanne and MiamiDon. If you can not play post flop you are just playing the lottery.
As I continue my journey into growing as a poker player I start to hate more and more the push monkey mentality. The surest way to even the skill gap between a weak player and a strong player is being a push monkey. If there is no post flop play then it is just your two cards vs my two cards. Any two year old can do that.
If you consider yourself a weak player, someone who is not very good at the game, then this is a good thing for you to do. Look down at your cards. Decide if it is likely you are ahead. Shove your entire stack in. On the nights when you get called and win a hand you will have amassed a huge amount of chips. If you can do this 2-3 times you actually may win.
If you consider yourself a student of the game do not do this. The more I play the less I like the mentality of shoving your AK in pre-flop because "Well I had a 45% chance of winning". Try and get your money in much further ahead than 46%. You will still lose huge hands as I do and you will experience much more pain since your likely much further ahead than you are used to. However I believe the rewards for this style of play will show up. At the very least I can look at myself in the mirror every morning and say "Fuck I am good". Being self delusional is also a good trait for poker player. As long as you keep learning.
posted by SirFWALGMan at
12:10 PM
10 Comments:
I realize you are trying to talk in simple terms, but this is level 1 thinking. If I push with my AK, it is because I don't want a call, not because I want a coin toss.
Maybe you were talking about calling, but then you wouldn't be a push monkey, would you?
1:29 PM
I think your totally off here.. SO MANY PEOPLE talk about how they want to push AK and get called. It is so prevelant in so many games that it is worth writing about. Possibly if a player of your calliber pushes he does not want a call.. but most of the people playing do want that call and do want the coin flip. I think the point still remains that the majority of people out there DO NOT want to play a hand. They want to end the hand pre-flop and hope for the best.
2:08 PM
when i look in the mirror, i say:
"damn, i need to get to the gym more often." then, i logon to Full Tilt and stack sum noob.
4:15 PM
Depends who you are playing with. In the Blogger field, I do NOT want a call with AK. This is scary.
But, with some EE-Awws, I want the call.
7:24 PM
Thanks for the kind words mate. :)
Glad I got the wheels in your head turning, and I hope you (and whomever else reads my blog) improved a little as a result.
KGB
3:15 AM
Oh, and one other thing...
Thanks to the link you put up, I got the most hits I've ever received in a single day. Thanks bud.
KGB
3:19 AM
np man. I like reading your blog and often times you makes alot of sense. I actually am thinking of doing an experiment where I never call or push all in pre-flop. No matter what. Fold Aces. No problem. Now while I know this is not optimal for MTTs and at some point in time pushing is right.. if only at the final table maybe.. I am interested in seeing if this takes a little of the luck factor out.
5:30 AM
I think you have to think of it from a donks perspective (call it Guin's usual perspective). If I have AKo and I am on the BB and Smokkee raises into me for the 12th time in a row from CO, I am going to use a hand like this to slow him down. Reraise all in and move on to the next hand.
Every time I try to play a hand like AK vs. players like you and the other top bloggers I get my ass handed to me. Tripjax was about to whoop my butt in the "Big Game" when he turned two pair +flush draw vs my TPTK. I got lucky against him but I wish I had raised more preflop to get rid of him calling with 56s.
I think not pushing is taking away one of the moves you have available to you.
6:27 AM
(I know it's been a while since you posted this, but, aside from blogging myself, I've been on an "internet break", so I never saw you respond to my comment(s).)
When you said this, you got me thinking on the subject some more...
"I actually am thinking of doing an experiment where I never call or push all in pre-flop. No matter what. Fold Aces. No problem. Now while I know this is not optimal for MTTs and at some point in time pushing is right.. if only at the final table maybe.. I am interested in seeing if this takes a little of the luck factor out."
Folding aces may be a little extreme, for you will be an 80-20 favorite AT WORST, but you are on the right train of thought. Going all-in as few times as possible allows you to survive, and get deep into the money in MTT's.
Now I have never had any MTT success myself, but I have consistently put myself in situations where I was the favorite almost all the times I was at-risk. Sadly, thusfar I have been unable to conjure up an MTT success story (aside from one sad little play chip tournament I won). Now I'm not saying that my poor MTT record is due to the strategy I described, but instead it is just likely a bad case of variation that everybody experiences. I am confident that, in due time, I will find a way to go deep in an MTT or two soon enough.
KGB
(If you'd like to discuss things further, my AIM SN is also KGBlovesOreos. I'd love to be able to pick eachother's brains for strategy/approach to the game.)
10:06 AM
FYI, I shutdown my old blog and started my new one at www.kgblovesoreos.com. I'm probably being a narcissist putting this here, but oh well.
11:13 AM
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