Baudib1 4001K post: Q&A

Um, I didn't even realize I had a milestone coming up.

I thought I'd do a Q&A. Not that I think anyone is really interested but I don't know, I thought I should do something special and didn't have any other ideas. If you have other ideas, feel free to suggest them.

So like, ask me anything, pretend this is a "well" for a super baller player except that I'm not as good, so don't expect great answers.

Hi Baudib,

Your feedback on my cash game hands has been very useful, so cheers for that

A few questions, mostly regarding live play (I've never played live at a casino but would like to give it a go)

1) Are you a pro? ie does all your income come from poker? (just interested/nosey)

2) Was it scary the first time you played live? I ask because the highest I have played online is 25NL and I worry that I would start to give off all sorts of reads due to nerves with a £200 stack in front of me. How quickly do you get used to that and stop being nervous? And how do you avoid giving off tells in general...sunglasses, hoods, anything like that?

3) Do you track players when you play live, using some kind of software to get an idea of VPIP + PFR etc?

4) Do you still play online? Or all live now? Is it really much softer live, and what stakes online would you equate the level of play to?

1. I'm not anywhere near a pro. When things are going good the supplemental income is great. when it's not, not so much. I had some personal difficulties in the past year and whatever I had stored as my poker bankroll pretty much evaporated.

Over the years my overall winnings from poker are probably around $25k, mostly from online MTTs (and most of those 4-5 years ago) and maybe 30% from live play. So yeah, nothing significant or life-changing at all.

2. I really dig the live experience and the first time I played live it was really cool. I mean, I had played some small sit-n-goes with friends back when the poker boom first started and everyone was playing poker.

The first cash game I ever played live was a home game I found posted on craigslist in my hometown. It was great. The guy was really friendly, the players were all cool, he had a professional dealer, gave us great free food and drinks. There was no rake, just $5 time charge (which I thought was a lot at the time, I wish I had known how great it was). It was $1-$2 live and I would buy in for $100. The players were so terrible I usually made like $400-$500 a night. They stopped having the game because the host and his girlfriend probably lost $15K in like 9 months. I think I personally took $3k off him.

3. I don't track players live, it might be a good idea. But I have a pretty incredible memory when it comes to poker. I don't remember their names well but I can visualize their faces and piece together an estimated range when they raise from UTG or think of all the significant hands we've played together. I can actually remember most of the details of every big hand I've played online as well. Not the players in the hand necessarily, but the betting sequence and all. Sometimes I post hands in the HH section from years ago and I can recall the details all very vividly.

4. I don't play online now at all except for the occasional play money game on Stars out of boredom.

Live is so much softer than online it's really hard to describe if you haven't done it. I mean, I do not think I am great at reading people but sometimes they just give off so much information it's ridiculous. Some people I cannot read through tells at all though. I think physical tells are incredibly overrated.

But their ranges will be so narrow you can exploit them. I feel pretty confident in saying that most $1-$2 live games are equivalent to like 10 NL or 25 NL at best. There is the caveat that there will be the occasional very good player who's looking to grind out a few quick buyins. At some $2-$5 games I've played, you run the gamut from incredibly weak players to real professionals, but it's so easy to figure out how good someone is you can just avoid the good ones. You will also very occasionally run into the perceptive live player who actually does garner information off tells.

The interesting thing, I think, about me is that I've become a vastly superior player since Black Friday, i.e. not playing that much.

Just before Black Friday, I sort of started having some poker epiphanies. There had been times where I had been discouraged and sort of stopped playing. Poker can be a real grind and it isn't always fun. But I felt I was on track to getting really better in a lot of different ways. I made a semi-decent score in an MTT 2 days before Black Friday. I had found a bunch of poker buddies in New York and talking to them really opened my eyes to a lot of things I was missing.

After Black Friday, I started reading and studying a lot more and I began understanding a lot of different concepts I had never heard of before. I wish I had had this epiphany years ago, but oh well. If I get to play online again I am pretty confident that I will be able to improve even more, but who knows? In live games it's hard to get enough volume or find enough spots to put concepts into practice.

Nice answers, thanks.

Think I'll grind up my roll a bit then withdraw some to play live. Once I can beat 25NL on pokerstars I should be fine with it I think. And as you say, its a case of exploiting the fish and avoiding players better than you, just like it is online. Just need to find out which is the softest casino in London

One more question:

Does it ever get a bit boring/slow playing live? What do you do to alleviate that? Chatting with other players? Browsing the web from your phone?

Live poker (especially tournament poker) has been described as "hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror."

I can understand the sentiment but I really enjoy live poker a lot. For one thing, it's profitable to engage people in conversation and if they want to talk about hands, it's fine. I try not to talk too much strat at the table and I certainly don't talk about poker in a way to put down other people or to show off my knowledge.

But anytime I've ever been at a table with a good player, they realize pretty damn quickly I know more than the average $1-$2 live fish. I like to say I can smell a "2+2er" a mile away, it's pretty obvious if you listen to them talk for more than 5 minutes.

People will tell you all kinds of amazing information, for free, if you are just nice to them. "I would never raise on a draw there." "I don't like going all-in with AK, I'd rather have pocket deuces." ETc.

I also find it fascinating to watch hands play out when I'm not involved. I'll also admit to playing more hands live than I would online out of boredom. There have been maybe 2 times that I've actually put on headphones to listen to music during a game, and they were both because someone was really annoying me and wouldn't shut up. But yeah, I play on my iPhone, too.

why dont you play live seriously? is there personal constraints (time, money, mrs etc)

There are a lot of reasons:

1. I haven't built my bankroll back up to where I want it to be. I had the personal problems I discussed in my live thread. Also I took a shot at the Borgata open and lost a pretty significant chunk.

2. Work is a problem. I work nights and it's hard to have enough energy to play poker for decent sessions after that. Also, what happens a lot is the fish get busted and by midnight or so it's only the better players left.

3. It's hard to find a good game that doesn't rape you on rake in the city. Places get busted frequently enough that the cost of doing business is high; most places are looking to take as much money out of the game as possible before getting shut down.

Despite this there are still profitable games but generally they start out juicy and wind down pretty quickly. I had a great game going at one place for a few months, it was like a wet dream. There were no fewer than 5 complete novices playing every night, blowing up to a grand each in a $1-$3 game. Guess what, they lost a lot of money and stopped playing.

ah i guess working nights is the main issue, that blows!

kind of off topic, but i once saw a post from you about raising in a multiway pot knowing that the tiny stack will shove behind us and it keeps our range uncapped.

basically are there ever situations where you want to deliberately cap your range with AA/KK?

Everything is on topic, whether I choose to answer is up to me! On another forum, it is standard to start every well with the question: "One horse-sized duck or 50 duck-size horses?"

I'm not sure what you mean by the question on AA/KK because when we have AA/KK we are, by definition, at the top of our range. If you mean slowplaying, well, there are spots to slowplay for sure but not as many as most people think. I mean the limp-RR from UTG is cool when it works but how can you really balance that?

Someone once told me that you should be capable of having any hand in any spot. There is merit to that but like a lot of poker beliefs, you can only take it so far. Something AeJones once said was, "No one ever has anything." And this is very true; in two-card hold'em it is very difficult to make a good hand. Obviously, if you take this too literally, you will get into a lot of trouble.

Times to "slowplay" AA/KK: When facing a 3-bet OOP from someone with a polarized range. This is especially true if they might fold to a 4-bet because it just screams strength or you have a really nitty image and/or they tend to spazz out when you donk into them or cling to top pair/smaller overpairs like they're the stone-cold nuts.

Something a really great player (IowaSkinsFan) once said is that, "It doesn't matter if he bets it or we bet it."
So if you have AA/KK and are facing a 3-bet, the pot is already pretty big. If you were in position and he raised, you'd be happy to 3-bet and get called. So who cares if he bet it or you bet it?

Sure, it's nice when you get the chance to 4-bet AA/KK, but if his range is polarized this is exactly what he wants you to do: To fold your weaker/middling hands (hands as good as TT/AQ or even JJ) and 4-bet the nuts so he can just fold his junk.

When people flat OOP to 3-bets they tend to have a very capped range of something like TT-JJ, maybe QQ sometimes AQ, very rarely AK. Regs especially will tend to put you on this range. This range is difficult enough to play OOP, it is even harder to play it when you have exactly what they think you have. The chance of an overcard flopping when you have QQ is 43%; with JJ it's 59%. If you cap your flatting range here your range is even further capped on Axx/Kxx/AKx boards.

Your range becomes a lot easier to play and becomes more profitable when you can have an overpair/top set on those boards, doesn't it?

Another spot to slowplay AA/KK: In an MTT when you are in EP facing a raise UTG with a lot of stacks behind you that are likely to squeeze.

This was long and rambling, hope that helps.

If I ever played live i've always wanted to know, 'should I give off signs of being a fish, i.e saying stuff like "ahh, kings no good?" when folding on a Q high flop, or should I just STFU and let people work out my ability via my play'?

along the "slowplaying" thing.

Iv been watching a bunch of baluga recently, he flats AA/KK/AK/AQ alot vs other regs to 3bets/4bets and also instead of cold 4betting simply because there is just more value in flatting.

simply because people (after figuring out 3bet ranges obv) have way weaker hands in their 3b and 4b ranges that if we are 4betting or 5bet shipping AA we are mainly just getting folds or coolering other regs. if he is 3betting a depolarised range and we are 4betting AA and AK + KK it allows him to play almost perfectly against us, shipping coolers and folding worse.

This was my kind first epiphany, maybe off topic but im sure you will have thoughts etc

also a comment/quote from baluga "its not hard to play pockets aces OOP in a 3bet pot"

It depends?

I have mentioned it in another thread recently but I think table image and meta considerations are hugely important in live poker. I don't think most live fish really think deeply about it but things like, "I saw him make this crazy bluff once" or "He always has the nuts!" really stick in people's minds. First impressions are powerful.

Mike Caro says he likes to portray himself as a loose cannon who's just splashing around like crazy, and then settle down and play premium cards. Phil Laak sort of does this as well. Jennifer Tilly even commented on this on The Big Game, she said that Phil plays very tight but he acts so goofy and talks so much it seems like he's way looser than he is.

Some things are beyond your control but if the opportunity presents itself, take advantage of any little thing that you can. If you happen to flop the nuts the first three hands you play, that makes an impression on people. They will be scared to play against you, you can start bluffing them -- "Oh, he always has it!"

I can't explain why but some people get the idea that I'm a total nit whereas others think I constantly make crazy moves. It's more important to understand what each individual player thinks of you.

One thing someone suggested is that if you change seats to get better position on someone or move away from someone who has position on you, make sure you say something like, "Oh that seat was so unlucky, hopefully this one will be better." A lot of live players are just there for recreation and to gamble it up a little, it probably puts their mind at ease to know that you're just like one of them.

I think Baluga is brilliant, I love all his stuff although I haven't read his latest book. He's one of those guys who puts concepts in words that are easy to understand and he's been tremendously influential in my poker learning.

1)How old are you?
2)If you and bgomez had a baby would it be stu ungar ?
3)How often to you come here and post outside the HA section?
4)Why do you not post in the cash thread?
5)Do you drink?
6)How many poker books have you read?\Best poker book you've read?

this

1. I'm 40

2. It depends. Is bgomez the mother or the father?

3. It depends. If I see a topic on hot threads I'm interested in I'll post.

4. I used to once in a while. I'm not sure if I'm really cool enough to post in there. Mostly just lurking, waiting for pics of Tyler's HOT sister.

5. Almost never. I used to go clubbing/drinking constantly in my mid-20s/early 30s. When I was younger than that I did other stuff. Stopping 99% of alcohol/other stuff consumption is about the extent of my maturity. I'd guess that I had 8 beers in 2011 and 2 glasses of wine.

6. I have no idea really. Probably 40. Most of them were really really terrible, like Phil Hellmuth's book. The best ones are probably Theory of Poker, Kill Everyone (not great reading, but important), Easy Game 1-2 by Baluga, Arnold Snyder's Poker Tournament Formula 1/2. Of the older books, Theory of Poker by far stands up the best. Harrington's HOH books are very good although I think slightly outdated, but still important. If a newbie player asked me, I'd recommend that they read Harrington's more recent books on online cash games and 6-max games, they're fantastic for people who don't have the basics down like how to use a HUD and interpret various stats, etc.

Dusty Schmidt's "Don't Listen to Phil Hellmuth" is pretty good. "Let There Be Range" is pretty good, I totally paid full price for that! maybe

Is poker the only gambling you do?

Whats the most you've lost in one hand?

Whats the best call you've ever done in poker?

other than playing the lottery, yes

The most I've ever lost in a hand, not including tournament buyins and all, was about $900 that I shipped with bottom 2 pair vs. some kid's Top/bottom pair earlier this summer. I sort of lost my mind during the hand.

The best call I ever made is tough, it might be a hand where I check-called KK on Axx 2 diamond board, the turn went check-check, then I check-called an overbet-shove on a third-diamond river. It was in an MTT vs. an unknown. I showed it to someone from here who said I had to have a mega read to do that. I just felt like it was an obvious scare card and my range is pretty face up so his range would be mostly bluffs.

Another one was in a live game a couple years ago where I called a big river bet with 99 on AT8 3 6 board and I realized he was repping so little and since I had blockers to the only draw that got there I should probably make the call. It wasn't really a big deal but I liked the way I pieced it together.

Have to be honest and say that most of my hero calls have been bad, it's obviously a leak.

Thanks thats really helpful!

What is the most common mistake you exploit in live cash games?

Pre black friday were you playing cash or MTT?

Just curious if you have ever heard this The third reraise means AA. It seems to me about 15 years ago that it was almost a way of telling your opponent I have AA if you reraised his reraise. Nowadays it seems that players are reraising and reraising with anything. Heck I was playing the other day and was dealt JJ in my BB. This was in a $10 bounty. Utg Raised he was reraised and the button reraised all in. Utg called and the other guy did too. I tossed my JJ. UTg showed 88, button showed 44 and the other guy had ace rag. It was ridiculous

Story/meaning behind your CC username?

I was going to say that the most common mistake they make is playing, but that's too flip. Its hard to say because live players are a bundle of leaks, myself included. I'd say the most common thing that I exploit is playing poorly out of position/not using position to their advantage.

there are many hands I've won where I get to the turn after bet-calling or check-calling the flop and think, "if this guy sets up to play for stacks on the river I may have to give up my TPGk-overpair range here." and you get to the turn and they check behind. I think I have to start leading in this spot more often because this happens a ton.

before BF I was a dabbler. Mostly an MTt player but trying to play cash. I started playing PLO and mixed games years ago and love them. In the month before Black Friday I was playing 8-game on Stars. I was also learning HU sit n goes. my most profitable game was PLO MTTs where I had an absurd/unsustainable ROI in a non-significant sample. I just tended to win the damn thing if I got into the money.

favorite food?

color?

movie?

vacation?

do u like the skype chat name "snow bunnies"?

yeah I've heard it. It's an old saying and there are lots of old poker sayings. There was one that said, "don't go broke with a queen or jack in your hand."
I think in your example you need to think about the mentality of the player pool you're facing and understand in a bounty tournament you will be facing a lot of gamblers, especially if the pot is already big and stacks are shallow.

The original 6 Dune books by Frank Herbert are my favorite books of all time. The main character in the first book is named Muad'dib. Baudib is a play on that using my name.

1) How long did it take you to post 4K?
2) Do you post anywhere else like 2+2?
3)Why this poker forum?

probably salmon sashimi, if it's good and fresh it just melts in your mouth.

black

fave flick is probably Kill Bill

I rarely travel. I went to Europe after high school -- London, Paris and Madrid. That was fun.

I like snow bunnies better than Love Triangle.

as a bonus, " bizarre love triangle" is one of my favorite songs.

I've been on here a long time, not always active. I'm thinking it's in my profile somewhere but I can't check cuz I'm typing on my phone on the train.

I post occasionally on 2+2 but mostly lurk there.
I'm a reg on another poker forum, if you'd like to know which one pm me.

I like cc cuz it's mostly a small group of regs with lots of occasional posters. I never felt like people made fun of me for being a noob here like they do on other forums. Admittedly other forums have more advanced or even famous members who post, but for the most part, the best players either stopped posting hardcore strat 3-5 years ago or only pass on insights for subscription sites now.

CC still has its own formidable group of players, plus I feel like the stuff I know is probably more helpful to people here where there are a lot of new players or micro stakes players.

The thing about position made me think about a hand I played at the borgata tournament. I raised UTG with AA and got 4 callers. board is super dry, K 8 3r. I bet 3/5 pot and get popped big by older guy to my immediate left. Everyone else folds. We were very deep because it was early and I didn't think I could get my money in good if I 3-bet him. so he gets to the turn and it's a blank and he checks behind. The river is another small card and I bombed it and he calls with his very obvious KJ/KQ.

I think he probably played every street badly but the consistent thing with bad players is they tell you the truth on the turn. The funny thing about nits is they don't use their image to bluff or put people to tough decisions and dont think about their image or perceived range when people bet into them. they think something like, "these guys always bluff me, I'm going to take a passive line here with my non-nut hand so I can pick off bluffs on the river and show down, damnit." I was a nit and used to think this way.

Above is so true, don't have a question right now but will, just wanted to thank you for taking the time to offer advice and answer so many posts. Thank You

how long have you been with your girlfriend?

when you getting married?

am I invited?

How did you get started