31 August 2012
Twitter Feeds and Table Draws
The Hendon Mob website recently added the option for players to include their Twitter feeds on their database entries. This presents in interesting quandary for players: to add it or not?
03 August 2012
Bluff-catchers
By Ben Jackson
In general, if I have a hand that is just a bluff-catcher, I try to keep the pot as small as possible by checking back on either the flop or turn to bluff-catch the river. So the action usually goes bet-check-call or check-call-call, and most the time you are in a spot where you beat no value hands so you need to work out whether your opponent is bluffing or not on the river. There are two hands I recently played which are interesting and illustrate the principle.
31 July 2012
Juicy Game?
Live tournament poker constantly evolves and Vegas during the World Series is a good place to assess the current mood. Whatever trend catches on there usually echoes across the poker world. If that’s so, then this summer’s vogue won’t be so popular with players. After the evolution to deep structured tournaments, it seems a few major casinos are beginning to count the costs.
29 June 2012
Crazy Rules, Tight Frenchies and the “Float-donate” move
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.
How to Make Tricky Flops Profitable
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.
28 June 2012
Punching myself repeatedly in the head
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.
14 June 2012
The Thin Red Line
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 OOP
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.
05 June 2012
Would You Believe it?
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.
31 May 2012
A Free Man in Paris
By Alex Rousso
Travelling abroad to play poker always has a double edge to it. On the one hand, you’re on holiday and you should enjoy yourself. When you bust out of the tournament you’ve got a vibrant new city to explore, rather than the standard bus ride home haunted by thoughts of whether you should have played the hand differently. The flipside is that, given you are on holiday, how much a grind should the poker be?