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 ...
Greatest skill in poker is understanding opponent psychology
Assuming a grasp of poker theory, the fundamental strategy of the specific game being played, and a basic understanding of poker math, I would say the most important skill in poker is the ability to understand the psychology of your opponent. This psychological understanding incorporates a range of skills, such as bet-size pattern recognition and adapting a strategy to counteract another ...
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 ...
Kido Pham vs Doug Lee: verbal trickery and making speeches
In honor of recently finishing the infamous Doug Lee thread on Twoplustwo, I'll devote a little time to examining a hand between Lee and Kido Pham. In this hand, Doug Lee raises with K2 and Pham calls in position with TJ. The flop comes KQ9, with Pham flopping the straight. Pham checks and Lee bets. Pham calls. The turn comes a blank. Pham checks and Doug Lee goes all in and it's all ...
Staring at hole cards usually means a weak hand
I want to talk about a tell that is very, very useful against many mediocre players. But it's also a tell you can catch a lot of pretty experienced players exhibiting, too. Here it is: The longer someone looks at their hole cards during their initial look at them, the weaker the cards are. Relatedly, though less useful, some players will look away very quickly from strong hole cards. ...
Bet timing tells. Strategic use of calling the clock.
So, there's this very, very slow regular who I've played with a few times in the $100 tournament I occasionally play in. His name's Nassir, he's a middle-aged dude, and he's as slow-acting as they come. I almost wrote about this guy a few posts ago, just because I've spent a lot of time examining his style, and also because I find him indicative of a certain type of player that I think it helps to ...
Three major misconceptions about poker tells
I want to cover some very basic and very practical information on tells. I wanted to talk about three of the most common misconceptions about poker tells. First off, let's start with the much-repeated but not-well-understood adage from Mike Caro that almost everyone knows: Strong means Weak, Weak means Strong. This idea, that people who act strong are holding a weak hand, and people who act ...
Staying friendly with someone you’re bluffing
I usually try to act friendly/devil-may-care when playing poker. Most of the time I'm just acting that way to give the impression I don't care about the money and I'm there to have a good time. Also, it is often to my benefit to get friendly with people, since they're more likely to give you credit for a hand when you bet against them - "He wouldn't bluff me, we're friends" kind of thoughts ...
Leg shaking at the poker table
Did well again this week in the $100 multi-table tournament I play in occasionally. Split it 3 ways even between myself and two women who play pretty well. One specific read played a big part in one of the plays I made. The first important pot I got into was when the blinds were 200-400. I've got about 20,000, and I'm 2nd chip leader at our table. This young guy who introduces himself to people as ...