I was quite deep into the $1,000 No Limit Hold’em rebuy tournament when I received a text from Marty Smyth. I’d spent $8,000 and there were 24 players left competing for a first prize of $130,000. I now had a slightly below average stack.
“Are you still in?” Marty inquired.
“I had 88k with avg 22k when we both put in 55k pre-flop with blinds 200/400. Me AK, him AA. Back to 20k”
I soon got a text back:
“Apologies. Seem to have texted...
Northern Ireland Police spoiled the pre Christmas festive atmosphere at The River Club in Derry City by arriving in force during the club’s Christmas tournament on the third Sunday of December. Some of the players actually thought that they were about to be robbed as the first police to arrive were done up in riot gear complete with balaclavas covering their faces. I’m not quite sur...
Victoria Coren
It's quite fun, this Guardian experiment. They're having a games slot every day - bridge, chess, that sort of thing - and I'm doing the poker one. It's aimed at the fairly new player, who might have watched a bit of poker on TV and just started playing with their friends and wants a few tips. So for the moment in the column I'm generally advocating caution and covering basics -...
For many players, there's nothing prettier than peeking at their hole cards and seeing paint. A-K. K-Q. Q-J. They're all big hands and, often times, very playable ones, especially in position. Sometimes though, your masterpiece of a starting hand can lead to a very ugly result.
The fact is over-cards can be some of the trickiest hands to play well if they don't connect with the board. So how do you avoid going broke when you whiff with your overs? In the words of Kenny Rogers, "you gotta...
There are a lot of potentially horrendous moves to be made in No-Limit Hold ‘em: playing out of position with a marginal hand, chasing down a draw without the correct odds, overplaying (or underplaying) the nuts. All of these are horrible, horrible plays. But in my opinion, the worst play that you can make (and I see made far too often) is the min-check-raise.
I’ve never seen this play used correctly. In fact, I don’t think it’s even possible to use it correctly. If...
In a recent thread on the ever-popular Two Plus Two forum, my good friend Andy Ward made a case for the utterly intangible and totally subjective hypothesis that I am the best all round poker player in the UK.
I was naturally quite flattered by this statement, and was about to spend a few minutes deciding which other players could be described as true all-rounders, when my eye wandered down the page to the rest of the thread. Don't worry, there was no time for me to get bigheaded at all, as...
Whenever you’re talking about poker strategies, you’ll find people who make no distinction between tournament play and ring game play. In fact, I know some top players who believe that both should be played exactly the same. Even though some of them have been extremely successful with this approach, I couldn’t disagree with them more.
The basic problem is that in a tournament setting, all chips are not of equal value. In most cases, the chips you lose are going to be worth a...
These hands are taken from the new, expanded edition of Internet Texas Hold'em: Winning Strategies for Full-Ring and Short-Handed Games. Take this quiz to test your skills. These are limit hold'em hands at the limits shown.
1. 25¢-50¢: You hold the A 3 in middle position. Three players call from early position, you call, and the big blind checks. Fiv...
We’re breaking the first rule of Fight Club. Bluff Europe now has its very own Poker Academy, ever more training sites are springing up on the web, and there is now an established profession of “poker coach”. Opportunities to improve your game have never been so prevalent.
Old timers grumbled if you discussed poker strategy out loud at the table. An earlier Pickleman article exhorted players not to “feed the fish”. At the time, I thought that if you did so, the...
The middle stages of a poker tournament can be a tortuous and tedious experience for even the most seasoned pro. The long trek toward the money, combined with a variety of potentially tricky scenarios you may face along the way, make it difficult to come up with one sure-fire strategy to help you through. That said, one aspect of mid-tourney play that’s extremely important is picking up pots pre-flop.
If you’ve been card dead in the first few levels you may only have as many chips...
It has been a decade of change in Las Vegas. A decade when everyone seemed to lose. The famous streets of gold are now littered with the belongings of those who have had to leave town as the boom dried up along with the water supply.
The casinos are run by number crunchers, unconcerned about the welfare of the staff or the players. They have decided that gaming is the only sure fire winner. Recently casinos have been looking to exit the food market which is labor intensive and the breakfast...
There are few better situations in poker than to enter final table play as the big stack. However, there’s a big difference in coming to the final table with the chip lead and in knowing how to use your stack to take control of the final stages of a tournament.
There are many players who don’t slow down once they reach the final table with a big stack. I’m not one of them. By the time I reach the final table, I’ll have already played a number of hands against about...
Just in case you are in need of a good New Year’s Resolution and can’t think of one, I have the perfect thing. It’s obvious and it’s related to gambling. It’s just such a good thing to do.
Record your results.
If you don’t do that you’re mad. How can you know whether you’re winning and how can you correct any leaks that have appeared in your game if you don’t even know how you’re doing? If your figures show that you win in six-max...
I suppose a mouldy mince pie 9 months past its sell by date or your Auntie buying you the same pair of socks for 7 years running might be slightly less popular, but with almost no demand whatsoever (well, except Joe asked me) the Camel's Christmas Presents makes it's return after a couple of years hiatus.
Dickhead of the Year
Me. Firstly for helping to drive the poor old Dean off the forums. Yes, he has a bit of a puffed up ego. But without people with this complaint there would be virtually...
Hand 133 - Crucial hand 7 - Biggest Hand So Far - Busting the Defending Champ
Blinds: 4000/8000/1000, My position: SB, My hand: Ac Qs, My Chip Stack: 389,000
Defending champ Lee Nelson has been moved to the table. He opens in middle position for 24,000 and I decide to just call with my Ac Qs in the SB. The BB folds. The flop comes:
Qh Qc 4c
I think it is fair to call it an above average flop!
I check and as expected Lee bets 44,000 into a 64,000 pot. Having flopped three Q...
Knowing what to do and when to do it is what separates those who just play in tournaments from those who make final tables. This is especially true in No-Limit Hold ‘em, where the first decisions you’re faced with are what hands you should play and when you should play them. As the blinds get bigger and antes come in to play, these decisions become even more crucial. In these situations, one of the most critical errors that people make is not varying their pre-flop strategy...
Not many people were planning the Blackpool/Las Vegas double.
There are kinda two tour circuits if you’re a British professional poker player, and there are also kinda two types of player.
The elite guys with large bankrolls and egos to match do the premier circuit with the cooperation of their gullible and patient sponsors. They play EPTs in Barcelona, San Remo and Monte Carlo, they pop to Vegas for the odd WPT, they do the Euro WPTs in Venice, Cyprus and even Marrakech. They only...
My moniker at a couple of online sites is “IonlyPlayAA.” Way back in 2004 when I went deep in the main event of the World Series, one of my opponents commented, “He only plays aces.” The comment made the TV broadcast, and hence, one of my online monikers was born. It’s always fun to be dealt aces with that kind of online name.
You will often hear people say that you shouldn’t go broke with pocket aces when the stacks are deep. Every scenario is different,...
While most players these days specialize in No-Limit Hold’em, I know there are many people out there who grew up learning Seven-Card Stud. With the resurgence of HORSE and other mixed games, now is a great time to branch out and revisit some of the basics to help make you a better all-around player.
For me, Fifth Street is the big decision point in this game because that’s when you have to put in your first big bet. And one of the toughest situations you can face on Fifth Street...
In my last tip I wrote about running bad and the effect it can have on your mental state. Now I’m living it. If you’ve been following my $0 to $10K Challenge, you know it took me about nine months to turn $0 into $100 and another nine months to turn that $100 into $10,000. Even though I hit my goal, I decided to keep playing and rapidly built up to $28,000. Three months later I was down to $9K.
Obviously, I was on a very bad losing streak, but it wasn’t due to bad beats. I...
