Advice?

This is the age of advice and poker is no exception. The number of books on the game reaches well into the hundreds. Every poker magazine, newspaper, tabloid, web site has an advice column, sometimes more than one (here on Poker Listings we have quite a few). There are summer schools for students of the game, there are poker boot camps, poker instructional cruises; there are videos and tapes and DVDs on the game. There are chat rooms, poker clubs, discussion groups where regulars argue the game and the latest insights into it. There are pros who are on call for advice (at sometimes astronomical rates), private coaches who can be hired for one-on-one lessons. Sheesh, it is a wonder anyone is left who isn’t an expert. I mean, really, if there aren’t any fish left there isn’t going to be any game.

Click to read more ...

Confidence

When I first started playing poker, the question of confidence never crossed my mind nor, for that matter, anyone else’s. We played by just playing. If we were in good moods, good; if not, not good. But ‘good’ meant our mood and how we felt, personally. The notion that mood might have an impact on the bottom-line wasn’t a consideration.

Click to read more ...

Post-flop play – Part II

Back to our discussion of post-flop play; see Part I. V. Control pot size. This one is tricky, almost certainly trickier than you think. Controlling pot size has two obvious elements, keeping it small and making it grow. When you’re on a draw you usually want to keep the pot small (adjusted, of course, for fold equity). There are some straightforward gambits here, particularly when first to act such as blocking bets (initial bets that are likely to be less than your opponent would bet) or “timely” checks (made after “thinking” for some time) which can induce a check from an opponent.

Click to read more ...

Post-flop play – Part I

This is the first of a series of columns on post-flop strategy. While I usually focus on the psychological elements of the game, I’m going down this road in an effort to identify the psychological factors that underlie the complex strategic elements of post-flop play of no-limit hold ‘em.

Click to read more ...

What’s Money Worth? Part II

Last column was a discussion about money and what it’s worth, a topic sufficiently complex to warrant another look. The key idea here is that winning and losing are asymmetrical. Losing money produces psychological pain that is greater than winning a comparable amount produces psychological happiness. This asymmetry gives us a foundation to get a deeper understanding of some aspects of our game that often have experts scratching their heads, specifically bad beat jackpots, the popularity of tournaments, bankroll variance and nosebleed level games.

Click to read more ...