2 Days to Go

I am at that pre-Vegas trip point where I can hardly think of anything else but poker. I actually haven’t had a trip like this ever – on my own where it’s nothing but cards. Even last year during the WSOP Jill was there, and even though she plays the good wife and encourages me to play as much as possible, it’s just not the same. In March it’s much more basketball than poker.

I picked up two books in the last week. I think I have to final table something one day just to pay for all the books I’ve bought over the years. Hansen’s book is a very interesting idea for a poker book – it describes every hand he was in on his way to winning the Aussie Millions – but it’s not as great as the concept. For one thing he’s less than precise in what he was thinking at times (e.g., “I guess I thought that…”). Really the book boils down to be aggressive with position, steal as much as possible, and back-off if you get too much action with junk hands. No one really needs a book to know how Hansen plays and much of it recounts him raising with junk and winning the blinds and antes. There are some monster calls and big hands and I don’t regret getting it, but it could have been better in the hands of another.

Negreanu’s new book finally came out this week and of course I got it the day it was released. I’m playing the 2-7 TDL even in the WSOP this year and the only reason I even play that stupid game is because he wrote the chapter in SS2. If he had written about Crazy Pineapple or Gary’s Asshole I’d probably be looking for those events. Anyway, in the tradition of Super System he got several collaborators on certain subjects (I like Todd Brunson but his chapter on high stakes cash games is more of a curiosity than of practical use, to me anyway).

Negreanu’s section, which is a substantial part of the book, is on his small ball strategy in tournament play. It couldn’t be more different from Hansen’s approach which only proves that poker approaches are like batting stances – to each his own. I think the most groundbreaking thing about it is how weak it looks. It’s basically weak-loose/loose-passive in the majority of situations, and that’s pre-and-post-flop! Everyone knows Daniel raises about 2-1/2x the big blind pre-flop with a broad range of hands, but what surprised me is how passive he suggests playing post-flop.

The rationale in a lot of cases to not taking an aggressive approach on the flop can mostly be summarized as “if you’re behind you’re way behind, and if you’re ahead you’re way ahead.” He prefers to let more cards come off to “gain information” rather than through betting, especially since his hand may improve, and the “information” from flop-betting is flawed. He also prefers to let people way behind bluff off their money or catch-up a little, and risking two outs or five outs to lose doesn’t bother him. A lot of it too comes down to controlling the size of the pot, a key NL concept that he uses to small-ball advantage. I’m definitely going to try this out in some of the deep stack tournaments I’ll be doing next week.