“Skill, determination and longevity.”

I was watching the Barry Bonds homer run again the other night after busting out of the $340 SH NLHE event at the Empire State Hold ‘Em Championships and was inspired.

Sure there is a lot of speculation around how legit his record is blah blah but it is an accomplishment none the less. I have been blessed with the ability, time and lifestyle that enables me to play poker as frequently as I want and it seems that I find myself getting off track often and not staying focused. It wasn’t so much the accomplishment of 756 as the speech that Hank Aaron gave. The part where he said it took “Skill, determination and longevity.” That motivated me to stay focused.

Starting this weekend or Monday I will be playing limit on Cake once again. I will start with a roll somewhere in the mid $3k range. I have a plan where I mapped out my progress coupled with rake back and a realistic hourly expectation. By the end of one year, with a low expectation, I will have cashed out around $45,000 from online play and built up to about $50,000 in bank roll.

The money I cash out each month will be like a payroll check, the money I make from running the games during the week will go toward tournament play. I am going to go to play the US Poker Championship in September. I will be playing a minimum of two No Limit hold ‘Em events and possibly staying for an extra week to play some stud events depending on how I do in the first two events.

Some realitys of poker

Some reality’s of poker

This time of year always brings me to a time of reflection as my year always seems to end/begin when the main event ends. I always had great illusions of grandeur, winning a bracelet etc at the beginning of each year then I look back at the shots I took to even play in the main event and the % of my bankroll I used to try it and make it. I always justified it as “I can always win more money, but the main event only happens once a year and what if I won it?”

This year was different. I didn’t play a single WSOP qualifier, I didn’t try to make a stand at the local poker room playing bigger stakes than normal trying to bankroll up for an impromptu trip to the WSOP. I made a plan and am sticking to it. The Main Event or the WSOP isn’t going anywhere.

Everyone has their shining day. You know the day, the day where you win a tournament or just absolutely crush a cash game and you feel unstoppable. I remember mine for sure. I used to play blackjack as that was all I could afford. The local casino spread a $2-$200 table and we would take trips up to the casino with $20 a piece and try to make a big score.

I didn’t know they had a poker room. I continued with my blackjack play as I progressed in my car selling career and moved up stakes. I was losing probably $400-$800 a week playing and then I stumbled back into the poker room. I sat down at a $3-$6 seven card stud game and got ate up. But it took like 3 hours for me to lose $100. This was much more fun for much less money with the same result, a net loss.

The regulars at the game became friendly with me and started giving me pointers then introduced me to Omaha which became my version of crack. I loved the game but wasn’t very good at it. I fell in love with the game of poker at this point. This was before the Hold ‘Em boom and the games with flops were a new concept to me as all of the games we played in my home game had no flop.

One day I look over and see the dealer taking money out of the pot. I ask the person to my left what that was all about and he told me the house takes 10% of the pot up to $5 as a fee for running the game. What I heard was the casino takes 10% of the pot and my brain started working. I would get calls two or three times a week from guys wanting to play and if the casino takes 10% I should be able to take 5% and it would be a better deal for everyone.

My first raked game was born. We started in a Super 8 motel with one table. Within three weeks we had to get a bigger room to accommodate two tables. The third week I walked into the game broke after I bought the food, booze and paid for the rooms. I had like $40. We played a little bit of short handed dealer’s choice until the phone rang and people needed to be let in. In that half hour I made a quick $150 and the game started.

I dealt all night, raked like a monster and at 4 am the game broke up except for two guys that wanted to play Omaha. I love Omaha. I was up $800 from rake, $120 from tips and decided to play. The game was 3 handed Omaha 8 or better. Dealer had a choice for the ante. The small blind was equal to the ante the big blind was double the ante and the betting was spread between the ante and 6 x the ante with a $12 max ante.

I went on a rush. Now that I look back at the game it was sick. Every time I picked up any sort of a draw, including a pure guts hot with an 8 low draw, I was in there three betting, just firing. The type of play I encourage online but see people go broke way too fast doing. I hit everything. I couldn’t miss and at 7am I had $4300 in my pocket. This wasn’t 43 hundred dollar bills. This was drug dealer money, $50’s, $20’s and $10’s in a huge wad. I found my calling.

Prior to this the most money I had made in one week was $3000. Since I can obviously make $4300 in a night poker was a much better way to do it. I kept my job and my game got bigger. We remodeled a barn and turned it into a sweet poker room. We had a bar and three tables. I would sit down and win; I now had dealers so all I had to do was handle the cash and play. No matter how bad I went I never booked a losing session in the barn, the game was just that soft and I was starting to actually learn about odds, not to play every hand, gut shots aren’t good to three bet etc. plus the dummy had a safety net. I had a partner in the game and with the 5% rake, no cap on the rake and 70% of the games played were split pot games with 5+ streets of betting (dealer’s choice home game style with a dealer and a rake) I was clearing $800-$1000 a week my end from the rake after expenses.

All good things must come to an end. My game was funded for the most part by drug money. My biggest fish in the game also sold pounds of weed when he wasn’t at the poker table and had an entourage of friends who were stacking up money with him. They started a construction company which was also doing well. When the drug dealer got busted, the construction company went under and the game went along with it.

I then took a few different jobs. All of which were work at my own pace blah. I sat back on the money I had built up and slowly lost it at the $10/$20 game.

Reality 1: Most underground card games are funded by drug money.

I found myself working at a job I didn’t like. On the road 3 weeks out of the month and I was ready for a change. On my week off I ended up at the casino because I had seen that they ran poker tournaments and this was right as the WPT started airing their first episodes.

I obviously won the first tournament I played and was back on top of the world. Poker was my calling, I was good at it (or so I thought) and I found online poker. I started off with a $100 investment and found the $25 max PLO8 tables. I went on fire in my first hour. I had $300 on a $25 max table. I steam rolled for another few days and cashed out $800 leaving myself with $100. Because that’s all I really needed right $100 to make thousands?

This online win, the $4300 win and the tournament win gave me a mindset that set me up for failure and I see it in so many new players. I came to rely on big scores and rushes.

Reality 2: Most players rely on big scores and rushes. This isn’t how long term money is made at poker.

I can’t overemphasize this point. The money that doesn’t get eaten up by the rake inevitably gets eaten up by the highly skilled players at the higher limits. When a player goes on a rush and builds up quick they expect to keep winning.

If they started their rush with lets say two or three buy in’s they continue to move up with the same bankroll requirements. They have a bigger bankroll than they have ever had and they move up limits accordingly. Just because you are winning doesn’t mean you have the skill set to consistently beat the higher limit games. Also when you are playing higher than normal you are not experienced with the larger amounts of money and in most cases let the money dictate your actions. Whereas the players who are consistently beating the higher limits have the bankroll to play and are very comfortable playing for those stakes.

Reality 3: Money funnels up in poker.

After I rode the roller coaster on Party Poker with the $100 I left on the site I eventually went broke. Just had one of those days where I would go set under set, 2nd nuts under 2nd nuts. I started surfing the Party Poker site reading everything I could about online poker. I learned about the affiliate program they had and got into affiliate marketing immediately.

This is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. This took poker from a fun thing to do that I was making money at to a business for me. I actually put together a business plan and started a website. This opened the door to me meeting A LOT of different people from all over the world and was the stepping stone to some of my best experiences.

Reality 4: There is easier money to be made off of poker than there is playing poker without swings or risk.

Since the boom of poker there have been a lot of businesses that have come and gone with people trying to get rich quick from poker. I have found two things that have been successful from the beginning of the poker boom and anyone can do one of them.

Affiliate marketing is tough to do and not everyone can do well at it, even if they have a general knowledge of how it works. Running a raked game on the other hand is one of the best ways to build a bankroll.

There are many advantages to running a raked game other than just the money. It takes very little money to start a game compared to the money you will make, you can learn more about the game from running the game than actually playing and you can never go broke running a game.

To run a game all you need is a location, a table (which you can build), some chips and a good knowledge of the game.

As I said, I met a lot of people on the road building my affiliate business and one of them is Noah (Ohiorounder). I was very fortunate to be able to open and run a successful business with him and some other friends. None of us got rich from it by any means but we were able to build up a decent customer base and sell the company to a larger company. We all got full time pay and some stock. The stock ended up being worthless but we all did well for a while. Then the laws changed and we were out of jobs.

Reality 5: No matter how good you get at the game of poker you can always expand your knowledge of the game by playing online with groups of friends.

By groups of friends I mean in the same room, not sitting at the same table but discussing hands as they are played. We had 2 apartments in the same complex and someone was always playing. This is the point where I had multiple $1,000+ wins at our raked game, multiple $10,000+ wins online and spent money like an African American who is not very good with money.

After the charity casino closed I took a job in Vegas and my life went pretty much down hill. The ironic thing here is I stopped drinking as much as I did in Toledo, stopped doing any sort of drugs and my life got worse. The company that bought us out was run poorly and that’s who I went to work for. Within two months I had quit.

I made some big scores in Vegas, but they were just big enough to catch my breathe will bills and leave myself with a few buy in’s, but one bad night it was over. I also bought a pizza place with the money I had left after I quit my job. That was a bad deal with a shady person but nothing really relevant to this blog. I found myself trapped in reality #2; I was depending on big scores.

Let’s turn back the clock a little. When I got started with the affiliate marketing it was initially designed to make some extra money and build up a poker bankroll. I had money and I traveled to multiple games. One game was about an hour south of my house. I became pretty good friends with the guy who ran it. He was a couple years younger than me but as far as bankroll and poker skill set him and I were on a pretty even plane.

He went on to continue running his game, building up online and moving up limits at local games. He found some other players who were good at poker and at times combined rolls. Last year I spent a lot of time with him at the WSOP. He has built up a roll of over half a million and is on a steady climb up.

The time I spent with him helped. Number two really set in. Looking back would I have traded off the experience I had in Toledo for a half million dollar roll? Honestly no. I had the time of my life and there is no dollar amount that could pay for those experiences.

Reality #6: Vegas is full of home game heroes.

I hear about people “Rolling up the stake and moving to Vegas” all of the time. Most of them are now dealers.

The reality of it is an above average/good player just can’t make enough money at limits lower than $5/$10 NL or $20/$40 limit to beat the rake and afford to live. It is expensive to live out there. With internet poker at your finger tips and easy home games within miles of your house the safe move is to build up a roll where you can afford to play high limits. Poker will always be there and you have all of the time in the world.

Next time you see Chris Moneymaker give his championship roar or when you see this year’s champion, Jerry Yang, give his trade mark double fist pump and think to yourself wow I am better than him I can do this remember that it was his day and there were 6357 people who paid the $10,000 and didn’t have their day. You cant base the future of your game depending on having a day like that.

Trapping by betting

When you are the first or one of the first people to act in a pot you are out of position and you will need to be a little trickier because you don’t know what the people remaining in the pot will do after you act.

The first scenario we are going to cover came up on a poker forum I frequent. The game is $2/$4 NL. Our hero is on the button with Aces. The villain opened the pot under the gun for $16. The action folds around to our hero who makes it $56. The villain calls the raise. The flop comes Jack Seven Five. Rainbow flop so it is a very non threatening flop for Aces. The villain checks and our hero bet $90 into a pot that is about $115. The villain smooth calls.

This sends sirens off in our hero’s head. What hand can raise out of position, call a re raise and check call the flop? The only hand that makes sense is a set. Possibly Ace Jack or Queens but this player is aggressive enough to lead out on the flop to get information as to where he is. The turn is another low card which does not pair the board. The villain once again checks.

At this point the stacks are relatively deep. The villain has at least $900 left in front of him and our hero has about $1400. The game has a $400 cap on the buy in so there is a lot to lose. Our hero decides to check behind.

The river pairs the board bringing a five. The villain leads out and bets $150 into a $300 pot. Our hero goes into the tank for a while; he says out loud I know you have Jacks full and calls. Of course the villain has Jacks full and he rakes in a $600 pot.

On the forum I had to ask our hero what he would have done if the villain had led out on the flop and here is his response:

“That’s a pretty good question and would have really made the hand play much differently. If he bet out on that flop 60 I would most likely have raised to about 180. In my experience a bet here usually would come from something like queens or a hand he is not of and wants to see how strong I am. From there if he went over the top again I would have to bail on the hand and assume he led into me with a set. However if he just calls me here the turn would be tough to play I would have to say that I would most definitely bet the turn putting him on a hand like queens given the preflop action, but if he check raised me on the turn I am done with the hand. I believe betting out here might have been his best play and caused me to lose the most. A very interesting question.”

So to sum it up he would have got $180 out of our hero on the flop and probably another $250 - $300 on the turn instead of $90 on the flop and $150 on the river. I do believe him when he says he could have folded to a check raise on the turn as the stacks were so deep but he definitely didn’t get the most value he could have out of the hand.

The villain certainly followed convention wisdom to check call the flop, check raise the turn and if you don’t get a bet value bet the river. The reason I posed this question to our hero is that I play sets by leading into an aggressive player. Most players with Aces just like to go all in so more often than not I am able to get it in on the flop, if not all in on the flop; get a good sized check raise in on the turn.

By leading into a strong hand with a set you are most likely going to get raised as the person who has a strong hand (he told us he had a strong hand with the huge re raise pre flop) probably thinks about poker conventionally and believes that if you flopped a set you would check call the flop and check raise the turn. So the hooks are set and he is completely trapped.

The next scenario I would like to cover is big pocket pairs out of position. Let’s say you have two Kings and decide not to limp under the gun (next month’s topic). You open the pot for $12 in a $1/$2 NL, which is a pretty standard raise for a live game like that, and get two callers.

What range of hands is going to call you here? KQ KJ QJ J10 small pocket pairs etc. For some reason when I open a pot from early position people put me on AK, just a standard thing “Oh he raised so he must have AK”. When I open pots I generally bet out on the flop I would say eight times out of ten.

The flop comes all under cards, lets call it Q 8 2. When I continuation bet after the flop I like to size my bets up so that I am getting a good return on my money so I bet somewhere around $17 so I only have to win the pot ½ the time uncontested to make money on it. Conventional poker play says to lead out somewhere around the pot size about $36 with an over pair. So basically if I miss the flop I should continuation to try and take it down and if I have a big hand I should bet the pot and make people pay to see more cards.

This is where I like to lead out $17 to make it look like a continuation bet. An aggressive player with a Queen is going to raise here to try and scare me out with the AK he put me on because I raised pre flop. This is where I set the trap, he puts me on a hand that missed the flop and he is trying to protect his top pair. Our opponent will probably raise to around $45 and I like a call here. Then when the turn bricks for both of us I like a check raise here. If the player is aggressive enough he will be somewhere around $60 and in a $1/$2 NL he will have over half of his stack committed to this hand and this is a great spot to get it all in. So it plays very similar to a set but for different reasons.

By changing up play and avoiding conventional poker wisdom you can trap people by betting into them. You can also change the perception that people have of you by playing this way. In a long session, where you play many situations a number of times, you will get people to fold by leading out with draws and top pair and you will be able to check raise and trap them conventionally down the road.

The world of Live Poker and common mistakes

Since the landscape of online poker has changed so much in the past few months I am sure that a lot of people will be trying to convert their play from online to live. I had the unique experience of living in Vegas for a couple of years and was able to see a lot of people make that leap from online to live and this article is some of the mistakes I see people make.

The first & biggest is something that I didn’t catch on to for a while and have found myself guilty of in the past. Poker Players are typically nice people and you can find good conversation at the table. Of course the common thread between you, me and the guy in the 5 seat is we all like poker to a certain degree. Some of us more than others but we all like poker. We read books about it, we go to websites about it, we watch it on TV and we travel to play it. So poker is a great thing to talk about at the table.

People love talking about poker so much that they will tell you almost everything they know about the game. What books they have read, what online site they play at and at what limits. You can take all of this information, coupled with the hands that they show down or show you, and almost always know the correct play against that player on every street of every hand.

The three biggest problems here are I used to give away too much information about my game/skill level. I also used to show uncontested cards to my new “poker buddy” or let them sweat my cards while I am in a pot and I would not play them so hard because we were friendly right?

Wrong. When you sit down at the table, as nice as you want to be to people, you are there to take their money. Every conversation you have, every gesture you make and everything you do at a poker table should be with a purpose. About five sessions into playing in Vegas I was able to find how much people are willing to give away. Instead of giving information about myself I would listen to what they said, ask questions and use that information later in the session. People really don’t care what you know, they just want to talk about poker and if you can keep the focus on them they will tell you everything they know. After all we are talking about their two favorite things, poker and them.

The second big mistake I see people make is talking down to or berating a player at the table. I don’t know if people think it is cool because Hellmuth does it or it takes the sting off of a bad beat but it is wrong. It is really easy to be a tough guy behind your computer screen and if you piss off one fish what’s the big deal? Well live it is very different. You only see a certain number of hands per hour and you will only have the opportunity to get involved in huge pots a few times a night. If you are over critical of the bad players play then you will most likely run them off of the table. Especially at lower limits, you need dead money in there to feed the rake.
I used to criticize players, don’t get me wrong. I am not a saint. But after looking back at the games I have been in I should take more time trying to make sure the bad players are happy and comfortable. They came to gamble and enjoy the game, who am I to get in the way of that? When I make bad comments or tell them how wrong they were, what am I trying to accomplish? Do I really want them to get better at poker? No I will tell you it is all ego. Something that doesn’t mix well with the discipline it takes to do well at this game.

Finally the dynamics of each hand played are so different from online play. You have a wealth of information given to you for free that you would never be able to find online. You are able to watch each players reactions and how they play each hand. You are able to pick up physical tells and you can put a profile on each player. This is something you are lacking online.

Using this information takes a lot of the importance off of pre flop play and puts more importance on the flop and turn. I can count on one hand how many times I have got all of my chips in preflop or blind shoved on the flop. I will tell you this, each time I had Aces.

Below are the five elements of a hand:

Estimated strength and statistical value of your hands (check out www.twodimes.net and see how well certain hands do against the other hands for instance nine and ten of diamonds versus aces)



Game pace: Is this a fast high action table? How many people are seeing each flop? Are your opponents just there for the free roll hours?



Atmosphere: Is this a fun table or a tight grim table? Are people “gambling” or is the rake just eating the money out of the game? Can you successfully bluff?



Timeline: Are you running well and picking up pots? Are you getting drawn out on and trying to recoup losses? No matter how bad of a player you are against people pick up on these sorts of things and will fold stronger hands when you are “hot” or call with weaker hands when you are “unlucky”. Timing is very important. You also need to look at how late or early it is in the night. People don’t want to go broke early so they will generally make weaker decisions. Also people will either try to gamble it up and get back money lost at the end of the night or play lock down poker and try to sit on a nice profit.


Pot size and potential pot size: This is very important. What do you see more, aces holding up or someone dragging in a huge pot with nine ten suited against aces? A friend of mine stated “I like big pots not big hands.” And that is probably the best piece of poker advice I heard last year. There are hands that can do a lot of damage if played well. These are the hands we want to get into big pots with and play them well.


I was very fortunate to be able to get into poker before the boom, playing live. I am now able to hop between online and live, with live play being my most profitable, with ease. Hopefully this article will help some of you with the transition.

Back to basics

From time to time I get on unbelievable “unlucky streaks” where I can go for long periods of time without logging a winning session. I try to change games, limits and switch between online and live but no matter what I do I find myself in a slump. This happens, all of the time to a lot of players. When it finally hits me that something needs to change I always revert back to the basics of poker. When I started playing I was a winning player at low limits, what I lacked in talent I made up for in discipline. The more my game progressed the more I diverted from the basic disciplines that made me a successful player from the beginning.

This article will have little to do with actual game play. The foundation of a good poker game is built long before you hit the felt. Most books I have read had very little content on building a good foundation for your poker game. I built the foundation of my game by reading a free book on the internet called “The Advanced Concepts of Poker”. It is available on the Neo-Tech website, though it is hard to find. Try doing a Google search for “The advanced Concepts of Poker” and you will find it.

Poker Journal

This will be one of the biggest tools you will ever have in the game of poker. It is very important to keep track of how many hours you play, how much you win/lose. What time of the day you play. This may seem like a lot of useless information, the more data you can put in the more you can analyze your game, the better you can become. With that information you can find ideal conditions for your style of play. When you can find ideal situations you can make the most money.

It is also a measurement of growth. I can go back to my early days of poker and see where I started I can also track trends and if I start to run bad I can go back over my notes and see when I started to lose and see if something changed in my game. I often refer to the early days of my poker and am very grateful to see how much my game and understanding of the game has progressed.

You will also want to take notes on players. How they act, when they raise, did they win or lose? Pick names for them, real or made up, then when you have four or five sessions of play you can make categories for these players based on the information you collected. When you face similar players you will have a game plan against each one.

Goal Setting

Regardless of whether you are a recreational player, aspiring pro or play full time it is always a good idea to know where you are headed. My first goal in poker was to win The World Series of Poker. I knew that I wanted to do and had no idea on how to get there. If you can set attainable goals you can make a roadmap of how to get there. I like putting a timeline on goals so for this article we will use a three month timeline. This way you can see progress in your game and not get discouraged.

Current Bankroll

In order to figure out where you are going it is a good idea to figure out where you are now. Bankroll is a great “yard stick” for measuring growth in poker. You either need to start with a set amount of money or you need to have “disposable cash”. I am not talking about money to throw away; I am referring to money you can afford to lose without it affecting your lifestyle. No matter how great of a player you are, when all of your chips get into a pot and you are an eighty percent favorite to win the pot, your opponent still has a twenty percent chance to win. That is all of your money and it seems like the twenty percent comes when you don't have a lot of money.

To play in a No Limit game you need to have at least two thousand times the big blind as an active bankroll. If you are playing with disposable cash you should have two times the buy in. If you are going to play fixed limit you should have two hundred big bets i.e. if you are playing $5/$10 you should have a working bankroll of two thousand dollars, if you are playing with disposable cash you can get away with five hundred dollars or fifty times the big bet.


Bankroll Goal

This is the yard stick I was speaking of in the previous section and goes hand in hand with your next goal. Your bankroll goal should be in the neighborhood of two thousand times the big blind of the next no limit game you want to play or two hundred times the big bet in a fixed limit game. I personally like to be over bankrolled and playing well below my means. Great things can happen when you play below your means. At some point you will come to a realization that chips are just betting units and a way to keep track of progress. You can lose a lot of chips in a game, which does not mean that you played poorly just that you got unlucky. If you can stand to take the beats of a few bad sessions and live to play another day you can play with confidence every session. There is no feeling worse than having ALL of your money in a pot, trust me I have been there.

A big mistake that I see players make is when they make a big score or have a big win they immediately take money out of the game and buy frivolous stuff. As a matter of fact I once saw a friend run five hundred dollars into a bankroll that was big enough to play $25/$50 No Limit. He went on a terrible run, didn’t move down and ended up having to sell the dream car he bought out of his poker bankroll.

Limit levels

Moving up in limits seems to be a big deal to people when the truth is you probably won’t see a huge jump in your opponent’s ability unless you move up four or five levels at a time. If you find a limit that is comfortable for you, you can consistently win and you have the proper bankroll you should move up. Having a goal for limit levels gives you something to shoot at so grinding out low limits based on your bankroll doesn’t seem like a dead end job.

Play and ability

This is the true test of where you are at in your poker career and it is also the hardest thing to gauge. People can go on unbelievable rushes and have the proper bankroll to play well above their skill level so they take the jump. As a student of the game this is dangerous territory. If you are consistently sitting with players that are better than you, you will burn through a bankroll faster than you built it. A good way to see where you are is to refer back to your poker journal.

Pre Game

With the growth of poker over the last four years there are more games available than ever. A major part of the discipline is playing when you are most fit and prepared to play poker. Here are some steps that I take every session and help me to get in the proper state of mind to play a session.

Well rested

I suggest napping. When I sit down to play I don’t like to limit myself as to how long I play a session. I like to stay as long as the game is juicy and I am feeling good. I do not play fatigued so by napping I insure myself that I can play as long as the game is good. After careful observation I have found that my most profitable hours of play are between 9pm and 3am. I generally lay down somewhere around 4pm and get up around 8pm. If the game is juicy enough I am rested enough to play all night into the morning.

In a typical day I get up around 9am and run all day. If I sit at a table during my most profitable hours I will most likely be very tired by the middle of the session. If I can not nap I will wait to play another day.

Showered

Nothing will improve my state of mind faster than a nice shower. Living in the desert personal hygiene becomes an issue after running around all day, this will affect my play.

Clean Shaven

There is something to be said about the fresh feeling of shaving. This will help improve state of mind.

Well fed

This goes back to stamina. When I am playing a session hunger can be a huge distraction and if I get up to eat in the middle of a session I lose focus on the game.


Good state of mind

As I said earlier there are so many games available these days that there is no reason to play in a bad mood. That being said sometimes I like to use poker as a way to release stress; this is when I sit down at a super small stakes game and drink as much as possible but for the purpose of this article we are trying to achieve optimal conditions for play. The rule I use is if I can’t smile genuinely I won’t play.



During game

No food or beverage at the table.

Eating and drinking at the table can not improve your game at all. When eating you can make a mess on the table, cards etc. and drinking will distract you while you play. Food and drinks will also give off many tells that you could otherwise conceal. If you are taking a drink of water, relaxing and enjoying the game, you pick up aces, what do you do? That’s right you put the lid on your water, posture yourself in your normal game play position and try to play your aces well. Even the worst of the worst will notice the change in what you did.

Instead of drinking at the table you should order your drink and walk away when it arrives. This will allow time for you to clear your head and more importantly take notes. Most people are not blessed with a photographic memory. This will allow you to write down big pots that you played. When the session is over you can review the hands and figure out how to win more/lose less.


Do not swear or express emotions.

Part of playing poker against bad players is to make the game as comfortable and enjoyable for them. Without bad players the only winner in the game would be the house. Without bad or live players in the game all the money would cycle back and forth across the table and the house would be taking rake out of each pot.

I was playing at The Paris and we had just a great table going. Everyone was laughing and having a great time. Two of the guys there were pretty good poker players and we had a great conversation going about poker in general. They kept drinking and drinking and the progress of the word “Donkey” came up. They told me about how it progressed from “Donkey” to “Donk” to “Dink”. About 2am a player sat down who either has no idea what was going on or was trying to hustle us. I would guess it was the former. The guy played every hand and had no idea how to play the game. He was stacking his chips six or seven high and had a mess of chips in front of him. Finally he outdraws one of the poker enthusiasts I was speaking of earlier. The poker enthusiast, now extremely drunk, went on to call this guy dink over and over for about ten minutes. I help him stack the enthusiasts chips and get them racked so he can color up and have some more room to play. He hands the chips to the floor and says “On second thought I’ll just cash out.”

This gentleman just won four huge pots in the last fifteen minutes, he was gambling it up and ready to start dumping the chips back to the table. If the “poker enthusiast” hadn’t berated him for drawing out on him the whole table would have benefited. Instead he chased off the first live player we had sit down in a few hours.

Antonio Esfandiari is a great example of how to conduct your self at a table. On one of the last episodes of “High Stakes Poker” he took two sick beats where he was a huge favorite. On the other side of the table sat Phil Hellmuth who was stuck in his own right but not playing very well at all. Phil was sitting there talking, mumbling and whining. He even went in the hallway to let off some self inflicted steam. Antonio was calm and took the beats as they came understanding that bad beats happen. If there were a perfect example of how to handle your self at a table Antonio would be it.


Memorize hands

Take notes if you need to, when you need to take a drink is a great time to do it. A large part of my success in poker is being able to analyze hands that I have played and figuring out was to extract the most money out of them as I can. Also when reviewing hands from a session I am able to remember mannerisms from my opponents and pick up tells even after the session is over.

Unfortunately televised poker does not give us a chance to see how the pros play hands and what they do in certain situations. The difference between cash games and tournaments is huge and the way they do play hands is not always appropriate for cash game play. Use the tools of the internet. You can post hands and get feedback from many different forums. The group I use the most is rec.gambling.poker. If you are not familiar with usenet news groups you can always access “r.g.p” through Google groups. There is a lot of spam there but I am willing to trade that off to interact in a group that is not moderated or censored.



Form a process for betting and looking at your cards

Do this the same way every time that way people won’t be able to pick up the strength/weakness of your hand. The way I do this is by putting a chip on my cards, hold enough chips in my hand to raise and watch my opponents as they look at their cards. The reason I hold enough chips in my hand to raise is if I find myself in a position where I have a big hand I do not want to fumble my chips and give off any information to my opponents. Good players make this mistake all of the time and this is an easy was to avoid this problem.

Another huge tell that I see at the table is how people put chips in the pot. One of my biggest tells for a while was when I was on a draw or bluffing I would toss my chips in the pot when I bet. When I had a made hand I would neatly cut my chips in front of me. Thankfully a good friend of mine was the dealer at the game I was playing and pointed it out to me. Form a process for putting chips in the pot. Do it the same way every time and people will not be able to pick up on the strength/weakness of your hand.


Do not play many hands for the first half hour that you play

Free information is everywhere. I always used to study my opponents when I was in a hand with them and try to pick up tells. After a while I figured out that these people have the same tells whether I am in a pot or not. They will do the same thing over and over telling you what they hold. By not playing many hands for the first half hour you can pick up this information and put a profile on your opponents.




Table selection

There is nothing that is more important to a winning poker session than selecting the game that best fits your style of play. There has never been a better time in the history of poker to be able to find a game that best fits your style of play as well.

There are games going twenty four hours a day seven days a week. If you look you can find a game that fits your style. After a while you will be able to adapt to multiple situations but why try? I play for money and want to put myself in the best situations possible.

I used to run a game in Toledo Ohio. We had the best action of any game and the most money in play by far. I had a regular customer who would come in, sit down and watch the game for up to an hour. He would then sit in for a half hour and left if the game was not right for him. He was one of the best players in the city. He had been playing poker and living off of it for the last ten years or so. He makes his money by putting himself in good spots and make good decisions because he plays for money not action.

When looking at your success in the game of poker it is important to look at your overall wins/losses, not just one session. That being said it is important to make sure that you are prepared for each session and play each session at your best level. It is really easy to become complacent when you are running well and keep bad habits when you are not running so well. I have many times found myself to be the best player at a table but so undisciplined that it doesn’t matter how good I am because I am not applying the principles that have made me a winning player from the beginning.

The value of the over bet

It used to be that a bad player would call off all of his chips and it seems that the roles have reversed. Now the bad players in the game I have been playing bluff off their chips instead of calling them off which is beginning to make more bad players make more marginal calls against a player that they perceive as aggressive.

Now here I am stuck in the middle, having to figure out who will call what and who to make marginal calls against.

I have a few friends in the game who are decent players. Both of them play the game as opposed to going to the casino to play higher limits so they are playing $1/$2 nl with $50k plus rolls and a total detachment from the money they have in play. Both of them consistently beat the game for $500 + every week and here is the formula we came up with.

Play pots. Get involved. Show a bluff or two. Scale your bets on your bluffs to where there is equity. Play multi way raised pots and fire $40 into a $80 pot. By making bets like that you only have to be able to take half of them down to make the bluff equitable. Once you have an image of splashing around in the pot and you make the nuts every bet is 2 to 3 times the pot.

I am guessing that you are thinking: What? Two to three times the pot is you crazy? I want to get some value out of the hand I just made the nuts!

Let’s look at conventional wisdom. Say you flopped open ended and called a bet on the flop. Flop is Q92 rainbow, you hold J10 and the turn is your 8. Conventional wisdom says to either check raise to trap or to bet around half of the pot to get some value out of it. So how many times do you need to get paid off on a twice the pot bet in order for it to be more profitable than value betting half pot? You only need someone to pay you off one time in four to make break even on the proposition assuming that people will call your half pot bets one hundred percent of the time.

Ok so on the ½ pot bet we are at the river, still have the nuts and only one person to bet into. The pot isn’t very big at all, how much big of a bet does conventional wisdom say we should make? A value bet that the person who called on the turn can’t afford to fold. Since the pot isn’t very large at all we are only talking 12 - 15 big blinds ($1/$2 nl $25-$30 bet for value) because the pot isn’t remarkably large and we need to get some money out of it.

Lets say this is the one in four times we got a caller in the over bet pot. Now the pot is huge and the player has a “read” on you that you don’t want to get called. Now we can value bet and jam it in there. Even if you bet the same amount to double what you bet on the turn you will more often than not get paid off. The player thinks you don’t want a call and will pay you off more often than not so once you get a call on the turn you get paid on the river a lot more than if you are value betting the nuts which makes the two to three times the pot bet even more profitable because of the money you get on the river.

Below is an example of the acceleration of the money in a $1/$2 nl game.

Conventional Value bet

5 limpers you are the big blind and check

$10 pot preflop

Flop Q95 Rainbow

Check (although a small bet here isn’t the worst play) middle position makes it $10 you call and get another caller.

$40 pot on the flop

Turn 8 completing the rainbow.

You bet $20 and get a call

$80 pot on the turn

River 2 You bet $50 and get called

Total $118 profit nh congrats.

Over bet

5 limpers you are the big blind and check

$10 pot preflop

Flop Q95 Rainbow

Check (although a small bet here isn’t the worst play) middle position makes it $10 you call and get another caller.

$40 pot on the flop

Turn 8 completing the rainbow.

You bet $83 and get a call

$206 pot on the turn

River 2 You bet $117 and get called