My First Online Final Table

Up to this point I had played quite a few multiple table no limit hold’em tournaments. I hadn’t made a final table yet, but had been down to the final two or three tables multiple times. I had always ended up with a short stack in the later stages of the tournament and never was in a position to vie for one of the top spots. I had to pick a decent hand and go all in and try and double up to build a decent stack, but always picked the wrong time when someone had me in a bad position. Well my luck finally changed in a tournament I played in.

I entered a low buy-in tournament  with 582 other people. It was quite of few people for a tournament, but I really liked the first table I was at. In this particular tournament everyone started with 1000 chips with blinds starting at $10/$20. I found myself at a table where I felt very comfortable at because everyone seemed weak in their poker skills. Lots of people were limping in and not raising. Betting was very weak, meaning people were betting the minimum bet after the flop etc… which told me that many at this table were inexperienced. I played my typical tight-aggressive game, and raised the standard 3-4xBB when I found a good preflop hand. This allowed me to isolate against 1 or 2 weak players where I was able to double my stack pretty quickly. It was tough starting with 1000 chips, because if someone hit the flop and I didn’t it would be hard to bluff them off and it would hurt my stack. Thankfully this didn’t happen and I played well for the first hour. I slowly moved my way up to the top 30-40 spots after the first hour and really liked my position.

Since I am writing this well after the fact, I don’t recall all of the details, but I was playing well and luck seemed to be on my side. This was a change from my previous attempts at cracking the final table. If you haven’t played in a low limit buy in online tournament, you won’t be able to believe all of the people that through in their chips with weak hands. This allows a certain few people to build up these huge chip stacks very fast. I swear after 20 minutes, someone will have 6-7 times their initial chips. Like I said before, I don’t remember all of the details during the middle of the tournament, but I had some good cards and was able to get my chip stack up to the average. Once the blinds increased to a size that meant I would have to put a lot of chips relative to my stack to play a hand, my chipstack diminished down over a little while. I found myself down to around 4K in chips with blinds at 400/800. This is not a good situation, and I was way shortstacked. I got a hand of K9 of clubs and decided to go all in since 2 more were in line to bet. Well the big blind called me JJ. This wasn’t looking good. But luck was with me this tournament, and I hit a 9 on the flop and a King came on the turn giving me two pair and beating the big blinds JJ. At that point I thought, maybe this is the time luck is with me to make the final table. If you haven’t played in a tournament, you will find out that luck does play a role towards the end of the tournament because lots of heads up all in’s are occuring with race conditions. A race condition is basically a 50%-50% odds, which occurs with one player have two high cards, and someone with a smaller pocket pair. The odds are pretty close to 50%, meaning you need some luck hitting these to survive.

Well after that all in, I was able to build up my chips to around 16K and was in a decent position with 3 tables left. With the big blind being high, the pots were big, so if you got good cards, it was easy to build up your stack. With two tables left, I was moved to the other table. I find myself with the chip leader who had 174K chips. I couldn’t believe it, but with his chip stack so high, he was playing a little loose and I was able to keep my stack up. I was surviving, and it seemed like everyone else started to fall out. I kept thinking I was going to go next, but I learned a good lesson from my wife who plays online also. Just keep patient and play good hands, and don’t try to make something work that is a long shot. I ended up practicing what she said (she has won a lot more money in tournaments online than I have) and even though some of the blinds really chopped my stack, I picked my hands and was doing alright. Well, after a little while I made it to the final table. The final 10 people all vying for the top prize. I tried to loosen up my game some since the blinds would hurt your stack if you don’t stay afloat. I actually got some really good hands at the final table and found myself in the final 4. I was really happy and the final four of us played for a long time. The chip stacks started to even out, and we were all around the 100K chip count. A few all ins happened, but no one would get kicked out.

Well I can’t remember the previous hand before my last, but I lost half my chipstack and was in a bad position. I was in the big blind and the first guy to bet raised the pot up to 28K (big blind was 10K). I was at about 68K in chips and had QJ offsuit. I decided to go all in because I had the feeling the raiser didn’t have a strong hand. Well I was right, he had J6. I had a pretty dominating hand. The flop came and it was a J and two rags. I was looking pretty good. Then my luck decided to turn against me and a 6 fell on the turn and I was out. I played pretty well and my instincts and reads were very good. I just got outdrawn in the last hand. I was happy with my performance, but I could have been in a good position to win the tournament if I would have won that hand

Texas Holdem 101

Hold’em is a version of poker that is the combination of two down cards for each player with 5 community cards.  Each person is dealt two down cards.  A round of betting takes place after everyone has two cards.  The flop occurs next, which is the first three community cards.  Another round of betting takes place after that, then the fourth community card is flipped over followed by betting, followed by the last community card known as the river.  Finally the last betting round is done.  A total of four betting rounds occur if at least two people stay in the hand until the end.  This is known as a showdown.

At first everyone is dealt two cards down that no one sees except the player.  At this point two bets are all ready in the pot to force action.  The small and big blind are posted before the two cards are dealt to everyone.  The size of the big blind depends on the limits of the game you are playing.  In a low limit game the big blind may be $1.  The small blind is 1/2 of the big blind.  These bets are posted to induce action on every hand.  The small blind is the person immediately to the left of the dealer, and the big blind is to the immediate left of the small blind.  The person to act first in the betting round is called Under The Gun (UTG) because he/she has to act first in this betting round.  The UTG position is to the immediate left of the big blind, or three positions to the left of the dealer.  The minimum bet someone may post is the size of the big blind.  If a person would like to raise, the amount has to be at least twice that of the big blind.  The betting order moves around in a clock-wise position, and everyone must either match the current bet/raise amount, post at least the big blind amount if no one has bet yet, or fold.  The action moves around until the big blind, who is last to act in this betting round.

After the flop, the small blind is the first to act.  If the small blind has folded, whoever has not folded left of the small blind will be the first person to act.  This betting round players can check if no one has posted a bet this round, call the current bet, raise , or fold.  Again, everyone acts in a clock-wise manner until the dealer has acted.  The dealer is the last person to act in each betting round until the end of the hand from now on.  Once the dealer has acted, the fourth card is flipped over on the board (community cards) and another round of betting happens.  This card is known as the turn card or 4th street.  This round is the same as after the flop.  The last card is known as 5th street, or more commonly as the river.  Hopefully you will not drown to much on the river.

Importance of Poker Starting Hands

One of the biggest mistakes new players make is play too many hands. Playing online and not playing a lot of hands can be boring at times, but if you want to be a winning player you must be selective with your starting hands. This may cause you to get a little angry if you had a 10h7s in your hand and the flop is 10 10 7, but this is rare. You are far more likely to miss hitting your hand and lose more money over time with this hand than you would make. Poker is about making smart profitable decisions. This article is geared more towards limit holdem than no limit or a tournament. Tournament strategies are a lot different than cash (ring) games. In cash games you are not under any time and blind pressures like in a tournament.

Your position relative to the blinds is very imporant. You should be playing less hands from early position and more hands from late position especially when you are in the dealer position. The blinds are a little different because of the forced bets.

Assuming a ten person table:

Early position includes: The immediate person to the left of the big blind also called Under The Gun (UTG) and the next position to the left

Middle position includes: The next three positions moving to the left (clockwise)

Late position includes: The next three positions ending with the dealer position

This leaves the two blinds: small and big blind.

Early Positions
Because you are in early position you do not have a lot of information with a lot of people still have to bet. Because of this you are not in an ideal bet. This means you should just be playing premium hands that will have a high percentage of winning.

Play large pairs: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, sometimes 10 10. 10 10 can be beaten easily if you do not hit your set by any over card. Since many people play high cards you’ll be beaten if many people are in the pot. Pairs are best to play against fewer players.

Also play AKs, AKo, AQs, AQo. AJo and AJs can be played if you are at a weak table, but you have to fold the hand if you feel strength after the flop.

If you are at a loose table (many players seeing the flop) you can play KQs, J10s since these are drawing hands, and if you make your hands (straight, flush, or straight flush) you will win a large pot. If the flop misses, fold the hand.

Middle Position
In middle position you have a little more information because a few people have already bet. You still are not in an ideal position so you should be selective on your hands still.

Play all of the hands you would in early position

You can play 10 10, 99, 88, 77, AJs, AJo, A10s, A10o, KQs, KQo

If you are at a loose table, you can add Axs. You are hoping to hit a nut flush and win a big pot. If you miss the flop, fold the hand. Even if you hit top pair (Aces) you are still probably behind unless you hit two pair.

If you play 1010, 99, 88, 77 you have to be able to fold the hand if you think you are losing after the flop. You are trying to hit your set and win a big pot. The middle pairs are good to limp in (minimum bet) and see a flop. If you hit your set than bet aggressively

Late Position
In late position you have the luxury to place your initial bet after most of the other table and on all bets to come. This is very important. This allows you to play more hands in late position. Since you will get a feel for what everyone at the table has, you can bet, fold, raise accordingly

Play all the hands you would from early and middle position

Add Axs, QJs, QJo, J10s, any suited connector to 76s

In late position you are going to play a lot more drawing hands

Remember that you must take into account what other players are betting. If someone has raised the pot, you shouldn’t play so many drawing hands because you are up against a pretty strong hand most likely. If a lot of raising, reraising is going on, only play the premium hands.

In Summary
In early position play few hands. Only the premium hands
In middle position you should loosing up a little bit
In late position you should play most of your hands

For further reading I would strongly suggest your read Player’s Guide by David Sklansky and Lee Jones. It examines starting hands in holdem.

Simple Tricks of a winning poker player

To consistently win at poker you must not make many mistakes, and exploit your opponents mistakes and weaknesses. I know that No Limit Hold’em is the most popular form of poker, but if you want to play cash games (ring games) online I would suggest playing limit hold’em. Many people make mistakes at limit poker and it can be really profitable for you to take advantage of those mistakes. This isn’t to say that you are going to win money every session or even go on an extended losing streak but you should be a long term winner. Limit poker will also limit your downside if your opponent hits a weak draw to beat you. In No Limit games you can get all your money in on a hand you have a high percentage of winning, but there are times that your opponent will hit a miracle card and really damage your bankroll.

Here is a list of rules to play poker profitably

*      Learn the math behind poker – Learn about odds and probabilities and how to use them in poker. This will give you an advantage and make profitable decisions.
*     Learn about table position – Learn about early, middle, and late positions at the poker table. You should play very few hands from early position and more hands from late position because you are more apt to bet last in late position
*     Don’t play a lot of hands – You should roughly be playing 20%-25% of your hands depending on the type of table you are playing.

*     Find a loose table with weak players – Find a table with a high percentage of players seeing the flop and staying in hands on draws
*

Find calling stations – Find people who will keep calling all the way to the river to a showdown. These are players that make many mistakes

*     Stop playing if the table dynamics change – It’s easy to change tables or stop playing online. If the table dynamics change (different players, less/more players) to something you are not comfortable playing then stop playing or find a new table

Poker Multi Tabling

I find multitable play to be very hard. I have a high resolution monitor so that I can fit four screens on my monitor without overlap. This helps with some current active window problems that I will explain later on. Concentrating on a particular game is very hard, because multiple hands are going hard. It’s very hard to get a good feel for each table and player that you are playing against. This can hurt your game and profitability because it can affect your decisions while playing. An important aspect of poker is getting a feel for the players at the table so that you can make profitable decisions. If you are playing at multiple tables, it becomes very hard to get a good feel because you are trying to keep up with all the tables and making sure you do not time out.

I would strongly suggest not to play multiple tables if you are just starting playing online. It takes some getting used to, and I think it hurts your profitability unless you get real comfortable with it.

Make sure that you do not have overlapping windows if you are going to play multi-tables. Most poker applications will bring a window current (active) when you have to act. So if you are trying to input something into one window and your turn comes up in another window, that window will become active and your typing will be inputted into that new active window. I had a problem with this. I tried to enter a pot bet in one window and my other table became active and I didn’t enter the bet because I typed in the bet with the keyboard. That data went to the new window and I clicked BET with the mouse on the first table and just bet the minimum bet. This could have been a problem for me, because I wanted to try to get some people to fold to my pot sized bet. I now opened myself up to all kinds of problems. The problem becomes worse if you have overlapping windows. If you have an overlap you will run into big problems. If you are going to act on you current active window (game) and your turn comes up on the other game, the window will be brought to the front and you will now click on that active game. This can cause major problems. Let’s say you were going to fold on your current hand but had a great hand in the other game. So you get ready to click the fold button on the bad hand, but your turn comes up in the other game and brings the window current and you click fold on your great hand because the overlap positioned both fold buttons in the same spot. I have heard of people folding a four of a kind by mistake with a huge pot.

My last time I played two tables at once I was dealt two hands pretty much at the same time. In the first game I had the 10 and 7 of clubs in the big blind. The other hand I was dealt KK. So I didn’t think this to be too much of a problem, because I would fold the 10/7 and play the KK. But no one raised the pot in the first game so I got to see the flop for free. So now I am playing two hands at once. This is very hard to do. Again, my windows do not overlap so I didn’t have that problem, but I still had a problem of having the wrong window active when I was trying to bet. Well I flopped a straight flush with my 10 7 of clubs. I had many problems trying to make the correct bet on both hands to maximize my winnings and had trouble making large bets because my active window kept changing as my turn came up in the next window. I did end up winning both hands, but I don’t think I made as much as I should have. I didn’t have a great read on the players I was playing, so betting the most I thought I could get away with was very hard. I stopped playing multi tables after those hands and just concentrated on one table after that.

Selecting the Right Poker Table for Profit

Table selection is something you should take into consideration when playing a cash game.  You want to find a table that is condusive to your style of play.  I believe that playing a tight-aggressive style is the best way to win money in the long run.  Because of this, I try and find a loose table where the average pot is somewhere in the 9-10x BB or greater range.  The reason for this is that I want to get paid off on my good hands and make my value bets work.  Playing at a tight table will be hard to make a lot of money because it will be hard to get paid on your great hands, unlike a loose table where someone may call with a weak hand.  By playing a tight game it gets kind of boring.  This is a big problem, because one of two things usually happens to me: 1)I start to concentrate on other things and not the play at the table or 2) I start to loosen up myself and make some weak calls which ends up losing money.  It takes some patience to not play too many hands, but it will pay off in the long run.

Usually in a loose game you will have a lot of people calling with Ax, which works well with a tight game when you would be holding a higher kicker.  These type of hands will usually pay you well because of the weak calls by the players.  Of course with players making a lot of calls on your bets, you are invariably going to get beat on the river and lose some decent sized pots.  Just remember, you picked this loose table because it’s the best way to make money in the longer term.  Just remember, you just need one solid hand against this opponent again and you will most likely get your money back very quickly.

Whats you Poison?

A slot machine and a video poker is similar in the way that both games require a player to insert a coin into the machine and press the “play” button. But those are the only similarities; these two games are very different from one other. A person who often plays video poker will surely disagree that video poker is as simple at the popular slot machine.

In video poker, cards appear on the screen, and the player has to choose which cards to hold, from none at all to five cards. Of course, the player has to be familiar with the game of poker, and has to know which cards he/she has to hold to win. The five buttons in the machine are for choosing which cards the player wants to hold. The objective of video poker is to get the highest hand or the best hand possible.

The player can choose between $0.25, $0.50, $1 or $5 to bet, and the bets are from 1x, which is the lowest possible bet, to 5x, the highest possible bet. To get a new set of cards in video poker, press the “deal” button. This button will enable the player to replace the cards he/she has chosen not to hold. If you win, the video poker machine will award you credits. The credits equal the value to play the machine. For example, if you bet $0.25, each of your credit will be recorded as 25.

If you want to play again, bet how many units or coins you want to play, and press the “deal” button. You will undergo the same process as mentioned above. Press the “collect” button if you want to end the game. The machine will then give you your awarded credits. You have to remember that you have to end each round of the game with a best combination.

Playing video poker is not all about luck. Like the real-life poker and online poker, the player also has to think about his odds in getting the best hand, and winning the bet. If the player chooses to bet the lowest amount possible, $0.25, and he has the best hand, it would have been better to have bet $5 on the game. Like the popular slot machine, video poker is for players who would rather lose a small amount than a huge amount of money. However even though the money is not as big as one can get from real-life poker, it is still best to get the higher stake.

Poker Mathematics & Gaining an Edge

It’s important to understand odds and probabilities.  You will have to use odds and probabilities a lot when playing poker to make good profitable decisions during your play.  Probability is the percentage an even will happen.  Odds tell you how often an even will not happen.  An example of a probability is that you will get an ace the next card (without one showing) 8.51% of the time.  As opposed to your odds of getting dealt pocket aces is 220 to 1.

Taking odds to the next step and applying them to poker is the concepts of pot odds and implied pot odds.  Pot odds are pretty easy to understand and calculate.  To calculate pot odds you take the current pot amount and divide it by the bet you have to make.  Take for example that $200 is in the pot currently and you have to make a $20 bet to call.  You are getting $200/$20 or 10 to 1 pot odds.  Implied pot odds takes into consideration the bets you will receive on the next betting rounds.  So if you think that you will get an extra $60 if you make your hand, your implied pot odds are $260/$20 or 13 to 1.  It’s important to understand how to calculate these odds.  Applying these odds and calculations in poker is explained next.

Before we get to the application of pot and implied pot odds, we have to understand how to calculate the number of outs we have.  The number of outs we have are the number of cards that can come on the board to improve our hand or make our intended hand.  For example, if we have a gut shot straight draw (meaning we need one rank card to make a straight of any suit) we have 4 outs.  If we have a flush draw (we have 4 suits, and need one more of the same suit to make a flush), we have 9 outs.  Taking this one step forward is to determine the number of discounted outs.  A discounted out is an out for you, but probably will help your opponent make a better hand than yours.  For example, in the example of the gut shot straight draw, we have 4 outs.  Maybe one of those four cards may give your opponent a flush, so that would be a discounted out and give you only 3 outs.  It’s very hard to determine the number of discounted outs without getting a good read on your opponents hand.  This takes practice reading of your opponents and figuring out their hands by their betting patterns and observing their play.

To use these odds to make profitable calls and plays in poker is important.  To make mathematically correct and profitable decisions you need to convert your number of outs to odds using the an odds chart and compare those odds to your pot odds.  So in the pot and implied odds example above, we had 10 to 1 pot odds and 13 to 1 implied pot odds.  If this example was a situation where you were drawing to a gut shot straight draw with 4 good outs, you would had odds of 11 to 1 to hit.  To make this a good call you would want your odds of making your hand less than that of the pot odds you are getting.  In this example you shouldn’t make the call because 11 to 1 is greater than 10 to 1.  But if you take into consideration your implied pot odds which is 13 to 1, you would be right to make the call with your 11 to 1 odds of making your hand because 11 to 1 is less than that of 13 to 1.

The AP Poker story caused quite a stir

So anyone with their head in a bucket for the last month might have missed the story but it all started through some observant poker players over at 2+2

Involving players including Steamroller, DoubleDrag and GrayCat…

The play to say the least was questionable. The rumor mill has been rampant. Everything from a SuperUser Account who could see all hole cards, to a terrorist funding attempt to overthrow the US Government.

Yes, apparently there was an internal glitch showing players hole cards. The shocking fact was AP’s tardy response

Following an internal audit, AP’s security team where caught playing “Who Want’s to be a Millionaire” during their work break. This only came out after their high security software was analyzed for authenticity.

And they wonder why I moved my money to Full Tilt.