Poker Blog and Poker Gossip

Came accross this poker video on metacafe about Poker Tells, and its not that bad (if you can get passed the guy’s annoying voice).  It is called the 10 Best Poker Tells.  Most of these tells apply better to live poker, but still worth taking a look.

Here’s the video:

As someone that loves playing the donk fests known as “super-turbos” or “hyper-turbos” on most poker sites (including Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, Titan Poker and many others), I thought I would do my best to write my strategy on how to take these things down.

The most important thing to know with these tournaments is that you need to gamble a bit.  At some point you are most likely going to have to put all your chips in with the worst hand.  The key to this is timing.  Here is what I like to do:

1) Get ahead early.  If your table seems rather tight and there aren’t immediately all-ins with crappy hands, try and get ahead early.  Steal pots with any semi-decent hands (two face cards) to try and build a slight edge.  This way if you do go all in later and you are behind and end up losing the hand you will still have some chips to try to stay alive with.

2) Run the clock.  Most people like to play these tournaments by waiting for ultra-premium hands like AA, KK, QQ or AK, AQ, etc.  If you can do anything to make the blinds go up quicker (giving them less time to wait for these hands) it will force them to get nervous and shove or call of their stack with mediocre hands.  Also, it’ll probably tilt them a little as most people playing these tournaments are trying to make a quick buck and have very little patience.

3) Gamble in late position.  If you are on the button and its folded around to you, if the two other stacks are shorter than you and you have a semi decent hand (AX, KX suited, two face cards), shove all-in and force the decision to them.  They will be risking their entire stack which should hopefully reduce their calling range.  Sure, every once in a while you will run into a monster, but this will probably be a rare scenario and you will benefit much more from picking up the blinds.

4) Sit back with your big stack and watch the others bust out.  By now hopefully you will have built up a decent size stack and the blinds should be creeping up on your opponents.  Sit back now and wait for premium hands before putting people all-in.

5) Don’t mess with the big stacks.  Try to avoid stealing pots from players that can bust you.  Prey on the short stacks and only risk your stack on the bigger ones with ultra-premium hands.

6) Bully.  Once your stack is at least 3 times bigger than your opponent, don’t be afraid to put them all-in with any 2.  Even if they win they will be even you and the goal of these games is to bust your opponents, even if its not with the best hand.

7) Enjoy your money!  Now that you’ve hopefully won the tourney, sit back, have a drink and enjoy your money.  Buy something nice for yourself!

Best Sites To Play Super Turbos

The best sites for super-turbo or hyper-turbo poker games in my opinion are:

1) Full Tilt Poker - Full Tilt runs the most super-turbos of any other poker site and games fill up quickly.
2) Titan Poker - Second highest traffic site for super-turbos and there are even more fish.

Welcome to 2009!  Its a new year, and if 2008 was a bad year for your poker game, its time to turn that all around.  2009 means a fresh start, and a 2nd chance for you to correct all the things that you were doing wrong to become a winning poker player.  Here are 5 poker tips to help you have more wins in 2009…

Top 5 Poker Tips

1) Stop Bluffing - If bluffing is a big part of your game right now, then STOP IT!  Many players tend to lose a lot of money when they attempt to bluff their way at a massive pot.  Stop it!  Sure, this may work sometimes, but bluffing is a skill that takes a ton of practice and requires for you to master the other parts of the game first.  For now, try and stop it completely, or at least do your best to cut back the amount of bluffing that you are doing right now significantly!

2) Patience - Do you feel like the stakes you are playing aren’t enough, or you often find yourself trying to force the action in hands?  Well, it sounds to me like you have no patience.  To do well in poker you need to be able to wait for the perfect situations to win massive pots, not try and force them to happen by gambling with your opponents.  If you find you are playing way to many hands and acting completely out of control, maybe you should try occupying your mind with something else while you are playing.  Invite an escort over, read a book, write a book… it really doesn’t matter.  Just try to do something to keep your mind active so you don’t get bored and make stupid plays!

3) Bankroll Management -You’ve probably heard this time and time again, but it IS IMPORTANT.  Play in games that you can afford and aren’t going to cause you to go broke instantly.  The players that do the best online are often grinding away at somewhat lower stakes but over time building up a bankroll that can get in the millions of dollars!

4) Table/Game Selection - You shouldn’t just be sitting down at a table because there is an empty seat.  Study your opponents, find ones with lots of money and if they are playing irradically, then all the better.  Instead of going too much into this one, here is an awsome site to help you find a good table to play at online: http://www.pokertableratings.com/

5) Seek Help - Books are a thing of the past.  Nowadays there is a new way to improve your poker game called poker training sites.  These sites are run by poker players that are WINNING LOTS OF MONEY!  On these sites they share all their secrets to how they make a lot of money playing poker.  These sites are usually only like $30/month (some even less) which is nothing considering what you can potentially make with this wealth of information.  They give you a ton of great tips and REALLY WANT you to take your game to the next level.  You can watch the instructors in real game action talking you through what is going through their mind at that given time.  Even for seasoned players, this should be a no brainer.

Follow these relatively simple tips and you should be winning more in no time for 2009!  If you have never played poker online before, be sure to check out our top 10 online poker sites list.

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!