Poker is a game of small edges

tpb221

tpb221

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They say poker is a game of small edges and I thought this was a interesting way to look at it. This is from a article by Tom Sexton over at PokerNews.
This is Archie Karas telling this story about playing Chip Reese heads up.
If you don't know who Archie Karas is you should read Tom's 10 part story on him. Very interesting story of taking $50 to $40 million and then taking $40million to zero.(ouch!)

Here's the full article.
http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/03/sextons-corner-34-archie-karas-part-4.htm


"One time Chip and I played at the Mirage. Chip sat down with $2,000,000, where half of his chips were $1,000 yellow chips, and the other half was $5,000 in chips.
Chip had ten racks of $1,000 chips, and I asked him, 'Why do you have so many yellow chips? We only need $80,000 to $100,000 for the blinds and bring-in.'
Chip said, 'I want them like that,' and I said, "Almost all of my chips were $5,000. I thought, 'Well, let's play, as maybe he is superstitious or something.'

"After a while, Chip started to stare at me and my chips, with his eyes darting back and forth, with a look like I was doing something to him! I stopped playing and said, 'What's wrong, Chip?
Why are you looking at me that way? What did I do?' Chip looked at me and said, 'Can't you see what you're doing to me?'
As I looked down at all of the yellow chips sitting in front of me, it hit me for the first time, what he was referring to: I had almost all of the yellow $1,000 chips! In heads-up poker, whoever wins the antes wins the match. You can bank on this 90 times out of 100. The big pots will usually even out.
While an opponent is waiting for aces or a good starting hand, I'm raising every pot and winning the antes and bring-in. Playing $10,000/$20,000 limit, you are talking about $9,000 pots over and over.
The antes are $3,000 each and the bring-in is $3,000. Chip was very smart, as he was trying to measure what was going on, after losing to me so much!"

I think that was a interesting way to use the $1,000 chips to keep track of how the game was going. Diff shows how poker can be a game of small edges.
 
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CashinJen

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Heads Up

That's a very interesting article. Heads up is something I have started playing alot of and he's dead on. The good players I play raise or fold. They never call. I have had to bluff big raises alot to get a guy off me trying to still every blind. Not only that but if you call with marginal hand and the flop misses you he's already got a big advantage so raising preflop is huge in heads up. Of course you can counter this by being willing to gamble but it still makes for a very tough opponent. Nice article thanks
 
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Igeso

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Great article! I heard Norman Chad and Lon McEachern talking about him... If I'd make so much money, I'd stop playing.
 
M33K3R

M33K3R

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Very well written article. I agree that it's hard to fathom the amount of money they use in each game.
 
OzExorcist

OzExorcist

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Great article! I heard Norman Chad and Lon McEachern talking about him... If I'd make so much money, I'd stop playing.

Thing is though, he only won all that money by being a massive degen. If he wasn't one, he wouldn't have won so much.

Archie's is a very interesting story none the less though.

Personally, if I won that much money I'd stop playing -EV games :p
 
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