I played some $15-30 limit Hold’em last night for the first time in a while. It was a fairly tough game; some of the better players were there, including three players who are probably professional-level. I considered going to the softer $10-20 game, which would have been a better financial decision, but I decided to make it a challenging night. I rarely get a chance to play against a tough field, ...
Limit player who holds chips defensively
Live fixed-limit, full-ring Hold'em hands that interest me enough to spend much time analyzing them are pretty rare, just because so many of the decisions are pretty straight-forward. I've got a hand here from a few days ago that I've been thinking a while about. It's a hand I probably could have played a bit better and that seems obvious in hindsight. The hand involves a couple of common tells so ...
Long-term mindset and handling variance
I hadn't played limit in a few months and then I played four long days of 15-30 over the course of the last couple weeks. I had a pretty rough swing on the first two days - lost $800 the first day and $1250 the next day. This was a pretty decent setback for my bankroll, considering I've only been able to play about a day a week on average this year. But it got me thinking about a few leaks in my ...
Hole card tells in Guts games and 5-Card Draw
In guts-style poker games, if you’ve ever played them in home games, the whole game is basically who’s in or out based on their current hand. No draws, no extra cards, nothing. You’re either in or you’re out and if you win you take down the pot. If you end up loser you have to match the pot. It can be a pretty anxiety-inducing game if you are truly playing match-the-whole-pot rules. In this post ...
Jamie Gold, lies, and ambiguous statements
Some people think that all poker players are liars. All poker players sometimes lie; that’s definitely true. But in my experience most players don’t often lie during a hand. They may misrepresent their hands, or mislead you, especially after the hand is over, but seldom will they tell an outright lie while a hand is going on. ...
Beginner thoughts on heads-up Hold’em online
I played my first real heads-up no-limit cash games yesterday. I've played heads-up in tournament situations before but I've never played a pure heads-up game. I've been hearing so much about all the heads-up nosebleed action through Twoplustwo (Isildur, Durrrr, Jungleman, PA, and all those guys) that I got a little intrigued. I felt that working on heads-up would definitely improve my game. ...
Creating a loose, careless image in no-limit
This weekend I was thinking about the ideal image you want to have when you're playing no-limit Hold'em. Here are the main things I want my opponents to be thinking about me: I want my opponents to think it's hard to bluff me. I want my opponents to think I'm loose enough to have any two cards in any situation. I want my opponents to think I don't care about the money. These are all ...
Poker in Cabo San Lucas
NOTE: THIS IS VERY OUTDATED; IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2010. I wanted to write about my poker experience in Cabo San Lucas because it was difficult for me to find anything online about the poker scene there. It turns out that Cabo does have a poker scene: it consists of a single electronic poker table. ...
Most useful tells in limit poker
I’ve been playing more limit hold'em lately, and I’ve put some thought into the tells that are most useful at limit versus the most useful ones at no-limit. Obviously there’s a lot less psychological pressure in limit, which makes for less tells. And the regular players, even the horrible ones, are accustomed to the common situations of the game and therefore give away less information. But ...
Importance of a tight image in fixed limit hold’em
This past weekend I returned to playing a $15-30 limit game, after spending the last few months mostly playing $100 multi-table live tournaments. Returning to limit after playing so much no-limit is a bit like suddenly having your hands tied behind your back. It is of course night and day from no-limit: a completely different game. Despite feeling a bit constrained and maybe a little impatient, ...
Making mistakes in poker and forgiving yourself
Here’s an example of a hand played very badly. A hand that (most probably) cost me several thousand dollars in tournament winnings, and that is currently haunting me. I write this to purge the poker demons. And to talk a little about how important it is to accept making mistakes, and to learn and move on. ...
The importance of poker tells in poker
Just because I focus on how to read physical tells on this website does not mean that I rank this skill as more important than other skills in poker. I think it can be, similar to the psychological understanding I talked about in another post, what separates a great player from a very good player. ...
Threatening-to-turn-cards-over tell
The threatening-to-turn-your-hand-over move is a pretty common tell you'll see at low stakes and sometimes medium stakes. You can often see it happen very clearly when a guy bets, another guy goes to call, and the bettor, almost in a threatening manner, prepares to flip his cards over. It can sometimes appear like some comical Western stand-off, with the one guy getting ready to draw his gun (or ...
Movement and stillness when bluffing
There's this weird old man that I frequently play with in this $100 tournament. His actions and mannerisms perplex me - he's just a weird old dude and I can't ever tell where he's coming from. He plays like a nit when he has an average stack but double him up and it's very hard to get him out of a pot. I generally have avoided any sort of bluff with him just because he's so unpredictable and is ...
Beginner thoughts on playing pot-limit Omaha 8 online
I decided not to play that $200 PLO8 tournament last week because I felt like I would have been pretty dead money. I'm really rusty at the game and have only played a little actual pot-limit; most of my experience with high-low has just been limit. I've played a decent amount of Omaha High for $5-10 blinds, but it was live. After going on PokerStars and playing in a low-limit .50-1.00 6-max cash ...