Archive for December, 2008
Submitted by Dungbeetle, this article belongs to the Poker and life section.
Editor’s comment: I just finished reading Dungbeetle’s poker New Year’s resolution for 2009 and found his views on the effects the financial crisis might have on the poker scene in 2009 to be very realistic. How do you think the financial crisis will affect your poker life in 2009?
I had intended 2009 to be a real make or break year on the poker front, in that I’d play in a number of EPT and WPT events as well as the WSOPE and WSOP Main Events. However, the fragile economy, crashing exchange rate and uncertainty surrounding my own job, combined with pretty ropey poker performance in the back end of 2008 have curtailed these lofty ambitions somewhat.
I also can’t help but notice that the more recreational players have understandably seen fit to reduce their poker outgoings in the current economic strife, leading to less “value” in tournament fields and cash games. Since this recession is a worldwide problem (although not dear leader Gordon Brown’s ludicrous stance of “all the Americans’ fault”), I imagine the card rooms of Vegas will be slightly less tourist laden in 2009, which again reduces expected returns.
The above gloomy outlook aside, I still have a fairly robust bankroll set aside for 2009. Of course all of this depends on my self discipline in not making other “investments”, but if I can stay away from self inflicted financial havoc, I should be able to make a decent fist on the poker front this coming year.
In a bid to curb my cash game excesses of recent months, I’ve decided to split my cash game and tournament bankrolls. I’ve set aside just fourteen buyins of £150 for the year for cash games, and once that is gone, it is gone. The only opportunity where there are budgeted reloads, will be during the trips to Ireland and Vegas. I hope this will stop my rather relaxed attitude to getting involved in £1k+ pots with marginal holdings, and cultivate a tighter more methodical game. We live in hope 
The London tournament roll is enough to play about 8/10 tournaments a month depending on buyin, and I aim to play at the International more often this year to get more exposure to bigger fields.
I’m foregoing online cash for the moment to focus on tournaments, as I feel a have a bigger edge in this area. I may change that later in the year depending on results. My current online roll is already in place, and this will allow regular midweek sessions, as well as a couple of shots at the big Sunday events. As always, motivating myself to play will be key in this area, and it has really been lacking recently.
And then there is the festival bankroll. Always the highlights of the year, my bankroll should stretch to trips to Ireland for the Irish Open, and Vegas for WSOP (although not the Main Event). There should be a lot of Canines (Loose Cannon regulars) making the trip to Vegas this year, so it should be better than ever. Hopefully one of us can scoop a really big result. I also should pop up at a few UKPT Main Events, as well as a Dusk Till Dawn Festival. In addition, closer to home, The International are hosting the London Masters in March, so I aim to play that one as well.
A couple of other goals for the year:
1) Take a couple of NON-poker holidays. The last two years I have spent every available holiday out of the sun, in a cardroom in the bowels of a huge hotel, staring intently into another man’s eyes. I owe myself at least 2 weeks of non-poker relaxation this time. My poker performance will be fresher because of it.
2) Cut out the ludicrous late nights. I can operate fine on 5 hours sleep. 1 hour is pushing it a bit though.
3) Win enough to justify playing the WSOPE Main Event. For me this has now surpassed the WSOP Main Event as the premier tournament on the calender. Nowhere else will you face such a concentration of big name pros, and top internet players. The champion of this event, is the true world champion in my book, as the luck factor is so much less than the Vegas counterpart, due to the reduced field size.
4) Stop smoking after Vegas. I’ll be 34 in March, and it really is time to give up or accept that I’ll be dead 15 years ahead of schedule. July should see a downtime in the poker schedule, and this will be the perfect time for me to stop.
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Tags: Poker and Life, Poker Articles
This article is a part of the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008 series. Follow the link to read more about how I got to go on the trip in the first place.
As you may remember my friend Artur qualified online for the main tournament of the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008. The tournament had a 2500$ + 200$ buyin and a total of 114 players registered. Artur debated for some time whether to play the tournament or sell the seat to someone else and use the money to play in the 1000$ + 100$ tournamen and cover the roughly 700$ losses he had suffered so far on the trip. In the end he decided to play the main tournament…afterall chances like this don’t come around too often.
Here’s the prize distribution for the top 10 finishes:
- 91200$
- 47000$
- 27600$
- 20400$
- 16600$
- 13800$
- 11100$
- 8500$
- 5500$
- 4400$
Once again this prize pool distribution clearly demonstrates that you need to finish in the top 5 in tournaments to win big. Keep this in mind in your next tournament if you find yourself playing it safe around the bubble to finish in the money and perhaps only win back double your buyin. In order to win big, you need to take risks.
Artur in the main tournament of the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008
I might as well start out by revealing that Artur did not cash out in the main tournament. After about 2 hours of play he was all in with AQ against a smaller stack on a Q108 flop. His opponent had AJ. River was an ugly K. 2 hours later Artur was knocked out with 77 against AQ all in preflop. The player with AQ went on to finish in second place, so at least he put the chips to good use:-).
Later on that evening we got slightly drunk and decided to play a 25$ SNG with the regular gang (Stef, Abby, Bruce (online manager of Littlewoods gaming and a few others who’s names I forgot)). The tournament floor managers also decided to join which was great fun. After Bruce was eliminated we decided to make it a rebuy SNG to get him back in the game (playing against Bruce was like stealing candy from a child…lol). Artur and I ended up taking first and second prize and split the money between us.
I was back with a 130$ bankroll!! 10 minutes later it was down to 105$ when I busted out of a SNG with A10 against AA…don’t play poker when you are drunk. 1 hour later I was broke again. Blackjack is apparently not my game. On a positive note Artur was on fire on the blackjack tables and combined with his previous cash table winnings he was almost back to break even for the trip.
Lining up for the speed climb competition
The following day we chilled on the ship; working out in the fitness centre and conquering the impressive climbing wall. Artur, Steffani and I made a 50$ bet on who could make it all the way to the top on the hardest route. Despite of my gruelling gym session earlier that day I pulled myself together and won the bet…sweet! I also won the following speed climb competition which basically completed my week:-)
Artur in the casino after demonstrating his roulette skills…notice how happy he is!
Later that day we checked out the poker rooms. I decided the night before that I was done gambling with my own money on the trip, and since there were no 25$ SNG’s running I let Artur do the gambling. He decided to spend 100$ in total and gave me the rest of his money for safekeeping. He busted out of a 70$ SNG which left him with 30$ for the rest of the evening. Then something amazing happened.
He dragged me to the roulette tables trying to convince me that roulette is a skill game. Throughout the trip I had watched him lose on the roulette tables, so needless to say I wasn’t convinced that this attempt would be any different. He kissed the wooden cross he has hanging around his neck, made the sign of the cross then proceeded to place 30$ on number 24 and then pulled me away as if to leave the table. BANG! number 24 comes up paying 35:1. I stared at Artur in disbelief. His comment: “roulette is a skill game”.
Later that same evening we got really drunk and he repeated the feat with 25$ on number 24 while chatting up a dealer. Combined with blackjack winnings he ended up winning around 2500$ that evening bringing his grand total to +3000$ for the trip!! Simply amazing.
The Corvette Convertible team
Back in Miami the following day we had some breakfast with Bruce and some other people we met on the ship (Tony Cascarino, ex. pro soccer player and Michael Greco, English actor who played Beppe in Eastenders) then rented a Corvette Convertible (sweet ass car by the way) and cruised around the South Beach area. It was a great end to an even greater trip. I would definitely recommend all poker players reading this blog to try to qualify for the Caribbean Poker Classic 2009.
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Tags: Caribbean Poker Classic 2008
Submitted by Maurice Lefort, this article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series.
Note from the editor: By tradition poker players are categorized according to which animal they resemble the most in the animal kingdom. In this article Maurice describes the poker bestiary or compendium of beasts if you will.
If you are a poker shark you already know what this article is about. If you are a poker fish, you do not. But in poker, are there only fish and sharks? No, there are many kinds of animals. But do not get me wrong, this is not a zoo.
Poker players love to depict their opponents as animals, depending on how they play. A donkey designates a very bad player, or as they say online, a “donk”. Nobody likes to be called a donkey, this is not very nice. But you can use many other terms.
Phil Hellmuth in his book “Play Poker like the Pros” introduces a poker bestiary with five poker animals. The Mouse is the careful and tight player, otherwise called “rock” or “nit”. If the mouse becomes aggressive, get out of the way unless you have a monster. The Lion is the solid player using a tight-aggressive style. He plays straightforward poker for the most part and rarely bluffs.
Next in Phil’s list is the Jackal. This is the maniac player who will wreak havoc any fine balance which existed at the table before his arrival. You will need a strong stomach to sustain his wild plays and crazy bluffs. Then we have the Elephant. It is usually referred to as a calling station. He plays like if one of his fingers were glued to the call button. Avoid bluffing an elephant, as he does not know how to fold.
Finally Phil Hellmuth characterizes the Eagle as one of the best one hundred players in the entire world. The eagle has better position and better vision than any other animal and extremely sharp skills.
Online Poker Fish & Sharks
Phil used only land and air animals to describe poker players. What about the sea? The sea has already produced many renowned poker animals, the most famous of which are the fish and the shark. Interestingly, fish and shark have opposite meanings even though a shark is a fish in the animal kingdom. But the shark is such a special kind of fish that it is a category in itself.
By definition, a poker fish is a poker player with below average skills. This includes both novice players who need to learn the ropes and some players who have played for a long time. Some players just want to play for fun and do not desire to improve their skills.
On the other hand, the poker shark feeds off all kinds of fish like its counterpart the shark in the ocean. This fish has survived and evolved in the poker ocean for a long time, becoming a shark. Remember that all sharks were fish first. As you guessed, the definition of a poker shark is a top poker player who is normally the best player at the table.
Your goal as a poker player is to become a shark. You will become a shark by playing plenty of online poker, reading books & articles, using poker software tools to help your decisions & analysis and thinking a lot about the game. It takes a tremendous effort to become a poker shark, but once you get there you will enjoy the feast.
Learn to follow the Online Poker Fish
The biggest fish are whales. Interestingly in the animal kingdom a whale is not a fish but a mammal, but the poker bestiary has its own rules.
Anyway what matters here is that there are sometimes huge fish, which means that they play very very poorly. They lose their chips very fast. These fish are tunas, but if they are really huge, they are called whales. Whales are sometimes encountered at low or mid stakes no limit Texas hold’em online games. For instance, there are many whales at PlayersOnly.
By whale, I mean a player which sees more than 75% of flops in a full ring game and who can call sizable bets. This simple definition guarantees that this player will lose his money very fast.
There is no need to be a hero at the poker table if your goal is to make money. Hence you should aim at playing with weaker players. There exists software tools specifically designed to help you locate these online whales.
Smart Buddy is the ultimate software as far as poker fish finder tools are concerned. Create buddy lists that you enter into the Smart Buddy software and you will be alerted each time one of the fish in your list comes playing online.
This universal software conveniently monitors players from over 100 online poker rooms and opens the table where the fish is sitting if you click to join. You do not even need to open the online poker room software. Just one single Smart Buddy window will monitor all the online poker rooms for you.
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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Building
This article is a part of the Poker Mathematics series.
Implied odds is a more advanced poker concept than pot odds, poker probabilities and EV. You should therefore familiarize yourself with these basic concepts first.
Implied pot odds take into account future bets made to the pot and are therefore not as straightforward to calculate as regular pot odds. Implied pot odds are most relevant when you are on a draw and stand to gain additional bets if you make the draw but on the other hand won’t make additional bets yourself if you miss the draw in question. The following examples will give you an idea of how to calculate your implied pot odds in different situations:
You are playing in a large online poker tournament. Blinds are 200/400 and you have 20000 chips. In middle position you are dealt QK of diamonds and raise 3xBB. The action is folded to BB who calls your raise leaving him with 18000 chips. The pot is 2600. The flop is A(d)3(d)8(c). Your opponent bets the pot signalling he has an Ace which leaves him with 15400 chips. From a regular pot odds viewpoint you are getting pot odds 3 to call and with 9 outs you have a 19% chance of hitting your flush on the turn. From a regular pot odds viewpoint you are not getting the right odds to call. However let’s assume that you call your opponents pot bet and your opponent will make another pot sized bet (of 7800) on the turn. If you hit your flush your call on the flop made you an additional bet of 7800. Therefore your implied pot odds on the flop were 7800 (the pot after the flop) + 7800 (your opponents bet on the turn)/2600 (your call on the flop) = 6. Now with odds 6 to call you are making a +EV play by calling the potbet on the flop; you need a 17% probability for winning the hand to make a breakeven play with pot odds 6 and you in fact have a 19% probability of hitting one of your 9 outs to complete your flush.
Please be aware that justifying a call due to implied odds is a tricky business. You have to be pretty sure that you will be able to gain additional bets from your opponent on the following streets. Drawing to straights is therefore usually better than drawing to flushes since straights are better concealed and are thus more likely to extract additional bets from your opponents.
The example from above demonstrates that the stack size of your opponent is also important. Calling drawing hands due to implied odds is done against deep stacks where you have the possibility of doubling up or at least making a large contribution to your chip stack. To illustrate this, let’s use the sample example from above, but now your opponent has a chip stack of 3000 after making his pot bet. Your implied odds for calling have now dropped to (7800+3000)/2600 = 4,2, which is not enough to call.
There is one situation in particular where you will almost always call due to implied odds, namely calling preflop raises with small pocket pairs. Most of the times you will be calling with the wrong regular pot odds, but your implied odds are great because you will usually earn big pots when you hit your set. When playing small pocket pairs remember the two rules: “no set, no bet” and “yes set, yes bet”.
Merry X-Mas and happy New Year to all!!!
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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Mathematics
Submitted by Rakewell, this article belongs to the Poker Mathematics series.
Whoever said poker players are superstitious? The article below written by Rakewell treats the dealing and receiving of cards when playing live poker from a purely natural scientific viewpoint. It’s all about angular momentum conservation baby:-)!!! Enjoy……
I’ve decided to break down and share with my readers an important poker principle that you won’t find in any book or DVD or training video currently on the market. That’s because there are some things that the pros keep to themselves in order not to give up all of their edge to the general public.
You’re sitting in a casino poker room and the dealer pitches you a card. It lands nicely right in front of you. But you see that it is not oriented the way you’d like in order to be able to peek and see what it is. Personally, I like them with the long axis pointed toward/away from me, but others like them with the long axis oriented right/left. Either way is fine, but whichever way you prefer, you have a problem when the card lands close to 90 degrees from the way you need it.
The dilemma is this: You have to rotate the card(s) either clockwise or counterclockwise–but which?
Amateur players often assume that it couldn’t make any difference. After all, what is printed on the face of the card can’t change because of how you turn it. “Preposterous,” these people would say.
But it does matter. You absolutely must apply the rotation in the same direction that the card was spinning as it arrived in front of you (which usually depends on whether the dealer is right-handed or left-handed). If you rotate it in the opposite direction, terrible things happen. The cards get dizzy from the sudden change. This is especially true with the face cards. If you upset the delicate equilibrium of, say, a queen, do you think she is going to call out to her peers to come join her in this hand? No! She’s upset. She’s nauseated. Her inner ear thing is all out of whack. She’s going to just sit there and try to recover. She might even throw up a little. By the time she’s feeling better, the hand is over and you’ve got nothing except a little spot of queen vomit.
The underlying mechanism is different for the non-face cards. It’s not a dizziness problem, but one of conservation of luck, which is closely related to the conservation of angular momentum. Do you remember a carnival ride when you were a kid, in which you stand against a round wall, and they start spinning it, and after it’s really going they drop the floor out from under your feet and you stick against the wall by centrifugal force? It’s the same with the cards. You need to keep them spinning in the same direction that the spinning was initiated by the dealer. If you suddenly reverse it, the luck all falls out, in precisely the same way that you would have fallen down into the pit of that ride if they had suddenly thrown it into a reverse spin.
The mathematics of this has actually been worked out in some detail by the boys at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. It’s beyond the scope of this blog, but trust me on this. Or go to your local library, ask where they keep the back issues of The Journal of the American Society of Theoretical and Applied Serendipity, and look it up for yourself.
You have to treat the cards with respect, and that includes not jarring them into a sudden reverse spin. Once you think about the underlying mechanisms, it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?
So now you know.
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Submitted by Dungbeetle, this article belongs to the Poker Tournament series
This tournament write-up needs a quick introduction from the editor (me, Mark) for all you readers not familiar with The International. The International is a private members club situated on 53-55 East Road London. And no, it’s neither a strip club or a religious sekt eventhough “private members club” has that sort of ring to it. The International is a club for chess, backgammon, bridge and poker club with its own Club Gaming Permit (in other words it’s legit). The following story is Dungbeetle’s first (correct me if I’m wrong Dungbeetle) encounter with The International:
I ventured over to Old Street last night to try out the new International Club. For those not familiar with London poker, it’s basically just the old Gutshot club moved to a new location, to get it in a new borough and thus end their war with their previous local council.
The Club gets a big thumbs up from me – nice decor, welcoming staff, good player traffic and a varied spread of nightly tournaments mean that I will be definitely going back. There was also an action packed £1/£2 Omaha game going on in the corner, which looked like it was destined to last all night. I couldn’t get on that game, but imagine I will play next time.
I entered the 8pm round of each tournament, along with the Baron, Deven, Honest Dave and Hass. The format was £30 + £30 giving you 7k in chips in total, and with 40 runners this generated a decent enough prize pool.
I made a mistake in that I started off playing too tight – I was hoping to catch someone for their whole stack, who would perhaps misjudge the power of one of their Omaha hands, but it didn’t really happen. I just didn’t get the hole cards, and whilst 7k in chips sounds substantial, the blinds escalated fairly quickly, which is particularly a problem in Omaha when hands get repotted pre-flop fairly regularly.
I decided to loosen my range in the third level and raised UTG to 500 with AT, but the BB moved all in so I had to pass. He showed 77 – so much for my tight table image.
The next hand cost me a big chunk of my stack. 5 limpers in an Omaha hand, and I make the mistake of checking in the BB with QJTT, my best hand of the evening.
We see a flop of A, 8, 8 – nothing for me. However it is checked around
The turn brings the King, so now I have 9 outs to Broadway (which admittedly might not be live outs), plus two tens for the house. Tom leads with a pot sized bet which I call, and we also get one other caller.
The river is another 8. I’ve missed my primary outs, but the other guys will need a bigger pair than my tens to get a bigger house. Once Tom leads again, for a smallish 1600 I’m not really sure what I am beating but make the crying call and get shown the quads 
Alas – down to 2500 chips.
I double up luckily one hand before the break. I am cornered into shoving UTG with Ah3h at 200/400 blinds, and get called by the SB with AJ, but I spike a 3 on the river to beat him and get a glimmer of hope back.
I play short stacked for the next hour or so after the break, desperately keeping my head above water. Meanwhile, Dave, The Baron, Dev and Hass have all been eliminated, The Baron losing a HUGE pot to the rather spewy lucky chip leader who called with a ten high flush draw, although Tom would admit he didn’t play his hand the best either.
Finally, I am put out of my misery in 14th place. Blinds are 300-600 and my 4.5k stack is looking desperate. I am in the BB, and when an early position raiser comes in for 1600, AQ is plenty big enough to move over the top of him. He calls with AK, and I fail to outdraw him.
This tournament is good fun, and I think I’ll give it another go next week. In addition, incredibly everything is half price on a Monday, including booze. Thus 3 bottles of beer and an orange juice came to £4.25 
The rest of the guys were playing Omaha and Holdem on various cash tables, so I decided to put my name on the list for a quick game. After lending Tom some cash for the Omaha game, and paying Dave back a debt from my home game disaster, I only had £80 on me, so the £1/£1 pot limit holdem game it was then. I was happy to short stack, just to get a further feel for the club and more importantly the playing styles of some of the regulars.
I was on the same table as Deven, and the regulars were all competent, if sometimes straightforward. Generally they called when they had it, and passed if they didn’t. There were a couple of useful aggressive players who were happy to re-raise but all in all a fairly predictable table.
My £80 stack went on a roller coaster as follows:
1) I sit out an orbit to observe, and then 3 barrel deuce seven on a low board and eventually take it to get to £120
2) I raise pre-flop with QQ and keep firing on an Ace high flop. The other guy has an Ace but doesn’t re-raise me until I am pot committed and I get a spawny 4 card straight on the river to get to £200.
3) I raise pre-flop with AT and get called in a few spots. The Flop arrives J, T, 7 with a couple of spades and I lead for £15. Deven re-raises another £50. I think for while and then decide he’s full of shit so I shove for another £130ish. Dev makes the slightly debatable call with his double belly buster K9, and hits a King to scoop the £370 pot The rest of the table is slightly taken aback by far the most aggressively played pair of hands of the night – middle pair verses the non nut draw.
4) I treble back up to £90 getting all in with 44 against four overcards
5) I bust out raising AA pre-flop and then getting it all in on a flop of 2, 4, 7 only to be shown that someone has tagged along with 24off.
A fun night, amongst the Xmas period poker action desert, and I’ll definitely be going back.
PROFIT/(LOSS) USD 2008
Live Holdem Tournaments 2,875
Live Holdem Cash 737
Live Omaha (590)
Live “Professional” Tournaments (7,436)
Home Games (1,314)
Online Holdem Tournaments 54,939
Online Holdem Cash 16,552
Online Omaha (140)
Sundry 1210
Rake (5,639)
59,913
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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tournament
Submitted by Bill Menschner, this article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Building series
There was a time when building your online poker bankroll was as easy as signing up to multiple poker sites. The sign up and monthly bonuses offered by many sites gave new players an overlay on the rake being charged at low limits. A new player could easily earn hundreds and even thousands of dollars in bonuses every month, enough to effectively build their bankroll and move up to higher stakes poker where the rake didn’t have as much of an effect. Unfortunately, sites give only a small fraction of the bonuses they once offered, and players have to resort to other methods to move up quickly.
Though bonus offers are gone, there are still good opportunities for low limit players to quickly build their bankroll. One of the best methods, and one that only occurs rarely, is when a poker site offers a new variant of poker. The initial interest in the game by players who are unaware of proper strategy presents a great opportunity for players to add to their bankroll. My favorite example of this, and a game that I miss, was Royal Hold Em, spread by UltimateBet. For those who don’t remember, Royal Hold Em was played with the same rules as Texas Hold Em, with the exception that the deck only contained Tens through Aces. It wasn’t difficult to figure out proper strategy for this game, but players loved the action so much that they would often play to the end chasing straights and underfulls.
Recently, many online poker sites have started offering Double or Nothing Sit & Go tournaments (DoNs), giving low limit players a new opportunity to easily add to their bankroll. DoNs vary in structure to regular SnGs in that the five remaining players win double their buy in back (minus the rake). These tournaments are a fantastic way for new and low limit players to build their bankroll quickly and escape the high rake of low limit poker.
Why are these tournaments so profitable for low limit players? There are many reasons, but the most important is that the play is awful. Most players enter DoNs thinking that if they play tight they will make the money. Playing tighter is a good first step, but only if you play the right hands in the right situations. It is not rare to find players in early position committing most of their stack in the opening rounds of a DoN with AQ or AJ. These are only marginal holdings early in a tournament, and a good way to waste your stack.
Another good reason for playing DoNs if you are trying to build your bankroll is that they are easy to multitable. Since you’re playing tighter you aren’t in situations where you have to play many hands post flop. I play 20 tournaments at a time. There are a few players who play more. No matter how many tables you would normally play at once, you can increase that amount playing DoNs and add to your hourly rate.
It’s not every day that a new poker structure is introduced by a site, but when they are made available you should take advantage of it. Though DoNs have been around for a few months, the play is still so bad, especially at the lower limits, that a new or low limit player can easily build their bankroll by employing sound DoN strategy.
For more information on DoN tournament strategy visit onlinepokerbankrollbuilder
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Submitted by Kochan, this article is a part of the Poker Strategy series.
This was the question posed to me about a year ago. Take a random person in his/her twenties of average intelligence and turn that player into a winning poker player. Given time and experience could you teach this person to play exactly like you and succeed? My answer was yes. Why couldn’t I? There’s nothing inherently special about me that lends me to be winning poker player. Poker is not about natural ability, it’s just something that can be learned. On closer inspection however, I’ve learned that this above statement is not entirely true.
About four years ago I began playing poker socially with friends. As is the nature of the game I thought I was God’s gift. We all did. After about six months I put money online and swung up and down generally ending break-even and mostly playing SNGs with no understanding of even the most basic SNG strategy. Soon after I made the switch from SNGs to limit hold’em full ring games. One night I was playing while a friend of mine watched; appalled by my play, “What are you doing man, you gotta play TAG.” I didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about. He went on to explain the concepts of tight aggressive play for limit hold’em.
It completely blew my mind. Was this guy for real? I mean I understand that playing A3 and A4 might be bad but does he seriously expect me to fold a hand like K10s pre-flop? That hand is awesome! I tried to listen to him and fought through the pain of having to fold those good looking hands (sometimes I still do) and I began winning. I built up my bankroll in limit before switching to MTTs where I did the same, slowly learning concepts of stack sizes/bet sizes and gathering information from watching the top players play and reading their poker related comments on forums.
Nowadays we have so many training sites where top pros reveal their secrets and yet there are still people who watch these videos and fail. Why? The answer lies in the fact that poker DOES require some natural ability. There are personality traits that top players share that losing players lack. The most important trait that separates the winners from the losers is self discipline. This comes in many varieties and is crucial to success in poker. Discipline in bankroll management. Discipline to follow the principles of poker such as position and pot odds.
I know you have a feeling that you’re going to smash a set with pocket 4s vs. a UTG raiser with 15 big blinds. I know that you’re sure you can flop a monster from SB with A7 vs. a mid-position raiser. Clubs haven’t come on the flop in ages!!! They’re due! It’s important to be able to put these instincts or moments of wishful thinking aside and have the discipline to play as you have been taught.
Of course probably the greatest reason that poker cannot be taught to just anyone is that some people don’t want to learn. It may seem strange but this makes up the majority of the losing poker community. Poker is a skill game with large amounts of short-term luck that often deludes players into believing they are awesome. We all have a friend who is the self proclaimed most feared poker player out there. They’ll send you hand histories to prove it. They’ll send you their hero call with Ace high in a big pot that they got right.
But do they ever send it to you when they get it wrong? They’ll explain to you that their poker instincts are unmatched. You can try and help them but it’s no use because they’ve ‘got their own style.’ This sentence is generally followed up by a bad beat story. You may laugh and recognize this player but their cockiness and laziness exists within most of us. Lately I have been grinding out some 5/10 short handed limit holdem at a breakeven rate. On my bedside table sits ‘Short Handed and High Stakes Concepts and Theory on Limit Holdem’ by Stoxtrader and Zobags. It would most likely catapult me to becoming a winning player at these games and yet it has remained unread for the past 8 months. How could I teach someone else to play? I would first have to teach them how to learn.
Kochan
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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy
This article is a part of the Poker Network series.
This article continues the series of Poker Network Reviews. We are now moving on to the Pacific Poker Network. The company behind the network, 888 Holdings PLC has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since it floated in October 2005. More information can be found on au.888.com.
Pacific Poker Stat Box:
Gambling License: Gibraltar
Rakeback Available: No
Americans Accepted: No
Traffic Rank: #13 on Poker Scout
Financial Information: Owned by 888 Holdings PLC.
Network Statistics: Updated: 17th December 2008 7 PM CET
Total amount of cash table Players: 1750
No Limit Poker Player: 1442
Limit Poker: 203
Poker Tournament Players: No live data available, but Pacific have a decent level of participants being the 13th largest poker network.
Special online poker Features at Pacific Poker:
The poker network is known ats the most fishy poker room online. Whether this is true or not is of cause hard to say. But the fact that the poker room does not accept rakeback deals and that only 4 tables can be played at the same time could scare of many high rollers.
Want to play online poker? Have a look at Pacific Poker!
Enjoy!
Written by Michael, December 17th 2008
Tags: Poker Network
This article is a part of the Caribbean Poker Classic 2008 series. Follow the link to read more about how I got to go on the trip in the first place.
Roughly 5 short hours after my 7th place finish in the 400$ tournament, Artur and I were once again back on tourist duty. This time our proud ship had dropped its anchor just outside Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St. Thomas, one of the US virgin islands. Funny thing about St. Thomas is that it was a Danish colony from 1666 to 1917 where it was sold to the US together with Saint John and Saint Croix for 25000000$. Due to its Danish history, many of the street names in Charlotte Amalie were similar to street names in Copenhagen, which is were I live now.
After conferring with my trusted Lonely Planet we decided to spend the day on Magens Bay, voted one of the top 10 beaches in the world on several occasions. Turned out to be a great choice. We found a nice empty spot at the far end of the beach with nice snorkeling and a great view of rock faces densely covered with vegetation and Pelicans fishing the waters. On the way back to the ship Artur physically dragged me into Hooters because for some reason he enjoys watching babes in skimpy outfits. Crazy Dane! Below are some pictures from our St. Thomas excursion.
Cool cash!
Artur on Magens Bay
Rear view of a big ass fish…scared the hell out of me the first time I saw it.
Chilling
Best of Hooters
Scary poker contant below, parental advisory recommended!
I decided to spend some of my winnings from the tournament on some cash game action. The 1/2$ games in the poker room were pretty juicy. Straddling and restraddling was allowed which in some cases meant that the 1/2$ tables were more like 2/4$ or 4/8$ tables. In addition to this take semi drunk poker players with large egos and you get the general picture. Artur and I formulated our own little cash game project and I donated 120$ a head for starting capital. The plan was pretty simple….make money:-)
Only problem as I was soon to discover: I seriously suck at playing cash games. On top of this I was amazingly card dead. During my first 2,5 hour session my best two hands were 44 and AQ. The lack of playable hands turned me into a pathetic calling station. I was calling raises with QJ unsuited, K9 and an especially great call of 6xBB with 44 in early position. I raised once with AQ but folded after a raise and a re-raise behind me. I ended up busting out with a terribly played K9 (not my best moment). Luckily Artur doubled his stack to 250$ which meant I hadn’t lost any money. Thanks Artur!
Strongly motivated to do better on my part, we continued the cash game project the following night. Again I experienced massive card death. My only playable hand for 3 hours was pocket 7’s which I folded to a raise. Blinded down from 120$ to 51$ I experience a temporary brain meltdown which convinced me that going all in preflop in an unraised pot in middle position with 89 suited was a good idea. My mind was in tournament games and M values which is just plain old stupid when you are sitting in a cash game. I get called by KK and lose my stack. In a fit of rage I returned to our suite and tossed an orange as far as I could over the railings. That helped!. Kicking the chairs around on our balcony also helped a lot.
I wanted to revenge my bad play so I allocated a final 140$ to play some solid cash game. I play a bit better but lose half my stack in a bluffing attempt. Double up a bit later with KJ against 55 but end up losing it all in an awful anticlimax of my poker adventures. I receive AQ UTG and throw a 25$ chip into the middle. Unfortunately I had forgotten that you have to either announce a raise or throw in at least two chips. Throwing in a single chip counts as a call. I was bummed out to see several calls all around. The flop was Q63 and I end up all in against the button who had called preflop with Q6 due to great pot odds. With that hand my cash game adventures were over. Artur actually managed to make quite a nice profit that night but for good reasons he didn’t feel like continuing the cash game project with me. We decided that he could keep his winnings.
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Tags: Caribbean Poker Classic 2008
(4.86 out of 5)