Kamikaze Corner
Improving your limit Hold'em game
By Davin Anderson

Here’s another great email I wanted to share:

Seeking greater success at limit Hold’em

I can’t seem to beat $4/8 half-kill limit poker, I need some advice.

Am I mistaken in the assumption from your nickname that you are the kind of player that I hear at the table all the time saying “I gamble” and call or bet an 8-3 offsuit for “action”? I lose to those people all the time.

I have heard that a person should not go to no-limit if they can’t beat a small limit game. I can’t beat $3/6 or $4/8. I have studied DVDs, magazines, more than a dozen books, from Vorhaus to Hellmuth, Sklansky, to Gordon, Doyle to Miller, and DVDs from Duke, Lederer, Caro, and more.

I get good reads and know I’m ahead about 75% of the time before and/or after the flop. I don’t slow play much, unless it’s the nuts or there are no big draws. Like if I have A-J and the flop is J-J-2 rainbow I’ll slow play. Even then I lost that hand to a runner-runner flush. So with that as my memory, I very rarely slow play. I bet out or check raise, and I still get called and lose. I don’t play many hands and when I do show down it’s almost always a good hand or close to the nuts.

So what would you suggest? I wish I could afford you as a coach. But are there any other alternatives that would be good? I’m very visual and hands on.

Thanks,
David C.
Stockton

There are more issues included in this email than I can answer in one article, but I will try to cover the most important.

First off, make sure you play limits that you can afford. If you have the option of playing $3/6 or $4/8, then don’t play games with a kill unless you can beat the smaller games. Bigger limit games and kill games are exponentially bigger, which means you need at least twice as much to play them.

I prefer to play games without a kill, especially when the kill game requires the winner to post a third blind. When the rules force you to post a third blind it’s really penalizing you for winning even a small pot. If you do play kill games with a forced third blind, don’t fall into the trap of feeling obligated to call raises because it’s your kill. It’s really a long term losing play.

My nickname—the Kamikaze Korean—comes from my days as a pool player and not as a poker player. I was known for making some crazy all or nothing shots to win at pool, and an old pool hustler started calling me a kamikaze. When I mentioned that I was Korean and that many older Koreans don’t like to be associated with anything Japanese (because of the Japanese occupation of Korea during WWII), he started calling me “the Kamikaze Korean.”

I must admit that when I started playing Hold’em, I was often a kamikaze-style player. After a year of losing, I learned that it wasn’t profitable to play like a kamikaze, but it is profitable if people think you are a kamikaze poker player. So I used the name to promote the image, and as an Asian player on the East Coast, it worked better than you can imagine. In most East Coast poker rooms, Asians were considered the bottom of the barrel in terms of poker skills.

If you are having problems with playing $3/6 and $4/8 limit Hold’em, then you probably need to change your philosophy and your perception of the game. Low limit poker has its own unique qualities and therefore requires a different approach than what you see on TV and what you read in most books written by top professionals.

The term “no fold’em hold’em” was created from the West Coast style of loose aggressive low-limit players. Typically the swings can be huge and therefore a crazy $4/8 game can require a $10/20 bankroll. You must be willing to accept big swings and losing streaks when you play low-limit poker.

These games require you to focus on postflop play rather than preflop play. A loose translation is: there are no bad cards, just bad flops. Traditional preflop hand rankings go out the window, and a much wider hand range must be considered as long-term profitable hands. Consider these as the most important factors when playing low-limit Hold’em: the flop, nut draws, and average showdown winner.

The flop is 70% of the game, so that’s when the most important decisions are made, especially in multi-way pots. If the flop doesn’t fit your hand, then folding is usually the best option. In low-limit games, the most money goes in after the flop, and most of that money is bad money (drawing slim to dead). That means the most profit is gained after the flop rather than before the flop.

When playing games with an average of 6 to 7 people in every pot, playing draws becomes a huge part of the game. These multi-way pots will often contain 20 to 25 bets by the river card. If you consider the math side of poker important, you will realize that in huge pots playing for a gut shot or a two outer can be mathematically correct.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the drawing hand is usually the most commonly misplayed hand in all of poker. In typical low-limit multi-way pots there will be multiple draws and often two or three people with the same draw. Therefore, you should stay away from non-nut draws in these situations. Suited connectors (as a flush draw) are usually way overvalued in multi-way pots, and I will sometimes fold my suited connectors even if I make the flush.

The third point is an often overlooked factor of Texas Hold’em. The average showdown winner will be two pair or better, and this is especially true in low limit Hold’em. When you play low-limit poker, with its constant multi-way action, unimproved hands like aces, kings, and queens go way down in value. Aces are actually an underdog to win a four-way pot, and become a huge underdog in a six- to seven-way pot. I’ve seen some old time poker players actually throw pocket aces away preflop after six people called an under the gun raise, and every time they made a great fold saving themselves at least four to five big bets.

Now don’t get me wrong, a tight aggressive style is always a good choice and you can’t really go wrong in the long run playing tight aggressive, but it’s not always the best choice. The best players aren’t always the tightest players and don’t always play so called “good cards.” The best cash game players can play all five gears, play each gear well, and—most of all—knows when to switch gears.

Don’t be fooled by the kamikaze-style players, some of them are true experts and deserve respect.

Thanks for the email David, I hope I gave you and the readers some useful insight, and good luck at the tables.