Party Star

Many players new to online poker games see articles on ‘variance’, ‘bankroll management’ and ‘downswings’ and assume that these issues do not really concern them. While improving the way you approach poker hands and situations is important – the natural swings inherent in the game of poker is something every new player should take the time to understand. Once you understand the big role that chance plays in the short-term, you will be better able to focus on the best decisions for profit over the long-run, and your poker bankroll can only benefit!

This article will look at a short run of 100 poker sessions for 2 players, first for cash games and then for 1-table Sit N Go Tournaments. We will show you how the outcome of 1 ‘coin-flip’ and 1 ‘cold-deck’ situation makes a huge difference to the profits of each player, before briefly explaining how bankroll management can be used to manage these swings. We will use realistic but rounded numbers for each example to keep the math as straight forward as possible.

Cash Games:

After 100 sessions of $50 buy-in No-Limit Holdem, our players have earned a steady 5 blinds per 100 hand session… giving each of them an overall profit of $250, this is not high – but remember we are talking about beginners learning the game here!

Now for one of the players we reverse the outcome of a coin-flip situation, say a flush-draw + over cards vs a pair all-in on the flop. With some dead money in the pot our player originally scooped a pot of $110 here, only in this example the draws missed and that same pot went to the other player.

Add to this a reversal of a KK vs AA situation, first time our player had the aces and won, in this example our player had the Kings and lost – a $50 minus instead of a plus being another $100 off of total winnings.

After reversing just 2 hands from 100 sessions of 100 hands each, one of our players only made $40 over the entire time. These players may be equally skilled, equally disciplined and playing the same kind of opponents – but the outcome of just 2 hands can have an extremely large effect.

Sit N Goes

Here we will reverse the outcome of 1 bubble hand for one player, and then add a ‘cold-deck’ situation on top. For a baseline let us assume 100 Sit N Go Tournaments at $10 buy-in with a 15% ROI giving profit of $150.

In our bubble coin flip (say, Ace-King vs QQ) our player loses instead of wins, getting nothing instead of going on as a huge chip lead to win the $50 first prize. Next we bring in the AA vs KK situation – again reversing the favorable outcome and missing out on that 1st prize. Two simple hands going in a different direction to the originals have wiped $100 of our player’s profits away. Make these wins for a different player – on top of their already recorded profit – and it is plain to see how a new player could perceive a 25% return as ‘easy’.

Variance, Swings And Your Poker Bankroll

Acknowledging that the swings in poker are not only an inherent part of the game, but have a very large effect over the short-term, can be useful for new players learning the game. Firstly, it should be clear that playing with only a small proportion of your bankroll per game can help protect you from big swings of fortune. Bankroll management applies to every player who wishes to be profitable over the long term.

In addition to the money management, the examples above illustrate that making the right decisions will lead to profit over time – regardless of the outcome of individual hands or sessions. When you review your hands the right question to ask is ‘will this make me money over time?’ if the answer is yes then the outcome this time is actually irrelevant.

Last Sunday, I hosted the $1,000 buy-in UltimateBet.com Online Poker Championship Main Event. Here’s an interesting hand that came up.

With blinds at $700/$1,400 plus a $150 per player ante, I looked down at pocket tens.

The player under-the-gun opened for a minimum raise to $1,400 and then another player moved all-in. Now, in the real brick-and-mortar world, I’d quickly muck this hand. But I wasn’t playing on felt, I was playing internet poker. And importantly, I only had ten big blinds left.

What should I do?

Folding my hand still seemed to be the best option. But sometimes poker players are shaded by the way they’re running, and on this day I was running badly. I’d been slowly but surely anteing off my chips while patiently waiting for a strong hand to play.

Look, I was frustrated with my lack of playable hands. That’s why I decided to play the pocket tens. I made the call.

The under-the-gun raiser snap-called with K-K and the guy that moved all-in showed pocket eights. Long story short, I was cooked, finishing in about 300th place.

After the smoke cleared, I was left wondering about what might have been. The fact is that I had been playing really great poker. Maybe I should have waited for a better spot, and if so, maybe I would have won the whole ball of wax.

Now, a week later, I’m still questioning my thought process and my play. But this much is crystal clear: online poker tournaments have a super-fast structure and I only had ten big blinds left. There’s no time to wait!

I discussed the hand with young online poker star Ashton “theASHMAN103″ Griffin. He thought that my best play was to fold. My question to him was this: Is it better to get your money in with a hand like 10-10 as the third player to raise it up, or is it better to move all-in with a hand like ace-high in late position? Well, he’d rather move in with ace-high because of the fold equity the chips you can expect to win if an opponent folds his hand. In fact, he’d rather move in with jack-high than call with 10-10 in this spot!

Truthfully, that’s not the answer I expected from an aggressive online player like theASHMAN103.

But I kept thinking that you just can’t wait for strong hands when you play online poker tournaments. You have to move your chips around a lot more often than you do in the real world. You have to play those pocket tens!

Next, I called Justin “Boosted J” Smith, another well known online pro, to get a third opinion. He said that he’d have made the call in most online tournament scenarios, but not all. He wanted more information, like, how many hands my opponents were playing and what the general mood at the table was.

I told Boosted J that the guy that moved all-in played aggressively and that the player under-the-gun had been making small opening bets on a regular basis. With that additional knowledge, Boosted J liked the call option even more.

Like a lot of situations in online poker tournaments, my decision to play 10-10 wasn’t clear cut. Ashton Griffin advised that all options should be considered because every discernable factor could be significant in making the correct play.

Justin Smith had more to say, too. He said that this hand showed why online poker and live poker are so different. In live tournaments, you have the chance to get a solid read on the entire situation and act accordingly. In online play, though, sometimes you just have to go with your gut feel.

-Phil Hellmuth

Two days ago, I stopped at a red light in Long Beach, California. Strangely, I was thinking about the second part of this series when I noticed a man crossing a street. I was startled. He looked exactly George Hardie.

Now, Hardie is a very prominent person, politically active, founder of the Bicycle Casino near Los Angeles in 1984, former president of the California Card Club Association, and often credited with forging the path toward modern poker operations.

Fine. But the man crossing the street walked without particular confidence. He was holding a bag of groceries. He seemed sad and uncertain. Then the light changed, and I drove on, having determined that this wasn’t George Hardie. The closer I’d looked, the more differences I’d spotted in their appearances.

But that’s not the point. For a moment I’d thought it was Hardie. Then I started thinking about an important poker-to-real-life link that I teach. I’ll get to that in a minute. First, we need to acknowledge that maybe the man I’d seen had never been physically or mentally capable of great achievements. Who knows? But what if he had been? What if circumstances simply had not collided in the right ways, at the right moments, to spark his interest in achieving? Or what if his interests were sparked but, again, circumstances had not collided in the right ways at the right moments, to allow him to achieve?

How I Was Almost Retarded

I’ll tell you how this relates to poker, but first let me share something that happened to me a long time ago. I almost didn’t end up being “the Mad Genius of Poker,” you see. There was really no reason for me to begin analyzing poker strategy, programming artificially intelligent players on computer, writing books, or speaking before large audiences. I could have just as easily ended up retarded.

Don’t be so shocked. Sure, I know that most retarded people have little choice. We cherish them for living their lives as fully as they can. We feel fortunate that we’ve been blessed with better brains. Most people are never faced with, in essence, having to make a decision about whether to be retarded or not – but I was. Someday, maybe I’ll tell you the whole story, but right now, here’s briefly what happened.

I flunked the sixth grade at William Smith Elementary School in Aurora, Colorado. And justice was served, because I deserved to flunk. I could do complicated math in my head, but I’d never learned to go up to the blackboard and follow the procedures. I liked astronomy and knew all the planets, but my grade school teachers had no idea about this. All they saw was a totally withdrawn kid who chewed pencil after pencil until the splinters could finally be swallowed. All they saw was a social outcast who hid alone in far corners of the schoolyard during recess. All they saw was a boy who daydreamed all through class, did no homework, and paid no attention to anything. To them, the boy seemed retarded.

A Good Hand For The Young “Mad Genius”

And the boy did not want to escape from the cocoon of the retarded, because to him it was sheltering. There was no responsibility. You could escape deep within yourself and fantasize about many wondrous things that became the bigger reality. I was there; I was that boy; I did this escaping and sought this comfort. And it wasn’t as if you were feigning retardation for the comfort; you truly were becoming retarded; you didn’t think there was anything more to be. You didn’t know how the real world worked, because the real world wasn’t real. Everything conjured up inside you was real. And you didn’t share it. And so you faded. I was there. I faded.

And then the day came after flunking the sixth grade where I sat in a class for “backward” kids in a semi-hidden room with a door in the back of a regular classroom. It was a shameful place where everyday you were humiliated walking through the normal kids whenever you entered or exited.

One day, a young woman teacher passed out tests to everyone in our slow class. These, I later learned, were intended to further separate us, weeding out the merely deficient from the truly retarded. Normally, I would just stare at the tests. Sometimes, I would just randomly mark multiple choice answers without reading the questions. Tests were an unwelcome discipline that invaded my daydreams.

But then there was that spark – a circumstance colliding in the right way at the right moment. And I focused on the first question and it was easy. And all the questions were so very, very easy for me. And while all others in the class toiled and were baffled and struggled through their allotted 15 minutes of mental torture – with the teacher reading the questions to the majority who couldn’t do it for themselves, I filled out the correct answers in perhaps two minutes. I raced against myself to see how rapidly I could accomplish this.

Drawing Out

And, in one strange and surrealistic moment that is indelible in my mind, I did not wait for the tests to be gathered, but sprang instead from my chair and marched to the teacher’s desk. She seemed stunned that I had risen to violate her space.

“I’m done,” is all I said.

She grudgingly looked at my paper. Then she seem perplexed, almost astonished. Perhaps an event she had long fantasized had been made real, and she played her part as she had imagined it. “You don’t belong here,” she said. “I’m going to get you out.” And she did – the next day.

You see, in that moment, I had chosen not to be retarded. Oh, sure, we can argue about whether it would have been true retardation – I know it wouldn’t have been. But I might have lapsed further into a world within myself, probably never to escape. But I drew out. Hearing my teacher say, “You don’t belong here,” opened up everything to me in a moment that might never have been. After that I craved praise and began to believe I could do things that others couldn’t. Believing it helped it grow real.

My high school years were bizarre. I still never developed discipline to do much homework, but I became so advanced in some areas that a few teachers thought I was a prodigy and even devoted their classes to discussions about my actions and my writings. Another story for another time. But, clearly, I could have been struggling to cross the street in Long Beach, bewildered, unknown, unliked, unapproachable. It just wasn’t the card I was dealt on the river – the card that changed everything.

Poker, Too

It’s the same way, you know, in poker. Think about this. Every year thousands of players come to the casinos to take poker seriously. They’re experimenting. Maybe they’ve heard the truth that some people make their livings playing poker. I’m betting they don’t completely believe it, but they’re going to give it a try.

Most of them fail and lose interest. It’s not that they’re not smart enough to win, they just don’t know enough. And maybe they get unlucky, just to make it worse. So, they become occasional players or stop playing altogether. A few, though – not necessarily even players with the best strategy in the beginning – get lucky. Their confidence soars. They hang around. Their lives are changed forever, because they happened to find the right games in the beginning, be dealt the right cards in the beginning, or make a borderline decision to persevere rather than go off in quest of other challenges or to sink lower into lives more miserable.

That’s poker, my friends. It’s the man crossing the street in Long Beach who wasn’t George Hardie and it’s you and it’s I. It’s all around us, poker, life – everywhere. Everything. Today, I’ve shared a little about myself and my bout with “retardation” in the sixth grade. I hope you’ll keep it confidential, because others might not understand. They’ll make fun of me – and I’m pretty sensitive about that, because I’ve always tried to shy away from the spotlight. Thanks for understanding.

Today’s Poker And Real-life Lesson

Last time, as I began to rewrite and re-examine the concepts behind Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy as explained in a two-part feature in Casino Player many years ago, we dealt with two important life-strategy elements. We learned that (1) “the cards” probably won’t break even in your lifetime; and that (2) you should never try to get even for a particular poker session or a life experience.

That meant that you need to understand that there’s nothing you can do about the luck you have in poker or in life. It’s not your job to make sure the odds even out or to whine about it if they don’t. Just keep making the best quality decisions you can, over and over, no matter what, and you’ll have the best shot of getting as far as you can in life or in poker.

And, by not trying to get even for a particular poker session or a setback in real-life, you’re able to plow ahead seeking gains wherever and whenever they happen – today, tomorrow, next year. Just make the right decisions, be willing to accept losses and setbacks, and keep moving ahead. Moving ahead and getting even are two entirely different concepts. You are always where you are, and every step forward from that point is simply a step forward. Period.

So, let’s move ahead…

3. Never make anything worse. Sure, it sounds obvious? But guess what? I’ve never met anyone who didn’t make things worse sometimes, including myself. People get angry, and they make things worse. They lose at business or at romance, and they make things worse. It’s because they’re feeling so miserable that those extra losses don’t seem to register. In gambling, I call this dangerous practice crossing the threshold of misery. Here’s how it works.

A player sits down at the poker table thinking that the worst that can happen is he’ll lose $500. Everything goes wrong and suddenly he’s losing $1,000. He has now crossed the threshold of misery and maximized his ability to register pain. Losing $1,114 doesn’t feel any worse than losing $1,000. That extra $114 doesn’t matter, and so he concentrates less and plays worse. It happens all the time in life. Romance does this to you. Unexpected misfortune does this to you. Decisions that would normally matter (like that extra $114 in poker) don’t seem to matter by comparison. But these decisions all add up. In life people who are heartbroken sometimes make the worst business decisions imaginable. Those decisions don’t seem to matter much compared to the heartbreak. And those decisions all add up, and eventually they will matter.

In poker, many lifelong losing players would actually be lifelong winners if they simply never made things worse. Worse out of anger, worse out of exasperation, worse out of apathy, worse out of self-pity, worse out of temper. If it doesn’t matter now, it will matter tomorrow. So from now on, promise yourself you will never make things worse. You will never make things worse.

4. What you’ve already invested doesn’t matter. Too many poker players damage their bankrolls by calculating how much they personally “invested” in the pot before making their decision about whether to bet or fold. Don’t do that. The pot, all that money you’re competing for, is simply there. It doesn’t matter where it came from or how much of it you invested. It wouldn’t matter whether it had originally been all yours or whether the players just happened to find it forgotten on the table. The pot belongs to no one right now.

Same in life. It doesn’t matter how much money, how much time, how much effort you have invested in a project. Say you purchased land for $200,000. One morning you wake up and it’s only worth $100,000. That same day, someone offers you $160,000. You should accept this offer, because you’re not losing $40,000, you’re gaining $60,000. That’s because what the land used to be worth doesn’t matter, and what you’ve invested doesn’t matter. You don’t need to win on this investment. The trick is to make profitable decisions again and again and let lifelong success take care of itself. Ignoring taxes, write-offs or anything else that will complicate this example, the land is worth $100,000 now. You can get $160,000 by selling. Selling is the right decision, and it has value–in this case, $60,000.

In poker, the time to hesitate is when you really need more time to resolve a close decision. Often things will occur to you given a little extra time. Or, under the extra pressure, your opponent may provide you with a tell. You might occasionally also hesitate for deception, so that alert opponents can’t determine that your pause always means you have a close decision.

Also, sometimes when you make a final free bet with a big hand, you’ll be more likely to be called if you don’t bet instantly. Well, if you don’t bet ALMOST instantly, I mean. Because both a bet delayed for a few extra seconds and an unreasonably quick one are apt to make your opponents suspicious and more likely to be called.

But, unless there’s a specific reason to hesitate, you should usually make all your free bets, calls, and raises crisply and confidently — because this enhances your image and speeds up the game at Rainbow Riches.

As most of you have probably noticed so far, UB has added a Step Sit and Go program to try and earn your way to this year’s World Series of Poker. In fact you can do it for as little as .10 cents. Starting with Step 1, you try and finish in the top 2 to earn your step 2 ticket. From there on every step is the same.

Get in the top 2, move on to the next step. Finish in the top 3 or 4, and you get to retry the step you were currently playing. The best way to put it is finish in the top 4 of any step, and you lose nothing. Sometimes when you finish 5th or 6th, you just get bumped down a step. So if you are playing a Step 6 and finish 5th out 9 people which is pretty easy to do, you just get bumped down to step 5 and just have to work to get back to step 6. The Step Program is as follows:

Step 1=.10
Step 2=.30
Step 3=$1
Step 4=$3
Step 5=$10
Step 6=$30
Step 7=$90
Step 8=$250
Step 9=$750
Step 10=$2250

When you win Step 10 you win a $12k WSOP Package, and if you finish 2-4th you get a good amount of cash back.

It is important to remember when playing these steps that you aren’t playing to win, and that getting 2nd place is the same as 1st. It is not your job to take people out, just to move on to the next step. If you hold 55 in the Big Blind, with 6 k in chips, blinds are 200 400, and someone with 4600 shoves; you might consider folding if its 3 handed, depending on the other stack size. I’d much rather make someone make a tough call, than make one myself.

There is definitely a flow to these steps. Almost everyone at the table can see that finishing 5th or better is going to get them some kind of ticket, so therefore you can assume that in a 9 handed SNG, the bubble begins at 6 handed!!! Because of this, a lot of people are playing tight.

Rightfully so as the blinds mean nothing. The other side of the coin though is noticing this and exploiting it. Get a feel for who you can 3 bet light. For me it’s normally the guy who has chipped up a little, as he feels he is the most likely to move on to the next step. Anyone who has played SNG’s knows what I’m talking about, when it comes to exploiting the bubble. It’s just in these steps that the bubble occurs so much faster.

In addition to this exciting new way to try and make it to the WSOP, you can also make it to Aruba, by winning Step 1 through Step 10. Start at Step 1 and work your way all the way to Step 10 and win Step 10 and you will get a $8,500 package to Aruba. This promotion is only available to the first 10 people who accomplish this. Good luck everyone, and I will definitely see you at these Steps.

Top earner on the World Poker Tour (WPT) Daniel Negreanu has stated that stupidity will lead to a fast exit from tournaments.

In an article for The Grands Rapid Press, the poker ace told of one competition he was in where he made a good run and then blew most of his chips in one go.

He cites three examples of “stupid play” in tournaments, the first of which is bluffing at the wrong time.

Negreanu’s second tip is not to call a large bet with a weak hand in an attempt to catch an opponent out.

Finally, he said that gambling on a “coin flip” with a large amount of chips is often a poor move and can be disastrous.

To avoid falling into these traps, Kid Poker recommends keeping an eye on the blinds to avoid overbetting and getting impatient.

In addition, he stated that making risky moves early on can be an error and said it is advisable to save risky plays for later on in the event.

Negreanu has won four World Series of Poker bracelets and currently has earned more money than any other pro on the WPT, having amassed over $5 million in winnings.

Say you’re playing in a low-stakes ring game. The blinds are $.50 and $1, and it’s folded to you in middle position. You find a nice hand - pocket Tens - and bring it in for a standard raise of three times the big blind. It’s folded around to a player in late position, who re-raises the minimum amount, making it $5 to go.

I’ve seen this sort of play repeatedly in the past few months while researching my next No-Limit Hold ‘em book by playing in low-stakes games. Every time I’ve been faced with a minimum re-raise, I’ve been up against a monster - pocket Kings or Aces.

A player who opts for the small raise may think he’s being crafty by getting me to put a little extra money in

the pot while he holds a big hand. But this is not a profitable play. There are two major problems with the minimum raise.

I’ve already mentioned the first problem: My opponent has telegraphed his hand. And making good decisions is pretty easy when you know exactly what your opponent holds. The second problem is mathematical. My opponent is giving me 5 to 1 to call the additional raise. (In this example, my extra $2 will give me a chance win $10.) When I make the call, I know that I stand to win a very big pot. My implied odds - the money I stand to make if I hit my hand - more than justify the call. If my opponent started the hand with a $100 stack, I could get paid at a rate of 50 to 1.

So I call and see a flop. If there’s no Ten on the board, I’m done with the hand. And if there is a Ten, I’m going to wipe my opponent out. As I said, poker is a pretty easy when you know what your opponent holds.

What’s the proper play when you hold Aces and a player has raised in front of you? Find the “Bet Pot” button and click it. Put pressure on a player who you know is starting with a second-best hand. Who knows, if he’s got pocket Queens or A-K, he may be willing to put his entire stack in pre-flop. If he holds something like Jacks or Tens, your big raise will minimize your opponent’s implied odds.

You should be wary of minimum raises at other stages of a hand, as well. Say you raised pre-flop with A-K and one player called. You hit top pair top kicker on a K-8-4 board. You bet out the size of the pot and your opponent min-raises you. At this point, you need to be very concerned that your opponent has hit a set. You have to wonder why he’d be raising an amount that almost begs for your call.

My advice here is twofold: first is that you should all but eliminate the minimum raise from your game. In some rare circumstances when you hit a full house or quads, it might be appropriate, but that’s about it. Second is that alarm bells should go off whenever you see a min raise. Your opponent probably has a big hand and you need to proceed accordingly.

Although Texas hold ‘em is still the game of choice here in the U.S., Omaha continues to flourish internationally, creating more competitive and challenging games both online and live.

Omaha is a game in which rags turn to riches and riches turn to rags as each community card appears. Draws dominate the action in Omaha, and because of this, understanding what you are holding is of the utmost importance. Unless you have the stone cold nuts, you rarely want to see any type of connected card hit the board for fear that you have just been outdrawn.

Although starting hand selection is extremely important in Omaha, it’s knowing when to get out that separates the winners from the losers. Knowing when you should raise or reraise is also very critical to success. These basic ideas should be the first step in any poker player’s education of Omaha.

Aggression is also the name of the game. Being aggressive in Omaha will allow you to reduce opponents with drawing hands, but you should temper this aggression on different streets.

Playing preflop in Omaha falls under the same strategy family as hold ‘em. You’re going to want to raise with your strong hands, see a cheap flop with your speculative ones and fold the rags. No matter what the game, being aggressive preflop is a strong strategy, because your opponents do not want to put in additional chips to see the flop. Remember, they are thinking along the same lines as you are: Get in cheap with speculative hands. If you can erase some of the players from the mix, the probability that your strong hand holds up will increase.

As much as I’m advocating aggression, be aware that you should not reach the point where they will not respect your preflop raises. Keep being a preflop bully, but use your brain and stop making raises that you know will only result in multiple calls. If your image has been watered down, especially in Omaha, this will convince your opponents to take a shot to get even more of your chips.

Where Omaha differentiates itself from any other game is in postflop betting. Once the first three community cards are out, your brain will need to work overtime to determine the best hands in this situation. With an extensive number of draws almost always available, every player must ask themselves if putting more chips into this pot is a beneficial decision. Obviously, given the title of this tip, if you have a good hand postflop, I’m advocating a bet.

In Omaha, your opponents are much more likely to have a good hand than in hold ‘em, but unless they have the nuts, they are also worried about the possibilities of your hand. Being aggressive will continue to reinforce their concerns as they wonder if their hands are good enough to continue on. Rarely should you call a flop bet if you have a hand of this type. If you think you have the second-best hand postflop and your opponent bets, raise. Test the waters and see what your opponent does. If draws are possible, he will not want you to make your hand either, and will further define his hand. You’ll be able to get more information in Omaha through postflop betting than in hold ‘em, where players are more protective of their big hands.

Think of it this way: Say you flop a set in hold ‘em — could you get away from this hand easily? No. Of course there will be situations (like a set of 2s on a 2-10-J-Q-K board with a preflop raise), but most of the time, if you flop a set, you probably think your hand is good and will be married to it all the way. In Omaha, if you flop a set, your hand might be in trouble already! If you flop a set of nines with a board of 9-10-Q, I wouldn’t feel too confident.

Protect your big hands in Omaha by being aggressive, and when given the opportunity, be the aggressor. Bet when your opponents check and give you control of the action because rarely will a card be a complete blank in Omaha. The more cards that come out, the more you need to look for any and every combination of cards that can beat your hand. If your opponent calls your big bets, hope that the next card makes your hand even stronger.

If your opponents are drawing, it is your responsibility to make them pay. If they incorrectly pay to see the turn or river and hit, so be it. Other times you’ll be happy they played against the math, because you’ll be raking in an even bigger pot.

A day of poker can be seen as a long, drawn out battle. In that battle are many short confrontations that set the tone for future battles. After all the smaller battles have been completed, someone will be broke and going home. Keeping a cool head throughout every single individual battle is the only way to be victorious in the long run. Once you lose your patience and focus, it’s all but over.

What I’m talking about is tilt, but really, it’s more than that. Going on tilt is the ultimate way to lose your money. Nobody I know will claim they play better when they are on tilt. If they say so, use some of Joe Navarro’s insight to figure out if they’re telling the truth. Going on tilt affects your thought process, gets your adrenaline going and will eventually force you to make a mistake, if you don’t control it.

Just as a quick example, you have just been two-outed on the river. The guy across from you smirks, claps, jumps up and down; he just rubs it in your face. The very next hand you have K-10 under the gun. That same player reraises you, so you decide that you want revenge and push all-in. He insta-calls and shows pocket kings, which of course hold up.

Now, if you weren’t on tilt you would not have:
(1) Raised under the gun with K-10,
(2) Reraised him all-in with K-10,
(3) Let your emotions affect your decisions
Clearly, this is an exaggeration, but I promise you that players whom you have played with have felt angered by a beat you have put on them and have wanted to get their chips back instead of finding a better source.

Admit it. We’ve all done it. The guy at the table whom you just don’t like has taken a pot from you. Instead of looking at one of the weaker players to steal and slowly grind back up, you go right back after your “enemy.” And, instead of winning the next pot, just give him more of your lifeline. Part of avoiding tilt comes from the experience. You’ve been there before, the beat will happen, and when it does, you have to move on. If you feel that you aren’t ready to move on, don’t play another hand. Take a break. Walk away from the table or even get up to go. Nobody is forcing you to play that next hand and of all people, you need to convince yourself that you are in no shape to ante up.

If this is a tournament, you need to think differently; you can’t just leave, but you can walk away. You risk missing an opportunity to pick up a big hand, but even then, what’s to say that the hand will hold up? Getting blinded away is a better decision than playing while steaming.

So how do you keep a cool head?

One strategy to use is to remember that each hand is only that, one hand. After each hand, mentally, start over. Give yourself a check list. Count your chips, take a deep breath, get dealt your cards, act on them.

When it comes to a “rival” player, you need to take this out of the equation. You do not have a rival player. The only time you need to focus on defeating one player is when you are heads up. Besides that, everyone else at your table is trying to take your money, and if you aren’t paying attention, they will.

Every player should be deemed as the same. Yes, some will be more talented than others and there will be some that you know you can take advantage of. Quite simply, that is an informed decision. For that reason, you should pick on this player if you know you have an advantage. If you don’t feel that you have an advantage and are going after a certain player out of spite, you are making a mistake.

Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. If you really want to get back at your opponent, make sure you’re the one who takes home the most money. After all, isn’t the best way to get revenge to have someone else take care of your dirty work? Let the action on the table dictate itself. If you happen to end up knocking out your hated rival, great. If not, hopefully you enjoyed watching him sulk as he walked away from the table.

First, you need to know that I frequently re-raise as the big blind when an aggressive, blind-stealing-type opponent raises in the small blind after everyone else folds. I don’t need a very strong hand to justify that re-raise, because even if I’m beat by a mediocre hand, the re-raise gives me psychological leverage to add to my positional advantage. Remember, I’ll get to act last on all betting rounds.

But in all other circumstances, while you should vary your play, and you can certainly sometimes justify re-raising when you’re in the big blind position, usually you’ll make more money by waiting to see the flop. Among the many reasons for this, these important ones come to mind:

1. If the small blind isn’t involved in the pot, you will have the disadvantage of acting first on all future betting rounds.
2. With all but aces and, perhaps, kings, the strength of your hand is not usually defined until after you see the flop. You really don’t know if it is strong or weak. Unlike stud games where your strength often changes slowly, one card at a time, the three-card flop strongly defines your hand in hold ‘em. Although your cards may be strong enough for you to believe that you have a likelihood of having the best hand, that edge is usually not enough to justify a re-raise and risk facing yet another raise from a rare hand that might truly dominate you. This is especially true because of your poor position.
3. Why announce that you have a fairly strong hand if you don’t have to? The very tiny edge of pushing a hand you think might be slightly better than your opponents’ hands is often overwhelmed by the fact that you are giving away information unnecessarily. Of course, this show of strength can sometimes work in your favor (and you CAN use it deceptively with weak hands), but it is more likely to work against you by chasing away weak callers and the long-range profit they might supply on future betting rounds. If you just call, opponents will think you might have anything, from very weak hands to moderately strong ones or better. You keep your options open on future betting rounds, and you can fold more easily, having invested less, if the flop disappoints you.

For these reasons and others, I recommend usually not re-raising in the big blind with moderately strong hands, except when isolated with only the small blind.

I’ve been thinking back about my life as a poker player. Today, I’m so involved with my University of Poker, consulting, producing publications and videos, and doing research that I play only about 50 times a year. I usually play from $75-$150 to $200-$400 limits, rarely higher, stakes that I can easily afford. My lifestyle is never going to change for better or for worse as a result of a single night’s poker play.

I’m older and wiser than I was as a kid, when I would risk my entire bankroll at the hint of a challenge, like an Old West gunslinger called out to Main Street for a showdown at sundown. Someone must die. It must not be me. No practical reason for this fight. Ego against ego. No reason. Risk it all. Be a man. No reason. Be strong. No reason. Yes, I remember, but I survived those days, and now those days are dead for me. Their passing many years ago made me feel more secure, but sadder. There were exhilarating moments mixed with monumental risk. I liked it then. But I like things better now.

And now I sit down to list for you the things I would do differently if I were to live my poker life all over again. Let me think. Well, I’m betting that I won’t be able to list everything, but I’ll try to hit on as many things as I can. Here’s the list:

1. I wouldn’t enter games that I worried about. In old Gardena, cheating was rampant. You dealt your own cards, and not everyone dealt fairly. Not every deck remained unmarked. Collusion among players was legendary. I was reckless. As an honest player, I didn’t believe the cheaters had any right to be in my game. Even when I was quite sure that I was being scammed, I simply stayed seated and seethed. I vaguely knew what was going on, but I hated to be run off.

Sometimes I’d spend months building a comfortable bankroll in an honest game, only to be lured into a crooked one. If I had to do it over again, I would run away.

2. I wouldn’t consider cardroom management to be adversarial. There’s a partnership that exists between a professional poker player and cardroom management. Both make money off the same business, and they need that business to be profitable. In my early years, I thought of management as an outside force, with different interests.

If I had to do it over again, I would make lasting relations with casino management from the very beginning, and I’d go out of my way to help make the cardroom successful.

3. I wouldn’t give women money to gamble in order to skip the preliminaries. In the ’70s, it was easy to pick up women. One-night stands were common. I wasn’t looking for lasting relationships. Weird time. Different planet. You had to be there. One of the quickest ways I knew to skip even the basic preliminaries of getting acquainted was to tell women I had faith in them as players and give them money to play poker. I usually agreed to keep half of what they won.

The problem was, they almost never won, and I came to believe that I wasn’t always getting an honest count. Also, all of these short-term relationships began with a lie — that I believed they could win at poker. Usually, I didn’t. If I had to do it over again, I’d spend a little extra time, save a little money, and go to dinner and a movie like everyone else.

4. I wouldn’t write books. Believe it or not, I never wanted to write poker books. I did lots of research, and it was time-consuming. It made winning easy. I didn’t want to share this information. But in 1977, two-time World Poker Champion Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson talked me into contributing to his soon-to-be bible of poker: Super/System — A Course In Power Poker. After that, my vow of silence was broken, and I decided to continue to help players who didn’t have the opportunity to do research win.

It’s been rewarding, and I enjoy teaching, writing, and lecturing. But if I had to do it over again, I think I’d just stay off stage and not let opponents know what strategies I use. Of course, that’s assuming I would want to remain a relatively obscure poker player for the rest of my life. There are, I admit, financial advantages to the path I’ve taken. Still, poker was simpler before I shared secrets.

5. I wouldn’t have gone through my FPS phase. I teach avoiding FPS, which stands for Fancy Play Syndrome. This is where you often choose the fanciest play, rather than the most profitable, in order to impress your opponents. I suffered from this myself for many years.

If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t try to impress poker opponents. I’d just be satisfied with winning their money.

6. I wouldn’t gamble above my bankroll. When you gamble too big for you bankroll, you frequently lose and must rebuild. The net effect is that you win less money than you would if you were more cautious.

If I had to do it over again, I would seldom risk more than 10 percent of my bankroll on any single poker session. Usually, the amount would be much smaller.

7. I wouldn’t spend too much of my bankroll. Poker players tend to underestimate the amount of money they need to cover a bad run of cards. They build a bankroll to $40,000, spend $25,000, lose $15,000, and find themselves broke, even though they won.

If I had to do it over again, I would be much more miserly in keeping my bankroll ridiculously padded. I believe extra profit comes from that extra comfort.

8. I wouldn’t flash money and get robbed. One of the big thrills for me was carrying around $40,000 in my pocket while doctors and lawyers might not be able to produce a single $100 bill. This made me feel rich, and I loved to flash money. Of course, many of my opponents had much more money than I had when I was young. They just didn’t carry all of their assets in their pants pockets.

This youthful exhibition of false wealth caused me to be tied up and robbed at gunpoint twice. And I don’t think it impressed many people. If I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t flash money. If I hadn’t, maybe I wouldn’t have been robbed.

9. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to jump down in limits. One of the worst things players can do is test a larger limit because that limit looks profitable at the time, then refuse to return to their previous limit when the conditions worsen. Ego causes us to think of ourselves as a $5-$10 player or a $20-$40 player or a $200-$400 player. Once you’ve established yourself at that limit, it can be psychologically damaging to jump down. Jumping down is embarrassing. That’s how it often was for me when I was younger.

If I had to do it over again, I would just find the most profitable game at any limit my bankroll could justify, and if it turned out to be a smaller limit than I could afford, I wouldn’t care what anyone thought. Often, there can be more profit in a $40-$80 game than a $200-$400 game, or in a $2-$4 game than a $10-$20 game. It depends on who’s playing.

10. I wouldn’t burn money. I’m known for taking a match and burning $100 bills at the poker table. I’ve done this to convince opponents that I don’t care about money and, therefore, to gain psychological dominance.

If I had to do it over again, I’d burn only $20 bills. It’s more cost effective and accomplishes almost the same thing.

11. I wouldn’t have been the Harlem Globetrotters of poker. Many times, I’ve played poker just to put on a show. Sometimes I even do that today. I like to prove my superiority by doing magical things that nobody else ever envisioned. I call this “putting on poker exhibitions.” While I’m usually able to win, despite the sacrifice, I wish my nature were a little more conservative.

If I had to do it over again, I’d almost always play purely for profit, not to show how good I am.

But, on the other hand, if I hadn’t done all of those things, I wouldn’t be writing this to you today. I wouldn’t have met and married Phyllis; I wouldn’t have a University of Poker; I wouldn’t enjoy the same friends. Maybe I’d have a different wife, live in a different town, read a different newspaper, and drive different roads to the shopping center. Maybe I wouldn’t be known as a poker player. And I wouldn’t be me.

Exactly what is game theory?
Sure, if you’re an astute student of poker, you probably know what game theory is. If you’re schooled in higher mathematical concepts, you also know. Sort of. But the plain fact is, most poker players don’t have a clue. Don’t worry. Game theory is just a term you hear bandied about by poker nerds. Frankly, the term frightens most normal poker players, because it suggests that a few opponents know something they don’t. Something powerful. Something sinister.

Say it ain’t so, Mike. OK, it ain’t so. I haven’t seen anyone show me a purely game-theory approach to any real-life poker game that could come anywhere near the profit potential of even common-sense poker. And nobody is likely to show me one for many years.

And when someone does come up with a complete strategy for a given game, based on game theory, nobody will be able to apply it very successfully during the course of a game. You’d need a secret computer to quickly analyze which action to take when. The game that probably comes closest to being cracked by pure game-theory principles is ace-to-five lowball. But even there, a naturally skilled player armed with some basic research will fare better.

So, relax.

Anyway, I never did tell you what game theory is, did I?

Game theory explained, finally.
The legendary mathematician John von Neumann is credited with pioneered game theory about 70 years ago. Also sometimes called the theory of games, it doesn’t just apply to poker. In fact, it’s most powerful application today is not to what you and I think of games at all. It is used for military decisions (or should be), for politics, and for everyday choices..

All you need to know right now about game theory is that it tries to provide the best decision at a given moment for a poker player by taking into consideration what your opponent’s best strategies is. For instance, should you bluff for $20 at this moment, attempting to win a $300 pot? Well, if you always bluff, your opponent should always call with his semi-weak hands. And if you never bluff, your opponent should never call with his semi-weak hand.

The truth is that to perfect your strategy, you shouldn’t bluff all of the time, but you must bluff some of the time. You need to consider your opponent’s options. For instance, if he has a weak hand does this mean your bluff will succeed? What if he raises? Should you just give him the pot then, or should you re-raise? Through game theory, you can determine - if all goes well - what frequency you should bluff and what frequency you should take any other poker actions.

What’s important is that once you know the frequently you should try to bluff in a situation, you need to randomize your actions. What does that mean? It means that if the answer you came up with through game theory analysis is that you must bluff one out of 10 times in a certain situation, this does not mean that you must choose one time in 10 to bluff. If you do that, your actions theoretically will be predictable by an all-knowing opponent. He would say, “Gee, no bluffs observed in the last eight tries. This means my opponent is going to bluff once out of the next two times, so I better call.”

Randomizing your choices.
To get around this problem, all decisions should be randomly generated. Every time that the same situation occurs, you should act as if it has never occurred before and randomly decide whether to bluff. You might go 50 times in a row or more without bluffing, or you might bluff three times in a row. Just so you choose randomly, you’re safe.

How do you choose randomly? There are several ways that are almost random. One method I sometimes use is to remember combinations of suits that I saw on the previous hand, but that’s another topic for another day. Just trying to be random in your own head may be close enough, in practice.

You need to know this about game theory. Your objective is to choose an action that leaves your opponent with no way to take advantage of it. In the case of bluffing, a perfectly randomized strategy will mean that it doesn’t matter to your opponent whether he calls or not, as long as his decision is also randomly based and he calls the correct percentage of the time in the long run. A theoretically correct game theory solution cannot lose through eternity, but it cannot win through eternity, either, when pitted against a similar strategy. The only reason such strategies win is because opponents make mistakes. That’s the same way any other poker strategy wins, by the way.

It turns out that some hands are almost always playable, and some hands are almost never playable. but many hands fall in the middle and they should be played sometimes, but not others. This is why I cannot usually answer questions that players pose about whether they should play a hand. The situation is usually borderline, thus prompting the question, and the answer is often that they should play the hand sometimes. This does not turn out to be a very satisfying answer in the minds of most players, but it is the right answer.

Why game theory fails.
Game theory fails, because poker is just too complicated. There are too many things to consider in a real game, and calculating a tactic for a given situation is seldom possible with any degree of precision. Even if you could calculate the exact answers for every situation, you wouldn’t have the time to do this while you were at the table, so you’d need to memorize all the answers. Good luck.

Another problem is that the game theory solution is apt to be aimed at opponents who respond perfectly. That’s the main challenge behind game theory. Play perfectly and let your opponent destroy himself, if he chooses. Although it may seem strange to you, if you have a perfect game-theory solution, you don’t need to adjust. No matter what your opponent does, he cannot win. The more he strays from the perfect strategy that you’re playing, the more you’ll profit from his exceptions.

But wait! What if your opponent bluffs all the time? Are you just going to let him do it? Again, you don’t need to adjust. If you stubbornly stick to your predetermined game plan (which means calling most of the time in a limit poker game), you win more when your opponent bluffs too much. However, you won’t win as much as you would if you simply said, “To hell with this game-theory stuff. I’m going to call all the time.”

Yes, you could adjust game theory to the circumstances, but that would mean going to the poker table armed with many sets of incredibly complex strategies, and I’ve already said that I don’t think anyone could handle even the basic one.

Another problem with game theory is that, although it can more readily be applied to two-player competition, poker games among three or more players add a complicated twist, due to the possible benefits of implied cooperation among opponents. This does not need to be cheating. The complication arises, even in honest multi-way confrontations. I’m not saying this cannot be resolved through game theory. I’m just saying, show me.

Having said all that, you still should realize that game-theory investigations are going on right now in poker, and that they will yield some valuable information. We will tune strategies accordingly. But it is unlikely that you will ever personally need to understand anything other than the basic concepts of game theory, because you certainly are unlikely to use such a complex strategy in a real poker game.

Why fixed strategies fail.
Actually, you can hone in on a very decent strategy by using a computer to try out tactics. You let the first “opponent” adjust until it is maximizing its profit. Then you let the second “opponent” adjust, and on and on. I have seen situations in which this won’t work, because the strategies stubbornly whipsaw back and forth, rather than finding a focal point. But it’s sometimes a very powerful technique. At the end of this experimentation, you arrive at a fixed poker strategy.

The main point I want to make today is that fixed strategies fail, whether they’re game-theory strategies or strategies.. By fixed strategies, I mean ones that don’t adapt to the conditions a the table right now.

Even a perfect game-theory strategy, targeted at perfect opponents, is not the best approach in real-life games. That’s because, most likely, your opponents are not playing anything near perfect strategy. If they are, you probably don’t want to be in that game, anyway. So, the best strategies are those geared for imperfect opponents.

That is why much published hold ‘em advice, for instance, is far off the mark when speculating that hands like A-J are seldom profitable. When opponents play A-9, A-8, A-4 with regularity, A-10 is more likely to beat up on another ace than to fall victim to one. Whether you should play A-J or not depends on the exact circumstances and the nature of your opponents. An A-K often makes more money against A-J than A-J makes against A-9, so you need to consider that, too.

Here is what’s wrong with fixed strategies in poker. The problem is threefold

1. If you use a perfect strategy geared at holding off perfect opponents, you probably won’t maximize your profits against weaker opponents;
2. 2. If, instead, you use a perfect strategy geared at typical weaker opponents, you may have to wait for the game to adapt to you (the wrong set of opponents can sit down and cost you money while you hope for a better group to arrive);
3. 3. Even an apparently excellent strategy can be overcome by two or more opponents playing inconsistently with the true strength of their hands.

We’ve all had moments in good old fashioned brick and mortar casinos where our senses become overwhelmed by an environment that we have no control over. From uncomfortable chairs to overflowing A/C to the guy sitting next to you who obviously hasn’t bathed since the last time the Cleveland Indians won the Series, playing live poker can be a less than pleasant experience at times. That’s why one of the biggest advantages of playing online poker versus live poker is the ability to control your environment. By standardizing all the variables of game play and setting your poker playing environment to your liking, you can maximize your focus and take that next step toward becoming a winning player.

So how do you control your environment? Well, let’s start at the beginning. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be very anal about your poker playing environment. That means you turn off your phone and shut down whatever program you use for instant messaging. Even if you’re just playing for fun, you should still be taking poker seriously (unless you’re just looking to flip away your roll). Along those same lines, make sure to turn off the TV, stop surfing the web and answering emails. This is about minimizing distraction in an effort to maximize focus, and one of the pitfalls of online poker is all the readily available procrastination devices at your fingertips.

Now that you’re distraction free, tune the other variables in the house to your liking. Is the temperature in the house comfortable? Check. Do you have water and soda within reach and a tasty meal ready to go in the fridge? Check. What about music? I always like to have some music going in the background, but nothing too loud or distracting (if you’re singing along with the lyrics, it means you’re not focusing on poker).

So you’ve got all the peripherals taken care of, now comes the game play itself. Go through the options in the game lobby and set everything to your liking. Most of it is up to you, but personally, I like to roll with the animation off (so the game runs smoother) and “highlight bet amount” turned on. For those of you who don’t know, when you turn on “highlight bet amount” it makes it so the bet amount is always highlighted when it’s your turn to act. That means all you have to do is type in the amount you’d like to bet when it’s your turn − no having to manually highlight the number yourself or fumble around with the bet slider. I also like to set the game background to plain brown, especially when you’ve played down to the final table. That bright blue “hockey rink” final table background can be distracting, so I always switch it off.

Once again, you’re doing all of this because it’s to your advantage, not just because you’re a control freak. By controlling your environment, you give yourself the best chance to maximize your focus on the game and be a winning player. This is far and away one of the biggest assets available to all online poker players.

One of the most important safety tips I can give in regards to “big” hands is to be especially cautious when you’re playing them from early position. I believe in this so strongly in fact that I won’t even play A-Q unsuited from under the gun at a full table. It’s just too easy to get into trouble with this hand and cost yourself valuable chips.

In my opinion, the smartest thing you can do with hands like A-K in early position is mix up your play as much as possible. That means you’re going to sometimes want to raise with these hands and, at other times, you’re going to want to limp with them. Why? Because by mixing up how you play in early position, you’ll make it harder for your opponents to figure out what kinds of hands you really are playing. Of course, there are some other things to keep in mind when adopting this strategy, the most important of which is that if you’re going to limp with big hands in early position, you also need to limp with small hands like 6-7 suited.

By the same token, if you’re going to be raising with hands like A-K, you also need to sometimes raise with your smaller hands. Of course, you don’t want to play complete garbage from under the gun, but you shouldn’t be scared to sometimes pop the pot with a less than premium holding. If you get called, you may hit something like two pair on the flop and, if you get re-raised before the flop, you can easily throw your hand away without costing yourself too many chips. Again, it comes down to keeping your opponents off-guard.

While some players argue that you should always raise your big hands, I think limping with something like A-K in early position provides another potential benefit. For example, let’s say I limp from under the gun and three other players limp behind me before the button puts in a raise. Because of the amount of money in the pot, it’s likely that the button is raising with a very wide range of hands. Depending on my read, I might just flat-call his raise and try to out-play him after the flop or I might even re-raise before the flop and try to take down a substantial pot right then and there.

If I had raised with my A-K in this position, chances are that none of the limpers would have put any chips in the pot and I might only get flat called by the player on the button. By limping with my hand, I can get some extra money in the pot and put myself in a position to re-raise pre-flop. If the button was just trying to steal from position, he’s likely to lay down and let me take the pot. If he calls, I can play the hand cautiously if I miss the flop and, possibly, take a down a monster pot if I connect.

Of course, there’s no “right” way to play a hand like A-K from early position. Instead, look around your table and determine what kind of opponents you’re facing, and how aggressively you want to play against them. Mix up your game and you should be able to make your big hands pay off at crucial times.

After honing their games online for awhile, many players decide to take the next step and test their skills in a live poker room. For some, the transition comes easily but, for others, the differences between playing at a computer and at a live table can be difficult to overcome.

For many online players, one of the hardest adjustments to make is to the speed – or slowness – of live play. Where you may easily see 50, 60 or more hands an hour if you multi-table at home, you’ll be lucky to see 20 or more hands during an hour of live play. The game just doesn’t move as fast. Some players adjust to the “boredom” of live play by listening to music and zoning out while they’re not involved in a hand.

While I don’t personally object to listening to music at the table, I prefer to chat with some of the players seated near me during the game. First of all, there’s a nice social aspect to playing live – if you have a good table – that you just don’t get online. Secondly, chatting with your fellow tablemates may help you to determine what kind of players they are. Is the guy next to you just killing time at a $5/$10 table while he’s waiting for a bigger game? Is he in town on vacation and just playing a little poker for the fun of it? Is he a regular?

These little bits of information can help you categorize your opponents and determine what kinds of players they might be; serious, casual, aggressive, etc. Remember, the more information you can gather, the better decisions you’ll be able to make when you’re involved in a big hand. This brings me to another important distinction between online and live play – focusing on your opponent.

When you’re playing online, you’re working with a much more limited amount of information than you are live. Sure, you may be able to calculate how often a player raises or re-raises from the button and keep track of their statistics, but when you get right down to it, you’re playing your game based on your two hole cards and the patterns you can establish about your opponents. When you’re playing live poker, on the other hand, you have a lot more information that you can factor into your decisions.

How is your opponent betting or sitting at the table? Are they confident? Do they look scared? Does your opponent’s demeanor change when they’re involved in a hand? Do they talk more? Less? Are they tilting? Drunk? Loose? Because of all of the extra information available to you at a live game, I believe it’s much easier to make reads on your opponents and, in turn, to put them on a very specific range of hands – or hand – if you’re really paying attention to what’s going on at the table. One of the biggest mistakes I see many online players make when they first start playing live is that they overlook this extra information and play a very “general” game rather than focusing in on a specific opponent.

My advice for these players is simple; slow down, focus, think. While you don’t want to take two minutes to contemplate every single play, there’s nothing wrong with going into the tank every once in awhile during a live game or tournament. If you’re paying attention to the action and your opponents, there’s a lot more information that you have to process and this sometimes takes some time. Think about how the hand has played out – and about how your opponent has played the hand – and you’ll find that your game will improve.