Archive for October, 2008
Slowing Down in Tournaments
24 October 2008
When you are hitting cards in poker, and you seem to be making good progress, it is always difficult to sit back and not play any hands for a while, but often it is important to do this in order to gather your thoughts before you get carried away. We all know that good luck doesn’t last forever and can disappear in an instant, so if you find yourself running good, and are near to being the biggest chipstack in a tournament, you can certainly make a case for it being wise to sit back for a while.
If of course you get dealt a strong hand, then by all means get involved, but my experience is that, if you can afford to sit back and let a few more players bust out, then you are making progress without having to risk a single chip. The importance of tightening up your play when you have been pushing players out of pots and winning chps is further illustrated by the fact that your change of style will mean you have good cards next time you get involved, and often your opponents will think you are trying to pick up more chips by using your big stack as a weapon.
I feel it is important to change gears in this way whilst playing poker, and it works the other way too. If you are playing very tight and not getting much action, bluffing someone off a hand then showing the bluff afterwards can reap rewards later on. Unless you are hitting hands every single time, then there will always be a correct time to sit back and wait for a preium hand, but as with many things in poker, timing is everything.
When to Chase Hands in Poker:
15 October 2008
Chasing hands is not something you preferably wish to be doing in pokeren usually, but sometimes the circumstances mean that you are being given the right price to do so. Much of knowing when to chase a big hand depends on odds.
Firstly, consider how much it is to call the bet, secondly how much will be in the pot once you call, and thirdly, work out your chances of making your hand. If you are calling a bet of 200 into a pot of potentially 800 chips, you need odds of 4 to 1 or better on making your hand, to make it a reasonable call. The odds on making different hands are something you should learn and familiarise yourself with, because although it sounds complicated, it isn’t when you consider the most likely circumstances you will need to work out the odds of. Often you might flop a flush draw, with four cards to a suit, or an open ended straight draw, and having even a rough idea of what your odds are will always help you along.
In some games, such as Omaha, it is possible to be drawing to a hand and still be a statistical favourite to win the pot due to the amount of outs you have, so drawing to hands is not always a bad thing. I like to raise with draws myself, because you give yourself a chance to pick the pot up without having to hit your outs, and if they call and you catch your card, you have already started to build a nice pot.
Stealing Pots:
8 October 2008
Picking up pots which you may not have ended up winning otherwise, is extremely important to being successful in tournaments, and indeed cash play.
We all have our fair share of luck as players, and we could keep our chip or cash level afloat simply by winning the blinds on each orbit of the table. Luck would dictate that on average we will have the winning hand once each orbit of play, but to overpower and eliminate your opponents at the table, this is not enough. To reach the final table and perhaps even win a tournament, you need to pick up pots through aggression and tactful play, and this is where the skill of the game comes to the fore.
The value of money means that people will be loathe to risk what they feel they are likely to lose when they turn over their hand, so as a player, you must convince them they are losing the hand to steal the pot. Of course your reads on an opponent are very important here too.
This is because if you are trying to convince an opponent they are going to lose when they have just hit a very strong hand, needless to say, you will fail. You have to pick up the pots where your opponent has a vulnerable hand, and one which could easily be bested.
This requires a great amount of judgement, but your opponents betting patterns and demeanour will always tell it’s own tale about how strong your their hand is. The most difficult part is deciphering these telltale signs, but if you can do so with consistency and accuracy, you have mastered one of the most fundamental skills of poker.