Of odds and evens
Not much postage here recently. I haven't been playing a huge amount of poker, and, for various reasons, when I have been playing it's mostly short cash game sessions. While these have been more than reasonably profitable, and have done a nice job of padding the bankroll for some future MTT entries, I just don't find the situations that arise in cash games to be generally as interesting as tournament ones (and of course, there's a greater incentive to keep key observations to ones self!)
I've been weighing into the debate over at Hoy's place concerning pot odds/tournament play etc. Naturally enough, I've been playing the role of math guy, but I don't believe that the math is the be all and end all of such analyses. May I beg your indulgence and illustrate with a bridge hand from last night? I promise not to get technical and talk about rectifying the count for a double squeeze or anything like that. I do need to describe some background though.
The event is the first of four qualifying nights for the main pairs championship at the club. To qualify for the main event, you must finish in roughly the top third of the field (sum of best three scores). The field as a whole is weak, and it would be a major surprise not to qualify -- think "surviving the first hour of a multi table tournament" but with the added kicker, that, regardless of how many chips you wind up with at the end of that hour, everyone will start fresh with the same chip count in the second hour.
Hmmm ... there's an interesting concept for a poker tournament format ... after every four levels everyone still surviving gets the average chip stack ... anyhow back to our story.
My partner and I bid to a small slam in hearts, requiring us to make all the tricks but one. The opponents, unfortunately good, rudely cashed their side ace at trick one, so I needed to make the remaining tricks. The key situation was the trump suit, where we held 9 of the 13 cards, missing the queen.
This is a standard situation and, without other information, there is a slight edge (about 2%) in playing for the queen to drop, as opposed to an alternative play of finessing. The first trick in trumps needed to be played in a particular way to guard against one of the possible 4-0 splits (I could't cope with the other one), but both players followed. The second trick in trumps was the decision point.
I led the trump from dummy, the player to my right followed smoothly (as I would expect him to whether he had one or two trumps remaining), and I paused ...
My gut was telling me to finesse. There was something, some tell, that I couldn't pin down. Was this enough "other information"? My head fought back with a threat to tear up my mathematicians union card if I didn't play for the drop. My head won. My gut was right.
I still don't know what the tell was -- I've pinned it down to something that happened on the first trump trick, and I think from the player who had one trump, not the one who had three.
Will I finesse next time? I don't know.
I've been weighing into the debate over at Hoy's place concerning pot odds/tournament play etc. Naturally enough, I've been playing the role of math guy, but I don't believe that the math is the be all and end all of such analyses. May I beg your indulgence and illustrate with a bridge hand from last night? I promise not to get technical and talk about rectifying the count for a double squeeze or anything like that. I do need to describe some background though.
The event is the first of four qualifying nights for the main pairs championship at the club. To qualify for the main event, you must finish in roughly the top third of the field (sum of best three scores). The field as a whole is weak, and it would be a major surprise not to qualify -- think "surviving the first hour of a multi table tournament" but with the added kicker, that, regardless of how many chips you wind up with at the end of that hour, everyone will start fresh with the same chip count in the second hour.
Hmmm ... there's an interesting concept for a poker tournament format ... after every four levels everyone still surviving gets the average chip stack ... anyhow back to our story.
My partner and I bid to a small slam in hearts, requiring us to make all the tricks but one. The opponents, unfortunately good, rudely cashed their side ace at trick one, so I needed to make the remaining tricks. The key situation was the trump suit, where we held 9 of the 13 cards, missing the queen.
This is a standard situation and, without other information, there is a slight edge (about 2%) in playing for the queen to drop, as opposed to an alternative play of finessing. The first trick in trumps needed to be played in a particular way to guard against one of the possible 4-0 splits (I could't cope with the other one), but both players followed. The second trick in trumps was the decision point.
I led the trump from dummy, the player to my right followed smoothly (as I would expect him to whether he had one or two trumps remaining), and I paused ...
My gut was telling me to finesse. There was something, some tell, that I couldn't pin down. Was this enough "other information"? My head fought back with a threat to tear up my mathematicians union card if I didn't play for the drop. My head won. My gut was right.
I still don't know what the tell was -- I've pinned it down to something that happened on the first trump trick, and I think from the player who had one trump, not the one who had three.
Will I finesse next time? I don't know.
Labels: bridge
posted by Michael Albert at 9:16 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home