As you can imagine, with Brett Favre coming to Minnesota, my job at KFAN radio has turned into a complete whirlwind. New storylines every day, countless radio interviews, scattered ESPN appearances (can’t complain about that), and a national focus on the Vikings.

Of course, because of this, my poker sessions have been shaved thin. In fact, they’ve been almost non-existent. And when I have played, I’ve been getting my ass kicked. And because I strictly play sngs, (mostly $50 turbos), a bad stretch can really take a toll on one’s bankroll (off the top of my head, I’ve probably only cashed in about 5 or 6 of my last 50 sngs… just awful).

It’s almost unrealistic how poorly I’ve run over the last couple weeks, but instead of boring you with the ridiculous 2-outers, I’ll just trust that most people know what I’m talking about.

And instead of sitting here pissing and moaning (which is what I REALLY want to do…), I’ve come up with a few bullet points of advice for myself and others in regards to running poorly on the felt:

1.) Always play within your bankroll… If you don’t, it’s impossible to withstand the worst of swings. Variance is VERY REAL in poker, and it WILL come back to bite you at some point.

2.) If you are consistently getting your money in good, but can’t seem to avoid running into bad beats, DON’T CHANGE YOUR GAME! Analyze carefully and honestly. Are you on tilt? Or are you just really unlucky?

3.) If you are unlucky, and if the deck keeps giving you the cold shoulder, make sure to keep a POSITIVE attitude. If you’ve played poker long enough, and if you are a winning player long-term, the luck will swing, as it always does. Keeping a positive attitude helps your overall well-being.

4.) Take breaks. Running poorly and losing money take a toll on other aspects of life, and it can seem as if things will never turn around. I recommend working out, going for a run, happy hour with friends, whatever.

5.) Listen to Huey Lewis and the News. If that doesn’t work, try Journey. One of those two bands is sure to pull you out of any poker funk.

I’m no Mike Caro. I don’t use physical tells very often, especially at the limit table, where players cannot bet more than $16-$30 on a single bet. People generally don’t sweat and cringe at the idea of losing $30, as they would at losing, say, $300. I do, however, use physical tells to break ties, and help make marginal decision-making easier.

Observing the way players maneuver their chips while in a hand is the most important physical tell I use at the limit hold’em table. A lot of times, players don’t even realize they’re doing it.

For example, I’m in the big blind at the 15-30 game. Three or four players fold as I notice the button look at his cards, and gather a stack of chips into his palm. Remember, the action is still four players away. Each of these four players, as it turns out, folds their hand. The button quickly raises. The small blind folds, and I look down at A-4 off suit.

Now, in a typical game, a button raise is always suspect, and an Ace high in the big blind may in fact be worth playing; however, in this scenario, the button player showed interest in his hand well before he was the last man standing, and it appears he was going to raise if other players had limped or not. If your button player is a somewhat reasonable person, and your read is in fact accurate, and Ace rag cannot be played. I folded.

Pre-flop is a great place to catch these tells in general. I like to play a little more slowly than some, just to see what will happen. Half the time players will act blatantly out of turn, and irritating as this can get, it does give you additional information. Again, it’s useful on the marginal decisions. Say you’re under the gun and look down at A-7 of clubs. This isn’t a great hand, but pause, take a moment to survey your opponents and see if you spot a man reaching for his chips in an aggressive motion. If so, fold your hand, as you don’t want to pay two bets for a hand out of position that probably isn’t good anyway.

Pre-flop chip action is different than post-flop chip action. Pre-flop, players are not trying to hide the strength of their hand, as they will be folding most of the time, and generally want to thin the field anyway. They reach for chips early. Post-flop, players try to act more coy, and as Mike Caro says, if they look weak, they’re probably strong.

Reading your opponents advantageously post-flop will look more like this:

You get heads up with a player who has called both your flop and turn bets. The river falls, completing a possible straight draw, and it’s on you to act. You have A-K, and the board now reads, A-6-7-2-10. You think for a moment, and notice your opponent grab his stack of chips, dangling them over the betting line, waiting for your action. Now, pre-flop, this really may signify strength. Here on the river, however, this is great news! If he had 8-9, the nuts, there is absolutely no way he makes this motion. What he wants the motion to signify is that he is strong, and that he is coming in with bets and/or raises. What it’s actually saying is, “Please don’t bet! I may call, but I really would rather see a free showdown!” Value bet that A-K all day!

Sometimes the best laid plans end up with a crying three old over a broken Lego Happy Meal toy from McDonald’s and a parent holding a class 5 migraine storm from trying to be in three places at once.

The plan last weekend was to introduce myself to the esteemed leaders of Minnesota Poker Magazine while they were at Canterbury covering the Twin Cities Poker Open this past weekend (look for coverage in your next issue). Since the wife declared a kid-free day for herself I would treat the kids to my natural environment and place a few trifecta bets while glancing at the $4/$8 with half-kill Omaha 8 game.

But, instead the Maple Grove community center pool’s siren call was too strong as watching the kids wear themselves out on the water slides and rope climb while I collected too many UV rays on the portion of my body the spray-on sunscreen didn’t reach.

The water cooled down the kids and the worn-out parent but while laying out a poker hand actually popped in my head from a recent tournament session I had online (fair warning most of my play is online since casinos and home games aren’t exactly warmed up to games outside of Hold Em’ at the moment, but soon the mixed games will take over the world!). While playing the third hour of a PLO8 MTT on Stars I was sitting with just over 10BBs looking for a hand to go to war with but not necessarily shove preflop. A-2-5-6 (suited in clubs) folded to me in middle position as I popped in for a pot-sized raise. The cutoff came along as did the two blinds to see a 3-4-Q rainbow flop with one club.

In the very technical Omaha-speak this was considered a dream flop, but the blinds both checked as I made the very easy decision to try to grab the money in the pot without a showdown with another pot-sized bet, committing myself to the hand with only scraps left in my stack. The cutoff liked his hand too and min-raised to get the rest of my chips in turning over A-2-Q-X (X meaning the card did not matter here).

Who’s ahead?

Hold Em’ players would point out the pair of queens and in this case you’d be correct. Despite my super-wrap draw and any card that doesn’t pair the board giving me the nut low, but his A2 also took away the 8 as I would only get 1/4^th of the pot. Of course when the board hit a seven on the river giving me the straight he probably threw the cat when I 3/4^th him for the rather large pot (both of us had the nut low 7-4-3-2-A) as I would go on five hours later to a final table finish while he sat in the chat box for the next hour berating my bad play.

The answer is neither player played poorly here, if you’re not pushing draws on Omaha-Hi or Omaha 8 (much like LHE) this game is not for you. NLHE players lose sight of that since their entire stack is at risk and pushing a flush and/or straight draw isn’t always optimal play. In Omaha if you’re not gathering up a big enough pot and settling to just check-call to hit those draws you’re losing money in the long run.

While the cash games have been *ahem* a little rocky for my slim online bankroll, the tournaments have definitely heated up. After playing on Stars and Full Tilt for the past four years there are a couple of regular spots that I can point you towards to begin your Oma-draw domination.

If you like a cheap lesson in Pot Limit Omaha Hi or Eight or Better, there’s two nightly tournaments to give you plenty of chips to play around with post flop and not feel like a one-hand and done waste of a happy meal.

For the night time player, I recommend the Full Tilt $5 + $.50 double stack PLO tourney that starts off nightly at 10:15CST. There are usually 250+ runners with plenty of passive players to allow for lots of post flop play (VERY important skill in PLO) and enough bad players for a shot at a decent ROI. While playing this tourney I suggest limping in with any three or four connecting cards (straightening cards, a pair above 77 with a suited connector). Learn to feel for when your set is good, when the players are dragging you along for the ride while holding the nuts. Like I said this tourney will provide a much needed introduction to a game that is being found more and more in a live setting outside of the WSOP (a friend of mine says the Venetian regularly spreads a $1/$2 PLO game now).

My specialty is PLO8 as it fits my mixture of being a nitty gambler. Your cheap lesson into this game can be found at PokerStars with two tourneys that run at night back-to-back. 8:30pm (or 2:30pm) starts the double stacked PLO8 $1,000 Guarantee, with fairly slow blinds. Again, this tourney allows for plenty of post-flop play for the beginning player to maneuver around a mixture of regulars and people bored with 16-tabling NLHE. Prepare for a long night as this tourney gathers 600+ players and final table doesn’t hit until north of 2:00am. Not a problem for those who get up when Tiger is teeing off in the final group on Sundays, but for a parent with two kids who forget the weekend means to sleep in past six a.m. it’s a decision between dollars and sleep.

I like money.

The other tourney is becoming increasingly popular is the $4.44 4-max PLO8 that runs at 9:30pm (or 3:30pm). Here’s your chance to flex those short-handed aggressive muscles. A word of caution however, remember this is Omaha where you are never a huge favorite preflop and you can’t become a shove bot until you’re down to a few big blinds which gets you into the territory of getting called (correctly) with any four cards.

Give these tourneys a try, don’t sweat the beats (they WILL happen more often than in NLHE math determines that not the evil RNG), and next time I drop by I’ll have a few interesting hands I ran into in the past couple of weeks while playing these.

Now if you’ll excuse me it’s time to cheer on the Vikes tonight. Yes, it’s preseason football but it’s still AP and Jared Allen for at a quarter.

Honestly, a lot of things irritate me at the poker table, and because I recently finished an especially annoying session, I thought it would be a good time to catalogue these irritations.

One may consider me a misanthrope anyway, but at the poker table, there should be some observed etiquette. Because our success, as poker players, hinges on taking other people’s money, the atmosphere is stressful to begin with, so the participants should be expected to act gentlemanly. Of course, this is rarely the case…

That said, these are the areas of particular annoyance to me:

Don’t try to talk to me, particularly when I’m wearing headphones.

What is it about a man wearing headphones that promotes inane discussion? If I’m wearing them, it means I’m going out of my way not to hear you, or your irritating chatter. Do not make me remove my earbud so you can ask me if I folded Jacks. I probably did, just shut up.

I couldn’t care less about your hand

I think it’s a problem of American men in general, but specifically poker players, to believe the world absolutely revolves around them. If I find myself in a rare conversation with a fellow poker player, discussing hands and situations, it is inevitable that a third party degenerate will pipe in with, “Yeah, my pocket nines have lost four times today.” Oh, did they? That’s interesting, because I don’t remember asking you or giving a crap. Keep it to yourself.

Don’t ever thank me

It is the peak of poor etiquette to offer a sarcastic “Thank you” to a player who helped you win a pot. I recently folded what would have been a chopped pot, answering an inquiry about what I had, revealing that half the chips that the gentleman to my left was stacking would have been mine, had I called the river bet. It happens, I wasn’t particularly concerned. But the winner of the pot looks to me and says, “Thanks for folding,” turning to the other players at the table for a response to what he thought was an absolutely hilarious jab. This is the same player who loves showing his bluffs to prove his superior poker skill. Please, just shut the hell up, sir.

I don’t want to hear your poor excuse for poker reasoning

Why is it that every awful rube at the table must explain why he made such a terrible play? I much prefer the gamblers who know they’re gamblers, and just want the action. The man who runs you down, hitting his only win on the river, that damn K of clubs, always has an excuse: “Well, I had Ace-King, how could I fold?” or, “I had outs,” or, “I had over-cards!” Please, sir, you are a bad player, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t veil your awfulness with “reasoning,” something us good card players actually use.

Don’t ever, ever, ever give me advice

You don’t hear the good poker players at the table handing out advice to all the schlubs. What is it about the awful players with a complete lack of understanding, that promotes sharing this “knowledge” with everybody else? You’re in for 8 racks, what the hell makes you think you can tell me how to play my hand? Yes, I folded A-K on the 6-7-8 flop, what a silly fold, right? I know you would have played it differently!
Side note: If I have to remove my headphones to hear your garbage advice, so help me God…

Act in turn!

I’m quiet at the table, and this seems to make it easier for players to my left to play their hands before I’ve acted. Mistakes happen, I understand. My frustration stems from the man who does it EVERY… SINGLE… HAND… And, lo and behold, it’s ALWAYS the same justification, “Oh, I didn’t see you had a hand.” No, sir, you didn’t look to see if I had a hand. Take some responsibility for your uselessness, sir. Observation is a very fundamental characteristic of a poker player. Oh, right, sorry… you’re not a poker player…

Well, there you have it. I suppose sitting in such close proximity to a bunch of strange sweaty men four nights a week will give rise to some irritations… obviously…

On Tuesday I got a rare perfect storm for the busy poker degenerate parent. Kids were overnight at my parents, and the wife was up north for work. With two card clubs within 40 minutes of my house and an itch to play what is one to do?

Hit up the ATM and make the time to shore up the kids’ college funds of course!

Since there was live racing going on at Running Aces, and I’ve never seen harness racing before, the executive decision was to go down 610 to 10 to 35W and make some new friends at the tables. Last winter I had the chance to check out the newest card club in Minnesota and walked nothing but impressed. The décor, the dealers, and the wait staff were all top notch. If I were to rank the poker rooms I’ve played in Running Aces would come in at #2 behind The Venetian in Vegas (of course those waitress uniforms there have NOTHING to do it of course).

The $4/$8 with half kill Omaha 8 or Better game was my first destination, sadly there was only an interest list with a few names on it. Typical for a Tuesday afternoon I was told but the itch to get some card playing in was strong. When my “main” game isn’t running my second favorite thing to do is overbuy into a $2/$4 LHE game and play lots of post-flop poker. After grabbing four racks, I headed over to table number three and was met with the usual looks of confusion as to why I needed all these chips.

“I’m here to give away money of course!” is my reply. But, not really.

Sure, I appear to be playing the part of the table clown looking to dust off a rack or two with second pair no kicker and playing 90% of the hands dealt. Drinking a few Captain and Cokes, and trying to gain conversation with the table on any topic helps with the façade. Sadly, the table contained mostly grumpy folks with no more than $40 in front of them looking to double up and leave as the starting table of 10 dissolved into sporadic people coming in and out and whittling down to a shorthanded table of five by the time the races started two hours later.

But, I got paid off after showing down a few hands early on that would not be approved in most poker books, when I hit a few sets, a boat, and flopped a flush with Q8s. Since my main goal when I play the low limits is to have fun, that mission was finally accomplished by finally cracking a smile on the regular in the four seat and walking away $13 to the good after two drinks and overtipping the dealer even when I stole the blinds (yes it is possible to steal blinds in a $2/$4 game).

The lesson to take away is, be sure to mix up your game by playing different stakes, as there’s a learning experience at any table you play at. Whether it’s playing higher or lower blinds than your comfort zone, every hour spent at the tables improves your game.

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