Poker Concorde

With online play, there is always a danger of players being disconnected, and this could lead to a key hand being automatically folded which would be very frustrating for the player involved. Due to this potential possibility though, there have been changes made in recent years to include protection from this eventuality. If a player finds themselves disconnected in the middle of a hand, the hands will be turned over as if the player is already all in and the remaining cards will be dealt, followed by the pot being awarded to the best hand.

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Personally, I am all in favour of having some sort of protection in place for this possibility, but I really don’t feel that the current system is working. Whilst it does serve the function it was intended for, it also opens the door for players to abuse the system. I saw a suspected example of this a few days ago when two players were involved in a cash game.

There had been raises and reraises on the flop and turn, and a big pot was developing. When the river came down, one of the players shoved all their remaining money in. after a few seconds the other player disconnected, the bet was forced to be taken back and the hands were turned over. One player had made two pair Aces up and the player who had mysteriously disconnected, had (A,K) for top pair. I do not know for certain of course, but it would seem that the disconnected player couldn’t be sure if their hand was good, and effectively blocked their opponent from being able to raise them on the river by disconnecting themselves.
If this is what is taking place among a minority of players as I suspect, it needs to be stopped pretty quickly, as it is completely unlawful and unethical.

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This week, it has been demonstrated to me that in any poker tournament, as long as you are still in the tournament, anything is possible. I had seen one player suffer a bad beat and fall to 2,400 in chips. He had been playing well up to the point as usual, but after suffering his bad beat, looked resigned to his tournament being over. He shoved all his chips in the next hand and doubled up, then did the same thing on the next hand, ultimately losing. I can sympathise with that dejected feeling after seeing all your hard work undone by poor luck, but as I mentioned to him after he had doubled up, he still had enough chips to get himself back into contention.

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At that time I was sitting with around 700 chips, and in some ways, I understandably expected to join him at the bar within a few more hands. Despite expecting this to be the case, I did not openly invite it by doing anything reckless, because deep down I know that with poker, there is always a glimmer of hope whilst you are still in your seat.
It can be hard to feel like carrying on when you see your chips decimated simply beacuse you made the correct decision, but always remember that same luck that saved your opponent, may decide to save you, when it counts.
That same player came back later on in the evening to watch, when there were three of us remaining in the tournament, and upon seeing my sizeable chipstack, he said with a smile "you were right, I shouldn’t have given up".
However tough it might be to recover when you find yourself shortstacked in this way, you have to firstly check the blind sizes and their proximity to you, then simply do what you can to stay alive.

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After Wednesdays live game in which I came back from the brink of elimination to win, you might think I had used all my luck for the week. Nevertheless, I decided to go to Saturdays live game as well to see if my good run could continue. It was a rocky start and from 6,000 I had a few hands go awry in the first hour and slipped down to around 3,000.

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Our table was down to four handed as we waited for one more player to go out before splitting tables, and with blinds of 200/400 coming round quickly to exert pressure, I felt I had to act. I picked up (A,3) as the second player to act, and after the first hand folded, did something I probably shouldn’t. I usually do not like playing smaller Aces because when you raise you find yourself dominated by a bigger Ace so often. This was my immediate concern when my all in move was called, even though any Ace four handed is quite strong. My opponent had (Ah,Qh) but luckily I caught a three on the turn to double up.

After another pot where I managed to represent a 5 for a straight with enough effect to force (K,K) to fold on the turn, I had around 8,000. My 8,000 turned to 14,000 just before the final table when I slow played (A,Q) beautifully inducing a bet on a flop of (A,A,J) followed by an all in bluff on the turn (2).
The end came at the final table when I raised to 2,000 preflop with (Q,Q). There was one caller and the flop came down (8,6,2). I moved all in, not wanting to give my opponent the chance to catch an Ace or King on the turn. After much thought, he called, showing (J,J). The river was an extremely unlucky (Jd), which was an unfortunate way to go.

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Players who like to make aggressive plays will always hold problems for their opponents, especially when the blinds escalate. The key problem is that when you feel you have a strong enough hand to take a flop with, there is a fairly strong chance you will not hit the flop particularly well. Then of course your aggressive opponent leads out with a bet, and you feel you have to fold your hand, rather than get caught up in a pot with middle pair or worse.

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The most obvious way to combat this type of play is to wait until you have a strong hand, and then slow play your opponent and allow them to build the pot for you. The problem with this is again, that you do not make such strong hands very often, and if you are shorthanded with large blinds, you cannot wait for excellent hands to come along.
This leaves us with our more risky, but sometimes necessary option, and that is to play them at their own game. If you know your opponent likes to force players out of pots, it might be worth checking on a flop, waiting for the inevitable raise, and then making a strong reraise.

Our aggressive player will think the check was made to lure them in against a strong hand, and often they will fold. You only have to make this type of raise, or reraise when you have nothing, on one occassion I find. If you show the hand afterwards, you can sometimes deter this type of player from getting aggressive against you. Once they know you have the courage to reraise them with nothing simply because you know that they are pushing you around, you should see this type of player give you more room to play quite often.

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