Thursday, September 30, 2004

The Most Common Mistake

What's the most common mistake you see players make online?

I know there are a lot of possible answers to this question, but the mistake I see most commonly, and this is probably just because I see it so often, maybe 20-30 times per hour, is doubling the blind in a NL/PL game.

$25 NL game on Party Poker. I'm on the BB with 92o. UTG raises from $.50 to $1.00. Three other players call. It costs me $.50 to get into a $5 pot. Even 92o is good in a 10 to 1 action. Flop is T95 rainbow. It checks to me, and I check with my pair of nines, no kicker. Turn card is a deuce. UTG goes all in. I'm thinking "did UTG just catch trip deuces?" One caller in front of me and I call all-in since UTG has me covered. River is a rag and the caller flips Q9 and UTG has....AA of course.

I cannot come up with ONE situation where that raise is a good move. It doesn't accomplish anything. It builds the pot a little. But the only way it can build the pot is if you get a lot of callers. And why do you want to face a lot of callers with a pair? You are forcing your AA to catch a set if you want to win. That's like playing AA the same as 22. Insanity. How many 5 way pots do you see that are won by a pair? Not many. There's a world of straights and flushes waiting to knock your pair out. But heads up? Small pairs win all the time.

A few hands before this I get AA and raise to $4. I get one caller with A8o and I win a $48 pot. I raised to isolate, got my one "sucker" and took him down. So I even showed this moron how to play his AA and he didn't pay any attention. The beauty of Party Poker is that you will ALWAYS get a sucker to call your pre-flop raise, and the other beautiful thing about Party is the suckers will never learn, no matter how many times you show them the right way to play.


2 comments:

SirFWALGMan said...

I hate NL so much! Here is an example why. For the past weeks since I have started using Poker Tracker:

.50/1 +40.00
1/2 +337
$25 NL -125

See. I hate NL! heh. I really do not know how I got so bad at it. It always seems that my trip 3's, get trumped by trip 8's, and since it was all in that one mistake costs me everything. Bah!

The real question is why am I good at NL Tourneys?

DuggleBogey said...

I don't think your losses at NL are big enough not to be explained by variance. The swings are greater in NL, so you could make up that amount in one session, easily.

I think the difference between NL ring games and NL tournaments are different for you because of the increasing blinds. Increasing blinds provide an environment of ever building pressure that every player feels. You know that if you don't act soon, the blinds are going to get you. That added pressure reacts negatively on the poor player.