guacamole

yeah, triple draw isn't exactly the most popular of games - thanks for reminding us. Congrats on your 100th post - now maybe you will get treated seriously. Maybe some day I will get up to the lofty heights of 100 posts.

Daniel will give all charter members a free deposit at whatever poker website he joins.

another lovechild of daniels, this time with the busty chick in Royal Tour's sig:

Looks more like TJ Cloutier to me.

paint is fine, thats what I used.zoom in so you can edit the pixels by hand, and use the pencil and paintbrush. It won't take too long.Say, maybe you can mod your Randy Moss photo...

here is daniel with the fossilman glasses on. Also note bright red poker stars shirt and massive Raymeresque chip stack.

yes, I think that it is too tight. You can't just play as if everyone has folded to you in 6-handed because you don't get enough hands to pay for the blinds. I have experimented with playing "good" 3 card draws that have either 2+7 or 3+8 to avoid straights, but drawing 3 can cost you a lot of money if your requirements remain stringent, and I have been ripped apart by players with rougher hand selection. You also leave yourself vulnerable to snowers if you don't loosen your requirements quickly on the later streets, so why not start playing rough from the get-go? I think a 2 card draw to

thanks for the compliment. I thought a bit more about this problem, and found some more interesting stuff.As I argued earlier, a safe folding % for J-high is 1/(X+1) since it is the highest folding % that doesn't allow bluffs to make money. But what is the marginal amount of money that can be made by raising this fold% further?By folding more often, you save money from the value bets, but lose money to the bluffs. Lets say your opponent makes his hand and bets out M% of the time. Also, lets say he bluffs B% of the time. So by lowering the fold%, you will gain M% from the real hands to eve

Here's one way of looking at it:Lets say the pot is X units, and your opponent bets 1 unit into your pat hand. If you call at least X/(X+1) times, the bluff play will be unprofitable to your opponent in the long run (at the breakeven X/(X+1), he gains X units 1 time for each 1 unit he loses X times). So you can safely fold randomly at least 1/X of the time without losing any EV over the straight strategy of calling every time to bluffs. You also gain EV from saving bets to players who DO make their hands. 1/(X+1) is an initial lower bound on your optimal "fold ratio"But if you fold MORE t

maybe if he had invented excel instead I would have more respect for him. You can't even calculate pot odds with word.

Ronnie O'Sullivan, the world #1 ranked snooker player, has been quoted as saying he is "bored" of snooker, and will be playing some events in the US pool circuit this year. Stephen Hendry has also said he is interested in doing the same, but only if the money is really good (fat chance of that).Snooker is played on a huge table. I don't know about pool, but I always got the impression that the table is a lot smaller. This makes potting distances shorter, bank shots easier, but there are smaller spaces between the balls and more opportunities for a skilled player. I am curious to hear if Da

with a final hand of J-8-7-6-5, the villain must have defended the big blind with 5-7 or worse. DN told us that Johnny Chan tends to be more conservative in limit games, so I very much doubt it was him.I would guess Jen, but only because Daniel didn't make the mistake of saying "he" or "his" while describing the hand.Obviously the pre-1st-draw call was loose, but I think the bet before the last draw was interesting. J-8-7-6-5 is a very inflexible hand (the best you can get by drawing is 8-7-6-5-2 - yuk), so I think the villain pretty much had to bet and go pat, hoping that Daniel had drawn 2

Daniel, Thanks so much for your fantastic triple draw chapter in SS2. It is very well written and has fantastic practical advice for a full table. That said, I have been having trouble in heads-up situations, which are common online because of the small number of players. Can you give us FCPers the upper hand with some tips on playing shorthanded? Obviously you have to play more hands, and I find that having 3-8 is very good since 8's are usually enough to win, and the 3 avoids getting a str8. Raising frequently on the button seems natural, but is it right to do this with any two card

He means raise and reraise everything (I think). The hands that you mentioned (237xx and 2468x) are excellent, and should be reraised like crazy. Most of the time, the UTG raise means he has 2 + two other wheel cards, or a 1 card draw to a non-straight 8. You aren't worried about these hands because they aren't really any better than your hand. But you have a common interest in driving out everybody else! You are capped at 4 raises anyhow (preventing you from getting wiped out from an unlikely made 7 or 8-5), and you should be happy to get all your money in early with these hands. Let's

yeah, the 6 is not that good because it is the straight card. Note that:1) to win the hand, you are probably going to need a 2 (otherwise, you are going to have at least 8-7 unless you draw exactly 3-4-5-6- 8_).2) Tossing the 6 gives you 3 more chances to get that 2, and you have 16 other outs to give you a better card (3,4,5,7).3) Even if you do draw the 2, and you get lucky enough to also get 3,4 or 3,5 or 4,5, you will have a hard time staying in the hand if you face action, since you will be missing 4 outs (that make a straight), and your pot odds will be poor with the pot unraised before

Your opponents will never break 86 to draw for a 7 because the possibility of a 2-3-4-5-6 straight robs them of one of their outs. With 8-7 it makes more sense since a straight is impossible (assuming you have a 2).For this reason, you should always stand pat (mostly) or fold (rarely) with 8-6 if you get it after the first draw. I can't think of a situation where you would draw to a 7. 8-7 is a flexible holding, and if you have position it usually pays to hold on to it, and toss the 8 if your opponent goes pat (especially after a reraise). This rule is flexible though - in a 4 way pot, you

you aren't the Andrew Black who is still in the tourney, are you?

my money's on Fillmath. He is the best ever.

here's another one:http://www.cheat-at-poker.com/hard to believe how these could work. I suppose firewall protection might help if these claims have any validity at all. I don't know for sure though, and I don't really care to pay $60 to find out (you would think the guy would just use his own system and keep quiet, huh?)

Hey, nutonflop,Andy Bloch had some discussion on his website about game theory, although it doesn't really give much more than what harvey said.http://www.andybloch.com/gl/pub/article.ph...9111&mode=printI found the "Uniform(0,1) Two-Person Poker Models" paper to be quite practical, as it demonstrates a method that you can use in more specific cases (solving multiple indifference equations). Anybody with highschool math skills can pretty much figure out how it works, and you don't need to read tons of game theory books to understand it.Also, thanks again, harvey, for sharing your knowledg

if Raymer wins both this one, and the main event (again, LOL), he is officially the worlds best poker player.I think a lot of people (me included) will be updating our opinions of the fossilman this morning. I was pretty shocked to see him at the top, although not nearly as shocked as I would have been had it been Moneymaker.

AQo has got to be a raise if you are playing the low limits. If you make top pair, you have a good kicker and your opponents probably won't have many outs. You don't really need to protect your hand.I think AJo is a lot more interesting. If you don't make a pair, you are going to lose since someone else is going to pair the flop. If you make a pair of jacks, you are vulnerable to overcards, and must protect your hand. But you won't be able to, because the pot is way to big. Also, your equity is a lot less pre-flop, so I don't think raising can be right. In a 6 handed pot, probably 45s h

Not only is (was) Paul Magriel a great backgammon player, but he also wrote the "Super System" equivalent in backgammon, his 1979 book which is fittingly called "Backgammon". Many backgammon players consider this the greatest book ever.

I imagine the guy didn't think too much, and assumed Kirill would just fold to an all-in bet.I just saw a video interview of Kirill on Cardplayer.com, and he confirms that he felt like he had a good read. His pot odds were pretty bad, but there was A,K,J on the board, and he is sure his opponent isn't paired, his 10 high is quite likely good.I think he said they both started with about 7000-7500, and he had to call 5000 at the end, so it must have been about a pot-sized bet. His opponent probably felt he might call a smaller bet.

Why wouldn't he bet? If he bets out with a better hand, he has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. The only question is whether he might have made a smaller bet with a strong hand, but of course he could have also made a smaller bet with a bluffing hand too! I'm not sure that the bet really gives Kirill any information about the other guys hand.Don't pot odds play into this? If Kirill called for 10% of the pot (or something small), then there is nothing unusual about his call at all.I think it is likely that Kirill had a good read on his opponent and figured him for low or random non-