Playing Loose Aggressive in No Limit Texas Hold Em

Bring out the Sammy Farha in you! Well it's not that easy, he is a world class player who has played poker far longer and better than I have. What I have the most respect for is that he can play this style of poker so masterfully, as seen on High Stakes Poker.

Now I have to be completely honest with my audience. I do not know how to play Loose Aggressive very well. I am still learning, and I plan on using my blog, practice and my friends at poker-strategy.org to help me develop the skills necessary. I did however recently have a chance to play some loose aggressive poker and did alright even though I lost a bit of money. Mostly from unlucky cards, but I got into my opponents heads and made them make bad calls.

Here is my current strategy for playing Loose Aggressive. Come into a table and play tight ABC poker for 25-50 hands, so you can build a tight image and so you can garner some information from your competition, point out the tight wads, and the loosey goosey types.

Then you start to step up the raising. Every time you aren't in the blinds and it's limped or folded to you, put in a 4 times big blind raise. If you are in the blinds with a premium hand, raise it up. If you are in the small blind with an opportunity to steal the big blind, make a bet. You will find yourself betting about 40-50% of the time. You will steal a lot of pots, and probably enrage a few opponents who want to mix it up with you.

This is where the information is useful, if a player is still playing tight and fights back, he's probably got a good hand. If it's a player who is fed up with you and calls every bet you make, then slow down after the flop if you hit nothing, but speed up if you have a premium hand. You will be paid off by these tilters with you big hands.

This brings me to my hand example. I had this opponent on tilt, he would call me with anything and I spiked a premium hand.

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PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (8 handed)

CO ($38)

Button ($22.50)

SB ($13.20)

BB ($4.45)

UTG ($33.40)

UTG+1 ($3.25)

MPA ($12.45)

MP2 ($28.20)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Qd, Qs.

2 folds, MPA raises to $1, MP2 calls $1, 2 folds, SB calls $0.90, 1 fold.

Flop: ($3.25) 5d, 3h, 8d (3 players)

SB checks, MPA bets $2, MP2 raises to $4, SB folds, MPA raises to $11.45, MP2 calls $7.45.

Turn: ($26.15) 8h (2 players)

River: ($26.15) Js (2 players)

Final Pot: $26.15

Hero has Qd Qs (two pair, queens and eights).

MP2 has Ah 8c (three of a kind, eights).

Outcome: MP2 wins $26.15.

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I got unlucky, had him drawing to 5 outs, and he hit it. At least I had my entire stack in with the best of it, and I made a very profitable play. You can't win them all unless you only play the nuts. I shook it off as a learning experience.

Please please if you have any comments, suggestions, experiences with playing Loose Aggressive, shoot me a comment or go to my post on poker-strategy and post your comments on the hand there. I am determined to become a Farha Jr. as I believe in the current landscape of tight wads on internet poker that this is the most profitable way to play Texas hold em right now if played well.

How do you play AK or Big Slick in No Limit Hold 'Em?

Ace King is one of the trickiest hands to play in No Limit Hold Em. It's argueably the 3rd best hand in poker, even though in a heads up all-in situation they are behind 22-QQ. This hand gets it's edge over lower pocket pairs because lower pocket pairs often have to fold when faced with overcards and aggression postflop.

The only hands you have to worry about are AA and KK. These hands have you dominated, but it's more easy to get away from these hands with AK because if you don't hit your pair you often won't go further than the flop against big aggression.

You make your big money against hands you have dominated that are overplayed, such as AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ. Players who know no better will go all-in with top pair second best kicker without considering that you could easily have AK.

So how do you play this hand?

I recommend an aggressive approach, you want to isolate the smaller pocket pairs, and the hands you have dominated that are still willing to see a flop with AQ, AJ, KQ, etc.

If you hit the flop then you have to decide what your opponent is willing to go all in with, if he is good and is committing on the flop then you should fold because your opponent will probably not be holding the second best pair, and is more likely holding a set or two pair. If your opponent is clueless enough to commit with second best kicker then you should commit with your top pair top kicker.

If you don't hit the flop, continue to be aggressive, there is a good chance that your opponent didn't hit the flop either and if there is overcards to his lower pocket pair he will be forced to fold. If you meet a lot of resistance and your opponent isn't overly tricky, then fold because he probably got a piece of it or has an overpair to the board.

When would I play this hand passively? When there are particular loose passive games. When it takes a large bet to make people fold and when you do put in a bet big enough to fold people's hands it's often folding everything except QQ, KK, AA. In these situations I would rather connect big on the board, see every street as cheaply as possible and value bet the flop, turn and river when you hit it big.

When you play passively you have to make sure you have a big hand. No longer can you commit with top pair top kicker. You can be aggressive with it on the flop, but don't commit unless you are shortstacked. Chase your flush draws if you have proper implied odds (you are deepstacked, your opponents are deepstacked, and you feel you have a good chance to get most of their money in the middle when you do make your hand.)

Playing AK with a shortstack.

This is simple, you should put in around 10% of your stack or 3-5bb. If you hit your pair or better on the flop then you should commit and try and get your money and everyone else's money in the middle as quickly as possible.

Playing AK with a deepstack.

This is much more complicated. Again, decide whether to play it aggressively or passively. Then it comes down to reading, calculating, and reacting. You need to put your opponent on a range of hands on every street, calculate your odds of you hand winning by showdown and how much it will cost to see showdown, calculate your odds of you bluffing your opponent out of his range of hands, and react and make a decision based on which is the most profitable decision, seeing the hand to the showdown, bluffing your opponent off his hand, or folding.

My advice with this hand. If you are new to the game and your reads are still developing then I suggest just playing shorthanded and use the simple strategy of committing on the flop when you hit your hand.

If you are a good player, then depend on your reads and calculations and stick to those decisions, don't deviate from your plans just because of a twitch or self-doubt.

How Do You Play Amateurs, Fish, and Downright Horrible Players?

We've all been in those games, the fish are prevalent, the maniacs are crazy, and you are stuck in the middle of it all licking your chops. But you end up losing more money than you win, you are frustrated, on tilt, almost ready to quit the game of poker, "If I can't beat these amateurs then I must really suck."

Playing these games requires a different skill set altogether. You can't play these people like you would play those tough games, the psychology is all different, the mistakes are different, and thus your strategy to exploit them must be different. I will break it down for you between all the different characters you will meet at the felt whom you have and want to take their entire stack.

How do you play the Maniac?

The maniac. One of the trickier of players to play, but often maniacs are a feast or famine type of player, they will either bust out quickly or generate a big stack which they will either cash out or blow it all away quickly.

For those who are unaware, this is the definition of a maniac. Someone who is ultra aggressive no matter the situation. Will raise with any hand, any draw, and isn't afraid to 3-bet 4-bet or even go all-in on a bluff or semi-bluff. Some more sophisticated maniacs will slow down and fold when they face fierce resistance and lots of raises and re-raises but maniacs are often the first to start the betting.

The number one strategy for this player is patience. You must continue to play a tight game, maybe even tighter now because you can't play hands that require draws like flush draws or straight draws without paying dearly every time he bets and raises.

So only play the premium hands listed here: Pocket Pairs, play them for a limp or call preflop, then hope for a set. Be aggressive with QQ-AA preflop. Fold the smaller pocket pairs if the betting and raising gets out of control and would force you to put in around 1/5 or more of your stack preflop.

Premium big cards. AK you would play aggressively preflop, and only continue playing post flop if you hit a pair or better, and/or a flush draw. AQ and AJ I would play passively preflop and continue playing post flop if you hit top pair or better, and/or a flush draw.

If this player tends to slowdown to people who push back with re raises then just call his bets when you have a good hand. If he does not, then re raise him when you have a good hand.

This player can be frustrating, but you can profit quite well off of maniacs if you are willing to be patient. Maniacs also have the side effect of loosening up the rest of the table, this will make the game even further profitable.

How do you play amateurs who don't know how to size their bets?

This is probably one of the most prevalent of people who play at the lower limits. These are people who over bet their bluffs, and under bet their good hands. They slow play every hand, and when they bluff they go nuts with huge bets. How do you play these players?

Reading is key. You must generate a pattern for this player, does he over bet his bluffs? Does he under bet his big hands? What pattern does he have when playing preflop?

Once you have these questions answered, you can easily figure out when you can call his over bet with a good hand, and when to fold your marginal hand against his small bets, but if you have a good draw you should call and make him pay for letting you see a card for cheap. Just make sure your read is accurate, there are some very shifty players who can vary up their over/under betting to their advantage depending on how they think people are reading them.

Here is a quick explanation why you shouldn't under or over bet your hands. You should keep your bets around pot sized, and vary around 2/3 to 4/3 the pot depending on the player you are playing. If you over bet your hand, you are risking too much money to win too little back. If your bluff is going to work, then it will work with a small bet as much as it would work with a big bet.

If you underbet then you allow your opponents to see cheap cards. When someone is drawing to a straight or flush then you want to make pot sized bets because it would be incorrect mathematically to chase their draws now. If they do make the call then you have induced a mistake and you should profit from these plays.

Remember this when betting or raising:

Value Bet: It's a bet you make when you want to be called. This doesn't mean this bet should be small, because if the bet is too small you are giving up the advantage you have with the best hand by giving your opponents the correct pot odds to chase their draws. A value bet's size depends on several things, the tendencies of your opponent and what their range of hands are. Generally though you can never completely predict the tendencies of your opponents, so you should figure out what draws your opponent is possibly chasing and bet so that they pot odds given are worse than the odds he has to make his hand.

Bluff: It's a bet you make when you do not want to be called. This doesn't mean this bet should be big, if it's too big you will risk too much money to win too little money.

If you opponent will fold to a half pot sized bet 50% of the time, fold to a pot sized bet 55% of the time, and fold to a one and a half pot sized bet 60% of the time then do the math.

You risk 50% of the pot or pot odds of 1:2 for a 50% chance of making him fold. That's pot odds of 33% vs 50% fold rate, you should end up having a 17% return on investment with this play.

If you put in a pot sized bet, pot odds 1:1 for a 55% chance of making him fold. That's pot odds of 50% vs 55% fold rate, you should end up having a 5% return on investment with this play.

If you put in one and a half pot sized bet, pot odds 1.5:1 for a 60% chance of making him fold. That's pot odds of 60% vs 60% fold rate, you will break even with this play.

As you can see, it's often the case that smaller is better for a bluff, if it's not then you maybe should not consider ever bluffing this player and just refer to my next section of "Calling Stations."

Semi-Bluff: A bet made when you mostly don't want to be called. However if you are called you still have a good amount of value in the hand because of draws, and even from information garnered from the bet and subsequent action from the opponents.

Example of information gathering. You are in the big blind with QQ and the action folds to the button who bets. His range is any two cards, he is probably just trying to steal the blinds. Calling here will not give you any further information and your hand is far from the nuts.

So you raise him with a "semi-bluff" in the attempt to take down the pot, or to narrow his hand range down. If he calls, then he may have a drawing hand, or is expecting to try and steal the pot again on the flop. If he raises then he thinks you are defending with anything or he may have a real hand and is now trying to define your hand.

Example of a mixed bluff/value bet. You have Jack Ten both suited to the spade. The flop comes down 8 of spades, 7 of spades, 3 or diamonds. Leaving you with a gut shot straight draw, flush draw and inside straight flush draw with two over cards for a possible top pair. You have an extreme amount of equity in this hand, but it's not a made hand. At the moment you only have Jack high, which is rarely enough to win a poker hand.

You bet here with the intention of either making everyone fold (thus profiting from "fold equity"), or you get called but with pretty large odds of making any one of your draws (thus profiting from "pot equity"). This play is a double play, in that your opponent may be "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't." The worst case scenario for this hand is a large re raise that may force you out of the hand with bad pot odds.

How do you play "fish" who are "calling stations?"

What is a calling station? It's basically a loose passive player who will call with any draw and will limp into as many pots as possible preflop. These are often the players who you will profit the most from. These are the players that almost every poker book was written about beating because this was the most common player before the recent poker explosion.

So how do you play these players? Well you play them straightforward, you play big hands, draw to your flushes and straights when the pot odds dictate it and bet aggressively when you have the big hands. Eventually they will continue to just call down with inferior hands and chase draws when the pot odds don't dictate that as a profitable play, this will result in mistake after mistake and you will profit from it.

So what hands can you play against these players? Well if the table is passive enough and your stack is big enough you can play suited connectors and small pocket pairs 99-22 for limps. You should play the premium hands aggressively unless you meet a lot of resistance, AJ+ maybe even KQ. TT-AA should also be played aggressively as well. Just be aware that even the fish hit big hands, so just because they are calling stations doesn't mean you should make their range of hands unreasonable.

Don't try and bluff these players. They can't be bluffed profitably. That's why they are called calling stations. They will call just about anything with anything, so make sure you have a good hand when you bet.

Shortstack Poker and Deepstack Poker: The Definitive Guide

As I posted earlier about the great book Professional No Limit Hold 'Em, I needed to revise some older strategies and posts. I am going to start with the subject of Short Stack poker and Deep Stack poker. I understood the differences and the advantages of both but I never really understood it tell I read this book.

So I decided to write up a final iteration for the subject of short stack and deep stack poker. First, these strategies are meant for cash games, but can be used for tournaments as well. The main difference is that these strategies are based around the idea of buying back into the game and doesn't address bubble strategies, freeze outs and payout structures for tournaments.

Now for the definitions:
It is generally excepted that 80 big blinds and less makes you a short stack. 200 big blinds and higher constitutes a deep stack. And everything in between is a middle stack.

However, I feel that strategies change greatly between 20 to 100 big blinds, and beyond 100 big blinds the strategy generally stays the same. So here are my definitions:

Ultra Short: Stack size equal to or less than 20 big blinds.
Short Stack: Stack size between around 30 to 50 big blinds.
Middle Stack: Stack size around 50 to 70 big blinds.
Deep Stack: Stack size around 80 to 100 big blinds.
Ultra Deep Stack: Stack size more than 100 big blinds.

Commitment/Committing: I will use these words a lot. What they mean is that you are in a position to commit all your chips, you have no other decisions to make except to try and put in all your chips as quickly as possible without over betting.

How do you play Ultra Short Stack Poker (20BB or less)?
Starting Hands for Ultra Short Stacks. With such a small stack, just limping into the pot puts 5% of your stack in the pot. Basically every time you play a hand or you are in the big blind, you are on the verge of a committed situation. This means that you should only play hands that you plan on committing to after the flop and when you play them, you should probably only limp or make minimum bets or at the most 3bb bets.

What hands are these then? All pocket pairs are acceptable, however smaller pocket pairs, 99 - 22 should only be played from late position and never for a big raise, with these hands you should commit on the flop with an over pair or set, check/fold the rest of the time unless you think you can steal the pot successfully.

With big pocket pairs it is acceptable to either play it slow preflop and wait to see if your hand remains an over pair or you hit your set, or you can put in a raise preflop and basically commit yourself right there preflop while trying to thin out any drawing hands. I personally advocate raising here with TT-AA but mix it up, or else risk giving away your hand strength every time.

Big cards. AK, AQ, AJ, AT, and KQ. I advocate limping with these hands, but don't be afraid to raise here as well to mix up play, but I don't like to commit myself pre flop with ace high. The reason you limp with these hands is that you have such a short stack that you can still easily commit all your chips and get called on the flop with top pair/top kicker. If you have big cards and they are suited, you can now commit yourself on the flop with flush draws and straight draws with over cards if you at least have 3 way action.

Ultra Short Summary:
AA-TT come in with a raise, commit preflop if you meet re-raises. Commit on the flop with over pair or set.
99-22 limp preflop from late position, limp from early if passive table. Commit on the flop with set.
AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ unsuited. Limp preflop from middle to late position, raise occasionally, play these from early position at passive table. Commit with top pair, top kicker on the flop. With top pair, good kicker, play according to your read on the opponents, but with a short stack it's often a commit or fold decision.
AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ suited. Limp preflop from middle to late position, early position with passive table, raise occasionally. Commit with top pair, top kicker on the flop. With top pair, good kicker, play commit or fold depending on your read. Commit with flush draws and open ended straight draws.

How do you play Short Stack Poker (30-50 big blinds)?

Here you are given a little more room to breath and make a few more decisions. You can still be easily committed preflop with raises and re-raises. You can also loosen up your preflop hand selection a little as well. You can also be more aggressive preflop as well and put some more bets in the middle with more hands.

Note: If you are playing against an Ultra Short Stack(s) and no other stack sizes in a hand, then you should revert back to the strategies of playing an Ultra Short Stack. The reason is that if you have 50 big blinds and everyone in the hand is at 20 big blinds, then you are effectively only playing with 20 big blinds as well.

Starting Hands. Again, AA-TT should be played aggressively preflop. I like the idea of putting in around 10% of your stack preflop with these hands. This will commit you, and make your decisions easier post flop when you have an over pair. So around a 3-5bb bet is good, and if you hit any resistance, don't be afraid to re-raise it and get committed preflop. If you have KK and up against AA, oh well, that's why you are playing short stacked, you don't lose as much in these situations as a deep stack would and you get to see if you hit that 20% chance of sucking out by the river.

99-22 should be played the same as before. Limped in late position, early position if playing at a passive table. If you hit your set, then commit, if not then fold.

Big Cards. AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ from late position should be raised. I like around 5 to 10% of your stack to go in preflop with these cards. From early position I really only like AK and AQ with the same bet sizing. If you hit top pair top kicker, commit. If you hit your flush draw, commit. If you hit your open ended straight draw, commit. This will give you the ability to semi-bluff a lot.

Suited Connectors. Suited connectors from 67 to JQ can be played from middle to late position for a limp. Early position at a passive table. You are looking for flush draws and open ended straight draws with these hands. If you are lucky and hit two pair or a set with these hands then even better, commit.

How do you play Middle Stack Poker (50-80 big blinds)?

Now you have even more room to breath, but now you must start making more decisions on the flop, turn, and river. You aren't so easily committed anymore to any hand except sets or better.

Note: If you are playing only opponents that are short or ultra short stacks, then you should play with the previous strategies.

Starting Hands. AA-TT again you should raise these guys preflop, and semi-commit after the flop with over pairs unless you pick up a read on an opponent that he for sure has a better over pair.

99-22. Farm those sets with these guys, limp with them and commit after the flop with sets. If you have 2 or more other people in the hand that will play along, then make or calling bets preflop is acceptable.

Big Cards. These guys should be played more aggressively now. Middle to late position you should raise, early position can limp or raise depending on how you want to play the hand. Again with a larger stack you can't commit on the flop with top pair top kicker. You also can't commit on a flush or straight draw anymore too, only chase these draws with sufficient pot odds and if semi-bluffing only sufficient odds to fold your opponents plus the odds to make your hand.

Suited Connectors. Just as before, they can be played, however now you can play them aggressively too since betting preflop won't commit you to your hand. Same as above, you can semi-bluff and chase draws with sufficient pot odds.

Stealing. You can now steal more often with this stack. If you have position and a good read on your opponents, you can often steal some nice sized pots. Remember that you can only bully around the stacks that are as big or bigger than you, remember that the short stacks will commit with hands that will often beat your stealing hands.

How do you play Deep Stack Poker (80-100 big blinds)?

Now you are buying in full or close to. You can no longer commit to any hands that you don't feel ultra confident in. This makes you vulnerable to being stolen against, but it also allows you to bully the medium to deep stacks with aggression.

You should really never put chips in the middle of the pot now with the intention of committing all in without medium to top set or better. If you get caught up in a betting war with second, third, fourth best straight/flush you have to be wary. Often it's good policy to avoid going all in with another deep stack unless you have the nuts or near the nuts.

Note: Again if you are playing smaller stacks, you should adjust your strategy accordingly with the previous strategy guides.

This stack and larger is all about reading. You are in the stage where you must now really pay close attention to the table. Most of your decisions will be tough and depend on your read of the opponents. If you are a really good poker player in comparison to the rest of the table, you should want the deepest stack at the table so you can exploit this advantage.

This stack and larger is all about position. Now that you must rely on reading and not whether you are committed anymore, your hands value goes up a lot with position. Position will always make your decisions a little easier, and your reads a little better.

Starting Hands. Same as above for AA-TT, be aggressive. Depend on your reads to continue in the hand if you suspect higher pocket pairs. You often won't be fully committed with these hands unless the preflop betting is wild, or until the turn or river. So read, read, read.

99-22. Farm those sets, but now if you wish to mix up your play and be unpredictable it's acceptable to raise a few of these hands preflop. Just be careful if you have a read that your opponent is on a higher set than you.

Big Cards. Be aggressive, and read your opponents. I've seen many of deep stacks lose everything to another deep stack with a king kicker to the ace kicker. Don't commit without a solid read and sufficient odds. Chase those draws and make semi-bluffs when the hand permits and the odds justify. Avoid these hands occasionally in early position at tough tables.

Suited Connectors and Suited One Gappers. Acceptable hands as always to play, mix up your limping and raising preflop. Don't suggest playing these hands in early position unless you are at a weak table with passive easy to read opponents. I won't even consider going past the flop without an open ended straight draw or flush draw, unless I think I can steal this pot based on my reads.

Stealing. You have more power to steal from big stacks. Stealing requires good reading skills and is dangerous against unknown players whom you don't know if they like to slow play big hands. Position helps, and reading is key to playing big stacks, so with razor sharp reads you can play almost any hand in every pot.

How do you play Ultra Deep Stack Poker(100 big blinds or more)?

This stack size is definitely the toughest to play. You can almost never commit everything with a stack as large as yours without a very good hand. Even then the risk of any hand is much higher as you can now lose a lot more money. Take a look at the hand during High Stakes Poker where Daniel Negreanu lost close to a million to Gus Hansen because they were both committed with first and second best hands.

This stack is played basically the same as the Deep Stack Poker guide. You are now afforded the ability to play your hand almost any which way you like preflop. Post flop you must play your hand according to your reads in the hand, and often that is aggressively pushing out the drawing hands and the weak hands, and folding to the monster hands. When you get that monster hand it is all about disguising it and keeping everyone in the hand with money going in the pot.

Of course as I've stated before, you must play according to the stack sizes around you. You can't play a deep stack strategy against an ultra short stack. What if you are in a hand with multiple stack sizes. What strategy should you take? I recommend taking the strategy towards beating the larger, looser, easier stack and hope you get lucky when it comes to taking down the shorter stacks.

This illustrates one reason it's easier to play a shorter stack. You never have to change your strategy around depending on the stack sizes around you, but the other stacks do. However, with a short stack you aren't afforded the ability to steal as many pots, to out think your opponents post flop, or play marginal hands like suited connectors.

That ends it for this article on Short Stack and Deep Stack poker. I hope this helps you all at the NL Hold Em tables. Here is what is in store for the future of the blog.

When given the time, you should expect to see some hand examples with hand analysis from me and those at poker-strategy.org.

Articles on Professional No Limit Hold Em by Two Plus Two: Stack to Pot Ratio, another article on Committment, R.E.M. Range, Equity and Maximize.

Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume 1 - Book Review

Professional No-Limit Hold 'em: Volume 1 by Ed Miller, Matt Flynn and Sunny Mehta is truly a great change of pace for poker books. Published in July of 2007 it touches on the next big craze started by High Stakes Poker on GSN. The transition from No Limit Hold Em tournaments to cash games.

This is the first advanced No Limit Hold Em book that I have read and it is a masterful book that literally taught me how to think better about how I approach a hand in poker. It immediately shored up some unforeseen leaks in my game and prepares me for the higher stakes when I eventually reach them.

So what's so great about this book? Well I can't post it all here, especially since this is merely a review of the book. It's a book where all the theory and ideas that are brewed up in the mad scientist labs of two plus two forums are brought together. This books number one goal is to teach us how to plan our hands and to see a hard decision coming before it even arrives and to either avoid it or to embrace it. And if we embrace the hard decision it teaches us to hit it with a game plan that will allow us to spend more time calculating our odds and focusing on our tells because if planned correctly we should have a very polar decision to make and it will come down to the math and the tells to make the decision.

This book was so good that I plan on illustrating the concepts within my blog in the near future. It has been so good that I will revise some old blog posts regarding my various strategies and posts as the processes and ideas in this book will help me refine the strategies I've already held.

So who do I recommend this book to? Anyone serious about becoming a good No Limit Hold Em player and anyone tired of the run of the mill Hold Em books out there. This book assumes you already know about starting hand strategies, and the basics of odds. So this book isn't for complete beginners, but I suggest to complete beginners you should first read Super/System 2, then get this book and practice, practice, practice.

If you wish to purchase this book, you can get it here from Amazon. Trust me it's well worth the money.

Upcoming books I can't wait to get my hands on: Harrington on Cash Games Volume 1 and Harrington on Cash Games Volume 2.

How to Think Like A Great Poker Player.

Chances are if you are reading my blog you are or are considering becoming a poker player. I have many topics and articles ranging from starting hand considerations to more advanced plays. Today's topic is on something that you must learn to do if you want to become good at poker, you can only win so much money following what is said in the books and my articles. They are merely a foundation for a set of skills that can't be tangibly explained in a book. These skills address the idea that you can not play perfect poker, the game is magnificent because it's much like chess, it is so dynamic and full of so many decisions that you can never play a perfect game.

So enough of building up this idea, here it is. You must learn to think like a truly great poker player, this is vague I know, I will explain first by illustrating someone who doesn't think like a poker player. You have a player at the table, he just finished reading his fifth poker book, and has a set strategy when he sits at the table. His pre-flop card selection is already set in stone, his aggression is the same always, he always continuation bets the flop, he only semi-bluffs the turn, and he only bets the river with a made hand. He's ABC, plays tight and aggressive like all the books in the world of poker advocate.

Notice that I didn't mention anyone else at the table. Remember the old adage, poker is a game where you play the players not the cards. A strategy like this will only fly in the micro limit games of hold em, and even there will only be marginally profitable. This is where you must begin to think like a great poker player. So what does this mean exactly?

Thinking like a poker player is a matter of understanding everything. Your strategy is that you have no strategy. You must be as unpredictable to yourself as you are to the rest of the table. You base every decision you make at the table not based on a preset strategy but rather the situation in front of you, the gathered information before you, and your analytical decision making process. Here's an example.

You have AK on the button in a 1/2 NL game. You had one limper before you, and you raised it 8 dollars. The small blind folds, the big blind calls, and the limper raises. You decide to call. The flop comes 4, 6, 9 rainbow.

What the beginner is thinking: I have an awesome pre flop hand, I raised it pre flop to protect it and I bet my opponents also have good hands too in order to call my bet and the limpers check-raise.

It's checked around and I raise it around the pot size. The big blind folds and the early position calls. The turn comes with a 2 not matching any of the suits on the board. The EP checks again to you, you decide to follow the book and raise it the pot again. The EP calls.

The river comes another blank, a 10. Suddenly the EP leads out with an all in bet, a little over the size of the pot. Suddenly you are in a position with only AK high and the book always told you that if you think you are beat on the river fold, the book told you that you should never push your stack all in unless you know you have your opponent beat.

You don't think you have the best hand, and you fold. Suddenly the EP flips over his KJ to show you that he bluffed you, you are enraged inside, but the book told you to cool your nerves and wait for another opportunity to slow play that bastard.

What the expert is thinking: Preflop: I am dealt AK on the button, I get to see all the action except the blinds before I act. You notice nothing special about the body language of the limper when he limps into the pot, you know he is passive pre flop preferring to let in a lot of action in the hopes of hitting a monster hand, you are cautious of him because he is crafty and good. You decide to put in an 8 dollar raise into the pot to isolate the limper and maybe just take down the blinds and the limper's money right here.

The big blind eyes you menacingly, a clear tell that he thinks you are trying to steal his blinds and he feels obligated to defend, again a good player but not very crafty. Suddenly you notice the limper is now eying you intently as well, but not in a way that is meant to scare you, he is trying to read you. He decides to put in a check raise, you stop and think.

This opponent has never limped with a super premium hand in early position, he shouldn't have to read you intently if he has a premium hand. You now can eliminate a lot of hands from his arsenal, the JJ+ and probably AK or AQ is unlikely in this situation. You decide to call his bet and see what the flop comes even though you know that not raising over the top is defining your hand as AK or JJ or QQ to your opponent. The big blind who is now feeling like a little fish in a big fight reluctantly calls.

The flop comes down trashy 4, 6, 9 rainbow. The big blind checks as does the early position, now you feel like you want to put in a bet in this situation, but you really can not completely discount either opponent from having a hand that hit this trashy flop and they may be slow playing top pair knowing that I probably have a premium hand like AK with little draws now. If I believe that then I will do what they don't want me to, check and see a free card. I check.

The turn comes down with a 2 completing the rainbow of suits, making a flush impossible on the river. The big blind checks again. The early position goes into the think tank and puts out a half pot sized bet. You know that he is prone to bluffing a lot, and you feel that even though he doesn't have a premium pre flop hand that he wouldn't bet a set or over pair in this situation, he wants others to bet for him. You recognize that this bet is merely meant to try and steal the checked pot. You decide to call him, and the big blind folds.

The river comes down another blank, the 10. You notice that the early position looks a little worried, he's trying to hide it, but you can tell he is shutting down on this hand, he checks to you. You decide to bet half the pot, and make him feel like you are value betting an over pair or set that you have been trying to slow play. He looks at you, shakes his head and says he just can't call you or raise you, and folds his hand. You muck your AK and take down the healthy sized pot with nothing.

Can you tell the difference? Obviously I typed a lot more for the expert player, but that's because he was thinking about everything in the situation around him. He had no strategy but to play every player based upon the tells you pick up on them and the information you have gathered since he first started playing. The expert used a combination of strategies written in many books in this hand based on the changing dynamics of the hand. I will explain them all here, but the true purpose of this article is to help people understand what it truly takes to think like a good poker player, not one who has just read a lot of books.

First, you picked up on tells. He recognized the big blind was defending his blinds and was trying to intimidate you, an obvious sign of someone with a weak hand. The early position was only trying to read you and pick up on your tells, but this tells me that he didn't have a super premium hand because he first would never limp into a pot with a premium hand and he secondly wouldn't have taken all that time to read me and think before putting in a check-raise.

The flop, you decided to take the free card. You hit nothing and you believe your opponents think this. Your strength pre flop wouldn't have connected with this EXCEPT unless you had an over pair. This is where the check not only gives you a free card, but plants a seed of doubt in the minds of your opponents, now they think you might be slow playing your hand by not making a continuation bet.

The turn, you decided to create a trap or setup for the early position. You recognized that he was thinking really hard, he wants to define your hand with his bet, and he also wants to make you think he is value betting the turn with his half sized bet. You know that if he had hit a set or had an over pair that he would have probably checked here hoping you would finally take a stab at the pot. His bet smells fishy to you, and you think he is trying to take this pot down. A call here will grow that seed you planted and make him feel even more so that he is being slow played here.

The river, the bluff. You see that after you called he goes form super focused and intent looking, even aggressive looking to looking a little shocked. He suddenly starts to look a little discouraged and you know you have him now. He's staring at the board when the river hits, and he just keeps on staring and doesn't glance at his chips. He decides to check trying to maintain his appearance of strength, and you bet into him with a value bet bluff. You make it look like you are value betting this hand and you know he has little to nothing. He ends up folding and you take down the pot.

So how do you begin to think like this? It starts with information, you must gather information in order to think about it. Find out which players are good, what their tendencies are and recognize patterns. Of course you think about the math, the stats, the starting hand charts, etc. but these are merely a guideline for a poker expert. If he feels like he is in a good position to bluff at a pot with 72 off suit then he will. You become more adept at making a play based on what you think your opponents are doing and what they are thinking more so than making a play because you have a certain two cards in your hand.

To truly think like a good poker player you must think about what other poker players are thinking. This requires a lot of patience and skill, but it's powerful to get into the minds of your opponents to set them up for bluffs, slow plays, and the like. This requires understanding how good of a thinker your opponents are, if they are beginners, you must realize that they will think like a book with very predictable behaviors. If they are crafty players who are as good as you, then you must now put yourself in their shoes, recreate the scenario and figure out his strategy and cards based on this information.

I will admit this topic is hard to understand, and many players go their whole poker careers not understanding this important idea.

To train yourself to think like a great poker player, you must analyze a lot of poker hands and not just your own. Analyze your friends hands, the hands posted on the many online forums and get your own hands analyzed by other people. If you can tap into the thought processes of others and your own, you can recognize areas your thinking is lacking and pick up on tips and ideas from other people's thinking.

Remember even if you believe you think like an expert, that you can never stop improving. Poker is a game of imperfect information, you can never gather too much information and analyze a hand too much. The only way to be perfect at poker is to have access to your opponents whole card cameras and a mind reading decide, since that would be cheating, you instead must rely on your tells, and learned strategies to play closer and closer to perfection.

Poker Commitment.

Worry not, this isn't a post about marrying your poker buddy or getting away from the table from time to time to spend time with your loved ones.

This article will be about committment to a hand, pot and situation. This concept is often misunderstood but if mastered can be a great tool at your disposal.

I remember so many players in the early years of television poker constantly use the excuse, I'm pot committed, I have to call with my draw, or middle pair, etc. This is deffinately the wrong way to use the strategy of pot committment.

Commitment is all about making decisions ahead of time, to commit to a situation and follow through with this decision.

Here is an example to illustrate this idea. You have a medium sized stack in a cash ring game of No Limit Hold Em. You are dealt AK suited in early position, and you think to yourself before putting in your bet that you will commit your entire stack to this hand if you hit a flush draw, straight draw, pair or better. Knowing this will allow you to size your bets accordingly, you want to now make a pot that will have you betting all in on the flop or turn unless you have a read that your opponent is on AA or KK.

Of course commiting your chips to AK is not a very hard decision. Here is where commitment is a more powerful tool. You are dealt a mediocre hand in early position with a medium sized stack. You get AJ unsuited, and you now have a very big decision to make. You really only have two options that you should be debating, folding or raising. Often in this position no matter our stack size we will put in a standard raise. The idea of commitment should instead make us step back from the situation and think forward in this hand. If you bet here you begin to commit yourself to this pot especially since you are medium stacked. Eventually your stack size in comparison to the pot will make you commit all your chips.

Do you want to commit all your chips in a situation where you may be outkicked if you have paired your ace? Once you have that top pair, it is going to be difficult to lay down your hand when the pot begins to become as big as your stack, and your preflop aggression is going to beg you to make a continuation bet. Or do you fold this hand, wait for a spot in late position to commit your chips. This decision is difficult to make, and a case can be made either way.

Commitment is a tell. You should use this concept to figure out if you think your opponent is already commited to his hand. If a player is still betting or calling and suddenly the pot becomes larger than his own stack, be aware that you are probably going to have to showdown your hand against this opponent. You must understand this concept fully if you wish to read your opponents well. This will tell you whether you need to make sure you have a hand that you think will beat his, or this should tell you to fold and not even contemplate bluffing this opponent.

As I said in a previous article, you should never commit everything on a bluff. Every bluff should have an out, a way for you to escape your plan if anything goes wrong. If a good player notices that you are committed and continues to play with you, you are in trouble if you are bluffing because he believes he has a better hand than you.

Rule #1 of Commitment: Don't play a committed player unless:

He is shortstacked and may commit to anything or because you want to play the other opponents in the hand.

You feel you have your opponent beat.

Rule #2 of Commitment: Don't commit yourself unless:

You have a good hand that you don't think is beat.

You are severely shortstacked in a tourney.

Involved in a multiway pot with a strong drawing hand and you are fairly shortstacked in comparison to your opponents.

Don't Commit All Your Chips On A Bluff!

Commitment is a powerful tool to help you with your decision making before you get close to going all in, and it's a powerful tool to help you read your opponents holdings. Don't worry if your opponent is getting away with bluffs where he is committing his whole stack on the bluff, eventually someone will hit a big hand and commit with him and take all his money.

Beginner Tips: A Guide to Slow-Playing Successfully.

I covered the idea of bluffing. Now I will cover the idea of the opposite, slow-playing.

A slow play or a trap is a poker play that is meant to deceive your opponent into thinking you are weak when you really have a monster hand.

Note this is much harder to do than bluffing, however this has much less risk involved since you should already be ahead of your opponent.

This is why it's much harder to execute than a bluff. You must convince your opponent that you have a range of hands much lower than the hand you really have. Just the meer fact that you are calling bets, checking and continuing to pay to see more cards is going to immediately pin you on a range of at least mediocre hands.

Slow playing has another bad side effect. Slow playing can give your opponents cheap flops, turns and rivers that can end up defeating your good hand.

As you can see, slow playing is very dangerous and should only be used sparingly. There really is only a couple of situations when it is acceptable to slow play your big hand.

When you know your opponent has a big hand too(or thinks he does). When you know your opponent is playing a big hand, but not as big of a hand as yours, you can slow play him. A good poker player will slow down when faced with resistance with even top pair and top kicker. If a good player smells weakness and has this hand, they are often betting heavily to protect their hand. This is a good opportunity to let them continue to bet into you heavily without giving back any resistance until the end.

When your opponent bluffs a lot. This is a great play against bluffers and over aggressive opponents. This is why I mentioned in the previous article that you should never bluff your entire stack, because if you already are known for bluffing a lot, people will try and trap you for your entire stack.

When you know that you will not extract anymore from your opponents by betting. This is those situations where you know your opponent is weak and will probably fold to any bet. It's a risky situation, and often it is a good decision is to just claim the pot right there and not give your opponent any chance of winning. If you feel you can safely maximize your earnings by slow playing and allowing your opponent to see cards, then it's a perfectly fine decision, but you are running a calculated risk.

My Suggestions? I suggest a strategy with very few slow plays. I prefer a table image of aggression, with more bluffs, maybe once an orbit or every other orbit (every time the button makes a complete pass around the table). When you have your big hands and bet them strong, your opponents will not know if you are bluffing or not, if they try and call you down, you will win a lot of money. If they don't call you down, then you will win a lot of bluffed pots. It's a win win situation where you keep your opponents guessing. Only slow play when you feel you can convince someone you are drawing and induce a bluff or if you feel your opponent is so weak they won't call any bets even the minimum.

Begginer Tips: Introduction to Bluffing Successfully.

You are not afforded many advantages over your opponents. You have two weapons at your disposal to extract profit, an understanding of math and strategy, and deception.

I have already discussed the odds of poker and general strategies for poker long ago, but now I'll go into the ideas of deception. We actually understand deception within poker well before we even understand correct strategy and mathmatics. We however only understand just enough about deception to hang ourselves.

Here is what I mean. A player brand new to the game of poker with little to no experience with it will either be ultra aggressive, bluffing in the wrong spots making incorrect bet sizes, or he will be ultra conservative playing a lot of hands but never bluffing and constantly trying to slowplay his big hands.

Bluff: To try and win by betting with little to nothing of a hand with the intent of making everyone fold.

It seems easy enough, but in reality it's much harder. This is a game of deception and lies and people won't trust anything you do, you have to really convince your opponents otherwise, and often this requires multiple levels of deception.

Here is a good strategy for deception, and it will work more times than not if executed correctly. Come up with a method to decide whether to bluff or fold in certain situations. Example: Whenever you have nothing in late position with a limped pot(no one preflop has bet or raised) you look down at your watch and if the minute hand is odd you bluff, if it's even you fold.

It is odd, you lead out with a bet, showing strength. If you take down the pot, you just won the blinds and any limper's money. If not you have now set yourself up to make another bluff at the pot later on in the hand.

Here is an example:

We will just ignore what we are dealt, in this situation it is all about reading your opponents and figuring out if you can force them off their hand or if you feel your opponent is committed to his hand and just fold before you lose any more money.

You are sitting on the button, two people before you limp in, you look at nothing and see that the minute hand is odd. You decide to lead out with a standard four times the big blind bet. You make the blinds fold and one limper calls, the other folds. You can narrow his range of hands down now, he probably has something decent, KJ+, AT+, 88+. He may be slowplaying a big hand (a concept I'll touch on) or he may be chasing a drawing hand like a suited ace or a small pocket pair, but this is less likely, but remember not to completely forget about those hands.

The flop comes down 9c 10s 3c. There is a flush draw and a straight draw on the board, this doesn't look like much of a flop, and you represent strength, a pot sized bet here should make most hands other than a pocket overpair fold. If you get called or raised, beware, you are probably facing a good hand that your opponent may not fold. This means that you should fold unless you have a very good tell that suggests otherwise.

What if you get raised on a flop like this? Well you represented strength, like AK, AQ or a big pocket pair by raising preflop. He think it's possible this hand didn't help you at all and is bluffing, or hit his set or straight draw or flush draw. You need to keep representing that you have big cards, and I recommend a reraise. If you get even more resistance, then you may very well be up against something big and I suggest folding.

More than likely though you will get either a fold or call, if nothing hits that suggests a straight or flush or big pair, I recommend another bet and hopefully you get a fold here. Just remember the longer your opponent stays in the hand, and the more of his stack that he commits to the pot the harder it will become to bluff this opponent. If you fail on the turn, but still have really deep stacks you may consider a river bluff, if you don't have much more of a stack, you need to fold before you commit your entire stack on a bluff, something that is almost considered a cardinal sin among many professionals.

Here is another strategy for bluffing. You are sitting in early to middle position with nothing, when the minute hand is odd, you bet at the pot as long as no one else has shown strength, if it's even you fold.

Example: Again your cards don't matter for this example as this is purely a bluff play. You are in early position with nothing, minute hand is odd, and you decide to limp into this pot. It goes 4 handed and the flop comes 5c 6c Ts. You check, and late position puts in a half pot sized bet. You call with the intention of betting a later round when a scare card hits the board. Everyone else folds and it's now heads up.

The turn is the 8 of clubs, the perfect card for you to scare your opponent. You now lead out with a pot sized bet since you are in early position. Chances are giving your opponent every reason to believe that you are on a straight and/or flush draw is enough to make your opponent fold most of the time.

If your opponent calls or raises you should probably consider giving this hand up because he has basically shown you that he's committed to see this hand to the end no matter what. If you are deep stacked and feeling really aggressive you can put in another bet on the river if he called your turn bet.

This is but only a couple situations in which you can bluff. You will find yourself in many more situations where you can bluff at a pot successfully. To become a great bluffer you must learn to get inside the head of your opponents.

Tips for general bluffing:

Put yourself in your opponents shoes. This is probably the most important concepts of bluffing. What range of hands would you put yourself on if you were in his position looking at your actions and betting patterns. If that range of hands puts you in a position to make your opponent think he is beat, you should bluff.

Don't bluff too much or too little. It's a beginner mistake to bluff much too often or too little. Not all players you play even at beginner tables are idiots. If they see you getting involved in every pot no matter if you are showing strength or not they will sooner or later trap or slowplay you (slowplaying to come in a future article). If they see you just playing your cards all the time they will bluff you.

If you are playing an extra aggressive strategy you must now adjust the range of hands your opponents will think you carry. This will greatly change your situations in which you will bluff or not. The game of poker has a nasty effect of making players honest if they try and exploit a certain strategy too much.

Vary your play. It's better to confuse your opponents and be unpredictable than it is to follow a single strategy for too long. Sooner or later a good player will read right through your strategy and slowly take your stack because of it.

Learn to bluff online first. Bluffing raises your heart rate, blood pressure and makes you sweat. If you can learn to control these emotions and pressures first when playing online, you are more likely to be able to control them in a real live game.

Learn the tells of a bluffer. And learn to not make them when you bluff. You can learn these tells from many books and online sites, learn them well and make sure you don't make them on the felt.

Be consistent. You must make your bluffing plays look just like your normal plays. If you vary your betting when you bluff and when you have a real hand, people will begin to read that and adapt to it. You will go from a bluff king to a broke king.

Short Stack Poker - Hand Example 2-4-2008

I've been doing a lot of talk about short stack poker, and I've had a chance to play some short stack poker, here is a hand that I was involved in where having the short stack got me paid off.

MP1 ($24.75)

MP2 ($35.85)

Hero ($4.40)

Button ($19.60)

SB ($15.35)

BB ($9.95)

UTG ($14.75)

Preflop: Hero is CO with Ac, Kd.

3 folds, Hero raises to $0.75, Button raises to $1.25, 1 fold, BB calls $1, Hero raises to $4.4, Button calls $3.15, BB calls $3.15.

(Here is where having the short stack works towards making pots three plus times bigger than your current stack because players often don't respect your bets.)

Flop: ($13.30) As, Th, 7s (3 players)

BB checks, Button checks.
(I'm all in, and I hit a nice Ace here on the flop, I'm pretty sure I'm coming away with this pot as long as no one is chasing a spade draw)

Turn: ($13.30) Kc (3 players)

BB checks, Button bets $5, BB folds.
(Even better, have two pair now, pretty much sure I have the best hand here. This also shows where I get fold equity for free, I'm all in and the button with his $5 value bet here forced out one more hand that could possibly beat me.)

River: ($13.30) 9c (2 players)

Final Pot: $13.30

Hero has Ac Kd (two pair, aces and kings).

Button has Td Kh (two pair, kings and tens).

Outcome: Hero wins $13.30.

(I can't believe the button would call such a big bet pre flop. I got my money in the middle with more than likely the best hand unless the blind had a smaller pocket pair.

Where my short stack helped me is that I no longer had any more decisions to make after the flop. The big stack made a decision to force out the blind after hitting his two pair on the turn. Suddenly my equity in this pot grew and I didn't have to do anything except watch.

Finally it showed that short stacks often don't get any respect at the table, you can often get all your money in the middle with a giant hand and still have 2 or 3 people call. This can potentially be bad as you have so many hands drawing against you, but you made a great decision if you still got your money in the middle with the best of it.

If you hadn't noticed, this example also shows that I probably didn't make as much money as I would have if I had a full stack. I had my opponent dominated and could have probably extracted his whole stack on the turn and river with value bets.)

Short or Deep? More Deepstack Poker vs Shortstack Poker

Note: I've recently published a short stack and deep stack strategy guide. It's a highly recommended read if you are more interested in the nuances of short stack and deep stack poker.

So we've gone over the nuances and situations to play short or deep. I've been so interested in this topic that I've continued to search out articles on the subject. One thing that came up was what the bankroll requirements are for Short stack Poker in comparison to Deep stack Poker.

I needed to look back at my bankroll strategies I posted in a very early and very popular article. Poker Diversification: Bankroll Management

If you are trying to learn to play shorthanded poker, then I personally suggest playing at the same levels you would play at with full buy-ins. Shorthanded poker is a challenge for your common logic and psychology and can easily turn a winning player into a losing one without some practice. Once you can get used to the short stack style of playing you can begin to loosen up your bankroll limits as follows:

Gambler:

Full Buy In: 10 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, you would want a bankroll of $1000)
Half Buy In: 17 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $50 would want a bankroll of $850)

Quarter Buy In: 30 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $25 would want a bankroll of $750)

Conservative:

Full Buy In: 20 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, you would want a bankroll of $2000)

Half Buy In: 33 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $50 would want a bankroll of $1650)

Quarter Buy In: 55 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $25 would want a bankroll of $1325)

Ultra-Conservative:

Full Buy In: 30 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, you would want a bankroll of $3000)

Half Buy In: 45 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $50 would want a bankroll of $2250)

Quarter Buy In: 80 Buy Ins (In a $.5/1 No Limit game with $100 max buy in, but buying in for $25 would want a bankroll of $2000)

Of course these numbers aren't exact science, but it should serve as a general guideline. Remember these guidelines only apply to those who have at least become sufficient at shortstack poker. The better you become at short stack poker, and learn to exploit the big stacks, you can become more and more loose on your bankroll requirements.

This will allow people to build up bankrolls and move up the limits faster than normal. Just remember not to speed up the limits too fast, if you hit a hard losing streak after hitting a limit remember to jump back down to make sure you don't piss away your hard earned bankroll on a limit that you can't compete in yet.

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A few more notes on shortstack poker...

Short stack decisions. With a short stack at a table full of big stacks, you will make fewer and much easier decisions after the flop. With deep stack poker you are often forced to make difficult decisions all the way until the showdown. With a short stack you can commit all your chips.
How short your stack is will determine your starting hands. With a short stack your implied odds (see A Quick Easy Guide To Odds in Poker.) will be limited because you can only win as much money as you have in your stack. Example: you have a $5 stack at the $.1/.25 NL game. You expect the most a main pot will get to in this game is probably $15 dollars if you commit all your chips and two others commit as well. If you instead had $25 at the table, your implied odds against another big stack will be around $50 if you can get him to commit fully to a hand by the showdown, thus your implied odds of limping in with a hand is much better with a full stack. This means that you can still chase with your small suited connectors but beware that your implied odds are a little worse off.

This brings up another aspect of short stack poker that was illustrated in the last example. With a short stack your implied main pot was three times the size of your stack where the deep stack
had an implied pot of only twice his stack. This is a concept that hasn't been defined by anyone. I will be a pioneer and call it the speculative odds. This is the odds that if you hit your draw or hit a big hand that you will actually see the big pot that was used to calculate your implied odds.

With a short stack you are more likely to see a bigger main pot relative to your stack size. Often a small stack will get involved all-in with more than one big stack. A deep stack if played correctly should have the action down to heads up if he's playing another deep stack by the time of the showdown. This means the most that will make it to the pot is your stack, your opponents and the little bit from blinds and bets from other players who have since folded.

Another note on short stack pot odds. A deep stack can only bully around other deep stacks. A deep stack with a strong hand but vulnerable to drawing hands can bully the other deep stacks out of the hand who may have that drawing hand with big pot sized bets. A deep stack can't bully a short stack because the short stack only has to commit the rest of his chips to see his draw which may often be less than the size of the pot.

Psychology of short stack poker. This is probably why we see such an influx of people who prefer to play deep stacked. This psychological condition of being opposed to short stack poker is probably due to the fact that almost only tournament poker is shown on television except for High Stakes Poker. We see in tournaments that almost always the short stacks are fighting for their lives, fighting to keep themselves in their chairs, forced to make difficult decisions for their tournament life.

This is so far from the truth in cash ring games. In cash games the blinds never increase and you have unlimited buy ins, so you are never eliminated. People are easily manipulated however in their psychology. A short stack is often read as a tell by other poker players, especially online poker players. A short stack immediately is read as a fish, a newbie, etc. A deep stack is immediately read as a shark. Often when a deep stack sits at the table he can immediately begin to bully the table because people respect his big stack, even though it doesn't give him any clear advantage over other players.

A short stack on the other hand is often never respected, bets are being called down with trash hands because they think you know nothing and think you are stupid for buying in short. This is great for those who like to see flops with drawing hands, and when you connect with a set, flush, straight, etc. you will bring in some much appreciated cash from those who think you are donking off your chips.

When should you play short or deep? I touched on this in the previous article, but I have done some revising to be done on the idea of figuring out when to play short and when to play deep.

Playing short:
You should play short when you multi table. A short stack has easier decisions and fewer decisions to make post flop. This makes it easier on the people who enjoy playing 2, 3 or more tables at the same time online.

You should play short when you are at a table full of decent deep stack players. This will allow you to take advantage of your better pot odds and the added benefit of free fold equity. Good deep stack players will punish you for chasing draws when you have a deep stack, when you are short stacked, you often will get the odds to push all in to see your draw through. Good deep stack players are also good at thinning the pack by the time it comes to showdown. When you are already committed all in, there is a good chance that the good players will force the other deep stacks out of the hand by the river and showdown.

Playing deep:
You should play deep when you are playing worse mixed stack opponents. When you can consistently make better decisions than your opponents preflop and post flop you should take full advantage of that by buying in with a full stack.

You should play deep when you are fully focused on your game and on the top of your game against similarly skilled opponents. Again you will gain an edge against your other deep stacks post flop if you make good reads and good decisions.

If everyone at the table is bought in short (subsequently making them all deep stacks with large blinds) you should buy in for about the same amount as the deepest stack. The reason is that you gain no advantage over these players by buying in for the minimum as they all are already close to the minimum stack size anyway. If all these players are better than you or you aren't making the best decisions, you should stray away from this game and find a deep stacked game to buy in short.

Poker Forums, Communities, and Friends.

I will give everyone the biggest secret in poker. It's how I went from total donk to where I am now. Now this might come off as a huge surprise to some, but it truly is the most important thing you can do to become a better poker player.

Join a Poker Community. This will serve as free advertisement to my friends at my poker community, but it's well worth it since I owe everything I've received from poker to them.

A poker community is a great source to learn, you have a mix of good and bad players all communicating with one another. You will have a place to brag, a place to share frustrations, to ask about strategies or just to help find a friendly cardroom.

I personally found myself at http://www.poker-strategy.org/. I didn't dare invest any money in poker, so I free rolled my entire first few months of playing poker, I followed their strategies, posted my hands, and finally I was inticed by one of the many lucrative sign up bonuses. I invested $50 and I ended up having around 2 to 3k a few years later.

What should you do? Go sign up, introduce yourself, and ask some questions. Maybe you have that hand history saved of a horrible bad beat, or a hand where you took 30 seconds to make a decision and you still felt like you made the wrong decision in the end. Go post that hand history up on the boards, ask people if they think you made the right decision. Join them in the chat room and just rant and rave on the chat while you either steam off your chips or stack them up high.

A poker community is the best place to go tilt for free. It's a place to hone your skills when away from the felt. You can go examine the many hand examples posted up on the forums and post your own opinion on the hand, and how you might play the hand. Of course this requires being friendly and not degrading or disrespecting the members, but if you are that kind of person, you probably aren't reading this article anyway.

A poker community is also a great starting point if you plan on learning a new version of poker. Often there are experts in all different fields of poker who are more than happy to draw someone to their 'dark side'. They can give you the basics, and when you start to get into complicated situations they can analyze your play after the fact.

I hope to turn my blog into it's own little mini-community. Somewhere people can come to read my latest hand example and post their comments and opinions. Where people can read my strategies and post their own. In this I open my doors to others to do just this, if you have any hand examples or strategies of your own you want to post, send me comments. I'll sensor if I have to the content and edit it to look somewhat professional, but that's just to keep the site looking clean. Ultimately I want my site to become a wikipoker.

Omaha Hold Em High/Low 8 or Better Advanced Strategies

The game has a nice long name. But many refer to it as Omaha H/L or Omaha 8. I posted a General Omaha High Low 8 or Better strategy quite some time ago. If you are unaware of the game, or just starting out, I suggest reading it first.

With the popularity of the game it has become now a much tougher game. You no longer get tables where 6 of the 9 players have no clue what they are doing. Now a days you get maybe 2 or 3 people at the table who don't understand the game very well. This has drastically reduced profits that can be ascertained from especially limit games any longer, the edge we once enjoyed is much smaller.

The new game now a days is to play Omaha 8 No Limit or Pot Limit. People still understand the game, but now your range of decisions multiplies. It can be played a lot like Hold Em now where you can steal the blinds and pressure the tight wads who wait for A2 every hand, and even when called you are rarely ever worse than a 40% underdog to even the best of hands. It often comes down to reading your opponent and the board, and deciding whether to bluff or hope to hit a huge hand.

Lets use an example, you are in Middle Position with a random hand, nothing great, but it's been folded to you and the rest of the players left to go after you play very tight poker. You decide to go on a pure bluff and raise it up 4 times the big blind. You get everyone to fold except the small blind. The flop comes K J 8 rainbow.

With a flop like this, without even looking at your cards you know you can probably bluff and chase the small blind off his hand, he checks to you and you bet out the pot. He thinks for a second, and decides to fold. He probably had the A2 and was chasing the low, he read your strength as having a high only hand and you hit the flop nicely. A high flop like this is going to happen a lot and it is sometimes well worth it to bluff at it when you know your opponents are playing straightforward tight poker.

The same is true with flops with A or 2 or both in it. This often counterfeits someone's low draw and will throw many kinks into their plans, often again a big bet will drive these players off their hands, allowing you to scoop up an uncontested pot.

Select aggression is key in this kind of game. You need to spice the game up with aggression, people will pick up on it, defend their hands more, start to chase more often, push back with bets. This is when you change gears a bit, slow down the loose play, wait for either premium high or low hands and continue to bet them like you bet your bluffs. Continue to bluff but with less frequency. Suddenly you will begin to get paid off on your made hands by those trying to keep you honest and you've successfully made a profitable table.

These are keys to winning at NL and PL Omaha 8. It's much like changing from limit hold 'em to no limit hold 'em. It's more a game about bet sizes than it is about the cards, you no longer are a machine at the table calculating everything out perfectly. You analyze your players and bet or fold accordingly. One will also notice these games are much more prevalent than the limit games now a days, it feeds to the action player, they feel they can play more hands, they can bluff more often and can risk more money.

Remember every game takes some time to learn and understand. If you've never played Omaha 8 before, then I am sorry to say that it's going to be a hard road. I became skilled at the game at the very end of the heyday of Omaha 8 Limit. I was winning tons of money playing calculated poker, playing like a machine. By the time the fish hole dried up and everyone understood how to play the game correctly I was well versed in the game and could plunge into the PL and NL arenas. If you want to learn now, you have to grind it out in the low limit games where some fishes still reside. It won't be as profitable and not as addicting as it was for me. You can jump into NL and PL Omaha 8 but be prepared for a roller coaster of a ride. You can start out playing just straight forward poker, make a little profit and diversify your strategy from there.

Online Poker Tells - A guide to online player reading.

What is a poker tell? It's an action made by a poker player that tips off the strength of his or her hand. Now we all make them in online poker, it's all about minimizing how much we tip others off. I'll begin by illustrating the tells, and finish by telling you how you can minimize these tells.

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Your online alias or name. This isn't the most reliable of tells, but if you have no other read or data on an opponent then you may as well try and use it for a little information. If a player's name is in all caps then chances are he is aggressive, loose, and a bit high strung. He's going to probably be bluffing his brains out, and will more than likely go on tilt easily. This also goes for names with a mix of upper and lower cases, such as tIrEur or something silly like that.

If a player's name is pristine simple and not out of the ordinary then they are probably conservative and straightforward with their poker play. This person is probably very careful about what their actions, enough to put some thought and effort into typing their alias into the sign up sheet.

If a player's name is in all lowercase, maybe with some typos, he's probably loose and passive. Doesn't really care too much, knows just enough to hang himself. Expect a lot of limping and chasing, but not much aggression unless he has the nuts or close there too. But may be hard to make fold a semi decent hand.

Again not the most reliable of tells, and this form of picking up on players tendencies is well known now and some more crafty players out there will make a name with the intent of making you think they are a loose when in reality they are tight.

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The speed of which someone bets, raises, or calls. Again this can be taken advantage of by crafty players and you can sometimes get misreads on players who are multi tabling and just can't make decisions quickly.

If someone hesitates to a big bet, they are probably relatively weak, but may have a drawing hand or just a good hand but fear the set or straight. This is a person who you may be able to bluff off on the next card with another shot if you feel they haven't made their draw.

An instant call or raise has widely been considered a sign of strength. But don't always be fooled, especially if you make a big raise and it's an instant call but not an instant all in or raise. People are aware of these online tells and may try and set you up for a future bluff with an instant call. Instant action usually portrays strength and confidence, and it may be enough for a bluff artist to convince you that he is trapping you.

Again not the most reliable of tells, and easily taken advantage of by crafty players. This includes the use of instant check/call/raise boxes. Again these boxes can be taken advantage of by crafty players, and beginners and amateurs alike don't use them often because they can't think that quickly for their hands, and at least understand that they don't want to give away their hand strength.

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Post the big blind or wait for the big blind? This online poker tell can be much more reliable. I for one used to never complete the big blind and will wait for it to come around. It saved me money and I was patient enough not to care if I play now or 15 minutes from now. Ever since realizing this online tell I no longer wait for the big blind ever.

It's a sign to players who are savvy enough to pick this up, that a player who pays the big blind to play early is often loose, looking for action and probably a fishy who isn't playing professionally or isn't playing to win in the long run. This is exactly the image I want at a table, I want my big hands to be paid off, I want people to call me down to the river with nothing more than top pair 2nd or 3rd kicker because they think I throw my chips away for action.

A first impression is important in poker, and it often takes a lot of good play to convince another player that you are in fact good, and by that time you probably already have a good portion of their bankroll in your pocket.

This is why I don't use this tell too much, it's too easy to get trapped into thinking another player is terrible. You have to stay humble in the game of poker and always reserve doubt for the skill of those around you. The reading of an opponent never stops as we are always learning, always getting better (or hope we are) and thus we must always readjust our reads.

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Betting patterns. This is the most important read for online poker and many would argue(as I would) that the most important read for any form of poker. The weakest link of most poker player's game is that they can't change gears, they don't adjust and they are set in their ways. The only time someone ever seems to change gears is when they get beat bad and throw themselves into tilt, this often results in the remaining tight players trapping you into giving away the rest of your bankroll.

Rule one: How often does someone see a flop? This will allow you to set a basic range of hands for this player. If he plays only a quarter or less of the time even from the blinds you can bet he only plays the premium hands, AA-99, AK, AQ, AJ, KQ and the very occasional suited connector from late position.

The exact opposite is true of someone who sees the flop half the time or more. You can't figure out what hand he has just because he plays a lot of flops. This makes it difficult for you to read him, but should mean that you should constantly bet into him and force this person to define his hand. Nothing helps a read more than pressuring your opponents, a lot of players don't consider paying the big blind to see a flop much of a decision, but paying 4 times the big blind to see a flop may make that decision a whole lot harder.

Rule Two: How often does this person bet and in what situations? If it's a tight player who bets a lot then you can expect that maybe 50% or more of the time he's betting with the best of it, but if he's betting a lot he must also be bluffing a lot. Doesn't matter how tight you are unless you only wait for hands like AA and KK, you will get unfavorable flops or flops that don't help your hand, but you would still like to claim that pot. Someone who bets a lot you can almost always guarantee is someone who bluffs a lot.

If someone bets very little, they are meek. They don't bluff often, and even when they have good hands they don't bet big. These guys are easy to stay away from, and easy to not pay off. You will only find yourself in trouble with these people when you have a huge hand and he has the nuts(also known as the best possible hand).

The person in between who seemingly bets a lot at one time but not another, becomes loose at one point then tightens at another instance is the scariest person. This is a person who knows how to change gears, someone who you can't get accurate reads on. This is the person you should strive to become, and probably the hardest to do so. This requires most of us to leap out of our comfort zone. If you are used to being tight aggressive it feels weird and uncomfortable to become loose aggressive. The maniacs out there just feel so bored when they change into tightwads and suddenly don't play a lot of hands. However if you can get over these mental blocks and switch your play up consistently then you can truly become a terror at the tables.

Fishes are victims of one of the more blatant of online poker tells. They make serious errors in bet sizing. If you identify one of these at your tables you can really narrow down their hand range. These players will often bet very little or check their good hands always trapping no matter if it's the nuts or just high pair, you punish these guys by not bluffing and getting your free cards to a better draw. These players will also over bet their draws and bluffs. If you are confident in this read you should either call or re raise, trap them or bluff back into them and scare them off the pot.

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These reads are no where near as good as the reads you can get at a live game in a casino or home game. It's hard even for the best players in the world to hide some of their tells, we all have them, but some are more blatant than the rest. If you can mix up your play in online poker, then you really have no tells. They can't see you twitching, your eye movement or body language over the internet.

I'm much less versed and experienced with real live poker tells, but after reading some literature on the subject I try to watch televised poker a little different now. I try and take those ideas from my readings and apply it to what I see on the television. For someone who doesn't have many chances to play real live poker it provides good practice to pick up on tells.

If you want to practice reading opponents from online poker even when you can't play any poker, go hang out in the many numerous poker strategy forums on the net. Read the hand examples and try and read the opponents based on their betting and post your opinions on what you think they had and what you think of that player's play. I plan on posting more hand examples as well in the near future to help my readers practice and analyze when they can't get to the felt.

Well I hope you all enjoyed this article, and put these ideas to good use. Remember to keep mixing up your play, keep focused in making good decisions, keep reading your opponents whether your in the hand or not, and above all keep having fun.