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. ...