Handling Table Etiquette and Online Practice

This is the free version of the Crush Live Poker subscription podcast. If you enjoy this audio format of poker training and want to hear more complete episodes, check out our membership options at CrushLivePoker.com . What's going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of Crush Live Poker and the Crush Live Poker Podcast. I'm your host here, Bart Hansen, and today's episode is Find Yourself a Gauge for Table Sele ction. And today we are gonna go over some hands, but I would say there might be an extended beg inning segment because I want to talk a little bit about the state of games and also a little bit about game selection. And I've been talking recently about how important it is to incorporate some other games into your repertoire besides No Limit, so that you can win the most amount of money that you possibly can. Because the name of the game really is about getting in the best game or getting in the game that you can profit from the most. Like if you're looking at a bad two five game where you might only be able to beat the game for twenty dollars an hour. And then there's a decent two PLO game where you can beat the game for $40 an hour. This is why I keep saying people should really really learn to play PLO the more that I play. I mean, I've been practicing so much. I've got over 10,000 hands on Club WPT Gold now . And the session that I played on Tuesday really sort of high lighted that . Now, the state of no limit games these days. I find it interesting, and it's interesting because of the way that people have gotten better at least pre-flaw in no limit hold them. I mean, everyone knows that if you limp in with Deuce Force , you're gonna get killed from under the gun. And people don't tend to do that as much these days and no limit hold them, but you see sort of the equivalent, I would say in PLO. And basically what ended up happening for this particular session was I got there fairly early. I got there maybe at 10 30 in the morning. I had to actually wait a half an hour for the 2-5 game to open up. And the game that opened up for whatever reason, even though it was my normal shift , it was unbelievable. It was literally one of the best games I have seen there in months during the day. And we actually got the straddle on, and it wasn't because of me. I actually went into this. It was a bunch of unknown guys. There was one guy to my right who apparently is a for-profit player, plays a lot at a different club like in New Hampshire, and he said he was just coming down here uh just for a sort of a change of scenery. I had gone into the session looking at these other guys that were all like a bunch of unknowns that didn't really buy in for that much and I was like, oh maybe I'm not gonna maybe I shouldn't push the straddle with these guys because they weren't all that deep and they were a lot of sort of fresh faces. But this guy to my right, he just threw it out there. Does everyone just want to straddle? And no one objected. And we actually started straddling every single hand. So we had this auto straddle on at 2 510, and I mean the game was just unbelievable. But much like you will see usually in higher stakes games with no limit , it doesn't take long for the bad players to really go broke. This game, in its really, really good state, like a 9.5 out of 10, really only lasted for like two hours. There were probably three or four of the players that were pretty bad. All went broke. One guy got up. And then three or four winning players, actually young grinders. I mean, I don't necessarily know how good they were, they came in. And that obviously changed the dynamic of the game up just a ton to take out three or four huge losing players , guys that are losing them probably more than like 10 big blinds an hour, and then replace them with winning players. But as I saw this happen, as I'm doing now more and more almost all the time, I've got my name on the list for 2-2 PLO, and then I have my name on the list also for 5-5 PLO. So I was able to really kind of shift out of that game immediately, I timed it correctly. Where I just moved over to the 2-2 PLO game once the 2-5 game got pretty bad. And that was it. I moved over to 2-2 PL O. I ended up playing two two PLO for a few hours. And that game is never gonna be bad. But what I've realized is that in these very, very small stakes l,ive PLO games like a, two -two game, although this is two, two, five to bring in. If there isn't a whole lot of raising pre-flop and there's just a bunch of limping, you don't really get to see large juiced up pots. So the game isn't good in the sense compared to another game where the pots are juiced up and the pots are just much, much larger. Now these guys weren't really necessarily good at 2-2 , but over the course of like one or two hours that I was there, I might have saw like one all in. And it wasn't like the guys were like super deep either. I mean, they were all sitting sort of sub 500 and just there wasn't any raising pre-flop. So it played kind of small. So sometimes if you're in kind of a micro or lowest stakes live PLO game, if there's not a lot of raising pre-flop and the stacks aren't that deep, the game just kind of plays small. And unfortunately at Encore, there's no double board PLO bombs to sort of juice the game up. So in essence, I would say that the game for 2-2 PLO game wasn't really all that good, but there was also a 5-5 PLO game going, which I would say was okay. And one of the things that I want to bring up, I'm going to sort of name this type of player, is that if you're in a room with multiple games, I think that you should look for a gauge player. Now, what do I mean by gauge player? A gauge player is a guy that will move back and forth and is usually sitting in the best game. Now, a gauge player is different than a bum hunter. A bum hun ter usually won't play in the game unless it's extremely good, and a bum hunter is just kind of sitting around. The particular guy that I'm thinking about, he only plays PLO and he's never going to sit out. But when there's a five-five or and a two-two game running, he's gonna be sitting in the best game. Now, even though the 5-5 game wasn't necessarily great, because the 2-2 PLO game was playing so small, and it wasn't really a good game in the sense of 2-2 PLO, he was sitting in the five-five, but he's sort of constantly moving back and forth. He's got his name up on both games. And usually, if you follow this gauge player , he's gonna be in the best game. Now, obviously, some of you don't have this opportunity. This is usually only in a room where there are enough games. But if you pay attention and look at the players , look at the regulars, the guys that you see on a regular basis in the room. Try to find that gauge player that's usually always sitting in the best game. And I mean the, best way to go about doing that if a guy really was a true gauge player is he would be playing in the best game no matter what the game was. Now this guy only plays PLO, so he's I've never even seen seen him sit in No Limit. But there are some guys that play all the games, and that's really obviously the right way to do it. But I've just seen this happen so many times, specifically with the two five live No Limit g ame where it's just good for a little bit of time and it doesn't take long for the bad players to go broke. And obviously that gets much, much more highlighted the higher stakes you go up. Like I've seen 5'10 go off at Encore. It's usually not a good game. And what I mean by not a good game is at least 60 or 70 of the percent of the players are for-profit players, are winning players, and the money is just sort of shifting around. Whenever that 5-10 game is good, good defined by compared to other times where there might be like three or four losing players in the game, they get absolutely annihilated quickl y. I'm talking about like inside of a short session and the game only lasts for like a few hours. It's just absolutely crazy. And these games just don't last that long. And you know, it is what it is. It's just sort of the state of the games. Now, so I basically ended up losing a hundred. I played maybe three hours of two, five, no limit. I lost like 150 bucks. I played another two hours of like two PLO. I think I lost 200 bucks. And then I played five five PLO where I won something like 800 bucks. There was one definitely, definitely bad player. We played mostly seven-handed in the PLO game, but there was definitely one bad player. And then as you're starting to get your feet wet in PLO, usually this is only going to happen sort of at the higher stakes, but what I saw was like a guy that was kind of skittish, like a guy that was new to the game, a guy that I had seen in the PLO streets before, but he was kind of new to the game and it was pretty obvious he lost a buy-in really quickly and then he's coming back for more. He probably ended up losing, I don't know, a lot of buy-ins , probably like three or four buy-ins. He was not a good player. So we were playing seven-handed. It was me, four other decent players, and two bad players. And that basically made the game good enough. And I'm I extracted money off of those bad players for the most part. There's one other thing I want to bring up here too, which was I noticed this at the two five game. This was with one of like the guys that I didn't know that was clearly a pretty bad player. And this went went down where this guy, like one guy had like pocket aces, another guy had pocket nines , and they got all the money in, and the board came out like five, eight, six, and then the turn was a seven. So the guy with pocket nines had a straight. And then the river was a nine. So the board was five , eight, six, seven, nine. There was a straight on board. And the guy with pocket nines tables his nines. And then this other guy who ended up having aces is just sort of looking at his hand. He hasn't tabled anything. And a third guy, one of the guys that was making the game really good, said, There's a straight on board. There's a straight on board. You know, there's a straight on board. And obviously you're not supposed to do that. And the dealers are actually pretty strict at Encore in terms of basically enforcing the rules. And the dealer actually said something, said, no, you can't say that. And obviously it's in very, very bad form that you say that I feel very strongly that if both hands are tabled and there's some sort of mistake in reading the board, it's your duty to speak up. But you're really not well, you're definitely not supposed to tell somebody, oh, there's a straight on board or there's a flush on board to get the guy to table his hand. The guy has to table his hand. However, what I would say though is that almost worse than that would be getting even if you were, I would say, maybe even involved in the hand, and it was something to your detriment, like you were the guy with pocket nines and the other guy with aces wasn't tabling his hand. It was pretty obvious that the third player just didn't know any better. He didn't know the etiquette. He wasn't he wasn't working with the guy with pocket aces. They weren't sharing the same bankroll. He was just somewhat new to the game and didn't know any better. So you have to take those types of things in stride. Like if you were the guy with nines and had a straight and then basically got counterfeit and this guy with aces was gonna mock. And then this third guy chimes in and says there's a straight on board, don't let that bother you if you don't think that the guy was really doing it intentionally, which I would say probably like 95% of the time, it's not intentional. It's just the guy doesn't necessarily know any better. Yes, it's in poor form. And the dealer was pretty strict about it and actually brought up the fact: hey, you shouldn't say that. But the guy, he's a losing player and he just doesn't know any better. There's no, there's no malice. There's no malicious intent. So you have to sort of let something like that kind of roll off your back. One other quick thing before we get into the hands here for this week. As I was talking about Club WPD Gold and getting reps in in PLO, getting reps in in no limit, just to practice. I mean, I know a lot of you guys are new subscribers that might have come on, and maybe you're new to live games and I've been corresponding with new subscribers, as I often do , or I always do on Discord the first time that they join, I've been telling people , especially people that I think would benefit. Like if they've got only access to private games or live casinos or hours away. I was like, why not just play on WPT Gold and get some experience? Because I've played a few thousand hands at the Lower Stakes No Limit games. They're they're pretty good. And the game really mimics a live game. And I keep saying if you've never signed up for the site, you can use the code BART and you'll get entered into our free rolls. But I wanted to read a comment because I was DMing a very well-respected poster in our community. And I said, hey, can I read this comment? I won't mention your name. He said, Yeah, if you could just not mention my name. So I'm not going to mention his name, but everybody would know who this guy is. And he's a professional, not a professional poker player, a professional in a different field. And uh he said to me, and I quote, I'm not sure if the CLP community truly understands just how good the WPT tables are. Playing mostly at the $100 tables. I'm up about $8,000 . And that doesn't include like a heads up session that he played against a famous person where he lost maybe 25% of that. So he says, I've won about ten thousand dollars in forty-three point five thousand hands played, and I'm not even studying anymore. I play mostly when I'm bored or working a night shift trying to stay awake. So he's basically one tabling on his iPad, and he's up $10,000 in $43.5 k ,000 played. And at the $100 tables, which is what, $25 cent, $50 , a dollar . I did the calculation. It's about 2 3 big blinds or 23 straddles in essence per 100 hands, 23 per 100.