Marginalpoker

These days in the lower levels of no limit Texas Hold em online then there is a very large percentage of players who can be classed as weak-tight. These are players who have travelled some considerable way down the poker evolutionary ladder. They understand quite a bit about the more advanced side of the game and their playing decisions can be defined as solid. However many players like this struggle to beat the game or only do so for small amounts of money.

In fact these days then players who struggle to beat the game are the fish of today compared to players of a few years ago who were absolutely terrible. If a player is a break even player or thereabouts then many people would argue as to how you could call these players fish if you cannot extract money from them. Well the fact of the matter is that you can. Let us look at a player who we shall call “Joe”. This guy breaks even but he breaks even in a way that is beneficial to stronger players. He makes $1200/month in rakeback but that is offset by him losing $1200/month on the tables.

The end result is that he breaks even but he is still putting $1200/month into the poker economy that the better players will pick up. In fact in this instance then the poker site is actually helping the good player to make money. The act of giving this player $1200/month is helping to keep a fish active in the games and any player who is not losing money will likely keep on playing. In their minds (and they may be right) then with a little work and perseverance then they could easily be making money.

However even winning players can still be “fish” for good players and it is easy to see why that is. Imagine a player who makes $1500/month in rakeback but loses $500/month on the tables to better players. This player is not only making a profit of $1k/month but he is also contributing $500/month to better players than himself. Also winning players are less inclined to change their games because why should they……they have the game cracked because they make $1k/month. So in a subtle roundabout way then the site is collecting rake, awarding a percentage of it back to the player and then you as a hopefully stronger player get some of that.

This is why it is not automatically correct to view winning players as having no value in the game. In my experience then weak-tight players can and do make money online because they can make money from the really terrible players at the lower levels. This doesn’t allow them to be +EV in the games but to lose less money than they normally would. Then in turn they pass this money back to stronger players or a percentage of it.

There are clear reasons as to why you need to have a larger bankroll whenever you play NLHE Ring Games. At the lower levels of play then the standard is weaker for obvious reasons but as a rule then a better standard of play usually means players who are more aggressive in nature. This means that you have to push marginal edges to make your money as players will not pay you off in hugely –EV situations post flop as often as they do in lower stakes games.
Having a bigger bankroll and a bankroll that is more than adequate for your level allows you to do two things. It firstly allows you to ride variance the way that you should ride it. If you have ten buy ins then not only are you under bankrolled but each loss of a buy in represents a far greater percentage to your bankroll. If you only have $1000 playing NL100 then not only is your bankroll not big enough but losing $100 is a huge 10% of your bankroll.
This happens irrespective of how well you play poker. If you flop the nuts with pocket tens on a 10-9-4 rainbow board and someone gets all in with you holding Q-J and the turn and river cards are 2s-Kh then you are going to lose your entire buy in. These sorts of events can happen in very quick succession and is all part of the variance within the game. However if you are playing with 100 buy ins instead of 10 buy ins then your loss is not 10% of your bankroll but an almost insignificant 1%.
In both instances you have lost the same $100 but one loss represents 10% of your roll while the other is a mere 1%. Another factor that needs to be considered is that a much larger bankroll allows you to play a more aggressive style because each buy in is such a small percentage. Let us look at an example, it has been folded to the button in a $2-$4 game and you call from the big blind.
The flop comes Q-6-2 rainbow and in this example then the hands are almost irrelevant. You have the J-10 and check the flop with each of you having $400 stacks at the outset. The pot on the flop was $26 and your opponent bets $16 and you check-raise to $50. Your opponent three bets to $200 but can he really have a big hand here? If they have nothing and merely think that you have nothing then a four bet shove will be profitable. However if they have a big hand then why are they three betting?
If they have a hand and think that you are bluffing then they would surely check and let you bet again being first to speak. It doesn’t make much sense to three bet a bluffing hand out of the pot. Also if they do have a very big hand then it is also in their interests for the money to go into the pot in increments so they end up with all of your stack anyway.

You can’t play a game unless you know how to score. In basketball you get one, two, or three points depending on your shot and the situation. In American football you usually score three or six points but sometimes two and one. In poker, there are no points to be scored but there is always a pot to be won. It can be won in two ways by having the best hand if there is a showdown, or by bluffing the best hand out of the pot and inducing a fold.

So in order to score (win pots) you need to understand poker hand rankings and what beats what. In poker a hand is comprised of five cards. For ease of understanding let’s start with the worst kind of hands and work our way to the best.

Many times a hand will be ranked just by the high card in the holding. The Ace is the high card in the deck, followed by the King, the Queen, the Jack, and all the numbered cards in order 10 down to 2. In a high card hand, say King-10-8-6-2. The hand would be called King high. If an opponent also has a high card hand and it’s topped by a Queen or less the King high would scoop the pot. If both players held a King and nothing else, the tie would be broken by the kickers (the next highest cards). If both hands are identical they split the pot.

It is fairly common to have at least a pair in the holding. This is also called two of a kind. If the hand was King-King-10-8-6, a player would have a pair of kings. A player with just a pair of queens or worse would lose. If both players had a pair of kings, again the kickers would come into play to break the tie.
It’s important to remember as we go up the scale, any hand type one rank above beats a hand below it no matter the cards in the hand. For example a pair of twos will always beat just Ace high because a pair is higher than no pair.

The next hand up the rankings is three of kind. Instead of a pair, a player would have three of the same card. Here it could be King-King- King- 10- 8. As there are some games were cards are community cards and are shared by all the players, like Texas Hold’em, it is possible to have the same three of a kind and kickers also come into play to break ties. Again, three of kind 2-2-2 will beat a pair of Aces as three of a kind is higher in the rankings.

Above three of a kind is a straight. A straight is when a player has five consecutive cards. An example is: King-Queen- Jack- 10- 9. Having two, three or four consecutive cards is irrelevant and usually those holding are just ranked by their high card. A straight must have all five cards in order. If two players have straights, the straight that starts with the higher card wins. Since an Ace can play on either side of the straight, Ace-2- 3- 4-5 or Ace-King- Queen- Jack- 10. The first straight would be ranked five high and the Ace, for that hand, would rank as the lowest card in the deck and that player would lose to straights starting from a six or higher.

One hand higher is a flush. A flush beats all straights, just as all straights beat all three of a kinds and so on. A flush is when all five cards are of the same suit (all diamonds, all spades, all clubs, or all hearts). Ties are broken, again, by the high card in the holding. And just like straights, all five cards must be in play or else it isn’t a flush.

Above a flush is a Full House. That’s when you hold three of kind plus a pair. A hand would look like this: King-King-King-two-two. Here ties are broken by the higher three of kind. If they are tied, then the ties is broken by the higher pair.

Above a Full House is a four of a kind. Obviously, that means having four of the same card in your hand. Ties are broken by the fifth card. So King-King-King-King-10 would beat King-King-King-King-9. Again, this only comes into play when the game of poker uses community cards like Omaha.

A straight flush is five consecutive cards (a straight) all of the same suit (a flush). The highest straight flush is a royal flush, when the player has A-K-Q-J-10 all of the same suit. Straight flushes and four of kinds are very rare.

When you are ready to play poker online just head over to some of the bigger and better poker sites such as: https://www.bwin.com/texas-holdem-poker. See you there!

There is an old saying that if you have to make fancy plays in Texas Hold’em poker then you are in the wrong game. A lot of people who read this will hugely disagree but essentially then these people will be successful players at the higher levels but it is these people who are often not the best people to take advice from. I may say an awful lot of controversial things in poker but this is basically because my advice is grounded in reality. It is a bit like trying to emulate top class footballers if your normal level of play is far lower down.

There are simply things that you cannot do and you need to admit this to yourself. You simply have to find your optimal level and this is where you can really start to blossom. At the lower levels then you simply do not need to make fancy plays. Let us look at an example here to show fancy play in action. You open raise from the cut-off with 10c-8c and the big blind calls you. The flop comes Jd-Js-2d and the big blind leads out with a two thirds pot sized bet. You call looking to try and represent a possible slow played jack and to scare your opponent.

The turn is the 4c and your opponent bets again and you raise and your opponent thinks for a while and then shoves all in. You have to fold of course but you could have easily folded to your opponents flop bet. Your opponent flashes you A-J and they simply bet their strong hand on the flop. So you were trying to represent the hand that your opponent actually had which was actually quite funny. But this was a fancy play but yet when you see high stakes games then you often see plays like this but this is because the games at those levels are far more aggressive.

In areas like full ring then you simply do not need to make plays like these. Also if you are making fancy plays like these in situations where your opponents play very tightly then you are going to be bleeding money playing in this way. It is for this reason why I like to play full ring because there tends to be someone somewhere who is prepared to do something that they shouldn’t. In full ring then you obviously have more opponents sitting at your table. In six handed games then you see more hands per hour on your table.

This may seem as though six handed games are better but yet in full ring games then you are compensated by having more players on your table and more players have the chance to make more mistakes. So one form of poker really isn’t superior to another and it is what you really make it and how you fit your own style around that.

There is a massive following these days by players who are obsessed by earn rates in poker. You see articles and forum posts all the time from players who want to know what good earn rates are for such a game or for certain levels. It is very difficult for two players to ever replicate the exact same earn rate for numerous reasons and so seeing other peoples earn rates should not have too much effect on your game plan. So let us look at all of the factors that affect earn rates.

Firstly we have individual skill which is clearly different from player to player. Then we have the differences in poker sites. Believe it or not, there are differences in skill from poker site to poker site based on numerous dynamics. Another factor that influences earn rates is what time of day you play as there can be weaker fish at certain times of the day over others. Another factor that affects earn rate is your level of concentration and this can differ from player to player and I suppose that this can be put down to skill as well.

Some players look at rakeback and sign up bonuses and include them in their earn rate while other players don’t. So when you see an earn rate by a player who is quoting say 9ptbb/100 over 75,000 hands at NL50 while you are merely making 3ptbb/100 over the same sample size then you do not need to start fretting about this. Remember one very important thing, if you are making 3ptbb/100 over 75,000 hands then you are in very elite company simply because you are a winning poker player.

I have heard of players who have had totally different sample sizes of 100,000 hands. Top professionals have run good for 100k hands and then broken even over the next 100k hands. Many players simply refuse to accept that variance could last as long as 200,000 hands. Imagine if you started your career with a break even stretch of 100k hands? How would you feel after embarking on such a run? Could you cope mentally with not winning over 100k hands?

This is where rakeback and sign up bonuses increase in importance hugely. Let us say that you go on a huge 100,000 hand break even stretch and you play 25,000 hands per month. If you make $1000/month in rakeback or sign up bonuses then you are ahead by $1000 at the end of the month despite breaking even. This is a huge cushion on your psyche because in your mind then you are not encountering a losing run. This is why I would include rakeback and sign up bonuses in my earn rate.

I know that a lot of players refuse to do this but I believe that it isn’t a bad thing to do if you are a relatively inexperienced player or you have yet to experience a really bad run.

At the lower levels of play in poker games like limit hold’em then you need to have a reason for everything that you do at the poker table. If it has been folded to you on the button and you have the Jc-3c and you raise then you need to ask yourself the question of why you just did what you did. In fact you need to be asking yourself this before you make your play and not after it. There are far too many players who act first and then look for a reason to justify their action afterwards.

If you have Jc-3c on the button and you are thinking about open raising then what are your reasons? Are you attacking the blinds trying to create some dead money in the pot if the small blind folds? Do you think that the blinds play badly post flop and play far too tightly? If you want to play effective poker then planning will be critical to your success. Often when you multi-table limit Texas Holdem games and especially six handed limit games then it can be easy to slip into automatic pilot and simply make bad decisions because you are called upon to make too many decisions in such a small period of time.

If you have A-J and the flop comes J-9-4 and you bet the A-J then why are you betting it? Are you betting for value or are you betting to protect your hand or both? Knowing why you are doing certain things will help you to react to events when they happen instead of wondering what to do. However it is not much use setting out a plan for the hand if you do not know how to achieve that plan. Once you have a plan then you are going to have to come up with some objectives to help you achieve that plan.

Let us say that you have J-10 and the flop comes A-K-Q giving you the but straight. There are two other opponents and you plan to maximise your winnings in this hand. This is your plan but how are you going to reach that plan? If your opponent raised from the cut-off and the button called with you calling from the big blind then are you going to check to induce your opponents to give you some action on your hand? Or did you check-raise the last flop only to see your opponents fold and so you want to trap them on the larger betting rounds?

You decide to check-call and then check-raise the turn. So here your very simple plan is to maximise your profit on the hand and the way that you set about doing this is to check-call the flop and then check-raise the turn. It doesn’t really matter if this line of play does not achieve the optimal value but the most important thing is that you have a plan. Remember that it is better to have a bad plan than no plan at all.

There is a misconception that aggression is good in Texas Holdem. This statement is slightly misleading because it implies that aggression is the be all and end all of poker. I have also heard that mathematics and bluffing is the key to poker as well. Of course all of these factors are important in no-limit Texas hold’em but only at the proper times and in the proper way. It is true that mathematics, bluffing and aggression are all vital components of a good No limit hold em player.

But look at this another way, if aggression was the be all and end all of poker then it would be all too easy to become good at the game and there would be no point in trying to teach people the finer nuances if all they had to remember was to be aggressive. Let us look at an example to show what I mean here. It has been folded around to the button who blindly raises with any two cards and in this instance has a weak hand like 8-4.

The small blind folds and the big blind calls and the flop comes K-9-2. The big blind checks and the button player bets and takes the pot. This looks like a coup but on the next hand, this happens. Once again this player raises from the button with 7-2 and the big blind calls. The flop comes 4-4-3 and the big blind checks and the button bets and it gets called. The turn card is the Jc and the big blind checks again and the button continues the bluff and gets called again.

The river card is another bad card for the button and is the Kd. The big blind checks again and the button shoves all in and this final bet induces a fold from the big blind. This once again looks like a great play from the button. On the next orbit they raise again with J-3 and the big blind calls again with A-6 and the flop comes 7-6-2. The big blind check-calls the flop and the turn comes another seven and the big blind check calls again.

The river card is the Qd and the big blind check calls again to win the pot with two pair sevens and sixes. The aggressive button starts to deride the big blind in the chat box by calling him a fish. However what he has failed to comprehend is that the big blind and probably other players on the table were starting to spot patterns in this blind aggressive play of raising pre-flop and then betting on every street post flop.

Better players will be better bankrolled and will be prepared to make lighter call downs. Tools like aggression are just like any other tool in that they are good tools to have but they need to be used at the right time and against the right opponents.

All poker sites have free poker games, whether they be play money games or freeroll poker tournaments where you don’t have to buy in for anything and you have a shot at making money out of thin air. The fact remains that with online poker, you have an opportunity to be able to make money out of thin air.

I had a player contact me last year who had made around $4000 in the space of a year simply by playing freerolls. Some people may look at that and think, yeah but how many hours has he played and what is his hourly rate?

But is this really the way that we should be looking at his achievement? If you turn $2000 into $4000 then you have shown a $2000 profit on $2000 so your ROI (return on investment) is 100%. Now 100% is an unbelievable return on investment! If you turn $1 into $4000 then your ROI is 4000%. But turning $0 into $4000 is a return that is infinite. Any poker player who has made money without having to invest anything is to be commended in my opinion.

Sure the regular players and the professionals may knock them but they are wrong to do so. There have been numerous bankroll challenges over the past few years where players have tried to turn mediocre sums of money into huge amounts and succeeded. The strong base that is needed is iron money management skills.

You must keep discipline at all times but if you can do this then you really can make money out of nothing. I tried my own bankroll challenge a couple of years ago and tried turning $1000 into $100,000 over the space of a year and had to pack it up through other work commitments. Once you get into the proper mindset, you can do this but the difficult part is ploughing through the first few months where you basically have to play poker without making any progress whatsoever.

There may be several thousand players in these freeroll poker tournaments and it is going to take you a ling time in all probability to be able to get away from ground zero or in this case… $0. But sooner or later you will cash in a freeroll event and you will be on your way. Then it is a simple case of grinding at the lower limits at a game that you are strongest in.

Say for example that you have cashed in a $1000 freeroll for $50, you then have numerous ways to go. You now have something to work with and if you can now take advantage of a rakeback deal as well then you are on your way. I would now be looking to fragment that $50 into at least 10 buy-ins and play $5 no-limit games.

The level of play in these poker games is very bad as you would expect and a decent player could make something like10 to 20 buy-ins over the space of a month depending on how many hours they put in.

Let us say that you made the lower end of that figure and made ten buy-ins during the next month after you cashed in your freeroll for the $50. Now you have $100 in your bankroll and you could either stay at the $5 level and be even better bankrolled or move up to the $10 games with the same ten buy-ins.

If you dropped down from $100 to $50 then you could drop back down a level to the $5 games where you would have the same ten buy-ins again. On sites that have micro levels then you can play really low levels like these and slowly build yourself up. Once you get to the $25 level with a bankroll of between $250-$500 then you can start to make some decent progress very quickly and the $10,000 mark will seem a whole lot nearer when you are multi-tabling making something like $10/hour.

There is an old saying in England regarding people who see nothing but problems where most of time there are none. That saying is “seeing Indians behind every bush”. A saying that dates back to the old frontier wars in the old wild west! But with online poker, this is exactly what many people do and many millions of people the world over truly believe that it is entirely crooked.

In fact some very smart and intelligent people firmly believe this and these include many people who have thoroughly investigated online poker. Well all I can say is that they must be missing a very serious trick because tens of thousands of people worldwide make money from online poker in some capacity.

With the latest stats showing something in the region of around 8% of players being long term winners then are all these players deluding themselves or wrong? Are the millions of dollars won by people like Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, and Phil Galfond just down to luck and variance? I know people personally who are making six figure yearly sums from online poker and have done for the past few years.

They are recording as many as 10,000 hands of poker per week, please don’t anyone tell me that this is luck. If anyone decrees that online poker is purely gambling then they are seriously missing the wood for the trees. I myself have made a good living from online poker since 2002…..am I lying or deluded…..or both?

But the problem is that the people who say these things do not understand the subject that they are commenting on and are probably conceited enough to think that their opinions are always right. But to that I say this…..let them think these things because as long as online poker is perceived as gambling then the savvy streetwise winners will never have to worry about paying tax on their income.

People comment on poker bots, collusion, tracking software and all of the rest of the reasons that losing players give to gloss over bad poker play. Well on the subject of bots, I have it on the best authority that a frighteningly large percentage of them are so bad as to be net losers unless they are incorporated with rakeback and sign up bonus schemes……and then they may make money for the user.

I have seen limit bots in action and their play was so bad that it defied belief. Most of the people who are using tracking software are not using it properly. I use or have used a host of products including Texas Calculatem, Poker Crusher and Hold’em Genius but yet the overwhelming number of people who use these items have poor technical games that software can never help them with.

Too many people are using software as an excuse to be idle and expect them to do too much and too many people who know that their opponents are using these items are overly fearful. In my opinion, in a complex game like no-limit then if one percent of people who played this game played to a level where no significant improvement was possible in their technique, I would be very surprised.

The fact is this, don’t go thinking that online poker is crooked. Sure there have been scandals and there will be more. But do you think that this just applies to online poker? The truth is that there are millions of players coming into poker every year at the bottom end. If you don’t stop seeing Indians behind every bush then the list of people who will get their money will not include you.

If you plan on winning poker tournaments you are going to have to be a fairly decent heads-up poker player. Just watch how Phil Ivey plays a final table and you will notice a significant difference between how he played the rest of the tournament. Poker tournaments are played in stages. You have a beginning, middle, late and Heads-Up stages. Obviously you want to get to the heads-up stage to play for all the marbles and we are going to show you what to do when you get there.

Hand Ranges
Typically hand ranges will vary from player to player based on the stage of the tournament you are in and how the table is playing. However, if you are heads-up with another player all of that goes out of the window. You must open up your hand ranges from the typical play range most good poker players are used to. That means [A][x] is a very strong hand and should not instantly be discarded simply because of a weak kicker. Small and middle pairs take on significantly more value during a heads-up scenario because you are now willing to race for the prize against a strong un-paired hand like Ace King or Ace Queen. Many players still hold on to the mantra that you must play good hands to be a good player even when they are heads-up. If you believe that then you won’t be winning many tournaments.

Chip Count
Believe it or not your chip count affects the risk you are willing to take heads-up. Let’s face it. There are only 3 scenarios you are going to see chip wise when you are heads-up: 1. You have a big chip lead over your opponent and are very likely to win the tournament. 2. You are even in chips. 3. You are significantly behind in chips.

If you are sitting on a mountain of chips then you are going to call or push with just about any small or medium pair in hopes that your opponents desperation will result in a marginal hand at best to push with. Conversely, if you are even in chips each of you will be nickel and diming waiting for the opportunity to strike a meaningful blow to the others stack. Lastly, if you are short you are simply looking for a hand to get your chips in with hoping for the best. This is why when you are in the money you are looking for a big hand or pot so that you can double up again assuring that you get to the final table within the top five or six players at the table in chips. If you can do that then you will increase your chances of getting heads-up significantly.

Know Thy Opponent
By the time you are heads-up with your opponent you have been playing at the same table for a relatively significant amount of time. You need to be able to draw from information you gathered on previous hands even if you were not involved. That’s why you need to be paying attention during every hand on every player because you never know when you will be able to use that information. Heads-up play is one of the most interesting and some say even pure forms of poker. Why? Because it is more about the player than it is the cards. You are more likely to see big bluffs and power players than at any time in the tournament due to the prize money at stake.
The good thing about poker online today is that you actually can logon and play heads-up and work on your game. True, it is not the same as playing live but the fundamentals are and it would behoove you to put in some work for when you do get there.
Good luck!