Hold Em Authority - Texas Hold Em Strategy and advice for all levels of players

This post has the potential to get ugly in a hurry, but I’m going to attempt to keep it as civil as possible.

I wanted to address something that one might not think about, but probably should, and that is: if you are a male, what runs through your head when you sit down and realize you have to play against a woman?

Speaking from experience, I can tell you two things:

1) I’m much more apt to fold a hand if a woman bets aggressively at me, because I sometimes feel that women in general are much less aggressive at the poker table than men are simply because they seem to be the same way in the real world.

2) I’m much more apt to get distracted and be thrown off my game if said woman is attractive.

Obviously, these are two stupid mentalities to take towards women, but sometimes they are extremely difficult to get away from. It is very easy to develop a rapport with women at the poker table, which is most likely part of the strategy they use to extract chips from you. If you really want to play the game correctly, you have to be willing to bust this woman even if you do hit it off. As for point 2 above, if you two are really meant to be together, she’ll wait for you somewhere in the casino after you bust her so you can talk more after the tournament or during the break, so stop staring at her and play your damn cards!

These two reasons illustrate exactly why you SHOULD respect women at the table, because they can use these two stereotypes to the fullest advantage, and the smart ones absolutely do.There is some interesting content on this poker blog namely a series of ten great examples that have become successful with the help of their looks and their game, and I’m guessing these women make more than I do in a year over the course of 24 hours.

If you respect women in life, there should be no reason to give them any less respect at the poker table. If you don’t respect women in life, women at the poker table are probably the least of your concerns at this point.

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Enjoy the weekend, but please don’t waste a day going to the Stardust in Vegas, beacuse it is no longer standing. Kind of a sad day in poker news if you ask me, but I guess there’s probably a couple other options for you in Vegas if you really look hard enough.

Are you competitive? An only child who has to entertain him/herself on a daily basis? Are you really bored right now? Why do I ask these questions? Well, I am all three right now, and I just recently invented a game at my workplace that times my ten key speed and tracks my improvement. Yes, I’m a huge dork, but I’m also competitive, bored, and an only child. Moral of the story, if you’re the same way, you may like this little game a friend of mine invented

Sometimes we need a break from the grind of poker, however, sometimes we don’t want to take a break, even though we should. Honestly, this little game could help a beginner find ways of making him/her self better in a heads up match. This article is courtesy of him, so I’ll just turn the typing over to him:

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Recently I’ve been trying to find ways to improve my game that are a little different than others. Aside from playing on Ultimate Bet almost daily I’ve been playing a one person game that I made up myself. I’ve been trying for probably a year to figure out a game that I can play alone, but still takes skill to win.

Over the last two weeks I’ve went from losing 60% of the time to winning 90% of the time. I encourage anyone to give me some insight on how I can make this game more difficult or if there are any big holes that I haven’t seen yet.

Here’s the game:

I play Texas Hold ‘Em when I play this game, but I would imagine that you should be able to play Omaha High and other games with small revisions.

What you need:

-1 poker deck of cards (no jokers)

-80 poker chips (one color)

-A Table

-Hands

Directions

This is a one player, heads-up match against a ghost player. Give yourself 40 chips and put 40 chips opposite yourself that will represent the ghost player’s chips.

Shuffle and cut as much as you feel and deal 2 cards face down to yourself and the ghost player. To begin, play 1 / 2 blinds No Limit. You are always in the small blind. Eventually blinds can be raised, but if it gets too high it becomes an all-in fest.

You can look at the hand in front of you as much as you want, but the ghost player’s cards stay hidden until a showdown situation occurs.

Pre-flop play goes like this…it is 2 chips to call and you can fold to the ghost whenever you choose, giving up your 1 chip small blind. Any chips you put in the pot before the flop gets paid out of the ghost’s chips 1 to 1 (meaning if you bet 10 the ghost player will call 10). After the pre-flop betting round you can burn and turn up 3 cards. This is the final betting round in the game. Any chips that you put into the pot after the flop get paid out from the ghost’s chip stack 1 to 2 (meaning if you bet 10 then the ghost player will only have to call 5). The ghost player calls all bets that you make. After this betting round all cards can be turned face up and the last 2 community cards can be put on the board, no betting the turn or river, best 5 card poker hand being the winner as usual.

That’s pretty much the game…let me know if there is any confusion, or if you think I need to castrate myself.

Courtesy of: Andy Schirm

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All thoughts of castration aside, I think a couple ways of modifying the game are these:

1. Have the ghost player always pay out 1:2, like the ghost does after the flop in Andy’s game.

2. Add a player to the mix – you’ll get paid off more with your big hands, yes, but you’ll pay the price much more when you’re putting lots of money in with mediocre hands.

Enjoy the little sidetrack from your daily grind!

The cards are dealt, you’re under the gun.  You look down at your cards, expecting to fold, but lo and behold, you find some bitches.  Two of them to be exact.  Well this is great, but now what?  I never really thought it was much of a decision until today when I had them utg and raised 3 times the big blind.  I ended up winning the blinds, which was just fine with me, but one of my friends who was watching me said “nice take, but I don’t like the raise.”

My friend and I discussed the hand, and this is what I gathered from his point of view: limp in, slowplay.  He expects a raise to come with someone eventually (especially at such low limits), and then he will reraise when it gets back around to him.

Interesting thought, but I just don’t know about it.  This is the way I played it today.  I try to vary my play, so who knows if I’ll play it the same way every time.  Anyway, I bet the pot under the gun, and everyone folded to me, and I won my .35.  I told my friend that if I win .35 every time I have QQ, I’m gonna be rich someday, and I’m fine with winning a little at a time.

Now I’m not saying said friend’s theory is wrong by any means, in fact, I’m sure a lot of players play it the same way he suggests, but here’s why I personally don’t play the bitches like that:

1.  By not raising, you are banking on someone else raising, which, depending on the table, may or may not happen.  As with pretty much anything poker, observation is key.

2.  If no one else raises, but 4 people call, the probability of you winning the hand has gone from a very high percentage to a very low percentage.  I realize it’s only a quarter, but if you lose a quarter (or more) every other time, you need to make some real profit on the other time that you win money.

3.  Going along with #2, even if only 2 people come in, chances are 1 or 2 of them are going to have an A or a K, and then when one of those hits on the flop, how do you play the hand?  You probably have to muck it, and once again, yes, only a quarter, but still, money lost that could have been won.

4.  If you do represent preflop and get a caller, you figure he/she has to have a good hand, possibly a middle pair, possibly AJ, AQ, etc.  You can really narrow down the amount of hands your opponent is playing when he/she has to call a raise.

That’s my opinion, and it is just that, an opinion.

Interesting title, I know.

Anyway, it seems that recently I’ve been in a mindset in which I think that whoever my opponent is, he/she must have the nuts, always. For example, if the board reads 9QK and I have AK, I automatically assume my opponent has 10 J or KQ. One of many problems with this mindset is not getting max value out of a hand that very well could be ahead.

Another problem I have that goes along with not getting max value out of a hand is thinking that my opponent always has a hand that could end up better than mine. Obviously this is the case most of the time, but I’m thinking in terms of open-ended straight draw, flush draw, etc. that have a very legitimate chance of beating me. Again, with this mindset, I’ll probably bet the flop way too big for my opponent to call, thus not getting max value out of the hand. Sure, I won the hand, but sometimes it’s taking a few risks that propel you to a tournament victory.

Especially in online play, you have to believe that players are going to put their money in the pot with far less than the nuts far more often than a typical live player would.  Be smart about your choices and play the hand through in your head before you decide that you’re beat - it may just reveal an answer that you’re not expecting.

In this age of aggression in the poker world, we sometimes get so caught up in winning that we do whatever we think it takes to bring home a victory.  It’s easy to do, and I’ve done it myself numerous times.  However, here’s a little food for thought the next time you’re playing in a poker tournament:

I recently played in a tournament on Full Tilt in which I reached the final table with a fairly short stack.  Nine players sit at the final table, and within fifteen minutes, seven of them were gone.  I played two hands before it got to three way and didn’t knock out a single person.  Everyone else at the final table was throwing their chips around in hopes of giving the chip leader a run for his money.  As it turned out, I was severely short-stacked (6:1) when it got down to heads up, but second place wasn’t a bad payday.

If you find yourself fortunate enough to be at a final table with a lot of aggressive players, don’t think it’s a bad thing to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.  You can’t win every all-in, but if you don’t put your chips in the middle, you can survive for a long time unless you’re really short-stacked.   If you think about the other players at the table as your teammates instead of your sworn enemies, in certain situations, it can work to your advantage.

It’s a question I ask myself quite frequently, and I get an answer that varies quite frequently. The problem with these varying answers, however, is that the same ultimate goal of making money is always why I’m playing poker. Yes, I lie to myself sometimes, and this can cause serious problems for not only me, but for anyone else who does the same thing.

For example, let’s take my answer a couple weeks ago: “I am just playing for entertainment.” If I’m just playing for entertainment, it must mean I’m not concerned about losing money. However, I am. Why would I say this to myself then? I believe it boils down to two reasons that a lot of poker players can justify:

1. You’re losing - It’s easy to say you’re just playing for fun if you’re losing, and you don’t have to justify why you’re getting your ass kicked by everyone at the table if you don’t care about what you’re doing. This technique is of a face-saving variety, and while it may make you feel better around your peers, it makes you feel worse about yourself in the long run.

2. No Motivation - I found this to be the most recent of my problems. I had just won a big tournament, and since I had made a lot of money, I wasn’t really playing for anything in particular except to pass time. At that point, I really didn’t care about losing money. How does this problem get remedied? Well, it’s very possible that you could lose everything you won, and then you’re back to square one. However, since this is not ideal, I think another thing that can bring you back into a realm of focus at the table is to set a goal for yourself. It’s simple, and it’s common, but sometimes we don’t do common things because they are so run-of-the-mill, and only the “losers” have to do something like that.

Take me, for example.  I am making the transition from school to the real world, and I need to buy a lot of household items like furniture, electronics, etc.  I decided to set a goal for myself that would equal a profit large enough to buy one of these items.  Coincidentally, my focus has increased dramatically, and while I’m still hovering around even, the game is more exciting to me and I have a new desire to win.

Figure out why you’re playing - and be honest, then do something to help you accomplish your reason for playing.  It sounds simple, but it requires honesty and commitment, two things a lot of us have a hard time putting together.

Good luck at the tables and with yourself.

If you read my last post, you know that I just won an online poker tournament. It was a sizable tournament, with 350+ people playing in it. Needless to say, I’m pretty pumped about it, and I feel like I’m at the top of my game. Numerous people have either told me or others that after winning an online tournament, beware!

Why?

Well, they say, because you won’t win anything for a long period of time after that.

That’s ridiculous - if the online poker sites focused on making sure you lose after a sizable win, they would be expending unnecessary time and energy on something that is completely immoral and illegal.

It may seem that you might not win after winning a poker tournament, and a couple of reasons could come into play.

1. You feel that everyone in the poker world should know that you have just won a poker tournament, and you are a force to be reckoned with. This line of thinking makes you a little bit more aggressive - a bad call here, a dumb raise there, and before you know it, you’re on a losing streak.

2. You think you’re invincible - You’ve just won a poker tournament, things are good. You can’t win a tournament without playing well, right? Maybe this means that anything you do turns to gold now. All of a sudden, you start playing more hands because you know good things are going to happen, and before you know it, your stack is whiddled away to nothing because of your not necessarily aggressive, but loose, style of play.

3. Finally, and probably most logical - the law of averages are starting to bite you. If you win a poker tournament, that means that at each point all your chips were in the pot, you won. Chances are, it also means you survived a few big pots that went to showdown. If you win 3 coin flips and lose 1 throughout a tournament, you’re doing pretty well. In the next tournament you play though, you could win 0 and lose 2. You may think this is terrible luck, but the last two tournaments you’ve played, you’re exactly where you are supposed to be in coin flips won, 3-3.

So, Beware! But don’t beware because of the online poker room trying to cheat you. Beware of your own playing style and make sure it doesn’t change from your tournament win to the next tournament. Beware of the law of averages evening things out for you.

Best of luck at the tables.

So you want to know how to win a poker tournament? Well, I really don’t have a lot of experience on the subject, but I did manage to pull one down the other night.
How about a timeline of events that led up to me luckboxing my way into my second tournament victory this century? Alright, here goes.

901: Draw for the button - I start in the small blind… there goes 5 chips right there.

912: I double up with KK against KQ after a flop of Q32.

913-930: I get too aggressive with my new found wealth and piss most of it away.

931: I almost double up again after turning a flush with a very aggressive opponent.

932-1000: Refer to 913-930.

1000-1005: I go into a secluded area and yell at myself for being reckless with my chips.

1005-1105:  I play solid aggressive poker and chip up - no double ups or huge pots, just a lot of small ones.

1105-1110:  Go to the bathroom.

1110-1140:  Go card dead - the blinds start to eat away at my stack a little bit.

1141-1210:  Fight to survive - I go all in three times in this period, surviving all of them.  At this point, I have managed to make it into the money.  One point to note here is that I didn’t play to cash, I played to win by going all in with various hands at different points during the bubble period.

1210-1215:  Do absolutely nothing .

1220-1240:  Double up with AQ against AK, and with 77 v AK.  Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

1240-130:  Never look back.

I played the last hour of the tournament putting constant pressure on my opponents.  As my stack grew, my confidence grew.  At one point in the final table, there were 8 of us left and I had 3 times the chips of everyone else at the table.  I mention this because if you come to this site often, you know I’m a tight player.  Even though I’m a tight player, I know what to do with a lot of chips when I get them.

There was one point in the heads up match when I got short stacked, but I was fortunate enough to suck out one time, and that’s really all I needed to get my head back into the game and take the tournament down.

Another point I want to make about this tournament is the fact that sometimes it’s just about keeping your emotions in check more than anything.  I was really lucky that my aggression early on with a big stack didn’t come back to bite me either time.  My regrouping at the first break was a big reason I won the poker tournament.

You can play great poker and lose, and you can play bad poker and win. Honestly though, in one way or another, you really have to get lucky to win a poker tournament - Good players just have to get a little less lucky than someone with less experience and talent.

Do you bet with the nuts? You’ve got an unbeatable hand, so obvioulsy you’re fixing to win some sort of money, but should you let your opponent hang his/herself instead? This is the topic of discussion for today’s article, and while there may not be one correct way to play this type of situation, there may be a more proper way to extract money from your opponent in the long haul.

A prime example of this situation was a hand I got involved in today, and it’s a hand that I really don’t feel I could have played any better. Towards the end of the first hour of a tournament, I was dealt QJ in middle position and limped with it (ok, that may’ve been a bit of a weak play). Three other players entered the pot including the big blind who was already in. The flop came out QJ4. The SB and BB checked, and I checked as well, hoping the last player may take a stab at the pot with a position bet. He/she did not, however, so we saw another card. The turn was an A, and it put two of one suit on the board. The SB immediately bet the pot, so I instantaneously eliminated the one hand I thought could beat me, 10 K, because why would you bet the nuts in early position here?

That being said, I decided to raise anyway because I wanted to punish my opponent for drawing (I thought he was on a flush draw at this point). Even if he wasn’t drawing and had a made hand, I figured it must be a rag two pair, in which case I had a hammerlock on the hand. Long story short, we ended up all in on the turn, and he flipped 10 K. Nuts. Fantastic. No help came on the river and I was eliminated from the tournament.

Two things to take away from this example are:

1. Notice the fact that he was first to act. If you have an unbeatable hand with multiple players in the pot, especially more than three, you have an excellent probability that someone else involved in the hand got a piece of that turn. Many players like to play A X, in which case, they just hit their top pair. Why not let them bet out instead, in other words, let them do all the work for you. Let them commit themselves and their chips to the hand, and then raise them on the river when they are too deep in the hand to get out.

If you are worried about a flush drawer in this case, chances are that player will bet, and then you can pop him/her back with a check raise. Not only does this force the player to commit even more chips to the pot in order to hit a draw, it shows that player that your hand is really strong.

2. Knowing your opponent could be a huge help in this situation. I’ve made a note on this opponent so if I ever face the same situation again, I will know what to do. I had never seen this player’s betting pattern while in possession of the nuts, so I just assumed that he was like the majority of poker players who liked to be sneaky with the nuts. In other words, I was playing the percentages. If you are lucky enough to see what this player does when in possession of the nuts early in the tournament, you could very possibly save your tournament life by making a correct read and laying a big hand down later on in the tournament.

In this case, I overthought and his move paid huge dividends for him. Maybe I’m just blowing a bunch of smoke up your butt after all! In all honesty though, I do feel that while there might not be one correct way to play this type of situation, you tend to maximize your profits going the route of the slowplay.

I never really thought that this issue would come up when writing content for this poker site, but it has.

The issue is this: Why do online poker sites now insist on putting blackjack on their main lobby page, and why have I just now figured out how to avoid playing it?

Obviously me admitting that I can’t stop playing it sounds like a true addiction, however, I have zero desire to play blackjack if it is not staring me in the face. That being said, my addiction is only present when I’m on a poker site. I’ve finally figured out what it takes to stop playing this devilish black jack game, but it took me awhile to figure it out.
This is typically the way it goes down: I will buy in to a $10 SNG or something of the like. I will lose, and then find myself trying to win it back in two $5 hands on the virtual black jack table. Before ya know it, I’m down waaaay more than I should be all because I’m willing to put my ass on the line for a quick score that many times doesn’t pan out.

I\’ve found three ways to deal with this problem:

1. If there is a “hide blackjack” option on your toolbar, click it immediately so that icon isn’t tempting you every time you look at the poker room lobby.

2. Every time you think about putting $5 on a hand of black jack, put that $5 on a heads up SNG. Obviously it will take a little longer to win/lose the $5, but that is a good thing. First off, you are playing a game where you control your fate much more than blackjack allows you to. Secondly, you are getting better at heads-up play. Finally, you are using your time more wisely, because even if you lose, it\’s only $5. You could lose a ridiculous amount of money in that same time period playing blackjack.

3. Finally, if push comes to shove, before you put that $5 on a blackjack hand, spend it on something tangible instead. If you’re going to do spend the money regardless, it might as well be something that can be used on a regular basis.

This blackjack is driving not only myself but a lot of my other friends crazy, and I think that while it is understandable from a business standpoint why these poker rooms are diversifying, it’s a shame at the same time.

Good luck at the tables, poker tables that is.