December 5, 2005
You want to be selective, but not so selective that you pass on Fulltiltpoker money you could have won, but for the fact that you didn't have absolute certainty about the value of your hand compared to your opponent's. You are looking for that proverbial fine line. You want to be aggressive enough to optimize your winnings. Optimize is the operative word! You are not playing to maximize your winning opportunities.
If two overcards fall, you're probably an underdog, and ought to give it up if your opponent bets into you. If just one overcard falls and just the two of you are contesting the pot, its a judgment call, and unless you've got a terrific read on your opponent, you'll seldom be sure where you stand. If he's clever, and tries for a checkraise by checking the flop and turn, go ahead and check behind him.
7 card Stud
If that's the case, why would anyone in their right mind quit -- except for being tired, having other Fulltiltpoker plans, or any other valid reason -- when they figure to win even more money by continuing to play? If the composition of the game changes, and all the weak players have gone broke and are replaced by better players, then quitting makes sense.
Peter Secor won it, and has the distinction some would call it the dubious honor of being referred to as the World Fulltiltpoker Champion for 2002. This was the fourth annual ESCARGOT, an event I created in 1999 because I thought that southern California, an area with more poker tables than any other in the country, deserved its own gathering to honor those poker players who chat about poker and other topics of mutual interest on the Internet newsgroup Rec.Gambling.Poker.
And the more you play and the better you become at reading your opponents by putting him on a hand or picking up tells the less you'll have to rely on game theory. After all, you usually won't be playing against the Invisible Man. Even if you play on line, where your opponents actually are invisible, you can discover tells about opponents and put them on hands based on their proclivities for checking versus betting, and calling versus folding.
I believe there is a sufficiency of technique that needs to be learned in poker before a player can comfortably and confidently deviate from the book play. Just as a painter must master brush technique and a musician needs to practice scales before improvisation and creativity allows them to bend the rules they have been taught, so does a grounding in generally accepted poker theory make it easier for a newcomer to quickly come up to speed.
5 card Stud
These Fulltiltpoker players give up a lot, too much it seems, which may be why they struggle year after year. Given the chance, even bright students are prone to avoiding mathematics. People who would consider themselves egregiously insulted if called "illiterate," readily admit to being innumerate. But mathematics - at least poker math - is not difficult.
When all is said and done, he might not even be able to beat a bluff. But the player in the middle has a lot to worry about. If you bet not only does he have to worry about whether you have a real hand, he also needs to concern himself with the player to his left. Even if the player in the middle has a marginal hand - the kind he'd call you with if the two of you were heads-up - he might release it.
