Today a few words about advanced NL tournament strategy in response to a student who sent me the following and asked, “What is going on here?”

Time: 2006-01-22 12:45:00 Title: Gary Gibbs Eliminated in 10th Place ($34,610.50) Log: Gary Gibbs raises to $48,000 from the cutoff position, and Gavin Smith calls from the button. The flop comes Ks-Qc-5h, Gibbs bets $65,000, and Smith calls. The turn card is the 7s, Gibbs bets $150,000, and Smith calls. The river card is the 9s, Gibbs checks, Smith bets $400,000, and Gibbs moves all in for about $650,000. Smith calls, showing 10s-8s (ten-high flush), and Gibbs shows 8d-6s (nine-high straight). Gavin Smith wins the biggest pot of the tournament, and Gary Gibbs is eliminated in tenth place.

Because Karlo Lopez and Gary Gibbs were eliminated on the same hand (but different tables), they will combine and chop 10th and 11th place money. Both players will go home with $34,610.50.

OK, so what really is happening here? What are these two guys doing betting and calling with nothing at all? I have no way to know what is going on in their heads, but I shall take a shot at it. Since both names start with “Ga” I hall call Gibbs “Gi” and Smith “Sm.”

Gi: I am one off the button. Everyone is playing pretty tight trying to make the final table, and I need some chips anyway, so I will raise here and steal the blinds and antes. After all, someone has to.

Sm: Gi raised here, but he will do that with almost anything trying to steal. I don’t want to re-raise and risk a bunch of chips in case one of the blinds wakes up with a real hand and comes over the top, making me fold. I have a pretty good hand to call here, and with my position, I should be able to take this pot away from Gi much of the time. Plus I may flop a miracle.

(Flop comes KsQc5h)

Gi: I missed the flop but there is only one opponent and chances are he missed too. I must make a reasonable continuation bet here, as he will probably give up if he missed, or even if he has middle pair. If he calls or raises, I will just give up on the hand.

SM: I missed and he is betting but of course he will pretty much always bet. I will risk a call here and see what he does on the turn. If he missed the flop, he will probably check and fold the turn, as my call will look scary to him.

(Turn is 7s)

Gi: Sm’s call was scary, but I just picked up an open-end straight draw, and I have eight outs to make a real hand and possibly double through. Plus, if I bet he will see that as very strong and fold many hands he would call with on the flop to see if I really have strength. Had I missed the turn I would have given up, but this draw now calls for firing a second barrel. I’ll bet roughly half the pot.

Sm: Well, he bet again, so he must really have something. However, I just picked up a well-hidden flush draw. His bet of $150,000 is pricing me out (about half the pot), but if hit my flush, there is a s good chance he will give me the whole $650,ooo he has left So I really calling $150K in an attempt to win over a million. I know I am drawing but my flush will be well hidden and his turn bet shows a lot of strength.

(River 9s)

Gi: Holy cow I made my straight. He will never believe it. Now how to get a lot of money off of him? I can just push all in, but that will probably scare him off top pair and I want a big reward for my miracle catch. If I bet a little, I will probably get called but I want a bigger payoff. I will check! He will bet most of his hands to get paid off, and perhaps he will put in enough to get pot committed so when I check raise, he will have to make a crying call. I am going to double through here perhaps.

Sm: Holy cow I made my flush. He will never believe it. Now how to get a lot of money off him? I know has a good hand because he bet the turn, but his check probably means he does not have a huge hand and does not want to face a fancy raise by me. I need to bet something here that will get paid off. I don’t want to put him all in as he will probably fold and I won’t get anything. The pot is $600,000. If I bet around two-thirds, he can make a crying call and still have $250,000 left which he might just do rather than see the whole pot go to me. Maybe I should be a little less, but I think he might pay me off at $400,oo so I will bet that.

Gi: I did it. He bet. And he did bet enough so he will have to pay me off. I will just push all-in here and he will have to call the rest. Final table here I come. With a big stack.

Sm: What is this? A check-raise? Did he make a bigger flush? I hope not but it does not matter because I have real hand and I am totally pot committed. I will call and just hope he was trapping with something I can beat.

Barry: OK, there is my best guess as to what these players were thinking. I could be way off, but I suspect I am close. In any event, that is my Thought of the Week for this week

Larry Grossman, host of the Las Vegas radio show “You Can Bet On It,” has been kind enough to invite me back to do a poker segment on Wednesday, January 25. The show airs on 1460 AM (Sporting News radio) from 2 PM to 3 PM in Las Vegas.

This will be my third appearance on his show, which also will be available on cardplayer.com after midnight on the 25th. Larry is closing his show on Feb 3 after 16 continuous years of being the longest running, and probably best, gambling talk show anywhere. I am honored to be invited to his next-to-last program.

It’s actually Monday morning when I write this. My sleep patterns were disrupted, and I played from 3 AM to 8 AM instead of my typical hours. The game was fairly full when I got there, and rather rapidly became four handed (me, another local pro, a local regular and a sort of local guy who was drinking a bit too much).

For some reason, people think when the gamer gets short-handed, they must play every hand, never lay down a blind and call to the river with anything. I do not and did not play this way. In fact, since I rarely held a hand of any sort, I almost never played anything. A relentless stream of 82 can make you look like a rock, but shorthanded, these guys were committed to every pot regardless of how few I played. So most pots were three-handed with me folding. This is not how I typically play, but I am not going to enter with trash hoping to get lucky.

Short-handed hold’em is a game of high cards, and preferably two of them. Yes, I know all about blind aggression, but it does not work anywhere near as well as its proponents think. Yes, I made a move or two, some successful and some not, but they were rare in themselves.

For example, I raise from the button with 10-8. Aggressive (drinking) local three-bets from the blind. I call. He bets the AQ2 flop. I put him on nothing and, as I look like a tight player, call planning to raise him off his nothing on the turn. Turn is a seven, he bets, I raise and he calls. (Bad for me). River is a ten. He checks and I check since I no longer need to bluff. He reveals 97 (pair of sevens) and I show my pair of tens to take it down. My read was good but he hit a pair so I had to draw out. He is angry I sucked out, and everyone else thinks I am nuts and just raising with nothing which nets me several bets later.

Anyway, that play was rare as I mostly watched. Eventually I picked up a hand (JJ) that held up for a nice pot. A little more give and take and I walked away with $1,000 of hard-earned money. I am not saying whether it was skill or luck; I am saying that I did not play many hands, played the ones I did aggressively (naturally) and won for the session without being in very many pots.

Take a look at your short-handed game. Do you play short-handed so you can play many hands or just play hyper-aggressive poker, or are you really trying to optimize your earn by continuing to play selective (though less so), aggressive (perhaps a bit more so) poker?

A couple of topics today. First, something that drives me nuts: people discussing strategy at the table. We have new guy in town whom I call Mr. WAPMAS. It stands for “Win a Pot; Make a Speech.” The guy cannot help talking about how he plays hands. Typical is “I would have semi-bluff raised you on the turn, but I knew you would call, so I just called hoping to draw out. Then I felt you might check the river so I had to bet.” Who needs this? Strategy is for books, forums, discussions with friends, and, yes, lessons. The table is for making money. You cannot make money by talking about strategy…all you can do is either make your unaware opponents smarter, or cause them to stop having fun and start worrying about the fact that they are not thinking enough or about the right things. Tables are for talking about fun stuff, sports, and maybe a funny play or two. Please heed this.

A number of people are having problems with suited aces, so I thought I would deal with it briefly. Weak suited aces are bad hand, and typically you should not play them. I know how hard it is to throw them away, and I had trouble with this leak for many years, so I understand it is easy to say and hard to do. But let’s look at what kind of hand it is.

First, it makes top pair bad kicker. If an ace flops and you have top pair, you will win the pot with little difficulty unless someone else has one too. If they do, your weak kicker will lose or tie unless you draw out. And you do not want to be in a position where you have to hit three outs to win a small pot. Ace-rag is the type of hand that wins smaller pots and loses bigger ones. Of course, you can also make small-pair top-kicker, but this is a tough hand to get to hold up. So as a power hand, suited aces are really only used heads-up where aces have value as a winning hand if neither player makes a pair.

There is also the suited aspect. Suited-ness helps when there is a large field, so you are getting a good price to flop a flush draw (around 7:1, including flopping a flush) and then a price to make it (2:1 against). This means with many opponents suited aces play well (almost regardless of price in limit hold’em) and against small and medium fields they don’t.

Suited aces are thus only playable in late position (unless your game is totally loose) with a large number of players, or in late position when you are first in looking to play heads-up. Otherwise, while it takes discipline, you will save money by tossing them away.