Jan 28 2010

Talking about poker bankrolls part three

Category: Poker strategy — carl @ 5:27 pm

In the third and final part of this series then and following on from part two, this highlights another so called piece of poker wisdom that is wrong and that is that just because a player is playing successfully at $100-$200 Hold’em online for instance, that they can beat all of the levels below that. Maybe they can but chances are that they can’t for the reason that I stated. As I have said many times, there is a lot of rubbish spoken in poker and much of the advice that is bandied about is far too generic for it to be of any use whatsoever.

Because of my very cautious attitude to money then what I had to do was to basically trick my mind into playing with large amounts of money. What worked for me personally was to take $2000 for instance that I had earned down some other gambling avenue and to use it to take a shot in a poker game. If I lost it then I would not play until I had mentally absorbed the loss.

This brings up yet another point of why the slide rule “experts” have missed the point. Let us go back to the case of the 18K poker bankroll. What if you are the type of person that tilts easily or simply cannot mentally absorb a loss until a certain amount of time has passed. If you have lost 1K in the blink of an eye in a big no limit pot with an unbelievable outdraw then you are hardly the type of person that can be entrusted to have another seventeen grand at their disposal immediately can you.

If everyone had to wait until they had the correct theoretical poker bankroll available before they could play at any level then hardly anyone would be playing the game. Here’s another thing, do you really have to play down to the felt and lose all of your bankroll before you admit to yourself or find out that a particular level of poker is too difficult for you. If the “experts” say that you need 12K to play theoretically at a certain level to avoid going bust then what if you stump up the money but are wrong in your assessment of your abilities.

If you are five grand down, do you play on just because you have another seven in your poker bankroll before you say “oh well, better drop down a level but I will have to wait until I have got some more money because I have lost it all trying to prove that I could beat 20-40 holdem”.

This is insane and utter madness. The upshot of all this is that don’t go along with what you hear about poker bankrolls and just do whatever makes you feel the most comfortable because if you are uncomfortable then this will affect your game plain and simple. If a bankroll approach helps you then fine, if you prefer a no bankroll approach then that is fine also but too much rubbish is spouted in this area by people who have never tried to gamble for a living and I think that you know my views on them by now.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: , , , , ,

Dec 19 2009

Playing Heads up Against Aggressive Stealers

Category: Poker Blog — carl @ 12:31 pm

In ring games whether they are full-ring or six max, there will always be a fair number of players who will raise with a fairly wide range from the button. Most of the time a wider opening range will be correct anyway but some players stray away from this in many poker games and start open raising with around 75% of their total range!

This may even be correct of course at the lower stakes games where more players are playing tightly and especially if they are getting rakeback. If you have been active in a game and have been folding several big blinds then whoever is on the button may just think that it is open season on your blind.

One such hand that I played last year should highlight the point. It was folded to the button who open raised to $3.50 in a NL100 Holdem poker game and we both had $100+ stacks. I had the Kc-3c and called. Many players would either three bet or fold here and these are not bad lines to take.

My own preference is not to escalate a pot out of position with a weak hand and to try and see more streets against a player who I rate to be better than. I want to outplay him and not try to outmuscle him. Trying to outmuscle someone who is prepared for a fight may not be a very wise online poker strategy and I have the capability to play well beyond the flop.

The flop came Ah-Ks-2d giving me middle pair and weak kicker. My opponent had been very aggressive and my Poker Office told me that this guy raised a lot of buttons when it had been folded to him. So my middle pair is now ahead of his range so I wait for the obvious continuation bet and check-call.

If I am behind then so be it and your variance increases in and around the blinds but you shouldn’t be afraid of that as good solid short handed skills can make you a mint in small-stakes poker. My opponent was raising 73% of his hands when folded to on the button so my K-3s favours well against his range.

Against players who play badly post flop and who think that aggression is the be all and end all of poker then you can really find good EV in these situations. The turn card is the 3h giving me two pair and the probable best hand. With $17.50 in the pot then I need to decide what to do. If I check then they may check a lot of hands back as I have called a pre-flop raise and also a flop bet on a board with no draws.

I decide to check and let him possibly fire another barrel as a bluff and I do so but this plan is foiled by them checking behind me. The river card is the 9d and now it is time to value bet or to encourage a bluff. His betting sequence looks weak so I make what looks like a weak stab and bet $10 and he raises to $35 and I call and take the pot.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 8.0/10 (2 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Tags: , , , ,

Dec 07 2009

How to play the connectors in online poker part three

Category: Poker strategy — carl @ 1:45 pm

Late Position

It is vital that whenever you sit down at any poker table that you try your hardest to assess the players on your table. There is no room in poker for mental laziness. When I am in late position and I have only just sat down at the table then I will make it my goal to see what the blinds are made of and the people to my left.

Those blinds are crucial to my success, if they play back aggressively then I will attack them less but if they are the passive types then I want to know quickly and I will raise from late position with hands like connectors whether they are gapped or not.

Once again if the pot has been raised before it gets to me then I will dump them in the overwhelming number of cases as I just do not want to be going up against premium poker hands against trigger happy players with small to medium stacks with speculative hands like connectors.

So if a player raised before me then I will simply pass the hand. But the main difference with being in late position is that I now have more opportunity to attack the blinds if it has been folded around to me or if there has been numerous limpers then I may take a flyer and limp along in the hope of flopping a big hand and getting paid off and this is a viable online poker strategy.

But these are long shot propositions and straights and flushes are poker hands that do not come along that often and your flush is not even the nuts and could cripple you anyway. If I consider raising with a hand that is weaker than the average conventional raising hand then I will not just do it with any old piece of garbage.

It is true that any two cards can win in poker but if you raised with anything then you would simply be raising too often and you would find players coming back at you a lot more. But those little connectors have the capacity to make a big hand that is fiendishly concealed and can break someone…..as long as that someone is not you of course!

The Blinds

I think that one of the most misplayed positions in poker and especially in No Limit hold’em is the play in and around the blinds. In my experience people defend their blinds too much in this version of the game. I don’t know if they have a limit Texas Hold’em poker mentality or what or maybe they instinctively know that the pre-flop raiser is coming in light and are electing to make a stand against this would be aggressor.

But the best play in the majority of cases if it has been raised is to simply fold the hand, this even applies if the raise has come from a steal position. Of course there are indeed exceptions to every rule and if you are constantly getting raised by the same player after it has been folded to them on the button then you cannot simply fold your hand in the big blind all the time otherwise this will just encourage this aggressor to simply raise with anything and take your blind money.

So as long as you have the proper table image of a solid normal type of player then you can play back at this bully every now and again on light values. Because after all, they have proven that they are clearly raising without the goods so you can re-raise on weaker hands also. As long as you are not over doing this play then your opponent is going to respect your re-raise and will likely fold.

This means that your raises are in fact taking larger chunks of money than if you had simply raised from position and taken the blind money.
This way, you can help to keep aggressive opponents who are in late position in check and your re-raises with connecting hands will have deception both when you flop a concealed monster and when high cards flop that your raise has represented.

But the fact of the matter is that if the raises are not coming from overly aggressive poker players who are making their intentions crystal clear then the best move is to fold connecting hands to a raise.

They are of course ideal for completing the bet in the small blind in un-raised pots as you will be getting excellent odds both in implied odds and pot odds to call the extra small bet with a sound speculative hand like a connector whether it is gapped or not.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson at bwin.com

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , , ,

Dec 07 2009

How to play the connectors in online poker part two

Category: Poker strategy — carl @ 1:33 pm

Middle Position

Nothing really changes much even when you get to middle position. Once again if you are sitting in a game where the players are passive and have fair sized stacks and also have the capability to lose their entire stack needlessly then you could speculate in un-raised pots a little more but the pot has to be categorically un-raised. Don’t try getting cute by calling an early position raise hoping that you can take the pot away from your opponent who likely holds nothing but high card poker hands.

Remember that your position although better than early position is still not that great and there are several poker players still to speak after you. The problem with your poker hand is that you need to hit the flop big time in order to continue and a pre-flop raiser will more than likely fire at the flop irrespective of what arrives so what are you going to do then when you miss?…..or were you hoping to flop a straight or a flush. If you were than I don’t much fancy your chances.

Depending on the poker game, if it has been folded around to me and I have a tight table image and the game is relatively normal with no aggressive players to my left or there is not much re-raising going off then I may sometimes throw my opponents a curve ball by raising from middle position with a connector whether it is suited or not. You simply cannot wait until you have a premium poker hand all the time before you raise otherwise your play is just going to be too predictable to your opponents.

But there is one thing that needs to be pointed out here and this is that there are in fact slight differences with regards to middle position. For instance in a nine handed game then after the two blinds, we have the button and the cut-off who are in the two latest positions on the table. This leaves five players in between the blinds and the cut-off in a nine handed game. Early position could certainly be classed as the first two to speak after the big blind but could also involve a third person as well.

So when early position becomes middle position and when middle position becomes late position is not always clear cut and especially when players are regularly sitting out or leaving the game. In a typical ten handed game, I would be much more inclined to raise from say the seat to the right of the cut off than I would the seat that is three seats to the left of the under the gun player despite many poker theory books stating that both are middle position.

So now we can see that middle position plays just that little bit differently to early position and the overall game dynamics are different. We will see in the next part on playing connectors just how things change from middle position to late position and how that impacts online poker strategy.

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 10.0/10 (1 vote cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , ,

Dec 07 2009

How to play the connectors part one

Category: Poker strategy — carl @ 1:24 pm

In this series of articles I would like to take a look ay how to play connectors in Texas Hold’em poker. Notice how I merely referred to them as connectors and not suited connectors. This is because in No Limit hold’em games then having the connectors suited is a nice bonus but is not really crucial as most pots these days are not multi-way.

Which is just as well really as getting trapped underneath someone else’s higher flush is an absolute crippler. Once again we will be looking at full ring poker games with between eight and ten players active. The term connectors will be used to describe hands from 3-2 all the way to 10-9.

It is also worth pointing out that connectors do not necessarily have to be connected. As hands that have a gap or even two and three gaps can also be called connectors as they still have straight making potential. For example poker hands like 7-5,8-6, 9-6 etc can come under the heading of connectors.

Early Position

The number of times that I see people misplay connecting cards are too numerous to mention. I don’t know if it is the influx of televised poker or what but many people seem to be falling in love with this type of hand before the flop. One thing that you must remember with hands like these is that they are speculative hands.

This means that you require the situation to be such that you can sneak in very cheap and have the potential to make a lot of money either because a player has a huge stack and because you feel that he has the capacity to lose that stack by making a big mistake.

These crucial points are often overlooked even by poker players who should certainly know a lot better. So if I have any kind of connector in early position in a full ring poker game then I will just dump the hand….end of story.

Even if you have big stacks after you and you have also identified several players on the table who could possibly go for their entire stack, your position is still terrible and will remain so on every betting round.

It goes without saying then that if I am in early position and there has been a raise to my right or even just a call, I will still dump my hand. I do not know at this stage that there will not be a raise after me and a speculative hand like 8-7 or 7-5 cannot stand a raised pot. You will end up being out of position with the worst hand on too many occasions for the play to be anywhere near profitable and that is a poor online poker strategy.

Do not get confused here with tournament poker tactics. Remember that players in tournaments need to accumulate chips to win the tournament and will be looking to gamble more than they would necessarily do in a normal cash game.

This concept gets accentuated on the final table where blinds are coming around rapidly and have escalated to a much higher level thus placing players under more time pressure. Whenever you see players doing this on television then do not be fooled by what you are seeing and then try doing the same in your regular cash game.

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , , ,

Dec 01 2009

Are The High Stakes Poker Games Now Too High?

Category: Poker Blog — malcolm @ 5:52 pm

Online poker rooms offer many different types of player the opportunity to participate in many forms of poker. You can play in Stud, Texas Hold ‘em, HORSE and Omaha in a variety of different limits. The higher limits you play the more money that you can win (and lose) by playing online poker. Those that want to make a living playing professional online poker must play at a level where this is possible and work to improve their online poker game so they can achieve this goal. You must also have the right mental approach.

Coping with swings of up to $100,000 in a day used to be essential tolerance for a high stakes poker player. The high stakes online poker games today have developed into super stakes games where it is possible that you can lose or win up to $1 million in one day, often more. Isildur1, the unknown poker player from Sweden, was in profit by $5 million within ten days of beginning to play the high stakes games, lost it all and then made another $3.5 million very quickly. A quick check of his statistics shows him now showing a loss of $500,000 overall, meaning that he has lost $4 million again in a matter of days.

Many online poker players’ bankrolls were swelled by Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque De Soleil, who lost around $28 million playing high stakes online poker in 2008.

As a lower stakes poker player who likes to make a bit of money from poker enough to bolster my standard of living and income a little I struggle to imagine how a poker player carries on playing when they amass such a life changing sum of money. The high stakes poker games are verging on being too high where all value of money is lost. This is worrying for a young person to move into adult life thinking that earning money is very easy.

In the global climate to which we now live, having $5 million would be enough for a full life of luxury with the right investments. Working in traditional businesses it is very hard to make this sort of money. Perhaps the wrong message is being sent by this irresponsible approach to money by the top online poker players who are happy to win and lose millions each day.

A better message is being sent by many of the top live players. Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey and Chris Ferguson invested their expertise into developing Full Tilt Poker, which now earns them in excess of $1 million per month each in earnings. This is just a reported figure and the actual figure may be higher. Daniel Negreanu has lots of outside interests that earn him money and Phil Hellmuth is reported to be a co-owner of Ultimate Bet and has his own brand of poker clothing and accessories.

Poker players currently grinding often do not aim to reach the ultra high stakes online poker games. Many are content to grind their way through many hours of lower stakes games knowing they earn more than they could in Industry. There are very few players making a healthy living from the highest stakes games, even Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan and Cole South (all known as top players) are showing heavy losses for 2009. The question must be asked on why they do not drop down and crush the slightly lower limits.

The answer is because the action is what dictates their involvement. Antonius is part of Full Tilt now as is Dwan, so it is others like Benyamine, Townsend, South, Dang and Ziigmund and others that are the big gamblers playing simply to participate in online poker. Are they simply out of control gamblers who happen to be good at online poker? We all know that assessing our own poker game is the hardest thing to do in poker.

I would recommend that you enjoy watching the high stakes games, but never forget the value of proper online poker bankroll management and an ongoing appreciation for the value of money at all times. Enjoying any profits you make will remind you on why online poker is so much fun when things go well and the reasons we all look to improve our poker game. Moving up limits is fine providing you are comfortable with the extra risk exposure.

By Malcolm Clarke

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , , , ,

Nov 23 2009

Getting your poker education from books

Category: Texas Holdem FAQ — carl @ 1:47 pm

There has been somewhat of a technological revolution with regards to poker over the past few years. The Internet has paved the way for the online poker game to really take off and this has led to vast numbers of young kids coming into the game and taking poker very seriously. Now most of these young guys are not just any old young guys but players who are University educated and have thought processes, intelligence and learning techniques that are highly relevant to the analysis of poker.

Many of them also have advanced qualifications in mathematics and statistics. Years ago, the people with these types of credentials didn’t come into poker because it wasn’t main stream and the Internet wasn’t widely spread and neither was poker. But now it is and these young guns are analysing the game in whole new ways that the old guard simply didn’t. So they understand the game better in many ways and have certainly enlightened the knowledge base of many of the older players.

So where does all this leave the older poker books? Well I would not go as far as to call them useless as a way to learn poker because I have over a hundred in my library. For instance I rate the Harrington series very highly. There are some books that are classics and will remain so. But I think that the overwhelming majority of them can be used as nothing more than primers for novice players in this new age of poker that we are living in.

I think that it can certainly be detrimental to the education of a poker player these days to concentrate on poker books as their soul source of education. Although it has to be said that this is sort of dependent on what level you are trying to beat. At something like NL50 ring games for instance then there is still enough value for good players to be able to beat these games with a good solid game behind them after having read the Harrington cash game series for example.

But you really need to avail yourself these days of the many good technically aware young poker coaches that are sprouting up all over the Internet on online coaching sites. There are many respectable sites like Card Runners, Stox Poker and Leggo Poker to name but a few. These sites are teaching their players the primary way to learn poker in the 21st century.

Unfortunately this means that the older players are getting left behind and until recently this certainly meant me as well. I was forced to undergo a rapid re-education and was forced to re-evaluate everything that I previously knew about poker.

This meant undoing previously learnt knowledge which was proving to be a hindrance to my future progression as a player and my ability to be able to continue to make money playing online poker. So my advice would be to be wary of getting your education from poker books in the modern world of online poker and especially the older books.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , , ,

Sep 29 2008

Check and Raise in Holdem

Category: Texas Holdem FAQ — CardRoom @ 3:20 am

I’m just a starting poker player and as of now I’m not yet so sure about some stuff particularly about check and raise in the same round of betting in regular poker. I know it’s not possible to check and raise in the same round of betting in regular games, but how about in Holdem?

Thanks!
Clark

Clark,

A check-raise is not only a common occurrence in Holdem, it is an encouraged tool for players to develop. When you are trying to extract money from an overly aggressive player, then checking to this player to induce a bet can be the proper play. You can then raise them to force more money into the pot or maybe even force them to fold if they were bluffing.

Also, whoever told you that you cannot check-raise during other forms of poker was mistaken. While it used to be frowned upon to do a check-raise and even banned in some casinos, the practice is now considered a standard part of playing poker.

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , , ,

Sep 29 2008

All for the Blinds

Category: Texas Holdem FAQ — CardRoom @ 2:54 am

Hi,

As I am writing this, I just finished playing Holdem by which my friend who had $10 in chips left became very troubled because he was informed he could no longer play because of not having sufficient chips for the big blind, which during that time was actually $40.

Well, I believe that he could have played, but only for $10 from every player. But I’m not so sure about this, so I’m looking for any piece of advice from you.

Thanks in advance! Great site!

John James

John,

You were correct. Your opponent could have still played, but the most he could have won from each player was $10. In no limit holdem you can go all in for less than the big blind if that is all that you have in front of you. Of course, the most you can win from each player is that amount.

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , ,

Sep 29 2008

Ending Texas Holdem Hands

Category: Texas Holdem FAQ — CardRoom @ 2:47 am

Hello,

I’m currently wondering while writing this. Last night while we were playing, an unusual, bothering situation came up.

Well, at some point, three players were left in, eventually, the hole cards were dealt and one player have folded. The other player was dealt 10 & 6 and I was dealt 9 & 7. Then the flop came and was 7, 8, 9.

After which, player two went all-in with a straight and as my natural reaction, I called him up. Well, we have almost the same amount of chips, but not until after I called. Eventually, player 2 felt he had won.

But afterwards, the dealer dealt the turn which was a 7. Luckily, I won with a full house. However, not everyone agreed, so we started to resolve the issue.

In the end, it’s player 2 who won the game that night. It was so nice of player 2 that he even offered splitting the total winnings until such time we have already cleared the issue. But of course, I believe it was not fair, so I just let him take the winnings.

Anything to say? A comment about what happened perhaps?

Thanks!
Rafael

Rafael,

You won the hand. Your opponent held a straight and you had a full house. A full house outranks everything but quads, a straight flush, and a royal flush. In Holdem you make your best five card hand out of the two cards in your hand and the five on the board. The hand was not over on the flop. There were still two cards to come and you turned a full house. Your friend owes you money.

VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
VN:F [1.7.5_995]
Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Tags: , ,

Next Page »