There is a tendency for players to want to check monster hands in the hope that their opponents will bet. This addiction with being deceptive is one that is widespread amongst many poker players. However it is based on misconceptions brought about by seeing other forms of poker and through not understanding the differences.

For example, let us look at a limit Texas Hold’em poker game where one player raises from a steal position and the big blind called with A-J. The flop came A-7-4 and the big blind decided to check and then call to disguise the strength of his hand. In this instance a check could induce his opponent to keep on firing on the betting rounds where the limits double.

So in this instance the slowplay is viable. Or how about taking a situation from tournament poker! A player with 18 big blinds open raises and the big blind calls. The big blind has a stack that is not much bigger than the pot size and when they check, our hero who has flopped top two pair and in this instance decides to check it back.

Texas Hold’em Cash Games

Here the payoff or potential payoff is your opponent’s entire stack as they may decide to launch a bluff attempt based on your apparent weakness on the flop when you checked. Look at the differences here with no-limit cash games, one instance was a limit game where the reward for not betting on the cheap better round on the flop could have been extracting bigger bets on the turn and river and the other was in a tournament where the blinds had risen so sharply that the average stack size was small compared to the size of the blinds.

Now compare these examples to a deep stacked no-limit Texas hold’em online poker game where both players had 100 big blinds before the hand started. Our hero raises before the flop to 3.5 big blinds and it gets called by the big blind. The pot has now around 7 big blinds in the middle if you factor in the small blinds money and the rake. Our hero has Q-J and the flop comes A-K-10 to give him the nut straight.

Simply Make The Bet

The big blind checks and I see many people check behind in this situation. But what this has effectively done is to reduce the hand from four betting rounds to three. What this means is that stacking your opponent will now be that much more difficult simply because the pot will not escalate enough with one less betting round.

If our hero checks this hand and another straight card comes like a jack then not only may his opponent hold a queen for a split pot but if they don’t hold a queen then the board looks so scary that all future action will dry up anyway.

If you bet the flop and your opponent folds then the chances are that there was nothing to win anyway. But if our hero had bet say 5 big blinds on the flop and that bet was called, this would have then placed 17 big blinds in the pot for the turn round. Another pot sized bet and call on the turn would have put around fifty big blinds in the pot by the river which is now close to being an all-in situation.

This article was produced by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Bluffing is an integral part of online poker and especially in high-stakes poker games. The levels of aggression in these games means that bluffing and being bluffed are common themes! Short handed and heads up play demand aggression but then again, you must do your fair share of bluffing in full ring games as well and even in situations where you feel bluffing should be at a premium.

Limit hold’em has a very big presence in online poker and there are many people who think that full-ring limit play is devoid of bluffing opportunities. There are ample bluffing chances that crop up in limit play and you must be alert to them otherwise you will be in serious danger of missing out on vital profit opportunities that will form the bread and butter of your earn rate.

Let us look at an example to show exactly what I mean. The game is $10-$20 full-ring limit hold’em and you are playing online poker. Here you have the Jc-5c in the big blind and three players limp in so you see a free flop. The flop comes 10h-6c-3c and you decide to bet into three opponents with your flush draw and overcard.

Your bet gets called by one of the limpers but raised by the button, both you and the limper call. The turn card is the 7s giving you an inside straight draw to go with your other outs as well. You check and to your surprise so do both of your opponents. The river card pairs the seven and now the betting is on you.

Here, many players would neglect to bet here in the big blinds situation. They would fear having two opponents with no hand and a player who raised on the flop. These are all valid arguments but your bet represented something on the flop and that was top pair. Your opponents checking this back on the turn indicates players who may be drawing.

The limper who called your flop bet and then called the turn raise could have merely been getting pot odds. Online poker is jam packed with situations like these and you need to be aware. The play of the flop raiser smacks of someone who was raising to get a free card and when they checked the turn then this seemed to be indicative of that.

You cannot win by checking as a jack high will not take this pot but you are getting very good pot odds to launch a bluff. Many novice players forget about the pot odds when looking to launch bluffs in limit play. They also neglect to take into account the play of the hand up until that stage as well.

Here it was a combination of the pot odds and the situation that indicated that a bet was in order and is all part of online poker strategy. If the flop raiser had followed through and bet the turn then you would have been forced to call and your initiative would have been lost in the hand. You couldn’t really then bet the river into this player and would have been merely making a pot odds call on the turn.

Online poker in all of its various forms is rich with variety and bluffing is what makes the game as exciting as what it is. But try to bluff intelligently and not blindly.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

These days there are vast numbers of articles all over the internet that talk about how to play poker before the flop, on the flop and on the later betting streets as well. The problem here is that there are so many different views and opinions coming from so many different sources that it isn’t any wonder that many players become confused.

You will hear novices ask about “perfect pre-flop play” and what it is. Many believe that perfect play is something that can be learnt from hand charts and other such mechanical devices. This is basically illusory in nature as true “perfect” pre-flop play is something that can never ever be attained.

THE HOLY GRAIL OF POKER

This is for the simple reason that poker is a game of incomplete information so you can never know what your opponents are going to do and what their hands are. But we can take the hand charts and card dependent strategies onto a whole new playing field by having no strategy that is set in stone.

This is probably the Holy Grail as far as pre-flop play is concerned. If you can properly tap into the game conditions and dovetail your play around that then perfect pre-flop play suddenly gets a whole lot nearer to being reality. Back in the days when I used to play just one table, I could feel the game out quite well.

CHANGING POKER DYNAMICS

I knew just who was raising and how often and what types of hands they were raising with. This was years before I started using Poker Office (www.pokeroffice.com) and yet I could still dovetail my pre-flop strategy very well. It takes experience to be able to feel games out like this but you can do it if your concentration levels are high enough and you are only playing two tables at the most.

I could tell who the solid players were and whose blinds I could attack and who was likely to come back over the top of me with a re-raise. I also don’t feel that tracking software does this more accurately than a highly developed feel. Where these items really come into their own are when you are multi-tabling as you cannot feel numerous tables at the same time anyway!

In many ways, deviating your pre-flop play depending on game and player dynamics is the ultimate level that you can achieve in poker. Multiple level thinking really starts to take this on to a whole new level but you can sometimes literally own certain players when you know what they are going to do before they even do it.

Also, optimal pre-flop play is dependent on what the prevailing game dynamics are in all forms of poker and not just texas hold’em. If you are playing Pot Limit Omaha or Limit Hold’em then what you do pre-flop is still based on what your opponents are likely to do.

OLD POKER ADVICE IS STILL SOUND

The old advice in poker that you should be striving to do just the opposite of what everyone else is doing is perfectly sound. If your opponents are tight then playing tightly may not win you much money at all but opening up and playing aggressively just might.

Think of all those stolen blinds and forced laydowns that more aggressive players would have played back at. Opening up and attacking is the optimal way to play when your opponents are tight and defensive.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

The playing of a short stack strategy is something that is getting more and more prevalent now wherever you look in online poker and especially online no-limit texas hold’em. There are many players, millions in fact who for whatever reason, don’t much fancy buying in for the maximum in a no-limit game.

If you want to play NL100 but you don’t fancy buying in for $100 then you can easily buy-in for the minimum which in this game would be $20. This allows you a certain amount of flexibility even though your stack is small. Many players are rightly fearful of playing a deep stack. This is wise if they don’t have deep stacked poker skills or other attributes like discipline.

So if they make a mistake, it won’t be a deep stacked mistake and it also means that they will not be giving implied odds to the good players either. In fact even though they will not have great flexibility with regards to how they can bet, they will have freedom based on the limitations of just how much they can lose.

You can actually play the situation in a similar way to how you would a poker tournament where you are short stacked. You are essentially looking for spots where you can create fold equity or get yourself all in as a favourite. Let us look at one such example, you are in the big blind with the J-10 and two players limp in and the small blind completes in this NL100 game. There is now $4 in the pot and you have $16 left in your stack.

This may be a great chance to shove all-in. You will take the $4 a very high percentage of the time here for the simple reason being that your opponents in all likelihood were looking to play a tiny pot and not one where they would have to put in $17 just to see a flop.

If you are called by someone with an A-Q then you are not that big of a dog and you still have plenty of equity in this situation. This is the worst case scenario but most of the time you will simply take this pot down. Remember that you are not looking to play deep stacked poker here or even moderately stacked poker so when your stack increases by as much as fifty percent to $30 then it is time to leave the table.

You cannot be moving all-in for amounts of money that are too large in comparison to what you can win. Here is another example, you are in the big blind and it is folded around to the button who raises to $3.50. They did this on the last orbit but now you have a Q-9. This isn’t a powerhouse by any stretch of the imagination but against a likely stealer then you can shove here with a small stack.

This creates a situation where you have elevated the pot to a level that the stealer or would be stealer simply did not want. They were basically looking to steal the $1.50 in blinds or have someone call them so that they could use their position post flop. If you place yourself into their shoes, their small ball tactics have backfired. Picking up chips from limpers and stealers are standard tournament tactics but they are also something that can be applied to cash games as well in the right situation.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Over the past few months, more and more people have enquired about the ease at which it is possible to turn pro. In many ways it is far easier to play poker for a living now than it was when I first started back in 2002. Back then many sites didn’t offer the facility to multi-table and rakeback wasn’t even heard of.

I am aware of some players who earn literally thousands of dollars a week in rakeback. This is how online poker has changed and even though the players at the top levels have become very good, it is still possible to make $50,000 to $100,000 a year playing online without having to play all that high.

If you don’t believe me then take a look at the following player who I know quite well. He plays NL50 and only started playing a year ago after studying NLHE for almost a year. He makes on average around $4/hour per table and he plays eight tables. So he is making $32/hour and then he also gets his rakeback on top and he makes around a $1000/month in rakeback.

He plays full-time which means 40 hours a week so his average monthly earnings are in the region of around $6500 including rakeback. This equates to $78,000/year playing as low as NL50. This may stagger a lot of people but I myself was making $25/hour at NL50 over 65,000 hands when I was six tabling my system earlier this year so I know that it can be done.

These days the life of an online poker pro involves playing numerous tables, getting rakeback and working off sign up bonuses. It also involves using software as well, my favourite tracker of choice has always been Poker Office with its built in HUD. This is another important factor to online play. Your opponents will be using tracking software, table finder programs, buddy lists and existing player databases so you will need to start using this stuff as well.

Over the past few months, many high-stakes pro’s have moved from being high-stakes players who play a relatively small number of hands per week to low stakes and players who now play thousands upon thousands of hands per week. There is a fine line here, obviously a $200-$400 player who is making between $500,000-$1 million a year will not earn anywhere near that amount by multi-tabling NL50!

But he may earn that amount or more multi-tabling $25-$50. I also know of players who are making $150,000/year playing no higher than $2-$4 and $3-$6 NLHE. As an online pro then you need to get certain things in place.

The first is your mindset, you must think professional and act professional to be professional. Also you need to exercise table and game selection. Another factor that may influence your earn rate is playing at different times of the day. You could for example play in the early morning where the network is dominated by weaker players who are playing through a certain skin who have been tempted because of the large sign up bonus.

If they come from a certain geographical area then this could explain why they are clumping together and this can lead to certain games on certain networks being softer at certain times over others. So it can definitely pay to try out different times of the day to see what effect if any that has on your earn rate. Tactics like these can really pay dividends when it comes to making money from online poker. The life of an online pro is far different these days than what it used to be.

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson