Holdem Hater

YTD: +$23750.50

I hate Texas Holdem.

I must admit to a slight fondness for the limit version of the game, but the mindsets between it and PLO are so vast and varied that I find it hard to switch from one to the other, as a disappointing Party session taught me last month. I passed to a classic underpair value bet/bluff just because there was 4 to a straight and a caller - even though I had drove all the action with my top pair, good kicker - even though I was getting laid more than 10 to 1!

But back to the subject at hand, hating holdem, of the NL and tourney variety.

Of course it hasn't always been this way. Like most Brits, I grew up playing tournament holdem, small buyins and pot limit. And I was good at it. However now the world has tilted on its axis and the world of NL tourney play is vastly different from the one I cut my teeth on. Back in the day, and it seems now so very long ago, to be a winning player you simply had to be intelligently aggressive. Most dead money, as it is labelled, was tight passive and could only really cause you harm if it got hit by the deck. Of course now the so-called dead money is ticking away like a time bomb. Sure they don't play "properly"; they grotesquely overplay all their hands on almost every street; having to call or bet on the river is unknown to them - they are already allin. Maybe playing this way is deadly for their bankrolls, but they don't care, they're just having fun doing what their "heroes" do on ESPN. But you can be sure that it can be deadly to you, if you don't make the right adjustments to your game or you are just plain unlucky.

It probably doesn't help my mood that my timing and luck is way out of kilter. I make a move in an unraised pot with 22 and then suddenly, bink, bink, bink, out pops a whole raft of slowplayed pocket pairs. I've got someone drawing to 4 outs for a big pot, and not only does he hit it, another runner comes to ensure someone else beats me too. Depressing.

Some examples of mild madness that you could see every day now on the web. We are playing the 215 tourney on Stars. There are three limpers to the button, with the blinds at 50, so 225 in the pot. The button goes allin for over 2000. Yum. Playing a winner-take-all 1-tale satellite, a guy limps for 50 UTG and I raise with 99 in the CO to 150. Everyone folds to him and he goes allin for 900+ more. With KJo.

These and many, many more are just standard moves in the NL world now. The game I used to enjoy, where you could outwit each other through the streets has fairly much gone, at least online. I'm sure there are sensible and strategic adjustments you can make. Dan N seems to have made them, along with some others. But I don't seem to have the heart or the will to make them, which is foolish considering how much money is flying around in these things.