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Worst Play of the Day!

Gus Hansen, has gone through the hand, that really set him back here at Aussie Millions, over and over again. Brought exclusively by Gus’ own poker community, theplayr.com, you can read his elaborate analysis of the hand, and why he eventually made the wrong decision - despite having made all the right assumptions.

We are on day 2 in the 'Aussie Millions' – or day 1B if you prefer. Heading down to the tournament area I was feeling good. A beautiful nights sleep, a healthy breakfast and some pretty decent results from my last tournament-endeavours. The stars were aligned as I was aiming for a repeat "Down Under".

Showing up a couple of hours late is not a new-found strategy but a conscious decision for an ante lover like me.

Antes doesn't arrive until the 3rd level and I arrived just in time for that.

Play hums quietly along without me never dropping below 17k or rising above 23k.

I have been laying low watching seat 5, Travis Brown from Winnipeg, Canada, taking charge. He must have busted one or two players before I got moved to table 44, because he had +60k in his chipstack.

On a more interesting note I had watched him take stab after stab at small and medium pots continuously adding money to his increasing stack. He had obviously come to play and since he definitely knew what he was doing I wasn't going to interfere to much with the antes still at a somewhat insignificant level.

Or was I?

We are playing 150-300 with a 25 ante and Travis limps 1 off the button. The other aggressive player at the table - seat 6 - limps along on the button and the small blind folds.

and as usual when facing aggressive players I raise just a tad bit more than I normally would - 1,550 it is.

Travis calls but seat 6 folds, so we are ready for a heads-up pot.

Flop comes
Not exactly gin, but at least I didn't have to deal with the dreaded Ace. I bet 2,200 into a 3,700 pot leaving myself with 17,500. Travis contemplates for a second or two before calling my bet.

Turn:
No Heart, no Ace and barring a 9 or the unlikely 87, I was still in front. Without further a'do I checked, planning to push all-in if he made a move. Sadly enough he checked behind me, and I was starting to worry if I had given him a free shot at beating me.

River:
Time to put the pieces together. It didn't feel like he was flushing, so a valuebet against JsTs or 77 felt like the right play. I could of course also try to pick up a bluff, if he was holding something like QdJd, but as many times before, I chose the active route.

I bet 4,600 only to face an instant all-in from the Canadian. Ups!!!

Suddenly I was looking at a totally different puzzle, and I couldn't really come up with a good solution to the problem.

I just hate to go broke on a super-small ante level, and I felt that I could still make some noise with my remaining 12,800, so I decided to fold.

Not a very good decision, when Travis then stuck the right up my nose.

So where did I go wrong? Well I for sure didn't earn an A+ for my river play, but I think my "real" mistake came earlier in the hand.

I simply forgot to take my time and put my opponent on a hand. Instead I did a couple of huffs, puffs, yes , no, maybes, and when I finally settled on a play, I made a horrible mistake.

Let us go back to the beginning. Preflop play was standard. Continuation bet even more standard. The turn – I don't really mind my play but I made it for the wrong reasons.

After Travis only called the flop, I should with a high degree of certainty have been able to put him on a hand.

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Of course I could never put him on Ad 3d also known as the super-bluff-call, but I should have known what he didn't have.

Let me explain.

I had reraised him a couple of hands earlier in the day, where he obediently had let me take down a pot or three. Add in Travis' strong preference for super-aggressive play, and the solution is right in front of you.

He was basically dying to make a move and the Th 9h 9s flop presented him with a lot of opportunities - especially if he had a heart-draw.

He did call 1,250 more preflop, so taking complete funk-balls out of the equation, his heart-draws would be fairly strong.

Ah3h, Ah8h, KhQh, QhJh, 8h7h – all of which he for sure would have raised with on the flop.

I should have been able to eliminate pretty much all flush-draws once he only called the flop:

If he'd had a strong flush draw on the flop, he'd for sure have raised me there, and if he'd picked up a low flush draw with a pair on the turn, he'd raise me here on the turn. My check on the turn therefore was fine, because he was simply drawing close to dead, and trying to induce a bluff was in order.

He didn't, so now I could also eliminate the 6h5h, as I don't think he would have checked a fragile bottom 2 pair behind me.

Looking at the 4h on the river, all the remaining small connected heart holdings are gone and a valuebet the most logical follow-up. Calling the all-in reraise is always treacherous as it could be my final decision in the tournament staring elimination right in the eyes.

Analysing it correctly I figured out that he didn't have hearts – what about a 9?

Well you will only find a couple of players able to make that play with a 9, when the flush finally got there. That's only for the Ivey-League players! All respect for Travis, as he definitely played the best poker at the table, but I don't think he is quite up there in that category.

The only possible holdings that could beat me was therefore T9, TT, 99, 66 and 44.

I should have treated my KK as it was as good as gold. My valuebet was fine, and the call of his reraise should have been a 'gimme'. (automatic call)

Getting more than 2 to 1 that your opponent has a bluff versus a full house on the river is in general a winning proposition! With Travis from Winnipeg on the other side of table it sounds even better.

Nonetheless I made the wrong move – I folded. Worst play of the day!

The fault was all mine and I paid dearly as the same Travis from Winnipeg knocked me out of the tournament 30 minutes later. No repeat, no glory but there will be plenty of chances to redeem myself. First chance is tomorrow in the 100k buy-in cash game.

As they say in Australia "No Worries".

About the Author

About the Author:
ThePlayr.com and Gus Hansen have one and only one goal with this site, and that's turning every single one of our Playrs into winners.

Online Poker, The Leading Edge

As a gaming software developer, CyberArts is often asked about the future direction of online poker. Here are some of the more interesting developments we see on the horizon. Online Gaming Software Grows Up The next generation of gaming software must be reliable and stable. The market and the high cost of player acquisition demand no less. Technology exists that provides the same kind of robustness and scalability found in numerous fail-safe platforms like mission-critical financial systems and air traffic control systems. Developing such platforms requires careful, rigorous design, implementation and testing, and takes years to complete, but what gaming company can settle for less? Early online gaming software was PC-based, single-user games downloaded or on CD. Developers extended these games to support multiple players online. The popularity of online poker caught those developers by surprise. The underlying architecture was not designed to support thousands of simultaneous users, playing frequent large tournaments. Compounding these challenges were poor internet connections including modems. As online poker took off, leading sites attracted more players than the designers had anticipated. The early systems failed and crashed spectacularly – sometimes taking down gaming sites for hours every day, interrupting tournaments and alienating players. Gaming software developers reacted by re-architecting with countless patches and fixes, forcing time-consuming client downloads. Many do not realize that poker software is still not as stable as the industry requires and nowhere close to the stability of online stock trading applications. As recently as last year, two of the top five sites suffered damaging multi-day outages. Most networks crash or experience unacceptable lag every few days. MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) is a measure of how often you can expect your online poker room to crash. Ask vendors to document in writing their historical MTBF. Poker and Social Networking Gaming has always been about entertainment. Social networks like MySpace and Facebook have attracted tens of millions of users, and their growth continues. The popularity is based on the simple fact that people like to congregate, share interests and “play together.” Poker software developers have started to build social networking concepts into their platforms – allowing players, for example, to congregate in private rooms. This functionality may be superseded, though, by a parallel trend. Spurred by Facebook “opening up” their platform to allow embedded applications, poker operators have created versions of their games that can be played right “inside” Facebook pages. CyberArts recently created such an application for its licensee PurePlay, which operates highly successful online poker tournaments in a U.S-legal subscription model. The PurePlay Facebook client is downloadable from within any user’s Facebook page, and users can invite friends and acquaintances to play. A Flash-based version of the client will allow game play within a Facebook page. A page can be an individual Facebook profile, or can be a special page created for a group or organization. This capability will give rise to informal groups and teams. Players can organize tournaments around schools, football clubs, brands, hobbies – the possibilities are limitless, and such groups can come together quickly and with little or no investment in software development. Big Media and Advergaming Gaming is increasingly about branding and transmitting a marketing message to mass audiences of players. We’ve recently seen a growing interest in online poker from “Big Media,” i.e., television, news and other print companies. They reason that free online poker is a good way to attract players to their sites, cementing brand loyalty and providing “eyeballs” for advertising. These companies require flexible interfaces where the cards, chips and especially the table felt may be branded to reflect an advertisers’ look and messages. CyberArts’ flexible interface allows ads to be embedded into the game – on the game table, chips and cards. High definition interfaces are possible, freeing marketers from a me-too look and feel. An example is shown above – a free online poker game offered by CyberArts licensee The Score, which is Canada’s leading sports television and radio network. Built into ScorePoker is sophisticated “advergaming server” software built by Toronto based Advertising Gaming Network. AGN’s software displays ads intelligently. It draws data about players from The Score’s member database – say, the player’s geographic location, and sports interests – and combines it with player history data. It then displays ads tailored to each player. A Vancouver player might see local ads, while a football fan who’s won a big tournament might see a congratulatory banner from his favorite team and Molson Ale. Players see ads at the appropriate time during a game, for instance after a hand is folded or during a break. No player is going to click on an ad when they are thinking about whether to call a big raise. Why bother to show ads at times like that? Games Beyond Poker Finally, the future of online poker will surely include other games that can be cross-sold to the same audience. Having built a profitable base of players that enjoy gaming, it makes sense to offer them allied products such as other games. Of course, a consistent look and feel, with single sign-on and shared wallet, is the only way to go. A universal gaming platform built to enterprise class standards of reliability should be part of the strategic plan for every successful operator.

About the Author

Harold Blue has been a leading online casino player for years and collects books and other reference materials for online gaming. He has been a copy contributor to online gambling sites. Currently, he is working with a team of online gaming software developers to create his own online casino site with more interactive features and nontraditional games included.