Since you guys have been the ones wanting me to write Razzercise, I have written up at least an outline, and am going to post it up for you guys to check on. If there's things not listed here that you want touched on that I didn't think of, let me know. But anyway, here's the outline:

• Third Street
  • Under the Gun Play
  • Middle Position Play
  • Late Position Play
  • Defending the Bring-In
  • Card Counting
    • Shifting Hand Strengths
  • Limping Pots
  • Raising Pots
  • 3-betting/capping Pots
  • When To Trap Play
  • Paired Hands and When To Play Them
• Fourth Street
  • Bricking a Monster
  • Hitting Perfect
  • Hitting a Seven, Eight, Nine, or Ten
  • Playing First To Act
  • Playing Middle Position
  • Playing Last
    • Heads Up
    • Multiway With Callers
  • Playing A Hidden Pair
  • Open-Pairing A Monster
• Fifth Street
  • Playing a Draw
  • Playing With the Nuts
    • Trapping
    • Fast Playing
  • Facing a Raise
  • Facing 3-bets/caps
• Sixth Street
  • Defining Your Hand
  • Dissecting Opponents' Hands
  • The Big Ten Pre-7th Street Questions
• Seventh Street
  • Playing Improved
  • Playing Unimproved
  • Inducing Bluffs
  • How Rough Can You Call?
  • Going For Overcalls
• Cash Game Play
  • Small Ante/Bring-Ins
  • Large Ante/Bring-Ins
  • Playing Low Limit Games
  • Playing Medium Limit Games
  • Playing High Limit Games
• Tournament Play
  • Large Stack Play
  • Medium Stack Play
  • Short Stack Play
  • Calculating Stack Size
  • Strategic Differences Between Cash Games & Tournaments
• Other Points
  • Short-Handed Play
  • Heads Up Play
• Hand Review
• Appendices

Are you really writing a book?

lol

This will be a great addition to the forum.

Let me know if you need help. Razz is my best game and one that I know a lot about.

I'll also try to help. I have been trying to make some charts for Razz (that could probably cross over easily into stud), but I'm having a hard time making them work. They mainly deal with counting outs, pot odds, dead cards, and so on.

Yep, been planning this for a while. It's been well discussed by hideout members and a few of the Razz heads I know. I hate extreneous work, but I have had a serious desire lately to start working on it. So I'm going to serious cracking on writing up everything. I've got a few portions written already on the pokerhaus.

Do you play Razz on FT at all?

That was my main site for Razz ring. Razz MTT's, i prefer Stars. But my ability to play online has been hampered lately. Should hopefully be changing soon.

Wowowow I want this.

link to pokerhaus portions plz.

I think this is it


http://www.thepokerhaus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1095

correcto. i also linked this thread on that thread, so everyone knows it's coming.

I guess this isn't going to be completed anytime soon.

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...howtopic=108498

if you guys would really like something like this and hanguk really is leaving poker, i could maybe do a cliffs notes for razz version.

You had me at hello.

I'd appreciate any Razz thoughts you have Checky (or anyone). I feel like I should be a winning Razz player, but I'm not even close.

Heck, I am a winning razz player, and I still want to pick checky's brain.

Please, that would be great!

ok, i can do this. when i get back to chicago, i'll probably do something like one chapter a week using hanguk's outline as a basic guide, though i should say right off that i'm POSITIVE that i play razz very differently from hanguk and will intentionally avoid some topics that i think are either not worth worrying about for most beginning players or overly mathematical .

here's something you can use for the book.

Preparing Yourself for the Razz Experience

1. Get a friend, homeless person, etc to help you.
2. Let them punch you in the face. Then make them pay you a dollar.
3. Repeat.

lol. I think you just bought Checky a free week to relax before he puts in the 2nd installment.

nh.

haha, that's kinda funny, but in all seriousness, i think razz gets a terrible rap (wrap? which spelling is it here? anyway...) for being a bitch of a game just because hands don't get especially defined until 4th or 5th street most often.

yes, this means i make a lot of "omg bad calls" on 4th and 5th very often.

It's an excellent lead-in for the book regardless..

The main issue people have with razz is they don't understand the fundamental basics of strategy. Your typical Hold 'Em players will resist the concepts of many live draws on 5th being more powerful than made hands. Plus, like any form of stud, your edge vs. the field is incredible if you are able to process the upcards and understand how truly live (or dead) you are drawing and the potential strength you are up against (A36 is a great hand, but if you see some 2s and 4s out there and no As, 3s, or 6s up and it's bet and popped before it gets to your action..).

And then there are the times the K bring in defends his blind and catches fire on his next two cards while you brick.. Really, the beats in Razz are some of the worst you will find in poker. Hold Em cats are used to seeing that 3 outer spike on the river, but that doesn't prepare you for the 4-card trifecta of your fish catching perfect-perfect while you catch brick-brick.

I'll defend my cruel mistress until the bitter end though, she's responsible for roughly 100% of my MTT final tables.

In summary: I'm in favor of any 57% information game where the bets don't double till fifth, roughly 10-20% of your opponents know how to play, and you aren't sitting there PF shoving everything you have in the middle muttering "I hope he has AQ".

eek, you wouldn't actually consider folding here, would you?

i don't know that i'd talk about razz in terms of "fundamental basics of strategy," really. i personally prefer to beat people into submission, convincing them that they're behind and then making them fold if they catch bad again. of course it's more complicated than that, but i think that's where someone like hanguk and myself would differ in our general approaches to the game. there are very few spots in which you'll actually come across draws that are ahead of made hands, and other specifically mathematically exploitable edges, so if you really want to crush razz, you have to learn to play above the heads of your opponents. the key to doing that is to do that convincing on the early streets when no one's that far ahead of anyone else, minimizing your "-EV" play and inflating pots to where you can draw to catch up properly on later streets.

but i'll get there....

LOL. No, I wouldn't fold, but I'd certainly need at least a 4th card that made me smile by 5th street.. Remember, in a multi-way pot with a few low hands and a chunk of your outs already dead, you are essentially racing to make the best hand against a pack, and it's highly unlikely you are going to see enough players catch bad that you have any way of taking the pot without showdown, no matter how good it appears you "catch"..

I'm a micro tourney player. In this type of situation I'm not only going to have trouble getting anyone to fold on 4th no matter how good I catch, I'm fully expecting the Queen bring-in to come along and add to the carnage (re: build the pot). It's a madhouse... I don't even know how to describe it. It takes untill about the 4th time you see a blind defense when you stop chuckling and realize these fools are ready to gambool.
It makes your life essentially hell, because it's one thing to make one guy pay a "bad price" to draw to their hand, it's another entirely to figure out what to do with three guys who you pretty much know are "committed" because they caught a 9.

In short, micro tourneys can give you really nasty habits that one wouldn't want to carry into actual ring games. I think we can agree on that;)



Oh, I came to the party already assuming you'd play Razz firing with both barrells like you would in Stud hi, just with a few extra jukes in your step. My line of thinking was you'd attack the "book" aspect by starting off with starting hand reqs, absorbing upcard information, controlling pot size, and tidbits like that.

If I was going to be greedy, I'd beg you for a cliffnotes section on tournament strat for razz and O8B. That's my current bottleneck. Anyone with 5 minutes of free time on their hands can tell you "how to play" O8B/Razz/Stud/Stud8 ring games, it's mixing the nuances with a tourney format that really be something that you simply don't see anywhere.
People will discuss NLHE tourney strat to death with you, but you aren't going to get a lot of feedback on the value of high only hands in late position once you are deep ITM in a O8B tourney.

Razz is another beast in tourney format as well, because it doesn't overly lend itself to "chip accumulation" by nature. You simply don't see blinds being stolen (and/or not defended!, in micro donkaments) until after 4 or 5 blind increases. You identify the ATM's early and isolate them when you can, but in my experience I'll end up with thrice the chip average at first break half the time and my original stack half the time, with little rhyme or reason to it.

Boy can I ramble or what?

I got this on lock starting next week.

someone is obviously disapproving of me teaching everyone else how to be lagtards.

YOU'RE FREAKING RIGHT I DO!


































that's my job

LOL, glad to have you take over, sir. i'm far too lazy to commit to anything, anyway

ty. It may have to wait until i get the entire book done, but you will see my full effort very soon.

Thanks for the effort on putting stuff up checky, much appreciated. For that, you have first dibs on proofreading. scottyno and dereeekho obv. get it too, since they're OG razztards, but guaranteed you guys get some good stuff.

hey...wat the...

isnt Hanguk supposed to be done with FCP?

isn't everybody?

if we were smart

i look forward to the book. maybe i'll even learn how to play this.

I'm hoping there will be pop-up pictures in Hang's book!

i doubt i'll put in pop-up pictures. but the cover will more than make up for it.

although i will take this suggestion into consideration.

Somebody into the sauce early today?

Define "early."

Point taken. His post was at 1:31PM, so at least it was after noon!

I'm getting visions of Richard Simmons holding a pair of bricks for the cover...

Maybe it's good that I'm not involved....

Who doesn't enjoy a good book of pop up pictures? It's all about marketing, baby.

Looking forward to this...I really want to start learning how to play Razz and T-D better.

I still don't understand. HangukMiguk is supposed to be gone!

He wasn't banned or anything. People come and go. FCP is voluntary, last I checked

He did make a huge post about needing to give it up as he was getting obsessed or something like that...

giving up poker and giving up FCP are separate animals completely. Let's not clutter the thread further

Sadly, you're pretty close to the cover of the book.

The front cover will have me wearing a Richard Simmons exercise outfit (sparkles and all), flexing. On the front of my shirt it will say "Razzercise With HangukMiguk." One of my friends will be in the background wearing a Boston Celtics jersy circa 1979, shaking a tambourine.

The back cover will have me with my back facing the camera in the same outfit, picking out a wedgie. The back of my shirt will say "How Low Can You Go?" The same friend, in the same jersey, will be in the background, flossing his butt with a towel.

There you go. I must have been hitting the sauce, not Cappy, Frez. Tell me that wouldn't be an impulse buy if you saw that at Barnes and Noble.

Ummm, that cover would not be an impluse buy...

You missed the super secret fine print. I'll blow it up for you.

I'll buy this if you get phil hellmuth to write the forward

He's dead to me as of last year when he wouldn't play me in .05/.10 Razz on UB. I even called him out in public. Mr. 11 bracelets...HA!

If he's my back's not busy, maybe I can get Captain Tom Franklin to write it?