By Paul Jackson
Ben and I, along with Barny and Ross Boatman, were representing Genting Poker at the Dublin UKIPT. The Citywest Hotel is a bit out of the way but, situated on a golf course, it’s a pleasant location, and in any event where you get a lot of Irish poker players together, there will always be plenty of action and drinking and fun.
If you’ve been following the series of articles you should now know how to play a balanced range and be able to read opponents’ ranges from each position pre-flop. Now it’s time to maximise profits on certain flops and to see how our opponents react. The difference in skill between regular online players is very small pre-flop but some have major weaknesses post-flop. Detailed below are some areas in which you can exploit this.
Cirque du Soleil founder and first poker player in space Guy Laliberté isn’t afraid to put his money in the biggest pots. At this year’s World Series of Poker, he’s convinced several dozen people to do the same – for a $1,000,000 buy-in charity tournament.
It’s no secret that these days online games are much tougher than they used to be. The phrase “a hard way to make an easy living” was once an maxim delivered with a wry smile, as if we all knew it wasn’t so bad.
This isn’t a history lesson about the Crimean War or Sean Penn films. It’s all about the Non Showdown Winnings/Losses, often called the “Red Line” on most tracking software. In simple terms, a downward-sloping red line is caused by a player putting money into the pot and folding. For the reverse to happen, you need to make your opponent fold.
Playing draws out of position can be very tricky and different players play them differently. Ben Jackson explains how to make the best of it.
Balls to the Olympics. There, we said it! The real British hope for gold this year lies within the hole cards of our heroic poker players. Here we profile young British players yet to win bracelets who we think will shine in Vegas this summer. With apologies to the likes of Ben Vinson, Priyan de Mel, Jon Spinx, Rob Akery, Ketul Nathwani, Marc Wright, Ben Jackson, Stuart Rutter, Laurence Houghton… (we could go on forever).
By Paul Jackson
Poker analysts go on about the importance of having a plan when you’re playing a hand (normally in a less than routine spot) and that is a very sound and sensible piece of advice. The biggest leak of many players is not to think logically and to make random decisions whenever it happens to be their turn to act; decisions which have little or no relation to the one they acted on eight seconds earlier.