Curtis Mayfield III's Poker Blog

My Thoughts on the WSOP TOC

This year Harrah's has annouced that the Tournament of Champions is back on the event list. To say that I am elated would be an understatement. I am not only thrilled about the prospects but I am extremely happy about how they went about setting up the rules for the tournament and including the public in the selection process. This is what the TOC should be all about in my opinion.

The TOC is more than just an all-star game it is an event to look forward too just as much as the Championship H.O.R.S.E. event is. The idea that 27 of the best poker players in the world are all going to fight it out in one tournament has got to be exciting to anyone that plays or watches poker tournaments. I also like the fact that they held exemptions for former champions like Annie Duke, Peter Eastgate, Joe Cada, Barry Shulman and Mike Matusow.

Running Good and Cashing Big

The past few days I have been playing poker like I am on fire. It seems like every hand is holding up and I am picking up cards and playing them for maximum value. I prefer playing tournament poker as you are probably aware. However, You still need to get lucky in order to really take advantage of your opportunities no matter what form of poker you play. The same goes for cash games. You still need that eliment of luck to fall your way at the right times but your skill is more likely to determine the outcome over long periods in both formats.

I have always believed that cards come in waves. For instance, lately I hav e been dealt Pocket Aces more frequently than normal. I had Pocket Kings dealt to me twice in a row and I doubled up each time. That is when you KNOW you are in the zone and your poker strategy is to basically play every hand.

The Big Game Poker TV Show Coming Soon!

Another poker TV show is about to hit the airwaves. This one will be called "The Big Game" and will feature several of the top professional poker players in the world. Of course we are all very familiar with the cash games Poker After Dark and High Stakes Poker. However, the minimum buy-in for the Big Game will be $100k. That's a nice chunk of change and certainly the action will be enough to make it more than interesting to watch.

So far only Dan Negreanu has committed to play but other pros are sure to follow the high stakes action. The show will air on Fox TV so stay tuned!

We're Not there Yet?

Last night I spent all of three hours grinding away at the tables in a large multi-table tournament. True, this is my nightly ritual and I enjoy playing this particular tournament. I have acahsed several times and made the final table a few times over the past 2 months or so. I thought last night I was finally going to reach my goal of getting tot he final table with a substantial amount of chips.

Seriously, when you get to the final table and have a large chip stack it gives you that added boost of confidence knowing you are not simply looking for a hand to push with. No, this time it was going to be different. I was playing a bounty tournament and had knocked out four players on my way to the final eighteen. Now I am an average stack and the hand of my tournament is dealt to me in the form of [Ad][Td].

WSOP All-Star Tournament

It looks like the Tournament of Champions has been rebranded into the All-Star tournament. I gotta admit that I am more than stoked to hear that the Tournament of Champions is back in action. This was one of the highlights of the WSOP in my opinion because if the star studded table where there were virtually no weak spots. Each and every player was an established tournament professional.

This time around there will be twenty seven spots in the tournament. Five of those spots are already pre-selected. Those players include Joe Cada, Mike Matusow, Mike Sexton, Phil Hellmuth and Barry Shulman.

Reckless Aggression doesn't Help

Many times when poker players are running bad they tend to get impatient. We will sometimes play hands that we shouldn't play in hopes of picking up the chips we lost in the previous pot. Usually this kind of play takes place in no limit scenarios whether it's Omaha or Hold'em. In any event reckless aggression doesn't help your cause. In order to win in cash games or poker tournaments you need to be able to keep your composure and manage your thoughts even after taking a bad beat.

I know that is easier said that done most of the time but it is something that each of us are capable of doing with a little or a lot of effort. Imagine trying to be overly aggressive with someone that is just as aggressive a player as you are. It's kind of pointless to do so because they have the same playing philosophy. Being able to recognize this will save you chips and save you heartache too.

Stand your Ground in Smaller Tournaments

Once of the keys to winningn consistnely in poker tournaments is being able to play back at your opponents at just the right time. This particularly true in smaller tournaments with forty-fiver players or less. The reason for this si if you have that few opponents the blinds are goingto eventually become a problem and stealing the blinds becomes even more of a premium play. Without being able to play back at your opponents you will be giving up too much as the tournament moves forward and the blinds grow to $100 / $50.

Single table tournaments tend to play quickly not only because there are only nine opponents but because the action forces you to take more risks for fear of the blinds crashing down on you. It really is not that hard to determine that you have to play fast in order to win. Usually you are going to see tight play early on and the pots will not be as large as in a normal multi-table tournament. This is prime time to play up your image when you are in the blinds with re-raises when holding almost any pair against a known blind stealer.

Win the Pots with Information Bets

When you are in a situation that allows you to bluff there are times when you have to be prepared to fire the third shot. This particularly happens when you are holding a middle pair like [J][J] or [T][T] and you call a raise in position. When there are only two players involved and you are heads up you cannot simply fold the hand even with a board like [Q][8][2]. The reason is because many times your opponent will be raising with hands like [A][K],[A][J],[A][Q]. Yes, it is possible you would be beat with Ace Queen but you still need to give yourself a chance to win the pot.

With that board I am going to make a small bet to see where I am at in the hand. Many times you will find that either you get flat called or you win the hand outright. Let's say the turn brings a [9] giving you and inside straight draw. Again, you decide to bet out and you get flat called again. You can now be fairly comfortable your opponent is on Ace King otherwise he would have raised. Armed with this information as long as small cards hit on the river you can make a strong bet on the river to win the pot. True, you had the best hand all the way through but many times players will incorrectly fold with a bigger card on the flop instead of making information bets.

Don't Always put Your Opponent on Ace King

For the longest time I have witnessed player after player getting railed assuming their opponent is holding Ace King. This happens from the first hand of the poker tournament when everyone has the same amount of chips all the way to the end of the poker tournament. For some reason online players will not give credit to their opponent and that is a really bad spot to be in. I think we all can relate to being short stacked and having to call or push with just about any pocket pair.Those are not the scenarios I am referring to.I am referring to two entirely healthy stacks that get involved in a hand and then there is a re-raise, which indicates strength, and all of the sudden instead of folding [T][T],[J][J] or even [8][8] a player pushes their chips in the middle only to find he is a 4 to 1 dog against [A][A] or [K][K].

Win Your 2010 WSOP Main Event Seat!

Have you begun your journey towards winning your WSOP Main Event? If you have not then there is no better time than the present. There are so many ways to win a seat and plenty of time to do it. Poker rooms around the world offer single tables, sit n go's, multi-player poker tournament, re-buy tournaments in just about any form of poker that fits your game. You do not have to qualify for the WSOP by just playing No Limit. Many people seem surprised by that but it's true if you happen to play online.

Brick and Mortar casinos tend to lean towards the no limit games and that is to be expected. But keep in mind that there are plenty of opportunities to get that seat if you seek them out. There are also a number of ways to win your seat for free too. So if you look long enough and far enough you can gather the information necessary to play under the circumstances that best fit your game and increase your shot at winning that coveted WSOP Main Event seat.

Hollywood is Place Not a Poker Strategy

You have heard the term Hollywood many times before. The one unfortunate thing that has been a result of the televised exposure of poker tournaments is the Hollywood effect. This occurs when a player knows he has to fold and goes into his deep thinking act before finally releasing the hand. Trust me, It does no one any good to have to wait an additional two to five minutes on a hand you know you are going to fold. This also happens when the board clearly displays what the winning hand is and yet a player decides that he will hollywood anyway.

The fact of the matter is that you gain no additional respect when you delay an obvious folding hand. True, there are times while playing poker that we all need to take a few minutes to think through a hand. The difference is that these times are usually when all of your chips are on the line versus every single hand. So the next time you are thinking about waiting a few minutes for effect before folding - DON'T. It's not worth the time or the effort.

Change Gears Frequently

Did you ever wonder why you seem to get called all the time when you are bluffing a pot? Usually there are two reasons for this. The first reason is because you simply have run into a hand that is much stronger than your own. The second and most prominent reason is because you have become predictable. Yes predictable! In order to win poker tournaments or cash games you have to change gears in order to become unpredictable. Otherwise, your chances of winning are slim to none.

How do you change gears?

You change gears by playing hands differently and from different positions relative to your chip stack and how your opponents are playing against you at that time. For instance: If you happen to be playing at a passive table you may decide to raise from early position with small pairs and suited connectors knowing that it is unlikely you will face a re-raise. However, you will still raise your large premium pairs from that same position. You may continue to do things like this from various positions until you have to showdown a hand.

Annie Duke WINS NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship

It's that time of the year again. The NBC Heads-Up poker championship has begun. Although the structure is ridiculously fast it is still a great event to see some of our favorite poker players go at it head to head. I love the format in that there is a featured table with two headliners and then they go from table to table as key plays take place. The show is very well produced not only in terms of the poker action but also the post game interviews that are done after someone either advances or busts out of the tournament.

As fate would have it Annie Duke won the 64 player event and emerged from the star studded field to beat Erick Seidel 2-1. Duke walked away with $500k in cash and is the first woman to win the prestigious title. Congratulations Annie Duke!

High Stakes Robbery on EPT

Imagine sitting in EPT minding your own business when all of the sudden you are asked to leave the poker tournament and whisked away by security. Well that is exactly what happened to players on the European Poker Tour in Berlin, Germany. Once the tournament had played down to the last twenty four players they were all asked to leave the room.

During that time the Grand Hyatt Hotel was being robbed of some 6 masked gunmen of what has been reported of as much as $1.5 million dollars. The gunmen were alleged to have been brandishing grenades in addition to automatic weapons. No one was hurt and play resumed four hours after the incident took place.

WSOP All-Star Game?

I happen to be a Twitter user and I noticed that the World Series of Poker is considering an all-star event in this years WSOP. That would be very interesting indeed. This is only an idea at this point as no official decision has been made. My guess is that they are still tossing around the idea along with whom and what qualifies as an all-star.

Obviously the top echelon players like Cunningham, Ivey, Hellmuth, Dwan and several others would likely be shoe-ins for this particular format. The other names are up for grabs. I suspect it is going to depend on the criteria they set. I also wonder how online poker players are going to fit into the mix. You certainly cannot overlook them. Any way you mix it someone is going to be disappointed. So, we will see how this one pans out.

Divide your Poker Tournament into Stages

Poker tournaments are hard enough to navigate as it is. If you don't take the time to divide your tournament into stages your job will be even more difficult. By dividing your tournament into stages it gives you a barometer of where you need to be and when you need to be there. It's true that there are other factors involved and that it isn't quite as simply as slicing up the tourney but it does help you to keep your overall perspective on the tournament.

There are three stages to tournament play and they are as follows:

Early - this stage is usually the first ninety minutes of the poker tournament. Basically your job is to build your stack as quickly as possible and then take advantage of that stack with speculative hands and calling small raises in attempts to grow it to a larger one.

Single Table Specialist make Nice Profits

In the world of poker many of us tend to get caught up in the televised view of poker. The influence of television makes the game appear to have only two viable ways of playing poker. Either you are a cash game poker player or you are a poker tournament specialist.

However, there are a number of other profitable ways to play the game of poker and single table tournaments are part of that mix. In single tables you are sitting at a nine player table and the payout is reached for the top three poker players.

I don't know about you but those are pretty good numbers in my opinion. Even with bad beats and a little variance a good player should be profitable in this kind of format over the long term. Considering that you will almost never be up against more than three or four good players the rest of those chips are all up for grabs.

Small Pairs and Tournament Survival

Sometimes I think we poker players can get a little arrogant when we get short stacked. Not all of us but some of us. Somehow we convince ourselves, with only one orbit left, that small pocket pairs are not good enough to get our chips in with. On the contrary, when you are short with one orbit or less any pocket pair is good enough to get your chips in with. The bottom line never changes in the midst of a poker tournament. You have to either double up or get up. It's that simple. You have to find a hand and get your chips in the middle of the table and that means Pocket Two's are good enough.

Play More Poker!

So what am I going to do after having a great weekend of online poker play? Play more poker! Yes, I had a great run this weekend and I am going to continue riding the wave and play as much as possible. For some reason when poker players are running well some of us have a tendancy to cut short our run for inexplicable reasons. When you are running good you want to play as much as possible and continue to take down as much profit as possible. If you are playing in a big tournament and have a nice first, second or third finish you want to jump in the next tournament available to give yourself a shot at another score.

Let your Opponent do the Work

If you had told me I would go on a run of five straight cashes and three final tables in a row I would have looked at you like you had three heads. But that is exactly what happened to me this weekend. The cards are falling my way and I am running ridiculously good. This has been an incredible week for me with several cashes and final tables made. It also substantiates my belief in playing poker tournaments with as small of a field as possible. The numbers do matter if as the smaller fields decrease the luck factor significantly. It's not like I had a truck load of premium cards but the cards that I got I played them well and allowed my opponents to be their way to the rail. That is the difference in online poker versus live poker. The game is so hyper-aggressive that no one will fold their premium hands even when they see clear resistance and the possibility of being beat.

Early Tournament Raise not as Strong

Yes, when you raise in a poker tournament early on it does not have the same effect as when an hour or two has already passed and the stacks have begun to accumulate chips. Online poker, particularly no limit, will always have the stigma of being hyper-aggressive. Although this is true for the most part it still carries with it some assumptions about how the game is played that do not bare out in live poker tournaments.

For instance, online poker tournaments tend to have very large pre-flop raises that can and do result in at least two players being all-in before a card has hit the board. This is the main reason why I do not advocate going broke with [K][K] early in an online poker tournament. The likely hood of you facing Pocket Aces is far too high for the risk if you know you can out play your opponents. Conversely, for the less skilled player it is an opportunity to double up and grab some easy chips provided the dreaded Pocket Aces are not held by his opponent.

Raise and Shove is Bad Tournament Move

If you play enough poker tournaments you will quickly realize that making large raises early on in the first few levels effectively renders your hand useless. This becomes the case because of two things. First, when you make a $200+ raise with only $1500 starting chips it gives away the strength of your hand. Second, if you get re-raised most online players are not disciplined enough to get away from [Q][Q] or even [K][K] and[A][K].

These kinds of scenarios simply re-emphasize the fact that making a 4x's the BB with a premium hand early on in the tournament is the optimum way to play it. The reasoning being that should you get re-raised you can then flat call or get away from the hand without taking a substantial hit to your stack. This concept doesn't necessarily apply to higher stakes buy-ins about $50 but you certainly see a lot of pre-flop pushing with less than optimal hands as well as with [A][A] in every kind of low stakes poker tournament.

Cell Phones and Poker don't Mix

I know this strays from my typical posts but I felt the need to visit this topic after witnessing a really stupid argument between a poker player and tournament director a few weeks ago. Here is how the scenario played out.

We are sitting down in the first level of a deep stacks poker tournament. Everyone has their drink of choice and things appear to be going well. No big hands have taken place and the players are still exchanging pleasantries as we move forward with the action. Outside of the poker room as well as on the tables there are signs indicating that cell phones are to be turned off and you must leave the table in order to take calls.

Ace Ten turns Tournament Around

Last night I played a large multi-table online poker tournament. There were 677 players and I was hyper-focused and tuned into what I had to do. Sure, I play poker almost each and every night but there are some nights online where you can get distracted by the everyday things that happen in family life. There were no such distractions this time and I knew that things were going to work out early on.

After the first hour or so I was still languishing around the tournament average when I finally hit a set of fours and easily doubled up with a flush draw on the board. Those are always ideal situations because your opponent doesn't want you drawing out on them and will usually assume that you are on a flush draw when they have top pair. In any event this particular play took me up to $13+ in chips and almost double the tournament average at the time.

Ladies Flocking to Poker Tables

Finally we are seeing a break through in the number of female poker players coming onto the scene. A recent trip to my latest deep stacks poker tournament netted 10 out of 70 entries that were females. This is a huge success as there were rarely more than 4 or 5 last year in these tournaments. A buddy of mine said he saw at least 20 female poker players in his weekly tournament out of a field of 80 or so. Those are the kinds of numbers we all hoped would happen for female poker players. It seems like it took a little longer for the ladies to catch up but I can tell you from experience that female poker players are awfully good.

Single Tables and Cash Games were Good

This past weekend was a very profitable weekend for me. I had a great run at both the cash game and tournament tables. Picked up a lot of hands and hit a lot of flops. Obviously it helps to play well and run good at the same time. I was the beneficiary of a lot of minimum raisers that simply priced in my draws to their own demise. For the life of me I still cannot figure out why this kind of pre flop and post flop move has become so popular in the online poker world. In many of the post flops when I was minimum raised I would likely have folded had they bet their hand out stronger. In any event it was money in the bank.

Starting out in Cash Games

If you plan on building a bankroll and playing on a regular basis you are going to eventually end up playing cash games. Even for a tournament specialist like myself I still play my fair share of cash games thoughout the week. Why? Because when you play in no limit poker tournaments there is no guarantee that you are going to cash.It doesn't matterif you have a huge edge over a smaller field because tournaments still have a high degree of overall variance.

In order to offset that variance you will have to begin playing cash games at some point and set some reasonable goals to make a steady hourly rate. That means managing your bankroll like it is a brand new baby. In order to help explain this process I will show you how I initially began playing in cash games and built my bankroll.

Online Poker may be coming to California Soon

With the US economy still struggling states are beginning to open up to the idea of regulating online poker. Particularly the state of California has been doing more listening than any state in the United States lately. The PPA just held a big meeting with law makers to help educate them on the benfits of online poker and how it can and has been being regulated effectively around the world. This is a major boon for US poker players because if California, who happens to be in a budget crisis, adopts and regulates online poker it opens the door for regulation for the entire country. If done correctly it will be a major victory for advocates of the game all around the globe.

Online Poker Still Going Strong

Despite the recent UIGEA laws in the United States online poker is still going strong. It may have seemed scary a few years ago when the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act first came about. There were a few arrests made of people the US deemed to be so called money launderes but the fact of the matter is that none of those arrested were guilty of anything. Unfortunately as all of this foolishness about the UIGEA has unfolded it has revealed just how little US lawmakers actually knew about online poker or gambling in general. A few countries followed suit blindly believing the US mantra on online poker while most had either previously established rules to regulate the industry or were in the process of doing so.

The Poker Intimidation Factor

If you play poker regularly you have probably noticed that some players are able to leverage their intimidation factor into their play. What does intimidation really mean? Well, intimidation is all about perception and not always about reality. We are not talking about physical intimidation because poker is not a physical game. What we are talking about is phsychological intimidation being a huge factor in a poker players success.
The fact of the matter is that if I just sat down in a tournament and then began to raise every time I had the button and no one did anything about it you could certainly consdider that I am using intimidation to bully the pots even when I don't have a hand.