Free Poker Strategy

No matter who you are, or how skilled at poker you might be, bad beats are unavoidable.

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Luck spares no player the crushing feeling of having got all your chips in as a huge favourite and lost to a highly unfortunate turn or river card. When it does decide to happen though, you should not let it define how the evenings poker went for you. If you walk out thinking ‘that was an awful nights poker‘ simply because you got terribly unlucky to bust out, you are missing the bigger picture.

The fact of poker, is that luck is simply a variable we cannot control. If we sit down, make almost every decision the correct one, and do not let misfortune influence our mindset, we have won, in a sense. I say we have won in a sense, because we have done everything that it is within our control to do, in order to nurture success. I know it is never easy to concentrate on being pleased with the way you played if you just lost most or all of your stack, but you have to think of the positives firstly.

Once you feel calmer a bit later on, run back through the hands in your mind and look at what you might have done differently in key hands during the poker tournament. No matter how good you might be, there is bound to be at least one hand that might have been better played a different way. In terms of keeping your emotions in check, well some are more susceptible to tilt than others I think, and it’s always more helpful if you are a naturally relaxed and calm person I feel.

Taking a few moments away from the poker table can help with tilting I think, but only if you are thinking about something besides the bad beat you just suffered. If you do not really have a chance to take five minutes away from the table, then simply try to detach yourself from what has just happened by concentrating on where your situation is. By this I mean, relative stack sizes, impending big blinds and their potential damage, and your best course of action.

Protecting your money from tilt can be difficult at times in poker, as there is always an underlying feeling that if you keep on playing, you might be able to turn things around.

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One of the key points to remember about poker, is that it is best played when you are relaxed and in a focussed frame of mind. You will maximise your profits playing this way in my opinion, provided you can recognise when frustration creeps in.

It can often be difficult to recognise when your optimum playing ability is being affected, because although your downward moving funds would seem to be a fairly reliable indicator, it is in our nature as human beings to have self belief and optimism. The problem is that when you couple that with a desire to carry on playing a poker game you enjoy, we sometimes subconciously overlook the obvious facts.  If frustration creeps in because we are losing, we will certainly start making increasing amounts of mistakes if we keep playing.

Often I find a good way of playing, is to sit down at a cash table with a set amount, and if I lose say 20% of it, stop playing immediately. Come back an hour later and try a different table. The theory here is that once you sit down at a table and start making a profit, you will be much more positive with your play, and generally more happy and relaxed whilst you play.

If you continue playing poker for a considerable amount of time while you are winning, and stop at a set point when you are not, you should be having a positive influence on the direction of your bankroll. If you happen to be in a tournament online and you start feeling a little tilted, it is usually best to go and occupy yourself with sometihng different for a while. If you can afford to miss a big and small blind without it having a huge effect on your chipstack, then I would do so in order to preserve a calm frame of mind.

Understanding basic odds is something which will really help your poker play develop. With a deck of playing cards, there will always be odds for each occurence when turning over cards, but you do not need to know the exact odds of every single occurence to be successful.

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For poker beginners, I would say that there are a few common scenarios which will arise, and you can memorise the odds for these situations to help get you started. One of the most regularly seen circumstances in poker, is a pocket pair against two overcards. Much can be decided on such hands. (A,K) against (Q,Q) for instance, is around 48% to 52%. That is why these instances are known as coin flips. If you understand the odds of a commonly found situation such as this, it will help you make preflop decisions. You know if there is heavy preflop reraising and you are holding a hand like (10,10), you are probably around 50% at best.

Other common circumstances include flopped Flush and Straight draws. If you are holding (10,J) for instance, and the flop falls (2,8,9), you need a (7) or (Q) to complete your Straight. Four Queens plus four Sevens unaccounted for, makes eight cards to potentially make your hand.  There are 47 unexposed cards out there, and 8 goes into 47 somewhere close to 6 times. This means your chances of making the Straight on the next card are around 1 in 6, or 17%.

As I mentioned earlier, you do not have to be exact to the decimal place, just within one or two percent. With the Flush draw, you have 13 cards to a suit in the deck, so that leaves 9 cards of that suit out there somewhere. You have a 9 in 47 chance on the flop, which equates to about 19% on the next card alone. Remeber you chances of making the hand improve if you are going to the river card too, but if your poker opponent reads the situation well, they won’t let you get that far.

This is a hand which took place in yesterdays live poker tournament, and involved myself in the small blind with (4h,2h). As the action had been folded around, I decided to make a bet to try and pick up the pot. My opponent called, and the flop fell (3x,8x,Jx). At this point, I felt that making a continuation bet would not give me enough information about my opponents hand. If they flat call, the turn falls, and I am left with the same problem of whether to follow through with the bluff or not.

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I know my table image is aggressive, and so if I bet out first, I know my opponent will think it very likely I am bluffing. You would think that with my lack of position and these obvious problems with trying to steal the pot, I might be best to give up, but we are missing one crucial point. Unless my opponent has caught the Jack, it would seem unlikely they have connected with the flop.

I do feel that if I check the flop in this position, my opponent is likely to make a bet whether they have connected or not, and reraising can then turn being out of position, into an advantageous position.

I did indeed check to my opponent, and they led out with a strong bet. This bet was slightly larger then I would expect from a player who has connected well, and it only served to reinforce my feeling that my opponent was just betting to try and take advantage of my perceived weakness.

My opponent certainly didn’t expect me to make a reraise, and through doing so, I had suddenly made my hand look very strong. I also tied my preflop raise into the story of me slow playing a big hand, in the process. My opponent did indeed fold as I expected, and I added 1,000 more chips to my stack.

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Having recently started posting on the PKR forum, I was pleased to find that there is a poker forum league running here, with a friendly contingent of players taking part.

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102 players took part in the first game, with NL Holdem being the format, and with 3,000 starting stacks each. I had taken a few days off from poker previous to this game, and felt refreshed going into the game. This probably contributed to me playing some of my finest poker, and eventually finishing 2nd place. Several hands during the tournament stood out in particular, one of which involved myself calling a 6,000 bet on the river with ten high. This may seem absurd to many people, and it does a little to me looking back, but I simply trusted my read of the hand without wavering. The board showed (2,6,8,3,2) on the river, with my opponent playing in such a way as to convince me they had a strong draw on the flop. With the rainbow nature of the board cards, my belief was that they had an open ended Straight draw with (5,7) or (7,9) and that the bet on the river was a desperate bid to buy the pot. I was correct and won the pot, but had to make some difficult folds during the game too.

After I had made a preflop raise with (Q,Q) in one of the hands, I found myself heavily reraised, followed by another all in by the next player. I had to fold, and was delighted to see my opponents turn over (J,J) and (K,K). I avoided losing a lot of chips to the (K,K), but later got hurt by an (A,Q) whilst holding pocket Kings myself.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable tournament, but I was more pleased about the fact that I had played to the best of my abilities, than the prize money. Typically, I found myself wondering what I could have done differently heads up to have won it, but I have to be pleased with what was a great result, and the best tournament I have played for a while.

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Online poker has become quite a phenomenon over recent years, with numerous rooms opening to aspiring poker players.

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The reasons so many thousands of people play online poker, are partly based on it’s convenience. In previous years, players had to find a local live game in order to play, and this could be a daunting task, especially for an inexperienced player. These days, if you are unsure of how to play, there is a lengthy guide to poker games on most sites, and you can enjoy a game with players of a similar standard on small stakes tables, or in play money games. This takes away any feeling of insecurity and concern about making mistakes as you learn. The ease with which you can choose your options to raise, call, or fold, mean that you do not have to worry about accidently acting out of turn or making some other etiquette orientated faux pas.

Online poker rooms welcome players however inexperienced, to enjoy the excitement of the game from the comfort of their own home, offering bonuses for cash deposits as well as a vast array of games to cater for everyones individual needs.

To me, these aspects of online play have contributed hugely to the growth of the game in modern times, but I still stand by my belief that nothing can replace the thrill of the live game.

Facing your opponent in person is how the game began, and still holds the most excitement for me. The social aspect of the game is another reason why it is one of the finest games ever invented, and if the whole world played exclusively online, we would be in danger of losing much of that social enjoyment I feel.

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Only recently I have had a chance to watch the entire final table through, despite following most of the updates throughout the whole tournament when it was going on.
I have to say that I was impressed by the way Peter Eastgate seemed to slowly increase his stack through the early stages of the final table without ever risking a huge pot.

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I certainly have to say that the two best players made it to heads up play in my opinion, but having watched all the hands at that final table, I personally feel that Demidov was the best player there by a considerable margin.
There were two particular plays he made that stand out in my mind. Very early in the game he made a huge raise to risk almost all of his stack against Philips when he had (A,Q) against (A,K) and both had missed the flop. You can say that pushing all your chips in on a bluff is not the best way to win a tournament, but you have to admire the raw talent it takes to pull off such a move. This early in the game, Demidov had to be reading Phillips hand perfectly and entrusting his tournament life to his own judgement, and he read the situation absolutely perfectly. From what I saw of Phillips play, I could personally never have seen him make a perfect read and play in this position. Another hand that springs to mind is when Demidov lays down (Ks,7s) after making two pair on a board of (7h,3d,6s,Kh,3c). Being up against a set of threes, this is a top class lay down considering it only cost him another 5 million chips to call.

After his WSOPE 3rd place in the preceding months, and then his 2nd place in the WSOP main event, Demidov has really shown what he is capable of, and in my opinion, was by far the most talented player at that table.

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This was another hand that took place this evening, and again, involved myself in the big blind, and the small blind. I had been dealt (Js,7s) and made a small preflop raise.

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My opponent called and the flop came down (3h,4d,6h) my opponent made a fairly small bet of 600, and I felt compelled to call as at that point, I felt a Jack or 7 would put me in front even if his bet was anything more than a tester bet, and a 5 would make my straight. It was the 7d that fell on the turn, and I began to doubt whether I should have counted the 7 as an out, although the basis for my thinking was still good in that, to raise preflop, I couldn’t see him holding many hands that contained a 5. Pocket Fives were plausible, but I felt when he made another fairly small bet, I had to try and find out whether my pair was in front. I had 4,000 in front of me, and the bet was 600. I reraised to 2,000 and my opponent sat and thought for a considerable length of time. Finally, he folded, showing (K,K). I never felt he was that strong at all, mainly because the standard play would be to force the issue earlier on in case I was holding an Ace and one appeared on the turn or river.

My aggressive table image helped me out here I feel, because he knew I was capable of calling preflop with suited connectors. Also, I asked him afterwards would he have called if I had reraised all in on the turn, and he said he would have because it would have looked so much more like I didn’t have a Five. If I had made a straight he would expect the same type of reraise I made, not too big to force an opponent out but enough to possibly force a flush draw out.

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Texas Holdem is a wonderful game, and one which has soared in popularity in recent years. Due to this I feel that it is likely the bar has been raised in terms of skilled players try to turn a regular profit. Omaha however, has always maintained some popularity, but the game has never attracted the same interest as Holdem. I can see no real reason why this is the case, as I have grown to play more Omaha I have found it to be certainly more exciting to play than Holdem.

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When it comes to making money at Omaha, I also think the skilled players find it a lot easier to turn a regular profit than the skilled Holdem players do. This is of course partly due to the Holdem players that switch over to experiment with Omaha, and simply can’t switch away from their Holdem state of mind. They consequently make mistakes, the biggest of which, is clinging on to a single big pocket pair when the board is showing every draw under the sun. I saw one such player manage to get all his $21 in with (Q,Q,x,x) on a board of (2,8,10). After being raised and reraised, two players called his all in, one with some sort of straight draw and a pair of tens, the other had (8,9,J,x). The first miracle for our man with the Queens, is that he thinks he is in front when he is raising and reraising on the flop, and due to the certifiable, insane play from his opponents, he’s actually right. The second miracle is that both players with a pair managed to miss pairing either of their other three cards as well as missing their straight draws. However nice the players pocket queens looked with that type of board, the reality was that he ended up having to dodge a cumulative total of about 30 outs both on the turn, and river.

He got incredibly lucky and won, but in Omaha, if you turn up in a Holdem mindset, it’s only a matter of time before the skilled players take you down.

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After learning a new 3 card based game recently, I felt I should share the basic rules of this game with you.

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There seems to be many variations of games which involve making 3 card poker hands. Usually the rules will differ slightly in terms of hand rankings with this type of game. Straights beat Flushes, with the highest Straight being (A,2,3) followed by (A,K,Q) then decending through the rankings in the usual manner. Flushes beat a Pair, and also a High Card, although Three of a Kind is the best possible hand. The other possible hand is the Straight Flush, and that slots in between a regular Straight, and Three of a Kind in terms of strength.

The game we played involved each player having three lives. Three cards were dealt to each player, with another two face up cards in the centre, and one face down. The action would move around the table with each player swapping one card for either of the face up cards, or the ‘mystery’ face down card. If they took the face down card, they had to replace it with their own card also face down. After each player has had one swap, any player thereafter can announce ‘knock’ after they swap a card. The moment this is announced, each remaining player has one swap left, with aim being solely to not turn over the weakest hand at the end. if you turn over the weakest hand, you lose a life.

These different forms of 3 card poker are often fun games to play I feel, and well worthy of introduction into a home game, if your usual game becomes tiresome.

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