I had a couple interesting hands this weekend in the $15-30 game. There were only a few hands where tells played a big part in how I played. The one I'm going to tell you about involves a very common tell, but it’s not one that’s usually so obvious at fixed limit games. It’s usually one you see a lot more at no-limit. But I think that limit is the perfect training ground for learning how to ...
Anxiety and low self-esteem in poker
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, ...
Review of Frank Wallace’s “Poker: A Guaranteed Income For Life”
Poker: A Guaranteed Income For Life Advanced Concepts of Poker by Frank Wallace I first read Frank Wallace's Advanced Concepts of Poker in 1999. This was when I was first getting into higher-stakes poker, setting up dealer's choice home games at my college, and trying to convince friends and random acquaintances to come over and lose some money to me. The Internet was relatively new in ...
Facial expressions of strength and weakness
Can you tell which two of these pictures belong together and which one belongs on its own? All three of these pictures are taken from three different hands in a "pro meets celebrity" poker tournament Jeremy Sisto played. All three of them were taken after Jeremy made a bet. Two of them were with hands where he was relatively sure he had the best hand. One is from a hand where his hand was ...
Checking quickly vs. taking a long time to check
In no-limit hold’em, it is a common strategy for the pre-flop raiser to fire a continuation bet on the flop. An opponent with a strong hand will often check quickly to the pre-flop raiser, because they don’t want to prevent the pre-flop raiser’s natural tendency to fire another round. They don’t want to arouse suspicion by taking a long time to check. An immediate (and by immediate I do mean ...
Shuffling cards tell
I see this a lot pre-flop in hold’em. Players do a one-handed shuffle of their cards when they are planning on folding. I think it’s probably just a nervous release of energy—something to do while you wait to fold. Think of it this way; a player with a good hand usually doesn’t want to draw attention to himself at all, even in such a small way. I also have noticed the tendency in myself, even ...
Photos for poker tells book
The photo shoot was last Thursday and everything went even better than I expected. The photographer did a fantastic job, and so did all of my actors/poker players. I've now got a lot of photos to wade through to find the best ones. I've also got a lot of editing to do on the manuscript. All-in-all, I estimate I'll have it ready to be sent to the book designer within a couple months. ...
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 ...
Jeremy Sisto and some pre-flop tells meaning strength
Continuing on the same theme as last week's blog post, I've got a video of another actor who unwittingly telegraphs his hand strength. The actor is Jeremy Sisto (from Six Feet Under and some other shows) and he shows some standard signs for great strength that you'll see displayed a lot when playing with weak competition. ...
Acting weak when strong, starring Matt Damon
We'll look at a video of Matt Damon flopping a full house in the 2009 WSOP (starts at 2 minutes). Damon exhibits a few behaviors that are fairly common from recreational players with huge hands who want people to think they're weak. ...
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. ...
LASIK and poker
Getting LASIK in two weeks. I'm fairly excited. I've been wanting to get it for a few years, mainly for poker-related reasons. I'll tell you some of my reasons in this post. ...
Dealing with mistakes and anger
I was thinking about the anger issues again yesterday, and something (perhaps obvious) occurred to me. I had always thought I should be used to making mistakes and getting over anger. But actually that's precisely what has made the anger get worse - the fact that I am so experienced and shouldn't be making such amateur mistakes. The more experience I have at something, quite understandably the ...
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. ...
Review of Barry Greenstein’s “Ace on the River”
Ace on the River by Barry Greenstein This is a truly unique book, and a great one. It astonished me to read some of the negative reviews on Amazon about this book. Apparently many amateur players were expecting an advanced strategy book or something. Nowhere does Barry promise this. Instead, the subtitle to the book is "An advanced poker guide". He is true to his word, because the book ...
Using peripheral vision in poker
I’m a big believer in the power of peripheral vision. I think that with training, your peripheral vision can become a very solid tool for keeping track of your surroundings and the actions of the people around you. Military and martial arts groups work on developing peripheral vision because it’s incredibly useful for getting a quick sense of your surroundings and for doing so ...
New poker book review section
I started a new section of poker book reviews. I've got reviews of two books there now: the Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells (it sucks), and Gus Hansen's Every Hand Revealed (pretty decent). Comments can be made on those pages; I'd love to hear if anyone agrees with some of the harsh criticisms I've made about the first book. I've also started a Twitter account: http://twitter.com/apokerplayer. ...
Review of “Every Hand Revealed”, by Gus Hansen
Every Hand Revealed by Gus Hansen I'm the author of the books Reading Poker Tells and Verbal Poker Tells and this is a review of Gus Hansen's book Every Hand Revealed. This book is a hand-by-hand breakdown of his win of the Aussie Millions World Poker Tour tournament, where he waded through 747 players and won $1.2 million. The book doesn’t include every single hand, of course (not his ...
Review of “Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells”
Ultimate Guide to Poker Tells by Randy Burgess and Carl Baldassarre First of all, there is nothing “ultimate” about this book. It’s bad and I wouldn't make that statement lightly. While reading this book, I went back and forth several times about how much blame should be directed toward the authors. On the one hand, they are self-proclaimed micro-stakes amateur players, and don’t try to act ...
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, ...