I Can't Wait For Vegas!

I leave tomorrow for Vegas with Michele.

I am very short on the poker winnings goal with one day to go. It would take a great session tonight, which is not going to happen since I need to pay the mountain of bills stacked up on my desk at home. Oh well. I did finish up $143 so that's a plus. I am also adding in the $225 I received from my old network group that is basically found money. All I have to do is come away from Vegas a winner. :-)

My friend Jon called me last night from the Bellagio. He said all the stars of the poker world were out last night because the main event of the 5 Diamond Classic for the World Poker Tour started last night. I am going to try and go over and check it out a little bit while I am there.

Now for a couple of No Limit Poker strategy issues.

Tom Keller wrote an interesting article in Card Player about the call and bluff move. Let's say you limp before the flop and there are one or two other callers. The flop comes and someone bets in front of you. You smell weakness because maybe they only bet 1/2 the pot. Instead of reraising them, you smooth call. If another innocuos card comes off and he checks. You bet and take down the pot. This is better than the reraise on the flop because you can see more information with the turn card and the opponet's reaction. It's the same in that the call and bet probably costs you as much as a reraise on the flop. It's dangerous, because the turn could bring another high card that hits your opponet.

The Poker Babe also mentioned her blog that the main thing she has learned in her poker tournament experience is that many tight players have a really hard time learning that they have to put their tournament life at risk a lot in order to win. She mentions that she played hundreds of tournaments before she finally realized this concept. The key is knowing when to do that. You obviously want to do it at the right time so you don't get busted out.

I agree with this because my main problem in the tournaments I have played is that I get blinded off. Or I lose one or two hands and then am stuck going with the all in mode. It really is more about putting your opponet on a hand and deciding if you can move them off of it. There was another article in Card Player about the leak in many good players game of folding to a raise. In my one table sit-n-go's, they go so fast that I don't worry about that too much. There's not much reason to bluff until you get down to the final 4. But in the 3 tables or the big tournaments, it is easy to play for a couple of hours with the same players and they will notice this trend. I just don't know if I have the balls to reraise with the worst hand or to do it to someone else if I suspect they are bluffing. My stack is very rarely deep enough to bully someone that much.