The Lessons Learned
2007-10-28 11:44:27
By: Gene Bromberg
With a poker room now within a 90-minute drive of my home (well, that's counting traffic...next time I won't head there during rush hour) I made two trips to Mountaineer Race Track in West Virginia this week. Results were mixed. Well, not exactly mixed--I left a loser both times. I didn't lose a lot, but as the quality of play was a bit sketchy I was disappointed that I didn't finish with more chips than I started. Of course, when you flop a set and the other guy flops the nut flush, there's gonna be a confrontation. Which I lost.
I was playing at a $1/2 No-Limit table and found my thoughts drifting back to Aruba. Not to the beach, or the water, or even the Balashis. No, I was thinking about the WSOP Academy that was held before the Aruba Poker Classic started. What got me reminiscing was the way some of my tablemates were playing. As I said, we were playing $1/2 No Limit. And several of the poker players were making their preflop raises a bit...big. Like, $17 big. When I looked down at my suited connectors and baby pairs and imagined flopping a monster and stacking someone, one of the maniacs would throw out a 8.5x preflop raise and force me to toss my hand in the muck.
During the WSOP Academy there was a question-and-answer session and someone asked Annie Duke about how big you should make your preflop raises. The questioner said that sometimes she varied her raises, sometimes 3x, sometimes 5x. Or more. Annie said (and the panel agreed with her) that making your preflop raises too big is counterproductive. You want to raise enough to thin the field...but you also want players with iffy hands to make incorrect calls. You also have to worry about blundering into a bigger hand and getting lured into a big pot as a big dog. If raising $6 gets the same results as raising $17, why not raise the smaller amount and limit your risk? I'm severely paraphrasing what was discussed at the Academy, but I think the point is the same. It's legal for other players to be dealt Aces, you know.
Other players, maybe, but not me. Two of the red-chip slingers made their $17 pre-flop raises and, after everyone folded, showed their pocket rockets to the table. Well, I guess winning three dollars in blinds is better than possibly losing a pot with Aces. But if that's you're thinking, poker probably isn't the game for you. You gotta come to terms with the whole risk-reward thing.
Then again, I'm the one down $150. Oh well, it's one big game, isn't it?
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