BOOKS BY JOHN VORHAUS
The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You’re Not
Creativity Rules! A Writer’s Workbook
The Pro Poker Playbook: 223 Ways to Win More Money Playing Poker
Killer Poker: Strategy and Tactics for Winning Poker Play
Killer Poker Online: Crushing the Internet Game
The Killer Poker Hold’em Handbook
Poker Night: Winning at Home, at the Casino, and Beyond
The Strip Poker Kit
KILLER POKER ONLINE/2
Advanced Strategies for Crushing the Internet Game
John Vorhaus
Kensington Publishing Corp.
To everyone who says these books have helped.
Thank you for thanking me.
Contents
The Foreword by Wil Wheaton
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Blessing and the Curse
PART I: THE MIND GAME
1. Who Are You
2. Sharps and Flats
3. Handles
4. Context Density
5. My Codes
PART II: SITNGOS
6. Planet Sitngo
7. Sitngo à Go-Go
8. Single Combat
PART III: TOURNAMENTS
9. Full Field Tournaments—Early
10. Full Field Tournaments—Middle
11. Full Field Tournaments—Late
12. The Road to RealWorld Glory
PART IV: CASH GAMES
13. Take the Cash (Games)
14. Full Ring Games
15. Short Handed Play
PART V: PART V
16. The Day of Living Derangerously
Outroduction
Appendix A: Random Access
Appendix B: Information Overlord
Glossary
The Foreword
by Wil Wheaton
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and hit “2” to speed dial my wife. The call connected, but went straight to voice mail. “Hi, this is Anne,” my wife’s recorded voice said. “I’m sorry I missed your call, but—”
I hit the pound key and spoke after the beep: “Hey, it’s me. I busted out. Call me when you get the message.”
After two days at the 2005 World Poker Tour Championship at Bellagio, two days spent playing the best poker of my life against the toughest field of professional players I’ve ever seen in one place, I’d taken a terrible beat at the hands of an internet player, and two hands later, took another one at the hands of Annie Duke. I went from seventh in chips to staring into Lake Bellagio in a matter of minutes. Such is the reality of no limit tournament poker.
I closed my phone, shoved it deep into my pocket, and stared into the lake. A few minutes later, a fellow poker player gave me a Newcastle Brown Ale. “You look like you could use it,” she said.
I thanked her, put the bottle to my lips, and drank. I leaned on the rail and resumed staring into the lake. Suddenly, Con Te Partiro boomed and the Bellagio fountains came to life. While they danced, a hand gently tapped me on the shoulder.
I turned around. “Yes?”
The hand belonged to a kind-faced woman who said, “I just saw you bust out. I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged my shoulders. Wallowing in misery is every poker player’s privilege, as long as we keep the details of our bad beats to ourselves.
“Thanks.”
“Would you be willing to talk to John Vorhaus?”
John Vorhaus, I thought, where have I heard that name before?
“John’s a journalist and the author of Killer Poker.”
I wondered if she was just continuing her thought, or if I had a big, fat tell that let her right into my mind.
Of course! I thought. Ryan gave me Killer Poker for my birthday last year.
“Sure,” I said. “But give me a few minutes to compose myself, okay?”
“Of course,” she said. “We’ll be inside when you’re ready.”
She walked back into the Fontana Room, and I looked at the lake, the fountains, the Eiffel Tower across The Strip…anything to remove the image of two hideous queens hitting the flop from my mind.
A few minutes (and a couple more Newcastles) later, I walked back into the room. I glanced at my chips, neatly stacked in front of Mr. Bust Wil’s Kings, and found the kind-faced woman. She stood next to an equally kind-faced man. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a khaki vest. He made notes as Phil Ivey and Greg Raymer raised and reraised each other preflop. If he hadn’t been wearing an UltimateBet cap, I never would have pegged him for a poker writer. He looked more like a war correspondent from Vietnam or El Salvador.
“Ivey’s been beating up this table for hours,” he whispered to her. “Raymer just came over the top of him for about 30,000.”
Raymer put on his trademark “Fossilman” glasses and rested his chin on his hand. Ivey thought for a long time, before he tapped the felt and mucked his cards with an almost imperceptible nod to Greg.
After a lifetime in the entertainment industry, it’s very difficult for me to get star struck, but as I stood there, in the Fontana Room at Bellagio, and watched the 2004 World Series of Poker champion lock horns with one of the game’s rising stars, goosebumps rose on my arms. Imagine standing on the field during the Super Bowl or sitting on the bench during the NBA finals (or, if you’ve bought this book, standing in the Fontana Room at Bellagio during the WPT Championship) and you’ll have an approximation of how I felt.
The hand having ended, the man in khaki turned to me and extended his hand.
“Hi, I’m John Vorhaus,” he said.
We shook hands.
“You’ve met my wife, Maxx Duffy,” he said, with a nod to the kind-faced woman.
“Yes,” I said, as the first genuine smile in hours spread across my face. Somewhere in the back of my mind, in that place I describe as “The Monkey Brain,” I knew that I’d just met two kindred spirits who were going to become lifelong friends.
“I’m blogging this for UltimateBet,” John said. “Would you mind talking to me about the tournament?”
“I’d be happy to,” I said.
We walked back outside, and I told John my bad beat story. He listened and took notes, and I’ll never forget how we ended the conversation: “Hey, I would have played both those hands exactly the same way.”
“Really?” I said.
“Oh yeah, but sometimes you do everything right and the other guy still catches a four-outer to crush