Strategy Snapshot: Table for Two, Thrashing for One

This hand comes from the online nosebleed cash games, where Phil Ivey has been thrashing seda1 at his personal Deathmatch $500/$1,000 NL table.
(Hand history and stats from PL.com MarketPulse Biggest Pots section.)
Players: Phil Ivey and seda1
Game: Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em, Cash, Full Tilt Poker
Situation: $500/$1,000 blinds
Stacks: Ivey $313,922.50; seda1 $192,475.75
Table Ivey Deathmatch at Full Tilt is Phil Ivey's personal table. One seat is always reserved for Phil while the other is open for any Tom, Dick or Mary with enough stones and/or enough e-bucks to sit down and try their luck against one of the best in the world.
seda1's identity is shrouded in mystery. I will refrain from speculating but I will say this: he is definitely not a professional poker player. I've railed the game a few times and have noticed seda1 plays infrared contactlenses extremely passively after the flop.
It also seems seda1 never bets his strong hands for value. I saw hands with large overpairs, sets or full houses get to showdown with seda1 only dragging 16/20BB pots. If he were a pro these hands would be played with huge pots or they wouldn't be going to showdown at all.
This all lends credence to the theory he's just a wealthy whale and not a professional poker player.

Rumor was seda1 was none other than the Bear, Barry Greenstein, but based on his play that's clearly not possible. Or is it?

In prior matches with seda1, Ivey had come away the clear winner. In this current battle they had been playing for close to an hour when I picked up the action.
Ivey had initially taken an early lead but the match had swung back in seda1's favor when he rivered a flush after getting his pair and a flush draw all-in on the turn versus Ivey's pair and a smaller flush draw.
After another half hour of grinding, Ivey once again has taken the lead. Now both players have monster stacks - Phil with $313,922.50 and seda1 with $192,475.75. Which brings us to this hand:
seda1 is on the button and makes a raise to $3,000. Phil three-bets the pot to $9,000. The flop comes out 8♦ J♦ 6♠. Phil leads out with a two-thirds pot-size bet of $14,000. seda1 smooth-calls in position.
The turn brings the 3♣ and once again Phil leads out, this time for $39,000. seda1 now raises to $163,000. Phil pushes all-in and seda1 makes the call for his last $6,475. The river brings the 9♣ and Phil tables A♥ A♠ to beat Seda1's J♥ 7♥.
Phil Ivey rakes the $384,951 pot and takes the biggest-pot-of-the-month honors!

Analysis

Now let's have a look behind the scenes. seda1 raises three times the big blind with J♥ 7♥ from the button. When playing heads-up you can raise almost any hand off the button just because position is such an advantage.
As a suited three-gapper with relatively good high-card potential, seda1's J♥ 7♥ more than meets that requirement. ivey obviously makes a three-bet with his A♠ A♥, choosing to go three times seda1's initial raise.

Ivey: Clearly ecstatic about garnering PL.com biggest pot of the month honors.

The 8♦ J♦ 6♠ flop is a relatively safe one and Ivey continues his aggression by making a two-thirds pot-size bet of $14,000. Phil would make this bet with literally any hand that he three-bet pre-flop with.
seda1 makes the call. He most likely believes his pair of jacks are good but decides to wait until the turn to make his move.
The turn brings the bricky 3♣ and Ivey leads for #39,000. seda1 springs his "trap" and makes a raise to $163,000. Ivey raises all-in and seda1 is forced to call for only $6,475 more.
Unfortunately for seda1, Ivey has aces and that's all she wrote when the river bricks out with the 9♣.
Now I believe seda1 was thinking fairly correctly, although in this hand Ivey did have him beat marked cards. A large percentage of the time seda1's pair of jacks would be by far and away the best hand.
Ivey could re-raise pre-flop with a very wide range. He would continue his aggression on the flop with his entire range. Once he is called, the range is a little narrower.
Ivey would probably only fire the turn if he had paired the board, held a draw or was on a complete bluff. I would say that seda1's pair of jacks beats the bulk of Ivey's range. This would make the push correct, right? Wrong.

Tons of disposable income, Phil Ivey's cell number and horrible post-flop poker game? Yep, seda1 could be Nelly... in crazy town.

Effectively what seda1 did was turn his hand into a bluff. Yes, his hand beats the bulk of Ivey's range. However, once he makes that giant raise, Ivey will just simply fold everything seda1's hand beats and will only call with hands seda1 loses to.
What I believe seda1 should have done is just call and face that bet on the river. What this does is it allows Ivey to continue with hands that seda1 beats but that he would have folded to a turn raise.
In poker you never want to turn a hand with decent showdown value into a bluff. While he was destined to lose a lot of money in this hand anyway, holding top pair to Ivey's overpair, in the long haul this move is definitely a losing one.
In seda1's case, it was clearly a losing move in the short haul as well - his net losses over the six-hour session: $600,000.
To see the full hand history, and about a dozen more high-stakes pots between the two, head to the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section, where you can track all the latest high-stakes action and see the top ten list of biggest pots online over the last day, week and month.

Battle of Malta Day 1b Chip Counts

Day 1b of the 2012 Battle of Malta is complete with a total of 97 players making it to Day 2. We've got the chip counts from marked cards Day 1b below:

Christian Bergstrom			234,500
Fernando Cimaglia			147,400
Piotr Sekula			98,600
Kristian Svensson			97,900
Jan Helander			87,000
Jackie Cachia			84,700
Gaetano di Franco			83,600
Biagio Torrisi			83,600
Fabrizio Fagiolini			79,700
Simon Berntsen			79,200
Salvatore Chillemi			79,200
Bart Kuiper			72,200
Nicodemo Piccolo			70,300
Chris Kiefert			69,800
Puk Nabuurs			69,400
Tellef Igland			68,900
Daniel Dalsborg			68,400
Giovanni Raffa			68,400
Gabriele Russo			63,500
Carmel Praeni			61,400
Mohamed Almani			58,200
Daniel Bradhe			52,300
Johnnie Samuel			51,900
Paul Rieger			48,700
Simon Hoffman			47,400
Vincenzo Germiglio			45,700
Lars Kollind			45,100
Mirko Cammisuli			44,700
Danny Nielsen			44,600
Philip Stupar			43,900
Siwkowski Lukasz			43,700
Marco Laino			42,800
Kara Scott			42,800
Andrea Maria Patorno			42,200
Ettore Minardi			41,000
Ville Savonlanti			40,500
Francesco Crisapulli			40,300
Adriano Sannelli			37,300
Kristars Bertulis			37,000
Sean Capone			35,900
Donato de Bonis			35,400
Antonino Agnello			35,000
Alessandro Barone			34,800
Arved Klohn			34,300
Erik Lennartsson			33,800
Roger Hardy			33,700
Salvatore Ubaldini			31,900
Dilbahar Demirbag			30,800
Lukasz Pomianowsli			29,900
Fransesco Caruso			29,500
Marin Vella			29,000
Mario Scibberas			28,000
Simon Skovmand			27,000
Alessandro Forleo			27,000
Matthew Hoffman			25,700
Giulio Astarita			25,100
Philipp Steuer			24,900
Antonio Trapuzzano			24,500
Kevan Lim			24,000
Giovanni Rizzo			23,200
Roger Bruget			23,100
Bonetta Pietro			22,900
Fabrizio Terranova			22,500
Hans Christian Folkmann			22,400
Mehmet Donmez			22,300
Kevin Price			22,000
Daniel Mountford			21,900
Eli Mazano			21,900
Emma Goodchild			21,600
Antoine DeGeorgeo			20,800
Hampus Eriksson			20,400
Fabio Assennato			20,300
Klaus Dachu			20,200
Giuseppe Fichera			19,800
Toni Karjalainen			19,600
Francesco Renda			19,000
Jan Balken			18,500
Ugo Farris			18,000
Fabien Mezanger			17,400
Ciprian Vosloban			16,900
Eric Moller			15,500
Fabio Salvador			15,200
Roman Lanzerstorfer			14,900
Jean Louis Breux			14,200
Andreev Alexey			13,500
Terence Byrne			12,600
Marcello Galletti			11,100
Georges Debru			9,400
Michal Jankowski			8,100
Ilenia Barreca			7,300
Tudor Mikov			4,200
Ole Ronny Bergan			3,200
Niklas Bergstrom			1,800

Aggression, Testosterone and Confidence

One of my touchstones for poker wisdom is Mike Caro. Over the years he's said so many wise and wonderful things.
My favorite is this beaut, tossed off some years ago: "Aggression is rarely wrong in poker. And when it is, it isn't wrong by much."
This line goes right to the core of the game and, not surprisingly, has received a lot of analysis. In terms of standard marked cards poker strategy the gloss is straightforward.
Aggression works because it can win "immediate" money two ways: (a) you force an opponent to fold a better hand or one that might improve to beat you; (b) you win more when you're best and get called.
Checking and calling only win when you're best and don't affect pot size. But there are other reasons why Caro is right, ones that involve "future" money, money that will be won in hands to be played later down the road.
The elements that underlie this implied revenue are primarily psychological and are best seen not as specific strategic moves in particular hands, but as factors that are part of what Dan Harrington calls the "metagame" - those elements that characterize the game as played over extended periods of time and among a host of different players.
The concept of a metagame is important and was discussed at length in an earlier PokerListings column.

Dan Harrington: Goes deep into the metagame in his new books.

The role that aggression plays in the metagame has a lot to do with the hormone testosterone, its impact on our physical and mental selves, the role it plays in self-confidence and the importance of experience. With your indulgence, I need to shift into professor mode for a short lecture.
Testosterone is an anabolic steroid derived, as are other steroids, from cholesterol (and you thought that stuff just clogged your arteries). It is produced primarily in the testes in men and, in much smaller quantities, by women in the ovaries.
It has a host of effects on the body including increasing muscle mass, enlarging body parts, stimulating sexual arousal and increasing bone density. It also affects cognitive functions, contributes to mental alertness and, under certain conditions, increases aggression.
Many have assumed that there is a direct relationship between testosterone levels and aggressive play in poker. There may be; in fact, there probably is, although I don't know of any controlled scientific studies.
But if a relationship does exist, it is likely complex because we know that hormone levels interact with a host of other factors, one being learning. Here's a classic study done several years ago - and, yes, it holds a message for poker players.

Monkey study holds clear message: You should drug players better than you.

Scientists selected a young monkey, one low on the dominance hierarchy and with relatively low testosterone levels; let's call him Max. This poor sod was routinely beaten on by his more aggressive troop mates.
But science came to the rescue. The researchers rigged his next encounter by drugging the monkey just above him in the troop's pecking order. Max won his first fight and replaced the other monkey in the chain of command.
The research team, however, was just getting started. Through a succession of fixed fights (the way some boxers get their shot at a title) they engineered a climb up the monkey version of the corporate ladder infrared contactlenses.
Max prospered. As he climbed, his testosterone levels went up. He gained weight and strength and behaviorally he seemed to show more swagger and confidence. Monkeys who once intimidated him were now cowed.
The message was clear. Testosterone levels are not fixed by biology. They are malleable and can be shifted about by experience.
So, back to poker. Everyone knows you win when you play better, but it's also true that you play better when you're winning. You take down a couple of pots; hormone levels take a tick upward.

PokerStars pro Dario Minieri: Looks like he's 12, but clearly an Alpha male when it comes to aggression.

You start building a stack; your confidence rises. You felt a couple of opponents; your modal level of aggression moves upward. You feel strong, assured, and importantly, your opponents sense it too.
If you come to the table with a good sense of self, a feeling of self-affirmation and a (realistic) belief in your abilities, you have a leg up on your opponents.
Self-confidence breeds aggressive action which wins that "immediate" money but, more importantly, like Max's case, it changes critical features of the metagame. Your sense of confidence is reinforced, your self-image is promoted and these emotions feed into your alpha male stance.
On the flip side of the coin, if you let a bunch of losses get to you, you're in danger of sliding down the dominance hierarchy at the table. The Maxes at the table, who are moving upward, will see what a wuss you are and beat on you mercilessly.
Indeed, a series of bad beats is, from a psychological perspective, a lot like being on the wrong end of a bunch of rigged fights.
Of course, this link with testosterone hasn't gone unnoticed. Several companies are touting products for poker players that they claim are testosterone boosters.
Gamma Labs, manufacturer of a compound derived from rice bran and pomegranate (called Gamma- O) recently signed an agreement with Harrah's to be a sponsor of the WSOP.

A series of bad beats is a lot like being on the wrong end of a bunch of rigged fights.

Because this compound is listed as a "nutritional supplement" it falls outside the regulatory umbrella of the FDA. As such, it has not been subjected to rigorous, scientific tests. Paint this old professor skeptical. Caveat emptor.
Is there a downside? A small one. Too high a level of testosterone is associated with inappropriate aggression.
This isn't terrible since, as Caro noted, when aggressiveness is wrong it's not all that wrong. However, more aggressive players have larger swings and higher variance. No problem with this if your bankroll and psyche can handle it.
Finally, a question to ponder: Does the link between testosterone and aggression have anything to do with the gender issue? I suspect it does, but the issue is complex and I'll have a column on it in the near future.

Putting Your Opponent On A Range Of Hands

How often have you heard an amateur poker player try and put a player on a single hand? Most players make the mistake of attempting to put a player on exactly two cards when in reality their actions and tells could represent a range of different holdings.
By putting an opponent on a specific range of hands, you’re essentially assigning certain card values that they could have. For example, if you see a tight player re-raising pre-flop, you can probably assume that their range is AA, KK, QQ, AK.
In this particular situation, you would need to have hands in this assigned range to actually consider making a call marked cards, and if you’re playing deep stacked enough to offer us good implied odds, you can also consider set mining with low and medium pocket pairs, as there is a great chance of getting paid off when you hit your set.
How To Put An Opponent On A “Range”
There are several things that a person needs to consider when attempting to put an opponent on “range” of hands and predict what they may do with parts of this range based on prior history or assumptions you can start making about the player.
Position is one such important consideration when evaluating a hand range of an opponent. This is because any positionally aware opponent understands the importance of position and will be raising a narrower range of hands in early positions at the table and opening up in later positions as there is a greater chance the blind steal will work and even when called they will have the initiative and position in the hand.
So even though a TAG player who is raising 8% of hands pre-flop, which in pokerstove equates to AA, AK, AQ AJ, ATs, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88, KQs that is not to suggest the same player is raising the same range of hands from the CO, which is considered to be late position at the table.
A player’s HUD (heads-up display) statistics (VPIP, PFR, 3bet%, etc) that show in real time at the table for players who are using poker trackers like PokerTracker or Holdem Manager will also help you to put an opponent on a range of hands when you’re playing online poker. A tight aggressive (TAG) player is entering most pots with a raise. The PFR stat (which stands for pre-flop raise) tells you what percentage of hands they open raise with before the flop. Using the pokerstove calculator you can manually input different percentages and see what ranges they correspond to. Try it for yourself. You can see that a 15% range consists of 77+, A7s+, K9s+, Q9s+, JTs, ATo+, KTo+, QJo.
Generally it’s a bit easier playing
marked cards lenses against a tight range. Against someone who is raising an extremely narrow range of hands in under the gun position, you can fold everything but your good hands and consider re-raising your premium hands. Playing against a wider range of hands can be a little trickier since they’re playing a wider variety of hands that can hit the board in a lot of different ways. For example, a loose player will open hands like A3 and so on boards like 3-3-T it’s possible that villain has trips, whereas you’re not really considering a tight player to have trips on this board as they’re much more likely to fold 3x hands.
When analyzing hand ranges you need to take into account the board texture and how it relates to hand ranges. What hands in their range connect with the flop? Once you can define an opponent’s hand range, and how it connects with the board, it will allow you to determine the strength of their holdings.
So by paying close attention to the number of hands played we should be able to put our opponent on a hand range. Obviously this skill takes a lot of practice but it will become second nature after some time and you will be able to do it with pretty good accuracy once you’ve mastered it.