Poker Talk

For amateurs in poker game, attempting small pocket pairs in an early position is not the right thing to do because they generally tend to lose their money in the attempt. Playing small pocket pairs in the medium position is slightly better because it offers you a little more opportunities of winning the pot as well as protecting your stack.

Playing in the Middle Position:

In the middle position, you have a fair chance of gaining from some of the pots and making limper money. You can make a lot of money from defenseless early position players.

The cards are dealt and you find that you have 99, which is neither a good nor a bad status. There is a great deal of action that awaits you and you have to be very cautious of likely tricks that your opponents are setting up against you. The most common action under the gun with an Ace-Ace or King-King is to limp in and hang around for the raise. When another player does the same, he comes to the top and tries to make you bet your stack. Be very careful of what you do here before you blindly decide to play aggressively and put in a good amount of your stack into the pot. You would only be doing what your opponent wants you to do.

The first round sees many of the contestants limping in and it is now time for you to place your bet. You are in a good position at the moment and can play aggressively and can try to get the pot down straightaway. You could try a six or seven times the blind raise and linger on for the result. If another player happens to come on top, you are beat and must let go of that hand. In case they are just multiplying your stake, you may call them and watch for the outcome at the flop. You could very well be seeing the last of the money here.

If you are called, be alert towards the board. You have to be loyal to a consecutive bet until you find 2 – 3 face cards out there. Supposing your opponents bet out, you might have to forego the hand, as there are chances that they may have hit the set. In case they decide to call you and you cannot see the chances of a draw, you are certainly beat and can only hope that they will check to you so that you can check down with an expectation of improvement when you get to the river. If a draw is at the table, you will need to play it aggressively and in turn dole out a good amount of your money. Players with flush draws will stake a lot of their money here but you must be careful that you are not sucked out in the procedure.

Another instance is when you have a small raise. This is just the appropriate time for you to camouflage your hand and observe the cards that hit the board. If it happens to be a low board, the following continuation bet can get you to the top again. In case they bet out on a high board, you can let go and cut your losses to the least.

The last instance is where the bet folds around you making you the first player in. This is the time to stand for and have a go at the blinds. You can dole out five or six times the blind bet and characterize a bigger hand than you really hold. You should not look out for callers at this stage since the board can be very risky. Here again you are committed to an extended bet but for a precarious board that happens to hit you.

An important fact that you must bear in mind is that the money that you intend to bet on small pocket pairs is an amount that you must be ready to say goodbye to at any time in the game. Trying to keep your stand even in a weak position will lead to a loss of money. Your aim is to dig big blinds and hit sets by playing with small pocket pairs and if you know how to play your middle position well, you can expect some good returns from it. Do not hang on to them; fold, as they are only poor calls.

One more stepping stone you need to climb on your way out of poker “suckerdom” is to recognize the need to keep detailed records of your table antics. Regardless of how objective you think you are, simply keeping a mental track of what you do at the table is not enough, because you’ll always remember things in a slightly distorted way: from your own perspective, exaggerating the good moves you’ve made and forgetting about the bad ones.

The first thing you need to cover when deciding to keep serious track of how you’re performing at the green felt is the issue of the bankroll. Very few players keep a separate bankroll for poker purposes only. Most of us commit the mistake of mixing our everyday finances with the money we take to the poker tables and that’s just plain wrong.

Your primary objective at the poker table is to make money. Sure, some people play it for the fun and the kicks, but I’ll assume you’re in it for the money as much as for the fun aspect.

If your goal is to make money, you need to know exactly how much you’re making, and I’m not talking about keeping track of how much you take to the tables and how much you walk away with. For a serious player, that’s just not going to cut it. You need to know exactly what limits you play and how you do on each and every one of these limits. If you’re dominating a certain limit and you move on to a higher limit where you still win but you only make like $15 an hour, obviously, you shouldn’t hang around there just because it’s a higher limit and you’re aiming for the boasting rights. You should also sign up for rakeback too. Rake rebate deals like the Full Tilt rakeback or the Ultimate Bet rakeback offer you a very nice edge bankroll-wise. Leaving an edge like this unexploited is a sin for every serious poker player.

These factors don’t really have anything to do with actual hands-on poker strategy, but they will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses and ultimately they will help you become a better poker player.

How you keep track of your poker performance is up to you really. You can use the low tech approach of pen and paper, you can use Excel or another similar spread-sheet application, you can use the stats provided by your poker room or you can go really high tech and purchase an application like PokerTracker.

The basic information that you need to keep track of, should include the current date, the start time of the session and its end time (it’s quite easy to lose track of time amid all the excitement, so you need this information to be able to tell exactly how long you play), the total amount of buy-ins (all the money that you take to the tables) and the total amount of your cash outs. This basic information will help you determine your hourly rate, which will offer you a precious clue regarding the EV+ in the hands that you play.

Other information that you should also track: the limits at which you play and the location. Location is not only important for live play. Different online poker rooms throw different levels of competition at you, and if you have accounts in tens of poker rooms, you’ll eventually find it difficult to track what you did and where. The bottom line is, you need to know where you played, because you may dominate a certain limit in one poker room and struggle at the same limit in another.

The most important result is of course your hourly rate, but putting together monthly statistics as well as overall ones is also helpful.

I know it may seem like a lot of effort should go into these statistics but it isn’t exactly so. Once you start doing it, you’ll see it’s easy and the rewards it’ll offer you will be more then worth the effort you put into it.

Keeping records of your poker shenanigans may not give you a direct help at the table, but it will definitely help you identify and eliminate your weaknesses which will translate into a better overall table performance over time.

This is probably one of the biggest tells that people have in their games and they don’t even realize it. Think about how you play your hands before the flop and you will quickly understand what we are talking about here. How much do you raise pre-flop when you are sitting on AA? How much when you only have a small pocket pair?

A lot of players will make a huge raise on one or the other and then play the opposite with the opposite hands. When you do this, you are telling anyone that is paying attention exactly what you have. For instance, you are a player that gets overly aggressive or and raised 10x the blinds with a small pocket pair or you push all in every time when someone raises in front of you with the same hand. When you have AA or KK, you tend to make a small raise of 3x and possibly just call a big raise in front of you hoping for action.

Any decent player is going to be watching you and all you need is a few showdowns for them to know exactly how you play. Forget about trying to vary your raises pre-flop to keep people off balance because it is very easy to lose track of where you are in your raises and actually outsmart yourself here. The trick to being a successful pre-flop raiser is to bet the same amount every time regardless of what your hand is. If you are the first to raise, pick your number and stick with it every time you jump into a hand. If you raise someone who has raised, raise their bet the same amount as you would raise the blinds.

Let’s assume that the blinds are $10/$20. When the action gets to you, you want to raise so regardless of what you are holding, you will make it $120 to go. If someone had made it $60 to go before the flop, you can raise their raise 6x so you can make it $300 to go here. If players are paying attention, they are going to see that no matter what you have, you are pumping the pot by a 6x raise each and every time.

All you are going to need is a handful of showdowns to have everyone confused when they get into a hand with you. You need to do this early and often at the beginning of the session and show a variety of hands. If you are heads up and folding, show those weak hands that you raised 6x the blinds with just like you had to show the KK in a showdown.

The purpose of showing here is make sure that everyone knows you are capable of playing poker 450 the same way you will play AA. Once you are in their head, you can back of showing your cards and play normally. Now when you are in the pot, they have no idea what you have and will tread very carefully around you. This is going to enable you to pull off some major bluffs and also create a lot of action when you really do land some nice hands.

It’s not exactly a secret that online, the vast majority of players suck at poker. Not only do they suck at the game itself, they pretty much suck at everything connected to it. Take rakeback for instance. While deals like the ongame rakeback and the rakeback Full Tilt Poker offers give players a handy advantage over the house rake, the vast majority of them never even consider signing up for such a deal. Some of these guys do realize they’ve made a mistake by signing up without rakeback, but they only do so when it’s already too late and they have an account opened. Most online poker rooms won’t allow those who already have a rakeback-less account to open a new one for rakeback.

Anyway, learning about the advantages of rakeback and signing up for a deal is only a matter of some reading up. Most of the factors that will differentiate you from suckers at the poker table are similarly “insignificant”.

The truth is, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist and you don’t even need to be extremely skilled in poker to beat 95% of players out there. Just master a few basic concepts and you’ll be amazed at how big an improvement you’ll show at the table.

One of the most common mistakes rookies make is that they play way too many hands. Every time they pick up their two pocket cards, they start seeing all sorts of dreamy flops that will hit their hand dead on. Then they build on the weak starting hand mistake by chasing it way too deep into the hand.

There are several reasons why beginners act this way, not the least of which are the “strategies” they pick up watching televised tournaments. Guys on TV seem to be raising and shoving on almost any two cards, and professional players openly advocate that real poker is about playing the player and not the cards, and therefore they can win pots on any two cards.

First of all, professionals are correct about the importance of playing the player over playing one’s cards, but you have to bear in mind that these guys don’t play on the same thought level that you do. On the level where they play, starting hand selection takes a back seat to playing the player, but on your level (which is most probably the first or second level of poker thought, where you only consider your cards and maybe the board texture), proper starting hand selection is vital.

Add to that the fact that the hands you see on TV are specially selected ones (they’re not going to show you the hundreds of hands that were folded before because it’s just too boring for TV) and that you may have seen action from the closing stages of a high buy-in tournament where starting hand values change radically.

The bottom line is, as a rookie you should exercise proper starting hand selection. There’s no shame in learning starting hand charts. After all, if you do not consider the suits, there are 169 possible two-card starting hands, and some of those hands win a much higher percentage of the time than others.

The premium starting hands are the AA,KK, QQ, JJ and AK suited. These hands are not guaranteed winners, but they do offer you a serious edge over the suckers at your table. Don’t lose sight of the fact that real poker begins after the flop, however, by selecting your starting hands well, you’ll make it much easier on yourself to play after the flop and you’ll simplify the decisions you’ll be forced to make.

Besides the starting hand selection, keep an eye out for your table position as well. The same starting hand will have a different value depending on whether you’re in early or late position and depending on the information you collect on your opponents before you act.

It’s not always fun and profitable playing poker, especially when you are playing a level you are not very familiar with such as Omaha Poker or 7 card stud poker. There are nights when your stars don’t seem to be in cosmic alignment. And nights when you just don’t feel in a good mood. Those nights are real hard and a pain in the neck. Who wants to lose money, anyway? But you are a good player. You can handle yourself well whatever bad luck comes your way. So, no reason to go on a tilt. But that is not always the case. No matter how strong your intention of playing well is, there are still moments that you lose control of yourself and play hands you shouldn’t be playing.

I know what you will ask now, how do you avoid these slip offs and keep yourself in control. There are actually simple and easy steps to avoid them. First off, if you feel like going on a tilt, shake yourself off, stand up, and go for a walk. Simply put, refresh yourself. Have a chat with your friend or order some coffee to pump up your adrenaline. You can also go to the washroom and sprinkle water on your face. There’s nothing more refreshing and better at getting back your energy in playing Texas Holdem Poker than cold water on your face. You can also pinch your toes to bring back the energy you lost. This may sound silly to you, but believe me it does brings you back from the hypnosis you had at the table.

Second, try the letter therapy. Get a piece of paper and wrote there “I am here to make good decisions at the table. Not simply to win money.” Write that a few times and put it in your pocket. Every time you feel like tilting or making a bad decision, take it out and read it. That would remind you of your real goal in those
Poker Sites.

Third, keep a positive attitude. You have in your hands the power to make your games as good as it can get. It’s about how you face and act in every game. Don’t let your negative attitude overcome you. Stay focused and every time you lose tell yourself, “that money I lost was not mine. It was just visiting.”

Lastly, every time you play poker, be it in casinos or online poker rooms, think of it as a job. Tell yourself that you are hired to play there. The money you have is not yours, but it belongs to your boss. And unless you make good decisions, you are not to be paid. Think of your boss as mean and demanding. He doesn’t care if you win or lose as long as you play correctly and make sound decisions. Naturally, you would not want to be fired, right? So, make sure to always make the right choices, and your spot at the payroll is guaranteed.

There you are. Simple and easy-to-do steps to keep yourself in check. Keep them in mind and you are sure to have fun at the tables.