Dougie Nutz

Factgirl has a fun post about playing poker in Las Vegas. In it she reports on what passes for conventional wisdom to your average low limit holdem player.

when I turn over my AQ Cosmo shouts "you raised with ace queen?!?!?" The whole table laughs like I had raised with 83 "They weren't even SUITED!!!" the Korean guy snorts. LA Asian sunglasses guy leans over and says "Yeah. I know what you were doing, but when you raise at this level you aren't going to chase anybody off. You should just limp with ace queen."

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. If you talked to these guys long enough they might even convince you that this is not completely crazy. After all, they will tell you, AQ is the kind of hand you want to play against few opponents not many. Against many opponents the chances of this hand holding up are slim, so why throw more money in on a speculative hand? But this is completely wrong. While your chances of winning the hand may be slim, they are probably better than each one of your opponents. If they call when you have an advantage, you win in the long run.

It just goes to show, never take advice from a veteran 3/6 player. If you do, you just might find out why they are still playing 3/6 after all those years.