Hand Analysis

The Co-operation Play On The Bubble & ‘Checking-Down’ Hands

When A Small Stack Is All-In, Checking-Down A Hand Will Often Be The Most Profitable Play – Find Out How And When To Check-Down A Hand Here.

There are times in Sit N Go tournaments where it makes more sense to check than to bet – even if this means committing the ‘poker crime’ of giving an opponent a free card with which to beat you. The main example occurs at the bubble (or close to it) in a SNG when a small stack is all-in.

This article will explain why ‘checking a hand down’ with another large stack can be more profitable than betting out – and also explain when not to check down!

Here is a common situation in a Sit N Go tournament with 4 players remaining and the standard 3 player 20 / 30 / 50% payout structure:

Player 1: 4000 Chips
Player 2: 400 Chips
Player 3: 3000 Chips (after posting the small blind of 100)
Player 4 (You): 2500 Chips (after posting the big blind of 200)

The action is as follows: Player 1 folds, player 2 goes all-in for 400 chips, player 3 calls and you look down to see 6-8 off suit.

This is a perfect situation to call the 200 chips with the intention of checking the hand down with player 3. The initial call is largely based on the pot-odds (you are calling 200 chips to see a pot of 1000 so getting 5-1). However there is another reason to call here, under normal circumstances Player 3 will cooperate with you in maximizing the chance to eliminate player 2 by checking the hand down.

By doing this you increase the chances that Player 2 will be eliminated and that you both move into the money paying places. Betting, especially with a weak or vulnerable hand, may result in a situation where a hand that could have beaten player 2 in a showdown folds on the flop. Now when Player 2 wins the hand there are still 4 players actively competing for the 3 paying places.

Checking a hand down involves implicitly cooperating with another player to maximize your own profits as well as theirs. This works in bubble (and close to bubble) situations in both SNG tournaments and Multi-table tournaments (especially in poker satellites!).

There are, however, times when the cooperation play becomes less important than winning the pot. If some of the above circumstances occur then the co-operation play should not usually be attempted.

1 – Your opponent does not understand the cooperation play and is likely to bet out, even with nothing.
2 – Your hand is strong enough that beating the all-in player is no longer a question (for example flopping 2-pair or a straight in the above example).
3 – Eliminating your opponent will not increase your expectation as significantly as winning the pot. For example with 5 players left and just 1 payout (a SNG Satellite) cooperation may not help significantly if you have a short stack.
4 – When a medium-stack has entered the pot with a raise and then a smaller stack then goes all-in. Reversing the places of the players in the above example would make a cooperation play less desirable. The medium stack has shown strength by raising before the flop and the small stack went all-in anyway. Save your chips here unless the pot-odds are compelling, if the original raiser has a high-pair then checking the hand down may not be an option!

Checking a hand down is often referred to as ‘Implicit Collusion’, the key point being that this is not explicitly suggested or otherwise communicated at the table. While checking down based on a mutual understanding is profitable and perfectly within the rules, communicating this intention (even in an online chat-box) is a breach of rules that could see you disqualified from the tournament!

How to Beat The Maniacs And Bullies At Online No-Limit Hold’em Tables

Poker table bullies are those annoying semi-maniac type of players that you meet in your no-limit cash game or tournaments, and they often accumulate their large chip stacks by sheer aggression alone and sometimes catching someone off guard when they happen to land a strong hand amidst their relentless aggression. These players don’t like to show down a lot of hands, usually because most of the time the have nothing much, as they play to win by exerting immense pressure on their opponents with every hand they’re involved in a pot with, and when they occasionally get lucky and actually do hold the best hand they usually win a lot more than they should do.

Table bullies win over both weak players who don’t have the heart to put money into the pot, and tight-aggressive players who don’t like to put in their money without what seems to be a lock hand. Here is an example hand that to give you an example of how to use their uncontrolled aggression to your advantage.

Slowplay the maniac and trap him for all his chips.

Imagine that we’re at an online late-night $2/$4 no-limit hold’em cash game. The player directly to our left has decided to play table bully for the night and is making every hand expensive before the flop and then not hesitating to shove in the rest of his chips on the flop, turn, and river if necessary in order to take the pot from us.

Not wanting to turn it into an expensive coin flip, most of us are praying, “PLEASE let me pick up those pocket Aces before this guy dumps his money off to someone else”. But Aces don’t come often at all. In this example, this hand actually came up in a real game played:

I was dealt Ah-6d from the small blind. Certainly not a powerhouse by any measure, but with the maniac and two other limpers in the pot it seemed worthy of another $2 to see a flop. The bully in the big blind checked to a flop of Ad-6h-2s, giving me top two pairs – a great hit. Naturally, table bullies love to take control so I decided to check to him to let him start the betting. It was obviously an unconnected flop, with unsuited cards on the board and so I didn’t doubt that he was going to bet out here. To my disappointment, he just checked behind.

Play moved on to the early position limper who made a $16 bet. The late position limper folded and I just called the bet. Without delay, the table bully goes all-in! Jackpot city! The original bettor thinks for a while before finally folding. The bully had more than I did (about $300) so I already had the checkbox on “Call”. Normally, I might hesitate and worry about a set in this position but rarely (if ever) will I lay down top two pair on the flop with a board like that. I make the call and the bully is forced to show his 9-3 offsuit – a ridiculous starting hand in hold’em for a multiway pot. After that hand, the table bully was completely crippled and soon busted out shortly thereafter due to his much reduced chip stack afterwards.

I like this hand for its fun value and the truly awful bluff that the bully tried to pull, but there is a lesson to be learnt here. Such players are becoming more common in no-limit hold’em cash games or tournaments, especially online. When an ultra aggressive player tries to take control every hand, the rule is to let him do the betting for you when you have a monster of a hand. If you bet out big to try to build a pot, these bullies will often be scared away (unless they are truly stupid, but most of them aren’t that stupid). After all, they thrive on dominating the action and winning pots without showdowns… so they have to bet and usually bet big to achieve this.

This strategy echoes a comment that the infamous Doyle Brunson mentioned in his book “Online Poker” – if you’re playing heads-up against a highly aggressive player, let him do the betting for you, fire a second bullet, and then get him for a raise on the river. If you aren’t fortunate enough to get in all your opponent’s money on the flop as I did, you definitely should consider slow-playing table bullies on an disconnected, harmless-looking board. It works!

Tight Aggressive Playing Style Is Winning Poker Play

The huge majority of new poker players start off playing every hand they get or every hand with a high or picture card (J, Q, K, A and sometimes any Ten). They also somehow like to play any two suited cards, even more so if one of those cards is a Jack or above. The problem is, way more often than not, these hands are way over valued simply because these newbie players don’t yet fully understand the game. This playing style is often referred to as “playing loose” or playing like a “fish”. At some point later on, usually when these players lose what is to them considered a significant amount of money, they then learn that playing like that is a recipe for going broke pronto and those who continue playing will learn that the answer is to start to play “tight” poker.

The hands that you chose to enter a pot with is one of the most crucial decisions to make in No Limit Hold ‘Em. Making good decisions preflop will undoubtedly greatly increase your return on investment! As the famous song goes, “you gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em”. As a starting guide, you should be folding roughly 70% of your starting hands, or even 80% of them if you are playing truly tight, which isn’t such a bad idea if you’re still learning the game.

So which hands should you fold and which hands should you hold? If there was a correct answer to this, we’d all do the same thing and over time the only profitable position would be the dealers! The truth is that there is no magic formula but there are good basic principles and that’s what I’ll try and show you here. If you print this out and stick it to your computer I would be very surprised if you didn’t see a noticeable increase in your returns.

While its nigh impossible to order starting hands perfectly, here is a good guide (in descending order). (An “s” means that the two cards are of the same suit, an “o” means they are off-suit, i.e: different suits).

All Pocket Pairs: 22 to AA

Ace suited: A2s to AKs

Ace off-suited: ATo to AKo

King suited: K7s to KQs

King off-suited: KTo to KQo

Queen suited: QTs to KQs

Queen off-suited: QJo to KQo
Jack suited: J9s to KJs

Jack off-suited: JTo to Kjo
Others: T8s to KTs, 98s to K9s.

Does this mean you should play or raise with these hands regardless, whenever you get them? NO!!! But hands other then these should be discarded unless you are using an advanced strategy (and if you are, why are you reading this beginners guide?!). The number of players who think they should raise/call with A4o online is what has fuelled the stories of good players making millions!

If this list seems hard to memorise then do what I do and create a short mnemonic. Unless I am a blind or button, I will automatically muck anything that isn’t:

1. A Pocket Pair

2. Two cards unsuited where one is over ten with a kicker over 8

3. Suited connectors (consecutive cards of the same suit, i.e.: 8, 9 of spades) higher than 6

4. An Ace with a suited kicker of any value.

The Min-Raise or Min-Rerarsie: The Pro’s and Con’s of This Type of Play

Imagine this:

You’re playing in a 9-handed $1/$2 no-limit texas hold’em cash game and you make a typical raise to $8 with Aqs sitting in middle position. Everyone folds around to the original limper who decides to mim-riase you and make it $16 to go. This mostly happens in the lower limit online ring games, usually where the novice players are often misplaying their big pocket pairs. Almost every time you make a raise and get reraised by the minimum amount pre-flop at these stakes in a cash game, you’re more than likely facing a premium hand, namely pocket AA or KK.

Our aim here in this article is to convince you that making such a play is not a good move. Let’s look at 3 fundamental problems with this play and how you can use this knowledge to exploit your opponents who just don’t know better for their own good at the poker table…

1) A minimum raise or reraise preflop all but gives your hand away. While you might think that this play disguises your hand and helps to build a pot, the truth is that you’ve given observant opponents powerful information about your holding. You’re forcing your opponents to think, “I’ve already put in a healthy raise. What cards would he make a minimum reraise with?” Clearly, you aren’t trying to win the pot right now, which probably rules out hands like AJ, JJ, TT, or AQ, in which most sensible opponents are happy to take down a pot without seeing a flop or just smooth call with. You probably aren’t playing a small pocket pair like 88 or 44, since that would just be silly move. Your goal with these hands is to see a cheap flop and hit a set. If you were on a bluff with rags, you probably would have put in a stronger reraise to intimidate me.

This all leaves you with 3 possible premium pocker pairs: QQ, KK, AA. I don’t know about you, but with pocket Queens I’ll usually either just call to see if the flop brings overcards or reraise healthily to force out the tricksters and mediocre hands. Bingo! You’ve probably got pocket Kings or Aces. Sure, someone could be making a very savvy play and pulling a complete psychological false tell bluff over on you with the minimum raise, but most players are ignorant as to what this tactic means in the first place. It’s probably an ineffective tool in the arsenal of a player who knows a thing or two about the transparent book of plays from the typical online poker player. The fact is that this seemingly advanced play rarely keeps your hole cards a mystery.

2) A minimum raise gives your opponents excellent pot odds to draw out on you. Poker players, especially the online variety, love to bemoan about how their opponents sucked out on their pocket Aces. While you’ll find plenty of bad players who will routinely go against the odds to do just that, a player who makes one of these minimum raises has nothing to complain about because he has given his opponent excellent odds to do it. If I’ve got pocket 10-10 and raise to $10 in a $1/2 game and you reraise me from the button to $20 with AA, you’re giving me over 3 to 1 pot odds on my call (it costs me $10 to play and the pot is already $33). If, say, the big blind calls your $20 raise before play gets back to me, I’m now getting over 5 to 1 pot odds. That doesn’t include the implied odds of getting all your money in the pot on the flop when I spike my third 10. Raise less and it’s even more of a no-brainer for me. I would be more than unobservant if I didn’t call a raise like that with pretty much any hand. You’re simply giving too great of a price if you make the minimum raise play.

3) You miss out on a great amount of value with the minimum raise. When you make such a small raise, you aren’t building much greater of a pot. Since your goal, of course, is to make the most money with your premium hands, you should start before the flop when you definitely have the best hand. As we’ve established above, you’re almost giving away your hand with the minimum raise. If you reraise 3 times the initial raise or perhaps the size of the pot, your opponents will have less of an idea of what you have and you’ll be building a nice pot. Sure, you’re sending the signal that you have a big hand – but that could be something like QQ or AK. Your opponent will be more likely to blow off his chips when he hits a pair of Kings on the flop with Big Slick since he’s already committed a good chunk of his stack.

The conclusion here is that the minimum raise is not the best or smartest use of the reraising option. First off, you are giving away too much valuable information to the more experienced players at the table (which coincidentally is also unfortunately the exact same kind of players that you were wanting to trick), thereby offering excellent pot odds to the initial raiser to call you to try and hit a flop that will outdraw your hand, and usually you just won’t make as much money in the hand playing it this way. If you’re looking to be more deceptive in your play, you can try to smooth call a preflop raise with your pocket Aces or Kings (note that we very rarely suggest this approach this for online play… or any play for that matter… as it can often end up getting us into all sorts of trouble by beware!). If you’re going to take a risk, this method is much more effective at hiding the true strength of your hand, but only use it against weaker opponents as smarter players won’t fall for this often enough for it to pay for you. Regardless, we suggest and highly recommend a decent size reraise with your premium pocket pair as a matter of regular habitual play. If everyone folds, you still won the pot and your Aces didn’t get cracked!

Playing Pre–flop is all about Position, Position and more Position!

Playing with Position in mind.

One of the key concepts to poker is to understand that each hand that you are dealt, especially in Texas Hold ’Em, has an intrinsic monetary value to it. This is essentially the amount of money that you can expect to make with this hand averaged out over time, every time you decide to play it at least to the flop.

For the stronger hands such as TT, JJ, AQ or AJs or better, it’s a reasonably high figure (the actual amount of this value really depends on other factors as well, such as how good you and your opponents play your respective hands). Other hands, are worth less, hands such as QT, KTs, 65s, etc, are only barely profitable and even then they tend to only be profitable somewhat for the better players out there. It goes without saying that worse hands will have a negative monetary value associated to them, most notably hands such as 72o.

Texas Hold’em, beyond the most basic hobby and fun level, is very much a game of skill and technical understanding where knowing the importance of position is paramount. The better the position that you have compared to your opponents, both considering the pre flop and post flop scenarios, the easier it will be for you to play your hand and thus maximise your winnings and minimise your losses. Simply put, your position has a direct impact on the profitability of your hand. Obviously for great hands like pocket aces, Kings or AKs, the value of the hand far exceeds the drawback bad position it may be in. But these hands are few and infrequently dealt. Therefore the essential ingredient to playing pre–flop is in knowing which position those somewhat mediocre hands can become profitable.

So the best pre–flop strategy is one that makes you play very tight in early position, and gradually becomes looser until you get to the button. Being on the button, and on the cutoff to a lesser extent, is such an advantage that it makes playing even sub par hands profitable. Many mid and high stakes winners will open–raise from the cutoff and button with more than 50% of hands. A normal opening range would be (+ means “and all better hands”)

UTG: AJs+, AQo+, 66+

UTG+;1: ATs+, ATo+, KQo+, QJs+, 22+

Cutoff: A2s+, A9o+, T9o, 54s+, 22+

Button: A2s+, A2o+, 65o+, 34s+, 22+

So now we have an idea of roughly what hands to play. What should we do with those hands? Well assuming no–one else is in the pot yet, we should raise with them. 6 handed play is all about winning as many blinds as possible. Its who wins the majority of the small and medium pots that wins big in the end. When you raise pre–flop you give yourself the best chance to win the pot. Either you win it pre–flop (if no–one calls), or you win it on the flop with a continuation bet. (And sometimes you will even have the best hand!)

So if it’s folded to you, you have two choices. Raise or fold. However should someone (or some few) have limped before you, you now have a third choice, calling. This is a much more difficult decision and will be dealt with in a later article. The most important factors to pay attention to are: position, the players’ likely hands and their skill level, your image, and your own hand of course. For example, if you know someone is only raising premium pairs from UTG, then you can fold trouble hands like AQo and “set mine” with all low pairs

Remember, whilst thinking about a pre–flop strategy, that it pays to be unpredictable. For the majority of the time you should stick to the recommended starting hands I have outlined above, however, if you play every hand by those rules you will make your opponent’s life easier as they will be able to correctly gauge the strength of your hand from your position. Don’t forget your opponents will only see a showdown from you in a very small number of hands, and will make assumptions based upon that showdown. So doing things like raising 78o utg from time to time can be valuable, as this will lead them to make unrealistic assumptions about your range.

Playing from the blinds brings up its own set of problems. Now you know you are almost certainly going to be out of position for the hand. If it’s limped to you, you should seriously consider folding most hands from the small blind. The positional disadvantage is so great that it makes up for the attractive pot odds. Even the most successful cash game players struggle to break even from the small blind and the multiple of bets saved by not calling can be significant at the end of a session. When on the big blind you will often get to see the flop for free. This isn’t as great as it seems and you should often consider raising the unraised pot.

Deciding which hands to raise with from the blinds is a difficult conundrum. On one hand it can be very hard to play hands out of position, so it makes sense to keep the pot small. On the other hand a pre–flop raise will make it much more likely that strong starting hands like TT, JJ or AQ will win after the flop. By bringing down the number of opponents (not all of them will call your raise) you reduce the chance that your hand will be outdrawn and can proceed to fire a big flop bet with less risk. The only solution is to experiment and come up with a range and style that suits you.

One move that all players should make, however, is very occasionally making a largish raise from the blinds with absolute rags. If everyone has limped it means it’s unlikely anyone has a good hand. This also has the benefit of confusing your opponents and weakening their implied odds when you do have a real hand in this position. It’s better to raise 52o here than A2o, as the chance of making a good but second best hand is lessened; and its very unlikely you will get to a showdown unimproved, so the ace high has very little value.

What to do when someone raises and you have a good hand in the blinds is a much more complicated subject, as there are so many scenarios and variables to consider. We will discuss these in future articles on this site. Meanwhile, good luck at the tables!

Notes / Glossary of Terms Used:

T (e.g. KT) = ten

o (e.g. QJo)= off suit cards

s (e.g. 65s) = suited cards

the cutoff = the position to the right of the button (1 before the button)

“set mining” = playing small pairs, knowing you are behind, hoping to hit a set, usually on the flop (three of a kind). The plan is to throw the hand away if you miss the flop because the risks usually don’t justify the rewards after seeing the flop.

limp in = entering a pot without raising (just calling the blinds).

“open–limp” = being the first person to enter the pot first with a call rather than a raise.

“open–raise” = being the first person to bet in a given poker hand and doing so by raising.

Multi Tabling And Why You Should Do It

There are many advantages of playing online poker compared to offline poker and, by far, one of the biggest advantages that online poker has over live poker is that you are able to play multiple tables at a time. Most online poker rooms allow you to open up more than one table window and sit down and play poker at each table simultaneously. Some online rooms have actually created a ‘mini-mode’ view that allows players to shrink the table window down so that you can fit 4 tables onto one 1024×768 screen without any overlapping tables. If you have a screen with higher resolution, then you can fit many more tables… some screen sizes even allow 16 tables to be viewed at a time!!! Imagine the difficulties in being able to physically play 16 tables at a live event!!!

Multi-tabling has become the preferred way of playing online poker for the regular online players; poker players who happily play with 2,4,8 or even 16 tables open. Typically though, most players tend to play 2, 3, or 4 tables at once to allow a good balance between concentration time per table and to avoid making mistakes or being timed out when too many tricky decisions are needed at the same time.

The advantages of multi-tabling…

The main reason for multi-tabling is to increase a player’s average hourly win rate. If you are a consistent winner at, say, a $100NL buy-in table, then you can imagine how much more you could potentially win per hour by playing 2 tables at once instead of just 1. Now imagine opening up 3 or 4 tables at once. It all seems pretty simple, open up some more tables and you could be doubling, tripling or even quadrupling the amount you are currently winning per hour. However, there is one important factor that we have to take into consideration before assuming that things are this simple. We have to take into account that fact that our play will deteriorate for every extra table we sit down at.

Every time we multi-table we can assume that the amount we expect to win every hour from each individual table will decrease. This is because our attention is now going to be divided between two or more separate tables, whereas we would be able to focus all of our concentration on one table if we were not multi-tabling. It will be more difficult to pick up reads on players because we will normally be too busy making our plays on one table to analyse the plays of our opponents on another.

However, this is not necessarily such a bad thing, because there is still a good chance that we will be making more money overall. Say for example when we play $100NL one table at a time we win $8 per hour, and when we play two tables at a time we win $5 on each of the individual tables. Therefore overall we will be making $10 per hour multi-tabling instead of $8, which means an extra profit of $2 per hour.

The biggest problem with multi-tabling for extra profit is finding the optimum number of tables to give us the biggest win rate per hour. If we play one table at a time we will win a smaller amount than if we multi-table, but if we play at too many tables at a time then our win rate per hour on each of the tables could decrease so much that we win less than if we were playing at one table at a time. There is some middle ground here where the graph of our win rate per table meets the number of tables being played at to provide us with an optimum win rate. This is usually between 2 and 4 tables for the majority of online players.

Multi-tabling strategy.

The best strategy for multi-tabling is to play standard ABC poker, where you bet your strong hands and fold your weak hands. It is difficult to find enough time whilst playing multiple tables to be able to make any tricky or advanced plays. If you try too hard trying to analyse the styles of each of the players at the tables you will simply become too exhausted and your ability will deteriorate even further. Just think of your opponents as robots and play a solid style of poker against them. You are not going to be able to outsmart all of them all of the time, but if you play better than the majority of them every time you sit down at the table, then you will be a winner in the long run.

Another reason why people decide to play multiple tables at once is to reduce the boredom of having to wait been playing hands. Players can become accustomed to the fast style of Internet play and so the wait been playing hands may become frustrating after a while. This frustration can sometimes lead to players loosening their starting hand requirements just to subdue the boredom, which is not a profitable way to play. So in some cases it can be beneficial to play more than one table at a time to prevent yourself from entering too many pots and throwing away money on hands that you should never have played in the first place.

Trapping Your Poker Opponents for Maximum Value

Trapping Your Opponents and Maximising Your Winnings

Many players seek to employ a technique known as trapping when they flop a monster hand. While this strategy seems simple enough, the truth of the matter is that to get maximum value for a trap, a player needs to take into account a slew of variables. Here we discuss a few of those variables and exactly what constitutes the optimum trapping situation.

Springing a trap can be one of the most fruitful enterprises undertaken at the poker table. But to do so requires more than merely flopping a monster and checking. Here are some guidelines to help you maximize on your traps.

Know Your Opponent: Every single time I write anything having to do with poker, the first thing I write is to know your opponent. From bluffing to trapping, the most important thing that any poker player ever does is understand who it is that they are playing against. Conventional wisdom would have you looking to trap against aggressive players. This is logical enough: a player who is likely to bet is also likely to bet with the worst hand. The classic trap here is to flop a joint, check or smooth call depending on your position then come over the top on fourth street or the river. Fine, that makes sense. The problem with this strategy is that it is inflexible and depending on your playing style it’s also rather easy to snuff out. To understand how to disguise your trap, we need to look at calibrating your monster with the flop.

Calibrating your Monster with the Flop (what you’ve got vs. what he’s got): First of all, let’s talk about what flopping a monster is not. A monster is not an overpair nor is it top pair with top kicker. A monster is a hand where both of your hole cards are going to be used in the made hand. So the weakest monster is two pair, which may or may not actually qualify as a monster depending on whether the board also has flush or straight possibilities. Then comes a set, which is a certified monster when the board is unpaired (like if you are holding pocket Queens and the board reads A Q 5) and a borderline monster when the board is paired (this would be like holding J-7 and the board reading 7 7 K.) Then you’ve got straights, which when flopped are always monsters, then full houses, quads and straight flushes which are obvious monsters.

Now that we have determined what a monster actually is, let’s build on the read that you should already have on your opponent:

• Raised pot, Heads up: If you have flopped a monster and are in a raised pot against a single opponent, the first thing that should cross your mind is “does he/she have an Ace?” Especially if the flop has brought an Ace, something like A 10 6 and you are holding a set of Tens. This situation is perfect for trapping. When I am first to act when the board has brought an Ace, I like to make a weak or overly strong bet (which also signals weakness to most decent players.) So this would be a bet of half the pot or so or a bet of twice the pot or so. Most trappers check on the flop, but I think that this broadcasts the strength of your hand or rather, it will broadcast the strength of your hand when you either check-raise or check-call later on in the hand. Sometimes the best trickiness is being straight-forward. The one exception I would make here is if your opponent is short stacked. If your bet is going to put him in a position where he is either folding or going all-in, then go ahead and check and let him hang himself. If you are not first to act, then the classic move is to do whatever your opponent does – if he checks, you check, if he puts $50 out then you put $50 out. Re-raising with a monster on the flop is a tough question. If you can sell it like you are making a move (making a very quick re-raise or too large of a re-raise) then go for it! Otherwise, it’s best to let the bettor keep the lead.

• Raised pot, more than one other player: These are the easiest hands to trap in and the ones that you are most likely to get paid off in. Why? Because it’s at least twice as likely that your opponent has something as you have at least twice as many opponents than in heads up hand. Remember that the best circumstance to get paid off with a monster is when your opponent has something good enough for them to call you down with. 100%, no exceptions, when you flop a monster with more than one player involved, check on the flop. You have to give your opponents a chance to make moves in front of you. I remember a hand where I had flopped a nut flush, was in first position and checked the flop. The two guys behind me, who had been engaged with each other for hours like rams locking horns, immediately raised and re-raised each other. So it comes back around to me and I “smooth call” (how this did not send off every red alert in the other two, I don’t know) then the guy who had been re-raised goes all-in for another $300 or so bringing the pot to like $700 on a flop with 3 Hearts. The next guy folds and the all-in guy goes to collect his pot like he had forgot that I had called. Then, just as his idiot fingers were reaching into the pot, the dealer oh-so politely reminded him that I was still in the pot and could he please not touch chips that were not his. His face was priceless – he had that moment of “Oh right, that guy… uh oh.” I, of course, called and he had top pair with the Queen of Hearts for a flush draw of his own. This brought him to a grand total of 0 outs against my nut flush. Now, this hand can be an example of any number of poker lessons from “don’t overvalue your hand” to “pay attention to who you are playing against” to the good old “don’t be a jackass” lesson. There is much to be mined in the failings of fools.

• Un-raised pots: These are the hardest monsters to get paid off because chances are that your opponent does not have interest in the pot. These are the hands that would more than likely get checked down to the river if you hadn’t flopped a wheel. Basically, this is the unluckiest luck you can have at the poker table and you have to keep checking and hope that your opponent picks something up. I say you can even check it on the river provided that you are first to act. Be careful though with two pair in this situation. As we have already said, two pair is barely a monster and if the turn and river come runner-runner, your opponent can stumble on a straight or set without ever betting on the turn. This is a nearly impossible hand to detect (because they won’t bet the turn) and because you have already gone down the trapping road, you will feel obliged to at least call and more than likely, come over the top. Tricky situation, un-raised pots are really not the best place to go trapping in. Play it strong unless you flop a Godzilla (quads or straight flush.)

Trapping is a largely overused strategy, especially by inexperienced players. While you can occasionally get paid off if you identify the right situation, all too often I will see players over-value hands like two pair or sucker straights and lose on the river. And betting strong with a strong hand can also go a long way to help you in the future as you will be seen as a straightforward player who bets strong when he has a strong hand. And that can set you up to pull off a much more valuable move than a trap – a bluff. So if the situation is perfect, then go ahead and trap. Otherwise, don’t get cute – get the chips.

5 Common Online Poker Tells

We’re sure you have heard something about poker tells — all those little, unconscious things that poker players do that often give away clues as to the kind of hands they hold. Your opponent may unknowingly rub his ear or scratch his nose, and you just know he’s bluffing. Or you see him break into a sweat and you know he’s got a powerhouse of a hand and he can’t control his excitement. By observing their eyes, posture, volume of speech, breathing patterns, etc, you can find more than enough to help you know when to hold and when to fold if you’re observant enough.

This is useful enough in offline, live play but what about when you play online? Suddenly you’re faced with a new environment. And all those basic and classic poker tells just go out the window because now you just can’t see or hear your opponent, and so much is hidden. If you’re used to looking for those tells, you might suddenly feel you tell-reading edge has somewhat disappeared…but if you learn a bit more about the online poker tells you should look out for, you’ll be able to put yourself back into the seat of the advantaged few. Here’s the top 5 poker tells for the online player…

Online Poker Tell #1: Watch Out For The Pause
When playing online, poker rooms limit the amount of time you have to play your hand. Most give you 30 seconds or less. That’s not much time to watch for a tell, but it’s enough. As a general rule, if a player pauses a long time, then bets, that still means he probably has a good hand and is trying to figure out his play. If, however, he pauses for a long time and just checks, it usually means his hand is mediocre at best. Of course, you’ll still have to be careful; some players know about these tells and will deliberately do the opposite of what’s written here to throw you off.

Online Poker Tell #2: Instant-Action Players
Most online poker rooms have little boxes you can check for quick play. As a general rule, you shouldn’t use these! They give too much away. If a player instantly checks or bets, it usually signifies a weak hand. Again, sometimes players will do the opposite, but most fish just use check boxes without thinking.

Online Poker Tell #3: Mr. Chatty
Just as in home or casino games, some people talk when they’re nervous or when they’re feeling good. Watch the chat screen. At times, players will say things like “Finally!” or even “What’s up with these flops?!” Those are good insights into what they may be playing with…especially if they’ve said something like this before and gave themselves away. Also watch for phrases such as “This playing online stuff is cool.”—giving away the newbies.

Online Poker Tell #4: The distracted “Sorry” player
One of the most frequent online tells of a distracted player is long pauses or timing out. Sometimes they’ll even apologize for it. This usually signifies that that player may be distracted. When playing online, many players are at work. Others are playing several games at once. Still others are reading message boards or surfing the net. All of those players will be distracted and not playing at their full potential…and you can take advantage of that. Again, watch the chat, too. Many times you’ll hear, “Oh man! I just lost $20 at my other table!” Good news…he’s distracted.

Online Poker Tell #5: The Raiser Who Has Position
This tell, also seen offline, is a common tell. If you’re in one of the blinds and everyone folds except one of the people in late position who raise, they may just be trying to steal the pot. If you have anything at all, raise them back. This move will most often result in them folding…but if they don’t, watch out! They may really have something.

Is this all there is to online poker tells? Of course not! There are many more online poker tells that these five, but this is a good start to begin with that will improve your online game play and make you the shark (or at least no longer the fish)!

Note that practically everyone has their own tells — these are the things that give our hands away at the poker table, whether playing offline or online poker! If you are aware of them you can use them to your advantage, and if you’re not then you are ignorant to them at your peril!

Online Poker Winners Always Take Notes

Top 12 Rules For Making notes of your online opponents and the types of player notes to take.

The great thing about online poker is the built-in feature that allows you to take notes. You can, and should, make lots of quality notes against your opponents.

Here’s what we recommend that you do when making notes of your opponents:

[1] Make notes that are useful to you, i.e. that you can understand and would enable you to adjust your play according to the type of opponent that you are up against.
[2] Make notes against players that you should avoid or confront more often. In other words, are they a complete fish and call you down regardless of how weak their hand is? Or are they very tight and only play big pots with a very strong holding?
[3] Be sure to note if they bluff frequently, or if they are generally honest in what they show down with.
[4] Information such as whether they slow play big hands or trap frequently is valuable, to enable you to avoid getting caught up in their traps.
[5] Note down if they multi-table. Players who play many tables at once, say 4 or more, often have a standard approach to the game as it is impossible to think each individual hand through taking into account of their opponents and the current situation, when playing that many tables. These players are often skilled enough and know the game well enough, so the general rule is that they are probabluy grinders who make a decent return for their multi-tabling efforts.
[6] Make a note of whether a player raises a lot in late position, or bets when no-one else has. He is then probably a blind or pot stealer. You would be advised to try and trap him with a genuine holding (and sometimes with nothing at all as a resteal attempt) to take the pot.
[7] Make notes of how your opponents play premium hands like QQ, KK and AA as well as AK. Some player like to just limp and disguise their hands, hoping to win big off someone who has hit top pair so would lose a lot to their overpair. Knowing this would help save you from losing more than you should against them if they have a tendency to play these hands like this.
[8] Note how they play their draws. Do they call and only bet or raise when they’ve hit? Or do they semi-bluff by betting out, raising to a bet, or push all-in often on a draw?
[9] Never make notes when you are angry or on tilt. This would only take away the neutrality in your note taking. Be calm and clear in your thought when making fact-based notes only.
[10] Make a date stamp (month and year is usually good enough) to account for the fact that many players do improve over time. Your notes on their play taken 2 years ago when they were a newbie may no longer be relevant if they have read 10 good poker books and now multi-table with ease. Those mistakes they made in the past could well be history, so your notes need to be revised to account for their game improvement!
[11] Be concise. Are they a fish, shark, tricky player, aggressive player, smart player, loose nutcase player, calculated player, etc. Are they always playing like that or do they go on tilt when they lose a big pot? (In which case you can try to take advantage of their tilt tendency in such cases to win even more from them!) Do they have a lot of cash and reload often (called Whales in the game) — if so it would be best that you try and track them down to win from them in all future games!
[12] Always think about how you will be using the notes you’re making in the future.

By following these 12 rules we’ve set here, you’re guaranteed to be making excellent notes against your online poker opponents. Do it well and regularly, and you’ll have a huge database of notes against most of your key opponents which will enable you to win more and lose less! Good luck at the tables!

Senh Lou @ Poker Depot.

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