Chris Halverson’s Blog

I moved up to the 1/2 tables at Part this past week. I got sick of getting sucked out on by the total fish who figure one more dollar is good enough to see the river with 82o or some crap like that. I’m short in the bankroll department for this level, especially after this past weekend’s cold run (what a time to move up, lose twice as much in the same amount of time!), but I am enjoying it more. I was getting to the point where poker wasn’t fun anymore. I would dutifully login because it’s better than doing nothing, but I generally didn’t look forward to doing it. I’d login, find a table, let out a big sigh and sit down. Even if I won it wasn’t fun. While I was taking it seriously, it seemed everybody else would just “play”. I would read about strategy, what to do in certain situations, and then it wouldn’t matter at all at a 50/1 table since you’d have 4 people calling you down to the river and then catch crap.

There is a big difference between 50/1 and 1/2. One interesting change is the majority of the hands do not go to showdown. In fact, here are many times when everything is folded to the BB. WTF? This is so different than 50/1 where having 7 people see the flop is not uncommon. While the play at 1/2 may not be pro level (mine included of course), it is a huge step up from 50/1. There is a theory (mostly on 2+2, but it more or less makes sense to me anyway), that 1/2 is tighter than 2/4 (at Party anyway) because most of the people at 1/2 moved up from 50/1 after winning. A lot of people at 2/4 play that level since they are used to playing that at the B&M and don’t want to move down or they are comfortable at that level. While I’m sure that this is a broad generalization, in some ways it does make sense. Don’t get me wrong, there are still fish here and they still play crap hands (and catch them), but there are enough decent people that you can actually use strategy.

Anyway, I have found a big leak in my game now that I’ve started playing with people who will actually fold. That is, I don’t raise enough. Books and other advice that you read push raising for a number of reasons ranging from getting more in the pot to driving others out. At 50/1 a raise doesn’t mean much and will not drive people out. At 1/2, a raise, especially pre-flop, will drive people out. It’s amazing to watch when you’re not used to it. I now see what BG was talking about last week when he sat down at 50/1 with me and complained about how wild it was. Pauly menitoned this too regarding his experience. I am much too passive, but as Henry pointed out to me, the 50/1 game is very passive as there are so many people calling down that you have to be passive because unless you have the nuts you are vulnerable.

Therefore, to not be session oriented, I feel good about the way I’ve been playing and Poker Tracker shows that I haven’t been screwing up too badly. Yes I have some holes, but now I know what some of them are, therefore I can improve. Playing with Pauly last night was instructive and confirmed some of my thoughts about how to play “correctly” at this level.

On a side note, if you don’t think that the rake will eat you alive at the low limits, check out the difference between a 1/2 pot and a 10/20 pot:

1/2: Main Pot: $36.50 | Rake: $1
10/20: Main Pot: $463 | Rake: $2

Winning a mere $430 more costs you only $1 more in rake. Ouch.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 22nd, 2004 at 4:14 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.