A Word on Table Image

Your image at the table begins before you even sit. When I arrive in a tournament room I scan the crowd to get the overall vibe and mood of the people who came out to play today. I am focus a lot of my decisions in life on what mood, body language, and casual conversations are telling me. What’s really going on here?

I usually wait to sit at my starting table until it’s about half full. Then I sit and start to listen to the conversations… Who’s got recent bad beat stories? Who’s running well? Who’s not really even focused on playing today? I play at tables where I am usually the only female and the vibe of females is usually pretty stereotypical. Unless I prove otherwise early in the tournament, they expect me to play like the tight-weak female players they are used to at this particular card room. This works to my advantage because I can manipulate that stereotype early on in the tournament and then change gears to throw them off later.

The card room where I play my weekly Saturday tournaments has a lot of loose aggressive gambler-type players. This is a dog track. The guys playing here are usually placing bets on the dogs while they’re raising hands. Starting off as a tight-aggressive player works well because they see me as someone in there raising with the nuts or at least an Ace, for the most part. I can usually take down a lot of small pots early on to keep myself with a healthy stack. My aggressive raising; though, is usually backed by semi-bluffs.

However, sometimes, such as in today’s session, the cards really do not help my early tournament game. Cards are supposed to be only 30% of poker, according to Helmuth and other pros.. but this was tough today. My table image started to become a reality. I did enter a few pots and played them aggressively to take them down but the semi-bluff backers were hard to come by. I honestly, didn’t catch an Ace-anything until the third level. My best pocket hands consisted of Q7, K9.. all off suit. With a lot of raising it was hard to make a play with something like this. I kept telling myself something better will come along… even if it’s a low pocket pair. Unfortunately, it just never did. Not only were my starting hands not giving me anything to work with, but I just never really connected with the flop either.

Enough with the whoa-is-me attitude. Cards shouldn’t matter all that much so where did I go wrong here? (I ended up playing a short stack for most of the tournament until my 10’s went up against K’s.) I’m thinking that because I wasn’t getting cards to work with maybe I should have changed my table image when things were not working out as planned. I could have presented myself as a loose-aggressive player and either hope to catch or just use my reading skills to know when I could steal. I usually don’t become a loose-aggressive player unless I have a comfortable chip lead or feel table control. . That’s an image I will have to explore in my early game and see if I can pull it off when I’m feeling myself becoming the stereotype image.

Hand Review

Tournament: $60 Multi Table –100 person; Derby
Date/Time: Saturday, November 10th 2007; 1pm
Game: NL HE Deep Stack; 4000 Starting Chips; No Antes
Current Chip Stack: 6800
Level: 200/400
Position: SB
Current Table Image: Doubled up on 3rd Hand of Tournament, Making Good Calls, Had a few close beats, Generally Tight, Aggressive on bigger pots, Generally keeps pots small without strong hands, Female, late 20s.

In the SB I look down at QQ. There are 4 limpers. I decide the best raise here is 1600 (4x BB). BB Folds, UTG Calls (stack about mine; new to the table), UTG+1 Calls (Stack a little below mine; Has been involved a lot with his new found chips), Middle Position Calls (Short Stack who will probably push soon), Button thinks for a bit after reviewing his small stack and folds.
My thinking: I am surprised with the multiple callers but feel that I was called with hands such as, QK, QJ, KJ, AJ, A10. Most likely, hands were suited. AK and AQ non-suited hands are also possible limpers & raise callers here. Low pocket pairs most likely folded to the raise at this table. Mid pocket pairs most likely would have raised first.
Flop brings: 4h, 6d, 10d. I’m first to act. I push for 5000. (Pot size is 6800). UTG calls without much hesitation. A Fold from UTG+1. Short Stack also calls. When the cards are flipped over I show my QQ, UTG shows Ad7d and the Short Stack shows 2d5d. Honestly, at this point I’m just numb until the cards are dealt. We turn a black 5 and river a 4 of Diamonds. I am left with 200 in chips and a few hands later say my goodbyes.
My over analyzing… A preflop all in could have most likely gotten UTG to fold and the short stack. If I considered someone possibly flipping trips here I probably wouldn’t have pushed but I still needed to bet. A bet of 2/3rds just about puts me all in and half the pot commits me. I was just excited the flop didn’t bring K’s or A’s. I was counting on most of those overs to be resting in my callers’ hands. Luckily that was not the case or else this hand review would be about how stupid I was for misjudging my opponents’ ability to hold low pocket pairs with a preflop raise. Now considering the diamond draw, I need to push to hopefully scare off any draws. The nut draw is most likely ready to be all in no matter what though. That leaves me with the calling of 4xBB UTG with Ad7d with 6000 behind. Maybe I’m fooling myself here because any other time it could have easily been A10, KQ, KJ. He has got to be putting me on a high pair.. but he doesn’t really know my table image because he just joined the table. For me, it would take a lot to call off all my chips on a draw.. but I also don’t know this guy. Is this just one of those times I flat out got unlucky? I’m going to decide yes. I went in with the best hand and he rivered the nut flush.
After even further review, because coming up just unlucky doesn’t sit well with me, I’ve come to the conclusion this hand was about the math. Preflop I gave him excellent pot odds to go for the nut flush. There was 3600 in the pot when the UTG was forced to make a decision for 1200 more. He was getting 3:1 on his money. Not bad when you’re looking at a possible nut flush.
The correct move here was to push all in preflop and try to make a play at the limper pot. In this case UTG would have been faced with calling (all his chips) 6600 into a 9000 pot.. My preflop bet just wasn’t strong enough.

Welcome..

Welcome to my poker blog. I wanted to start a blog to talk about all the different hands and sessions I've been facing on my poker journey. I bring my stories into my office everyday but I can tell my co-workers are getting lost in the lingo and just want to know if I've won or lost.
I am hoping to improve my own play by putting the details in writing. I figure if I write about it, I will over analyze it to death and hopefully learn my lesson as to why I lost or what contributed to my success. I've read tons of poker books but now I'm going to take Phil Ivey's advice (recently posted on Full Tilts Player Tips). Take in all the information you read but don't think too hard about it while at the tables. This will just get confusing and overwhelming. Absorb the information but focus on developing your own style based on the tools you've learned.
I've reached a point in my game where I am feeling very comfortable with my table image and reading other players. I've had a good amount of success in recent months. I am working on finding my mistakes and learning to not make the same mistake twice. I am also looking to analyze the characters I interact with and learn how they play against me, view me, and what I can do to manipulate the situations.
Thanks for stopping by to read what I have to say about my poker sessions. Please comment or email me. I'd like to have good conversations about hands and plays. I will also be tracking my stats on this blog so I will be able to know if I am an actual winning player or not. As of today, I am currently a winning player for 2007.