Using Tells ... Reverse tells, that is!

The way I define a poker tell is: A detectable reaction your opponent has when they realize what their hand is. Tells can be subtle (a momentary pupil dilation when another player likes what he sees); or profound (a heavy sigh and headshake, followed by a huge bet … which indicates a monster hand). But most poker-playing tell experts will admit that much of the time there’s a can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it quality to detecting tells. The immortal Doyle Brunson says that evolution has provided us with this skill; it kept our caveman-era ancestors from wandering into the wrong place where a bear was waiting to devour them. (Given his age, perhaps he knows this firsthand.) You ignore these hunches at your own peril.

Detecting tells is a valuable skill to have. Numerous books have been written on it. But giving off false tells can be even more useful … if your audience is attentive, and can process what they’re seeing.

I was playing a $3/$5 cash game and had around $700 in front of me. The table was pretty passive preflop, with lots of limpers and callers seeing every flop. This hand was no different. I was in the big blind. The player on my left (who was first to act) had a stack of around $400. He led out with a raise for $20. It was a bit unusual to see a preflop raise in this table; but what happened next wasn't at all unusual, which was watching five other players call. I looked down at the KsTd. I had a $5 chip already in play, so it would only cost me $15 more to enter a pot that had $125 in it. King/Ten offsuit is not a good hand, but the pot odds were irresistible. I tossed in three more red chips, and seven of us saw the flop.

The dealer spread As Qd 9h. I had a gutshot straight draw, but I couldn’t see going any further with this hand if the flop was bet into. The small blind checked, and I checked behind. The next player to act, the one on my left, was the initial raiser. He put together a handful of chips as if to bet … but at the last minute, he checked also. The rest of the table also checked, so we got to see a free turn card.

Yahtzee! The turn was the Jc, so now I had the nut straight. This time after the small blind checked, I assembled a bet of around $75 and slid it across the bet line. Now, the UTG player came alive, raising my bet to $175. The remaining field quickly folded, and action was back to me.

I had the nut hand. There was no flush possibility. I was ahead of every other possible holding. My only risk was if my opponent had a set or two pair, he could fill up on the river. I saw that my opponent only had around $250 left behind, so I went ahead and put him all-in.

My opponent tanked. He knew he was dead to a ten (unless he had one too). Did I have one? He was trying to figure that out.

Then I went into acting mode. I took my hand and put it over my mouth. Tell experts will say that players will do this when they are bluffing. Bluffing, after all, is a form of lying. Humans aren’t hard-wired to lie. So a mouth-to-the-hand gesture is sort of saying, “I just said something that wasn’t true. Don’t ask me to say it again.”

I followed this up by gently rubbing the side of my head. Again, another strong tell. When players are nervous, they will “hug” themselves as a way of making themselves feel better. I’ve seen opponents rub the back of their neck, their shoulder, even their arm. They do it when they’re weak, and worried about what might happen next.

My opponent tripped all over himself calling my shove. I turned over my straight, and he turned over Ad Qs, for top two pair. The river was a brick, and my opponent was down to the felt, and reaching into his wallet for a re-buy. I’m convinced it was my acting job that earned the call.

The only other comment to make about this had has to do with the player’s flop check. Clearly, it was a huge mistake. He started to assemble a bet with his top two pair, but at the last minute checked, obviously hoping for the opportunity of a check-raise. It didn’t happen, and he gave away any chance of taking down the pot. Had he bet, I would have folded. Lesson: Don’t slowplay your monster hands out of position.

Reflections on Pendleton’s Spring Poker Rodeo

Poker is a game of skill. It is not gambling – at least, if you define the term “gambling” the same way I do. “Gambling” is putting money at risk when you have absolutely no influence on the outcome. Craps is gambling. Lotto is gambling. So is sports betting, roulette, slots, and just about everything else in the casino. That’s why whenever I enter a casino, I pass by all those tables and loud machines without even a glance and head straight to the card room, and I stay there until it’s time to leave.

Poker is a game of skill. Want proof?

Allow me to introduce you to Angela Jordison. Angela won the very first poker tournament held here this particular season. Now, there were 537 entrants in that tournament, and so for Angela to win (assuming poker is all luck and no skill), the chances of this happening would be 1 in 537 or a little less than two-tenths of one percent (0.2%). Not bad, huh? But also no big deal. After all, somebody has to win that game.

The next day, Angela entered the second tournament of the series. There were 448 players, and … Angela won that one too.

Wait a minute … the odds of the same person winning two tournaments in a row? Again, assuming it was all luck and no skill, that would be (1/537) * (1/448) or … four ten-thousands of one percent.

But Angela wasn't done. The next day, she entered the third tournament, which had 214 total players. You probably know where this is going. Yep, she won that one too. Three tournaments, three wins, one winner. That drops the odds of this happening randomly to less than two one-millionths of one percent. And that’s a mighty small number.

Just as an aside … she was on my direct right in another tournament (not one of these three), and she was without a doubt an excellent player. She came to my table with substantially fewer chips than I had, and was still there long after I had busted out.

This is one of the biggest accomplishments of this type that I can think of, and it happened because poker is a game of skill, and Angela was one of the very best players in that room.

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It goes without saying that I played a lot of poker this week while I was out in Pendleton. Far more hours at the tournament tables than the cash games (and I scored one cash in the four tourneys that I played). There are quite a few hands that are memorable to me, most of which I played really well, including some that I lost. But I think this particular hand stood out for me.

It was fairly early in the tournament. Three players were in the hand, and the effective stack sizes were about 15,000 chips. Blinds were 200/400, and there weren't any antes being collected yet. A young aggressive player who was pretty good (although a little loose) opened the hand in middle position with a raise to 900. I was on the button with the Ten of clubs/Ten of hearts, and just called. Sometimes I would raise with a hand this good, but having watched this player for a while I realized that it wasn't likely I’d get him to fold out, and I didn't want to bloat the pot preflop only to have to release it later. Basically, I was playing to set mine, and willing to drop the hand if I missed. The big blind called the raise, so we went three to the flop with a pot of 2900 and stacks of around 14k.

The flop was Ace/hearts, Ten/diamonds, Three/diamonds. So I flopped middle set on a wet ace-high board.

I looked over at the big blind, and I could see that for some reason he had a tough decision on his hands. He was an older player who had not gotten out of line, so I was intrigued by his hesitation. Finally after some delay, he merely checked.

The initial raiser followed up with a bet of 1500 chips, around half-pot size. I expected him to have an Ace much of the time, and if he did I thought he might call a raise. But I decided to check instead, because I thought maybe the big blind might raise himself given his odd behavior, and I’d be happy to have those chips in the pot too. But much to my surprise, he folded. So the pot was at 5900 and our stacks were at 12.5k.

The turn was the Ace of diamonds. This brought the diamond flush on the board, but also a full house for me. At this point, my opponent checked.

Now I re-evaluated his hand range. While an Ace was still a possibility, given that there were now two on the board, it seemed less likely. I also couldn't put him on the flush. I considered that he probably had a high pair himself, or perhaps an Ace that he didn't want to bet because he thought he might scare me off whatever it was I had. I couldn't see myself getting any more of his chips with a bet at this point unless he had that Ace, so I just checked behind.

The river was Jack/hearts. The villain put out a smallish, 3000-chip bet. I decided to raise it to 8000 from my 12k stack. A shove just seemed too much here, and what I was hoping for was that he would shove on me instead with his Ace (or, less likely, his flush). But instead, he folded his pocket Kings face up, congratulating me on slow-playing my Ace/rag.

I just thanked him warmly, and collected the chips.

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I didn't play a lot of cash games this trip, but I did play some. I helped open up a new 2/5 table which became populated by folks who (like me) had dropped out of the tournament rather early on. More than a few of these players were tilted, willing to sling a lot of chips around in an attempt to win back the entry fee of the tournament they’d just busted out of.

As luck would have it (and not particularly good luck), the three players on my immediate left were all extremely loose players. They seemed to make every bet in increments of $100 … or more. And they tended to tangle with each other more than the rest of the table, which was fine with me (and also entertaining). Since I've been around the poker room a time or two, I've learned how to play back at players like this. So I just nitted it up to maximum, and played pretty much nothing at all. Every hand had a raise, every raise had a re-raise, and frequently all this was preceded by a straddle which bloated the pot even further. The only hands I played were pocket Aces, pocket Queens, once pocket Eights which flopped a set, and maybe an Ace/King or Ace/Queen. I actually busted the guy on my left; and the guy on his left at one point asked me, “Haven’t you lost a hand yet?” I replied, “I only want to play those hands that I am going to win,” which actually was fairly accurate. After a brief four-hour session, I’d won more money than I had in a month at my last job.

Poker is a game of skill. And on top of that, it’s fun.

Some Recent, Random Experiences from the Table

We've all seen them; those hyper-aggressive players that bomb the pot on every street, frequently winning a hand by doing nothing more than bullying the opposition out of the way. And we just know that they can’t have a real hand every time they do this; but whenever we try to fight back, we discover that (at least that particular time) they in fact do; alternately, we chicken out before we get to the river.

These players used to befuddle – if not downright intimidate – me, but nowadays I know how to fight back effectively.

It was early afternoon, and my opponent had been playing all night long. He had a stack of nearly $10,000; a respectable showing in a 3/5 game when the max buy-in is only $500. And he was one of these hyper-aggros. Helpfully, he was in Seat 1 and I had Seat 4, so I at least had position on him. I pegged him right away for who he was (his gigantic chip stacks were something of a clue), and assembled a strategy for how to play against him, should the occasion arise.

For the most part, we stayed out of each other’s way. When he came into a pot, I’d generally get out; and if he passed on a hand, I found myself more likely to stay in. But inevitably, the big confrontation took place … and I was ready for it.

I was in the big blind, and he was in the cutoff. This being a Seattle room, the field limped in with hardly any folders, until it got to Aggroboy. He tossed in a huge two-fisted raise, and it was folded to me. I looked down at a pair of black sixes, and thought, what the heck? This was, after all, exactly the kind of hand I was looking to go to war with. I called, the rest of the table folded, and it was heads-up.

The rainbow flop came Ace, Queen … Six. Precisely the kind of hand to hit the Villain’s range, and of course I had just struck Yahtzee. I meekly checked. Villain cut out a monster, pot-sized bet. I hemmed and hawed, and eventually called.

The turn was a three, completing the rainbow. Once more I checked. Once more, Villain bombed the pot. Once more, I hemmed and hawed and called.

The river was a seven, and now was the time to drop the hammer. After a brief, respectable delay, I softly said, “All in” while tossing in a single white chip, and waited. Villain visibly melted. He knew exactly what was up now. However, he also knew that he just had to call; he’d watched me playing for some time now, and he realized that the river bluff was part of my repertoire. His Ace-Jack was no match for my flopped set.

While I was stacking my double-up, I saw that he was muttering to himself. Not in a mean way; he was primarily beating himself up over how he played his hand. Then, just slightly louder, he said, “Well, you hit your hand and just sat back and let me bet it for you.” I said, “Yep, I appreciate that.”

He ended up moving to Seat 6 as soon as the opportunity arose, so that my positional advantage would no longer be there … but by then, the damage had been done.

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Different day, different players.

I was at a table blessed with a textbook fish; a rich noob with a bottomless supply of $100 bills, giving away stacks of chips at a time to whoever happened to be in a hand with him, and happily rebuying whenever he hit felt.

The player on my left, on the other hand, was quite good; and ultimately found himself heads-up against our generous Villain. The Hero had turned two pair, and shoved all in. Villain called with his flush draw, and had at most seven outs (roughly a 15% chance to win the hand). As sometimes happens with really bad players, Villain hit his hand on the river and doubled up. Once the hand ended, as my neighbor was cutting out the chips he needed to make the pot right, he said (only half-joking), “I hate you. You know that right? I mean, I really hate you.”

This got some chuckles from the rest of us at the table, so he continued: “I mean, if you got hit by a truck on the way out of the card room, I wouldn't miss you.” I very quickly chimed in, “Well I would!” This brought more laughter from the rest of the table.

Poker humor. You either get it, or you don’t.

Poker in the Caribbean

It was not a surprise to discover that the poker room, while an integral part of the casino, was completely vacant for most of the day. Although the Hollywood Casino, right on the campus of the Simpson Bay Resort on Dutch Sint Maarten, opened its doors each day at 1pm (more or less), there wasn't a soul to be found anywhere near the four baize-topped tables until after the dinner hour had passed. Sometime after sundown, a sign-up list appeared on a clipboard atop one of those tables, along with a pen, inviting would-be rounders to indicate their interest by adding their name. The pre-printed data on the form promised that the $2/$5 game would begin “around 9pm”, and only required a minimum buy-in of $100, with no maximum. I added my name next to the Seat Two line, and since Seat One was already claimed by a punter named “Steve”, I signed as “Devo” – my college nickname – to  identify myself more uniquely.

At precisely 2100 hours I dutifully returned to the site of my upcoming triumph … to discover that it was still vacant. (“Island Time” is the term I came up with to describe the punctuality of the St. Maarten residents.) A subsequent visit fifteen minutes later was only slightly more fruitful; a terminally bored dealer had materialized, sitting behind three full chip racks (one each for $1, $5, and $25 chips). Arrayed around the remaining circumference of the table were three would-be players, looking equally bored. I joined them to become the fourth.

The next fifteen minutes I spent amiably chatting with the lady in Seat Five (Angela from Chicago, so it emerged). A fifth player then grabbed a seat, and as this was apparently the magic number, the dealer and her floor manager began buying our American currency, exchanging it for the equivalent in clay-composite chips, and we were shortly underway. Most folks, including me, considered $300 to be sufficient ammunition for the battles to come.

As I anticipated, actually getting the cards into the air served as the siren call for the rest of the players to join us. At 51, I was clearly one of the youngest at the table; it soon became equally clear that I was the best.

The aforementioned “Steve”, at Seat One, turned out to be a rather chunky guy, laden down with gold jewelry to a point just this side of tacky. He was accompanied by a varied posse of attendants who came and went throughout the evening. He was not left alone for a single moment, conversing with one companion after another throughout his entire time at the table occasionally slipping into some Slavic language (Greek? Croatian?). I pegged him as a big drug dealer; perhaps mafia. Contrary to the rest of us, he bought in $1000 at a time, proceeding to give it all away on a consistent basis.

Steve quite literally played every hand dealt to him. Regardless of whether a pot had been raised (or even re-raised) ahead of him pre-flop, or if he was the tenth limper, he had to see every flop. It goes without saying that this is what led to his disastrous results (of which he seemed quite oblivious). But what I found annoying about his style was the pace of his play. Each action on every street required excruciating deliberation. He’d look at his cards; cut them several times; look at them once more (his thumb flipping their corners with a satisfying “fwap”); cap them with a chip; count the rest of his chipstack; cut out calling chips; cut out raising chips; study the board cards carefully; reassemble his chipstack and look at his cards again …

But worse than that; the rest of the table, clearly looked at Steve as some sort of poker model to be imitated (and he certainly looked, if not played, the role). Consequently, every single player (save me) went through the process of carefully contemplating every move. A pre-flop fold holding 7-2 required a Solomonic degree of consideration prior to acting. I marveled that these people were even capable of selecting “paper or plastic” at the grocery store check-out.

The other troubling aspect of the game was the overwhelming rake. Winning a hand in the States will set you back 5% of the pot, capped at a maximum of somewhere around $3 to $5 depending on the room (not counting jackpot drop or dealer toke). However, I was never able to get a handle on the rake in this game. Dozens of chips were flying into the pot with each hand, fueled largely by Steve and his $1000-at-a-time re-buys. And each time the dealer dropped so many chips down into the rake box that, near as I could tell, it was amounting to 10% of each pot with no cap.

Generally speaking, a game of this sort simply cannot be beat. The only exceptions are when the players are particularly bad, or the game is particularly loose. And both of these elements were present in this game. When I finally calculated my overall win rate during the entire week of play, it amounted to around $100/hour, a phenomenal rate for a $2/$5 game. How phenomenal? Well, let me put it this way: It’s something I've never achieved before; and I predict that, no matter how long I live, I’ll never see it again.

Most of these earnings actually came at the Aruban poker room at the Excelsior Casino, located at the Holiday Inn resort. The rake there, I discovered by careful enquiry, was an only slightly more reasonable 5% with a $10 cap and $2 jackpot drop.

At this room they had a $4/$8 limit game with an interesting rule variation. In the States, a $4/$8 game would have blinds of $2 and $4, with pre-flop and flop betting increments of $4, and turn/river bets in increments of $8. Here, though, you could choose to bet either $4 on the flop or go straight to $8 a street early.  The math related to this flop bet modification, combined with the aggressive rake, called for an overly tight game.

I experimented with this feature somewhat, although when I discovered that I was consistently betting low with draws and high with made hands, I shifted gears to betting the max on the flop. I had no desire to make myself so easily readable; although at this table I could have played each hand face up and still come away winner.

I pretty much kept my limit play to a minimum, playing only until a seat at the red-chip game opened up. There was so much more money to be made there. Even so, to give an example, I played a 30-minute session at the limit game, buying in for $100 and cashing out for $265.

When I toted up the figures at the end of my Caribbean adventure, I discovered that I had pretty much paid for the hotel, airfare, and meals for the whole trip. I suppose this might just mean that a follow-up visit is called for at some point.

The History of No-Limit Hold 'Em

I guess it takes some audacity for me to claim that I can summarize the entire History of No-Limit Hold ‘Em Poker into a single blog entry. But blogging takes some audacity to begin with, so I suppose I’ll plead guilty as charged. Maybe it will help to say that my own evolution as a poker player mirrors the timeline that I’m about to lay out.

STAGE ONE: 1950s-late 1980s

No one really knows when the first hand of Hold ‘Em was played, or even where. The fact that its full name is “Texas Hold ‘Em” would seem to be a clue regarding the latter. It was definitely being played there by 1959, and within ten years it had spread to Las Vegas. Twenty years after that, it was declared a game of skill by the state of California, and poker rooms throughout that state (which had been spreading draw poker for some time) started spreading that game too. Even to this day, the twin epicenters of Hold ‘em poker are Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Although poker was legally – and legitimately – determined to be a game of skill, very few players happened to have any. Roughly 99% of all players at this time just played by feel, not really paying attention to which hands are best to hold pre-flop, or when one should fold post-flop. There are still plenty of players who play this way, and you can still find them in pretty much every game. In fact, nearly every poker beginner starts out at this point, and only a few graduate to the next level of skill.

STAGE TWO: Late 1980s-2003

By the time the 80’s were coming to an end, folks started noticing that some players were consistently winning more often than others; i.e., that it wasn’t all just luck after all. The players who were winning had been studying the game, and had figured out that the way to defeat the amateurs was to play a very tight game – folding the overwhelming percentage of the time preflop, and only going to war with the best hands possible. Then, when they did play a hand, bet aggressively to build big pots that they were more likely to win. The strategy even had a name: Tight-aggressive, or TAG. Players like Tom McEvoy, Chris Ferguson, and Phil Helmuth, Jr. were winning world championships with this strategy. T.J. Cloutier became the most successful tournament player in history by using it.

But the seeds of change were being sown, and the TAGs were about to be left behind by a new generation.

STAGE THREE: 2003-Today

The year 2003 was pivotal in Hold ‘em poker. Several significant events happened during this year:

·       A new TV show hit cable television, called the “World Poker Tour”. The show featured (mostly) well-known players playing for millions of dollars, with hidden cameras showing the audience the players’ hole cards. People were finally starting to see some of the strategy behind how winning players played. And since success breeds imitators, the WPT was just the first of over a dozen poker TV shows to hit the networks over the next few years.

·       An anonymous accountant with the serendipitous name of Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker Main Event – poker’s world championship. This fired the imaginations of would-be rounders all over the poker universe. If an amateur like Moneymaker could win the biggest game in poker, maybe they could too.

·       Internet poker started going mainstream. Someone playing online could play more poker in a minute than a live player could play in an hour. Some folks played more hands in just a few months than Doyle Brunson had played in fifty years at the live table.

As the popularity of poker skyrocketed, the TAGs from earlier days saw an opening and began to publish books evangelizing their TAG doctrine. A flood of material from authors like McEvoy, Cloutier, Sklansky, Gordon, and Ciaffone hit the poker universe. The seminal work was probably Dan Harrington’s series, “Harrington on Hold ‘em”. Harrington was himself a world champ, earning the tongue-in-cheek nickname “Action Dan” for his famously tight play. His disciples came to be known as “Harring-bots”. Sayings such as “tight is right” and “fit or fold” started gaining currency.

But behind the scenes, the oh-so-perfect edifice of TAG was beginning to crumble. The culprit? A new strategy, honed to perfection by hordes of internet players: LAG, or “Loose-aggressive”. TAG remains to this day a very effective strategy for cash games, where one has the luxury of sitting around waiting for the very best hands. But it’s suicide in tournaments. Bottom line, you just can’t wait for premium hands in tournaments; the blinds and antes will decimate your stack and make you a non-factor by the time you decide to play something. Consequently, loosening up your opening standards, which increases variance, is mandatory for tournament success. The “aggressive” component of TAG was still relevant in this new strategy. But tight was no longer right; and fit or fold meant failure.

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And this is the path my own personal game has taken. I started off with an understanding of the rules of Hold ‘Em but no idea of strategy (or even an awareness that “strategy” existed). Then I discovered – and read – pretty much every poker book that had been written by the TAG generation, and my game improved correspondingly. But tournament success continued to elude me. I would sit and watch my stack gradually get whittled away, implementing my TAG strategy to perfection. I came to realize that I needed to loosen my game, but wasn’t sure exactly how to do that. It wasn’t until I hired a coach with tournament success of his own that I started to assemble this final piece in my game. It’s definitely made my overall game much more successful … and more fun, too.

Poker and Gambling

Well it’s been six months, I suppose that’s a long enough delay between blog posts. To dip my foot back into the waters, let me describe a situation that always sets me on edge: Whenever I hear poker defined as gambling, especially by people who should know better (like poker pros). It’s not. At least, not by my definition.

Perhaps that’s where the disconnect is. Allow me to define the term my way. “Gambling” to me is putting money at risk when you can have no impact whatsoever on whether you win or lose. The lottery is gambling. Slot machines are gambling. Roulette and Craps are gambling. Keno is definitely gambling … the worse game in the house. In fact, just about everything in the casino is what I would call gambling – you have no impact on the outcome. The only exceptions for me would be Blackjack (if you’re counting cards), Sports betting (but only if you are REALLY studying the game … maybe 2% of all sports betters are good enough to do this), and of course poker. In fact, I think it’s something of a tragedy that poker is generally found in casinos … I end up having to walk past all of this real estate that doesn't interest me in the slightest to get to the small room where I can personally affect my own results.

There’s certainly an element of luck involved in poker, no doubt about it. And that’s actually a good thing. If there wasn't any luck in poker (as Phil Hellmuth, Jr. once astutely observed), the best player would win all of the money and everyone else would lose. But because of the luck factor, sometimes bad players win. And sometimes, they win a lot. And sometimes they win over a long stretch of time, although it’s unlikely that they will. But the best players will lose sometimes … and win more often. And they'll win more when they do win. I've heard some players refer to poker as an “investment”. I don’t think they’re far off.

It’s worth noting that the IRS agrees with my definition, and allows “Professional Poker Player” to be used as a valid employment definition. For this, we owe a debt of gratitude to Billy Baxter, who sued the US and won. The IRS at first would not permit Baxter to identify himself as a professional poker player, a position which would have bumped his tax rate up to around 70%. The judge turned to the prosecutor and said, “Son, if you think poker is a game of luck, let’s have you and Mr. Baxter sit down here with $50,000 and a deck of cards, and just see who wins.”

Enough of an entry for one day … hopefully it won’t be another six months before my next post. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas to one and all!

It's the WORLD SERIES!!

The World Series of Poker is in full swing at the Rio in Las Vegas. Three massive rooms in the hotel’s convention center have been set up with hundreds of poker tables to handle the 10,000+ players coming in from all over the planet to sit down and play a game of cards. With nearly 70 bracelet events and every cash game variant imaginable being dealt during a six week timeframe, there really is something for everyone. And those who sit down at the table bring with them the distinctive style of how the game is played where they’re from – East Coast, West Coast, Asia, Scandinavia, etc.

Into this milieu I entered, ready for a session of $2/$5 No-Limit Hold’em. If it weren't for the fact that this was the World Series, and my opponents were literally from all over the world, the fact that I had decided to play the cash games wouldn't merit much attention. But there were two people in particular at this table – Europeans – that I kept my eye on. They had the loose, hyper-aggressive style common to that continent, which required my concentration and largely kept me from playing on autopilot.

One of these opponents was from England, although from his looks he could pass for Mediterranean or even Arabic. But he was on the opposite end of the table from me, and we didn't clash all that often. When we did, I knew enough of his style to parry his attacks and largely hold my own.

The other European was directly on my left. Although she was French-Canadian, she was originally from Bosnia and played that way. Whenever she decided to enter a pot preflop, she almost never limped but bombed the pot. Post-flop, she bet every time she was checked to, and her bets were close to pot-sized. Her sheer aggression was earning her far more pots than she deserved, and nobody was quite sure how to play against her.

From my perspective, the fact that she was right next to me was the most problematical issue. It was very hard for me to make any moves in a hand, because she’d come over the top of me frequently and blow my strategy out of the water. Bottom line – I ended up having to surrender the smaller pots to her due to her aggression and my inability to read her or figure out how to counter-attack. But with a monster hand, I was more than willing to let her bloat the pot, and then take it on the river. And the two big pots I did take more than made up for the many small ones I released to her.

Early in the session, I was dealt Ac Qc in UTG+1. The player on my right, the first to act, raised to $15. With a hand this good, I would frequently re-raise. But at this table, I didn't have to bother; I knew one of my aggressive opponents would do it for me. Sure enough, like clockwork, the lady on my left popped it to $60. Everyone else folded, and I called, so it was head-up. Effective stacks were roughly $400 (I had a slight edge on her chipcount).

The flop was Qd 8h 3d. I was convinced that I had the best hand, so it was only a matter of trying to figure out how to get the most money into the pot. I paused and thought and eventually checked. Sure enough, my opponent pushed out a bet of $85 into the $140 pot, leaving around $300 behind.

Here’s where I went into Hollywood mode (something I very rarely do). I looked at her bet, looked at the pot, looked at my chips, counted out the call, looked over at her stack, asked how big it was, and then put out the call. I realized that I was representing a diamond flush draw, so I went with that.

The turn was the 8d, and so I immediately donk-shoved. It didn't take her long to muck, and I stacked a $300 pot without having to show my hand. Maybe if I’d played it slower I’d have won more; a turn c-bet from her was a near certainty, and there couldn't have been too many river cards I had to fear. But I was happy with the pot I got.

The second big pot of the two I won from her happened late in the session – sort of a bookend to the whole day. I think I played this one better. I’d spent the previous hours getting to know her a little bit better, and she has a fascinating story. Grew up in Bosnia, fled to Quebec during their civil war not knowing a word of either French or English. Now, twenty or so years later, she speaks both, as well as her native Bosnian. Since she was taking so many pots from me, I was constantly teasing her about how she was outplaying me and stealing my action. “Cut it out!” I complained. “Let me win a pot, will ya?” She just smiled and kept up her aggression.

I was dealt Kc Tc in the hijack, and in a true rarity at this table action was folded to me. I knew this was going to end with us heads-up, and I had a hand I liked, so I kicked the action up to $15. She re-raised to $60 on the button (of course), and the two of us went from there. As I put in my call, I continued to needle her: “Well, I guess I can kiss these chips goodbye too.” This actually got a laugh from the table (poker humor has a low bar for success). The intervening hours had given us both the chance to grow our stacks; and while I’m not sure which of us had the bigger stack, they were both around $2000 by now.

The flop was Qc 8h 3c, which was far and away the best flop I could have hoped for: Second nut flush draw on a board unlikely to hit her range. I checked and let her continuation bet. She did, for a $90 bet, and I called, complaining the whole way. I figured that even if I was behind, any club, King, or Ten would put me ahead.

The turn was 6c. Unlike the previous hand above (where I was falsely representing a flush), this time I checked; certain of the fact I was way ahead at this point. She bet again ($200), and I called again.

The river wasn't really what I wanted: 9c. An Ace was definitely in her range, and the club Ace outkicked my turned flush. But while I couldn't bring myself to bet, neither could I bring myself to fold when she fired the third bullet. I called her $200 river bet, and when I showed the flush she mucked. Well over $1000 in round plastic disks were pushed towards me.

It doesn't matter how many pots you win; only how big they are.