Tracking my progress in Texas Hold'em
Published on June 14, 2007 By PacDragon In Gaming
Sweet. My wife brought home around $4,000 from her trip. Not a bad haul for someone that hasn't played poker seriously in months. She was killing the no-limit tables at the Stratosphere. Ended up playing against a bunch of drunk guys from different wedding parties, so the tables were nearly all fish.

She's got such a great system that I'm totally unable to emulate. She likes to sit down and immediately start playing like a maniac. Makes big pre-flop raises, over bets the pot post-flop, pushes all in with T8s, etc. And does a lot of "bad" plays, like minimum betting a bunch with nothing.

Not only does playing like a maniac piss people off (especially when the players just want a nice friendly session) but when a woman does it it puts them on double-tilt. Before long, they'll start telling her what an awful player she is. "You'll go broke playing that way!". And unless she gets really lucky, she typically will even lose her first buy-in with these antics.

After a while, even the tightest tables will loosen way up. They'll figure the only way to compete with her is to play for big pots and call her huge river bets with marginal hands. Once they're in that mode, she goes into lock-down, only playing extremely big hands. And every time she hits with a big hand, her opponents will nearly always pay her off with their stack.

They rarely catch on. They only have to see her push all-in once with a weak hand and that's all they'll remember for the rest of the night, no matter how many big hands she shows down.

It did backfire in one session. She was at a table full of fish and one pro. She sat down, started in maniac mode, and had nearly the entire table tilting. But before she picked up good enough cards to exploit it, the fish began imploding against each other, pushing all-in every few hands. Eventually, six of them got busted by the pro. He thanked her later, saying the table was a rock garden before she arrived and loosened it up.

Man, it's just amazing how she can trick an entire table into playing really poorly against her. And they refuse to accept that she might have a plan, bitching about how bad she plays, completely ignoring the mountain of chips in front of her.

She brought home a nice pile of cash and set the bar pretty damn high for my own trip...

Comments
on Jun 14, 2007
Good stuff, the only problem with that strategy is finally getting some decent cards.
on Jun 14, 2007
Totally. That's why I prefer the opposite route. I like to bet smallish (50% to 75% of the pot) with really good hands, until I show a few down. Then use my solid image to start stealing with those same small bets, especially in a tournament where the blinds keep rising. That way I don't have to rely on getting cards near the end.

But man, when she does catch cards after a setup like that, she can pull down cash like no one's business. The tricky part with that style is not losing too much on days the cards don't come, so you don't eat away all your profits from the days that they do come. We argue all the time about which method is "best", but we're both bringing money home so something in each style must be working.

Edit: To be fair, I should mention the flaw in my own strategy: I have a hard time getting my big hands paid off. And that may be a bigger issue in no-limit cash games.
on Jun 14, 2007
I feel that you're likely to pull in small amounts over time, while she is going to have large swings where she's down, then back up again, etc. As long as she only loses one buy-in she's all right, though.