Live at the Bike

"What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand."

- Confucius

For the last two months, I've been religiously watching the broadcasts from Live at the Bike online. While there is some good entertainment value there if you're a poker aficionado, I think it's pretty good as a learning tool for playing in live cash games.  At least, that's how I'm treating it in light of my upcoming two-day poker bender.

The broadcast is hosted by some combination of Bart Hanson, Dave Tuchman, Nichoel Jurgens and Owais Ahmed. It is a three hour broadcast, twice a week, of a live cash game from the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles. Since it is target at hardcore poker fans, the commentary is much more advanced than you'll see on the World Poker Tour or the ESPN broadcasts of the WSOP.

I pay the $10 per month membership in order to have access to the archives, simply because I can't always watch the episodes live as they air (they're free when they're live). For instance, I don't work at the hotel on Friday nights, so tonight I'm watching the Friday episode.  I'll watch the Tuesday night episode starting about an hour after it begins, and later I'll go back and watch that first hour.

Watching a cash game with the hole cards exposed is very enlightening, and the strategy that is discussed will, I believe, be very helpful on my next trip to the poker room. I'm considering the $50 three-month subscription that will also include Bart Hanson's Crush Live Poker videos. Maybe if I do well at the tables at the beginning of September, I'll treat myself.

I just wanted to put in a plug for LatB, since I think it should be required watching if you take cash games even semi-seriously. It's amazing how much you can learn just by watching. You can pick up on the feel of a live game. I think it will help me with reading situations, and with my hand-reading when in a hand. Hand-reading has always been a weakness that I've needed to work on, but when you can't spend quality time at the tables it's hard to work on that kind of thing. Getting to watch this game is a big help to me.

I just hope that I can apply the things that I'm learning. I also have to remember to adjust them slightly, because I'm not going to be playing $5/$5 (at first) but $2/$2. The quality of player in Florida is going to be, on average, less than those in L.A. Those L.A. players have been at this for years, while the Florida players have only been able to play real poker for a little over two years, ever since the $100 buy-in cap was lifted.

My plan is to start out at $2/$2, just to get back into the swing of things. I plan to do this because I haven't played since the beginning of April, when I logged a $563 win in just 7 hours. If I can do well at the $2/$2 table and double my stack, I'm going to take $300 to the $5/$5 table and give that a shot. I think I can handle the $5/$5 players, I've just been too risk averse in the past to try it. I have sat at a $5/$5 table for an hour or so once, and didn't play any hands because I was card dead. I did notice, however, that the players didn't seem to be better than the $2/$2 players to any great degree, just that they were deeper stacked and tended to be a bit more aggressive. To that end, I think if I tighten up a bit to start, and wait for some decent hands, I can put myself in a position to profit nicely.

We'll see how that turns out.