Texas Holdem Poker

Regardless of the type of poker that you are playing, be it tournament or cash, betting for information is extremely important in NL Hold’em. There are plenty of players that simply will not do this and it is more than likely the reason that they are not very successful at the game of hold’em. At times, you have to be willing to lose money to win money. Only the great players grasp this concept and use it to their advantage.

The problem with a lot of amateur card players is that they are scared to put money into the pot without the best hand. Once the flop has hit, you don’t necessarily have to have the best hand to hit. By merely checking it down, you find out nothing and invite everyone to beat you. In order to be a great tournament player , you are going to need to fire, even if you don’t have the best.

As an example, assume that you have been deal Q9s on the BB and someone in late position has doubled the blinds. Both you and the small blind make the call for the hand to be three handed. The flop comes out Ad9h2c. You have a rainbow flop and you have hit middle pair with a decent kicker. The small blind checks and you fire a $400 bet into a $600 pot. The initial raiser calls and the SB folds. What does his call tell you?

Since there is no flush draw or straight draw, you have no worries there. Since he raised in late position, he more than likely has an A, but it Is probably pretty weak or he would have come over top of you. He could also be sitting on a pocket pair like JJ or 1010. The only other real alternative is that he is setting you up for a re-raise on the turn. So now the turn card is dealt and it is a 6s. There is still no draw on the board unless he was going after a runner-runner pre-flop. With $1,400 in the pot, you fire a $1,000 bet.

This bet is going to give you a very good idea of where he stands. If he is setting you up, he will come over the top of your, but in most cases, if he only has a weak A he will just call or fold here. If he calls, you are going to have to make a decision on the river as to how you want to approach the hand. For this example, let’s assume he calls.

By just calling, he has more or less told you what his hand is. There is no draw so that is not even a question. His weak raise prior to the flop would indicate a mid pair or a weak A. You can still possibly be the winner here, but it is unlikely. Depending upon the type of player you are up against, you may have to back off at this point and take the loss if he makes a big bet on the river. Again, this is why it is so important to pay attention during the course of the tournament.

If he has shown a tendency to fold on the river with a weak hand, you can fire at the pot and hope he doesn’t come over top of you. If he is a calling station, you have no shot of chasing him out so check it down and hope he does the same. Your betting told you what he had, now it is up to you to make the right move.

With Dwan ending the season on a winning note, it is only appropriate to discuss how to handle a maniac at the table. They play just about every hand and fire at every pot. Their cards mean nothing to them and when they spot weakness, they are relentless. This type of player can win a lot or get felted, but they could care less. To them, it is all about scooping the chips and getting you off of your game.

This style of play has become very popular over the last few years. The young, internet generation of poker player has no fear and no respect for anyone else at the table. They are going to fire at any pot and if they hit, they will come right at you regardless of their kicker. You are going to have to learn how to deal with this type of play if you are going to be successful in today’s game.

If you show weakness, you are going to get run over. On the other hand, you don’t want to continue to dump good money after bad just to prove a point. You are going to have to catch them in a hand and make them pay. It is the only way to slow them down and reverse the way that they approach the game. It will only take once before you can slow them down and then it is your time to play their game.

If you sit down at a table and are out of position, change tables. You do not want to be in front of a maniac as you have to be ready to push your chips every time you are in a hand. To play with someone like this successfully, you must have position.

One thing that you are going to have to keep in mind is that this person is capable of playing any two cards in any position. You are going to have to watch their betting patterns and see how aggressive they are when they catch something and when they are just making a move on the pot. This attention to detail will pay off when you finally get your hand.

The maniac feeds off of weakness. In order to get them to fall into your trap, you are going to have to donate some hands to the cause. Look at is as an investment as you will get all of this back and more when they bite on the trap. Make some weak bets or raises and when he comes over the top, give up your hand after some thought. Do this a couple of times and the trap is set.

Now when that big hand hits, make your bet and wait for him to come right back over the top. If you are in a good situation, he may be pot committed and call you regardless of what he has. If he doesn’t call, you take the chips and you wait to catch him again. If you can catch him again, he will more than likely start to slow down when you are in a hand. Maniac’s are not stupid, they are just very aggressive. Once you get him slowed down, you can start to take over the table. You can get a maniac under control, it just takes some time and patience to do it.

There isn’t a poker player alive that participates in tournament poker that has not found themselves card dead in the early stages of a tournament. You go in with a plan that you are going to double up early on that one big hand, but it never seems to come. The next thing you know you are looking down at less than 1,000 in chips and you start to wonder how much longer you can wait.

When you make your move is going to depend on how fast the levels are and how many sets of blinds that you have left. While a lot of players will get concerned when they get below a certain level, it is not about how big your stack in as much as it is how effective that stack is going to be when you push it in the middle of the table.

For example, if you are down to 1,000 in chips and the blinds are only at 50/100, you still have 2 rounds before you need to get into panic mode. The reason is that you can still make a significant raise by pushing all in with 700 chips that will make someone think twice before calling you. However, once the blinds get to a point that your stack will only represent a standard 3x or 4x the bb raise, you need to be concerned. In fact, you need to make sure that you never allow it to get to that point.

While the saying ‘a chip and a chair’ sounds great, you are going to need some unbelievable luck in order to make that work. By staying aggressive with a stack that still represents a significant raise, you are fighting off those that will call you just for the sake of eliminating a player.

Another factor in this is going to be your position. You need to get those chips in the middle against players that have to worry about losing the amount of chips that you have remaining. Pushing them in there against someone that has a monster stack is only inviting a call. While this is great when you are sitting on AA or KK, you want to avoid giving the big stack at the table the opportunity to tangle with you.

Finally, it all comes down to your cards, or should I say card. Remember, you are looking to make a move against players that cannot afford to take the hit and when you are in position. Whether you like it or not, you are often going to have to get those chips in there on the strength of only one card in your hand. If you are not sitting on a pocket pair, you MUST be looking down at an Ace or King.

Being short stacked is never an enviable position, but you have to get those chips in there when they can do the most good. With any luck, you will be able to scoop up some blinds and manage to hang around until you see a good hand, but don’t wait too long. Once you get in the danger zone of 6-10x the big blind, you are going to have to take your chances when a decent hand comes around. Otherwise, you are doomed to seeing your last couple of chips go into the middle on the blinds where you have no choice in making a stand.

PokerTracker, Sit N Go Power Tools, Sit N Go Shark, do any of these names sound familiar to you? If they don’t, you are probably making more deposits than withdrawals into your poker account. In this day of poker, if you do not have at least one of the many forms of poker tracking software that are on the market, you are merely begging to have your cash taken by players that are willing to out the $100 or so to know every last detail of how you play the game.

Check out the poker forums online and read about how people get called down by the same players time and again with nothing and they end up losing all kinds of hands on a bluff. Do you think that is merely coincidence? Is it a conspiracy? No, more than likely the other players have poker software that tells them that they do this all the time and are taking a shot against a very loose aggressive player.

While the software is generally sold on the basis that you can data mine information on other players, there are also other benefits to consider. First and foremost, you can get add ons to the software that will not only enable you to store all of their information, but you can also have it up on your screen in real time to help you make decisions against the player your are up against.

By using this software, you are able to track every move that you would consider to be important during the course of the hand. How much money they win or lose overall. How many times they follow up a pre-flop raise with a continuation bet. How often they call down to the river and win. Their win percentage when they check raise on the river. You don’t think this kind of stuff is useful regardless of the level that you play at?

In addition to mining other player’s information, you are also getting all of your data stored. You can tell when you are falling into a pattern during an individual session and you are also able to start to analyze your play offline. This is where the software really helps your game.

Imagine having a frustrating session and losing a small mint. Your mind is not clear and your probably forget the hands as soon as you shut down your system for the day. Once you get off of tilt, you can go back and use the video playback feature and see where you made your mistakes. You may not like what you see sometimes, but it will make you a better player.

Of course there is the question of the money. Your argument is that you only buy in for $50 at a time and play micro-limits. You see no use in spending a $100 on software at that level. Then ask yourself how many deposits you have made and how much if ever you have withdrawn. Also ask yourself how many other micro players have the same attitude. That software will pay for itself if you use it right regardless of the level of player you are. This can end up being the best investment you ever made in poker.

If you have any time at all on the tables, be it online or live, you have had to deal with bad players that we lovingly refer to as calling stations. If you don’t think that you have, you are probably one of them. A calling station is someone that will not make a raise pre-flop unless they are sitting on a monster, will probably rarely raise post flop and will call you down if they hit any portion of the flop, including bottom pair with a weak kicker.

You can make a lot of money off of these players, but you can also cost yourself a lot if you don’t know how to react to them. Online is easy as you can take notes and when you sit down at a table you will already know their style. If you are playing live, you are going to have to pay attention to every hand and make sure you pick up on their play. Once you have them identified, you can adjust your play accordingly when they are in a hand.

Calling stations are notorious for passive play. They will usually only raise pre-flop with hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK, JJ, 1010. Anything else, they will tend to call down any raise prior to the flop and pray to the poker gods that they hit something. If they did raise pre-flop with a hand and do not hit, they will more than likely check. However, keep in mind that if they raised with a hand like 1010 and the flop comes out K72, they are going to check, but if you bet, they are going to call you all the way down to the river in the hopes that somehow their 1010 will hold up.

A perfect example of a calling station hand would be you are dealt AQ and the station has A3. You pre-flop raise and are called. Flop comes out K-10-3. You fire and the station calls. Turn card comes out as a 7. You bet and the station calls. River card is an 8. You now have 4 over cards and a possible straight on board. You fire a river bet and are called and lose the hand because the station made one of his cards and cannot let it go. Does it make sense? Absolutely not, but it happens time and again.

How you change your play is going to be dictated after the flop and what happens on that first bet. If a calling station makes a pre-flop raise and then fires again on the flop, you can be pretty certain that they have either hit their hand or are sitting on a pocket over pair. They do not comprehend continuation bet so you are all but guaranteed that they are alive and well in the hand. If you haven’t hit, just dump the hand and wait to catch them later.

If you pre-flop raise and then fire a continuation bet on a missed flop, they will call you if they have anything working off of that flop. You have to fire that continuation bet, but from that point you are going to have to play very cautiously. You can still fire on the turn just in case they are on a draw, but if you miss the river, you are going to want to show them a hand. The amount of money you will save by doing this on the river will more than justify the play.

The bottom line is that you cannot bluff a calling station out of a hand. If they are in after the flop, they have more than likely hit the flop in some way or have some type of draw working. Your river bet is the biggest bet you are going to make in the hand and when you miss and fire, you are dumping chips. If you have a hand, you can absolutely bet as they may be sitting there with bottom pair. However, firing on the river with nothing is just going to decrease your stack against this type of player. Adjust your play and you crush this type of player and avoid losing unnecessary money.