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, ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...
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. ...
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 ...