It’s been a while…and that’s not just the title of a good song (hell of a song actually, better DL it on iTunes while I bat this out). Nope, my fingers, a keyboard and poker haven’t made a collective gasp in almost a month. Had I lost inspiration? Suffered a stroke inducing bad beat playing heads up 4 rollz and given up poker? Absconded with half a million in corporate trust funds?
Nup…But here’s what I have been doing.
This is a quickie but a goodie. I realised one thing we didn’t cover when we took a look at calculating poker pot odds and our discussion of implied odds earlier was simply what percentage we had of making our hand depending on the number of outs in the deck. Remember that ‘out’s are cards in a deck that make our hand. For example, if we are on a heart flush draw with two hearts on the flop, we typically have 9 outs (nine heart cards still left in the deck that make our five heart flush).
Now, we did take a look at one easy way to calculate our pot odds, but if you kick ass at counting how many outs you have, it also pays to commit to memory the percentage likelihood of hitting our hand depending on our number of outs.
Ok…this post doesn’t have all that much to do with poker but I’ll get around to our favourite topic anyway. Anyone have ninemsn.com as their default home page? I’ve been sitting here today browsing the headlines as I am want to do whilst procrastinating about work, and the only thing that comes to mind is WTF?!?
The Aussie Millions has come to an end for 2009. It was a particularly exciting year for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that a good mate made an impressive run, finishing a very respectable 29th and cashing for a cool 40k…you’re a champ Leo. Another was that the title was finally taken down by an Aussie.
Our group has had our inspiration inflamed by our friends finishing tally and our home game series, which will see at least one of us complete in next years main event, kicked off last night.
If you’ve spent any time at all playing poker online one of the things you will have learned to pay attention to (or block out competely depending on the situation) is table chatter. Often it can be harmless banter, but often it gets personal, but there’s nothing more boring than profanity censored rants which really do nothing more than make the aggreived player look like a twat. Recently though, I’ve been privvy to a couple of decent little poker sayings and come backs, so I’ve documented them as best I can remember. Playing poker well is one thing, having the mouth to go with it can be a thing of beaty.
You know you’re a poker junkie when…
One of my best friends father was a chronic alcoholic. It was a serious and debilitating disease which ultimately took his family away from him, and then later him from them. I start this post with a slightly downbeat tone because it ties in with one of the morals of the story, namely that no matter how bad things can be, they could always be worse, and a frame of reference can help give us perspective. Ok…enough serious stuff.
So how does my mate’s dad liking a mid morning nip relate to poker I hear you say? Well, on a much smaller scale and on the frame of reference of poker alone, there is an equally debilitating disease which, much like an addiction, can be an unwanted influence on our health. By health I mean the size of our bankroll, and I am of course talking about tilt.
I used to tilt. I used to tilt a lot.
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It’s here, it’s started, and the bloodletting has already begun at this years Aussie Millions 2009 Main Event. If you’re a pro or spectator from the States or UK the prospect of a 2 million guaranteed first prize tournament might not warrant a gruelling 23 hour plane trip. It is, afterall, one big buy in event in a Country far far away. But for we skips down under, it’s the biggest event in town, and even though the official numbers are expected to drop from last years entrants, the Aussie Millions has still managed to yield a star studded field.
Is this all leading somewhere? Yeah, at the end of this post you’ll find our favourite Michelle moment where she gets pwned by Norman Chad. But in the mean time, take a look at some of the other (less than) memorable moments in the following video clips.
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Now Tiffany Michelle might look good enough to eat a plate of french fries off, but after having now seen just about all the footage of last years main event, I for one have let my initial enthusiasm for her deep run peeter out into reserved condemnation. It’s not so much the way she played (which was impressively aggressive), or the fact that she had to suck out half a dozen times to avoid elimination (with a field that large, who doesn’t?). It was just the fact that she was such a freaken b%*#h in the process.
Am I in any position to judge? How would I act if I smacked a couple of thousand other players in the rear to find myself in the top 30 at the World Series? I dunno…I’d probably act like a right smarmy self congratulating tosser…but then I’d be the one who would have to suck up the blog posts written by poker champion wannabe’s about what a tool I was.
We kick off this little poker remenisce where Tiffany Michelle calls the clock on Snead during a big pot. Even if he was getting 10:1 odds on his money, like Marquis says…it’s just not cool.
A while ago we started a series on no limit hold em strategy and looked at essentials like bankroll management, different playing styles and pre flop play. In this post we’ll revisit that all important element of poker…pot odds.
Poker pot odds can be approached from a fairly elementary standpoint, but in later posts we’ll be looking at more complex situations where ascertaining pot odds takes more than using the fingers on our hands to count our outs (if only it were that easy).
I’m not a poker pro. Chances are I’ll never be one. I’m ok with that because there’s something I just freaken love about sitting at the felt at a home game with a beer in my hand trying to out-think the player sitting accross from me. It’s probably fortunate because the reality is that at the moment, my bankroll isn’t anywhere even close to being at a level that could sustain one, much less regular 10k entry fees. Having said that though, I doubt there would be many avid players with baby bankrolls who haven’t entertained at some time the prospect of getting to play in a main event. Recently, I’ve had an opportunity open up which may well see that opportunity become a reality. Best of all, it might be achieved through the humble home game.
Believe it or not, this article is ultimately about playing good poker, but we’re going to approach the topic from a slightly oblique angle, so hopefully you’ll forgive me. You see, I’m currently listening to my latest downloads on iTunes, which include some pretty cool riffs. In fact, the songs I’m listening to are so good, that I’m inlcined to forget the fact that it’s currently 2:30am, and even though I’m crushing a $1/2 game on Stars, I have to get up for a blistering day of work in just 4 measly hours.
Ever had a session where you know you played like crap? Nevermind…it’s a rhetorical question. If you read that first sentence and started shaking your head you’re either delusional, very lucky, or very very very good. I’m none of those things, so I’ll happily admit there are days where despite everything I’ve learned about poker over the last few years I still play like a randy virgin taking his first shot at popping his cherry…in other words, I am completely devoid of insight or style, and generally fumble around or **** things up. After a hell session it can sometimes pay dividents to reflect on where things went wrong, and get back to basics. In this post, I’m going to revisit some of the core texas hold em poker tips to avoid donkey plays, particularly in tournament poker.
I have a friend who plays in our regular home games who is a rock. I mean he is tight…super tight. Think of a joke involving tight, and the virgin mother’s nether regions, and we’re at least starting to get close to just how rigid this bloke is with his hand selection. Now, I sometimes get called a rock, but that’s just fine with me. I always enjoy making a point of bluffing the name caller out of a key pot during the game, and I try not to be too smug about the fact that they walk away believing they made a brilliant laydown. The thing is though, whilst playing tight aggressive poker might be a good starting frame of reference, not having the ability to change gears when the situation demands it can be a loosing proposition.
Taking a bad beat in poker can be a really frustrating thing. A bad beat, in poker parlance, is losing a hand that is initially thought of as a winning hand. There are varying degrees of bad beats. Frequently, a bad beat is preceeded by some form of muppetry played out by a donkey who the poker gods have a hard on for. An example - having your all in bet called by someone with bottom pair against your set, only to see them hit running cards for a straight. A lesser degree of bad beat but no less typical, would be when someone who has a pair of aces continues through the betting rounds upping the ante everytime only to lose to a player who simply gets lucky in making a gutshot draw. Poker bad beats such as this happens all the time and are considered to be a normal occurrence that most of us need to learn how to accept. Ask any poker player, they can tell you a bad beat story. If you find a player who has a poker bad beat story but chooses not to tell it, chances are they can handle themselves at the table.
Its doubtful Chris Moneymaker knew in 2003, when he won the World Series of Poker that he’d change the way the world looks at poker, but it’s true nonetheless. Since then, people from around the world and certainly this author, have dreamed of sitting at the final table, holding pocket aces, and staring down Jackie Chan.
However any decent player knows you’re only as good as your last game (or tournament) and learning to play a good sit n go game can generate some serious cash very quickly (skill and the poker gods not withstanding) .
This is the third part of our series on No Limit Texas Hold Em Strategy, and we’re going to take a look at where things all begin…pre flop poker strategy. A poker hand pre flop is a little bit like the start of a first date. We’ve made our selection carefully, we can feel the potential, and we’re a little bit excited about how things might develop. The only real difference is that unlike a date, in a poker hand we’re really not looking to get screwed. Here are a couple of factors to keep in mind when playing your hand pre-flop.
In texas hold em winning hands with massive holdings is easy. It doesn’t take long to learn what beats what, and when we hit a monster like a full house or flush it’s less a question of whether we will win but how much we can extract from a hand. However, in hold em, particularly tournament play, we won’t always hit the big hands we need to stay alive. When this happens, winning hands without the holdings can be key to our enduring success. Many players simply lack the experience or balls to make strong plays when our opponents show weakness, so we’ll examine a few of the situations where we can look to take down pots, even when our hole cards are against us.
This is the second part of our series on No Limit Hold Em Strategy, and in this post we’ll take a look at the first poker playing style we want to master at the tables…tight aggressive. Of all the playing styles new players should try to emulate, this is the one. The reasons are numerous, but the advantages clear.
Do you use an online free poker odds calculator? I sure hope so. Odds calculators are a CRUCIAL part of winning money at online poker. Here are a just a couple of ways an odds calculator can QUICKLY and EASILY improve your game:
No limit hold em strategy is a massive topic, but in this series we’ll be looking at some of the essential NLHE strategies to implement in your play, and then take a look at how those concepts can vary depending on whether we are playing tournament poker or cash games. Getting our head around some of these strategies whilst experiencing them through practice at the tables can make understanding how they relate to situational play much easier. Here’s what we’ll cover in coming blog posts:
What can I tell ya…I’m a bit of a poker junkie, and if you’re anything like me and the poker crew if you have a spare three minutes waiting for a train, your morning coffee, or even if you’re just having some quality time on the porcelain throne… you might as well spend it playing poker. Here are a couple of options to play poker on your Blackberry mobile, courtesy of Bplay.
It’s been an interesting month of poker. The World Series Of Poker November Nine finally played it out to bring an end to the 2009 WSOP. Kudos to Eastgage for taking the mantle, and to Dennis Phillips, my personal fave, for taking out third and knowing when to lay down hands. I’m following the online vibe to decide whether the delayed final table was a win or a wash. If there was a media blitz leading up to the November Nine it certainly wasn’t focused south of the equator, and we downunder could have been forgiven for forgetting that there were still nine blokes still waiting to take their slice of a $20M pie. The lead up series was decent but I was a little dissapointed at the delayed telecast of the final table and having numerous hours of play condensed into two. Still, it closes out another big year and it was awesome to see the numbers up. Now on to a more personal front…
The decision to start playing small ball poker and integrating it into an overall adaptive poker strategy is a change players on all levels are making. The style of play now known as ‘small ball’ has probably been in circulation as long as poker has. However, its recognition and emergence as a profitable form of play has been assisted through it’s adoption by poker pro Daniel Negreanu, the man also responsible for the styles current moniker. For those of us who have suffered one too many bad beats at the business end of a massive pot, it seems there might be some pretty tempting reasons to implement small ball poker into our playing repertoire. Read more »
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