WillisNYC

Live play has been very good to me in the last couple months.   I have not had a sick run of cards or been running particularly good.  However, my confidence has been soaring as I have been playing a lot more live games recently.   One of the things that has been very heartening has been my ability to read my opponents and put them on hands in key situations.    For example:  Last night I was playing a $5/10 game in the Borgata in AC.  The table had been allowing a lot limping and I had not been getting a lot of great cards all evening.   2 limpers ahead of me and I had JQh in late position.  I limped with them and the SB and BB completed.   Flop was 49J rainbow.  All checked to me and I bet $50 into the $50 pot.  SB and UTG both called.  The SB loved to play any two cards but the UTG player tended to only play good hands.    The turn brought a blank 6 that I didn’t think helped anyone.  I figured the SB was on a draw and put the UTG on a Jx or a pair like TT.  They both checked and I bet $250 into the $200 pot hoping to push out the draw and take down the pot right now.  The SB called convincing me that he was on a draw and the UTG folded.    A threatening Ace hit the river and the UTG player almost immediately bet out $350.   There was no flush draw on the board at any time, so I couldn’t put the UTG player on an ace for a flush draw.  Also an ace wouldn’t make sense to be in his hand for the draws that I put him on.  I really thought he had either T8 or TQ.  Those are the only two hands I had him on to this point in the hand.  I also knew the SB was an experienced player who could bluff if he missed his draw, especially if this would be the only way for him to win the hand.   Thus, his bet not only didn’t surprise me, it was almost expected.  All this went through my head in a few milliseconds and I made the call within 5 seconds.   I immediately turned over my JQ and the UTG player started moaning immediately, ‘ I can’t believe this shit!  I folded AJ!’   The SB slowly turned over his hand revealing TQ and boosting my confidence in my reading ability.   Looking back on the last couple days, this wasn’t my biggest hand by far, but it illustrates how in certain situations, I have been able to read accurately and more importantly ACT upon the reads properly in the heat of battle.  Two players on that table asked me ‘ Just HOW did you make that call?’  “I went with my read,” was my response.  This hand garnered me MUCH more respect at the table afterwards. 

The day before I was involved in a very big hand that in the end boiled down to a read again and math.  I was on a fairly aggressive table which raised $40-$75 for nearly every preflop.   I had about $2000 chips and called a $50 raise with As9s in the cutoff.  The initial raiser, a middle position caller and myself saw the 9dTsJs flop together.   The initial raiser bet $150 into this pot.  The middle position player raised to $300.  I hoped to draw cheaply to my flush and called expecting the initial raiser to call or fold.  Instead he reraised to $900 total.   The middle position player immediately threw $2000 chips into the pot covering both of us remaining players.    My initial reaction was to think damn, he obviously has QK and I have to fold!  I then forced myself to look at the betting and do the math.  $165 pot preflop.  $150 initial bet, raise to $300, call $300.  A reraise that contributed $750 more.  I had put $350 chips in the pot already and had $1650 left behind.  Thus I could win $1650 of the $2000 chips the middle position player had contributed in the last raise.  Thus I had to call $1650 to win $1665 plus $1650.  I was getting almost exactly 2-1 on my call if I made it.  I reviewed the betting in my head and the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that the last raiser had KQ.  This was important because if he had a set, any board pair would kill my flush and keep me from winning the hand.  However, the middle position player had acted very quickly in each of the rounds of betting.   A set would require more thinking for most people to throw $2000 into a pot when he wouldn’t be guaranteed the best hand.  If the mid position player had a set, my odds of winning were much lower and I can’t justify the call.   IF the initial bettor has a set and decides to come into the pot, then I will get 3-1 on my money and that is what I need if I am up against a set.  The math says go and I decided to go with my read and pushed my remaining chips in the pot.   The initial bettor folded his hand at this point and says, ‘I folded the ignorant end of the str8.’  The middle position player flips over KQ to my relief.  A beautiful 3s hits the turn and my opponent is drawing dead!  A meaningless 9 hits the river and I get pushed the monster pot. 

Many people at the table expressed shock that I had made the call with just the draw to which I replied, ‘It was just math in the end!’  However it was my turn to express inward shock when I realized from the ensuing discussion that NO one at the table was able to articulate the math behind the call!  I was friendly with a player who had sat next to me for some time and we quietly discussed the math.  He said I needed 2.5 times on my money to make the call.  I asked him to explain and he said, ‘You had 9 flush outs and therefore you were 40% to win the hand.’  ‘Ok’, I replied, so how does that make me 2.5 to one against to win.  He couldn’t explain it.  Two others overheard our discussion and it was clear that THEY had no clue about outs or odds either!   I am truly shocked that these opponents could sit at a $5/10 table with $1500 in front of them and NOT know basic poker outs and math odds!  This is great to know that my average opponent knows little to nothing of pot odds in a firm way.   

I love live poker in Atlantic City!

I have been playing quite a bit in Atlantic City lately and have been a fortunate winner in some big hands.  

The first hand, I was playing $5/10 NL in the Borgata  for about 45 minutes.  I had built my stake up to $2k from my initial $1500.   The table was playing very weak with lots of preflop limping.  5 limpers ahead of me, I have 48s in the cutoff.  I limp along and see a flop.  The flop is 5s6s8d.  UTG bets pot, the limper next to him calls and so do I thinking I have excellent drawing odds for the flush and straight.   The turn brings the 7d and completes my str8.  UTG and the limper check, so I bet pot of about $300.  Both of my opponents call and I am putting one on a flush draw and the other on two pr or a set played weird.    A beautiful 7s hits the river to complete the str8 flush for me.  UTG checks and the limper now bets $300 into a $1200+ pot.    I have to struggle to contain the glow of joy at this development since you always wonder if you can get paid off with monster hands.  I think about my play for a while and decide to push all in and pray for the best.  Neither player has been particularly aggressive to this point and I wonder if I will get called.  UTG instantly folds and the fella next to him instantly ‘calls’ and flips over quads!  It takes him about 30 seconds to understand that I have a str8 flush and he loses.   He immediately gets up from the table, dials a buddy on his cell phone and says, ‘Call the cops, I just got robbed down here at the Borgata.  I can’t believe I just got beat with quads for a $4500 pot…’

 At a different table, I was playing a full ring game with 2 really aggressive guys.   Directly to my left was an Asian kid that the table nicknamed ‘Turbo’ for his hyper aggressive style.  Turbo had just bluffed me out of a $1000 pot with 2nd pr when a flush card hit the turn and I had put him on a flush draw.  He was ‘kind’ enough to show me the bluff after the hand, I think hoping to put me on tilt.  I never tilt.  Get frustrated or mad yes, but never change how I play because of ’tilt’, it is one of my strengths.   However the two aggressive guys on my table got me to alter my play since they were both to my left and presented a trapping opportunity for me.   I got QQ UTG and decided to limp since I was ‘certain’ that one of the two aggros would raise.    Sure enough, Turbo raised to $100, the other aggro called as did another fella and myself.    The flop came down AhQhTd.  Not perfect, but about what I was hoping for .  Turbo checked as did the other aggro.  The other fella bet $200 and I smooth called hoping for a raise from Turbo or the other aggro so I could get all my chips in.  Turbo calls and the other aggro folds.  SO much for that plan.   Turbos call had me putting him on  KK  and the other fella on Ax.    The turn brings a Kh and I moan inwardly knowing that it is a bad card.  I check, and so do my opponents.  Good, neither was on the flush draw, but I am probably behind Turbos set of Ks.   A very fortunate Q hits the river giving me quads!    Knowing how aggressive Turbo is I decide to put a ‘feeler’ bet of $300 into this $1200 pot figuring that he will raise me if he has what I put him on.  Sure enough he instantly fires $900 into the pot.  The other fella folds while I think for a minute about what to do.  I slowly count my chips down and then announce ‘all in’.   Turbo instantly calls and flips over his KK.  I show him my quads and the whinging and whining starts immediately. 

On a different $5/10 table a day later I have built my stack to around $3k.  Two players on the table are very aggressive post flop, betting at any ’scare’ card that completes a flush or str8 draw when it hits the board.   They have each cost me several pots where I didn’t have enough of a hand to call down their suspected bluffs.  Needless to say I am a little frustrated with each of them.  I am also determined to show down a hand if I can just hit something reasonable on a board with them.  They each have me covered as well.  I limp in ep with 66 and get raised to $50 by one of the aggro players.   The other calls, as do I and another player.    The flop is 6s8sTd.  Bottom set in ep, so I check, looking to check raise and take down the pot.  It gets checked to the 2nd aggro who bets $125 into the $250 pot.  The half pot bet screams drawing hand to me so I decide to make a huge raise.  I raise $600 on top of the $125 bet to destroy his drawing odds.   The other players fold and it comes back to aggro 2.  He hems and haws for a good 2 minutes and I think he is folding til he finally puts $600 into the pot.   I am pretty sure he is on a draw, but I really don’t know which one.  A 3s hits the turn.  Aggro dude instantly says he is all in.  I had already decided that I had to show down a hand with this guy and no scare card was getting me off this hand once I put in the big raise.  I instantly call because of the decision I had already made.   A beautiful 8 hits the river giving me a FH and aggro dudes starts cursing me ‘You stupid mother fucker!’  and flips over AKs for the nut flush.   I take down the $6k pot and a huge amount of discussion ensues as aggro dude leaves the table in frustration.   Most of the discussion centered around how badly aggro dude played and how I could call so quickly.   Aggro dude really should have pushed or folded on the flop.   He has no drawing odds except for implied odds on the flop, but he has two overs and the nut flush draw which is a favorite over a pair.   However, it is highly unlikely that I had just a pr when I put in the huge flop raise.   He should have put me on a set or a flopped str8.    I made my decision about how to play the remainder of the hand based on two things.  I knew aggro dude would bet any scare card regardless of whether it made his hand or not.   I also knew that if I was wrong and he actually did hit his hand I would have outs.   I only had ten outs for a one in five chance to win a pot that was offering me only 1.5 or so to 1.  However, given our history, I gave him less than a 30% chance of actually having the hand that he did.   So it could be argued that I made a bad call on the turn, but given the history between us, I wasn’t folding a set there regardless.  

I was very lucky in all 3 of these hands and I didn’t put them in the blog to show how lucky I have been lately.  The interesting thing I discovered was how frustrated that I became when playing with bigger aggros than myself.  It gives me insight into how frustrated others must feel when playing me.  I have known all along that my aggressive play gets others to make bad calls because they don’t know when I am bluffing or when I actually have a hand.   It was interesting that I fell into the same trap when playing other aggros.  

WPT UK magazine offered me a chance to write a bankroll article early in 2007 and I leaped at the chance.  I am an instructor by nature and love to write about poker and my experiences.  The opportunity to combine my playing experience with what I have learned about poker primarily from other authors is a singularly satifsfying experience for me.   

I learned poker just like I learned many other games.  I read a book.  I then applied what I learned and was immediately successful.   I must be fairly unique because I read countless stories of people who have not had any success, let alone the success that I have had from reading and applying what they learned in poker books.   Evidently, many people have trouble trying to actually apply what they have read and thus look for other sources to learn how to play poker.  I have tried to become one of those sources.  I teach poker online and in person to those that contact me.   I also produce online videos that I sell here:  http://www.thepokercamp.com/videos/bwillis_main.htm

 In my classes I teach a very nuts and bolts approach to cash games.   I lay out what starting hands should be played from every position on the table whether it is full or short handed.  I also describe what actions should be changed based on the other players acting ahead of you.   Reraises, all ins and play against short stacks are all covered.  Postflop I describe my strategies about continuation bets,  when to check raise, when to bet pot, etc, etc.  This is my basic class and it describes how to play the cards properly.  This strategy will enable anyone willing to apply it to beat games up to $5/10 NL for 10big blinds per 100 hands or per hour in a live game.   I know this for a fact because I have been doing it for over two years now and the system is well proven at all the lower levels of poker.   Many reading this may doubt this, but my results speak for themselves and I have the pokertracker and excel spreadsheets with years of data to back it up. 

I also teach advanced poker courses on how to use my cash game strategies in MTTs.  How to play the players after you have learned to play the cards.  How to beat SNGs using a totally different strategy that I didn’t come up with, but use because it works.   I charge $150/hr for my time when I teach all these classes because my time is worth more than that when I sit down to play poker.  (Which is what I could be doing if I wasn’t teaching poker.)  I do this because I love to teach and I understand that some people learn differently than I do.  They learn by watching and discussing poker while it is played better than by reading a ‘dry’ poker book.   The poker books are cheaper than my classes, but many of them are bad and learning which ones to heed and which ones to toss on the fire is a difficult proposition for beginners.  If you read my story below, you will find that I learned from many sources, not just books, but also from colleagues and videos.  Thus you will find this blog full of many links to articles and videos that will help you on your poker journey to whatever destination that you have in mind.   Enjoy!