I received an interesting email from Daniel Steinberg, who's an ex-poker-pro with some very good online and live results. He’s obviously got a lot of poker experience, so his opinions are worth listening to. I've included some of my responses to him in-line with his email. ...
Review of Jared Tendler’s Mental Game of Poker
The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler I must admit I was skeptical when I first heard about The Mental Game of Poker. This is because I’m very skeptical about most self-help-psychology books. I think most of them are bullshit. Also, having played poker seriously for a number of years, I didn’t think there was much a book could impart on the topic of improving your mental state. I knew ...
Immediate calls – a badly written chapter of my book
A reader, David Monath, sent me an email about my book Reading Poker Tells yesterday, pointing out some inconsistencies in the “Speed of calling” chapter, specifically what I say about immediate calls and what they mean. I wanted to address the inconsistencies here for the benefit of people who read the book. ...
Got third in a fairly big tournament: thoughts on poker tells
This past weekend I played a $215 tourney at Chinook Winds, put on by Deepstacks Poker. Out of about 280 players, I got third for $5,700. I feel like I’m playing my best tournament game I’ve ever played; I can literally only point to one hand of the entire 22 hours of playing where I believed I’d made a mistake. That’s a big step up for me; in most of the few bigger buy-in tourneys I’ve played ...
More on immediate calls (snap-calls) in No Limit Hold’em
In my previous blog post I talked about what immediate calls (snap-calls) of significant turn bets in NLHE might mean. Some responses let me know that I hadn’t made it clear that I was just talking about significant turn bets, as opposed to flop bets, so I wanted to reiterate that. I think some of what I said can apply to flop bets, but flop bets and calls are usually not as meaningful, just ...
A Snap-Call Theory
The last post I wrote talked about immediate calls and what they might mean. (I called them “quick calls” but I should say “immediate calls” or "snap calls" because “quick” could be interpreted as someone moving their bet in with a quick motion.) I had talked in my book about quick calls for a short bit, but I’ve never felt happy with that section, because I felt there was much more to say on it. ...
$2-5: quick call of turn bet indicates probable draw
This hand is from a $2-5 NL full ring game. Long story short: my opponent called a substantial turn bet very quickly, and I should have thought more about what his action meant. I should have come to the conclusion that his quick call meant that he was most likely drawing, which means I should have bluffed the river. ...
Poker tells at live $1-2 no-limit
Update: Did you know I have a poker tells video series? Check it out here. In the past couple of weeks (November 2012), I played a few sessions of live $1-2 NLHE with the purpose of studying what poker tell information was the most important and relevant. It’d been a while since I played $1-2 (haven't been playing much at all lately with the exception of some $2-5 and the occasional $100+ ...
Length of time looking at hole cards: a really useful heads-up poker tell
I got heads-up in a NLHE tournament the other night and noticed that my opponent had a very common poker tell: when his hole cards were weak, he'd stare at them for a couple seconds on his initial look at them. This can be a useful tell at a full table, but I've found it's especially common when in a short-handed or heads-up situation. Instead of posting this story here, I got permission from ...
An American playing poker in Paris: Cercle Cadet trip report
In September, I was in France for my honeymoon, so like any good new husband I wanted to get out and play some poker while I was there. After researching some Paris poker rooms, I ended up playing just a few hours at the Cercle Cadet poker club. This post will contain a few tips it might help you to know if you plan on playing there and my general impression of the card room and players. ...