Likey's Blog

You’ve all heard of Sklansky Dollars and G-Bucks by Phil Galfond right? I’m sure there’s some +/-EV there for Rail Bucks somehow, I’m no mathematician so there are no formalas or calculations here I’m afraid. Those of you who know me well enough will certainly know that I railed a lot of tournaments in the past but not the high-stake cash games.

I do admit it’s good fun to see how a player’s chips grow vastly or their demise in receiving an outrageous bad beat, it gets more interesting to see how the final table plays out. It has gotten to the point where it’s normal to see my friends winning 4-5 figures whereas a few years ago it would be amazing to see such a feat.

A lot of questions popped into my head when I first started railing – things like:
* Why is he raising so small?
* What can he be 3betting here with?
* Surely that’s a squeeze?

But I also aim to put people on hand-ranges and try to pinpoint their hand with great accuracy based on the betting pattern, sometimes I even bother with the suits. I used to also write notes on how people raise as the blinds went up, I then tried it for myself and realised that I got far deeper in tournaments than I ever did before.

Then there’s stack sizes to consider, it’s funny when someone with 10BB will raise 3-4bb and still pass when they missed the flop. Other fun things to notice are the sweat cards on the Turn and how their opponents outs always seem to follow on the River i.e. runner runner straight/flush/full house.

Nowadays I do it purely out of habit but when I first used to rail it was to get tips on how to play without actually having to ask – as mentioned above. So it has turned from being +EV by learning how players play to just railing them mind-numbly and I’d say it’s now -EV because I could be using that time to be playing or improving on my game instead.

So the next time you rail – think of the Rail Bucks you could potentially gain or lose.