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Action Flop Theory
Millions of people play online
poker today and despite the great stories about the big tourney’s
that unknown players won (WSOP) most of the time you hear
about bad beats like you cannot believe. Seems that many poker
players enjoy complaining about that 2 outer river card that
sent them packing. That miracle last card that saved the fish
from your harpoon and usually followed by some “I am
about to quit” remark or “I have had enough of
this poker site” comment.
As a mathematician there has
to be an explanation why the probability of flopping three
of the same suit is not 118 to one online but rather 1/15
at certain times of a tournament – just coincidence
– I think NOT. There is no coincidence in online poker
– everything is not as random as it may seem. Did you
folks ever think how the cards are shuffled or that this randomness
is not really statistically as random as one might expect?
Of course the poker site is not rigged – that would
be out and out stupid to rig a tourney for $5,000 in profits
when the daily rake on the average poker site is $300,000
… no way you rig a tournament unless you have brain
cancer! But there is a theory that explains why all this bad
beat stuff happens – it has to do with “Action
Flops” and the Action Flop Theory.
Few of you have ever heard that
term before Paul Phillips mentioned it on the World Poker
Tour – what the heck is it?
The theory behind action flops
is very simple – the action flop is a flop that will
encourage the good players to get very aggressive in a pot
and usually where the bad player makes an unlike river draw
to suck out the good player. Sound familiar to you. It should
be the reason you lose most of your tournaments. A quick aside
here you should note that poker sites keep track of the cards
distributed and indeed the amount of AA dealt are exactly
0.45% of the hands or 1 out of every 220 hands. The key here
is that we don’t know how often KK is dealt with AA
or how often TJ suited takes down AA or how often AA wins
against any other hand. Have you ever seen a good player on
the button (with nobody in before him) bet a large proportion
of his stack with AQ suited only to be raised all in by a
weak player on the button with whatever, and surprise surprise
the weak player wins and cripples the good player –
all the time you say – I would agree with you (depending
on the particular time in the tournament). If the software
was perfect then the bad players would be pounded day after
day, week after week, tourney after tourney. Clearly if you
have played in thousands of tournaments you know this is not
the case. A friend of mine bet all his chips with AJ suited
on the button when the big blind represented 5 X his stack
and believe it or not this bad player in the BB called with
8 2 os – yes he risked half his stack on 8 2 os and
won. That was just not a call to make with 33 let alone 8
2 os. It is ridiculous. But let us all assume that Action
Flops exist. The next question is when are they more likely
to occur and how can you avoid getting trapped into an action
flop. Action flops usually happen in waves during a tourney
and it is no coincidence to note that a string of action flops
will cripple the good players at your table. So if you are
at a table and you are taking notes on the players or you
see a couple of very good players at your table getting 1
or 2 out pounded watch out. You may be in for an AK or JJ
or TT under the gun and you may be the next victim of an action
flop. So what is the next question to ask yourself if you
want to avoid an action flop – when do I feel like risking
chips to pick up easy chips – or when do I think the
gap theory is at it’s largest point – or in other
words when I can win chips uncontested – that is when
you should have your guard up and expect an action flop to
take you out. Look for a string of action flops right before
you reach the in the money category of players. This is when
you should be at your most conservative. If you doubt this
simply go to any big tourney that pays top 30 and start watching
all the tables when there are 35 players left – you
will laugh at the way good players are busted out.
The Action Flop theory is there
to help the bad player beat the good players – after
all if you are a good player you will likely take the beat
in stride and get into another tournament right away –
where as the new player on the site might quit and never play
again if he / she loses right away … think about it?
A little handicap that gives the bad players a slight advantage
– is that such a bad thing? Why not? It is not as though
they won’t get busted out eventually anyway.
We all know that to be a good
player you have to be very aggressive. You have to make a
lot of value bets and kill pot odds and force your opponents
to put their money in the pot when they have virtually little
chance of winning. That is how good players behave. So would
it surprise you to know that you are being suckered into acting
in such a way as to help the bad players? Good players know
how to bet, steal and extract the most out of the hands they
play. Bad players are basically calling stations and have
little knowledge of proper betting techniques. In B&M
poker rooms flopping set over set happens VERY RARELY as opposed
to the laughable frequency that the bad player with Ax beats
KK all in pre-flop thanks to that delayed Ace on the river
… oh yeah that was random too. The fact remains that
I have charted thousands of MTT’s and one constant sticks
out in my mind – action flops occur and are there to
hurt good players. The nut hands are not always out there
and small hands win. Playing online, you see more big hands
than you would ever see in a B&M poker room. Let’s
talk about the real world for a moment and how action flops
work in real life. Bad players are easily destroyed by superior
players faster than you can imagine – they have virtually
no chance to win in a live mult table no limit holdem tournament
– hence the term “dead money”. In a land
based poker tournament for big bucks the good players take
all the chips from the bad players – that is a fact
of poker. Online it is a different story. Why? Is it so different
after all?
So here we are with the “ACTION
FLOPS”, those flops that bring big action to a hand
and irritate many of the better players with the two outers.
If you owned an online poker site you would realize that 5%
or so of the players would totally annihilate the rest of
the players in quite a short period of time and you would
need a system in place that would balance the playing field.
Good business practice I would think. Action flop theory accounts
for this practice.
Action Flops accomplish
the following:
1
- they let the winning players win far less than they would
normally do if the flops came as they do in land based poker
rooms.
2
– they let bad players play longer, putting out big
hands that even the novice
players can extract the maximum from.
3
– they allow bad players to misinterpret the quality
and value of their hand and consequently the bad players let
the good players bet the hand for them. Good players are used
to betting their own hands and getting value for their cards
through proper betting. Bad players haven't accomplished this
skill set and they need help from the good players. With action
flops, the good players bet the hands for the bad players
to ensure decent value for that river card suck out. Bad players
always assume the best hand is always out there, while good
players play “pocket pair” poker and get value
out of their hands.
The end result is the
following:
The good players win less than
they should. The bad players play much longer than they would,
enticing them to play even more than if they were just slaughtered
as they would in a land based poker room. The house gets a
much larger rake for it's end.
Is a winning player smart enough
to argue he isn't winning enough? Most wouldn't know how.
They are winning, so they really can't complain, or can they?
The bad players who normally wouldn't stand a chance get to
play longer for their dollar. The online sites rake in far
more money. Would this be considered a good business practice?
Obviously very few winners would complain, since they are
winning. The losers are playing longer and occasionally hit
a tourney and make a score, securing another fix like the
spiked cigarettes put out by the tobacco industry for years.
Small players talk about making
$100 a week or so, ensuring publicity for these sites. Losers
don't bother talking as they would rather not tell. This is
the theory in a nutshell. Good players make less, bad players
last longer and the house makes far more in rake. If you had
an online poker what would you do to maximize your profit?
This thought is not directed at any poker site in particular
but in all poker sites collectively.
This theory was developed over
thousands of hours of online play and online observations.
If you ever doubt that this theory is not true just ask your
table at the beginning of play who is new and who is a regular
player and you will have a good idea who to avoid. Also take
the time to watch a good player (or two) during a tournament
and you will note that they are inevitably busted out on a
2 outer by a rookie player or a bad player – now you
know why!
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