Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players - Ebook written by David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth. Read this book using Google Play Books app on your PC, android, iOS devices. Download for offline reading, highlight, bookmark or take notes while you read Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players. Dear Internet Archive Community, I’ll get right to it: please support the Internet Archive today. Hold 'em poker for advanced players Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item. Hold 'em poker for advanced players by Sklansky, David; Malmuth, Mason. Publication date 1999 Topics Poker, Gambling Publisher.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the March, 2012 issue.

The new IGT heads-up limit hold ’em machine plays you even. There is no rake. The rules are the standard ones. Are bonus rounds on slot machines predetermined. The button has the small blind equal to one-fourth of a big bet, and the other player is the big blind, which is half a big bet. So, in a $20-$40 game, the button puts up $10 and the big blind is $20. In this article, when I use numbers, a $20-$40 game will be assumed.

When you buy-in, the machine gets the button on the first hand. From that point on, the button rotates as long as you do not re-buy or add to your stack. If you play the big blind and then add money, you will get the big blind again. Notice, that this is not an edge for the machine as long as you buy-in a large enough amount and you quit on your button. If you do that, you will always be playing with more than enough to play the hand through the river, and on half of those hands, you will have the button.

This is not true if your initial buy-in is not large, perhaps 20 big bets or less. The reason for this is that the button's edge increases as the stack increases up to the point where you have more than enough to play a hand. So, let's say that you bought in only enough to play one hand through the river. Such a strategy gives the machine an edge. Do you see why? The literature seems to indicate that the edge the button has against a good opponent is approximately one-tenth of a big blind EV wise. But, that assumes a full stack. If your first hand is played with just enough chips to go through the river, your second hand when you have the button will often be with a smaller stack and a smaller EV. So, a loss on your first hand will hurt you EV wise. But a win will not help you. (because that extra money won’t be in play the second hand).

IGT probably understood this concept and therefore did not require a large buy-in. In fact, they only require that the initial buy-in be 2½ big blinds. They probably thought that anybody who bought in for that little was giving them an extra edge since they would often go totally broke before they got the button, and they are basically right about that. A player who buys in small with the intention of quitting after two hands, if he gets that far, will find that he gets the button less then 35 percent of the total hands played.

IGT apparently forgot that the button's edge is not exactly proportional to the stack size. In fact, if the stack size is below 1½ big blinds, it’s zero. Do you see why? It's because the button can never fold. If it does, it leaves itself with only one big blind. So it is better off racing for three big blinds since it has at least a 33 percent chance of winning.

Had IGT allowed a buy-in of 1½ big blinds, a 4 year old could beat it because the first hand would be a coin flip. That is there would be no disadvantage to being in the big blind. And, when you did win that first hand, you would have a small advantage on the button somewhere between 2 to 3 percent of a big blind. So playing $20-$40, every other $60 buy-in would theoretically earn about $0.50, and that's about $50 per hour. Add to that the player's club perks available at those casinos that give points and you might be able to increase that to perhaps$80 per hour.

Unfortunately, you cannot buy-in that tiny. The least you can buy-in playing $20-$40 is $50 (or 2½ big blinds) and when you do, the button has an edge on the first hand. But, it's not much, and it comes only from the fact that it can fold pre-flop and you cannot. If you folded, you could save $30. But that's always worse EV wise than racing for a $100 pot. But the button can save $40. So it should fold any hand that is less then 40 percent against two random cards. Now, I can tell you from experience that the button does not play this situation perfectly. But even if it did, its edge is only about 2 percent of a big blind, and it would be folding about 15 percent of the hands and saving about $2.50 on average when it does fold. The remaining 85 percent of the hands will be split about 44½ to 40½. So if you buy-in $100 one hundred times, the machine will make about $40 total when it has the button. You will make about $6 from the 15 times he folds pre-flop, and you play the button with a $110 stack. Plus, you will win some amount the 40 or so hands when you double up and get to play the button with $200. Exactly how much that is, I’m not sure. But I do know that if you play the button decently, it can’t be less then 5 percent of a big blind per hand, and that’s if the machine plays perfectly which in my opinion it does not do.

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So without going into too much detail, I will say that my observations are that when starting stacks are as high as five big blinds, the machine rarely gets away from a hand once it has committed two big blinds. It seems to fold only in absolutely hopeless situations and bleeds EV with some weak hands that should be gotten rid of.

But even if it doesn’t, a player who plays the button well has a small edge, close to one big blind an hour. If he restricts himself to places that offer generous points, that edge doubles, and it’s not hard to play well when all you have is five big blinds on the button.

It’s also my opinion that the best strategy against the machine is somewhat different then it would be against humans. For instance, I think that there are many situations where you should sometimes limp on the button. But you need to experiment yourself. It may also be true that this technique of playing two hands and quitting and then re-buying is even more profitable if your initial buy-in is slightly greater then 2½ big blinds. Perhaps, all the way up to five big blinds. Remember, my observation is that the machine plays small stacks less then optimally.

To finish, I have purposefully been somewhat imprecise. One reason is that I did not do all the math meticulously. Another reason is that the strategies observed may not be representative of the machine's overall strategy. However, the only thing that I am virtually certain of is that the minimum buy-in, followed by good play on the button, followed by a cash out, is at least a small edge, especially if you are able to use a player’s club card. Of course, IGT can make this all go away by raising the initial buy-in significantly. But until they do, you might want to go out there and grind out some money.

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