How to Win at Online Poker

HOW TO WIN AT

ONLINE POKER Expert strategies for mastering the world’s hottest game

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INTRODUCTION

EDITOR’S LETTER

Dennis Publishing, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD Tel 020 7907 6000 Fax 020 7907 6282 EDITORIAL EDITOR Anthony Holden GROUP ART EDITOR Spike McCormack GROUP MANAGING EDITOR Peter Walker DEPUTY ART EDITOR Claire Hayter FREELANCE DESIGNERS Russell Clark , Sarah-Jane Mortimer, Mike Newson FREELANCE SUB-EDITOR Justine Harkness CONTRIBUTORS Roy Brindley, Rick Dacey, Nolan Dalla, Roland De Wolfe, Andrew NS Glazer, Phil Shaw, Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams, Dave Woods PUBLISHING & MARKETING PUBLISHER Richard Downey 020 7907 6488 COMMERCIAL MANAGER Emily Ford 020 7907 6349 CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Martin Belson 020 7907 6150 DENNIS PUBLISHING LIMITED MANAGING DIRECTOR Bruce Sandell CHIEF EXECUTIVE James Tye CHAIRMAN Felix Dennis Printed by BG Print Distribution by Seymour Distribution 020 7396 8000 Published by Dennis Publishing Ltd, a company registered in England number 1138891 Entire contents © Dennis Publishing Ltd licensed by Felden.

All email addresses are first name_surname@ dennis.co.uk

Safe gambling Gambling could be harmful if not controlled and kept in moderation and readers engage in such activity entirely at their own risk.

Dennis Publishing in no way encourages reckless gambling and it is recommended that readers who engage in gambling carefully monitor their activity and set financial limits.

Anyone concerned about problem gambling can contact GamCare on 0845 6000 133 or gamcare.org.uk for further information.

While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of editorial and advertising material no claims for loss as a result of any errors will be accepted by the publishers. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publishers themselves and are in no way intended to be relied upon.

Overseas hosted websites are not regulated

by UK legislation. Dennis Publishing can make no representation to readers of this publication as to the authenticity or conduct of the services advertised nor accept responsibility for activities relating to such sites.

This publication isn’t intended for persons under 18; it is illegal for such persons to engage in gambling activity (other than pool betting if aged 16 or over).

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EDITOR’S LETTER

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the poker revolution.

Right now, tens of thousands of people are playing Texas hold’em through the magic of the Internet, and if you’ve sampled the world’s hottest game you’ll know why.

PORTRAIT: JAMIE McGOVERN

It’s as intellectual as chess and as visceral as manhandling a snake, and offers the added bonus of huge cash rewards

The ‘Cadillac of poker’ is the most compelling and exhilarating game on the planet. It’s as intellectual as chess and as visceral as manhandling a snake, and comes with the added bonus of huge cash rewards if you play it right.

Of course, the fact that zillions of people are playing it means that zillions are practising too, which makes it more important than ever to have a firm grasp of poker skills and strategies before you venture into the world of competitive real-money play.

Remember, this isn’t blackjack.

Whatever anyone tells you, poker is first and foremost a game of skill – how else could the best players in the world keep winning year-in, year-out?

In these pages we aim to give you all the tools and knowledge you need to become a consistently winning player, whether it’s in cash games, tournaments or even just play-money games with your mates.

To make it as easy as possible, we’ve divided our expert tips and advice into three colour-coded sections: pink for beginners, blue for intermediate and black for advanced. Starting with the very basic rules and structures of Texas hold’em, we cover every key aspect of the game, from position play and bluffing right through to the intricate details of poker maths and psychology.

Enjoy the book, learn its lessons well and above all have fun. That, after all, is what it’s all about.

Anthony Holden Editor 7

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BEGINNER STRATEGY

Want to learn how to play poker with the best of them and make yourself a nice profit into the bargain? You’ve come to the right place…

Welcome to the first of our three colourcoded strategy sections. Here we’ll teach you the very basics of the game and give you all the skills you need to make the move to competitive real-money play.

First off you’ll learn the rules of Texas hold’em, as well as some basic strategies for beating it. From there, we’ll take you

through the most popular betting variants – limit, pot limit and no limit – and give you an insight into some key concepts such as position and hand selection.

By the way, online play is usually in dollars, so it’s this currency that features throughout this book. Read on and some of them could soon be coming your way…

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BASIC HOLD’EM TIPS

1.Buttons and blinds

In poker, dealing is far from a drag…

‘Position is key!’

It’s a statement you’ll hear over and over during TV tournaments, but it’s very rarely explained.

‘Position’ refers to your proximity to the button, a circular marker which represents the nominal dealer.

Online, dealing is done automatically, but the button is there to show who would otherwise be dealing, and moves one place to the left with every

hand. It determines where the betting or ‘action’ starts, as well as who must pay the blinds (two compulsory bets that are posted before the deal to instigate action).

You can find these – small and big blinds – to the left of the button.

The players on the blinds are the last to act during the first round of betting, but are the first to act in all subsequent betting rounds.

It’s universally accepted that you’re in the best position when you’re on the button, as you have the benefit of seeing everyone else’s decisions prior to making your own: to check, bet, raise or fold.

You’re also ideally situated to try to ‘steal’ the blinds, by raising and pushing the blinds to fold.

See page 35 for more information on blinds.

BASIC HOLD’EM TIPS

Basic strategy

Playing poker’s more fun when you’re winning, so take heed of these simple strategies and you’ll be hearing the rattle of chips before you know it WHAT DO YOU NEED TO PLAY WINNING poker? Patience and the ability to outwit your opponents are key attributes, but above all else, poker’s a game of skill. It’s the reason the same names win big year after year. Luck has nothing to do with it.

When you’re just coming to terms with the game, it’s simple to split players roughly into two camps: those who have the above attributes – patience, cunning and statistical strategy – and are lured back through the thrill of victory and financial gain; and the less successful players – invariably losers in the long run – who play for fun and in the vain hope of getting lucky. Get together a mixed table of the two and you’ve got a recipe for a fine game of cards.

Obviously you want to make sure you’re in the winning group. And, while you can’t completely remove the element of luck, you can maxim ise your chances by playing winning strategies.

Here we’ll take you through six specific elements that will improve your all-round game, starting with the basics of Texas hold’em. Also over the page are the poker hand rankings, as well as a bit of peace of mind when it comes to playing online.

If this all seems a bit daunting at this stage, turn to page 22, where we’ll go through the rules of hold’em in more simple terms, starting with the easiest format. Otherwise, follow these six basic guidelines and you’ll be on the road to poker success.

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BASIC HOLD’EM TIPS

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2.Playing position

Whether you’re the first or the last to act, there are a few simple rules to know…

When considering which hands to play and which to fold, the decision-making process invariably involves position.

Basically, the later your position the more likely it is that none of the remaining (yet-to-act) players have a sizeable hand.

Likewise, if you’re one of the first to act – in an early position – there’s a greater possibility of a powerful hand being among the players who have yet to be offered their option of folding, calling or raising.

Considering this, you should only call in an early position with a powerful hand.

The likes of 9-10 suited are nice cards to limp into a multi-way pot with in late position for example, but doing so in an early position is unwise and invariably costly. All it takes is one big raise from the players behind you and you’ve effectively just given them free chips.

Similarly, a hand such as AÚ-10Ú can be used to raise with in a late position as it offers a lot of value against one or possibly two opponents. If you’re a more aggressive player you might even see them as worth a raise in middle positions. But the hard and fast rule is that if you want to win you’d muck the cards at the early stages of a tournament as one of the first players to act.

Obviously these rules vary depending on how many players are left in. If you’re under the gun with only two other opponents you can call and raise with a lot less than when you’re staring down the barrel of a full ten-man table.

For a more detailed analysis on position play, turn to page 32.

3.Raising big What sort of hands do you need to get aggressive?

So, what’s a powerful hand?

It’s always good to see a pocket pair but you need to play them properly.

We can’t stress enough that it’s folly not to raise when holding a big pocket pair.

Pocket Aces are a favourite over any other single hand, but consider the following percentages:

pocket Aces have an 80% chance of prevailing against 6Ú-9Ú. However, throw in a J:-Q: and this drops to 62%. Stick two more random cards into the mix and the Aces are now favourite to lose. It’s ironic, but raising with Aces ramps up the chances of you taking on a player holding a

good hand while also increasing the possibility of heads-up action.

The latter point is vital if you want to avoid getting busted out.

You want to go against a good hand as your raise will create a pot worth fighting over and one that a player with a strong hand may well commit all

his chips to on a flop that shows promise. Big raises will often be called by the likes of pocket Jacks, who will love the look of an 8-high flop, or Q-K who will relish a Queen or King-high flop. In either scenario you could see all the chips going in with your opponent needing a miracle to survive.

You’ve been warned!

Don’t get too attached to the following hands – they’re trouble Any Ace: Next time you hold A-5, A-6, A-7 et al, stop to consider what the only people who will contest a raise will be holding. It’s simple: those with an Ace and a better kicker, and those holding a pair higher than your kicker. You’re a huge underdog and if an Ace doesn’t come along you’ll be reduced to bluffing to win the pot, and the chances of that working are not good.

‘They were suited!’ Way too much emphasis is placed on suited hole cards. Consider this: A…-Q; against 10…-10: is a 43.1% underdog whereas A…-Q… against 10…-10: has only a 2.6% better chance of prevailing. A lot of players think the added edge of suited cards is something like 20%.

Playing the likes of Q-4 because it’s suited is simply bad poker.

Never fall in love with a hand Forget the time you won a big pot with a certain starting hand – such foolhardy superstition is absolutely guaranteed to cost you a lot of chips and even competitions in the long run. If that’s your style stick to three-card brag.

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Is it safe to play online?

Don’t believe the hype – Internet poker is carefully monitored Yes, it is safe, so relax. Every major operator uses an independent auditor to review its software and check the randomness of the cards dealt. Some operators also allow you to set daily deposit limits for a 24-hour period, so you can’t come home drunk and max out your credit cards.

Collusion (where you team up with a mate and dump chips on him) is theoretically possible, but in practise you’re not going to last more than a couple of hands. Sophisticated software analyses your play history and instantly alerts the operator to any suspicious activity. By tracking betting patterns, card history, player combinations and final hands, collusion just isn’t going to happen and if you try it you’ll be banned from the site for life.

So, online poker.

Safer than a long row of big churches. In fact you can have a guarantee from us that if you lose money it’s either your fault, or the fault of a really bad beat. And that’s poker.

BASIC HOLD’EM TIPS

4.Tripping up How to avoid inadvertently helping your opponents Most players try to limp into a pot when holding a small pocket pair. That’s a fair enough play providing the blinds are small enough to get in cheaply. However, virtually every player will then check if they hit three-of-a-kind (commonly known as ‘trips’) on the flop.

Indeed, ‘trips’ is a big hand and trapping should get you paid off, but you have to bear in mind that by giving someone a free card you’re giving them the chance to draw to a winning hand.

Conversely, when betting a welldisguised huge hand your opponents

will never believe the strength you have. They are likely to be attracted by the amount of chips now in the pot, prompting a re-raise or an all-in move, especially by someone holding the likes of A-J on a J-3-8 flop… lovely jubbly when you’re clutching pocket 8s!

The best piece of advice is to mix up your play so that your opponent can’t ever put you on a certain hand. If you always check and re-raise, or always bet big when you’ve got a made hand you’re going to be easy to read and, as a result, easy to beat.

If not for your pessimism, things would have gone differently and you could have doubled up

6.Concentrate Pay attention – it will save you a packet down the track Now, you might not like this last bit but it’s true. If you enjoy doing other things while you’re playing you’re going to lose.

That’s because if you’re happy chatting or being distracted by Match of the Day you’re not concentrating on what’s going on around the table.

Poker can be a long-haul game and you need to have patience and be able to sit through hands you’re not playing, while still maintaining your focus on what’s going on around you.

Drift off and you’ll miss vital bits of

information that could win or lose you the game later on.

The good news is that most players, especially on the lower-stakes tables online, are remarkably consistent in move-making and basic play. The best players note down every characteristic and tell and that’s why they win consistently. Make basic notes when you’re playing and look out for the same players again. It’s easy to identify people’s mannerisms but you need to be constantly vigilant.

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BASIC HOLD’EM TIPS

The concise rules of Texas hold’em

5.Serendipity now!

Don’t know them? Here’s a lightning-quick guide to the world’s best game…

How to make a fortune... accidentally What? Good fortune? But poker isn’t a game of luck!

Let’s explain. Bad beats, for example, create a sense of pessimism. You’re going to get a period of play, no matter who you are, when your opponents seem to continuously hit miracle cards to win pots that were yours for the taking.

Consequently your game is affected as your confidence dips.

Conversely when everything’s going well – winning your coin-toss hands and filling your flush draws – the optimism such good fortune induces leads to a totally different playing style.

Here’s a basic example. You’re holding pocket Queens and an aggressive player raises into you.

You know this opponent is the type who will have some kind of strong hand and will not relinquish it should you move all-in.

With abundant confidence you’ll put a gun to your opponent’s head and move all-in.

However, if you’re on a bad run where you seem to continuously come out second best, you’re likely to just call and look for a flop with no Ace or King on it. With the way things are going, the flop will, of course, come King-high and

BEGINNER STRATEGY

you’ll pass to any bet. Naturally, the bet will have come from your opponent who missed with his A-J but sensed your weakness and lack of desire to get involved in a big confrontation and successfully preyed on it. If not for the pessimism, things would have gone entirely differently and instead of losing chips, you could well have doubled up.

Don’t get despondent when things aren’t going well. Unless you’re a natural born loser, luck will even out in the end and you don’t need to put yourself on tilt to try and reverse it – it’s a sure way of losing even more money.

Texas hold’em couldn’t be any easier.

The two players to the left of the dealer post the small and big blinds to get the betting started. (Blinds are compulsory bets you have to make to stay at the table, otherwise everyone would fold until they were sitting on a monster.)

Then everyone gets dealt two cards face down (known as the hole cards). From here, the first round of betting takes place, purely on the strength of these two cards, starting to the left of the big blind and continuing clockwise until everyone has matched the bet (currently the big blind but this can go up with a raise) or folded their cards.

Community cards Then a card’s burnt (to avoid anyone cheating by playing with a marked deck) and you get what’s known as the flop, the first three community cards, dealt face-up, that everyone can use to make

up their final five-card hand. There’s another round of betting, starting to the left of the dealer (or button), before the turn card, and another before the river and final round of betting. If there’s still more than one player left in, the cards are revealed and the pot awarded to the highest five-card hand based on the standard poker hand-rankings. More often than not though, rounds of hold’em are won without cards being shown.

Split pot In the case of more than one player holding the same hand, the kicker (or higher card) comes into play. Unlike other poker variants, you don’t have to play either of your hole cards, which means that if both kickers are lower than those on the board, the pot is split. Likewise, if a Royal flush is dealt as the five community cards, everyone who’s left in shares the pot.

Hand rankings – from the coveted Royal flush down to nothing at all Royal flush

The daddy of all hands, this is the best possible straight flush

Straight flush

A straight but with all five cards in the same suit

Four of a kind

Fairly selfexplanatory – four cards of the same rank

Full house

A pair and three of a kind

Flush

Five nonsequential cards of the same suit

Straight

Five cards in sequence but not suited

Three of a kind

Also called trips or a set

Two pair

Two lots of two, obviously

One pair

Any two cards of the same rank, the best being Aces

High card

When no one has a pair or better, the highest single card wins

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INTRO TO LIMIT HOLD’EM

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BEGINNER STRATEGY

INTRODUCTION TO LIMIT HOLD’EM

Deal me in!

A beginner’s guide to limit Texas hold’em

Want to play poker but don’t know where to start? Top poker expert Nolan Dalla’s guide to the easiest format – limit Texas hold’em – will put you on the right path SITTING DOWN TO A POKER GAME FOR the very first time can be a confusing, intimidating, even scary, experience. I’ve played over half a million poker hands during my lifetime, and while I’ve forgotten playing almost all of them, the one hand that’s still crystal clear is my first live poker hand dealt in a casino.

The year was 1983. Two months after my 21st birthday, I sat down in a $1/$4 seven-card stud game at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas. The line-up at my table appeared mighty tough. The men with faces of stone looked like they’d been playing poker since WWII. The women, mostly grandmothers living on retirement cheques, were just as intimidating. I was the youngest player in the game by at least a quarter of a century. It was a textbook case of the Las Vegas locals (them) feasting on a tourist (me). Shark bait.

I anted up 25 cents. The exact cards that were dealt were irrelevant, but I recall how one of the chain-smoking old-timers made it $4 to call, which was the maximum bet allowed at the table. I reached into my stack and, without any hesitation whatsoever, flung four $1 chips into the pot. They weren’t going to push me around. I’d show them!

‘Sir, don’t splash the pot,’ the dealer insisted. Splash the pot? What in the hell was he talking about? ‘Sir, place the chips in front if you intend to call, and I’ll rake them into the pot,’ the dealer instructed.

Sure – I knew that. Right. ‘No problem,’ I said, hoping that my first infringement of poker etiquette would go unnoticed.

I might as well have fired off a flare gun.

My opponent kept on betting on each

round and by sixth street I’d seen enough.

I folded, careful not to allow anyone to see my cards and the fact I had no business in the hand in the first place. I’d played one hand and was already stuck $17.25.

Around 30 minutes later, I was broke and stormed out, furious. Such was my first poker experience at a casino. What did I do wrong? Well, as you’ll find out over the next few pages, just about everything.

Your first ‘play money’ game When I first started playing poker, the Internet didn’t exist. If anyone wished to learn how to play poker in a casino, the beginner had to jump into the fire and get burned. But that’s no longer the case.

Now, with easy access to the Net and multiple poker websites to choose from, it’s much simpler to learn the rules and nuances of poker for absolutely nothing.

Here’s what you can do right now: download the free software on www. pkr.com and play for fun. Since you’re not playing for real money here, there’s really no such thing as making a mistake.

Go ahead and try a few crazy things, see what it’s like to fold, call, bet and raise.

Watch the betting action and notice how players are forced to act in turn. Notice that in limit games, the bets conform to a certain size on each round of betting.

I strongly suggest before you even think of playing poker for real, an apprenticeship in online play-money poker should be mandatory. There’s really no better way to build up your confidence. When you play online, no one knows who you are.

There’s no reason to feel any pressure or be intimidated – everyone was a beginner

Go ahead and try a few things; watch the betting and how players are forced to act in turn

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once. What’s more, most players at the playmoney tables are beginners and, best of all, you can play in the comfort of your own home without it costing a cent.

Your first ‘real-money’ hand Remember the story of my first poker hand?

Back then, I didn’t know the rules. I made the mistake of playing the first hand I was dealt. And I went bust after half an hour.

When you graduate from play-money to cash-games, you will find people play a little differently. At the low-limits most might still be having fun, but as you get better and play bigger, the opposition will take things more seriously. So if you want to join those who are aiming to make a profit, you’d better start out right. Here’s what I’d recommend for your game plan in your first session: Take your seat and wait for the blinds to come to you. Don’t post a blind in advance.

Wait patiently and watch the game.

Make a commitment that the first hand you play will be a very strong hand. Fold all

hands which raise any doubt. This means that you will only play a big pair or A-K. Throw everything else away.

Since you have already dedicated yourself to winning the first hand you play and are following the strictest starting-hand rules, odds are you should have the best hand when you finally do decide to play.

If you lose that first hand for any reason, continue to practise the strictest startinghand selection. Wait for a premium hand.

Trust me, it will come. Eventually.

If you are fortunate enough to win that first hand (not counting the blinds), go ahead and play more hands as you become more comfortable. Gradually, you will see what is happening at the table and will be able to pick spots where you can play more hands, and even make some raises.

Finally, don’t be influenced by what you see from your opponents. Quite frequently they will show so-called trash-cards and win big pots. Fact is, they got lucky. That happens in poker. But in the long run,

In a casino or online game, the house provides a dealer…

The basics: A crash course in limit Texas hold’em Texas hold’em is a deceptively simple game to learn, but difficult to master.

It’s surpassed all other forms of poker in popularity, leaving five-card draw, five-card stud and seven-card stud in the dust. The basic rules are as follows: Before the hand begins The first thing to observe is the location of the dealer button, which means that player will act last on all betting rounds except the first. The player on the immediate left of the dealer button is called the small blind. This player posts a small forced blind bet in advance of the hand being dealt. In most limit hold’em games, this amount is one-half the size of the big blind.

The big blind sits to the immediate left of the small blind, and is exactly two seats to the left of the dealer. The big blind places a full-sized bet in advance.

The remaining players do not ante, nor are they forced to place a bet before the deal begins. These players get to see a hand for free. After each hand, the dealer button rotates one spot to the left, thus assuring that every player plays one set of blinds during each orbit around the table.

How the cards are dealt Each player is dealt two cards, both face down. These are called hole cards.

They should never be disclosed to opponents, so protect your hand at all times. These are the only cards you will be dealt. Therefore, the most important decision you make in every hand is whether or not to play – which means either folding, calling, or raising.

The first round of betting After you receive two hole cards, there is an initial round of betting. Now you must decide if you want to play the

hand. The size of the bet is always a fixed amount. This means betting increments on these early rounds are the same as the amount of the big blind. For example, if you are playing in a casino game where the big blind is $2, it will cost $2 to continue playing the hand.

The other options are to fold (which costs you nothing) or to raise. If you decide to raise, it must be exactly double the amount of the big blind. If there has already been a raise, and you have a very strong hand, you may want to re-raise. This means you will bet three times the size of the big blind.

If you are the small blind, you have the option of completing the bet to stay in the hand (costing you just one-half a bet if there’s been no raise). If you’re in the big blind, you’re not required to place any more money into the pot on this round (unless someone has raised). A good poker player does not bet or raise very often – they are patient and wait, and throw most of their weak hands away.

The flop After the first round of betting, all the chips are pooled in the center of the table by the dealer. This is called the pot.

Only players who still have hole cards compete for the pot. Next, the dealer turns three community (shared) cards face up in the middle of the table. These three cards constitute the flop.

Now, you have a five-card poker hand – two hole cards and three flop cards. After the flop, there’s another round of betting.

The first active player to the left of the

button will act, and the betting progresses in a clockwise direction.

A good poker player does not bet or raise very often. They throw most of their weak hands away

The turn After the second round of betting, a fourth card is dealt and placed in the center of the table. This is called the turn card, or ‘Fourth Street’. The turn card means there are now six cards from which to make the best five-card hand.

Now the stakes double in size from the previous round. For example, in a $2/$4 game, the initial bet on this round will be $4. Again, the active player to the left of the dealer button is first to act, and the betting progresses around the table in clockwise fashion.

The river After the third round of betting, a fifth card is dealt and placed in the center of the table. This is the final card of the hand, called the river card, aka ‘Fifth Street’. The river card makes seven cards from which to construct the best fivecard poker hand. The stakes remain the same as in the previous round. So, in the previously mentioned $2/$4 game, the betting amount on this round will be $4.

Again, the active player to the left of the button is first to act, and betting progresses clockwise.

The showdown After the final round of betting, the best five-card poker hand wins the pot. If you’re in this long, you should be fairly confident you have the best hand.

Otherwise, why would you still be in?

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in the pot and the personality traits of all the other players at your table.

Position Most low-limit hold’em players and beginners fail to grasp the importance of where they’re seated at the poker table.

Other than the two cards you are dealt, it’s the single most important factor in your decision of whether or not to play a hand.

In general, the later you act on each round of betting, the bigger your advantage. So, if you’re the dealer, you see what everyone does before you act. Conversely, if you’re in early position, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. You must act first without knowing how your opponent(s) will react.

Turn to page 30 for an in-depth guide to position, but for now we’ll take a brief look at the impact of position in limit hold’em and what each category means to you:

…so a dealer button is used to indicate the player in last position

players who play inferior cards will lose.

Count on it. Better yet, sit in on their games.

Love them. Just don’t be one of them.

The blinds The small blind and big blind constitute a compulsory bet by the next two player to the left of the dealer. After the flop, these two players are the first to act. They’re in the worst position, since they have no idea what their opponents may have or do.

However, the blinds get to play more hands as they’ve already posted a bet and so will see many flops for free or one more bet.

Early position The player to the immediate left of the big blind is considered to be ‘under the gun’. This player has a gun to his head, since he is the first player to When to hold ’em and when to fold ’em decide whether or not to play the hand.

Imagine that two runners are to compete, Both this player and the player on his left and the first is given a significant advantage. are considered to be in early position. It’s Of course, that first runner recommended to play only would win a lot of the time. the very best starting hands Why? Because he enjoyed an from early position in limit Most edge during the entire length of low-limit hold’em, such as A-A, K-K, the race the other didn’t have. hold’em Q-Q or A-K. Now, let’s think of this in poker players and Middle position In a full game terms. For example, if the first beginners of nine or ten players (which is poker player begins with a fail to grasp fairly standard for most hold’em powerful hand and plays an the real games), players who are fifth, entire hand from start to finish against a second poker player importance sixth and seventh in the betting who has a much weaker hand, of position rotation are in middle position. which player will win most of the at the table While players here can play most of the hands listed earlier, they time? Naturally, the first player must also remember there are at will win – in the long run. least three more players to act This is why, obvious as it may behind them. Play tight in this sound, it’s critical to start off spot. Get more aggressive when you are each hand with good cards. In hold’em, the best starting hands are as follows: A-A, K-K, sure you have the advantage.

Q-Q and A-K (suited).

Late position This normally refers to the You should almost always play and raise last two or three players to act on each (and re-raise) with these four powerhouse round of betting. In a ten-handed hold’em hands from any position. Unfortunately, these premium hands don’t come very often game, the eighth and ninth players in the rotation are in late position. These players – usually about once every 60 hands or so. enjoy an edge over players who act before You can also play the following hands, but they’re not always worth a raise: J-J, 10-10, them because they get the added benefit of knowing what the other players have done, 9-9, 8-8, 7-7, A-Q (suited), A-K (unsuited). before being forced to make a decision.

The remaining two-card starting-hand Players in late position are also less fearful combinations are open to question. Whether of being raised, since most of the other to fold, call or raise with hands other than players have already acted. Late position these depends on several factors, such as players are able to play a much wider range your position, the number of players already

BEGINNER STRATEGY

How a hand unfolds You’re holding a very playable Q…-QÚ for your two hole cards. Do you fold, call or raise? Should you be jumping for joy or sweating bullets as the flop, turn and river come down? Let’s see…

The first round It’s time to raise and get some chips in this pot!

Pocket Queens is among the best hands you can hold before the flop, so you want to see some betting action and multiple callers.

The flop Nice. No overcards (cards higher than your Queens) means you’re probably in good shape. Keep betting, or checkraise if you can – unless you think someone already has you beat (eg, with J-J or A-A).

The turn Oh dear, the Ace is a scare card, as it gives anyone with a pocket Ace a higher pair (and remember, hands like A-Q and A-J are very playable).

Bet again if you want to show strength, but fold to heavy betting.

The river You’ve hit trips!

Beware though – anyone with 9-10 has hit a straight and there’s a heart flush possible too.

Drawing hands like 9-10 should have folded long ago – but what about A-A? Bet it hard and pray…

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BEGINNER STRATEGY

INTRO TO LIMIT HOLD’EM

of starting hands (unless the pot has already been raised), including any pair, any suited Ace, any two face cards, and most suited connectors (hands such as 6-7 of the same suit, or 10-J of the same suit are playable in late position without a raise because they have both straight and flush potential).

Dealer This is the strongest position in any hand. Even an unskilled poker player enjoys some intrinsic advantages by virtue of his position at the table when he is the dealer.

In essence, this is much like being the last bidder at an auction. Imagine having the ability to know everyone’s bid in advance before making your own. The dealer gets to see how every player acts on each round of betting and can then decide to fold, bet, raise or re-raise. More bluffing is done from the dealer position than any other.

So there you have it – enough of an edge, we hope, to ensure you don’t end up as shark bait the minute you test the water in the limit hold’em pond. But once you’ve caught the poker bug and have practised on the play-money tables at PKR, tested your nerve in live games, and generally become more confident about which hands are winning hands, you’re going to want to raise your game to the next level. Make sure you’re comfortable with all the basic material we’ve covered so far. Because from now on you have bigger fish to fry…

The evolution of (gambling) man Just as evolution pertains to nature, becoming a winning poker player is normally a slow, arduous process. There’s no way to turn a losing poker player into a winning poker player in a single day. There are no magic formulas or secret potions. Even if you read some of the highly acclaimed books on poker strategy on the market, implementing their ideas takes time, not to mention hours and hours of practice.

Nevertheless, there are some fundamental precepts, which – if followed – can accelerate the evolutionary process from poker loser to winner. Elaborating on the basic concepts we’ve already covered, here are three quick tips for intermediate hold’em players that will instantly help your game: Exercise better game selection The most important decision you make when playing poker is the very first one – deciding which game to play. Finding the best possible game for your bankroll and comfort level should be your top priority, instead of getting to the action as quickly as possible.

All strategic decisions that follow derive from the initial decision of whether the game is good or bad. A skilful player playing against equally skilful players will break even in the long run, while an average player playing against bad players will probably turn a profit. So even though the skilful player in this example is better than the average player, his earning potential isn’t as high due to poor game-selection practices. We’ve seen poker players spend more time

pondering what to eat at the dinner buffet than scouting the room for the best game.

The most important decision you make is the very first one – which poker game to play

Adapt to the table Make decisions based on the type of game you’re in and the tendencies of your opponents, not your own mood or frame of mind. It’s common to see players in mid-sized games come to the table with a certain mindset – to play tight, or be aggressive, or whatever their temperament happens to be for that session. Maximising earning potential requires you to first determine how others play and think, and then adapt to their style.

Very tight games may demand more bluffing and aggression, whereas wild games might call for simpler, more straightforward play.

Essentially, you should always be flexible and adapt your style to the game at hand.

Never forget position Recognise that as you move up in limit, position becomes much more important. In many small-stakes games, multiple callers routinely see every flop. This makes position less important than it is in games that are normally played with just a few players or heads-up after the flop.

Acting last is a decisive advantage in midsized games because you see what actions your opponents take before you have to make a decision. By contrast, acting first in these more challenging games is always a disadvantage, as most skilled players constantly keep the pressure on opponents who are out of position.

Advanced thoughts If you’ve made it up to the mid-sized games and you’re a break-even player, then congratulations! You might not realise it,

but you’re in the top 20% of poker players in this range. The fact that you managed to transform yourself from a losing to a breakeven player shouldn’t be taken lightly: if you’re a break-even player, you’ve obviously developed some useful skills and are in a position to advance even further.

As you advance, you must learn to think outside the box. This means experimenting with different strategies beyond just the fundamentals, such as starting-hand selection, tight-aggressive play, and other proven winning methods normally applied to small-stakes games. Conventional play isn’t good enough to beat most of the tougher games, so you have to go beyond a simple, straightforward approach.

One unconventional act is to scrutinise your opponents. To be successful, you must try to get into their heads and try to pick up patterns, tells and tendencies so you can predict what an opponent might do in a given situation. In short-handed play, the cards sometimes hardly matter at all, as the psychological battles between players can reach extreme levels.

For this reason, intimidation and table image are far more important in mid-sized games. Tough players who are winning chips are disastrous to play against. Bad players, whether they’re winning or losing, are always good to play against and must be harvested.

Mid-sized hold’em games are the continental divide of the poker world, economically speaking, as more players tend to play beyond their means. By comparison, small-stakes games rarely affect the financial status of the players in them. However, in a significant number of mid-sized games played at casinos, people

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INTRO TO LIMIT HOLD’EM

BEGINNER STRATEGY

Top tips for limit Texas hold’em We’ve got yet more advice on improving your limit hold’em play so you can become a true poker ace! Follow these tips and you can’t go far wrong Fold lousy hands!

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Why, then, do so many players get involved in pots with bad cards? Many otherwise decent players get attached to socalled trap hands, which end up costing them stacks of chips. About ten years ago, I tracked every single poker hand I played for 18 straight months, and then tabulated my results. I found that I lost more money with J-K off-suit than any other hold’em hand. When I think of a lousy hand, I think of J-K.

are playing beyond their means. This has dramatic consequences on the games in terms of players’ diversity of backgrounds, experiences, playing styles and skills.

The survival of the fittest As you move up, recognise that the skill differences between the players become increasingly negligible. At the top levels, they’re so small that most outsiders can’t really discern them. For instance, there’s a wide skill gap between the best and worst small-stakes players. At mid-sized games, these differences are less apparent. In big games with skilled players, though, table decisions are even closer (mathematically speaking) and more psychologically advanced. In the biggest games, the elite players ascend to a level of thinking akin to chess masters studying a board, always thinking several moves ahead.

Finally, if you’re really determined to win big money by playing poker, be a positive force in the game. It’s a good idea to make your opponents feel comfortable – by chatting, for example. No one likes to lose money, but if your opponent has a bad night but enjoys the game and playing with regulars, he’s still likely to return.

It’s a wonderful paradox that players who are outclassed and losing big will often remain in games for a long period as long as they’re having a good time. Far too many pros forget this and lose out on potentially bigger earnings because they drive away inferior opponents with rude manners.

Sure, Darwin talked about the survival of the fittest, but we don’t need to behave like Neanderthals – so always play poker like a gentleman, not a caveman. Good luck!

Assessing your opponents and their playing styles is top priority when you join a new poker game

In general, either raise or fold This strategy works – try it. If you’re not comfortable raising in many situations where you would normally just call, then don’t call. Perhaps you shouldn’t be in the hand if you aren’t confident enough to make a raise. Obviously, there are exceptions to this guidance, such as calling with drawing hands in multi-way pots, but the raise-or-fold strategy makes you an extremely troublesome person to play against – exactly what you want!

Respect kickers In limit hold’em, more pots are lost at the showdown because of kicker-trouble than any other clash of hands. This is especially true with Aces. An Ace with a small side-card is very tough to get away from when an Ace flops.

If you bet and get called in any spot, you can’t feel confident about your hand. Big cards with weak kickers are the proverbial ball and chain of limit hold’em. Unless you’re in the blinds in an unraised pot, or you’re acting very late and might steal the blinds with a pre-flop raise, don’t play high cards with weak kickers.

Blinds are a table toll, not an excuse to play more hands If you were to calculate the wins and losses from every single seat you’ve played in your hold’em career, you’d see that you have lost more chips in the blinds than in any other spot. Here’s a hint: don’t add to the losses. Blinds are the worst possible position to play from, and, against aggressive players, you’re at a huge disadvantage. If you can’t get in cheaply or re-raise with a strong hand, don’t get involved. Calling liberally from the blinds should only be done in short-handed games and against very

weak-tight opponents who may be susceptible to a bluff after the flop.

Bluffing is vastly overrated, especially in limit games Bluffing can be effective in tight games or against timid opponents. However, it should only be used selectively.

Once you get tagged as a bluffer, you can’t do much more with it. One thing to consider is that players remember bluffers. We all recall when we were bluffed out of a big pot. You probably remember the person who bluffed you. You don’t want to get tagged with this tactical albatross, because then you have to start playing showdown poker (that is, showing the best hand to win the pot), which means you have effectively become card-dependent.

Moreover, it’s rarely wise to try to bluff more than one player, especially when you’re playing limit games.

Be a Zen Master What’s a Zen Master, you ask? Zen is a Buddhist philosophy that encourages emotional tranquillity and acceptance of what has already transpired. Remember that bad beats happen to every single poker player. And, interestingly enough, bad beats happen more often to good players than to bad players. This is because the good players usually have the advantage – until fate intervenes, that is. The best poker players learn to accept tough beats as part of the game.

They recognise that losing control, or going on tilt, as it’s otherwise known, causes more losses at middle-limit games than anything else. Zen and the Art of Poker by Larry W. Phillips is an excellent read for all poker players who are struggling to balance out the bad times with the good.

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BEGINNER STRATEGY

NO LIMIT VS POT LIMIT

NO LIMIT VS POT LIMIT

Texas hold’em: No limit or Pot limit?

Different playing styles and strategies are required for pot-limit and no-limit poker.

We show you how – and when – to put your money where your mouth is…

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NO LIMIT VS POT LIMIT

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

IF YOU WANT TO PLAY POKER WELL enough to beat your average grandmother, you need to get to know the differences between the pot-limit and no-limit versions of the game.

No limit is very exciting to watch and easy to describe to new players. In fact, it is self explanatory: there is no limit to the amount you can raise. Pot limit, on the other hand, is slightly more esoteric.

The maximum raise in pot limit is the total amount bet by all players after you have matched the amount required to call.

So, if the blinds are $1 and $2 and nobody has bet yet, you can bet a maximum of $7 ($2 to call plus the total $5 on the table, made up of $3 in blinds and your $2 call, which is counted as part of the pot).

There are several other important differences between pot-limit and no-limit poker, not least the context in which they are played. No-limit Texas hold’em, variously referred to as ‘the Cadillac of poker’ and ‘the crack cocaine of poker’, owes its popularity almost solely to tournaments, the oldest and most prestigious of which is the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event.

When hold’em was first played in the United States, no-limit cash games were common, but they dried up quickly, as the top players soon took all the money. Basically, the pot-limit format was introduced to slow things down! Today, no-limit cash games are making a comeback on the Internet, although pot limit remains popular both in tournaments and cash games, and is often preferred by more experienced players.

If you’re playing either pot limit or no limit in a cash game or at the start of a tournament, there’s no reason for hasty action, as the blinds are low in relation to the total number of chips in play. You need to be playing mainly either hands that are very strong – such as A-A, K-K, A-K and Q-Q – or hands that can catch out less well-advised players, like small pairs that draw to three of a kind, and suited connectors (7:-8:, for instance) that draw both to straights and flushes.

Just how big the big hands need to be depends on the level of game you play in.

In a small game, other players may not even understand the importance of kickers, giving you a big advantage. In contrast, in the first few hours of the WSOP Main Event, the blinds start so small and the skill level is so high that many players would only risk all their chips pre-flop if they were holding pocket Aces.

If you’ve got a strong hand, use it!

The classic beginner’s mistake in big-bet games is to play strong hands too weakly before the flop, then put all the money in on the next (more expensive) rounds after someone else has made a better hand. Aces is the prime example here, as K-K and Q-Q can look weak when an over-card, such as an Ace, flops. Some players seem to think A-A is invincible, whereas it’s often a one-

way ticket to a disappointingly small win or a murderously big loss.

Pairs generally play strongly providing no over-cards or obvious draws come on the flop (for example, if you have Q-Q on a broken flop of 2:, 5Ú, 10…), but you will need to bear in mind that anyone with a smaller pair has a 15/2 chance of hitting three of a kind, and since poker is based on such odds, ensure you are not giving others an incentive to draw out on you. The way to do this is to raise by a sizeable amount in the first place.

In no limit, you can bet what you want, so the standard raise of three times the big blind or the pot could be a disaster if the blinds are still small and you run into the above situation against 2-2, 5-5 or 10-10. To avoid this, you might bet 10-15% of your chips – or more. In this way you maximise the action and minimise the risk.

Pot limit, by contrast, is still in many ways a drawing game where raises are restricted.

So if the blinds are small you might not be able to raise enough to protect A-A or K-K. In this instance, good players sometimes go for a check-raise in order to get more chips in, and play big hands slowly if they can’t get a lot of money in pre-flop.

The other strong hands in big-bet hold’em are of the A-K and A-Q variety. In tough games, A-Q has been called a trouble hand as strong, tight players only play or represent the very big pairs and A-K if they are not drawing, but if playing in loose, low-stakes, highblind or late-position situations, it is playable, as are A-J, A-10, K-Q and K-J. As with big pairs, you should raise enough in no limit to shut out draws if you feel your hand is initially the best. In pot limit you must bear in mind the ratio of a pot-sized raise to your stack size, so you don’t lose a lot of money to a draw. A-K needs to connect with an Ace or a King on the flop to be bet strongly, but you can still bluff if you think the other players are weak, tight or respect you for strong hands.

As the blinds go up in tournaments, the value of the weaker Aces and face cards rises and the value of drawing hands falls, so with few bets left, A-Q and A-J are certainly hands you can raise or move all-in with, as are big and medium pairs. The key here is that with weaker hands you want to be the one raising to steal the blinds and make others fold, and you want to do this before anyone else has made a bet. When raising in the late stages of a pot-limit tournament with a medium hand, you also need to be aware of how much of your stack you can get in the middle with a single bet.

Show me the money In pot-limit and no-limit cash games, since the blinds stay the same, money tends to change hands only when players make

BEGINNER STRATEGY

Know what you’re talking about Get to grips with these basic poker terms before you play the game

The classic beginner’s mistake in big-bet games is to play strong hands too weakly before the flop

■ Texas hold’em A poker game where each player receives two cards face down and must make the best five-card hand using them and/or the five community cards. Betting occurs after each of four rounds of dealing: 1 ‘Hole’ cards: A player’s two hidden cards that only they can use.

2 The flop: The first three community cards, dealt in quick succession.

3 The turn: The fourth community card, aka Fourth Street.

4 The river: The fifth and final community card, aka Fifth Street.

The winner is the last person remaining in the hand (if everyone else folds) or the person with the best five-card hand at showdown.

■ Pot limit/no limit In pot limit, you can bet anything up to the exact amount in the pot; in no limit you can bet anything up to your total number of chips. Beginners should also note that you can ‘check’ (meaning not to bet), providing nobody else has already bet on that round, and call, meaning to match the previous bet but not raise or fold.

■ Table stakes This rule, almost universally applied in modern poker games, dictates that a player cannot be bet off the table.

If a bet exceeds the amount a player has, that player is simply declared ‘all-in’ and entitled to see the hand through to the end. If he wins, each player involved in the hand will pay him up to (but no more than) the amount he has put in the pot.

■ Blinds Compulsory bets that get the action going. In poker, the cards are dealt and decisions are made in clockwise fashion from the dealer button. The person to the left of the dealer button posts the small blind and the next person the big blind (usually double the small blind). These blinds reflect the size of the game and form the foundation of each pot. After the first two cards are dealt, the person to the left of the big blind acts first; in subsequent rounds the person to the left of the button is first to act. In a cash game the blinds remain fixed.

In a tournament they are periodically raised according to a pre-determined structure to ensure the tournament plays down to one player.

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BEGINNER STRATEGY

NO LIMIT VS POT LIMIT

mistakes. Cash games can be played pot limit (favoured in casinos) or no limit (favoured online), and can be played with a lot of money on the table in relation to the size of the blinds (typical of casinos) or, conversely, can be played with relatively little (online). Basically, you need to adapt to the style of game you’re playing in.

Deep-stack, pot-limit games naturally tend to attract skilful players eager to exploit the novices who raise the pot to $7 from their $200 stack with Aces before the flop and proceed to put in the other $193 on the next rounds when they have fallen behind to a pair that made trips, or are in considerable danger from a number of draws.

No-limit games tend to be wilder and more volatile, with people raising and moving all-in frequently, which presents more opportunities to make quick money from bad players, but also loosens the constraints that stop you from playing drawing hands.

The standard of the game also has a massive bearing on the quality of hands you need in order to win big pots. For example, in a fast, loose, no-limit game you might tempt a short-stacked, inexperienced player to push all his chips in with a weak Ace against your A-K before the flop, whereas in a skilful, deep-stacked game it is common to only see money changing hands because of a powerful bluff and/or excellent call, or a clash of massive hands such as two players both making a full house.

The key to both pot-limit and no-limit hold’em is rooted in understanding the other players, the odds and how the amounts on the table relate to what you can bet at any given stage. The principal difference you should remember is the restriction on betting in the early rounds in pot limit, making it a more drawbased game, whereas in no limit you’re usually in a position to bet a draw out of existence.

To be a successful hold’em player, you should really try your hand at both formats to see which you prefer (starting out with play-money games at www.pkr.com). By playing pot limit you’ll learn the importance of drawing hands, which can, in turn, help you learn how to protect a big hand in no limit. Both games require a lot of skill and self control because any decision can be extremely costly.

If you can become a strong, disciplined player there’s limitless money waiting out there to be won – and a lot of fun to be had too.

The standard of the game also has a massive bearing on the quality of hands you need to win big pots

Decisions, decisions Some examples of how to bet in each betting format CASH Your hand: A-K (suited) Game style: Any Position: Middle Blinds: Any

TOURNAMENT Your hand: A-A Game style: Loose Position: First Blinds: 25 and 50

■ What do you do?

One player limps (flat calls), you make a raise and both the blinds and the limper call. The flop comes down A…, K;, 6;, and again you bet after the limper checks. Now the small blind calls, the big blind raises and the initial limper re-raises! What should you do?

A lot depends on how wild the other players are. Consider this as a deepstack, casino pot-limit hand and you have one set of options, while as a short-stacked, online no-limit hand you have a host of others.

■ What do you do?

Here, the format is of less importance.

Your primary concern is how the players behind you are going to respond to your play. Some of that can be determined by how much is at stake. Generally speaking, the smaller the buy-in, the looser the play will be, with more players willing to go all-in.

■ Pot limit Against good opposition, you might actually have to throw your hand away. The most likely hand for the limper is 6-6, as he called, then called again after you made a raise that was restricted to the size of the pot and two others came in. That player would then naturally check the flop, letting someone else bet the Ace or King and re-raising for a massive amount.

It’s likely the small blind has a weaker hand, as in late position he would raise with something very strong to protect the hand, and the big blind could have started with almost anything as he already had money invested and was getting very good odds to catch a well-disguised hand. The fact that he called could mean he has something along the lines of A-x of hearts.

■ No limit In a short-stacked, no-limit game, the format and mobility of your stack means you can raise 10-15% pre-flop should you wish to, so long as you think other loose players will call. You would hope to give a hand like 6-6 bad odds to call, so even if this loose player catches you, in the long run he will lose it back by calling with small pairs that fail to improve.

People often play hands like weak Aces and could call with any kind of flush draw. In a wild, short-stacked, no-limit game, you would often raise all-in to block out draws as far as possible and snare the second-best hands. Even if you end up losing, you have successfully protected your hand pre-flop. If the other players are so loose that they put money in with inferior hands, you should end up the winner in the long term.

■ Pot limit If you check and nobody raises you, the Aces are in serious jeopardy, as you’ve let drawing hands in and you can still only bet the pot. If you checkraise successfully, you may force players to fold, and also make them play more cautiously in future.

However, if you bet the pot, you are still letting people call with drawing hands for a reasonable sum, and if the maniacs only call, it’s likely more people will come in as the action moves around the table, since there are so many chips up for grabs.

■ No limit Here your problems are similar to the ones you faced in the pot-limit game, but if you can make a big raise of say $250 to $400, you may shut out any draws and suck in the players who call big raises. However, you also run the risk of everyone folding.

The answer here has little to do with the betting format and centres around how you play the Aces. You should play them in the same manner as other hands in order not to arouse suspicion. Pot limit is great for this, as making a pot-sized raise can mean a wide variety of hands. In no limit, you will need to be careful to bet similar amounts most of the time so as not to give away If the other the strength of your hand. players put Remember money in that if you have with inferior bet out strongly hands, you pre-flop, you should be can carry on the winner betting strongly in the long afterwards; but term if you try for a check-raise and fail, you will need to proceed with caution!

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HOW TO PLAY POSITION

The button gets to see what everyone else does before making a decision

ANYONE WHO HAS EVER WATCHED televised poker will know the dealer button is the point from which the cards are dealt clockwise, starting with the player on the button’s immediate left.

Obviously, this is where the dealer would be sitting in a self-dealt game. What, though, are the implications of this system and what does position actually amount to in poker?

Well first you need to understand the mechanics of the game. In flop games such as hold’em it’s relatively simple: the button always moves in a clockwise direction and the two players immediately to its left post the blinds, which are compulsory pre-flop bets that determine the minimum call or raise and guarantee there are always some chips in the pot to win.

Blind man’s bluff Hold’em almost always has two blinds – the small blind and the big blind – with the small blind being immediately to the left of the dealer button and usually half the size of the big one. In a cash game these will be fixed (for example, $1 or $2), and in a tournament structure they’ll rise at fixed intervals so that players are forced to act and the game reaches a conclusion. Whatever the format, the player to the left of the big blind (the ‘under the gun’ player) acts first pre-flop, and then the small blind acts first in the three subsequent betting rounds.

As such, the player on the button has the best position of all, as he’s the last to act of those who have not had to bet compulsorily pre-flop, and last outright on all subsequent rounds. In effect, then, the button gets to see what everyone else does before making a decision, which is a key advantage.

This means if you’re the button you have a number of options of which everyone else should be wary, and such an advantage can be just as important as the cards you’re holding. Particularly in no-limit or pot-limit games, it means you’re in prime position for bluffing, since if no one else gets involved in the Know your place hand, you can Positions in relation to the button: a brief guide… attack the blinds, In poker, the important seat placings 1 Small blind or re-raise players and positions each have names. The 2 Big blind who appear weak. more specific the name a seat has, 3 Under the gun In poker, it’s the more easily the player’s hand can 3-4 Early position important to be defined according to position. But 5-7 Middle position remember that remember, positions will change after 8-10 Late position you need a better every round of betting and after every 9 Cut-off seat hand to call with hand as well. Wait your turn!

10 Button than to raise with, and on the button you can often force others to fold pre-flop, particularly since they know you have this last option on three more betting rounds, by the end of which the pot could be huge. Moreover, when they do call, you need to bear in mind that a player who checks will often be weak, so you don’t even have to have a pair to try to move them off the hand.

At the other end of the scale, being under the gun is the worst position, as you have to

BEGINNER STRATEGY

act first pre-flop when your opponents are trying to spot how strong you are, and then early on in subsequent rounds if you continue in the hand. If you raise with anything less than a great hand, someone might re-raise or call and try to trap you. If you just call, you have lots of players behind who might raise and make it more expensive.

The best policy in this position is always to accept your limitations and pass anything that doesn’t look rock-solid against a full table. What this translates to depends on the game and the other players. In tough limit games, for example, a first-position raise might only mean A-A, K-K or A-K, and A-J or 8-8 might be hands to throw away, whereas in no limit, your implied odds and the element of deception mean you might raise with 8-9 or A-Q and call with a variety of hands. This last option depends on how aggressive your opponents are, whether you’re likely to see some cheap flops, and whether they’re going to make you pay a high price for being out of position later on.

Straight down the middle In middle position, you have a mixture of factors working for and against you, and pragmatism is often the most sensible path to follow. If no one acts first, you might raise in order to isolate the blinds, and continue playing aggressively if you ‘win the button’ by forcing everyone before it to fold so you are only up against one or both blinds (who may call simply because they already have some money in the hand).

Alternatively, if early-position players raise or those behind you call or re-raise, you might want to fold pre-flop, or at least play more cautiously afterwards. Anyone can get dealt a great hand, and your main advantage with position is being one step ahead in guessing what your opponents have and being able to exert pressure if they show weakness. If you don’t like the information you’re getting before the action comes to you, or if an opponent seems unconcerned by the pressure you’re trying to apply, it’s usually best to back off a little and even consider folding to a bet. You shouldn’t get carried away if you find yourself pushing against a brick wall. What follows are some scenarios using our ten-handed paradigm: Scenarios 1 A basic steal?

A no-limit hold’em (NLH) tournament, mid stages. Everyone folds around to the button who raises, as usual, to three times the big blind. Both blinds, who are tight and passive players respectively, fold. Did the big blind have a hand? Maybe, but on the other hand maybe not… This is a classic late-position play to use to keep yourself afloat midtournament, especially if there are antes in place. However, be prepared to beat a hasty retreat if someone re-raises you.

2 Get out of the way!

NLH tournament, early stages. A tight player raises under the gun to three times the big 33

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HOW TO PLAY POSITION

blind (BB). All pass around to the small blind who re-raises to 10 times the BB. Then the big blind goes all-in. Forget position – everyone here has been dealt great cards, but who has the Aces?

3 Youthful cunning or mere exuberance?

Pot-limit hold’em tournament, mid to late stages. Under the gun calls, a mid-position player raises the pot and another player calls. All fold back to under the gun, who now re-raises the pot. What should the other players do with good but not great hands here? Traditionally, most players would only check-raise in early position with Aces in order to get some money in the pot or trap someone. Nowadays, though, the new breed of aggressive player – and a few inexperienced ones – are lowering the bar and either trying to make this super-strength play with lesser hands (maybe A-K or J-J) to get it all-in or force others to fold. Or they decide that if they can’t see a cheap flop, they’d rather lump it all-in with a hand such as 9-9 than face a tricky one out of position.

A few enthusiastic souls have been seen making extravagant versions of this play with holdings such as 7-3 off-suit.

4 Critical mass or playing for laughs?

Limit hold’em, cash-game. All pass to the cut-off seat, who raises and is called only by the BB. The BB checks the flop and the cut-off player bets. What have you learned about their hands? Well, this depends on the stakes and the players, but in many instances you’ll have gleaned nothing, although you’ve learned a valuable lesson in positional limit hold’em play.

A late-position player will often raise with a variety of hands to steal or isolate, and the big blind who is getting 7/2 on his money will often call to look at the flop. If the big blind then checks it, the other player will bet nine times out of ten, as he might win the pot

there or at least make the big blind check the turn, offering the aggressor the chance of a free card on the more expensive round of betting. Because of the nondescript nature of the betting amounts, the raiser could have Aces or junk, and you’d have little to go on in the big blind. As such, the scare factor is particularly high, as you could get drawn into calling a series of bets.

Generally speaking, in low-limit games (under $5 or $10), play is much looser and softer, so players might bet, call and bluff here with anything. In mid-limit games (up to $50/$100), players may be much tighter and tougher and continue less. In highlimit games, where each bet is massive, the players often employ an ultra-aggressive strategy to confuse their opponents.

5 The turn check-raise NLH tournament, early stages. A midposition, solid-aggressive player makes a standard raise, which is called by the button and the big blind. On a flop of Q, J, 7, the blind checks, the aggressive player bets as might be expected, the button folds and the blind calls. The turn produces a blank and, once again, it goes check/bet, but then the blind re-raises all-in, after which the aggressive player thinks for a while and folds, while grumbling about his bad luck.

What did they have? Almost certainly, the blind had a good hand, maybe 7-7 or J-Q, or had read the other guy for nothing, and the raiser might have had anything from A-Q to a bluff and either surrendered the bluff or made a big lay-down, feeling trapped. The turn check-raise has this power, as it usually gets chips in the pot and doesn’t often mean a draw. As such, the odds of actually making a hand drop massively from flop to turn.

6 A flop story…

Pot-limit hold’em cash game. Most live cash games in the UK and many on the Internet

Most players would only check-raise in early position with Aces to increase the pot or trap someone

It’s important to remember you need a better hand to call than to raise with, and on the button you can force others to fold pre-flop

are played pot limit and with deep stacks, meaning several rounds of betting. As such, positional play is key, since your opponents can put all of your money in jeopardy by the end of the hand or make tricky check-raises.

With blinds of $2/$4, one player (let’s call him Tony) raises to $14 under the gun and gets three callers before the blinds, of whom the big blind calls the extra $10. This isn’t unusual: even if Tony has Aces, the others already have enough money on the table to call in late position and try to trap him.

The flop comes 7;, 6;, 2Ú, the big blind checks and Tony bets out $60 into the $72 pot, suggesting strength but not offering the others an open invitation to call or fold. Seat five folds, Ben in seat six calls, then David in seat seven raises the pot to the maximum of $252. The big blind folds. Tony calls the extra, as does Ben. The turn is the 9: and Tony checks as does Ben, then David bets all-in $500 into a pot of $1,008. Tony thinks and raises all-in and Ben calls all-in another $460. The river is a blank and Tony shakes his head, preparing to muck, and flashes QQ to his neighbour. David reveals 7-7 and Ben turns over 8;-10; for the nuts.

Tony had decided to bet out with a good hand in early position and try to force it through against a possible flush draw and slightly lower pair, only to find position his ever-increasing enemy. Ben had called preflop and on the flop, as he was getting decent odds with the suited connectors, and then the flush and straight draw against what looked like over-pairs or trips. David had 7-7 and tried to hit his set (as he did) and use position to drive the others out on a dangerous flop, where he had the best hand. Ultimately, though, he fell victim to the monster he had helped create. So Ben won a huge pot with an off-beat hand in the middle of two second-best hands that both thought they were ahead because of their position at the table.

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HOW TO PLAY THE BLINDS

BEGINNER STRATEGY

HOW TO PLAY THE BLINDS

Blind ambition PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

Giving away your money for nothing might seem rough, but you’ve got to know when to defend your blinds and when to avoid wasting chips on a losing battle

Most players defend their blinds far too often.

They fail to think the hand all the way through

BLINDS IN HOLD’EM SERVE A PURPOSE similar to antes in stud games: they create an incentive for a player to invest and/or attack. Without any compulsory starting money, there would be little incentive for an intelligent player to make the first bet, even with a very good hand. If everyone else folds, he’s won nothing. Without blinds or antes, the first bet is merely a target, and the other players could safely fold without an unbeatable hand.

By forcing the player to the dealer’s left to post a small blind (SB) and the player to his left to pay a big blind (BB – usually double the small blind), hold’em becomes much more interesting and fraught with action. Each hand begins as a battle for the blinds, and once that battle begins the pot

starts growing – and the reasons to play grow with it. Low-stakes games rarely end with the first raise; in high-stakes games, especially no-limit tournament final tables, the first raise often does end the hand.

Even though blinds serve a purpose similar to antes, they function quite differently. Antes are dead money. Anteing merely entitles you to receive cards; you still must make a bet to engage in the action. If you post one of the blinds, however, your chips count as a bet (it’s live). If you post the BB, and no one else plays, you win the hand. You won’t have won much – only the SB (which is usually half the size of the BB, although it can vary from one-third to two-thirds of its size).

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make getting involved in many other hands easier, because you’re getting to play for a discount price.

Making the best of a bad situation When, why and how you should play when you’re getting that discount is a widely misunderstood subject. Let’s start with a key principle behind correct blind play. Some situations are natural money losers, and the hands when you post the blinds fall into that category. If you had to post the BB on every hand, you’d get slaughtered: you’re in early position (bad), and investing chips before you see your cards (also bad).

Over the long haul, you will lose money on your blind hands – not every time, of course, but on balance. The key is to lose as little as possible, so you can make money overall by taking advantage of your premium situations, like when you sit in late position.

Let’s start with an elementary blind-play decision. You’ve posted the $30 BB in a no-limit hold’em game; your neighbour to the right has posted the $15 SB. Everyone folds around to the button, who decides to raise it to a total of $90 (a $60 raise). The small blind folds, so it’s up to you. Does this hand continue, or does the button win $45?

Over the long haul, you will lose money on your blind hands. The key is to lose as little money as possible

Understand the risks Assuming that you have a plausible starting hand (more on that in a moment), you have to then assess your risk/reward ratio, and to do that, you have to decide whether you’re going to try to win the pot by calling and then winning on the flop, or by raising and trying to win right away.

Say you’re playing in a casino and raising will cost you $60 plus the amount you raise.

Let’s say you raise an additional $180, a total bet of $240. The tricky part is to understand what you’re trying to win with your raise: you’re trying to claim only $135.

Some people mistakenly think that after their call, their raise is giving them a shot at a $195 pot (in other words, thinking that their $180 raise might buy them $195). They’re wrong: the pot only becomes $195 after they call. The $240 bet is a shot at money already in the pot, and that was only $135 when the move toward it was made!

There’s a mighty big difference between risking $180 to win $195 and risking $240 to win $135. The first play doesn’t even have to succeed half the time to be profitable. The second has to work 64% of the time just to break even (actually a bit more than that when you take into account the rake).

The maths changes when you try to win by calling and then making a decision on the flop. Your $60 call cannot win the pot.

All calling does is give you the right to make a play later in the hand, and that will necessarily mean risking more money then.

If the flop is favourable enough, it might not be much of a risk; if the flop is unfavourable,

your money may be gone and your only remaining chance will be an opportunity to lose more.

Your $60 call creates a $195 pot. If you assume that you will only make a move at the pot when the flop is favourable (good players’ actions are more complex than that), you can call – in a purely mathematical sense – if the flop will be favourable 30.8% of the time (60 divided by 195). Whether hitting a flop is easier or more difficult than that depends to some extent on your hand, and to some extent on how easy or hard it is to outplay your opponents on the flop. How well you think you can get paid off when you hit your hand also makes a huge difference, and, remember, it’s much harder to get paid off handsomely when you’re acting out of position – and that’s exactly what you’re doing when playing from the blind.

Defending blinds ain’t easy – no matter what the game In a limit poker game, it initially seems easier to defend the blinds because the investment odds are usually better. The player on the button can’t raise as much as he can in a no-limit tournament, so you don’t face as much immediate pressure.

The problems in analysing limit poker defense don’t end there, though. It’s much harder to win the pot with a re-raise, because the amount you’re re-raising isn’t enough to knock out someone who had raised from the button; even if he was stealing, he’ll usually call and look at the flop.

Similarly, when you get a favourable flop, you can’t usually win it with one bet. You’ll have to risk seeing a turn card also, and make a second bet. In limit poker, the raiser can’t put as much pressure on you, but you can’t put as much pressure on him. You’ll probably have to attack him twice, and be out of position each time.

That’s why even though the relative cheapness makes it first appear easier to defend the blinds in limit poker, before the hand is over, it winds up being probably just as hard as in no-limit or pot-limit. You face a different collection of problems. Playing the hand out of position on the flop, turn, and (if you get that far) the river is a huge disadvantage. Each betting round, you’re going to have to act first. Your opponent will have more information than you when it’s his turn to act, and that’s very bad news.

Position is all-important Suppose you call and you do hit the flop. Do you bet? If you do, your opponent still has most of the power and options. If his hand missed the flop, he might concede, and you’ll only win the money that was in the pot to start. If he hit the flop too he can raise,

and now where are you? Should you call a re-raise? The problem will become even more troublesome on the turn. You bet the flop, but your opponent didn’t go away.

Assuming the turn card doesn’t help you, where do you go? Do you bet again, hoping to scare your opponent off? Do you show weakness by checking? To win the hand playing out of position is far harder than most people realise. Worse still, when you do win, you usually win much less than you could have won if you had been the final player to act, rather than the first.

Because of the position problem, most players defend their blinds far too often.

They see they already have some money invested, and are getting a discount on their call, but fail to think the hand all the way through. They may be getting a discount,

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HOW TO PLAY THE BLINDS

guideline like, ‘You should defend your blind 31% of the time,’ but alas no such rule exists, because how much defending you need to do is a factor of how much attacking the other players do.

Some defendable hands are obvious, however. If you get dealt a big pair or A-K or A-Q suited, your hand practically plays itself.

If you won’t re-raise with those hands, then you’re probably too timid to play winning poker full stop.

Unfortunately, you won’t be dealt these strong hands as often as you need to defend your blind, so you’ll need to select some other hands to defend with. Choosing the right hands is very important, and many players instinctively make the wrong choice.

Even though A-4 is a better heads-up hand than J-10, you’re much better off defending with the J-10. Why? On many occasions when a late-position player attacks, if he has an Ace, it’s a big Ace. That means that if you get the seemingly good flop of A, 9, 5, you might wind up losing a fortune to someone who was raising with AK. Even though Aces and Kings look like excellent defending cards, unless you have a strong kicker, you run too much risk of finding yourself in a dominated hand position.

A hand like J-10 is less likely to contain the same key cards as your attacker’s hand.

If an Ace hits the flop, you can get away from your hand. If the flop comes 10, 4, 2, the player who raised you with A-Q has nothing – and it’s far more likely that a lateposition raise will come from someone holding two big cards than from someone holding a big pair.

As a result, unpredictable but potentially useful hands like J-10 or even 5-6 are probably better defending hands than something like A-2 or K-3. If you play A-2 and an Ace flops, you’ll only get action when your hand is in big trouble. If you play something unpredictable like 7-8, you might but they’re getting a discount on damaged goods. Efforts to show you can’t be pushed around in the blind can be very costly. Most players would win much more (or lose much less) if they defended their blinds less.

Because good poker advice is rarely black and white, you shouldn’t turn into an easy target every time you hold the blind. If you don’t defend at least occasionally, you can be certain you will be attacked every time, and that will cost you more money. The occasional call, or better still the occasional re-raise, will alert the late-position players that your blind is not free for the taking.

Picking your spots Given that you must defend sometimes, what sort of hands should you defend with?

It would be nice to give you a simple

BEGINNER STRATEGY

wind up crushing someone who raised from late position with A-K when the flop comes A, 7, 8. You can also win pots from A-K raisers who are afraid to slow down when the flop comes 8, 3, 2. You’ll pay dearly if the raiser held K-K, but again remember that late-position raises are more likely to come from players holding two big cards than from a big pair. Naturally, if the raiser held K-K and the flop comes 8, 8, 3, your call with 7-8 puts you in position to win a huge pot from players who don’t expect you to be holding an eight.

How many are lining up to hit you?

The next important point to consider when defending your blind is in a sense a variation on the pot-odds question: how many people have attacked so far?

If you’re playing a limit game and a midposition player raises to $60, and three players flat-call that raise, the first thing you should do is realise you’ve found a good game, because flat-calling two bets is usually a weak play. If your hand is strong enough to call two bets, it’s likely that it is strong enough to take the initiative to make it three bets.

Let’s leave the juicy game issue aside, though, and realise that the multi-player situation changes your pot odds considerably. With four players in for $60 and a folded $15 small blind, the pot contains $285 when you ponder putting in the extra $30. These pot odds are so wonderful that you can call with almost any hand; you could even call with something as woeful as 3-2 (but not 7-2 – against multiplayer fields you definitely want hands that can make straights or flushes).

Most of the time, your weak hand will be worthless on the flop, but when you do hit it, the rich pot tends to get richer: players will stay in with you, chasing for the size of the pot, and instead of $285, you’ll probably win $500 or $600 in a limit game.

In a pot-limit or no-limit game, your speculative holding can easily bust someone who makes the mistake of forgetting that Texas hold’em is not a twocard game, but a seven-card game.

Golden rules for playing from the blinds It doesn’t have to be the blind leading the blind. Here’s why…

Most players defend their blinds too often, but you must defend often enough to ward off automatic attacks.

It’s easier to defend your blind in a limit game or in a multi-way pot, because you are receiving much better pot odds, but that still doesn’t make playing the blinds a winning position.

Most players fail to recognise the huge inherent weaknesses involved when playing the remainder of the hand out of position; a decision to defend

involves consideration of what will happen on all future betting rounds.

Defending doesn’t just mean calling – and attack is often the best form of defense. It is more often than not correct to defend with a raise, especially against weaker opponents.

When selecting hands to defend, be wary of hands that are likely to be dominated, like Aces or Kings with bad kickers. Look more favourably on connected middle cards or small pairs.

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SIT-AND-GOS

SIT-AND-GO STRATEGY

The need for speed

They offer good odds of making money and are so fast you’re in and out within the hour. Sit-and-go tournaments are all the rage online, so here’s a quick primer on how to beat them Sit-and-gos are popular for good reason.

For starters, you know that the game isn’t going to last for hours, which makes it perfect if you’ve got a job and/or a nagging partner. Make it to the end of a ten-man sit-and-go and you’re looking at around an hour, maybe more if you’re sitting with tight players, but often less if you get sucked into a loose game where chips are flying everywhere from the off.

In the money With prizes allocated to the top three finishers (typically 50% of the prize money for the winner, 30% for second and 20%

for third), you’ve got a good chance of finishing in the money if you play a solid game. Compare this to the vast multi-table tournaments where the returns are much higher but where it’s feasible to go on a winless run for months.

They’re also a safe way to play your poker.

In ring games you can haemorrhage cash in a hurry. With a sit-and-go you know exactly how much you’re risking in a single session.

More importantly, though, a lot of poker players simply have a style that’s ideal for the sit-and-go format and can reach prize-paying positions with remarkable consistency.

Follow these tips and it could be you.

1. Early Doors

Sit tight in the early stages and only get involved if you’ve got the nuts The last thing you want to do is start off hell-bent on playing every hand and acting like a maniac. You often see people going all-in (and hence all-out) in the first few hands of the game, when the blinds are low and not worth stealing.

Take it easy and hope that you run into that maniac. If you do, the best idea is to let him steal the small amounts at the start and wait for the chance to win your money back and more when the blinds go up. By then, you’ll have lulled him and the rest of the table into a false

sense of security with your tight play.

What sort of hands should you play at this stage? A lot of people argue you should get in with hands like suited connectors, hoping to fi ll a big, even nut, hand that’s disguised enough to pay handsomely. However, when you get action with your 8-9 suited you could find yourself in trouble. Ultimately, there’s no reason to make moves at this point and play too many hands. Instead, play tight and avoid big confrontations unless you’ve got a made hand.

PHOTOLIBRARY.COM

The game isn’t going to last hours, which is perfect if you’ve got a job and/ or nagging partner

SIT-AND-GOS, OR MINI-TOURNAMENTS, have become one of the most popular online poker formats. To join in, all you have to do is sign up at the level of your choosing (anything from $1 up to $1,000), and then wait for the other seats to fill up (that’s the ‘sit’ part) and you’re off!

It’s a fast and fun format, and plays almost identically to the poker you might have seen on television. Shows like Late Night Poker sport six people, with equal chips in and blinds that rise at regular intervals. The game’s the same online, although most sit-and-gos start with ten players, which requires a slightly different tactical approach.

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SIT-AND-GOS

BEGINNER STRATEGY

Got no time?

Try out shorter sit-and-go variants but approach these with caution…

Short-handed If you fancy a quicker, more aggressive game you have the option of playing shorthanded sit-and-gos with as few as five or six players. You’ll need to modify your strategy in such games, as you’re effectively plunged straight into the middle stages of a standard sit-andgo, but with small blinds. With fewer players, hands increase markedly in value, which means there’s going to be a lot more betting and raising with weaker hands. Be prepared to get involved in more pots and be more aggressive – or stick to the tenman tables.

2. Middle Stages

With a few players eliminated, it’s time to start changing gears All being well, after a few levels of play the bad players will either have been eliminated or taken out better players and ended up with a sizeable chip stack.

Either scenario is good for you. The latter is ideal, as the big stacks are now the fish that will pay you off in the long run. By now, you should have been identified as a tight player who only commits chips when holding a premium hand. And if you’ve hit a few hands and been paid off, there’s no reason to change your style at this point.

If, on the other hand, your stack is below average, it’s time to change gears and employ some aggression. Naturally, you need to control this. Turn it on when you’re in position to attack the blinds, as they should now be worth stealing.

Before long, you should get back into the comfort zone.

Never forget the basics of tournament poker though. Play big hands as well as poor ones and be aware of the power of your chips in relation to the average chip stack and the size of the blinds.

Turbo tables You’ve got about 15 minutes to spare and you’re desperate for a game of poker.

Instead of facing the fact that you’re in need of help, you tackle a turbo table, where blinds increase rapidly and you’re only given a few seconds to make your decisions.

Far be it from us to put you off playing cards but you should remember that these conditions aren’t conducive to skilful playmaking and it’s skill that gives you an edge.

Spend your 15 minutes re-reading this piece instead!

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3. End Game

With just four or five players left it’s time to go on the attack!

At this point in the tournament you’re tantalisingly close to the cash, and two big factors come into play. Firstly, hand values increase dramatically. Hands like A-10 are now huge. Secondly, you can prey on your opponents’ desire to make the prize-paying positions, as nobody wants to go out on the bubble.

At this stage, it’s extremely hard for anyone to call an all-in with no hand.

And since the ‘no hand’ scenario is going to apply to most players most of the time, pre-flop exploitation is now by far the best way to accumulate chips.

If you can identify a player who’s nursing his chips with a desire to simply make the money, start religiously raising his big blind. Similarly, the big stacks probably won’t mind losing some blinds while the smaller stacks battle it out, so this is another potential victim to exploit.

The only ill-advised play is ‘fearless calling’, which is never a good idea.

You’ve probably got the message by now: the later in the game, the more aggression you should show. You’re not going to get paid off by waiting for big hands now, so get those chips in!

CHECKLIST 1 Avoid playing marginal hands in the very early stages 2 Avoid confrontations over minuscule pots as these can escalate into major pots with relatively small hands to back up your investment 3 Always try to maintain a stack that is healthy in relation to the blinds

Raising the stakes

Short-stack and big-stack play

Because bigger fish swim at the higher stakes tables too

We all know what happened when David met Goliath…

You can play sit-and-gos at whatever level you’re comfortable with, but when should you make the move to a higher level? Are you better off playing two $10 sit-and-gos, or one with a $20 buy-in? Or should you gamble on your ability to win a $10 table and use the proceeds to play a single $50 table?

There’s a general misconception that the standard of poker play increases in direct correlation to the cost of the game but, in a lot of cases, the exact opposite is true. Players tend to gamble within their means, so those on low-stakes tables are often unable to lose much, and thus play very well/ tight. Conversely, you often find rich folk at high-stakes tables who simply want the buzz of a big game.

It’s worth a trawl around to test the theory but, clearly, the one thing you do not want to do is go broke, so don’t up the stakes until you’re happy your bankroll can sustain an unwelcome losing run. It happens to everyone.

Big stacks are always preferable to small stacks, but they have far less influence in a sit-and-go, where blinds rise quickly and come around frequently as players are eliminated. Big stacks can soon diminish and short stacks can quickly get themselves back into contention.

Somewhere in that mess you have to improvise and strategise. For example, if the blinds are $400/$800 and you’re down to $1,350, you have to realise that the big blind is invariably not going to fold to your all-in and will call with almost any two cards regardless of his stack because of the pot odds he’s getting and the chance of knocking you out. Conversely, as chip leader you need to remember that anyone with a very short stack is almost impossible to bully as they need to double up.

Therefore, strategy is key and movemaking has to be selective. As a rule, it’s best to target players with similarsized stacks to you, as they have just as much to lose.

4 Raise your game during the middle part of the competition when the action speeds up 5 Avoid flatcalling in the latter stages of the game and show some aggression 6 Never break any of the above rules!

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ONLINE STRATEGY 101

Always follow the double/half bankroll rule – when you double your initial stake, cash in 50% of your profit

BASIC TIPS FOR ONLINE PLAY

Online strategy 101 Need some help getting to grips with online play? Follow our expert tips and we’ll transform you into a cold-blooded poker killer – and all from the comfort of your own armchair…

IT SCARCELY NEEDS TO BE SAID, BUT online poker is a very different business from live play. It requires a different attitude, a different level of awareness and a different set of weapons if you want to dominate it.

These are dangerous waters, and many an unwary minnow has entered them unprepared, only to be chewed up and spat out by the various sharks lying in ambush.

To help you avoid this fate, we’ve set out some simple tips and pointers for success in the virtual world – so you too can start working your way up the poker food chain.

what’s the point of playing for free? Since nothing’s at stake, no one plays properly and I won’t learn anything but bad habits. Not true. Loads of people are doing what you’re doing – playing for free for the purpose of learning. And beyond this, you’re not even dealing with strategy yet. At this point, you’re just trying to master the look and feel of it all.

So play your best, and don’t be surprised if you go ‘broke’ and have to reload your free money many times until you find your feet.

Surely it’s better to lose fake money than real money any day.

Play for free first It may gall you to hear that a sharp cookie like yourself won’t be ready to dominate the game just by showing up and flashing your brilliance, but the fact remains. As we’ve established, Internet poker plays radically differently from the real-world version, and even seasoned casino players may find themselves at a loss. The pace of play is faster – as much as ten times faster. Visual tells are absent (though sites such as PKR are attempting to remedy that). The whole mechanism for sizing bets and moving chips into the pot is different. And that’s to say nothing of learning to take all of your poker information from your computer screen as opposed to a cardroom or casino.

As a result, it’s imperative to clock up plenty of hours on the free-play option of your chosen site until it becomes second nature. We know what you’re thinking –

Play small, play smart Once you’re comfortable with an online poker site and have mastered its mechanics, you’re ready to play for real cash and to embrace the main rule of online poker: DON’T GO BROKE! Ideally, money should flow from the online poker site into your bank account. If it’s going the other way, even in small amounts, you’re doing something wrong and you need to adjust.

To preserve your bankroll, never put more than 10% of it into play at any one time. That may sound unreasonable, but it’s the only way to go. If you’ve only got $100 in your account, then sorry, you need to find a game or a tournament small enough for $10 to be adequate funding. One bad session, even one bad hand, can destroy an overdeployed bankroll. Safeguard yours by following the double/half rule – whenever you double your initial stake, move 50% of

your profit back to your bank account. This is a good way to make sure that you get something more out of your online playing experience than just a lot of killed time.

Stick to the plan Because online poker is always there, it’s easy to fall into the habit of just playing a few hands whenever you have a few spare moments. The real problem with this habit is that it has no ‘exit strategy’. You can easily fall prey to ‘One More Hand Syndrome’, where a few hands turn into a few hundred and, if you should happen to have a bad run, a short session can turn into a protracted and catastrophic game of catch-up.

Many players sensibly deal with this problem by playing only scheduled tournaments or sit-and-gos, and using the end of the tournament as a cue to end their session. Whether you choose tournaments or cash games, every time you sit down to play, you should know what game you’re going to play, at what level and for how long. If this means setting an alarm, set an alarm. Above all, when you’re running bad, run away! If you find yourself jumping from table to table or site to site in search of that one ‘get well’ game, you’re probably heading downhill fast.

Switch off the telly Your plan for online play must include eliminating all distractions. With so little information coming at you from the small screen, it’s easy to lose focus and let your mind wander to the television, the radio or that tasty single malt you’ve been saving.

Of course, your efforts to maintain focus may get you so tuned into the game that you play too many hands – this is a common consequence of online play. Further, since you’re ‘only’ playing for numbers on a computer screen and not for real chips that you can touch and hold, it’s easy to feel no pain when you lose. Compound all this with the accelerated pace of play and you’re looking at online poker’s biggest pitfall, expressed as maths: distraction + alcohol – discipline x pace of play = disaster.

The only way to avert this pitfall is to treat the ‘game’ of online poker with unwavering seriousness every time you play. Anything less is a recipe for poverty.

Don’t double-dip What many players love about online play is the ability to play more than one game at once. They even justify this by saying their hourly win rate goes up by seeing more hands. This may be true for some (usually full-time pros), but not for most.

Making simultaneous decisions in multiple situations against different line-ups when time is of the essence can only lead to lapses in judgment, ill-considered actions and mistakes.

Most people who double-dip say they’re doing it to maximise their profit. They’re really just doing it because they’re action junkies. Ask yourself: Isn’t 100 hands-anhour enough for you? And wouldn’t you be

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

BEGINNER STRATEGY

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ONLINE STRATEGY 101

BEGINNER STRATEGY

Playing on a site like PKR can be great fun, but you still need to approach it with discipline

CHECKLIST Follow these six simple rules and you’ll be an online champ in no time 1 Eliminate all distractions and focus on beating the game 2 Protect your bankroll by never putting more than 10% of it in play at once

People who play more than one table say they’re maximising profits, but they’re really action junkies better off playing one game perfectly than two or more games carelessly?

Beware short-handed play The same need for action that leads to double-dipping also leads many players to short-handed play, where the wait between hands is brief or – in the case of heads-up play – non-existent. Trouble is, sharks abound in these shallow waters. If a superior foe has you in his sights and has you in a shorthanded situation, you’re asking for trouble.

There are a few things you can do to solve this problem. One is to shore up your shorthanded skills so that you can hold your own in this situation. The other is to keep good written records (we call this a book) on all your foes so that you’ll know if you’re facing a shark short-handed. Above all, if you find yourself out-classed, out-gunned or outthought, don’t let pride or ego keep you in

3 Protect your profit by cashing out 50% of your winnings when your bankroll doubles the game. Get out before the situation spirals out of control.

Don’t go into financial freefall When playing online it’s easier to lose fast than to win fast – and it’s easy to see why.

Big wins require a rare combination of luck, skill and loose play from your opponents, whereas explosive losses require only a moronic convergence of your own bad focus, bad discipline and bad attitude. In live games, the languid pace slows everything down, including tilt or flawed judgement. The online pace of play can rip open a tiny leak in your game and turn it into a torrent in an instant. Internet poker, then, requires that you always be self-aware and disciplined enough to get out of your own way! If you can’t do this, your bankroll will be punished.

Take the game seriously and eradicate selfindulgence on the other hand, and online poker will prove a highly profitable venture.

4 Play just one game at a time, because even a second game can be a distraction from the first 5 Don’t play for more than recreational sums until your track record absolutely proves you’re a winning online player 6 Always quit when you’re losing

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY Now that you’ve got some basic skills under your belt, it’s time to go one step deeper. Here’s where we separate the Aces from the jokers…

CONGRATULATIONS! BY THIS STAGE you should have a good grasp on the rudiments of Texas hold’em – position play, blinds, betting structures and more.

Here’s where it really gets interesting.

You’re now ready to delve into some of the more complex and esoteric skills involved in

the game, such as correct hand selection, bluffing and calculating odds. We’ll also look at various strategies for cash and tournament play, and explore the concept of online tells (yes, they do exist).

Your path to poker mastery lies before you, so read on and all will be revealed.

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

BLUFFING

Each player is a riddle waiting to be solved in order to come up with the right plan of attack Clockwise from above: 6-2 in the hole but you play it like it’s K-K… and take it down without a fight. Pure class…

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BLUFFING

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bluff THE ART OF BLUFFING

In the

Clever bluffers can leave you feeling naked – like they’ve seen right through you.

Pay attention as we show you how to avoid being caught with your trousers down

THE MOST FAMOUS ASPECT OF POKER – but also the most misunderstood – is bluffing. From the glamour of Hollywood films to the many myths surrounding famous players, bluffing is a key element invoked to describe poker – a romantic fantasy of getting something for nothing, living off your wits, infallibly reading an opponent’s tells, and, of course, winning in situations where you have exactly the same chance as your opponent if the cards were all face up.

Of course, this isn’t quite the case. As in physics, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction, there’s a whole flip side to bluffing that poker players must understand, whether they’re calling a bluff and winning with next to nothing, or inducing an opponent into thinking he can steal the pot with a big raise and a garbage hand.

As we’ll see, these are the essential dynamics of poker. They’re also what makes it exciting to play, as the momentum swings back and forth and players strive to push things in their favour, all the while knowing they can overdo it at any time and end up having the opposite effect.

Horses for courses…

Poker is a game of people as well as probabilities, and each player is a different riddle waiting to be solved in order to come up with the right plan of attack. Since bluffing is one of your main weapons, it’s crucial to know not only the different types of bluffs at your disposal (see the ‘Know Your Bluffs’ box over the page), but also how, when and if to use them against different types of players.

As explained in Alan Schoonmaker’s seminal book The Psychology Of Poker, most players can be characterised in general terms along sliding scales of loose to tight and passive to aggressive, which gives four generally identified player types, plus other ‘special’ categories. Whether you’re playing in a live poker game or online, you need to watch your opponents’ betting patterns and behaviour to identify the type of player they are so you can play them effectively. You also have to be prepared to constantly revise

your opinions and watch out for those clever souls who want to mislead you into pegging them incorrectly. With that in mind, let’s get some traits down on paper: 1 Loose-Passive The proverbial calling station, this type of player hardly ever raises or takes control in a hand, and will blindly call regardless of his cards without even a basic understanding of hand selection. Often, embarrassingly unobservant players try to force them to fold only to find themselves losing to a pair of deuces. Over the long haul, calling stations never win, and all you need to do to beat them is bet your good hands, throw away the bad ones and avoid looking like an idiot by trying to get fancy against them.

2 Tight-Passive Known as a ‘rock’, this type of player will have the entire table folding as soon as he reaches for his chips. These cautious guys play so few hands and raise so infrequently that the idea of them having anything less than a monster hand is inconceivable. A rock is your ideal candidate for bluffing, as he’ll usually muck his cards if you so much as cough at the pot. Of course, you must bluff subtly and with some randomness or risk being discovered and losing a pile. Even worse, you may encourage him into a different pattern of play – one less conducive to being fleeced. If you manage this balancing act, all you have to do is fold at his smallest sign of strength and steal as much as possible the rest of the time.

3 Loose-Aggressive The maniac who raises and re-raises every pot is the embodiment of this category. This type of player seems intent on creating as much action as possible and views a bet or raise like a bull views a red rag, irrespective of whether it ultimately leads to his own downfall of not.

Loose-aggressive players can cause carnage in a tournament if enough opponents employ the wrong tactics and the maniac ends up with a nice chip stack. You must bide your time and wait for good

A ‘rock’ is your ideal candidate for bluffing – steal as much as possible unless they show some strength

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hands – you can lower your hand standards a little when playing against these types and play speculative holdings in the knowledge that you’re likely to win chips. Don’t go too far though, as even the maniacs get good cards, and if you read a situation wrongly they can cost you loads of chips. See page 83 for more tips on playing maniacs.

Know your bluffs Bluffing is the act of making a bet with the worst hand, and hopefully forcing an opponent to fold a better one. Easy enough in principle, but when it comes to Texas hold’em, you need to know the various ways you can do this successfully. So here are some basic bluffs, as well as a few counter-tactics Semi-bluff This is when you haven’t made your hand yet, but you’re betting with a reasonable number of outs. So if you do get called, you still have ways to win, such as betting a flush draw knowing that you may win there and then with your bluff or if you get called, you can still make the flush.

This tactic is used frequently by the pros and all good players, and is often the deadliest, as it means your opponents will find it difficult to know if you have a strong hand or just a draw any time you put chips into the pot.

at the next opportunity, it frequently means they were stealing. Moreover, if you either called and missed a draw or called with nothing just to bluff later, you’ve found a great low-risk opportunity to do so.

Positional bluff A positional bluff is using good table position to exert pressure on the opposition. You may be raising to steal the blinds in late position, or betting one of the subsequent rounds in the hope that you can make a player pass a better hand when they know you will be acting after them throughout, and could put them to some tough decisions.

Forcing opponents out of their comfort zones can be a bountiful tactic.

Naked bluff A naked bluff is when you’re betting with no outs, aware that the only way you can win is if you make Check-raise bluff the other player fold.

Checking to let your Daring and audacious, Daring and opponent bet after you with this is a very high-risk option that requires a audacious, position, and then re-raising is precise read on your the naked called a check-raise bluff. This opponent and a lot of bluff is a is both high risk and a very guts. John Duthie put on high-risk powerful move, as the checkraise almost always signifies a master class of naked option that strength, meaning you might bluffs to win $1.7 million requires a force a nervous opponent to at Britain’s inaugural precise fold. Equally, though, if they Poker Million in 2001. read on call or re-raise, then you’ve However, one reason he got away with his bluffs is your foe created a big pot out of position and are left with the that he never had to equally tough choices of show any of them, and giving up or making an even the other players didn’t bigger and potentially fatal bluff on the have a clue until afterwards – when next betting round. the tournament aired on British TV. Re-bluff Sensing that someone else is making a move on a pot and fighting back to try to beat them at their own game is known as a re-bluff. Often characterised as the strongest move in poker, this is an ultra-high-risk sophisticated play made by many top players generally against other good players, all of whom understand intimately the levels-inside-levels approach that defines high-stakes poker strategy.

Delayed bluff A less spectacular version of the rebluff, the delayed bluff consists of calling a bet with nothing against a seemingly weak opponent, with the intention of taking the pot away on a later betting round. This often works best with position; if you call a bet on the flop or turn last and then the other player fails to follow through with a bet

Trap A trap is feigning weakness with a very strong hand in the hope that an opponent will make an ill-timed bluff.

This might be through slow-play, in which you check and call other players’ bets, or make a small bet that is designed to communicate weakness and could induce a raise or a bluff from an opponent.

Check-call An antidote to very aggressive players and a way of minimising your damage if you fear you’ve walked into a hand rather than a bluff, check-calling means simply calling down an opponent when you think they have nothing. If you’re right, then the other player has effectively given a lot of free chips to you, and if you’re wrong, at least you found out as cheaply as possible (as well as gaining a valuable insight into your opponent’s playing style).

Having a feel for your opponent’s playing style – and stack size – is vital when considering a bluff

4 Tight-Aggressive Most of the best players fall under this banner. By playing select hands, they earn respect from other players, but also maximise their wins by betting draws, check-raising, trapping and using any other strategies they see fit. Considered a tricky player, the tight-aggressive type usually has a sophisticated understanding of the game.

They mix all of the various elements of success and can vary them to create a smoke screen or false image.

For example, a tight-aggressive player might play loose-aggressive when he thinks the time is right, or feign an element of passivity in the knowledge that he can eventually use this to fool players who have branded him tight-passive. Needless to say, tight-aggressive is the style you should be trying to play. Additionally, you want to avoid going up against tight-aggressive masters in iffy situations.

5 Special Categories Some players seem to defy definition, and when they’re good, they fall clearly outside of the tight-aggressive box. For example, one recognisable type is the good looseaggressive player. This guy plays many hands with devastating force, but always has an acute idea of where he’s at in any given situation, and he can just as easily make staggering bluffs or fold if things turn ugly. And all the while he’s plotting to take all your chips as soon as he does pick up a monster hand.

Recently, ‘Gambling’ Gus Hansen has emerged as the embodiment of this style – he will raise with any two cards since he’s so busy playing the person that what he has in his hand hardly matters – but there’s a long tradition of truly great players of this type, including Doyle ‘Texas Dolly’ Brunson, Stu ‘The Kid’ Ungar and Ted Forrest.

A game of situations and players Now that we’ve looked at the basics of bluffing, including broad player categories, types of bluffs and some counter strategies, it’s time to get a bit more complex and think about the specific circumstances that might allow you to make a successful bluff or catch an unconvincing one. We’ll also look at some player types in more detail and figure out what makes them tick (see page 51).

There are many questions to ask in doing this, and success often involves making a split-second appraisal of all the information and deciding on a course of action, which is why poker is so much fun. The following are some of the most important questions to ponder in any poker game…

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

What does your opponent have and what does he think you have?

Estimating your opponent’s hand and thought processes is the closest you’ll get to knowing what’s going on without carefully placed mirrors. If you’ve successfully identified his betting pattern, you’ll have a rough idea on his hand, and subsequently what you need to let him think you have.

These are skills that are honed over time, and each decision depends on how much information you have accrued, the timing, chip stacks, position, pot size and so on.

What type of game is it and how many players are there?

The fewer players there are in a game or hand, the more bluffing becomes an option.

Similarly, bluffing is most likely to succeed in no-limit games, where gargantuan bets can be made. If you want to get a real feel for this aspect of the game, sites like PKR.com have no-limit hold’em practise tournaments.

You’ll soon find that having your chips eaten away by the blinds is no fun while waiting for a great hand, whereas raising, bluffing or

He can make staggering bluffs or fold if things turn ugly, all the while plotting to take your chips

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calling with almost any two cards is a great way of sharpening your instincts as well as providing a real thrill.

Where’s the dealer button?

This aspect of play is covered in greater detail on page 32, but if you’re in position (on or near the button), bluffing is a potent weapon, as you’ve seen a full round of betting before it’s your turn. If you’re not in position, your play should be more defensive unless you have a premium hand.

What’s your table image?

While you’ve been assessing the other players, it’s likely they’ve been doing the same. So if you have a tight-cautious image, you’re much more likely to bluff successfully (and be the target of bluffs), whereas if you’ve been playing fast and loose, or have been caught bluffing, the opposite is true.

Is the bluff convincing?

Against weak, tentative opponents, you probably won’t have to bet much to bluff them out of the pot. However, against good players, who are often fearless, you need to make a bluff convincing and think it out incisively, representing a specific hand and playing exactly as you would if you actually held it. This could mean sticking your neck out with a large all-in or facing a hand you suspect might be a bluff for big money, so there really is little margin for error.

What it often boils down to is whether you actually believe your opponent or not.

If not, do you have the courage to follow your instincts and make a great call?

Am I getting in too deep?

What you think could be a great move may actually land you in someone else’s trap. Always consider how much damage you stand to sustain if you get it wrong or choke and make your actions transparent.

For this reason, check-raising with marginal hands, making big bluffs on the end and so on are not recommended for inexperienced players. Similarly, you should be trying to condition your opponents to get out of line in these ways when you do have a hand.

How big is the bet?

Whether bluffing or facing a potential bluff, this is one of the key pieces of information to consider. If you bet too little in relation to the size of the pot, you’re normally more likely to get called, while if you over-bet, the opposition’s odds are so slight they’re likely to fold all but the best hands. However, skilful players know this and reverse or randomise their bet size to confuse things, and many great players are capable of putting in enormous bets and being equally likely to have the nuts or nothing.

You’ve got to ask yourself, is he the kind of guy who views his losses as the price of a good night out?

Always consider how much damage you can sustain if you get it wrong or choke and become transparent

What are the stack sizes?

Stack sizes are important in a tournament when considering a bluff. As such, big stacks can bluff and call bluffs easily but short stacks can’t, and you should play 50

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accordingly. Remember that short-stacked players may call out of desperation, and if you have a lot of chips in reserve and aren’t afraid to use them, you can still bully your way to winning a lot of pots.

What’s the texture of the board?

It’s sometimes difficult to bluff when there are lots of draw cards on the flop or when you raise pre-flop and the flop comes all small cards. In the first instance, you might get called by a draw or a made hand; in the second, your opponent might stay with you unless he’s convinced you have a big pair.

By contrast, the exposure of a scare card can provide a great chance to bluff – if your opponent seems to really hate the Ace that came on the flop, the chances are that you can successfully represent it, and the same is true if the turn or river card looks to have completed a flush or straight draw. As always, watch out for these exact same

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

thought processes in your opponents and estimate their motivations (and card holdings) accordingly.

Is it a bluff or a value bet?

This is particularly important on the river, when there are no more cards to come. It’s essential you learn to get a high percentage of these calls correct, and make the right decision if you have the option to bet. Again, there’s no easy way of doing this other than by experience, but this is a great aspect of your game on which to work, as you’ll always be considering the play of a complete hand and have all the info that goes with it, as well as being able to rule out the possibility of semi-bluffs.

At all times, remember this vital point: poker is a game of situations and players, as well as one of cards and mathematics.

Study these factors and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a bluffing master.

Know your enemies If you’re going to bluff, re-bluff and trap with the best of them, you’d better have a good idea of who you’re up against.

Here, we look at some of the more specific types of players and how you can deal with them to ensure success…

Rank amateur This player knows so little that he’s barely speaking the same language as you in poker terms. In the words of Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott: ‘If they don’t know what they’re doing, how can you?’ Proceed with care and beware of playing big pots when you don’t have a big hand. Over time, you’re sure to figure out a way to beat this sort of weakling, but you might get a nasty surprise on any given hand!

CREDIT IN HERE IF REQUIRED

Bully An extension of the loose-aggressive player, this guy looks for those who are weak, and often doesn’t care whether the outcome for themselves is a triumph or disaster. The bully could be a top player if he would only channel his aggression and employ good judgement (after all, having control of the whole table is a great way of accumulating chips). At the very least, he could be mediocre by opting out of settling personal scores from previous hands, or demonstrating his willingness to blow off a big stack just to prove a point. Decide which type of bully you have and act accordingly.

A-Z game player Many reputedly great players who have earned their reputations through dazzling displays of talent are also prone to being temperamental, for whatever reason. For example, try to work out which well-known pro not only has a B game, but also a C, D, E, F and G game. Here’s a hint: when he’s playing badly, that same person really does stink, making awful, amateurish

decisions. We don’t want to embarrass the guilty party here, but the moral of the story is to know when a player is performing below par and to look for the right way to take advantage of it.

On-tilt player Rather than just playing poorly, this guy is visibly off the rails, whether from alcohol, a bad beat or fear of the high stakes. The point is that he’s temporarily incapable of making good decisions, so when you have a hand, give him as many decisions as possible to contend with and hope it pays off.

Remember: this game is about finding and exploiting weaknesses, so show no mercy.

ABC player This is a player who clearly plays by the book, more commonly found in limit games where imagination is less valuable than solid mathematics. In these situations, this type of player is likely to be highly predictable. Respect the seemingly obvious plays they make and look for ways to exploit them by thinking and playing outside the box.

Instinctive/mathematical player Often split between the no-limit and limit camps, this player clearly values one approach over another. The instinctive player thinks he can make almost psychic assessments of his opponents’ cards and actions, while the mathematical player believes everything can be solved through complex analysis. If you recognise that a player relies on one of these approaches, exploit his blind side.

Young gun It’s often been said that as poker players grow old, they slow down a bit in terms of aggression, so in a live game bear the age of your opponent in mind when deciding whether to bluff or trap. For example, many of the young Scandinavian players are now famous for a hyper-aggressive, relentless style.

Possessing this sort of information can save you a few early bets.

Gambler The action-player is different from the bully or the loose-aggressive type in that he’s really just there for the thrill of gambling. Exercise patience and you will almost certainly win this player’s chips.

Recreational player Encounter this player in a live game, and you will see someone who views his losses as payment for entertainment.

Treat this guy with respect and make him feel like he’s part of the game. That way he’ll continue to play.

Chameleon The chameleon is the ultimate opponent, with no definable characteristics or patterns other than constantly adapting to circumstances – along with a deep and rounded knowledge of the game.

If you know that an opponent might be playing any number of styles at any given moment, how can you formulate a strategy to defeat him? It’s very difficult, and for this reason you too should aspire to play like a chameleon. Observe them, learn from them, but above all avoid tangling with them unless it absolutely can’t be helped.

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STARTING HAND SELECTION

SUNNY OUTLOOK

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PRE-FLOP STRATEGY

Weather to play or to pass Choosing which starting hands to play is one of the most important aspects of Texas hold’em strategy.

Make the right decision rain, hail or shine with our innovative ‘calendar’ hand-grouping system…

ILLUSTRATIONS: RUSSELL CLARK

PLAYING POKER IS FUN, BUT SO ARE a lot of other things in life. What makes poker special is that you can win money at the same time. Poker also possesses the same sort of mystical attraction that draws so many to tank driving – the idea of going to war sitting down.

Well, that’s the theory anyway. In reality it’s not that easy. As any tank driver will tell you, the best laid plans can easily go awry in the fog of battle. Similarly, you can know all you like about poker statistics, but theory can take you only so far in the real hurly-burly of live competition.

What’s just as critical is an understanding of what’s important in the game, being able to utilise that understanding, and being able to make the right decisions under pressure, time and time again.

We’re not saying that an understanding of the finer details of poker probability theory isn’t a real advantage – it undeniably is. But what we are saying is that a long-term winning strategy requires more than a little of ‘something else’. Indeed, we have come to believe that this particular element is actually a lot more important than either a ready acquaintance with almanacs of poker probabilities or access to streams of statistical software. In this article, we’ll introduce you to one such ‘something else’ – a certain something that we’ve named ‘calendar’ strategy. You’ll soon see why.

The heat of the moment The first key idea is to determine what’s really important to a winning poker strategy, and the second is to formulate this in a way that can actually be turned into a practical methodology. The system we will outline below is actually based on a lot of statistical analysis, only it’s presented in a way that can be of best use to those without the slightest interest in statistics or probabilities.

It’s meant to serve as an alternative to the conventional approaches to pre-flop strategy available in most books on this subject, which generally make what should be a relatively simple decision seem very complicated indeed, with advice that’s

extremely difficult to retain or recall, let alone understand in the first place. This system is simpler and more accessible.

As you know, in Texas hold’em each player is dealt two cards and must make a decision whether to fold the cards without playing, to call someone else’s bet or to raise the bet.

Because this decision has to be made before any other cards are dealt, the key issue is gauging the likely strength of your hand compared to your opponents’ hands.

The problem, of course, is that you have no idea what cards your opponents are holding. What you can know, however, is that a particular hand is generally worth playing more strongly than another. For example, if experience suggests that raising with A-Q suited is a good strategy, what should you do if you’re handed a pair of tens? If calling with a pair of sixes late in the betting round is a good strategy, what does that tell you if you’re last to play and are looking down at a J-10 off-suit?

Strength in numbers Indeed, an understanding of the pecking order of possible hands is the foundation of basic pre-flop strategy. With the benefit of this understanding and based also on your table position and previous calls and/or raises, it’s possible to devise a solid groundplan for playing the entire game.

First, however, you need to be confident in the order of strength of pre-flop hands, and second, you have to be able to access this information and the core strategy derived from it under pressure in real time. Which is where our calendar strategy comes in – it’s designed so you can apply it before the flop whatever your hand is.

It works like this. The system ranks each possible pre-flop hand, and selects 52 as playable in normal circumstances, depending on where you are seated relative to the dealer and who’s played what before your turn comes. The best hands are called January hands, the worst playable hands are called December hands. The first week of January corresponds to the strongest hand possible – a pair of Aces, the second week

You need to be confident in the order of strength of pre-flop hands – and to access this info when under pressure

to the second strongest hand – a pair of Kings, and so on.

Any hands not on the calendar at all should probably be folded. There may be exceptions if you’re a particularly adventurous or experienced player, where there may be a case for occasionally playing off-calendar, as we term it. Really, though, this is the poker equivalent of skiing off-piste – only for the bold, the ultra confident and those who really know what they’re doing.

Because there are 12 months in a year but 52 weeks, some months are allocated five weeks for these purposes and some four. Months of cards are then grouped into seasons – January, February, March and April cards are known (somewhat optimistically) as spring cards, and should be considered in early position and later.

May, June, July and August cards are known as summer cards, and should be considered in middle position and later, while September, October, November and December cards are autumn cards, and should be considered in late position only.

A simple guide to position in a ten-handed game is to consider late position as the dealer button and one seat to the right of that, the next three seats to the right as middle position, and the next three to the right as early position. This can, of course, quite easily be adapted for games with fewer players.

Let me check my diary...

To summarise the general principle, the best hand, a pair of Aces (A-A), is the first week of January while, conversely, the weakest playable hand, a three and a two of the same suit (3-2 suited), represents the last week of December. January’s cards are: AA, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, A-K (suited) while December’s are: 6-5 (suited), 5-4 (suited), 43 (suited), 3-2 (suited). Whether you call or raise or re-raise depends also on how early/ late in the season your cards fall.

The big advantage of this calendar system is that most people should find it a fairly easy way to memorise the relative strength of hands, and how to play them. Just as 53

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

STARTING HAND SELECTION

FROSTY OUTLOOK

8

10

Seasonal system Take the guesswork out of pre-flop strategy with our easy-to-use calendar

Most people should find this system an easy way to memorise the relative strength of hands, and how to play them

SPRING HANDS (PLAYED IN ALL POSITIONS) January February March A-A 10-10 A-10 (suited) K-K A-Q (suited) K-J (suited) Q-Q A-J (suited) A-Q (off-suit) J-J A-K (off-suit) 9-9 A-K (suited) K-Q (suited) Q-J (suited)

April K-10 (suited) 8-8 Q-10 (suited) A-9 (suited) A-J (off-suit)

SUMMER HANDS (PLAYED IN MIDDLE/LATE POSITIONS) May June July J-10 (suited) 10-9 (suited) A-7 (suited) K-Q (off-suit) 9-8 (suited) A-6 (suited) 7-7 8-7 (suited) A-5 (suited) J-9 (suited) A-8 (suited) A-4 (suited)

August A-3 (suited) A-2 (suited) K-J (off-suit) Q-J (off-suit)

AUTUMN HANDS (PLAYED IN LATE POSITION) September October November J-10 (off-suit) 3-3 Q-10 (off-suit) 6-6 2-2 K-9 (suited) 5-5 A-10 (off-suit) J-8 (suited) 4-4 K-10 (off-suit) 7-6 (suited)

December 6-5 (suited) 5-4 (suited) 4-3 (suited) 3-2 (suited)

OFF-CALENDAR HANDS (FOR EXPERIENCED PLAYERS ONLY) 10-8 (suited) K-2 (suited) K-3 (suited) Q-5 (suited) 9-7 (suited) K-8 (suited) Q-3 (suited) Q-4 (suited) 8-6 (suited) K-7 (suited) Q-9 (suited) Q-2 (suited) 7-5 (suited) K-6 (suited) Q-8 (suited) 6-4 (suited) K-5 (suited) Q-7 (suited) 5-3 (suited) K-4 (suited) Q-6 (suited)

importantly, though, it uses what is, in our view, the best available analysis to work out which hands are superior to which.

Utilising this analysis can be a great help when it comes to honing your skills. Start by familiarising yourself with the complete calendar, shown in the table above, right.

Putting it into practice Once you’ve mastered the calendar, the next step is to learn the optimal plays for hands associated with the different times of year – ie, whether to raise, call or fold. As a guide, we suggest the following, but you can revise and adapt based on your own experience and your knowledge of your opponents as you become more familiar with the system.

Err more on the side of caution the later in the month or the season the hand falls.

SPRING CARDS January: Raise (even if raised) in all positions February: Raise (call if already raised) in all positions March: Call in early position; raise (call if already raised) in middle or late position April: Call in early or middle position; raise (call if already raised) in late position SUMMER CARDS May, June, July and August: Call in middle or late position (fold if already raised) AUTUMN CARDS September, October and November, December: Call in late position (fold if already raised)

More generally, the looser you consider the game (ie, the weaker the hands you think your opponents are playing), the later in the calendar you might consider playing instead of folding. Beware of players preceding you who have indicated strength by raising.

Ultimately, of course, there’s no definitive system for playing any given hand in a game of hold’em. If there was, we’d all be winning millions and there’d be no call for books like this one. There are, however, better and worse strategies, and a convenient way to access the relative strength of hands is important in determining which is which.

Remember though, your aim in any poker game is to remain unpredictable, so any system can only be used as a loose guide.

Hopefully this calendar system will prove to be one of the more enjoyable!

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ASSESSING THE FLOP

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

ASSESSING THE FLOP

Set your

sıghts on the

flop

It’s no good gunning for a pot if you can’t tell where you stand after the flop.

Here, we extend the innovative ‘calendar’ system to take in post-flop play – so you’ll always know when to pull the trigger and when to hold your fire

TEXAS HOLD’EM IS ONE OF THE MOST cunningly devised games ever invented, allowing casual players to win just often enough to keep them interested while also allowing more skilful players to win often enough to keep them playing this particular form of poker. In other words, it combines the fun of the roulette table with the hard strategy of the chess board, allowing every type of player to participate and enjoy at their own level along the way.

As you should know by now, the defining moment of any hand of Texas hold’em is the flop, when the number of cards available to you leaps from two to five.

At this moment, the value of your starting hand will often change dramatically, calling for a radical reassessment of your position.

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

ASSESSING THE FLOP

If you’re holding Q-Q for example, and the flop comes down A-K-8, your previously magnificent ladies are left looking very exposed indeed.

In the previous piece (starting on page 52), we introduced the ‘calendar’ handgrouping strategy to help you with pre-flop strategy and starting hand selection. The basic idea was to use the seasons, as well as the month and position at the table, as an accessible and statistically-tested guide to playing the first couple of cards.

Memorise this Here, we’ve extended the calendar system to make it easier to recall how you should play in those hands where you have decided to continue with the action, ie, post-flop play.

To do this we will use the same seasonal division as earlier, so cards after the flop fall into ‘spring’, ‘summer’ and ‘autumn’ hands.

As before, spring hands are the best, playable in most circumstances, summer hands are playable in some circumstances and autumn hands are playable in only the most conducive circumstances.

Note that as There’s no before there are definitive no ‘winter’ hands – system because of course which it is never winter in the wonderful applies world of poker. in each The earlier in the and every season your hand situation – falls, the more that would aggressively in be too easy general you should play. There are occasions when you might wish to play other hands (we have termed these ‘off-calendar’ hands), but as with pre-flop calendar strategy this is the poker equivalent of skiing off-piste – only for the bold and ultra confident (and, of course, the just plain daft). If you don’t have any of the calendar hands, or else it is obvious you are down after the flop and don’t have a big draw for a straight or a flush, you should consider folding very seriously indeed.

Exceptional circumstances Be warned, though, these are guidelines only. In combination with the calendar system for playing poker before the flop, these categories are designed to offer you that vital edge which divides winners from losers. Ultimately, though, as explained in the pre-flop lesson, there really is no definitive system that applies in every situation. That would make life just a little too easy.

Knowing how to play each hand of poker to the best possible effect requires a multitude of skills and knowledge, some of which may take years to develop. Add this system to your poker arsenal, however, and you’ll be that much better prepared next time you face a difficult betting decision.

SPRING HANDS Bet and raise hands

January With any pair, a fourth card on the flop of the same rank (making quads) is a dream hand by any player’s standards and you should bet and raise in all circumstances. You are virtually unbeatable, and the only reason you wouldn’t bet out aggressively would be to risk a checkraise or let drawing hands improve. Either way, you want to see as much action as possible.

Example You are dealt

HOT SHOTS You won’t get better shots at the pot than post-flop hands such as these

SUMMER CARDS Worth betting and raising… up to a point

Flop

Advice Bet and raise in all circumstances

May With an Ace and a card of another rank in the hole, a card on the flop giving you top pair with the other card in your hand is a big chance (usually referred to as ‘top pair, top kicker’).

In this position, you may attract a lot of betting from players with lesser hands. Betting and raising is normally the best strategy here, but consider your position if raised.

Example You are dealt

AIM CAREFULLY You have a good chance of taking down pots if you play these cards right

AUTUMN CARDS Consider your options

Flop

Advice It’s usually worth betting and raising

September If, once you have seen the flop, you find yourself with a draw for a flush and a straight (especially if open-ended), consider betting and raising. If, however, you make neither on the turn, slam on the brakes before the river. Check or call a small bet, but fold if put under pressure.

Example You are dealt

POKER SHARP-SHOOTING Tougher prospects, but all the more satisfying when you bag these longer-shots

Flop

Advice Consider betting and even raising. Check or call should you fail to make the flush or the straight on the turn

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ASSESSING THE FLOP

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

February If you are holding an Ace and another card of the same suit, and then the flop deals you a second Ace and two lower-ranked cards of the same suit, you are looking at drawing for the nut flush as well as already holding top pair. If the flush doesn’t come off your hand is vulnerable, but in this round of betting you should be looking to play aggressively.

March With any pair, a third card on the flop of the same rank (making trips) is good enough to indicate a raise. Your opponent/s may have a draw to beat you, but it’s probably a good strategy to make them pay to find out. Bet/ raise unless you have a very good reason not to (eg. there are strong flush and straight possibilities and betting is heavy).

April Bet and raise if you hold a high-ranking pair (10-10 or better) which is an over-pair (no higher cards on the board) after the flop – eg. you hold Q-Q against a Jack on the flop. You’re likely to get plenty of play from anyone holding a card of equal rank to that on the flop, especially if they have a highcard kicker (say an Ace) to go with it.

Example

Example

Example

You are dealt

Flop

You are dealt

Flop

You are dealt

Flop

Advice Bet and raise in almost all circumstances

Advice Bet and raise in almost all circumstances

Advice Bet and raise – but beware June flops

June If you have a high-ranking pair in the hole, beware of a flop that sets up the possibility of a flush or a straight, two pair or trips for one or more opponent. Usually think seriously about betting if there are no overcards to your pair on the flop, but think about laying this hand down if you are raised.

July It is frequently a good move to bet and raise if you find yourself with a high-ranking top pair after the flop, even if the best of your other cards is relatively weak (in other words, you have top pair but a weak kicker).

However, you should seriously consider folding if you are raised.

August If you’ve got a medium-ranked over-pair on the flop (ie, 7-7 to 9-9), you’re very vulnerable to over-cards. With so many low-ranked cards on the board, the chances of a straight are also higher. Play aggressively to drive out drawing hands, especially when you’ve got a chance of a straight.

Example

Example

Example

You are dealt

Flop

You are dealt

Flop

You are dealt

Flop

Advice Consider betting if there are no over-cards to your pair, but retreat if necessary

Advice Betting is often worthwhile but think again if you are raised

October If you have a pocket pair or hit a pair on the flop, beware any sort of pair of on the board, as it may spell trips, full houses or even quads. It is certainly worth considering a bet or even a raise, particularly if your pair is of high rank. However, alarm bells should ring if you are raised (and especially check-raised).

November If you have a pocket pair, beware of any over-card on the flop (eg, a 10 to your 9-9).

You might still consider betting against a very small number of opponents, or calling against more, but you are probably behind in this case and will need to improve. Fold at any sign of strength from your opponents.

December If you find yourself with a small pair (say 6-6 or worse), and there are one or more overcards on the flop, you should generally fold if raised, unless you have a chance to draw both ends to make a straight (eg, you have 4-5-6), in which case you can consider calling, depending on the pot odds.

Example

Example

Example

You are dealt

Flop

Advice It is worth betting and even raising, but think seriously about folding if raised

You are dealt

Flop

Advice You might bet against one or two opponents if neither has raised

Advice Often worth betting and raising but maybe fold if raised, and beware of over-cards later

You are dealt

Flop

Advice Fold if raised but possibly call if you have an open-ended draw for a straight

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

INTRODUCTION TO ODDS

Hmm, four nines are... take eight... pot size was... damn! I should have folded.

Note to self: buy calculator

Okay, I’ve run out of fingers, so the odds must be good, plus I’m wearing my lucky shirt. Let’s go hard!

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INTRODUCTION TO ODDS

INTRODUCTION TO ODDS

Know the odds

Poker may be a game of situations and psychology, but if you do your maths homework you’ll leave a lot less to chance. Never fear though – our simple approach will give you all the numbers you need and help maximise your chances when it counts…

Omit the guesswork from your game and let the maths do the talking

I’ve got a 12% chance of trips here, but I’m feeling Big Slick or worse on my right. To call or not to call?

EVERY TIME YOU MAKE A DECISION or respond to what another player does in poker you are taking and laying odds.

While a game like no-limit hold’em often comes down to a ‘do they or don’t they have it?’ scenario, there are many games and situations in poker where the odds alone that you are getting on a hand will completely dictate your actions.

For example, in a game like limit hold’em or Omaha, many of the decisions you make will be highly mathematical ones based on the pot odds, and in some situations there might even be no point trying to bluff a player because of the odds, whereas in others you could virtually call blind.

It’s therefore important to have a strong idea of the odds of making or defending your hand in any given situation, and the ability to quickly compare them to the pot odds you are getting or giving.

Tournament poker, in particular, is one area where all good players know the odds of their hand winning an all-in against other hands inside-out, because these confrontations come up so frequently.

Most of them don’t like playing all-ins that are close to even money, and some will even fold as a decent favourite rather than risk a big all-in early on, because they expect to have a better chance of outplaying amateurs in smaller pots. But even for the greats there comes a point in a tournament when playing an all-in is necessary, and – needless to say – you should always aim to be a clear favourite when this happens.

Poker odds can be examined in a variety of ways, and we have split them into sections below to simplify the process, as well as

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

listing some common confrontations with percentages for you to learn and remember.

We’ve omitted odds from flop to turn, and on the turn, as these can simply be calculated by counting the outs for or against you out of the remaining cards.

(For a concise table of pot odds on the turn and river, turn to page 64.)

Basic odds In hold’em there are 1,326 possible twocard combinations for your starting hand, and 1,225 for any one of your opponents after you look at your cards. If you play a hand through, there are then 19,600 possible flops and 2,118,760 total full-board combinations. This means that you could play for a lifetime and not see exactly the same thing happen twice!

With these parameters the chances of getting a pocket pair are 16/1, and of making it into trips or quads on the flop is 12 percent. The chances of getting Aces are 220/1 and A-K about 1.2 percent, and if you don’t have a pair, you will make one on the flop about one-third of the time and about 49 percent of the time by the river.

With suited cards, you will make a flush 8.4 percent of the time by the river, but only flop a flush 0.84 percent of the time, and flop a flush draw nearly 11 percent of the time, of which it will be completed with a frequency of 38.3 percent. (Still with us? There’s more.)

If you flop an open-ended straight draw, it will complete 34 percent of the time. The flop will be all of one suit some 5 percent of the time, two suited cards 55 percent and rainbow 40 percent.

All of this is interesting to know, and there are many other interesting facts in poker, but often such information is of limited use, since your equity in a situation also depends on what cards your opponents are holding in any given situation. Because of this, in some games (especially Omaha) you may ignore ‘redraws’ if only looking at one side of the equation and overestimate your chances.

On the other hand, you may be in a better position than you think. For example, in hold’em the chances of completing your flush draw after the flop are low, but if you also have a live Ace (see 9…-9; vs A:-3… in the Heads-up Hands table over the page) they are much better.

So basic odds are certainly important because they give you a framework to think within, however you mustn’t forget that poker is all about situations and psychology as well as mathematics – so although the chances of any given player having Aces pre-flop in hold’em may be 220/1 against, unless they raise blind every hand, when they do raise the true odds are going to be a whole lot shorter.

Pre-flop, all-in hand match-ups The key here is to spot hands that are likely to dominate, and those that are likely to be dominated. This is mainly useful for the purposes of tournament all-ins because a bad hand may be getting the odds to 59

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

INTRODUCTION TO ODDS

Terminology Get to grips with the basics – or you’ll never be able to tell your good hands from your bad ones…

Basic Odds The odds of an occurrence based on just your cards or your hand played to completion. For example, the chances of getting dealt A-A pre-flop, or making your flush, or four of a kind on the board.

belly-buster straight draw, another player would be unlikely to recognise that you made it. Conversely, in Omaha, as soon as the board pairs or a threeflush comes it’s highly likely someone has made the nuts or something close.

Pot Odds The amount a pot is laying you compared to the relative strength of your hand.

So if a short-stacked tournament player moves all-in for $1,100 in when the blinds are $500 and $1,000 and you’re the only opponent on the big blind, you needn’t even look at your cards before calling as you are getting 26/1 for your chips, which is a magnificent price even if you’ve got 2-7 off-suit.

It’s more complex if the sums are closer to even. Let’s say, for instance, you’re getting exactly 7/2 pot odds on the board pairing on the river when you have trips against what you’re sure is a completed flush or straight (making you a 3.4/1 underdog), and the other player is all-in. Here you would call in a cash game, as mathematically it’s a profitable play. But in a tournament or satellite you may fold, as the small edge you have may not be worth risking a lot of chips – unless you want to gamble.

Reverse Pot Odds/Implied Odds The amount it will cost you and what you stand to lose afterwards by drawing and making a second-best hand. For example, drawing to a straight when someone else already has a made flush, or either of these on a paired board where someone already has a full house.

Implied Odds The money you expect to get from an opponent if you make your hand and betting continues. For example, a good player might think, ‘I’m getting slightly less than the necessary pot odds to draw at the straight here, but I know Tom is likely to pay me off afterwards if I make it, so it’s worth my calling.’

To estimate this accurately you need a good sense of your opponent and his hand, as well as how the hand you make and your position are likely to affect the situation. For example, in hold’em if you called with a

Redraws When estimating odds, consider the chances of making your draw but still being beaten when another hand improves, such as drawing to a straight, making it and losing to a newly-made flush or full house.

Very important in Omaha, where the nuts can change on every street, and you often play on a street-by-street basis rather than trying to get all the money in early.

For example, any decent Omaha player knows that a made straight on the flop is destined to lose when sandwiched between trips and a flush draw and should therefore be junked.

outdraw a good one on the flop and thereafter, but your equity in a pre-flop all-in is fixed and not affected by whatever the board throws up. If you’re considering a call, compare this information with the pot odds you’re getting and decide if the risk is worth it with a marginal hand – and whether you’re likely to be pot-committed if raising or facing a re-raise all-in.

Everyone is familiar with the concept of situations in hold’em where a pair takes on two over-cards, and because these are unavoidable you should always be So you’re telling me it’s in looking to get my favour to call this all-in the money in during situations with my 7-4 off-suit? What where you can about my blood pressure? be evens or better. For example, A-K may run up against A-Q as well as 8-8 and therefore be a good all-in investment, whereas the best 2-2 can hope for is overcards and a bigger pair would be a 9/2 disaster. You can raise all-in but you can’t call an all-in bet with it.

Notice from the odds listed that the emphasis is therefore on drawing to live cards in a showdown – such as with A-6 vs 7-7. Only the A is a live out and in A-7 vs AK only the 7 is live, putting both hands in very bad shape. When there are no pairs or duplications, things are much closer, with middle connectors like 8-9 suited vs A-4 being virtually even shots.

Know Your Heads-up Hands

Check out this selection of hands and their percentages of landing you the pot in heads-up play PRE-FLOP Hands A:-AÚ vs K:-K… A:-AÚ vs Q…-J… A;-AÚ vs K:-10; A:-K: vs A…-7; A…-6Ú vs A…-2: A:-K: vs 2;-2: A:-K… vs Q…-Q: A;-K: vs 8;-9; A:-J; vs Q…-9…

A:-6… vs 9;-10;

Win% Lose% Draw% 81.5 18 0.5 80 19.5 0.5 86 13.5 0.5 72.5 23 4.5 38 28 34 50 49.5 0.5 43.5 56 0.5 61 38.5 0.5 58.5 41 0.5 51.5 48 0.5

ON THE FLOP Hands A;-A: vs 9:-9Ú A;-A: vs 9:-9Ú A;-A… vs 7:-8: A;-K; vs 9…-9Ú A;-3; vs 9…-9Ú A…-J: vs K…-J; A;-A: vs 9…-7…

A;-A: vs 9…-7…

A;-A: vs 9…-7…

9…-9; vs A:-3…

Flop 7…, 3Ú, 2; 9…, 3Ú, 2; 9:, 6:, 2…

7;, 3Ú, 2; 7;, 3Ú, 2; JÚ, 4…, 3; 6;, 8:, 2Ú 9:, 8…, 6…

K…, 2…, 4Ú A;, 7…, 4Ú

Win% Lose% Draw% 91.5 8.5 – 10 90 – 56.5 43.5 – 45 55 – 47.5 52.5 – 86.5 12 1.5 66 34 – 33.5 64.5 2 63.5 36.5 – 9 91 –

On the flop These odds demonstrate popular confrontations when all the money goes in on the flop and illustrates the importance of not risking a situation where you are a massive underdog. In order to do this you will need a good

idea of what you are up against, which means protecting your hand pre-flop and understanding just how big a draw you have on the flop, as well as how your opponents play certain hands.

For example, if you have a combination hand like a live Ace and flush draw against a pair, a straight and flush draw, or a pair and a draw, you’re likely to be in reasonable shape, unless of course you run into a monster, whereas the wrong end of a straight draw or a second-best flush could obviously cost you dearly. Similarly, running a big pair into trips or going up against someone who holds two pair or an even better pair than yours is likely to spell disaster for your chip stack.

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

CASH GAMES

CASH GAME STRATEGY

Cash in hand Sit-and-gos are a safer option, but if you want to grow your bankroll in a hurry you need to step up to the cash tables. Follow our simple guide and you’ll be well on your way to table dominance YOU’VE ALREADY ABSORBED THE KEY strategies needed to win sit-and-gos in our piece on page 38 – now it’s time to learn the tactics needed to crack cash games. You might think the style of play and betting is similar, but you couldn’t be further from the truth. Successful tournament tactics don’t translate to the cash game because of fundamental differences in the two formats. So, how do the two situations contrast?

First and foremost, in tournament play you’re risking a one-time investment – the entry fee. Once you’ve paid that you don’t have to think about money again, with a big stack of chips to throw around and bully people. In a cash game every chip you bet is real money. Sure, you can play tight and record minor profits

and losses for a time, but if you’re not careful you’ll get dragged into bankrollthreatening situations. When this happens you need to make sure you’re on the right side of things.

What’s your game?

Game selection is always important, but never more so than in a cash game. Never try to crack a game if you’re unsure what’s being played. It’s easy to surmise that Omaha is similar to hold’em, but you’ll quickly see your account bleed out if you enter a game that you’re unfamiliar with, acting like you know it all.

Similarly, hi-lo games are very different from high-only games. Just like the time you started playing poker, you need to ease yourself in gently when learning new

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CASH GAMES

to a head-to-head scenario pre-flop, while removing the vulnerability of putting all your chips in jeopardy.

If the shoe fits…

Almost all players fit into boxes and it’s essential to get your opponents marked as soon as possible. If you can identify the ‘nuts players’, the ‘draw chasers’, the ‘limp-along merchants’, the ‘aggressive big-pot players’ and the like, you’re going to be able to modify your play accordingly and start cashing out consistently. The exceptions to this are the successful cash game players, who quickly adapt to the play and players around them and may be considered ‘tight’ on some tables and ‘loose’ on others. However, players that do the sums and stick by them are those who will see the money over a period of time.

The sums you need to know are the probability/possibility (of winning) against the return on investment (ROI). If you’re holding a draw that makes you slightly better than 50/50 to make the nuts, you shouldn’t hesitate calling an all-in against just one other player because, blinds and other dead-pot money included, your ROI will be better than even money. Equally, if you’ve got a 40% chance of prevailing in a three-way pot, you should see this as another automatic play.

If you like to accumulate chips via ballsy moves before tightening up your play, a small buy-in might be suitable games not throw yourself in at the deep end. Thankfully, while Texas hold’em hasn’t traditionally been a popular cash game, it’s making up for lost time. In fact, it’s now moved ahead of the old favourites like draw, stud and Omaha.

Of the variants, no-limit hold’em is the one to watch. It’s fraught with danger and you can find yourself getting into pots that involve your entire bankroll – and could wipe you out with the turn of a single card.

Limit games are the safest option but, despite fixed betting, you’re still risking real money and bad play will always be punished with the loss of hard-earned dough. Pot-limit cash games probably remain the most popular, especially in a live casino setting as they invariably offer the ability to get a confrontation down

Start as you mean to go on Common sense counts for a lot so you should begin by identifying a starting stack that suits both your playing style and the game you’re about to tackle. If you’re a tight player who doesn’t gamble recklessly you shouldn’t fear putting a large sum of money on the table, namely a stack that matches the chip leaders.

On the other hand, if you’re a chancer and like to accumulate chips through some ballsy move-making before tightening up your play, a small buy-in might be more suitable.

The logic behind this is simple. Say you’re playing in a pot-limit hold’em game and you have a playable hand (like Q-J suited). You call for $10. Then the pot is raised to $50 and you’ll probably find yourself calling again. But then the shortest stack at the table moves all-in for $110, followed by another person going all-in for $300. Suddenly you have a tough decision: to call for $250 more or say goodbye to your $50.

Now, should you only have a small stack, say $100, you’re getting terrific value to shove all your money in, considering all the dead money put in by the $10 and $50 callers who would now fold to the all-in raises. You could find yourself getting something like 9-for-2 for your money in a three-way pot.

However, if you’re sitting there with $250+ you know you’re going to have

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

Busted!

Tear up that double-mortgage application! Follow these tips and you’ll avoid it happening to you…

Tilt trauma As even the most placid of players knows, you can go on tilt in any game at any time. But if you do it in a cash game, especially one that’s no-limit, you can lose your entire bankroll very quickly. Try to stay calm and focused at all times and if you catch a particularly bad run of cards and feel like you’re losing your patience, click the sit-out button, take a walk, a few deep breaths and only go back into the game when you feel like you’re back in control of your emotions.

Remember that poker is a game of patience, and nowhere is this truer than at a limit cash game, where bluffing is almost nonexistent and it’s premium hands that’ll pay off.

Know your limit Selecting a tournament to play in is pretty straightforward. You know exactly how much you’re staking at the start when you’re levelheaded and fresh. In contrast, working out what table to play on in a cash game requires you to think a bit more. $1-$2 might sound like low stakes but the pots can mount very quickly. The rule of thumb is that you should sit down with a minimum of approximately 50 times the big blind, which would make your $1-$2 table a meaty $100 game.

In addition, the difference between limit, pot limit and no limit is vast and you should move up the ladder with extreme caution.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Look for tables that are occupied with people who are playing with a similarsized stack as you. Never get involved in personal battles with someone else.

You may well lose a big pot to an annoying character who lucks out on a draw, but don’t feel that you’ve got to reclaim your cash back from him, as that’s a sure way to lose the rest of your money. Once you’ve lost a pot consider the money as gone and start again with the next hand.

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CASH GAMES

to put a lot of money in jeopardy for a hand that’s going to need a lot of help to win. Therefore you pass and forfeit a largish amount of money by protecting your stack.

Essentially though, it’s all a matter of feelings – a mental formula that involves other factors such as your bankroll, your ability to pull up more cash if you need it, the volatility of the game and the amount of money you want to win.

The latter – a staking plan – is something that very few cash game players employ, but it’s a good idea and something gamblers in other fields see as religion.

Stick to the game plan Consider this – sit in with $50 and try to cash out with no less than $150. If that fails, buy in for another $50 and intend to stop when you hit $250. Finally, if that goes wrong and you’re in for $100, pull up another $100 and try to turn that into $400. The bottom line is you should make a plan and stick to it. If you hit your target you should leave the table – or run the risk of losing the lot.

Making big calls because of pot odds may sound like a very cavalier attitude

but it’s a scientific – and winning – formula. However, the golden rule in cash game poker is that every chip you put in the pot is real money from your pocket.

Should you have a limited bankroll, a run of losing pot-odds calls could soon wipe you out. As a result a ‘tight but aggressive’ style would suit your resources best.

Likewise, repeated move-making is a short-term way of making small profits but a guaranteed loss-maker in the long run.

This is because, while you will pick up your fair share of blinds and small pots, when the big pots call your bluffs you will only be taking on a player with a premium, sometimes even made, nut hand.

Before you start though, a quick word of warning – if you like the thrill of making the big bluff, you might be better off sticking to tournaments and sit-and-gos.

Playing cards aggressively when you’ve got the goods and understanding value calls is the formula for successful and consistent cash game poker.

Value for money Pot odds is a well-known mathematical system and one that, in the long run, will help you cash out if you’ve got the patience to play it right. And the good news is it’s

The golden rule in cash game poker is that every chip you put in the pot is real money from your pocket

extremely easy to pick up. Here are the basics, but see page 58 for more info…

Pot odds is a method of counting ‘outs’ and assessing the value of making a call.

For example, if you’ve got an open-ended straight draw, there are eight outs – or cards – that will make your straight.

Making an exact conversion of ‘outs’ is a complex business, but fortunately there’s a simple formula. When there are two cards to come (turn and river), each out has an approximate 4% chance of arriving (for the first ten ‘outs’; each one thereafter equates to an additional 3%).

With just one card to come, each out has an approximate 2.2% chance of arrival.

The table below shows a pretty accurate probability of the chances of hitting your outs. So if your mental arithmetic isn’t too hot, photocopy this and keep it with you.

Back to our example, and the chance of you making the straight post-flop on either the turn or river is approximately 32%, or on the river, around 18%. Now, if the pot is $150 and it’s only $15 to call the turn, it makes a lot of business sense to get your money into the pot. Essentially, you’re getting 10/1 odds for a 4/1 bet.

Play cash games in this way and over time the odds will make you a winner.

Pot odds Call, raise or fold?

If you know your outs, the decision’s pretty much made for you. For a quick formula to work out your chance of hitting on the next card, multiply your outs by two and add two. To work out your chances of hitting after the flop on either the turn or river, multiply by four. It’s not an exact scientific method but for our purposes it’s close enough.

Number of outs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Two cards to come 4% 8% 12% 16% 20% 24% 28% 32% 35% 38% 42% 45% 48% 51% 54% 57%

One card to come 2.2% 4.3% 6.5% 8.7% 10.9% 13.0% 15.2% 17.4% 19.6% 21.7% 23.9% 26.1% 28.3% 30.4% 32.6% 34.8%

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

MULTI-TABLE

TOURNAMENTS

MULTI-TABLE TOURNAMENTS

Playing

field

the

Learn the key strategies for smashing up those monster multi-table tournaments – and taking home the monster money THE PATH TO GLORY IN TODAY’S ONLINE wonderland doesn’t lie in cash games, and it doesn’t go through sit-and-gos.

Sure, you can win some money with these activities – enough to sustain your poker cravings and maybe even draw enough extra income for that 42-inch plasma screen the wife wants. But for real money, life-changing money – what James Clavell

you’ money (because famously called ‘f it lets you tell the boss where to go) – you’re probably going to need to get involved in the massive full-field online tournaments where, if you win, you could trouser a truly life-changing chunk of money.

Of course, nobody just wanders into these things and stumbles blindly to victory. The best online tournament players – the names

you see regularly on the leaderboards – have a definite plan, including strategies not just for the playing of individual hands but for exploiting predictable opportunities and evading inevitable traps that occur and recur throughout a full-field tournament. Let’s shine a light on those strategies, shall we?

Early phase: Dead money A certain percentage of online players come into full-field tournaments wildly ill-equipped.

Maybe they don’t have the smarts or the experience or the game plan. Maybe they’re just there to learn or to have fun. That’s fine.

They’re free to do what they want with their money and time. But what this means for us is there’s a lot of loose money – dead money – floating around, and in the early stages of a tournament it’s your job to do this one thing: Grab all that the dead money before someone else does.

If that dead money finds its way into the hands of more dangerous, skilful foes, it’s

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

Blind survival Compare your stack to the blinds and adjust your play accordingly… # OF ORBITS STATE OF STRATEGIC YOU CAN YOUR STANCE SURVIVE STACK

going to be much harder for you to carve it away later. Best to attack it while it’s poorly defended. Make aggressive raises and re-raises. Force your weaker-minded opponents to make tough choices. Among other things, they lack the experience or savvy to make tough choices correctly. The more hard decisions you put to them, the more likely they are to err on the side of dumping their chips to you.

You won’t be the only one using this strategy of course; other sharks swim in these waters. But if you use simple common sense to discern which players should be attacked and which should be avoided, you won’t be under too much pressure and can focus on putting pressure on those least equipped to handle it. In other words: Don’t challenge strong players, challenge weak ones. That’s what they’re there for.

If you do this one thing right – duck the good players and pummel the bad ones – you should be sufficiently well-heeled to compete in the tournament’s middle phase.

Middle phase: Things not to do Surviving the middle rounds of a full-field tournament – when the blinds have risen a few levels and a good proportion of the field

has dropped away – is less about making the right moves than about avoiding the wrong ones. Remember, at this point most of the weaker players have been sucked dry and kicked to the curb. Therefore, the general level of expertise is higher. You can’t count on your remaining foes making careless mistakes, nor can you afford to make a single one yourself.

Here then are some common errors to avoid in the middle round play: Don’t forget your overall place in the tournament The amount of chips you hold, relative to the size of the blinds, tells you whether you’re in great shape, fair shape or short-stacked and imperilled. The ‘Blind survival’ table (above) illustrates the number of orbits you can survive until the antes and blinds would bust you completely.

It’s easy to see that when you have a strong stack you can be much more loose, aggressive and creative in the playing choices you make. But, and this is important, you need to keep firmly in mind where you’re at. If you’re in a great chip position but see yourself as only average or, worse, imperilled, you won’t be able to leverage the advantage that a big stack brings. You’ll be making a mistake.

There’s a lot of loose money floating around, and it’s your job to grab it before someone else does

<5

Imperilled Highly selective.

Look for a favourable spot to move all-in

5-10

Adequate Standard selective/ aggressive.

Look for hands you can drive

11+

Strong

Loose/ aggressive.

Try to take control of the table

Monitor your opponents’ stacks In the middle stages of the tournament, some stacks are short and vulnerable.

Others are large and formidable. Most are of average size. And all these stacks should respond to raises differently. If you don’t pay close attention to the size of your intended targets’ stacks, you can land in a world of hurt. Suppose you hold 8 -7 in early position. Some players call this a ‘package hand’, a holding they add to their package of raising hands for the sake of deception.

It’s not a bad idea to have such package hands, but they must be used correctly. If you see that your one potential caller is fairly short-stacked, you don’t want to push with your package hand, because you know you’ll only get a call from semi-strong to a strong hand, a ‘good enough to make my last stand’ hand. A hand, in other words, likely to dominate your 8-7 suited.

Aim that package-hand raise instead at someone who has about the same number of chips as you. This foe still has enough chips to remain patient, and will therefore fold a lot of the marginal A-7, K-J, Q-10 sort of holdings that an imperilled player would play. You have a much greater chance of getting him to lay down, thus winning his chips without a fight.

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MULTI-TABLE TOURNAMENTS

Don’t blow your lead by picking unnecessary fights This is a common flaw in people’s play.

Whenever you become chip leader, you get it into your head that it’s the chip leader’s right, by god, to tyrannise all the smaller stacks. That’s true… to a point. But if you try to do too much with your big stack, you’ll find it an average one – and then an imperilled one – in a short space of time.

Say your bullying behaviour has caused a procession of timid folds from your foes, but then someone with about two-thirds your stack size re-raises you, putting themselves all-in. Should you call? You’re already in a dominant position. How much more dominant do you need to be? And what does it mean when someone with a fair amount of chips is willing to go to war with the chip leader? It means they’re not afraid.

Maybe they’re just a great bluffer; more likely, they’ve got a hand worth taking into battle. Don’t get carried away. Let someone else be the bully. You’re still chip leader, so why squander it away so carelessly?

Final phase: The squeeze is on As the money bubble approaches in full field online tournaments, players sort themselves into two groups. First there are those who are desperate to get past the bubble and earn themselves a payday – any payday.

This may be their first tournament and they want ‘something to show for it’. Or they may have gotten into the tournament via a satellite, so the ratio between what they’ve paid to get in and what they stand to win is really quite attractive to them. Other players however, are ‘in it to win it’, and consider a low money finish to be equivalent to a first-round bust-out. They’re looking for the big-money payouts and know that these numbers sit in the top three spots.

Plus, to some, glory and bragging rights are even more important than winnings.

So the final phase finds a field of players with wildly different goals, attitudes and plans – not to mention stack sizes. When you find yourself in this situation, ask yourself two questions: Which goal do I have? And how will I achieve it?

CHECKLIST Tournament triumph is all about timing and strategy, so remember…

1 Attack weak money early.

Make sure you get your fair share of the dead money 2 Always avoid unnecessary confrontations with big stacks or better players 3 Know where you are at all times in relation to the blinds, antes and other stack sizes 4 If you get ahead, preserve your prosperity. Just because you can play the bully doesn’t mean you have to 5 In the later stages, try to identify who just wants a money finish and who’s in it to win it.

Bully the former, evade the latter, and pick your spots with care 6 Be fearlessly in it to win it. You absolutely never win these things if you’re afraid in any way shape or form

‘I want something to show for my efforts’ If you just want a payday, and you’ll settle for a small one, then your task is simple: measure your stack against the rising blinds and see how far you can go if you just do nothing at all. If the numbers suggest that you can make the money without playing a single hand, by all means follow that path. You won’t get much money for your troubles, but you’ll get something and that’s better than nothing.

‘I want to move up by measured steps’ If you’re aiming for a cautious climb up the pay table, with a backdoor chance at the top spot, you want to pick your spots with care.

Yes, you’ll be involved in hands – it’s the only way to collect chips – but you’ll make it your practice to avoid large stacks and engage short ones, especially the shortest and most imperilled ones. If you’re lucky enough to have at least a little something in hand, by all means put the squeeze on those who are on the brink of extinction. You have little to lose (since their stacks are too small to bust you out) and plenty to gain – every player eliminated now moves you one place higher up in the money.

To work this strategy effectively, keep a wary eye out for the bigger stacks around you. They may not be content just to let you pick on the small stacks unmolested. As soon as you attack a small stack, you might find yourself under attack from a much larger stack. Then you must decide whether to stand or run.

‘I’m in it to win it!’

If you want to take out the top prize, you really don’t want to let anyone else get a bet in edgewise. Use the combined forces of your big stack and your big moves to send everyone else fleeing from your path. Use big bets and raises to reinforce the belief that you’re going to win this thing, full stop.

In short, get on top, stay on top, and hurl bets down at everyone who tries to climb so high. There are pitfalls, though. Your pocket Kings may run into pocket Aces and knock you back into the pack. In the main though, if you back up your big stack with strong moves and bully behaviour (always within reason, of course), you’ll put yourself in position to win the top prize, the bragging you’ money. rights, and the famous ‘f Drinks on you, then!

Don’t step on these landmines Preparations for a big multi-table tournament is not a simple case of logging on and going for it with a set strategy. Take these into account and it’ll be a much smoother ride…

FATIGUE Online tournaments take hours of intense concentration. Make sure you’re well rested going in and you have the full amount of time you need to see the thing through. You don’t want to be glancing at the clock every five seconds or pushing for a quick and often disastrous resolution.

DISTRACTIONS Other people in your life may want other things. The wife might want the lawn mowed. The dog may be on fire.

Whatever the problem is, it will have to wait! (Okay, maybe not the dog…)

If you can’t play with a clear head and the support of people around you, you shouldn’t play at all.

QUIT-ITIS Too many players turn a tournament setback into outright surrender. They sustain a crushing beat and then throw away the rest of their chips. Don’t let this happen to you. There are too many stories of ‘a chip and a chair’ comebacks for you to lose all heart just because you’ve lost some chips.

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

STACK MANAGEMENT

TOURNAMENT STACK STRATEGY

Stack management When it comes to your stack, bigger is better. But what can you do when you’re not so well endowed (with chips)? Here we reveal the best strategies for tournament hold’em – how to get out of a hole, and how to dominate when chip heavy THERE ARE CERTAIN PLAYERS YOU can destroy at a poker table but you’ll never have more chips than them. Oil magnates, self-made billionaires, poker writers... If you play cash games with these types, you might be able to decimate their stack but they will re-buy in an instant without a second thought.

Even in a cash game at your local casino there will be players with huge bankrolls in relation to the size of the game. While this may be good for your bank balance, you’ll never be in a position where your stack dominates them.

Tournament play, however, is a different kettle of fish. In tournaments, the worth of a man’s play can truly be measured by the size of his stack. But, while big is certainly best, it’s not necessarily the size of your stack that matters, but what you do with it.

In tournaments, players will find themselves in situations to which they are unaccustomed.

Sometimes, you will find yourself the chip

leader, on other occasions you will be chip dog. In these two situations, the same hand must often be played very differently.

Big Stack When you have a big stack, people take notice. Opponents are much less likely to steal your blind or raise into you. That’s because in tournaments, once you lose your chips, you are history. One of the most basic rules is not to get involved with the chip leader unless you have to.

Much of what you do, as ever in hold’em, will be dictated by position. When you are in early position (for instance, first, second or third to act in a nine-handed game) you need a genuine hand to raise. Even if you are a massive chip leader, you don’t want to risk losing your chips to people behind you.

If you are on a slow clock (the blinds only go up infrequently), much of the play will take place at the final table and although your chip lead is important, you will not win the

Big is best, but it’s not necessarily the size of your stack that matters, but what you do with it

tournament when there is more than one table left. So from an early position you must have a premium hand.

You should avoid regularly playing medium suited connectors, such as 6Ú-7Ú or 9;10;. The reason for this is that in no limit or pot limit, after a couple of hours of play, the blinds will be big enough that you will be unable to call a significant-sized raise. If you do look down to find A-K, Q-Q, K-K or A-A, then it is better to raise. It’s unlikely you’ll get re-raised if you’re the big stack. Therefore, you’re likely to face two or three players and will be an underdog to win the pot, whereas if you only have one caller, you’ll be the favourite, unless he has a higher pair.

In mid-position you can be slightly bolder. If you are sixth to act, you may think about stealing the two blinds. This is an advantage of having the big stack. As in late position, it depends who is to act after you. If they’re rocks who will fold if anyone raises and they don’t have a premium hand, then it’s worth exploiting with a passable hand.

You would not want to raise with 9-4 offsuit, but you could with A-9 suited or J-10 suited because – unless you run into a monster hand like Kings or Aces – you will see a flop and have a chance of a draw at least. You can try and see more flops in midposition when you have a big stack. Even if it’s just the big blind and yourself who see the flop, it may be worth a bet if your hand has not improved. Even if the big blind has bottom or middle pair they may not call a raise and risk a war with the big stack.

Conversely, if you do have a premium hand, you may only want to call a raise or make a small bet into an unraised pot. If you

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be in the 50/50 pots. Avoid calling when you think you are facing two over-cards to your smaller pair or vice versa. You can raise with these hands, but you don’t need to call as you don’t need be in these gambling hands when you’re chip leader. Be aggressive but don’t be wild or have a laissez-faire attitude to your chips. You may be doing well, very well even, but the real money in most tournaments does not start until the final table, so you are not moving up the money ladder by gaining chips at this stage, just gaining a stronger foothold on it.

Work on your reputation. If you have become chip leader by playing solid, then loosen up – people will respect your raises.

If you have got there through loose play and playing non-premium starting hands then tighten up; only play when you are favourite.

On the button you should try and steal the blinds, irrespective of your cards – don’t even look at them!

Short Stack The people with the most chips know that ultimately their main obstacles to the big stack will be the fellow chip monsters first at their table and then in the tournament as a whole. Often, though, the big stacks will try and delay confrontation with each other.

Instead, they gang up on the smallerstacked players to try and eliminate them and move themselves closer to the money.

The best way to play the small stack often depends on how small you are. If you are really small and can’t survive more than one more round of blinds then, when you get a passable hand, you have to go all-in, whatever position you’re playing. If you find yourself in the big blind and the compulsory posting is half your stack, then you are pot committed and have to go all-in. Even if you do double up, you will only be in the same position again one round later. Tournaments are about survival, but there is no point being blinded away. Whatever two cards you have are unlikely to be that much of an underdog against any other two cards.

Under different circumstances you may have mucked the hand you go all-in with but remember that 8-5 is less than a 2/1 underdog against A-K.

have Aces, your big stack will certainly scare off A-10 or A-J with a re-raise. It may be better for them in this instance to hit their 10 or A and think they have the best of it, thus enabling you to extract more chips.

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

Leave it until late It is in late position that being the biggest stack is most advantageous. Playing on the button at all but the most aggressive players, you should try to steal their blinds, irrespective of your cards. You should not even have to look at your cards!

Your opponents will really need to have a hand to enter a flop with the chip leader. If they have a monster, they will re-raise and you can put it down, but if they have a fair hand such as A-10 or 9-9 and don’t hit their flop, you can find this out with one bet and may well take a larger pot than if you had not raised. You can also do this from one off the button or in the small and big blind. The exception is when facing a small stack as they may be forced to call to avoid being blinded away.

Don’t be one-dimensional Even when you’re more heavily stacked than Dolly Parton, it’s important to vary your play.

If you keep raising, all but the weakest players will twig and start playing back at you. You want to take your fair share of blinds from late position, but don’t want to be in every pot. Even in late position it is not advisable to continually call with A-Q or Q-J suited or any hand where if you hit you can still do your dough. You also don’t need to

Short but not that short If your stack is short but not dire then you have far more options. Playing in

early position, you have to be even more careful what you raise with as big stacks will be more likely to call you. If there are two of them on your table then they may put you all in and then not bet against each other, to try and eliminate you. If you have Aces or Kings then you will probably be happy to take your chances, but if you are holding A-K or Q-Q, you may want to see a flop before committing all your chips.

In mid-position and facing only one big stack, you may want to raise with any Ace with Jack kicker or better, or a pair of Jacks or higher. If you are unlucky enough to run into something higher then you will need an outdraw, but you may be getting your hand in with the best of it in a two-way pot or win the hand uncontested.

In late position, you will need a lot less to raise the pot. It is not advisable to try and steal the blinds from someone who is chipped up. They may call with less as they can afford to see a flop and may have the added bonus of decimating your stack and knocking you out. If you do want to nick the blinds, it is not worth doing so from a fellow short stack as they too are unlikely to pass even a hand as weak as one high card or anything suited.

It is the medium-sized stacks whose blinds are up for grabs. They will probably give you more respect if you are short stacked as they will reckon you have a lot to lose and would not want to risk tournament exit.

Again, whether you want to attempt to take the blinds from the button or one off the button may depend on whether you think you will be called. If the blinds are rocks it may be worth trying to steal, but if they are loose or have been prone to defending their blind, it may be unwise, unless you are sure you will call a re-raise.

Some players may try to hang in there for as long as possible, but this is only the best strategy if you are near (or in) the tournament prize money and there are other short-stacked players. Being short stacked not only makes you a target for others, it bars you from many important aspects of a successful game such as seeing flops, playing drawing hands and picking up the blinds. It is vital to get out of the position as soon as possible.

Size matters Your tactics should change according to your stack size…

This is a table of situations where you should play differently depending on the size of your stack. They’re not definitive plays but are the ones that should be used most frequently.

HAND

POSITION

POT

SHORT STACK

BIG STACK

A-K os A-8 s Q-Q Q-9 s 8-7 s

Early Mid Mid Late Late

Unraised Unraised Raised Unraised Raised

Call Fold Re-raise Call/raise Fold

Raise Call Call Raise Call

(os = off-suit; s = suited)

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ONLINE TELLS

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

ONLINE TELLS EXPLAINED

Online tells

and how to use them Online poker may be different from live play, but look closely and the psychology is still there. Here we identify the tells you can see online and how best to exploit them

call?’ Her instant raise on the turn was that of a straightforward player making a straightforward play. And you know this.

You know it so well that you do one of two things: either you fold and get out of her way or, knowing full well that you’re beaten, you ‘call to keep her honest’.

A lot of people will call, which just proves the difference between picking up a tell and acting correctly on what you see. But that’s another story – for now, just recognise the timing tell and do these two things: Be on the lookout for players whose oscillating pace of play betrays information about their hand or their thinking.

Never oscillate yourself. Always take the same amount of time to act. Don’t let your hesitation give you away.

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM DICTATES that there are no such t hings as online tells. How could there be when you can’t see a foe’s face, hear the timbre of his voice or watch his hands shake as he pushes chips into the pot? Even the way he swigs his beer (or, as famously portrayed in Rounders, cracks his Oreo cookie) can tell you whether he’s on a monster hand or a stone cold bluff. But how can you check out his cookies, his beady eyes and his other body language when all you can see is a screen?

Even on the new generation of 3D sites such as PKR (check out our special section starting on page 103), all you’re looking at is a virtual representation of a player, performing actions that are entirely voluntary – ie, someone has to actually click a button on the PKR interface to make them happen.

Well, conventional wisdom isn’t always right – and in fact reliable tells abound in Internet poker. You just have to recognise

them for what they are. Here we’ll take a look at some of the top Internet tells – including a few that are unique to 3D sites such as PKR – and how best to use them against your foes.

The timing tell You’re playing no-limit hold’em against some slackjaw from Canada, screen name SassCatchYou_Anne, who has shown herself to be a typically bad Internet player: she calls too much, raises too little and chases too far. You raise under the gun with pocket Jacks and everyone except Anne folds. The flop is 9;-7;-6:. You bet half the pot. She thinks and thinks and thinks – almost times herself out – and finally calls. The turn is the 2;. You bet the pot and she instantly raises you all-in.

What do you think? Does she have the flush? Of course she has the flush!

Her hesitation on the flop was because she was wondering: ‘Do I have odds to

Online poker happens so fast that it’s often easier to uncover patterns than it would be in a live game

All very well and good, you say, but what if they’re faking? What if it’s a false stall designed to make me think they’ve got a tough choice when really they’ve got a monster? Certainly, that’s a possibility, but unless you’ve seen the player do something similar before, why assume they’re doing it now? It’s a better idea to treat online tells as genuine until proven otherwise.

Pattern tells Online poker happens so fast that it’s often easier to uncover patterns of play than it is in a real-life game. In a live cardroom, for instance, you might notice that the player two seats to your right seems to be attacking your big blind from the button with alarming frequency. You wonder if he’s got a real hand or if he just loves the button raise.

In the real world, you might get a look at how he handles the button three or four times an hour. Online, though, that button comes spinning through his hands every few minutes. It won’t take you long to see a pattern in his play. If he raises from the button more than half the time 73

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INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

The density of information available helps pick up patterns and – even better – spread misinformation

ONLINE TELLS

you can assume he doesn’t need much in the way of a hand to feel comfy about popping in a raise. That’s a tell – and it’s one that’s only revealed through the particular circumstances of online play.

Because so many common poker situations recur so quickly online, the density of information is high, and pattern tells emerge easily and reliably.

As a result, you can swiftly figure out who makes button raises only with quality hands and who will attack your blind with anything. Against the former, you fold; against the latter, you play back.

In PKR there is even more information to pick up on, in the form of emotes, chips tricks and the various other actions you can perform through your avatar.

As mentioned, this is not the same sort of information you get in live play, because it’s all consciously triggered; however, even in such deliberate actions, subconscious patterns can easily emerge.

For example, you might find that a player finds it very amusing and clever to use the ‘Oh my god!’ emote to pretend they’ve hit a great hand on the flop, only to routinely fold at the next available opportunity. If you

observe this a few times you might have picked up a small behavioural tic, which could easily turn into an exploitable tell.

Next time they use that particular emote when a flop comes down, raise into them and see what happens.

Reverse pattern tells While the density of information available in online play is good for picking up patterns, it’s even better for spreading misinformation.

If you know what to do with it, you can use it to train small-minded foes to see the tells you want them to see and make the moves you want them to make.

Suppose it’s you who’s making those raises on the button. The first time you raise, the blinds fold because they can’t be sure whether you have a real hand or not. The second time you raise, mere minutes later, the blinds fold again, because they still can’t be sure – but they sure are getting suspicious.

If you were playing on PKR, you could even punctuate your action each time with a suitable emote, just to reinforce the behaviour in their minds. Now they’ll be on the lookout. They’ve seen you

PKR and the card peek On PKR, interactive features and ‘involuntary’ actions throw up a totally new kind of tell that doesn’t exist on other sites…

When you play on PKR your hole cards are not visible at all times like they are on other poker sites. Instead, you have to click on your cards or a button to view them, but whenever you do so, your ingame avatar actually peels back the hole cards for a peek as well.

So, just as in live poker, you can now pick up tells based on when, how often and for how long other players view their hole cards. Try watching the other players when the flop comes down. Some, especially those who play exclusively online and are uncomfortable with the idea of not being able to see their cards, will already have their cards peeled back in readiness – which you can do by holding down the ‘look at cards’ button (see page 106). However, if you move the mouse to one of the action buttons (call, raise, fold, etc), your avatar puts the cards back down.

As such, you can now observe the other players’ reactions to the flop just as in a live game. Do they keep staring at their cards, hoping a hand will magically appear, or put them down immediately? The former is usually a sign they haven’t hit anything, but the latter, in the context of PKR, could mean one of two things. Either they like the flop, and have looked away quickly to feign disinterest, or they have made an instant poker decision and have moved to click on the relevant action button.

Which of these it is may be unclear unless the player has to act before you, and it may require a bit of observation before a pattern becomes apparent.

But if the player instantly lowers their cards when the flop comes and then bets in turn, you might want to consider your options. If the decision to bet was that easy, they may well have hit their hand – and even if they just check they may be trying to draw you in for a check-raise.

Reverse card peek tell Equally, a possible reverse tell is to wait until the action is on you and then pause so that everyone looks at you impatiently.

Once you think you have their attention, glance at your hole cards (as if for the first time), then immediately place a large bet or raise. Hopefully, they will assume you were distracted or away from your PC, then when you came back you found a monster lying in wait.

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ONLINE TELLS

INTERMEDIATE STRATEGY

CHECKLIST Stick to these rules and you’ll master your opponents in no time 1 Pay attention to patterns – they will tell you what specific tells cannot 2 Use information density to train your foes into doing what you want them to do

make a specific play twice and they won’t let that happen again. So the name for our next tell is exactly what they’re thinking right now…

Third time’s the adjustment Show a typical player a button raise (or other move) one time and he’ll form a hypothesis. Show it to him a second time and his hypothesis is confirmed. The third time you show it to him, he’s ready to counter-attack. He’s made an adjustment.

But you see this coming. Like a fighter pilot getting inside his enemy’s turning circle in a dogfight, you anticipate your enemy’s tactic and plan your response in advance.

In the case of the blind steal, it’s simply a matter of not taking that third stab at the blinds unless you happen to have a big hand. In other words...

Steal twice, real once Yeah, fine, you say, but don’t you have to get lucky to pick up a real hand just when they’re making a ‘third time’ adjustment?

Yes, you have to get lucky, but it’s a special kind of luck, called situational luck, and this kind of luck works for you no matter how the cards may fall.

If you get the cards you need when you need them, great – execute Plan A. Thanks to the misinformation you’ve been spreading, your foes won’t put you on a big hand and you’ll have them trapped. If a poor hand comes, go to Plan B and decline the steal opportunity. This not only thwarts and frustrates your foes, it also makes them doubt that you’re the rascally blind stealer they thought you were.

The beauty of their doubt is it lets you start the whole sequence over later, stealing once or twice before they get up the gumption to

take a stand – when, if you’re situationally lucky – you’ll have a decent hand.

Chat tells Every Internet site has a chat feature, which is great if you like the social side of the game, but every now and then you’ll encounter a rude player who uses the chatbox to mouth off. When you outplay them they think you’re just lucky, and end up typing sweet nothings like, ‘I hate you, I hope you die!’ While it’s at your discretion whether or not to report them to the relevant customer services, you should also ask what this tells you about their state of mind – ie, they’re angry, on tilt and ready to dump all their chips.

Can a player fake rage? Absolutely, but most people who vent spleen into the chat box do so because they’ve just suffered at your hands and yelling at you makes them feel better. That’s a massive tell about their entire (flawed) state of mind. If your moral compass permits, your best tactic is to push them even further into tilt and fleece them of their money. In PKR, emotes such as the ‘chicken’ and ‘bring it on’ can be infuriating, and certain to push a tilting player into some ill-advised playmaking.

Buy-in tells Any time you see someone buy into any game for less than an adequate amount ($100, say, in a $1-$2 no-limit game) you should assume that he’s timid, scared, running really bad or unwilling to put an adequate amount of money into play.

Push him. Punish him for his weakness until he shows some backbone.

Buzz tells If playing in a poker game is a buzz, then playing in two must be twice the buzz.

Double-dippers, then, or even triple-dippers, are telling us that they’re more interested in stimulation than win rate. If you scour the sign-up lists and find that you’re playing against someone who’s playing on several other tables too, you can guess that he’s not fully committed to playing his best.

To exploit this tell just wait until you see him involved in a big confrontation in one of his other games. At that point, you can steal chips from him in your game because he’ll be totally distracted by more pressing matters elsewhere.

Pre-action buttons As you know, every site offers you the option of planning your moves in advance.

If someone has no interest in their hand, they can click ‘Check/Fold Any’, grab a drink or go for a toilet break. If they have a monster, they can ‘Bet/Raise Any’ and go to war with guns blazing. These pre-action buttons, of course, cause their actions to appear on-screen instantaneously when their turn comes around.

You, who are paying careful attention, will quickly note which actions are thought out in the moment and which are planned in advance. This tells you much. An instant raise, for instance, says they have a hand so big they don’t care who does what in front of them. A raise with hesitation might betray a drop in confidence based on all the raises that preceded their intended one. Again, for this there is a two-point plan:

3 Always try to stay one step ahead in your thinking 4 Lookout for short buyins, action junkies and other obvious behavioural flaws 5 Be blandly consistent in your betting and timing so as not to give too much away 6 Tilt is the single biggest tell of all. Find tilty players. Push them deeper into tilt. Strip their wallets and enjoy their money!

Use pre-action button information as a reliable indicator of how confident your foes are about their hands.

Don’t ever use the pre-action buttons yourself; information is power and you should never give it away for free.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

By this stage you should be well on your way to online poker mastery, so it’s time to get serious, with top-level strategies for winning play

BY NOW, YOU KNOW TEXAS HOLD’EM inside-out. You know all about pre- and post-flop strategy, tournament play and pot odds. You know how to spot a bluff and how to exploit a variety of online tells.

In fact, you have many of the attributes of a successful Internet player.

However, you shouldn’t content yourself with a merely adequate understanding of the game. In this section we will look at more advanced skills such as poker maths and the specifics of heads-up play, as well as introducing you to the mysteries of Omaha.

Glory and fortune await, so read on!

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HEADS-UP MASTERCLASS

HEADS-UP MASTERCLASS

Face-off

When you get down to two players in a tournament, it’s time to forget your manners.

To win in this environment you’re going to need all the aggression you can muster…

PLAYING HEADS-UP IS THE CLOSEST you’ll get to playing Russian roulette with Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter.

There may not be a gun pointed at your head, but going toe-to-toe at a poker match is a high-pressure situation.

If you can’t conquer this aspect of the game you’ve got no chance of becoming a successful player. It’s much like a game of chicken – you don’t need the fastest car or, in this case, the best hand. The nerve to stay on target once the pedal has hit the metal is a far more important quality.

This kamikaze spirit could get you into trouble if you crash your Route 66 racer into a King Kong pick-up truck, but without it you may as well walk away from the table before you even post your first blind.

The most important thing to remember is that you don’t need the best hand to win; it doesn’t matter what cards you get dealt if

the other person folds. If they toss in their 10-8 and you’re sitting there with an 8-6 you still pick up the chips. In heads-up you can justifiably contest any pot with a single court card and almost any pair is worth pumping.

Show some aggression Forget the time that mother told you to play nicely with the other children – be a monster, be aggressive. Once you’re the chip leader, bully the other player off the blinds and use your position to pile the pressure on their dwindling stack.

If your normal game is a tight long-haul style then be prepared to change gear rapidly. You can’t expect to play a checking and folding game and still win. Not only will you get more blinds stolen than if Ikea left its Liverpool warehouse unlocked overnight, you’ll be that much easier to read when a Big Slick slides your way.

If you attack the other hand, you force your nemesis to make the decision to call, fold or raise, and it should allow you more time to spot tells and expose bluffs. The majority of the time neither hand will have a great deal of ballast to it. If your opponent checks, you have to bet. If a re-raise comes your way then you can always fold, but giving free cards towards a potential straight or flush draw is not an avenue you want to pursue.

If you’re the small blind you should attack the big blind like a rabid dog. Salivate, bark and get on all fours if you think it will help, but you have to raise that big blind more often than not. If your opponent only calls you down a third of the time, you’ll still be in profit – and you may hit something on the flop anyway.

Flog the flop When a bets is called and the flop hits the baize you can’t afford to look at the cards in the same way as you would during normal play. If you hit a middle pair with a decent kicker during a standard hold’em hand you’d probably be quite happy about it. In heads-up this puts you in a very strong position. As a rule of thumb, if you’re on the button never just call – always raise to ensure you get a payout when you get dealt a decent hand.

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HEADS-UP MASTERCLASS

ADVANCED STRATEGY

WSOP 2005: Hachem’s call In heads-up, any two cards can win If you don’t know your foe, you may not get many chances to get an insight into their heads-up technique. Watch the preflop raises to get an understanding of what they will bet as a bluff and what is a solid move aimed at pulling you towards a heavy loss. When you get to see cards on their backs make sure you remember the betting practice of that hand. If a similar rhythm emerges later, it’s odds-on they’ll be holding the same or similar hole cards.

Against an inexperienced, passive player it’s best to raise as often as possible and lay as many bets on the flop without making your loose and wild play too obvious. It’s good to remember that the chance of starting with a pair is around 16/1, so a single court card is worth a punt.

If the newcomer folds in the face of heavy raises and continues to look cowed, pile on the pressure until they show the first sign of strength. If they meet you head-on after folding their first couple of hands, chances are they’ll actually have a hand – then it’s time to assess how good your hole cards are and consider backing off.

However, it’s paramount to sustain the assault on your opponent’s chips. If the stacks get tipped over 3/1 in your favour it makes the likelihood of a comeback very remote indeed. Take them to the cleaners and start calling them all-in.

Of course, this advice is all well and good but it does assume that you have the larger clay army in front of you. What if you’re the lowly peasant fighting against heavy artillery? It’s a tricky decision whether to wage a war of attrition and call their bluffs or opt for the ambush, waiting until you get a decent hand to wreak heavy damage. However, you need to strike a balance to ensure that your stack isn’t simply whittled away by blinds.

If you’re the small blind, attack the big blind like a rabid dog.

Salivate, bark and get on all fours

‘Bouncebackability’ You know the big stack is looking to bet you all-in and they’ll be likely to play you on most hands just to pile on the pressure.

The best chance you have when you’re very short stacked is to act like a downon-your-luck street urchin. Go all-in with a half-decent hand and you’ll either double through, steal the blind or get caught trying to pick pockets. But if you’re continually getting your blinds stolen your chances of getting back on level terms slip further away with every hand.

Ultimately, you’ll find heads-up play embraces two of the purest aspects of poker: the ability to disguise your own hand and to figure out what your opponent has.

But if you want tournament success then it’s vital to master the heads-up. Unless, of course, you’re happy coming second.

Starting hands are far less important in heads-up play, especially when you’re allowed to see a flop cheaply. In the final hand of the 2005 WSOP Main Event, Joe Hachem won with one of the worst hands in poker, 7-3 off-suit, against Steve Dannenmann’s unsuited A-3. Dannenmann had raised to $700K pre-flop against Hachem’s $300K big blind. As chip leader Hachem only had to double his blind to play – a cheap price for the chance to pick up a killer flop that filled his straight. When the Ace came on the turn, Dannenmann was completely trapped.

Joe Hachem

FLOP

Steve Dannenmann

TURN

RIVER

Chip leader Joe Hachem was let in cheaply to pick up a killer hand

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

POCKET PAIRS

HOW TO PLAY POCKET PAIRS

Is that a pair in your pocket? … or are you just pleased to see us? From pocket ducks to pocket rockets, we show you some extremely sound – and sobering – playing strategies for every pair you’ll ever have in Texas hold’em POCKET PAIRS RANK AMONG THE most valuable hands in hold’em, but because they are so often misplayed – usually overplayed, sometimes underplayed – they don’t add as much to your winnings as they should.

Here, we examine the nature of pocket pairs, focusing primarily on their use in no-limit tournaments. There are also some crucial notes for low-limit money players, so don’t run away if you tend to only play small-limit or pot-limit games.

Let’s start with The Worst Play In Poker – and it’s quite astonishing how many players get this one wrong. Yes, you guessed it, it’s calling an all-in bet with a small pair.

If you call all-in rather than betting or raising all-in, you only have one way to win: holding the best hand. It’s far better to have two ways to win when you make a bet; either with your bet or with your hand. Suppose you knew that your hand was a 3/2 underdog to win – that you only had a 40% chance of winning. Suppose, moreover, you knew that if you bet all-in, your opponent would fold 50% of the time.

It would be correct to bet, even though you knew you had the inferior hand. In 100 confrontations, you would win 50 without a fight, and of the other 50, you would win 20. You wind up winning 70 of the 100 confrontations. While you can’t know the odds this precisely at the table, this example shows how having two ways to win often turns an inferior hand into a winning one.

However, if you call all-in, you’re going to find yourself in one of two situations: either you’ll be roughly even money (against two over-cards) or you’ll be roughly a 9/2

underdog (small pair against larger pair).

Do you really want to put all your chips into the pot when it’s impossible for your opponent to fold and you’re either a small favourite or a huge underdog?

It’s a ridiculous play if you look at it realistically, and yet you’ll see players again and again making huge calls with hands like pocket fours.

The ‘coin flip’ myth Whenever you watch televised poker and you see someone with a pocket pair going up against someone with two overcards (such as Q-Q vs A-K or 7-7 vs 8-9), you almost always hear the commentators say one of two things: either the hand is a coin flip (meaning that it’s a 50/50 chance) or that it’s roughly 11/10 in favour of the pair. Listen for it – it’s practically universal.

The only problem is, it’s almost always universally wrong.

Different pocket pairs are different-sized favourites against different over-cards.

In fact, they’re not always favourites.

Believe it or not, J-10 suited is a favourite over every single pair from 2s through to 7s if the pair doesn’t contain one of the suited cards – and usually even if it does.

You need to reach pocket 8s before the pair becomes the favourite, and that’s by a tiny amount. On the other hand, if you take your pocket 7s – or even your pocket deuces, for that matter – up against A-K, you’re the favourite. Can you guess why the J-10 hands do so well?

Smaller pairs There are four main ways in which over-cards can defeat a pocket pair: To hit one (or more) of the over-cards.

Believe it or not, J-10 suited is a favourite over every single pair from 2s through to 7s. Just don’t start ranking it too highly

For example, Q-Q vs A-K, and the final board is 5, K, 7, J, 2.

To make a straight (a single card from a pair can also help make a straight, but two connected cards stand a much better chance). For example, 7-7 vs J-10, with the final board coming 8, 9, Q, 7, 2 (notice that even making a set of 7s on the turn didn’t save the pocket pair).

To make a flush (very similar to the straight analysis). For example, 8:-8Ú vs Q;-J; with the final board coming 10Ú, 9;, A;, 3…, 8;. Notice the same river card that made a seemingly lucky set of 8s also created the flush: remember such possibilities when calculating your outs.

To get counterfeited – one of the biggest problems with diddly pairs. For example, 3-3 vs A-9, and the final board comes 5, 5, 6, 10, 6. The owner of the 3s must play the board, while the opponent can use his Ace. Any time you own a small pair and a larger pair flops, be very careful.

Because J-10 makes more high straights than any other hand, if you owned a pair of 4s, you would actually much prefer to be up against the powerful-looking A-K, which makes far fewer straights, than against J-10.

If you own Q-Q and are up against A-K, you are lucky enough to be in the single most favourable pair versus over-cards situation. Express it however you like: 4/3, or 1.33/1, or a 57.2% advantage. No matter which way you describe it, you are quite far away from coin-flip territory.

You own this significant edge because your two Queens reduce the A-K’s chances of winning with a straight. A-K’s owner will need a Queen to hit the board

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

POCKET PAIRS

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

POCKET PAIRS

to make a straight, and you have two of them tucked safely away. Don’t get too excited by this though. Many players, upon learning that J-10 makes more high straights than any other hand, start to rank J-10 far too highly.

Smaller pairs You can split pocket pairs into several distinct value groups. Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up…

Low pairs (2-2, 3-3, 4-4 and 5-5).

Although these hands stand a reasonably good chance of winning a heads-up confrontation against over-cards, they have several vulnerabilities. In a game where three or more players see the flop, they usually need to make a set to win.

Small pairs are also the most vulnerable to being counterfeited. The good news is their unimproved post-flop weakness is so obvious that even bad players are willing to throw them away – something that can’t be said of…

Middle pairs (6-6, 7-7 and 8-8). For the most part, these hands play like small pairs. The biggest difference is that they don’t get counterfeited nearly as often, and occasionally in heads-up confrontations you will find yourself facing only one over-card instead of two. Otherwise, these hands can be more troublesome than small pairs, especially if the board comes low – 10, 4, 2, for instance. A player holding pocket 8s will often think ‘only one over-card hit, I might be leading’, and bet aggressively, not realising he is up against someone who has that ten or someone who is tentatively calling with a hand like 9-9. Normally, unless you flop a set or a good straight draw (that is, the board is 4, 5, 6 and you have 7-7), you should get out.

Danger pairs (9-9, 10-10). These are much like middle pairs, but occasionally will hold up against an opponent who has hit part of his hand (like, for example, someone playing A-8 suited who hits the 8). They should be played like middle pairs, but you will very rarely get counterfeited.

Some call them danger pairs because players tend to push them too hard.

Beware and don’t make the same mistake.

Royal couples J-J: The single trickiest hand in no-limit.

It wins just enough without improvement to give its owner confidence, yet is extremely vulnerable in multi-way situations. If you are facing all three over-cards, you are a significant underdog. Just how big varies: you’re better off being up against A-K and K-Q (winning about 43%) than against A-K and Q-10 (winning about 37%), because of the lack of duplication. One trick to avoid trouble is to pretend it’s 8-8. You’ll only play it hard in favourable post-flop situations, and won’t try to beat the world with it, pre-flop.

Q-Q: The third-best starting hand in hold’em should be played aggressively.

The problem in low-limit games is you

Unless you flop a set or an open straight draw, troublesome middle pairs should be abandoned as soon as possible

won’t just be up against one player holding A-K: you’ll be up against K-10 here and A-9 there, and that’s much less favourable than facing a solitary A-K. In no-limit, what sort of hands will you face heavy action with? Bluffs, the odd person overplaying a small pair or A-Q, A-K and K-K or A-A, where you’re a 9/2 underdog. It’s often best to make a significant, but not full, commitment raise and wait to see if the flop contains an Ace or King. If you’re in a tournament and someone raises up front, someone else moves in on him, and someone else calls the all-in bet, unless at least one of the all-in players was short stacked, your Queens belong in the muck.

Ditto, when someone seems unafraid of multiple opponents.

K-K: Paired cowboys make for a terrific hand that’s worth playing quite strongly.

Just remember even rookies playing A-3 have a 30% chance to beat you with their over-card. In a low-limit, multi-way pot, if an Ace flops, your Kings are doomed.

Only in high-limit games – where players will fold hands like A-9 – do you have a chance. Try to avoid going on tilt when your Kings get beaten, because players hold singleton Aces a lot and 30% chances are not insignificant.

Aces in the hole A-A: Beloved pocket rockets don’t have over-card worries. The key is in knowing when to fold them. In low-limit, multiway games, you should figure that two red Aces are toast when the flop comes 9:, 10:, J…; so beware of extremely coordinated flops. Don’t get stubborn.

A lot of no-limit players like to limp with Aces, hoping someone else will raise, so they can re-raise. But if five people wind up limping, you have no idea where you are after the flop. Why not raise and hope you get re-raised? If everyone folds and you just win the blinds, that’s still not as bad as losing your whole stack because you let someone in too cheaply.

Perilous plays How good is that pocket pair? Only a flop will tell you to hold or fold…

Pocket pairs are normally the best hand before the flop, but remember your hand is usually defined by the flop.

One of the biggest mistakes players make with pocket pairs is getting stubborn with them once the flop makes it probable they’re no longer leading. Remember, hold’em is a sevencard game, not a two-card game.

Because low pocket pairs almost always have to flop a set to be worth continued play, it’s vitally important to

keep position in mind when playing. If you happen to be the first player to act and hold a small pair, there’s a strong chance you’ll face one or more raises by the time the action gets back to you – and by then the price to see the flop isn’t right. You’ll only flop a set one time in eight tries, so do your best to get in there as cheaply as you can, and try to get in against those opponents who have enough money to pay you off handsomely if you get lucky.

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DEALING WITH MANIACS

ADVANCED STRATEGY

He’s an eccentric, a gambler, a freak, a risk-taker, an oddball – and a godsend to any poker game…

DEALING WITH POKER MANIACS

Jokers in the Pack

Don’t be intimidated by the aggressive play of a poker maniac. Follow our expert advice and you can tame these wild cards – and turn a tidy profit in the bargain

PICTURE THIS: A MAN BRINGS A big brown grocery sack to a game of poker, takes a seat and then dumps the entire contents of the bag – $25,000 – on to the poker table into one big pile.

Bundles of hundred-dollar bills tumble on to the green felt. The man has everyone in the game covered at least five times over.

The date is winter 1996, the place Resorts International, Atlantic City, the game pot-limit Texas hold’em. The man posts his $5 blind and is dealt a hand.

What happens next defies the imagination.

The man becomes an instant legend in poker circles, as he proceeds to raise on each successive round of betting. This

wouldn’t be unusual but for one crucial detail: he never looks at his cards.

The man is an eccentric, a gambler, a freak, a risk-taker, an oddball – and a godsend to any poker game. He is the quintessential maniac, playing without any fear of losing and seemingly lacking any regard for money.

Incredibly, he wins a few hands early on and busts two players at the table before meeting his inevitable destiny. The $25,000 lasts 20 minutes. His fate sealed, the man toddles out of the casino, never to be seen or heard of again.

While this was an extreme example of what a maniac does to a poker game, it epitomises the grave risk and tremendous upside potential of having a maniac sitting at the poker table. The maniac is certainly capable of breaking his opponent with a combination of good hands and reckless aggression. However, in the long 83

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DEALING WITH MANIACS

run, the maniac always meets his doom when confronted with the appropriate counter-strategy – specifically designed to neutralise the nutter’s hyper-aggressive tendencies. Carefully crafting a counterstrategy to deal with such maniacs does not have to be as tedious or frustrating as you might think.

Major impacts of having a maniac in your game: A maniac presents a unique set of challenges for any poker player. In actual fact, the maniac is not always at a disadvantage. For instance, a maniac might fare well in heads-up play against a passive opponent. In short-handed games with multiple passive opponents the maniac likely enjoys a significant edge.

The maniac’s demise usually comes in full-ring games (with at least eight players), where he is up against just one or two opponents in each hand – at least one of which (or even both) holds a stronger hand. Against such blatant aggression, what happens is that all the players become more disciplined and tend to

In standard games (four- or five-way action in hands) Play tight in early position Play aggressively in late position Re-raise more often – attempt to isolate the maniac and get heads-up Call the maniac’s bets/raises more often, even with a marginal hand Don’t bluff

play technically-correct poker. They wait for strong starting hands with which to confront the freak.

Hence, the maniac often faces the one or two best hands at the table, and is frequently at a disadvantage. Because opponents see that he plays many hands and will pay the bets off with a flurry of raises, all that is necessary is to patiently wait for strong cards and let the odds work against the maniac.

Unfortunately, this poses a serious problem if you fail to get good starting hands. Some undisciplined players see chips flying around the table and can’t contain themselves. They begin relaxing their own starting-hand requirements.

These undisciplined players see the maniac occasionally win with garbage, and react by betting or raising with marginal cards.

This plays right into the maniac’s intent – to generate action, put opponents on tilt and create a wild poker game with multiple players in every hand with huge pots.

Most games with a maniac usually fall into one of two categories – they are either very tight (two- or three-way action in most pots) or very wild (multiple opponents calling raises in every hand).

The maniac’s behaviour causes every single player at the table to adjust his strategy and playing style.

In wild games (sixway action or more in most hands) Play suited-connectors, pairs, and Ace-suited hands more often Check and call when pot odds dictate there is value Throw away marginal hands when other players have raised or re-raised Don’t attempt any isolation moves Don’t attempt to bluff

Basic strategy for playing against a maniac Keep in mind that in poker, seating position is absolutely critical. It is almost always advantageous to sit to a maniac’s immediate left. The worst seat at the table is usually to the maniac’s immediate right. So, in such a situation your first goal should be to select a favourable seat.

Request a seat-change if possible.

Dealing with a maniac How to exploit a maniac’s weaknesses, whatever type of game you’re in…

In tight games (two- or three-way action in most hands) Play very tight in early position Play tight-aggressive in late position Check and call and/or check-raise more often, since the maniac will usually bet when checked to Induce bluffs and call more often. Call down the maniac’s bets and raises, even when holding a marginal hand Don’t attempt to bluff

With a maniac in the game, the ultimate objective is to get in with the best hand, anticipating that the maniac will pay off on all bets and raises. In tight games, a tight-aggressive play is usually the optimal strategy. In other words, in hold’em enter a pot with premium starting hands (pairs higher than 7-7 and non-pairs like A-K and A-Q), and bet them aggressively. The maniac will often try to intimidate you into folding by raising and re-raising. But since you are playing good cards more often than not, you will end up with the best hand and win more pots.

In wild games, a very different strategy is necessary. Since the maniac has created multi-way action and big pots, drawing hands increase significantly in value. Preflop hands, like suited-connectors, small pairs and Ace-suited, are often playable cards. If you have two suited cards and flop two cards to your suit, a raise by the maniac actually increases your expected value in the hand, since you will win a much bigger pot when you make the flush (which happens about 37% of the time when you flop a flush draw).

Check out our ‘Dealing With A Maniac’ box (left) for more basic strategic concepts when playing against a maniac.

Differences between limit and no-limit games with a maniac at the table So far, most of the strategic concepts discussed relate to limit hold’em games.

However, pot-limit and no-limit games present their own unique circumstances.

It’s important to note that maniacs can dominate a big-money game, especially when stoked with big bankrolls against timid opponents. Players who are afraid to lose their chips fall victim to the maniac’s hyper-aggressive tendencies.

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Don’t let him get to you! Sit back, relax and take him out with a good’un

Players who are afraid to lose their chips will fall victim to the maniac’s hyperaggressive tendencies

In a sense, they get run over. Once the maniac discovers this weakness, he simply launches raise after raise at his helpless opponent, and more often than not will win pot after pot – even though he likely doesn’t have the best hand.

Such dynamics are simply not possible in limit hold’em games, since the amount of betting is fixed on each round and opponents are less likely to be intimidated by the size of the wager.

This concept is important because it’s essential to accept the reality that bankroll swings in pot-limit and no-limit hold’em will be much more severe with a maniac at the table. In high-limit games it is far more difficult to ‘find out where you’re at’ – to use a common poker expression – with a bet or raise when facing a maniac.

For example, with a strong but vulnerable hand such as Q-Q, it is probably best to throw your hand away when you bet out and are raised by an opponent after an Ace flops. In a conventional game, the opponent is likely to have an Ace, which means you are beat. But when a maniac raises in this situation, you are forced to play a guessing game, which is not a good position to be in. The long and the short of it is that it’s tough to play against maniacs in pot-limit and no-limit games when contrasted with fixed-limit games.

Keep the maniac happy while you slowly fleece him Poker is just as much a game of psychology as it is of card values.

Accordingly, there are several specific tactics that can be used to keep a gambling fruitcake sitting in the game for longer, and therefore steadily contributing to your profits at the table (if you are following our advice that is).

Most maniacs are losing poker players.

Over the long run there’s no way that this insanely aggressive behaviour can bring in a decent profit. No amount of talent or experience can overcome playing way too many hands and putting one’s money into the pot repeatedly with the worst hand.

So, it’s important to try and understand why the dimwit plays so recklessly.

Does he simply like to gamble? Is he a wealthy eccentric playing for insignificant stakes? Or does the attention he receives at the table stroke his ego? There are a myriad of reasons for maniacal behaviour, and identifying the underlying cause of such behaviour is the first step towards exploiting it for profit.

ADVANCED STRATEGY

What is a maniac?

General poker theory suggests there are four basic types of poker player: 1 Weak-tight players play very few hands and surrender pots too easily 2 Tight-aggressive players play few hands but bet strongly when involved 3 Loose-aggressive players play many hands and bet strongly 4 Loose-passive players play many hands but surrender pots too often.

But I would add another group of players: the maniacs. They deserve a special category all to themselves.

What separates maniacs from looseaggressive players is that maniacs play even more hands and tend to bet, raise and re-raise to the point where the game is played for significantly higher stakes. Therefore, the dynamics of an ordinary poker game are altered radically because of the presence of the maniac. In short, a maniac usually displays the following characteristics and tendencies: He has more than an average number of chips on the table He often posts a live straddle (when permitted to do so) He plays far more hands than normal He raises and re-raises far more often than normal He bluffs far more often than normal

Whatever the root causes may be, most maniacs – indeed, most poker players – want to enjoy themselves at the table. It’s human nature. Disparaging remarks and negative comments made by so-called pros towards these players are incredibly detrimental to both the short- and longterm winnings that might be gained from having these madmen in the game. It’s an important point to remember.

It might sound dubious, but believe us, the ultimate counter-strategy when you’re playing with a maniac is to let the player think he can dominate a game, and that you – his opponent – can be manipulated at the table. Letting the maniac think he can run over you and bully you into losing, while you are actually prepared to confront his aggressiveness with proper counterstrategies, effectively sets the perfect trap.

In essence, the maniac has committed the very worst error of poker – underestimating his opponent.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

REBUYS

REBUY TOURNAMENTS

To rebuy or not to rebuy?

Playing like a maniac and going all-in regularly means certain death in normal poker. Not so with rebuys. Here we show how buying back in when your stack is low can keep you out of the poker cemetery IN MANY WAYS, TOURNAMENT POKER revolutionised the game when it first came to prominence in the 1970s. It quickly proved a more exciting way to play the game, adding a sense of urgency and drama to the already potent wagering action. It’s one of the main reasons poker has become so popular today, and many casual players dream of one day entering the $10,000 Main Event at the World Series of Poker. This, and most of the tournaments played on the Internet, are ‘freezeouts’ – that is, you’re eliminated as soon as you lose your chips (even if this happens on the very first hand). However there’s another, very different, type of tournament on offer at most venues, and that’s the ‘rebuy’.

In these events, there’s a designated ‘rebuy period’ (usually the first hour), during which you can buy more chips if you go broke. Depending on the specific

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PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

rules, you can do this as many times as you want when you have chips but fall below a certain level (or even straight away). Sometimes you can also take an ‘add-on’ at the end of the rebuy period, in which you can buy even more chips irrespective of how many you have actually accumulated.

Because of this, strategy during this part of a tournament is radically different from the freezeout stage of the event – that is, when the rebuy period is over – or a straight freezeout. In short, you need to have a few rebuys in your pocket, a good gambling attitude and the ability to see exactly who is playing what game during this stage, as well as how their game alters afterwards.

So rebuy events sound right up your street, eh? Great, but hang on a second, as there are a few things you need to take into consideration before you even play a hand if you want to make them profitable.

Get stacked First, you need to check the rules and structures to ensure your pockets are deep enough and to determine your overall strategy. For example, in a $10 online rebuy event, you might need to budget around $50, as some sites not only offer add-ons, but allow you to rebuy before the first hand – basically, whenever you have the usual amount of starting chips or less.

Moreover, with often huge fields online, it’s normally a good idea to buy more chips whenever you’re given the opportunity so you can build a stack and have an advantage over players who don’t.

You may also go broke at some stage and need to rebuy a ‘double stack’, although doing so more than once probably isn’t advisable. With two double buy-ins of $20 and an add-on of $10, $50 is a good ballpark figure to keep in mind.

However, if only single buy-ins are allowed, $30 would be pretty reasonable.

This strategy usually holds true, but you also need to check on how many chips you get at which stages for your money.

For example, buy-ins and rebuys are usually the same amount of chips, but some events might give more for the add-on as an extra incentive to take it.

This can represent a significant difference. For example, if a site offers double buy-ins where you get 1,500 chips for $10 (so 3,000 for $20 to start with) and an add-on of 2,000 chips for $10, you should probably just play as normal and gamble it up. Conversely, if you’re only allowed single buy-ins of 1,000 chips for $10, but an add-on where you get 2,000 chips for another $10, it’s probably more

correct to play extremely tight and ensure you don’t need to take unnecessary rebuys where you only get the 1,000 chips. For the purposes of this article, though, we’ll assume the latter isn’t the case, as all you need to do there is fold – unless you find a monster or flop a big hand cheaply!

Unlike in a freezeout, where people usually play very tight in the early levels while trying to figure each other out, it’s common to see several people go all-in on the first hand of a small buy-in rebuy event and turn over hands such as 4-4, K-7 and A-2! This is great news if you’re on their table, as you’ve found some real gamblers and, if you play it right, you could be sitting on a mountain of chips by the end of the rebuy period for only a small outlay.

Just ask yourself this: if one table has 40 rebuys on it and another has only ten, then which table is more likely to produce the eventual winner? For this reason, you need to do as much as possible to encourage the gambling spirit while keeping things as cheap as possible for yourself.

This might mean talking it up with the maniacs and making a few inexpensive raises or bluffs (which, of course, you can show to loosen everyone up), going all-in a few times, or just generally giving the impression that you’re there to gamble.

Of course, this isn’t exactly the case, as there’s no point ending up with 20,000 in chips if that’s what they would have cost you if you were able to buy them. Rather, you want to create the illusion of being a maniac – as poker legend Doyle Brunson wrote: ‘You have to give action to get action.’ And this is particularly true in rebuy events, as people are far less likely to gamble with a rock.

This is easy enough to do. Most rebuy events are pot limit or no limit and the sizes of bets tend to get exponentially bigger through the betting rounds, so you can make a lot of ‘advertising’ raises and bluffs before the flop or on it without denting your stack. However, because of this, people will frequently mis-categorise you and pay you off when you have a hand and make big bets on the turn and river, or go all-in before the flop with a big hand.

You want to create the illusion of being a maniac – you have to give action to get action

ADVANCED STRATEGY

For example, if you sit down and more than double your starting chips in the first half of the rebuy period, you might want to tighten up a bit, as your plan has been successful and you don’t really want to get low again. Besides, if you do make this decision, the chances are the other players won’t notice for a while anyway, and so if you do pick up some big hands, you’re just as likely to get paid with them.

However, if you go broke and decide to take a rebuy, you need to start thinking about how much you’re prepared to spend, or if you want to continue at all.

For example, if you find yourself bereft of chips very early in the game and the table is a good one, you might be happy to go over budget in order to take advantage of the fast and loose gambling on offer.

On the other hand, if you’re at a poor or tough table or the rebuy period is nearly over, you might just decide to tighten up and wait for the freezeout stage, or even give up and leave if you go broke again.

After all, if others have a massive stack already, you’re going to be at a huge disadvantage anyway.

The big freeze(out)...

The freezeout stages of a rebuy event throw up a few special circumstances.

Most importantly, you need to observe how people’s styles change in comparison to how they played during the rebuy period. For example, have they noticed that a change of strategy is needed at all?

Have they taken add-ons or extra rebuys if these were available to them? And how many chips do they now have compared to the blinds and average stacks (both at your table and overall)?

Consider these points as you enter the freezeout stage of the tournament (and mentally compare them to other events you’ve played) and you’ll be well on the way to the final table.

Success or disaster?

If there’s one certainty about this approach it’s that the volatility of your results in the rebuy period can go through the roof as you’re gambling so much and often playing far more hands than you would normally.

As things progress, you’re probably either going to end up accumulating a big stack or going broke, and when this happens you need to consider whether it’s time to reconsider your strategy.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

POKER MATHS

POKER MATHS MASTERCLASS

Do the

maths ON THE FACE OF IT, TEXAS HOLD’EM seems to be a pretty straightforward game played with up to ten players and 52 cards. But the mathematics underlying it are extremely complex. Players are generally split into four groups when it comes to this topic: the bleary-eyed amateurs who chase inside straights and flush draws even when the odds don’t compute; the old-timers who’ve learnt everything by rote but can’t tell you that 2-2 vs 9-10 suited is a dog whereas 10-10 vs A-K is a 4/3 favourite; the maths literate who can calculate odds and conceptualise poker situations with the help of a calculator or notepad; and the crackpot geniuses with degrees in game theory who can rave on for hours about stuff no one else understands.

Although fitting a Bachelor of Statistics and Maths Science course into a four-page article is beyond even our talents, we want to start out by getting your poker brain at least up to the third stage of maths mastery. You’ll be able to easily calculate odds, think about the game for yourself and analyse various situations – then we’ll start branching out into more advanced areas. So, what are the magic numbers you need to start drilling into your head?

Counting cards Well, 52 cards means you can be dealt 1,326 possible two-card starting hands (assuming you count A;-KÚ as different from A;-K:), of which 78 will be pairs (1 in 17), 312 will be suited and the other 936 will be unsuited. Each pair can occur

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

Struggling to make those tough poker decisions? It could all be a matter of getting your sums in order.

Ready your calculator then, as we show you how to put your times tables to use at the poker table…

Calculator Fun That’s right, fun! Well, you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank when you apply this simple calculation to your game – mathematics never felt so good Ever wondered how you too can be a fountain of poker knowledge and maths wizardry? All you need is a calculator with a ‘combinations’ button (something along the lines of ‘nCr’ or similar), a pen and a notepad.

Now imagine that the (c) stands for ‘choose’ and that you’ll be putting in numbers either side and hitting the

combinations button in the middle.

So, to calculate the number of possible starting hands enter ‘52 (c) 2’ and, voilà, the answer is 1,326.

Want to know how many ways you can be dealt Aces? There are four Aces in the deck, so enter ‘4 (c) 2’, which is 6.

And the chances of being dealt a pair of them? Well 1,326 divided by 6 is 220/1.

Not very good, unfortunately.

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POKER MATHS

ADVANCED STRATEGY

Of 1,326 possible twocard starting hands, 78 will be pairs, 312 suited and 936 unsuited – this is the terrain on which you’re going to war

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POKER MATHS

six different ways and each unpaired hand 16 ways, of which it will be suited a quarter of the time (to learn how to calculate these numbers see Calculator Fun on the previous page). Of course, all this might seem as interesting as watching paint dry, but these numbers define everything that can happen to you in a poker hand – this is the terrain on which you’re going to war, so it’s a good idea to get a feel for them.

In fact, two-thirds of the time an unpaired hand will fail to make a pair on the flop, and a pair will only turn into trips one in eight times

Dog or dominant For example, if you’re in a tournament and find yourself sitting to the right of a maniac drinking double kamikazes and raising every second hand before looking at his cards, you can figure out where your pair of Jacks stands when you raise and he inevitably re-raises all-in. There are six ways he can have A-A, K-K or Q-Q, which are the only hands that dominate you, and 16 ways he can have A-K, A-Q or K-Q, against which you’re a marginal favourite.

So, assuming you’re happy to risk the coin-flip, the 18 in 1,225 chance that you’re losing is a fantastic proposition – and good news for the barmaid when the maniac retreats to drown his sorrows.

But what if the same thing happened close to the bubble and the drunk had been replaced by a solid player you know would only re-raise with a bigger pair or A-K? Well now you might not be so happy, as of the 34 possible hands you put him on, 18 have you dominated and 16 are virtual coin-flips, meaning you’re actually a favourite to be the dog. This is a time to think very carefully about pot odds and relative chip standings.

Making a hand Moving on to the flop, you are now confronted by a plethora of possibilities (19,600 to be precise). But aside from the numbers, the key factor to remember is pretty obvious – that the proportion of the hand that you’ve seen just increased from 2/7 to 5/7 (you’ve now got five of the seven cards that will comprise your potential best poker hand). This makes the flop the defining moment in every hand of Texas hold’em. And if you’re playing no-limit or pot-limit hold’em, this is where it’s going to start getting expensive.

So what are the possibilities? Well, the good news (assuming you’re an aggressive player) is that most hands miss most flops.

In actual fact, two-thirds of the time an unpaired hand will fail to make a pair on the flop and a pair will only turn into trips one in eight or so times.

So, assuming you raised pre-flop and therefore have the momentum on the flop, a routine bet of around half the pot can be a very profitable venture. Even if your opponent only folds 50% of the time and calls or raises the rest (because he’s holding a pair, he’s on a draw or he figures you’re bluffing), you’re still playing winning poker. And of course, some of the time you’ll actually have a decent hand as well.

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This then is part of the beauty of poker – you can bend the rules in as many directions as you want, as nothing is concrete except the numbers behind the cards. Learn them well and winning and losing will eventually pale into insignificance, as playing poker becomes more like running a business – some days you sell a showroom full of Ferraris and others you’re just paying the bills, but at the end of the month the sums still add up to a healthy profit and you’re left smiling all the way to the bank.

The next level We’ve now armed you with the key facts and figures that serve as the foundation of poker, and we’ve shown how you can use mathematics to handle the many possibilities that might unfold. You may not think it’s important to know that there are 1,326 possible starting hands and 19,600 flops in Texas hold’em, but without that knowledge you’re making decisions blind and – even worse – not maximising your chances of winning.

One thing is certain: playing position and acting aggressively is a mathematically proven route to success. Raise before the flop and you might steal the blinds, even if you’re not holding the best hand. If you get called you’ve got the momentum and should carry on betting.

But in the spirit of getting you to understand the numbers, how can this be demonstrated? With a little help from that calculator mentioned on the previous page – the one with the ‘combinations’ button (nCr). Use it, understand the real value of your hand, and you can talk yourself into getting more chips into the pot (or decide that folding is actually a better option).

For example, say you raise with a random hand in late position, and your passive opponent calls with A-K in the big blind. What are the chances he will miss (and will therefore check and fold to your bet)? Assuming you have any two cards below A-K, like 7-3 off-suit or 5-5, the

answer is ‘42 (c) 3’ (the remaining combinations of three cards below A-K) divided by ‘48 (c) 3’ (the total combinations possible), which is 66.37%. This means that whatever you’re holding, you’ll win the pot two-thirds of the time through aggression alone.

The numbers game You can use the same theory to make calls in almost any situation that you might encounter. Say you’re playing in a tournament and you’re short-stacked.

You’ve got less than 10 big blinds left, so you decide that on the next decent hand you’re going to make an all-in move while you’ve still got enough chips to push people off the pot and make drawing hands pay to stay. Here your decisions are determined pretty easily by a few calculations. Say you’ve got an Ace with a weak kicker – a five, for example. Now you might automatically assume that any Ace is a clear-cut favourite, but is this correct?

Let’s start with you in the small blind when everyone’s folded around to you. You have $9,500 and the blinds are $500/$1,000.

Once you’ve posted your small blind of $500 you have $9,000 left and can win $1,500 by moving all-in – this means you’re getting odds of 1/6 on your money, which isn’t great on the surface. To make it worthwhile you should be looking at being at least that big a favourite to win the pot.

There are 1,225 potential hands that the big blind could have, but how many will he call that will beat your A-5? This, of course, depends on many factors: stack sizes, what sort of player he is and so on. But for argument’s sake, let’s imagine the big blind is a tight player who will call with any pair of sevens or higher, and A-8 through A-K. There are six combinations for each pair ‘4 (c) 2’ except A-A – there are only three of those ‘3 (c) 2’ as you hold an Ace – and 12 combinations for each A-x hand (three Aces combined with four Kings, Queens, Jacks and so on). In total then, there are

‘But they were suited!’

Famous last words, eh? Don’t get dazzled by non-connecting suiters.

The odds are against you – and here’s the proof…

Starting-hand requirements are one of the cornerstones of successful poker and one of the traps beginners often fall into is playing hands like Q;-5; or J…-3… just because ‘they’re suited’. Well, put the mechanics of poker maths into action and you will soon see why this is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

Forgetting for a second that you might win by pairing your hole cards (or lose a lot on your kicker), what are the chances of actually making the flush? Say you hold two hearts – the chances of actually flopping it is ‘11 (c) 3’ (you need three of the 11 hearts remaining in the

deck) divided by ‘50 (c) 3’ (the total combinations possible from the cards you haven’t seen), which is 0.84%. Eek! As you can see, those flushes on the flop come along less than one in 100 times. So, what if you’re only looking for a flush draw on the flop? Now you want two hearts and one card of another suit to turn up. The equation here is ‘11 (c) 2’ (two of the remaining hearts) multiplied by ‘39 (c) 1’ (any of the remaining cards that aren’t hearts) divided by 19,600, which is still only 10.94%.

Consider these numbers and you can see why playing hole cards ‘because they’re suited’ is a very bad idea.

An Ace with a small kicker isn’t as good a hand as it might appear for making your stand when short stacked

ADVANCED STRATEGY

117 combinations beating you, or less than 10% of the hands he can be dealt, making moving in a profitable play for you.

What are the chances?

Now what if you were on the button with $9,000 and two other players left? Well, assuming all the details are the same, each of the two players will call with 117 out of the remaining 1,225 (9.55%) combinations and fold the other 1,108 (90.45%) hands.

And by multiplying together the chance of each of them folding (90.45 x 90.45 divided by 100) you realise that they will both fold 81.8% of the time. This means you’ll win the blinds about nine hands out of 11, which isn’t ideal when you’re only getting about 1/6 on your money. But you have to factor in the chance that if you’re called you can double or even triple your stack while holding the worst hand.

A quick visit to an online odds calculator reveals that against a bigger Ace you’re about a 3/1 dog and against pairs lower than Aces you’re about a 7/3 dog.

For the sake of simplicity and because you’re more or less screwed if both players call or one finds Aces, let’s round these numbers up and say that when called you’re always a 3/1 dog. Now you can say that nine times out of 11 you will win the blinds ($1,500) and two times out of 11 you will lose 75% of the time (a loss of $9,000) and win 25% of the time (an average of $9,750 depending on which stack calls). So when you’re called your net result is $9,750 x 0.25 minus $9,000 x 0.75, which equals $-4312.25.

Now, to see whether this is a profitable play or not, the odds need to be factored in. Going on the information you have, you’ll win $1,500 in chips nine times and lose $4,312.25 twice.

So the net result on the play each time you make it is $1,500 x 9 minus $4,312.25 x 2 divided by 11, which is $443.22. This makes it a profitable play, but not by much.

In fact, you might want to think again before putting all your chips on the line.

What’s it add up to?

The moral of the story is that an Ace with a small kicker isn’t as good a hand as it might appear for making your stand. And now that you understand why, you can apply the numbers to your overall game.

Admittedly, we’ve used one very specific example here, but the general concepts can be used in any given situation.

Having said all that, we don’t want to scare you away from poker with too many facts and figures. Poker is meant to be fun and we’re not suggesting you turn it into some sort of academic study. Play the game as you feel it, not strictly by the numbers. The maths just makes poker more transparent, which will give you an edge when the going gets tough.

And ultimately, there’s not a person on the planet who will dispute that poker is more fun when you’re winning.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

OMAHA

HOW TO PLAY OMAHA

Let go of hold’em and head for Omaha

Many Texas hold’em players are trying their hands at Omaha, but their assumption that they can make the leap easily is often their undoing.

So how do you avoid looking like a tenderfoot when you make the switch?

As such, pot-limit Omaha, the game with the unfortunate initials PLO, is the most popular form of high-stakes Omaha, while Omaha hi-lo (8-or-better) is probably the most popular form of low-stakes Omaha.

The differences between PLO and limit Omaha are huge – much more so than the differences between limit hold’em and pot-limit hold’em – so here we will examine both forms and (with any luck) set you on the path to victory.

Let’s start by looking at the key differences between Omaha and hold’em, starting with the most important: 1 The ‘must use two’ rule In Texas hold’em, a player can use one, two or none of his hole cards to create his final hand – if there’s a royal flush on the board, every player in the pot at the end will ‘play the board’ and receive an equal share of the pot.

But in Omaha you must use two – and only two – of your four hole cards in forming your final five-card poker hand.

This rule leads to all kinds of curious situations. In hold’em, you would love to look at your two hole cards and see two Aces. In Omaha, if your four hole cards

PHOTOGRAPHY: DANNY BIRD

AT FIRST GLANCE, TAKING UP OMAHA when you already understand hold’em seems easy – just a case of moving from a five-community-card game with two hole cards to a five-community-card game with four hole cards.

Yet just as first glances at members of the opposite sex have led most of us into trouble at one time or another, so too have the Texas hold’em player’s first lustful glances at Omaha. Remember – appearances can be deceiving! The value of hands, the role of position and the nature of betting are all very different in Omaha, so don’t get lulled into a false sense of security.

Learn the game well, however, and you could turn all this to your favour. The mechanics of Omaha are similar enough to hold’em to ensure that it attracts a lot of curious ‘tourists’, leaving plenty of room for canny players to clean up.

Omaha is played in both high-only and high-low (or hi-lo) versions (see page 98 for more on this variation). For reasons that will become clear after you’ve mastered the game, no-limit Omaha has never really caught on – the value of hole cards simply changes too much throughout the course of a hand.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

In Omaha you must use two – and only two – of your four hold cards in forming your final five-card poker hand

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

OMAHA

The law of the draw Omaha is a game of draws and redraws. Ideally, you only want to play well-connected starting hands and always have multiple ways of improving. Of course, with the random turn of the cards, anything can happen…

In Omaha, position is less relevant.

You could say that hold’em is a game of position, while Omaha is a game of card combinations

Beware! High pairs are not that powerful in Omaha, and J-J is almost worthless unless it makes a full house or quads.

The JÚ-7Ú can make a flush, but non-nut flushes are also dangerous in this game. Let’s limp in and see what happens.

Boom! Somehow, you’ve managed to flop the nut straight, 4 through 8. It goes to show, just about any random hand has a chance of winning in this game. Bet big to drive out drawing hands though, as this game ain’t over till it’s over.

Crash! The turn brings no change but the river is a disaster.

The big bad Ace of spades completes a potential flush, and in Omaha you have to assume someone’s hit it. That’ll teach you for playing mediocre starting hands now, won’t it…

are the four Aces (or any four of a kind), you essentially have a ‘must fold’ hand (unless, perhaps, you are playing headsup), because you have a pair of Aces and no way whatsoever of improving them.

You can’t make a flush or a straight – you must use two of those Aces – and clearly another Ace can’t hit the board.

Indeed, most hands that contain just three of a kind are completely unplayable, although in a high-only game you might consider limping in with A…-A;-AÚ-KÚ (a pair of aces and one nut-flush draw) from the small blind in a multi-way pot, and in hi-lo you could also play A…-A;AÚ-2Ú because you would almost certainly hold the only A-2 (you’d also have one nut flush draw, and while your pair of Aces doesn’t add much to your equity, you would be the only player who could hold a pair of Aces).

Novice players often get bamboozled by this rule. Say the final board shows K;-QÚ-10:-K…-Q;. You hold A-J-x-x, completing an Ace-high straight, while your opponent shows A-K-9-9. If you

were playing hold’em, you’d toss your hand in the muck as soon as you saw that King turn up, as this would make a full house, Kings full of Queens. However, because your opponent has to play two of his cards (no more, no less) his best five-card hand is actually three Kings with an Ace kicker – a hand smashed to bits by your nut straight.

This is why it’s vitally important to ‘table’ your hand (place all four cards face up on the table) in any situation where you’re not completely sure what you hold.

Once you table your hand, other players and the dealer are entitled to help you read it. There’s nothing to be ashamed of – we’ve seen players at the final table of a WSOP event staring at the same Omaha hand, all trying to figure out what the hand’s owner has!

The ‘must two’ rule means: You cannot ‘play the board’. You can only play three-fifths of it You cannot play just a single card from your hand, nor can you play three or four

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Just because there are four suited cards on the board and multiple players in the hand, it isn’t a ‘lock’ that someone has a flush, because ‘someone’ will have to hold two cards in suit, not just one.

You must get accustomed to thinking of your Omaha hole cards not as individual cards, but as groups of two. With four cards in your hand, you hold six possible two-card combinations. A strong Omaha hand gets equity or value from as many of these six combinations as possible – ideally, significant value from all six.

2 Position is less important Good hold’em players know that position – playing on or as near to the button as possible – is vitally important to winning play, so much so that many hands worth a raise in late position are not even worth a call in early position. In Omaha, position isn’t irrelevant, but it pales in comparison to hand values. It would be fair to say that hold’em is a game of position, while Omaha is a game of card combinations. Why? It’s because…

3 Winning hands tend to be stronger Even though every once in a while the ‘must two’ rule will devalue a hand, as in the example given earlier, over the long haul, the typical winning hand is much stronger in Omaha than it is in hold’em.

The reason is obvious: instead of only one two-card combination that can be used together with the board, the player has six such combinations possible. Someone playing A;-K;-JÚ-9… and staring at a flop of Q;-8;-2… may be focused almost entirely on his nut heart-flush draw, but if a 10 hits the board, the player has made a straight with his J-9 combination.

Good Omaha players don’t focus entirely on one part of their hand. They examine all the little bits and pieces of equity that each of the combinations represent. This is one of the reasons why you may have heard the expression, ‘Don’t play Omaha hands containing a dangler.’ A dangler is one card that doesn’t work well with the other three cards in your hand.

For example, if you hold K-Q-J-10, your cards all work well together. The six combinations will give you a straight with almost any combination of high cards on the board. If instead you held K-Q-J-2, the deuce is a dangler. While it could help (if, say, the flop comes 2-2-4, which is still a pretty vulnerable hand), it’s far less valuable than a card that adds to the straight possibilities, because Omaha tends to be a game of straights, flushes, and full houses.

Hold’em players are accustomed to hands like top pair, top kicker being strong (for example, holding A-Q and getting a flop of Q, 5, 4). In Omaha, top pair, top kicker is practically useless, unless you’re only sitting with one, two or – at a push – three other players. Even then, you shouldn’t be raising or even calling big bets with it.

Indeed, in games where many people see the flop, a good rule of thumb is to assume that if a hand is possible, someone either has it or is drawing to it. With six people in a hand, for example, players are trying to match 24 cards up with the flop (36 twocard combinations). Good Omaha players, in multi-way pots, only play hands that are the nuts or a draw to the nuts.

4 Once you’ve made your hand, you still often need to improve to win Omaha is said to be a game of draws and redraws. Whether you’re playing PLO or straight limit, your work isn’t done when you’ve flopped a good hand – it’s usually important to have some kind of draw to something better. You may not need to improve, but it’s the equity you get from these redraws that can turn a losing session into a winner.

Suppose, for example, that you hold K;-Q;-10…-10:, and you get a great flop: 10;, 5;, 4;. You’ve flopped a flush, although you need to beware, because it’s not the nut flush. You’ve also flopped top set. Although three 10s isn’t as strong a

ADVANCED STRATEGY

hand as your King-high flush, the set gives you a redraw to a full house.

Should a 4 land on the turn, you now have the top full house, and only need to worry about someone who has quad 4s (quads occur much more frequently in Omaha) or someone who held either the 7;-6; or the 3;-2; (giving him a straight flush draw).

Even though they do appear more often in Omaha than in hold’em, you can’t live in fear of quads and straight flushes. If you make the top full house, you should bet it strongly, and only if your pot-sized re-raise gets re-raised by a strong player should you slow down and consider that you might be up against four of a kind (in limit poker, you should probably put in four raises before you decide just to call).

Because random hands do have a reasonable chance of winning, many bad or tilted Omaha players get sucked into playing bad hands more often

5 It’s easier to get sucked into playing weak hands Hold’em players will often get exasperated during a losing stretch and start playing garbage cards, chanting the Loser’s Lament: ‘Any two cards can win,’ but most players of any ability won’t continue to play hands like J;-2; for very long.

In Omaha, the saying, ‘Any four cards can win’ comes much closer to the truth.

It may seem hard to believe, but in a heads-up situation, there are very few Omaha starting hands that are even 2/1 favourites over a random opponent hand.

Naturally, you can construct scenarios where one starting hand is a much bigger favourite than that: if you give your opponent 2-2-2-2 he isn’t going to win very often. But if you assume your opponent has a random and weak-looking collection of cards like J…-8:-5…-3;, even a magnificent starting hand like AÚ-A:JÚ-10: is only about 2/1 favourite. Your opponent can make various straights and flushes that you cannot, can make numerous two-pair combinations that you cannot, and is going to get five community cards to try to make something out of his mess of a hand.

Because the random hands do have a reasonable chance of winning, many bad or tilted Omaha players get sucked into playing bad hands more often than their hold’em counterparts. While the results on any given Omaha hand are going to be better, over the long-term, the negative effect on one’s bankroll is just as certain.

You don’t even have to start playing garbage hands like J…-8:-5…-3; to get into trouble. Just playing hands with danglers is bad enough. Play A…-K…QÚ-6… often enough, and that almost completely useless 6 will send you home a loser against people who play hands where all the cards work together, even if their first three aren’t as impressive as your first three.

You could argue all day about the best Omaha starting hands, but AÚ-A:-JÚ-10: is a good example of a magnificent hand.

Some people have other favourites – and 95

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

OMAHA

Four cards good Omaha is a slightly more computational and less visceral game than Texas hold’em, so keep your wits about you

You must use two and only two of your hole cards to make your hand. In this case, you haven’t hit your spade flush yet – in fact, you’ve only got a pair of 3s!

You should make sure all your hole cards work together. Here, the A… is supported by the 8…, which could be used to make a nut flush, but overall it’s a dog’s dinner.

In Omaha, you must know the nuts at every street. Here, a flop of 3, 5, 6 meant it was 4-7, but by the river that’s beaten by 3-3, 6-6 or A-A, while 5-5 is the stone nuts.

right there you see a significant difference in the games, because no one debates AA’s value as the best hold’em starting hand.

A strong Omaha high hand will include the following elements: High cards Cards that connect up well for straight purposes Cards that give you nut-flush draws Cards that give you the chance to make full houses or quads AÚ-A:-JÚ-10: gives you a pair that can make the best full house or quads, two nut-flush draws, multiple combinations for high straights, and the single two-card combination (J-10) that makes more high straights than any other two-card combination. Some people argue for hands like AÚ-A:-KÚ-Q: (sacrificing a few straights for a few more high pairs), but it’s one of those pleasant choices that isn’t going to make or break your day, because you’ll play them both the same: very hard before the flop and not at all after the flop, unless they connect well with it.

6 Know your outs We’ve already mentioned that position is far less important in Omaha than in hold’em, due to the comparative strength of the hands. This means your ability to calculate pot odds and possible outs (cards that can improve your hand over your opponents’) are deadly weapons in the Omaha player’s arsenal. In fact, your mental arithmetic will need to be topnotch if you want to become a killer Omaha player.

If, like most people, you’re playing Omaha online, you’re also going to be short of tells and useful information (even on the likes of PKR), so your maths skills become even more important.

Say, for example, that you start with A…-K…-7;-6; and the flop comes J…, 4…, 5Ú. At the moment, your hand is worthless and a pot-sized raise probably indicates someone holding three Jacks, the current nuts. However, there are lots of ways you can improve, so you need to be able to calculate your outs. To start with, any spade will give you the nut flush, so that gives you a total of nine outs (there are 13 cards in a suit, two are on the board and you hold two, so there are up to nine remaining in the deck). Then any 3 or any 8 will give you the nut straight. This means another six outs (there are four 3s and four 8s available, but one of each of these will be spades so you can’t double-count them). As a result, on this flop you have a total of 15 outs.

As a rule of thumb, each out equates to about a 4% chance to improve, so you have a 60% chance of improving your hand. Good odds you might think, and well worth calling – but don’t forget that your opponent, who is probably sitting on trip Jacks, will have outs to improve as well. He can hit any pair to make a

full house (that’s six outs or a Jack to make quads, another out). As such, you need to subtract his seven outs from your 15 and you have the right odds for playing a pot and winning it uncontested.

Suddenly you only have a one-in-four chance of winning this pot with the best hand. Whether you call will depend on the size of the bet you have to call and what’s in the pot that you can win.

You also need to work through the same exercise on the turn. If the turn draws a relative blank – 10Ú, say – then you need to re-calculate. You would now have another three outs (any Queen except Q…) to make the nut straight. If your opponent’s hand is J:-JÚ-9Ú-Q:, then this turn card will have greatly improved her hand too.

This may seem laborious and complex, but the ability to calculate odds and outs on the fly is what separates winning Omaha players from mediocre ones.

7 Bet it hard With draws being so key to Omaha, it’s critical that you don’t let other players make draws cheaply or for free. If you have top trips or the nut flush, make sure you make pot-sized bets and re-raises where you can. This applies to both the flop and especially to the turn, where you can really make other players pay just to see the remaining card. Pot-limit games also benefit you here, as the pot will be at least three times the size by the turn (if you make a max raise followed by a call).

Don’t lose your bottle if you still hold the nuts on the turn, as it’s always painful to see the board pair when you’re holding

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OMAHA

the nuts or see a potential flush made when you’re holding trips. In short, bet your hands as hard and aggressively as your opponent will allow.

Our advice is never to slow-play a hand in Omaha, except when you have an absolute monster. Monsters include quads (where you hope someone else will make the nut full house by waiting) or straight or royal flushes.

The only other situation where you don’t want to overbet your hand is with a nut straight and no chance of improving. As a rule of thumb, two out of three straights will be overturned in an average game of Omaha. For instance, you hold J…-10…-4:3Ú and the flop is 7:, 8:, 9;. You currently have the nuts so make an early-position pot raise. Another player raises and then a further player re-raises! You have the nuts!

However, there’s every chance another player does, too, but has a hand that could improve – for example, 10;-J;-A:-Q:.

They have the upside of the straight and a nut-flush draw; or perhaps J;-J:-10:10;. They have a full-house draw and a

ADVANCED STRATEGY

mid-flush draw. Either way, you want to get out of the hand. Even if your straight does hold up, you’ll probably end up sharing the pot anyway. Painful as it may seem, with two other players in the pot, this is one nut-hand you should choose to fold.

bet to push someone off their hand, so bluffing in Omaha isn’t for the faint-hearted.

The flipside of this is that big raises in Omaha are very rarely bluffs, so it’s best to respect them: you’ll be facing the nuts nine times out of ten.

8 Know where you stand When your mind is spinning with pot odds, outs and redraws, you can sometimes miss the obvious. This means missing what you actually have in your hand and what draws you can make. Make sure you know what the nuts is at every stage. It can be all too easy to bet the nut straight hard, missing that the river delivered the third suit necessary for a flush.

11 Omaha is a numbers game Okay, so we know that maths and potodds rule the roost in Omaha. This means that Omaha is a far less ‘lucky’ game than hold’em and that, although miracle outs will always hit, beginners will get eaten alive by experienced players.

This fact probably explains why Omaha will never be as popular as hold’em. With a few good cards, a complete novice can break a professional hold’em player and carry on winning for quite some time. In Omaha, however, gamblers who draw to non-nut hands or look for case cards and gutshot draws will quickly be bankrupted.

Omaha isn’t – at least superficially – a more skilful game than hold’em, but you do need different skills to be a winner.

9 You need the nuts The classic hold’em player’s mistake in Omaha is to over-value hands; dynamite hands in hold’em can be little more than damp squibs in Omaha.

The worst of these is a weaker full house (sometimes called the underhouse), as these can be extremely costly. If you flop two pairs, especially if they’re mid-pairs, your hand is next to useless if you have more than one player left in the hand.

Even if you make your full house, it’s likely to be beaten. The same goes for mid and low pairs. If you hold 8;-8…-7;-6Ú and the flop comes K:, K…, 8Ú, you currently have a pretty strong full house.

Anyone holding a King will probably call a pot raise and then the turn comes a Queen, and suddenly you could easily be losing (even someone left in with Q-Q will now beat you). Remember that Kings full of anything will beat you. Play mid pairs with extreme caution.

As an aside, small pairs (5-5 suited and below) can be very profitable starting hands if you can limp in with them cheaply. This is because if they quad up, you can make some massive pots from players with A-A and K-K who hold what they think are unbeatable full houses. At the same time, their obvious weakness means there’s never any temptation to overplay them.

It goes without saying that non-nut flushes – even King high – aren’t much use in Omaha, despite being mighty in hold’em. Furthermore, bottom straights are worth very little – if you own the ignorant end of a straight you should call only the smallest of bets on the river, if at all.

10 Bluff with extreme caution Since most good players are playing with or drawing to the nuts, making a successful bluff in Omaha needs the right sort of board and a good instinct for the betting pattern.

Most bluffs are best played on the turn when the board pairs and your opponent’s betting pattern indicates a straight or a flush (in which case you’re representing quads or a full house). Just remember that a bluff will have to be a large or pot-sized

12 It’s harder to hold your cards!

This might seem silly, but it’s true. Almost anyone can squeeze two hold’em cards and keep them hidden from his neighbour, but it’s not as easy with four cards.

If you’re going to play in live games, you actually need to practise holding your cards such that you can see them and your opponents can’t. Omaha players are quite accustomed to getting free looks at their neighbours’ cards, simply because they hold them up like a five-card draw hand to look at them.

Furthermore, you need to develop a good memory for suits, as you don’t want to keep looking back at your cards every time a flush-draw hits the board.

Committing four cards to memory is harder than two, but if you don’t it could turn into a massive tell.

One thing that will help speed you along in your study of Omaha is a willingness to let go of most of the lessons you’ve learned as a hold’em player

The final word Learning to play Omaha to a high standard takes a long time, just like any form of poker, although playing it passably is easier these days, thanks to all the books, Internet resources and freerolls available today.

One thing that will help speed you along in your study of Omaha is a willingness to let go of most of the lessons you’ve learned as a hold’em player. Even if you don’t muck your cards incorrectly when you’ve actually got the nuts, sooner or later your hold’em background will jump up and bite you – unless you stay vigilant.

Omaha is named after a city in Nebraska, USA, a state that borders with Texas.

But while the two states may be close geographically, they might as well be separated by half a world, because there truly is a giant gulf between the two games.

The sooner you recognise that, and stop applying Texas hold’em principles to Omaha, the sooner you’re going to start winning.

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ADVANCED STRATEGY

OMAHA HI-LO

OMAHA HI-LO EXPLAINED

Omaha hi-lo

Following on from our Omaha masterclass, find out why this version of poker is the world’s second most popular format after Texas hold’em. It’s only complicated if you don’t know the rules and you’re guaranteed plenty of action…

THINK YOU’VE GOT THE HANG OF bog-standard Omaha? Okay, well it’s time to introduce a twist in the form of Omaha hi-lo, a variation that allows two winning hands to share the pot – the best high hand and the best low hand.

High hands were explained on the previous pages, but for a hand to qualify for the low, it must consist of five unpaired cards with the highest being no greater than an 8 (the game is also referred to as Omaha 8-or-better, or O8B).

As with Omaha (high) you have to use two of your hole cards and three from the board, so for a low to qualify there must be three different cards 8 or below on the board. If not, there’s no low and the winning high hand scoops the whole pot.

The best low hand, the ‘nut low’, is A-2-3-4-5 (referred to as ‘the wheel’ or

‘bicycle’). Straights and flushes don’t count against low hands, but this hand does count as a straight for the high pot.

So, A-2-3-4-6 of hearts would be a 6-4 low and a flush for the high. Remember too, that players can use different cards to form their high hand and their low hand (or the same ones) and that you should always be aiming to win both of them.

For this reason, correctly assessing the strength of all your hole cards is key so you maximise the chances of making the best hands both ways. The best starting hand is therefore A-A-2-3 double-suited (see panel, above right) and you should push this to the max before the flop. But any low hand with potential high strengths is acceptable.

With a board of 2-3-5-6-8, the best possible low hand is if you have A-4, giving you the wheel. The second best is A-2,

The best starting hand is A-A-2-3 doublesuited and you should be pushing this to the max before the flop

remembering that you have to use two of your hole cards, so you ignore the 2 on the board and use yours instead.

Omaha hi-lo tends to generate a lot of action, as everyone involved in a pot tends to hit some sort of hand, but you shouldn’t escalate the betting without outs in both directions. Players often make the mistake of thinking their A-2 is going to win them half the pot, but other players will often have the same low, meaning that you’ll get ‘quartered’ (and this can amount to less than you’ve put in to play).

It might sound like hard work, but hi-lo is a great game once you get the hang of it. It’s a lot more difficult to learn than hold’em (hence its lower profile), and the best playing strategies are widely debated, but with big pots and lots of action there are plenty of reasons to get involved.

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OMAHA HI-LO

Premium hi-lo hands Five of the best O8B starting hands – as always, double-suited is better

ADVANCED STRATEGY

Why play Omaha hi-lo? Big pot alert!

By using your head you can cash in on slow-thinkers

A-A-2-3 When double-suited as shown, this is the don of hi-lo hands, closely followed by its lesscoordinated variants A-A-2-x Any hand containing the best possible pair and a 2 is extremely powerful, from A-A-2-4 right down to A-A-2-K A-A-3-x This hand is also very powerful, combining top pair with the second-best low combination, A-3

Some pros insist they only play hands that contain A-2, which gives the best chance of making the nut low

A-2-3-4 While not as good a high hand, this combo has the low covered beautifully. Any A-2-3-x is also a great hand A-2-K-K A very powerful high hand, with the allimportant A-2 pairing for the low. Any A-2-x-x hand is very playable, from A-2-Q-Q on down

Brain strain Omaha hi-lo is a complicated affair, especially compared to the simplicity of hold’em, but it’s much easier to understand in practice. The example below shows the importance of having both high and low outs in your starting hand PLAYER ONE

PLAYER TWO

PLAYER THREE

The daddy of all Omaha hi-lo hands, bet big to make a pot.

Hi 37%, Lo 15%, Lo split 34%

A bit raggedy but with high and low possibilities – call and see the flop. Hi 24%, Lo 8%, Lo split 34%

Great high hand and very playable, but no low so exercise caution.

Hi 39%, Lo 0%, Lo split 0%

FLOP

Top trips and nut low draw – bet big and make others pay to draw.

Hi 44%, Lo 55%, Lo split 3%

Nut flush draw and most of a low – fold or call if you’re optimistic.

Hi 35%, Lo 19%, Lo split 3%

Only a wrap at the top end, so fold or call if you’re feeling optimistic.

Hi 21%, Lo 0%, Lo split 0%

TURN

Bingo! The nut low to go with the new nut high straight. Bet big.

Hi 39%, Lo 92%, Lo split 8%

Only 2-3 beats your low now and you have straight and flush outs.

Call. Hi 31%, Lo 0%, Lo split 8%

The low came so only half the pot on offer; flush outs for high. Fold.

Hi 31%, Lo 0%, Lo split 0%

RIVER

Ugh, that card completed both the flush and a higher straight, so check and pray. Hi 0%, Lo 100%

Somehow, you’ve hit the nut flush and the second nut low so a large bet is in order. Hi 100%, Lo 0%

You played a high-only hand in hi-lo and got in trouble. Fold or check next time. Hi 0%, Lo 0%

CREDIT IN HERE IF REQUIRED

PRE-FLOP

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FIXING LEAKS

FIXING LEAKS IN YOUR GAME

Plugging the leaks If you want to be a consistently winning poker player you need to identify and repair any weaknesses in your game – and online hand histories give you the perfect opportunity player or an ultra-aggressive ‘raise every pot’ player, but using your hand histories you can successfully plug leaks and preserve and swell your bankroll.

It’s no good winning the odd monster pot if you lose hundreds of small ones to get there

Automate it Because life’s too short to do the hard work yourself Your hand histories contain all the clues you need to tighten up your game, but sifting through them by hand is time-consuming and extremely hard work. And to be honest, we’d imagine you’ve got better things to do with your life – like playing poker.

That’s where software like Poker Tracker comes in. Poker Tracker enables you to import your hand histories as a text file (if you play on PKR, your hand history is stored on your hard disk in c:/program files/pkr/handhistories), instantly delivering the core information and statistics you’re after. You can download a free trial version from www.pokertracker.com that enables you to import up to 1,000 hands. If you like what you see you can purchase the full version for $55 (£30).

What should you be looking for?

It’s all well and good having access to the data, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for you might as well be studying the human genome. Take the following steps as your starting point but you should also consider investing in a piece of software (see ‘Automate it’ boxout) that will sift through the data and do the hard work for you.

How many times are you paying to see a flop?

Playing too many hands is one of the most common leaks in poker. You’re here to play cards and it can be extremely boring folding hand after hand. But there’s no point in playing too many hands pre-flop – it’s one of the surest ways of losing money.

If you want to play winning poker you need to know when to fold ’em, and looking at your hand history and seeing a ‘see-flop’ ratio of 50% or more is a sure sign you’re playing way too much.

Are you losing with marginal hands?

If you’re calling re-raises with marginal hands such as K-Q, then you can bank on this being one of your biggest leaks.

Look for the hands that you’re losing most money on and try to only play them in position, if at all.

What effect is position having on you winning or losing hands?

You should know that position is one of the key elements of most games of poker, but there’s nothing better to reinforce this than a run of losses from under the gun in black and white.

How much are you playing from the small blind with a weak hand because you think it’s a value call?

You might think it’s worth it with your Q-3 off-suit, but checking back over your hand history will probably convince you otherwise. Remember that small amounts

of money mount up over time and that the money you’ve already invested in the pot as your small blind is gone – this is one of the costs of playing the game not an investment that you need to protect at all costs.

Do you like to play suited cards?

Suited cards with straight potential have been getting a lot of press recently and they’re extremely tempting to get into a flop with. They’re also correct to play if the pot or implied odds are favourable, but how often is that the case? And what sort of suited cards are you losing with? If you’re going in with 10-6 because it’s suited you’re probably getting yourself into a whole lot of trouble. Check the gaps and check the rank of suited cards you’re winning more with – 2-6 suited isn’t going to pay off in the long run.

How much are you losing by bluffing?

You probably know that to be effective you can’t bluff too much. How much is too much? That depends on the game and the people you’re playing with, but you should be able to work out if bluffing is a profitable venture for you. Better yet, try to find which opponents you’re having success over and which ones appear to see straight through you.

Hunt the fish You’re not playing poker to make friends so you should compile a list of people that you’re making the most money off across the whole game and avoid the people you’re losing to. That’s simple economics.

Big pairs Are you losing more than you should with big pairs like Aces and Kings? It might be that you’re letting too many people into the pot, by limping in or making small raises.

Aces are a favourite against any other hand but let too many people into the flop and you’re suddenly in danger of losing a lot of chips.

Small and medium pairs Unless they improve they’re often not going to be the winning hand. And seeing

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YOU WOULDN’T IGNORE A LEAK IN your house. You know that over time it would deteriorate and become a massive and costly problem. It’s the same with leaks in your poker game. Everyone has them – some worse than others – but if ignored them they could end up ruining your game and obliterating your bankroll.

Put simply, a poker leak is a mistake that you repeat on a regular basis. It might not be large – in fact the larger it is the more likely you are to notice it and correct your play – but even the smallest leak can be a costly one. It’s no good winning the odd monster pot if you lose hundreds of small ones to get there.

The best way to eliminate leaks from your game is to go back over every hand of poker you’ve played and analyse the results. This is next to impossible if you’re playing live, but online is different. When you play on sites such as PKR.com you can get hold of hand histories for every game you play, and this effectively gives you the complete DNA of your game. And it’s the mistakes that you want to isolate and make sure they never happen again.

You need to remember that looking at hand histories is far more valid in cash games. In tournaments you have to play hands according to the blinds, your chip stack and those of your opponents. In cash games each hand is a separate entity, which means you should be playing each hand to an optimal strategy. What that strategy is depends on you as an individual. You might be a conservative

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FIXING LEAKS

ADVANCED STRATEGY

as the odds of a pair flopping a set are 7.5/1, this isn’t something you can bank on.

Should you raise pre-flop to try and take the pot there and then? The fact is you can do that with any two cards. Should you try and see a flop and hope to hit the magic set? That depends on how much it’s going to cost you to get in.

Are you playing draws without the odds?

This is a very common leak and one you really shouldn’t be making. Make sure you know the concept of pot odds and implied odds inside out and apply it to your game. It will save you a lot of money.

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