What's in a name?

Kyri_ps: lucky ****
Dealer: Game #3160840394, Kittyluck wins pot (£12.50) with Two Pairs, Queens and Fives, Ace high
Kittyluck: that is my name
-William Hill Poker, .50/1 (GBP) NLHE

cats: 1% of Ryan Kallberg was better than 2% of Phil Ivey.
-IM to Mark, referring to the 2 percent stake Ivey supposedly granted author Michael Craig for giving him batteries for his noise-suppression headphones

So eventually, at some point of play, some toaster starts saying that I'm catching cards on him. This time around, I had Q5s in the big blind and some toaster is all-in for 5 GBP more.

One, I believe in giving people action, especially in no-limit. Remember Perry Friedman and my 83o? :)

Two, if I can bust the short-stacked toaster, he'll either rebuy and possibly be on tilt, or at least open up the seat for another paying customer.

In the hand that led to the conversation at the very top, toaster had KJo in the 6-max game. Sorry, toaster. Go scrounge up some quid doing whatever you do and see you soon.

The other day, on my way to dominating and winning a $20+2 SNG on Full Tilt, exasperated toasters kept on saying that I was just catching cards. What they didn't realize was they were being outplayed.

I would randomly bet when I sensed weakness. One time, I took a page out of Ed Miller and David Sklansky's No Limit Hold'em book and raised with 37s on the button, got the sb to call, raised the sb toaster when he bet just 100 into a 1,000-chip pot, to 1,000 and then saved the rest of my stack to go all-in on the turn. He thought and thought and thought and then folded.

This aggressive philosophy is nothing new. In Super/System, the original one, Doyle Brunson said that he would often chip away at little pots to build a big stack and then when the time came, he'd have enough chips to gamble -- but he wouldn't be using his own money.

When people get exasperated seeing your random hands in NL, it's a good sign. They can't put you on a hand or they don't have the experience that tells them why they are losing to random hands that provide high implied odds when they hit. The high implied odds come from the fact they can't get away from hands.

I see this in especially the tightest of tables, the NL$400 on the WP, people sacrificing the equivalent of round-trip plane tickets to Vegas by staying in with their AA against two pair and sets.

I feel that with the right NL table, almost every hand is playable, limpable, especially in later streets. With certain toasters, you can even call raises with hands that many times will be beat. That's because many toasters have ABC games that are based on limit principles. Play big hands and bet them out. Keep betting even when they are doomed. It's surprising how people don't really look both ways when they cross the street.

Just make sure you don't get caught in the same crossfire. Your big hands are like bringing the big guns to battle. But they're vulnerable to improvised, makeshift hands, improvised devices of crafty NL players that can bring your stack down in a hurry. It's fine to be the aggressor, but make sure you mentally bring that engineer battalion with you to sweep for mines along the way.

Think about the action. Break down the hand. Why are not one but two people calling your pot bet on the flop when there are no apparent draws? Are both of them crazy maniacs who will raise you out with nothing? Probably not. (In this particular hand, I avoided a set, while the other player, who had top pair Q vs my JJ, did not).

Or are you in a multiway field, which brings down the chance that your big pair will go on to win, even on a raggedy board. (Every time I'm in a multiway pot that I've raised, I picture the part of the screen on High Stakes Poker that shows the percentages to win for each player's hand. The more players in, the lower chance any particular player has to win preflop). Or are you betting out a coordinated board that could have flopped somebody's straight?

Don't worry if you're not right all the time. You won't ever be right all the time. They can win pots, but you're there to collect buy-ins and entire stacks. But if you think about your hands, you'll be right often enough and you won't have to whine when others are opening up the passing lanes after having you outplayed.