Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Not for those trips to the grocery store but a poker list, stupid! According to Team Pokerstars Pro Daniel Negreanu you must carry this list with you to ensure you play poker at your peak. The three tenants of a good poker player follow:

Fundamental Poker, Disciplined Poker, Observational Poker

Without diving into specifics, Daniel says that you have to play good solid poker, behave yourself and not make stupid calls, and pay attention to other players at the table. There, I just accomplished in two sentences what took Daniel a whole page to describe; you can pay me at noduhpoker@paypal.com.

All kidding aside, the article does provide good reading it really delivers another message. Would be poker players who think they have to get tricky and make insane calls to be a good player – are on the wrong track! It all boils down to playing ABC poker for the most part and being level-headed enough to wait and pick your battles. Play solid poker with good starting hands and don’t try to bluff the one player at the table that CAN’T be bluffed.

So now that I’ve given you a primer on Daniels article, you can read it here: http://www.mlive.com/grpress/sports/index.ssf/2008/10/keep_a_personal_checklist_on_y.html

Lately I have been playing a lot of Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) online and have noticed that many of the games are VERY beatable.  In my ever lasting search to find the easiest PLO Poker sites, here is what I have found so far.

About 2 weeks ago I watched many of the PLO videos on Real Poker Training, so I decided to hit the tables with my new skills.

If you have the patience to wait for strong hands and pick the right tables, you can make a killing playing these games.  Here are the sites I have been playing, and my thoughts on each:

PokerStars.com - PokerStars has a ton of action at the PLO tables, but I think the players are slightly better and a little tighter here than at Full Tilt Poker.  I managed to make just over $1500 in about a week of grinding it out at the $1/$2 PLO tables on top of my original $800 buy-in.  To do well here I think you have to play a little more aggressive to force bigger pots with premium hands.

FullTiltPoker.com - I had $120 left in my account, so I decided to give their $.50/$1 tables a try.  The players on Full Tilt’s PLO tables are VERY aggressive (for the most part), so you need to be much more patient.  In just over 1 week I have run my original $120 up to over $1400.  I have tried their $1/$2 games a few times (though I don’t really have the bankroll for them), but when I build up a little more will be playing these more often.  Players are SUPER-AGGRESSIVE at these tables and love to gamble.  Wait to get all the money in on the turn and you will get some callers looking to outdraw you.

Pacific Poker - VERY beatable, though they don’t have the traffic that the sites above have.  There really is only action at $.25/$.50 and lower, so if you are a small stakes player this is probably the easiest site for you.

Prior to watching the videos I was probably winning a little here and there, but overall was probably breaking even, or possibly down.  My play used to be much more aggressive and I was getting involved in WAY too many pots.  David Eisenstein shares a lot of great tips in the videos, and has made me become a much tighter player.  If you are very aggressive right now, I definitely recommend trying the site out for a month at least to see his videos.

If you know of any other sites that are great for PLO, please post them in the comments below.

Good luck at the tables!

The stop and go is a trick used by many very good poker players to maximize their chances of taking down a crucial pot when they are on the short stack. This is a poker tip that you can try next time you are involved in a poker tournament holding a short stack and you decide that you are going to go all in out of position. For example, if you are in the small or big blind and another (typically known to be aggressive player raises), instead of just going all in over the top of his raise with a short stack (that the other player will likely gamble and call) just call the bet. Then, regardless of what comes on the flop immediately go all-in. This will help give you some extra chances of winning the hand as the player will have a harder time calling on the flop if he hasn’t quite made his hand yet.

Here is a hand that I was involved with recently where this would have worked. I was on the short stack and had been playing very tight. The player that opened had been raising most pots. I looked down at A9 in the small blind and decided to make my move:

PokerStars Game #17415090173: Tournament #88276515, 500FPP Hold’em No Limit - Level VIII (200/400) - 2008/05/13 - 23:23:20 (ET)
Table ‘88276515 1′ 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: soiwinha (4170 in chips)
Seat 5: closemaster (3295 in chips)
Seat 8: yankfan (6035 in chips)
soiwinha: posts the ante 25
closemaster: posts the ante 25
yankfan: posts the ante 25
closemaster: posts small blind 200
yankfan: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to closemaster [9h Ad]
soiwinha: raises 800 to 1200 - Aggressive player raises
closemaster: raises 2070 to 3270 and is all-in - What I should have done was just call this bet, then regardless of what happened on the flop raised all-in.
yankfan: folds
soiwinha: calls 2070
*** FLOP *** [Qc 7s 2h] - Had I just called his raise pre-flop then shoved here, it would have been very hard for him to call with just Jack High.
*** TURN *** [Qc 7s 2h] [Kd]
*** RIVER *** [Qc 7s 2h Kd] [8d] - Because I didn’t do it, look what happened on the river
*** SHOW DOWN ***
closemaster: shows [9h Ad] (high card Ace)
soiwinha: shows [Jc 8c] (a pair of Eights)
soiwinha collected 7015 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 7015 | Rake 0
Board [Qc 7s 2h Kd 8d]
Seat 1: soiwinha (button) showed [Jc 8c] and won (7015) with a pair of Eights
Seat 5: closemaster (small blind) showed [9h Ad] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 8: yankfan (big blind) folded before Flop

Good luck!

Qualifying for a major tournament via an online poker site is something to celebrate, but don’t allow the victory to fool you into thinking the tournament will by any means be an easy set of games to win. It won’t be. To begin with, you are in a completely different setting, the stakes are often higher and the competition more intense. If you aren’t careful, you could lose your chip stack quickly and disastrously. So, what should you do? Strategize and pace yourself.

When the tournament begins, rein in the urge to over-bet, over-bluff and over-play. Don’t  get carried away in the initial rounds and be out before you even have the opportunity to win money. Play cautiously and intelligently. As other players are weeded out, you can start to loosen up a little bit. Raise the stakes, bluff occasionally and have some fun with the cards in your hand. Still, remain careful. The jackpot may be within viewing distance, but it’s not reachable yet. Play so that you get to the final rounds, and when you do, cut loose. Play your strongest, raise the bets steal the blinds and prove to the other players that you are the top opponent.

You can beat the pros but only after you play like one.

As there is no set design, or prescribed plan that any one poker player can use to play successful poker online and off, some may think that there are as many different ways to play as there are variations. There are however, some constants that hold true in any variation of poker. Check out the first suggestion in a series to improve your poker game, and mine.

The first thing to keep in mind is how you fair on the radar of the other players. In reality there is no need to show you have a dominating personality at the poker table, through verbal expression or attitude. This is something that you should try to keep low key. Other players will find it more difficult to read you and your tells if you are ‘just under their radar’. Additionally you’re going to find that using this option will make it easier for you to identify when it is the best time to play a strong hand, bluff, or make what ever move you have in your poker arsenal.

When do you raise? What a question - one many of us have at one point found ourselves asking. Raising is used in many ways, including winning, considering some opponents may fold. There have been studied and determined 7 good reasons to raise in a competitive game of poker.

If you are confident you have the best hand, it’s a given, raise to get more money in the pot. If you raise and tempt others to call or repeat your action, when you cash the pot, you will win a much larger pot with your royal hand.

This raising option can also drive an opponent with a better hand out of the competition. Should you believe your hand has been bettered, raising may protect your hand, because it may imply to the opponent they are out matched, which would drive them to fold.

If you should chose to bluff, by raising holding a midrange or worse hand, the player maybe able to induce the better opponent’s hand to fold. It is the hope that the highest hand will be the one to fold in this circumstance. Only time will determine if it worked.

Should you chose to raise with an ok hand, and your opponent checks you, particularly with a game of draw, by the next betting round, you will have obtained a free card, in hopes to further improve your hand.

In an effort to gather information, you may raise to ascertain where the other player’s hands are. Obviously more information is revealed when one player folds, the next calls, and the last raises. It is also possible that all the other players at a table will fold, and the ante goes to you. This motivation for a raise is called a probing bet. This form of probe is especially effective if you hold an uncertain hand.

To improve chances of taking the pot, a raise may be placed which would encourage players with worse hands to fold. Although it is possible they may have improved with further community cards, having forced them out, allows better odds for the players left.

Through an effort to move out the best hands, an isolationist player would raise before the bet opportunity falls to the player with the best-suspected hand. Doing this may cause the players who come after him, including the player with the best cards, to fold instead of call or raise. This will obviously cause the pot to fall to the aggressive but isolationist player.

Some basic guidelines for when to raise, all of them seem straight forward to any skilled poker player, however a reminder never hurts.