Chris Ferguson - How To Win

By Chris Ferguson

PEOPLE OFTEN ASK VERY SPECIFIC QUESTIONS about how to be a winning tournament player.

• How many chips am I supposed to have after the first two levels?
• Should I play a lot of hands early while the blinds are small, then tighten up later as the blinds increase?
• I seem to always finish on the bubble. Should I tighten up more as I get close to the money, or try to accumulate more chips early on?

Surprisingly, all three questions have the same answer:

Stop trying to force things to happen. Just concentrate on playing solid poker, and let the chips fall where they may.

In fact, that’s the best answer for almost any specific tournament question. Here is a more useful question:

How much of a difference is there between ring game strategy and tournament strategy?

The answer: Not as much as you think.

Before you worry about adjusting for tournaments, concentrate on adjusting for the other players. The most important skill in poker is the ability to react to a wide range of opponents playing a wide range of styles. Players who can do this will thrive in both ring games and tournaments alike.

Many of the most costly tournament mistakes are the result of players over-adjusting for tournament play. Let’s look at these questions again:

How many chips am I supposed to have after the first two levels?

The short answer: As many as you can get.

Play your cards. Play your opponents. Do not try to force action simply because you think you ”need” to have a certain number of chips to have a chance of winning. You should be thinking about accumulating more chips, while trying to conserve the chips you already have. The more chips you have, the better your chances of winning. The fewer chips you have, the worse your chances.

Forget about reaching some magical number. There is no amount below which you have no shot, nor is there any amount above which you can be guaranteed victory. A chip and a chair is enough to win, and enough to beat you. Getting fixated on a specific number is a good way to ensure failure. Next question:

Should I play a lot of hands early while the blinds are small, and then tighten up later as the blinds increase?

Your play shouldn’t change much as the tournament progresses. Gear your play to take maximal advantage of your opponents, irrespective of how far along the tournament is. Most players are too loose in the early stages of a tournament. Rather than become one of these players, adjust for their play by doing the following:

• Attempt to steal the blinds less often
• Call more raises
• Re-raise more frequently

Likewise, when opponents typically tighten up later on, you should steal more often and be less inclined to get involved in opened pots. Again, this should be a reaction to the way your opponents are playing, not an action based on any particular stage of the tournament. Last question:

I seem to always finish on the bubble. Should I tighten up more as I get close to the money to avoid this, or try to accumulate more chips early on?

Usually the people asking this question are already tightening up too soon before reaching the money. In other words, they are over-adjusting to tournament play. Not only is it incorrect to tighten up considerably before you are two or three players from the money, but doing so is the surest way to finish on or near the bubble. Just play your best, most aggressive game, and try not to let your stack dwindle to a point where you can’t protect your hand with a pre-flop all-in raise. If you do, your opponents will be getting the right pot odds to call even with weak hands. Look for opportunities to make a move before you let this happen, even if it means raising with less than desirable holdings.

But wait. Surely the different payout structure means something, doesn’t it?

Yes, tournaments differ from live action in that you are rewarded for how long you last, rather than for how many chips you accumulate.

In ring game poker, the chips you save by folding are just are valuable as the chips you win by playing. In tournament play, the chips you save are actually more valuable.

Consider a typical $1,000 buy-in tournament with 100 players, where first place is worth $40,000 out of a total prize pool of $100,000.

At the beginning of the tournament everyone has 1,000 in chips with a value of $1,000. The eventual winner will have 100,000 in chips and in live action would be entitled to $100,000, but in a tournament it’s only worth $40,000. At the end, each 1,000 in chips is only worth $400. As your stack grows, the value of each additional chip decreases, which means you want to be slightly more averse to taking unnecessary risks in tournaments than you might be in live action. (And if you are at all averse to taking risks in live action, you’re probably playing over your bankroll.) Don’t overcompensate for tournament play. Most people would be better off making no changes at all, rather than the changes that they do make.

Having said all this, there are two cases where adjusting will help:

1. When you are just out of the money

If you are short stacked you need to be very careful when committing your chips, especially with a call.

If you have a large stack, look for opportunities to push the short and medium stacks around—especially the medium stacks. These players will be a lot less likely to want a confrontation with you, and it should be open season on their blinds and antes.

If you have a medium or small stack, you need to be a bit more careful. Remember, though, that the other players—even the larger stacks—don’t want to tangle with you, They just want to steal from you without a fight. Be prepared to push them around a little and even to push back occasionally when they try to bully you. This often turns into a game of Chicken between the bigger stacks to determine which large stack will let the other steal most of the blinds.

2. At the final table

Very little adjustment is necessary until you are one player away from the final table. Here, again, you should tighten up slightly because this is the next point where the payout structure handsomely rewards outlasting other players.

Once at the final table, look for opportunities to push around the other players, and the smaller stacks in particular. This is good advice throughout the final table.

What about heads up?

There are no more tournament adjustments necessary. You are essentially playing a winner-take-all freeze-out for the difference between first and second place.

Remember: Tournament adjustments should be subtle. It is rare that your play would be dramatically different in a tournament. When in doubt, just play your best game. And if you never adjust from that, you have a great shot at winning no matter what game you’re playing.

Action Dan Harrington - Bullying The Bully

By “Action” Dan Harrington

IT ISN’T EASY PLAYING AGAINST A SUPER AGGRESSIVE PLAYER. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I enjoy playing against a player that’s weak-passive, into a lot of pots, and just gives me the pots all the time. That’s the kind of player I like playing against. Against aggressive players, I have to play in a way that I’m not necessarily comfortable playing. But a lot of it is just a matter of will. Your will has to be stronger than their will. You have to force them to conform to what’s happening at the table, rather than having them force you to conform.

The best way to fight aggression is with aggression of your own—as long as you’re in the right position. You want the aggressive player to be in front of you. If you have the aggressive player behind you, well, you’re out of luck, because he’ll have position on you most of the time and it’s going to be tough to make moves.

But let’s assume he’s in front of you. When he opens up in middle position, you can adjust your play based on the fact that he doesn’t necessarily have as good a hand as a more conservative player who just opened up in middle position. If you have a hand like K-Q, you probably wouldn’t play that against a raise from a conservative player. You have to have a stronger hand than what your opponent has in order to play from that position, and K-Q doesn’t quite fit the bill. But against an aggressive player, who could be playing garbage, K-Q becomes a good starting hand.

You can choose a couple of ways of playing it. You can call and see if you can use your position to beat him after the flop—but because he’s an aggressive player, he might be able to maneuver and do things against you. So there’s a simple solution to that: Instead of calling, you take a chance and make a decent re-raise, like three times his raise or four times his raise, with the knowledge that (a) you rate to have a better hand, and (b) the aggressive player is not used to having a player re-raise him. Believe it or not, as aggressive as they are, they don’t want to play big pots. They want to play small- to medium-sized pots, manipulate the pots, and be able to outmaneuver you. This way, you’re telling him, You ain’t playing a small pot this time, you’re playing a big pot, and now you’re going to have to call or come back over the top of me.

Now, some of the aggressive players, if you do this too much to them, they’re going to say to themselves, he’s fooling around with me, and they’re going to make a stand. They are either going to call you, and then do something after the flop, pretend they have a hand; or they’re going to raise right away, and then you have to make up your mind whether to call or not.

The only consolation I can give you is, the aggressive player doesn’t want to get into this. So, if you think he’s a better player than you, that’s what you want to do, you want to make him uncomfortable. You do that a few times to him, and believe me, he’ll stop dead in his tracks. Aggressive players just don’t want to fool around with someone that does that to them.

There’s also a third option, besides calling or putting in a substantial raise, and that’s to put in a small raise. If you do this, the aggressive player will typically re-raise you, and since he probably has a weaker hand than normal for a re-raise, you can now carry it to the next level and re-raise him. Of course, you’re running into the risk that, this time around, he does have the good hand. Remember, just because an aggressive player raises all the time doesn’t mean when you get into a raising match with him he can’t have aces. He can have aces or kings, and you’re just out of luck.

Again, playing this aggressively isn’t really my style, and I’m not comfortable with it. But as long as I know the other guy is going to be uncomfortable, then that’s fine—I’m willing to suffer through it to force him to suffer through it.

Dan Harrington won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1995, and pulled off the astonishing feat of reaching the final table in both 2003 and 2004. His books, Harrington On Hold ’Em Volume I and Volume II, can be ordered through Two Plus Two Publishing.

David Williams - No Mucking Way

By David WIlliams

ABOUT 95 PERCENT OF THE TIME, I won’t show a hand if I don’t have to. I don’t want to give any information away for free, because when people have no clue how you work, that’s what gets them to do crazy things against you. But poker is all about playing the player, not just playing the cards, and if you know you can show someone something to get under their skin and it will make them play worse, then every now and then you should capitalize on that.

If I pulled off a bluff, I might like to needle the other player by showing it to him. Or maybe I’ll show my opponent one of my two cards, often the less significant card, just to make him wonder. I might show him a 3, just so he’ll say to himself, He raised me with a 3 in his hand?! When the other player is a target, someone whose head you can get into, then there are benefits to giving him that free information.

Here’s an example from an early-round hand at the World Poker Tour World Championship at the Bellagio in April: I had 10-7 and I raised from an early position, making it look like I had a big hand. The board came up K-9-7, giving me bottom pair, and I fired the flop, and one opponent called. On the turn came an A, so I bet it even bigger, hoping he’d think I had an A, and he called again. Then the river came a 7, and I bet it even bigger, because I now had trip 7s, which I was pretty sure was the best hand. The other guy folded. And I showed him my 10. So he was thinking, Did this maniac have pocket 10s and jam the whole way with an ace and a king up there, or did he have A-10, and how could he bet A-10 with a board of K-9-7? The guy just sat there thinking, What did you have? No clue I had 10-7. He couldn’t figure me out, and he just kept thinking about it, and it wore on him.

There’s something to be said for just mucking all the time, but there’s also something to be said for finding ways to create confusion and get guys on tilt. You establish yourself as an unpredictable player, so they just have no clue where you are and they always have to worry, What the hell does Dave have? He could have anything at any time!

It’s ironic, but you can make yourself harder to read by giving your opponent a little bit more information. And if he gets confused and angry, then you’ve put yourself at a huge advantage.

Men Nguyen - Down But Not Out, Words From The Master

By Men “The Master” Nguyen

PLAYING WITH A SHORT STACK might be a little bit different for me than it is for you. If you’re not a world-famous player with a bull’s eye on your head, then you don’t have to be so worried about people gunning for you, hoping to bust you. One time, a guy beat me and took an ordinary pot, and he acted like he just won the tournament. He jumped up and yelled, “I beat Men The Master! I’m going to go tell my son I beat Men The Master!” So when I’m short stacked, it’s risky for me to go all in, because I might get several players calling me, hoping to be the one to knock out Men The Master.

I was in a tournament recently in which I was down to my last $675 in chips. But I didn’t give up. I waited until I got a solid hand—in this case, a J-10. I knew if I limped in, people were going to raise. And I knew that if I pushed all in, several other players would call, trying to break me. So I was smart enough to just go in for $400, leaving myself $275. Then the guy behind me raised, everyone else got out of the way, and I was left with one-on-one, instead of having a bunch of people come in. It’s hard to win if you have four of five people in against you. But one-on-one, he’s holding two cards, you’re holding two cards, and whoever hits better on the flop, turn, and river wins it.

If you’re not a target, you can play differently, and there are situations where it’s wise to go all in instead of just raising a moderate amount. Here’s an example from the World Poker Tour Championship tournament in April, when I made a mistake—yes, even Men The Master makes mistakes sometimes—by not going all in with my short stack. I had K-6 of hearts. If I had a lot of chips, I might not have played it at all, but when you’re short stacked, you have to play some hands you’re not supposed to play.

I had about $10,000 left, and I raised $4,000. The big blind was $800, and my $4,000 wasn’t enough to discourage Tom Franklin in the big blind from calling me. If I had gone all in, Franklin might have thrown away his K-Q, but I didn’t raise enough, and both he and Phil Gordon called. The flop came K-3-3. I had no choice, I pushed all in. Phil Gordon mucked his hand, and Tom Franklin called. That was the end of it for me. I could have gotten Franklin out of the hand earlier by going all in, but instead I only raised about half of my stack and it backfired. When you’re short stacked, and you have a halfway decent hand, it can be a safer move to go all in before the flop, in the hope that some players holding better hands than you will choose to fold.

Here’s an important tip: When you’re short stacked, and the blinds are going to get to you and wipe you out before long, you should push it in the first decent hand you get where you’re not one of the blinds. The idea is, if you’re the big blind, and you get everyone to fold by going all in, then you’re not picking up many chips from other players—you’re mostly just collecting your own chips. But if you’re not one of the blinds, and you win, you’ve got the big blind and the small blind’s money.

Ultimately, you have to find some luck and some good cards to rally when you’re short stacked. Hopefully, some guy will think you don’t have a hand, think you’re acting out of desperation, and you can double your chips and come back. But you can’t wait too long for A-A or K-K or A-K. At some point, you have to take a risk. If you don’t take chances and make plays, you may last a little while, but you’re not going to win a tournament.

Online Poker Instruction

Chip Ferguson gives us some instruction for playing online poker. He is using Full Tilt in this example. Find more Poker Instruction Videos at SNGIcons.com

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Quick Tips From Johnny Chan

By Johnny Chan

NAVIGATING YOUR WAY THROUGH NEWBIES

When you play against a newcomer, someone you’ve never played a hand of poker with before, you just patiently watch and don’t try to run over him, because you can’t run over a sucker. A sucker doesn’t know any better, and that can make him difficult to play against initially. So just be patient and watch how he bets, how he plays his hands, and take it from there.

In the beginning, a lesser player may have certain advantages, especially against the pros with whom he has familiarity. But in the long run, he doesn’t have any advantages. The advantage almost always shifts to the better player.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

If you’re just starting out, play a lot of cheap poker games, play a lot of satellites. Get to know the players. Learn from the best—that’s how you become the best.

As far as practicing by playing online, it’s just not the same. When you play in a live tournament for big money, for real money, you’re going to be playing against players, face to face. Online, you can’t see your opponents. It’s not the same. So I wouldn’t suggest playing online for practice; I would suggest playing live in any satellite. There are satellites all over. When I learned how to play poker, I didn’t learn it online—I learned it from people, learning how to read people’s minds, playing people from all walks of life.

PARDON THE (LACK OF) EXPRESSION

There’s no trick to having a good poker face, really. It’s about practice. You learn over time, whether you lose or you win, whether you have exceptional cards or no cards at all, you react the same way. You have to think of the game in these terms: Each individual hand is not a big deal. Whether you lose this pot or you win this pot, you’re going to play a million more pots after that, so what’s the big deal? Keep everything in perspective, stay calm, and you’ll be less likely to give anything away with your face.

Howard Lederer - Observe And Learn

By Howard “The Professor” Lederer

t takes many skills to become a good poker player. We all know that poker is a game of bluffing, math, reading tells and patience. But we seldom hear about the importance of observation. Of course, it takes observation to acquire the information necessary to make good reads on your opponents. But I am talking about a different type of observation in this article. I am talking about the type of observation that allows you to learn from both good and bad players; the type of observation that allows you to assess your own game in an objective manner; and the type of observation that will allow you to see the skills that your opponents are teaching you every day—and use those skills to improve your game. I am talking about observing how your opponents play their hands, not how they look while they are doing it.

Chess, backgammon and bridge are games of perfect information. After each hand or game, you can see exactly why you won or lost. Poker does not afford you that luxury. The lack of perfect information in poker is one of the game’s great strengths. Unseen cards make it more difficult to improve because you often walk away from the table after a losing session not knowing whether your loss resulted from poor play or poor luck. Therefore, you need to glean all the information you can from the shown-down hands and exposed cards during play. This is one reason I don’t think that it can ever be correct to voluntarily expose your hole cards. You are simply giving free information to your opponents.

In chess there is a culture of study. Players pore over game after game of the top grandmasters. But they also study their own games. Often, a better player will find herself in trouble early in a game against a weaker opponent, but outplay her overmatched foe to pull out a victory. But when looking at the game later, there can be no denying that the weaker opponent did something right early to gain the advantage and the stronger opponent will come away improved from the encounter.

In poker, since the full story is not obvious, a losing player tends to be dismissed. To reach your maximum potential as quickly as possible you need to overcome this tendency and realize that a player who is not as good as you can still teach you a few things.

Let us say, arbitrarily, there are 1,000 skills that go into being the perfect poker player. Let’s further assume that you do 800 of those things well. Let’s also assume that a player who you have been beating for years has become adept at 700 of those skills. I can assure you that this hypothetical opponent does at least 50 things better than you. It would be folly to think that all 700 of his acquired skills fit perfectly into your skill set of 800.

If you only observe better players, you will be missing out on numerous learning opportunities. Find the things a weaker opponent does that give you the most trouble and see how you might incorporate them into your game. The simple act of testing to see if a play works or doesn‘t work for you will make you a better player. And, you certainly will be better prepared to beat that opponent the next time you play against him.

The focus required to learn from your opponents’ play has immediate benefit, too. By putting in the effort to observe, you will also see all the physical stuff that will allow you to make better reads. You will also get better tuned into your opponents’ moods and tilt factors. Focus can be an acquired skill. The more reasons you have to focus at the table, the more likely you are to do it. Your results will immediately improve as your table skills become second nature. Meanwhile, the extra information you acquire about your opponents and yourself will lead to faster overall improvement in your game. This is the kind of positive feedback loop that can get a poker career started the right way.

I like to say that every time I play poker, it is a learning experience. But that can be taken one step further. Every hand I observe is a learning experience. We all observe our opponents when we are in a hand with them. But it takes great discipline to do that when we are out of a hand. We can’t nor should we expect to be perfect poker observers. I will take phone calls at the table, get into deep discussions with my seated neighbors and sometimes have kibitzers sit behind me. These all distract from observation, but they are necessary activities for the social creatures that we are. However, when I find myself fully engaged in a game, I closely observe every hand, whether I am in it or not. There seems to be no effort. Hours can pass as I simply enjoy playing the game that I love. I play poker, I observe poker players, and I learn from those players. Which makes playing poker the next time that much more fun and profitable.

Making Adjustments

By Chris Ferguson

“Chris, what’s your playing style?”

I’m surprised at the number of times I hear this question while chatting online. Equally surprising is the number of different opinions people seem to have on the subject. I’ve heard it all: You’re too tight. You’re too loose. You’re tight-aggressive. You’re too passive. Actually, I never hear that last one. But I’ve heard all the others.

Which means I must be doing something RIGHT!

If you ask me (and many of you do), I don’t have a style—not one that you can so easily pin on me, anyway. Loose. Tight. Aggressive. I am all of the above, depending upon the circumstances. Putting opponents to the test

One essential element of playing winning poker is forcing your opponents to make difficult decisions. That’s why raising is almost always better than calling—it forces an extra decision on your opponent. To take this a step further, you will win more money forcing your opponents to make decisions when they are out of their comfort zone.

Here are some examples:

Your opponent is playing too tight before the flop?

You want to punish him for this, and the best way to do that if you are acting in front of him is to raise more often—be more aggressive. You’re going to start stealing a lot of blinds, which is great. But what if your inexperienced opponent catches on, and adjusts to your play? Interestingly, that’s even better. Now they start playing more hands pre-flop, and that’s where your edge really comes in. Anytime your opponents change their pre-flop style, they’re going to run into trouble later in the hand. A guy who usually plays nothing but very strong hands is not going to know what to do with weaker holdings later in the hand.

So either you steal a lot of blinds or force your opponent to play outside his comfort zone. It’s a win-win situation.

If a tight opponent raises in front of you, wait for a stronger hand to call. By playing tight when you are acting behind your opponent, you avoid losing money to his stronger hands. Again, if your opponent catches on, you’re forcing him to play more hands than he is used to up front, which will allow you can outplay him after the flop.

What about the guy who plays too many hands?

If I’m acting first, I’m going to want a better starting hand than normal. Most of the value from raising with marginal hands is derived from the possibility that your opponent will fold immediately. If your opponent has never seen suited cards he didn’t like, the value of marginal hands decrease, as he’s unlikely to lay down his hand to your raise. He may win more pots pre-flop, but this is more than offset by the extra money you’re going to make when you do see a flop with your stronger hands.

If a loose opponent raises me, I will be more likely to call or even re-raise instead of folding with weaker hands, and more likely to raise instead of calling with stronger hands. The reason I will frequently raise with weaker holdings is to take control of the hand, so I can pick up the pot later. Again, I am daring them to change their style. If they don’t, I am getting the best of it. And if they do adapt, once again they are like a fish out of water and prone to making mistakes later in the hand. Getting aggressive It’s important to have a lot of tools in your arsenal. First, it’s helpful to adjust to your opponents, to force them out of their comfort zone. But equally important, it will enable you to take advantage of your own table image when you have already been labeled as a tight or loose player, and to react accordingly.

Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey are known as extremely aggressive players. The only way they have been able to survive with this image is by being able to adjust to different opponents and slow down when appropriate. I have seen both of these players slow down, sometimes just before an opponent starts reacting to their aggression. They are somehow able to sense this. Other times they won’t adjust much, forcing an opponent to beat them at an unfamiliar game, which invariably leads to the opponent’s self-destruction.

One critical skill is the ability to pay attention. To everything. All the time. Not just when you’re in the hand. In fact, pay special attention when you’re not in the hand. Every hand your opponent plays gives you valuable information about how he thinks about poker, and how he’s likely to play hands in the future. If there’s an expert at your table, watch how he plays. See what plays he expects to work and think about the play and incorporate it into your game. See how they push weaker players out of their comfort zone.

Paying attention is the fastest way of figuring out an opponent, one of the best ways to learn and a great way to move up the poker food chain.

Save Your Bet

By Rick Fuller

One of the most common mistakes that can cost you a lot of money over the long haul is calling a bet on the river when you know you’re beat. It’s a huge leak for a lot of players—one I’m familiar with because I’m actively trying to remove it from my own game.

“Well, I’ve got pot odds,” you say to justify your call. But it doesn’t matter. In these situations, pot odds mean less than a marriage proposal from Britney Spears. Yet so many of us make the call anyway, thinking we have no choice. Earlier this year, I was playing in a $20/40 limit Texas Hold’em game. I was in early position and raised with pocket queens. A loose player behind me called, and another loose player re-raised all-in, making it $50 to go. A very tight, predictable player—I’ll call him Rocky—capped the action at $70. The big blind called, putting it back on me. I had $40 invested and wasn’t going to fold pocket queens. For only $30 more I was going to see a flop. I called and the player behind me called—making us five-handed with one dude all-in.

The flop: K-7-4, all spades.

The big blind and I both checked as I looked back at my cards to confirm that one of my cards was indeed the queen of spades. The loose player also checked, and Rocky bet out $20. The big blind folded—putting the decision on me. I was pretty sure Rocky had pocket kings. That’s what I put him on before the flop, and I was sure that all he would bet in this situation were a set of kings or possibly pocket aces with the ace of spades. (The way he played, there were no other hands with which he would’ve capped the action pre-flop.)

I was pretty sure he didn’t have aces because he didn’t check his cards after the flop. Although it’s possible that he would have remembered which aces he held, most players at this level will at least take a peek to double-check. Yep, I was almost certain that Rocky had flopped a set of kings.

Now I had to decide what to do. It was possible that one of the two players behind me had the ace of spades, but they both played a ridiculous amount of hands, so it was just as likely that they held any two random cards. I also knew that the player who was not all-in would be likely to draw to a lot of spades, including the jack or the ten. With the pot size at $360, I decided that making the $20 call was the right thing to do here. I threw in my chips casually and the player behind me folded—leaving just Rocky, All-In and me.

Burn and turn … six of spades.

I was watching Rocky’s face as the card came. He got a disgusted look that seemed genuine enough. I fired $40 toward the pot; Rocky thought about it for just a minute and reluctantly called, still looking perturbed.

The river … six of hearts—pairing the board. Rocky’s eyes lit up, and at that moment I knew I was beat.

I checked to him and he bet $40. It was at this point that I made the mistake that can cost a player a lot of money over the course of time. There was $500 in the pot and it was just $40 to give myself a chance to take it down. I figured that I had the pot odds to call—because if Rocky was bluffing and I was right about that only one time in 12, it was a profitable play. But there was a major problem with this line of thinking.

Rocky was a very tight, passive player who would have been more than happy to check and show down just about any hand except for the nuts. I knew this, but for some reason still decided to call. I did not have the pot odds because I knew that I was beat. Sure enough, Rocky rolled over the K-K for a full house, the exact hand that I knew he had.

Leak.

There are times when you simply have to ignore pot odds and lay down your hand. This applies to pot-limit and no-limit Hold’em games as well. A favorite ploy of many no-limit tournament pros is to make such a small bet on the river that their opponent feels they simply have to call. If there’s $4,000 in the pot and I bet $400, and you know that I will bluff at least one time in ten in this situation, then you have to make the call…right? No! If you know, either through a read or betting patterns in play that you are beat then you do not have to call. Save the chips for use in a better spot.

In limit Hold’em, one of the keys to success is the ability to “save bets.” I used to believe that earning an average profit of one big bet per hour made me a good player. But if that’s my goal as a professional, then in the hand described above, I had just blown my expected earnings for the hour. Errors like this one tend to really add up over the course of a single session, not to mention an entire year. Folding on the river when you know you’re beat—just a slight tweak to your game—can significantly increase your expected winnings—from 1 big bet per hour to 1 or even 2 big bets per hour.

That’s not to say that you should always lay down a hand to a river bet when you suspect you’re beat. If Rocky were the type of player capable of making a bluff in that situation, then I wouldn’t have been so confident about his pocket kings, and my decision to call would’ve been easy and correct. But, after playing together all night, I knew Rocky better than that—and thus I should’ve known better than to throw “just another $40″ into the pot, no matter how sumptuous it looked.

Rick Fuller is a former police officer from Seattle who has made it to two final tables in the World Poker Tour and two final tables in the 2004 World Series of Poker.

Money Management 101

By Kristy Gazes

GREED GETS YOU INTO TROUBLE. I’ll never forget, a couple of years ago, when I first started playing No-Limit tournaments, I went to the Commerce Casino, and there was a tournament starting that had a million-dollar guarantee. I walked into the room, and all you heard was, “Million, million, million.” Everyone was saying the word “million.” Money like that can make people act irrationally. It can make people enter more tournaments than they can really afford to enter, or play cash games with higher limits than they can really afford to play. If you want to be a financially successful poker player, you need to control your greed, you need to control your ego, and you need to have a system.

I play poker for a living, and I have a system that I’ve been using for over 12 years. I play at a certain limit, and if I lose three sessions in a row, I go down to the next level underneath. So if I’ve been playing $40/$80, I’ll go down and play $30/$60. And I have to win three sessions in that game to get back up to $40/$80. And I’ve gotten all the way down to $3/$6, or even $2/$4, from as high as $200/$400, but it’s a system that works. Some of it’s a silly superstition thing; if you’re running bad, you want to play smaller. But also, it prevents you from really going on tilt, it teaches you discipline, and it also improves your all-around game because you end up playing with a wide range of players, from new players to pros.

It’s really important to be organized and keep records. People kid themselves. Have you ever talked to anyone who admits that they lose online? Only about six percent of all players come out ahead online, so you’ve got 94 percent of the people lying. You have to keep records, because then you can see your hourly win rate, you can see what games you’re winning at, what games you’re losing at, and you can improve your game by tracking these things. If more people kept track and kept organized, they would be much more successful at gambling—but at the same time, it goes against the whole grain of gambling and the gambler’s mentality to approach it that way.

One key to money management, for me, is having a completely separate bankroll for poker, which you don’t touch for anything else. I even have a separate bankroll for tournaments. With live play, I like to have a bankroll way above the usual amount required to play a certain limit. People say for $40/$80, you need to have a $50,000-to-$60,000 bankroll. I think you should actually have double that amount to play that limit. You also need to be careful playing tournaments and be aware of how much you can afford in terms of entry fees. If you want to play all the big ones, it costs over $250,000 a year. There’s such a short-term luck factor involved with tournaments that if you’re playing too many, you’re always running the risk of going broke.

The biggest problem I see among poker players in cash games is that, pardon the expression, they eat little and s— big. In other words, when they sit down at a session and they win, they quit right away instead of playing for a while, and that’s when you should play longer. And when they’re stuck, they play for two days.

In tournaments, there’s a problem in terms of people taking shots. People play the little tournaments, the nooners, the online tournaments, and they build up their money slowly until they have enough to get into a five-dime WPT event. And then, boom, all their money’s gone. Rather than trying to satellite in, they just take a shot. Taking shots is why most people go broke.

Ego is another major problem that gets people into trouble. People aren’t willing to step down to smaller games, because they’re afraid someone will see them. But you can’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses. If the game is good and you feel good, keep playing. But if you feel intimidated or overmatched, get up. You can always go back the next day. Don’t ever sit in a game where you’re on scared money. If you have to play $5/$10 forever, then that’s what you have to do.

Money management isn’t sexy, but it’s essential to be successful at poker. I know a guy—one of the best players I know—he gets together $50,000, $60,000, $100,000 all the time playing $30/$60, and then he’ll hop into the $300/$600 game and just lose it all in one shot. That’s crazy. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t let the greed get you.

Kristy Gazes is considered one of the top mixed-game players in the world and recently established herself as a top tournament player as well by winning the FullTiltPoker.net Championship at Wynn Las Vegas in July.

Deebing Not Steaming

By Freddy Deeb

AT T

HE VERY FIRST TELEVISED WORLD POKER TOUR tournament, I was at the final table, and I took three bad beats in a short period of time. I was extremely frustrated, and I was close to losing my cool. So I got up and took a walk for a few minutes. The blinds were huge, and every hand was so crucial, but I left the table anyway. This wasn’t like Jennifer Harman getting up from the table on the telecast of this year’s World Series Main Event, which she did at a time when the blinds were still fairly inconsequential. This was difficult to do because the antes and blinds were so huge in my situation. But I did it anyway because I needed to take a walk, cool off, and put those bad beats behind me.

It all comes down to how you’re feeling. If you feel like you have to take a walk, just take a walk. Most players wouldn’t suggest doing it at blinds that high, but everybody’s different. If you have to clear your head, you have to. It’s better than shoving all your chips in with five-high the next hand.

When you’re steaming, you’re not thinking about the 5-2 you’re playing, you’re still thinking about the K-K or A-A you lost with. That’s your excuse for doing it. People don’t always move on completely to the next hand. They let the previous hand linger with them. And that’s the worst thing you can do.

A lot of times, people pick up a big hand and they lose with it, and all of a sudden, they’re in seven out of the next 10 hands. Instead of just sitting back and waiting for another good hand, they get out of control and they steam, and they end up blowing off some more money, which is the worst thing to do. When you lose with a good hand, I recommend that you actually play a little more tight than normal for the next few hands. On the flip side, if I win a big hand, I raise the next hand, automatically.

When you’re at the table with a player who’s steaming, you want to play marginal hands against them and put the pressure on them. Most of the time, the flop will come down, he’ll have a weak hand, and normally you can raise and he’ll just fold because he played a bad hand and didn’t hit the flop.

We all get good hands and bad hands. And we all take bad beats. It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you’re a bad player or a great player, you always run into some bad beats. The key is to minimize your losses. I see all the time, a player picks up pocket kings, a bad flop comes down, and whereas I might have lost $700 on the hand, he’ll lose $7,000 because he doesn’t realize that the flop is so bad, two kings are almost worthless after that flop. It’s like they’re hanging around just to have some kind of a bad beat story and cry about it. Instead of crying about it afterward, they should be thinking about the hand constructively: What did I do wrong there? Why did I lose so much money on this hand? Should I have done that, or should I not have done that? People need to learn from a losing hand and process what happened instead of getting all emotional about it. Two big rules of mine to close with: You should never play when you’re tired, and you should never play when you’re drinking, because your emotions are low under those circumstances. When you’re losing, your morale is down—it’s the same thing. If you see yourself not playing well, you should pick up and go and play again another time.

Kassem “Freddy” Deeb captured the million-dollar first prize in the 4th Annual UltimateBet.com Poker Classic this past October.

The Art Of Being Lucky

By Dennis Oehring

I REALLY LOVED THE MOVIE THE COOLER, starring Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Baldwin manages an old school Las Vegas casino, and Macy plays a hapless loser whose luck is so bad, it rubs off on anyone he is around. Baldwin employs Macy as a “cooler” to hang around people in the casino who are on winning streaks, knowing their good luck will immediately change when Macy’s bad luck rubs off on them. The movie got me to thinking about luck, and how much of a factor it plays in our game.

I think we all know people whom we consider to be lucky or unlucky. Are some people really luckier than others? Are some people born with inherent good luck, while others have inherent bad luck? Could genetics somehow play a factor? I really don’t know the answers to these questions, but I believe there are definitely things that we can do that will increase the amount of good luck that we experience. This column will try to analyze some of them, especially as they relate to tournament play, whether online or in brick-and-mortar casinos.

There are dozens of books and CDs out on how to play poker, most written by professional players with documented track records of success in the game. These books all seem to focus on improving our skill level, whether in tournaments, satellites, or middle- or low-limit games. The luck factor is mentioned very little.

To me, luck plays a much greater role in tournament play than in live games. Considering the number of players one has to weed through to get to the final table at the WSOP these days, it just can’t happen without getting lucky many times over—which makes Dan Harrington’s feat of getting there two years in a row that much more amazing.

There are many professionals who have referred to luck and its importance. Tom McEvoy says that a key to winning tournaments is to survive long enough to put yourself in the position to get lucky. Chris Ferguson estimates that winning a tournament is probably 75 percent luck and 25 percent skill. And Mike Caro has claimed that if you are three times as good as other opponents, in other words that much more skillful, you might expect to win one tournament out of 100.

So if luck plays such a big role, then why go to all the effort to improve our skill? Why not be content with simply understanding the rules of the game that we’re playing, knowing that a flush beats a straight and so on, and let it go at that? Well, I go back to what McEvoy says. The level of skill we develop will determine how long we stick around, which in turn gives us the opportunity to get lucky. In tournament play, skill buys time, and the longer we can hang around in a tournament, the greater will be our chance of getting into the money.

As an example, I was playing in a tournament recently at my local casino. It was a no-limit, $35 dollar buy-in with a maximum of three rebuys and one add-on at the break. The player seated to my right was younger than me, and I had not seen him before. He entered almost every pot, called almost every raise pre-flop regardless of the amount and the cards he was holding, had to exhaust his rebuys early, and, consequently, was the first player from our table to bust out. He won a pot or two, but I felt the choices he made as to which pots he entered definitely showed his lack of skill and experience. He simply didn’t give himself a chance to stick around.

So, with all of these books written about improving our skills, why isn’t more written about luck? Probably because we can’t measure it. It isn’t tangible. It’s not available at Home Depot or Wal-Mart, we can’t take pills that will boost its level in our systems. For most of us, some days we have good luck, while other days we don’t. The problem is, we never know when we will have it and when we won’t. We can sit in a ring game for hours and rarely enter a pot, then be dealt several unbeatable hands in a row, and then never see a winning hand again for the rest of the session. Personally, I once won five sit-and-gos in a row online, and then didn’t win another one for close to a week.

I worked in sales for many years, and competition between salespeople is similar to competition between poker players. In sales, they say that 80 percent of the money is made by 20 percent of the salespeople. I’ve read where only 10 percent of cash players actually make money playing poker, so that leaves a whopping 90 percent of us who are consistently losing. But when I look at the winners in my local casino, I see people who have made every effort to be on top of their game. They are not above reading the latest articles in poker publications on improving their skills, despite having years of play under their belts. They work at their game constantly.

In sales, I was once told that luck occurs when preparation meets opportunity. In poker, the opportunity exists at our home game, our local casino, our Las Vegas vacation, or on our favorite Internet site. The amount of preparation we put into becoming better players will determine whether the overall luck that occurs for us will be good luck or bad luck. Sure, experience counts for something, but being experienced often means that we will continue to make the same mistakes over and over because that’s the way we’ve always played. We have to be open-minded enough to be able to look at our game objectively and see where we can improve. Some players will take the time to do this, but I sense the overwhelming majority of players consider that to be too much work. As a result, they are the ones who are destined to stay in the 90 percent bracket.

Another important factor is attitude. Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, is credited with saying, “If you think you can, you can, and if you think you can’t, you’re right.” If you don’t believe you’re good enough to win a tournament, it’s doubtful you ever will. If you believe you will be successful and experience good luck at the tables, you will attract far more good luck while competing than by believing otherwise. Caro is a proponent of this philosophy.

I hear all the time at my local casino references by many players as to how lucky one particular player is. There’s that guy who always cashes out several racks in live games and is a fine tournament player. I love what Ferguson has said about guys like this: “Show me the guy who everyone thinks is the luckiest person in poker, and I will show you the best poker player.” Is this person inherently luckier than others? That seems unlikely. My guess is that he has done everything he can do to prepare himself, including having a positive attitude and strong belief in his abilities, and luck just seems to come to him naturally and consistently as a result.

How many times have we heard the term “river rat,” referring to the player who pulls out the best hand on Fifth Street? And how often have we heard the winner, while stacking his chips, say with a smile, “I’d rather be lucky than good any day?” Well, personally, I’d rather be both. Wouldn’t you?

Dennis Oehring is a freelance writer based in Las Vegas.

A Matter Of Trust

By Amir Vahedi

IN ANY POKER HAND, OBVIOUSLY YOU START by collecting information, analyzing your hand, and coming up with possible hands that your opponent can have. After you make a judgment based on the information you’ve been getting, here comes the test: Are you willing to act on it? Are you willing to put your money on your read? When somebody bets the flop, will you raise back? Or if you put the guy on some hand and you have a beautiful hand—but you know you’re beat—will you let it go?

Nine out of 10 mediocre players would contradict themselves, because they’re not able act on their judgment. That’s where the guts come in. It’s not about jumping in a fire. It’s about acting based on your judgments. Over a period of time, you might be wrong sometimes; but sooner or later you become so good, that nine out of 10 times, you’re right.

If you don’t act on your reading, you become a very confused player. The only way you can get into a pot is by having a monster hand. That’s what I call lazy poker, when you just sit down and wait for the hand. I can assure you, even if you get pocket aces every 20 minutes in a tournament, it doesn’t guarantee you winning the tournament, because one of those is gonna be cracked.

So why don’t you create your own situation? After all, it’s a game of skill. If you want to play a game of luck and want to sit down and wait for the dealer to hand you two cards, you might as well go play blackjack. This is a game of intelligence, and the people who play it that way are using their intelligence to benefit. You want somebody from outer space to come tell you what to do? No. You’re the boss. So you better have faith in your own judgment.

If you see your judgment is wrong too often, that means your information gathering is not good. The advice I give my students: Get out of that dark black hole that’s called your own hand. Stop paying too much attention to that. The fact is, you never know the value of your hand, unless you know who you’re going against and have a preliminary idea of what your opponent is holding. Let me give you an example:

If a guy half your size comes running to pick a fight with you, if you’re a smart person, you think, This is way too easy. But it’s not about running away from a fight. You have to know what the other guy’s abilities are. If he’s a karate expert, you pick up some type of weapon and go fight him. It’s about balancing the skill—and always making sure you have an advantage.

That’s how it goes in poker. Before you even focus on your cards, “squeeze” the other guy’s hand. Try to figure out what you’re going against. Try to figure out if it’s likely the guy’s playing A-K this way or a big ace, pocket pair, or a middle pair that way. That way it gives you an idea of what you need to go against them.

I try to get a feel for the table in the first five or 10 minutes. Some of these guys are pros. I know how they react under pressure, what they do, how they like to play, what types of hands they like to take advantage of or get into the pot with, what type of raise they make. For people you don’t know, you have to be a good people person. You have to be interested and know what type of personality you’re dealing with.

Try to find out what kind of background the guy has. Especially in a cash game, any wrong decision can cost you big money. Talk to them, create contact, or listen to them talk to somebody else. There is so much information you can use. If the guy is behind on his rent, it means he would not put his money on the line with bad cards. Another guy doesn’t care, he’s drinking left and right, he’s talking to the other guys, he’s not paying attention. So with this guy, you have to be extremely careful, have a hand, and make him pay.

Ninety-five percent of the game is about the actual opponent, not the hand that you’re holding. I’ll get into the pot with any two cards if I know what my opponent has, because now I know what I have to catch and I take advantage of those opportunities. I work harder than my opponents. I sit down and pay attention and then cash in on that information.

How you make your money in poker is important. Do you do it blindly in any business? No, you don’t. You have to know what you’re doing. You have to know your surroundings. If you don’t have enough information from somebody, you’re not paying enough attention. You’re trying to make a perfect read, and you say, “Wow, it didn’t work. I’m very unlucky. The guy’s crazy.” He’s not crazy. You should’ve figured out that this guy’s not laying this hand down.

In the meantime, you may catch a real hand. But that’s your bonus. You’re not depending on that. You’re depending on cashing in by isolating and grabbing somebody that you know how to deal with. If you find out that there are three people at the table you know how to deal with, stay away from the other guys! There’s no gun to your head that you have to play with every single person. Try to focus on those three until you get information about the other guys. Use the information you have to your benefit, and don’t let the information you don’t have hurt you.

Shake It Up

By Erick Lindgren

THE FIRST THING MOST PEOPLE THINK OF with regard to mixing up your play is the notion of occasionally playing weak starting cards just to keep your opponents honest. That’s fairly obvious.

But just as important is the idea of not playing too many hands, even if your cards are strong. Cards, initially, will dictate how you play. But let’s say you get five or six big hands in a round. If those hands go unseen by your opponents, and you’re out there raising a lot, your opponents are going to think you’re goofing off more than you are. So you actually may need to tighten up the next round.

I like to call it “playing with the flow.” You need to play with a flow that allows people to believe you’re playing good hands most of the time. For the typical player, it’s important that your opponents believe that you’re not goofing off, but it’s also important that you’re playing enough hands to remain seemingly dangerous.

And playing with the flow isn’t just about which starting cards you play. It’s about how you play with them. You need to mix it up using every tool possible. For example, I’m not a big fan of re-raising before the flop early in a tournament; I like to see a lot of flops and play with a little more information. But, occasionally, re-raising is a good way to add chips if people perceive you as being fairly tight. Say you just have a J-10, and a guy’s raising a lot of pots. If you put in a pretty cute re-raise, not too big, a lot of times the other guy will fold.

Also, don’t be afraid, early in a tournament, to just flat call your opponent with a big hand, even aces, kings, or queens, just to disguise it. You have to throw a lot of different looks at your opponents. You don’t want to be predictable. And don’t be afraid to play after the flop, especially if you have position.

Position is something that’s always important to keep in mind when mixing up your play. If you come and join us at a WPT event or at a World Series of Poker circuit event, an event where we get 10,000 in chips, there is a lot of post-flop play early. So, say you’re starting with 50/100 blinds, and a guy makes it 300, don’t be afraid to just call the guy when you have position, when you have an 8-9, or even a 7-6, preferably suited. You can call somebody with a lot of junk, as long as you’re in position. You’ll be a real thorn in somebody’s side if, every time they raise you, you call with position on them. It gets really frustrating to that person.

What stage of the tournament you’re at is also crucial. Playing with the flow is more prevalent early in the tournament, when there’s a lot of post-flop play. Depending on the structure of the tournament, a lot of times, when you reach the final table, the blinds and antes are pretty high compared to the chip stacks. That takes away a lot of the post-flop play, so then you’re not necessarily playing with a flow, and instead you want to be super aggressive, re-raise people when you think they’re weak, and really put them to a decision. You essentially go back to the approach that Doyle Brunson always advocated for poker, and that’s putting your opponent to a decision for all of his chips.

But earlier in a tournament, you don’t have to be quite so aggressive. You want to mix it up and play with the flow. You have to make it difficult for your opponents to figure you out. You have to keep them guessing.

Erick Lindgren, who recently released a book entitled Making The Final Table, plays poker at FullTiltPoker.com.

One On One Poker - Advice to Win at Heads Up Poker

Antonio Esfandiari dishes essential advice for using unrelenting aggression to get ahead in heads-up play

Author: Antonio Esfandiari

THE MAIN PRINCIPLE OF HEADS-UP PLAY to keep in mind is that it’s very difficult to make a hand. Even if you flop bottom pair, you probably have the best hand. If you flop top pair, you probably have a monster, even if you have the worst possible kicker. So what you want to do when playing heads up is never give up. You want to play almost any two cards. You always want to bet, and you always want to see flops. You have to be aggressive, plain and simple.

Say you’re in a pot and there’s a little bit of money in before the flop, and you’re first to act after the flop; in that situation, I almost always recommend putting a little bet out there because it really puts a lot of pressure on your opponent. If he doesn’t have anything, in order for him to bluff, he has to call your bet and raise you three or four times as much—meaning he has to commit a lot of his chips to make a move on you. Conversely, if you just check and he bets, now you have to face the same dilemma. When you’re first to go in a heads-up pot, no matter what happened before the flop, if you bet out, it puts a lot of pressure on the other guy because chances are he didn’t connect with the flop.

In heads-up play, a lot of the time neither you nor your opponent are making hands. So it’s who is in there stealing those pots when no one has anything that’s going to come out ahead. If you have an ace, you probably have the best hand. If someone raises, you just come over the top. And if you get your money in with K-J, and the other guy has A-7, sure he has the best hand, but you’re not even a big underdog at all.

Very rarely should you fold before the flop. If you have a 9-7, you don’t want to be folding to just a little raise. You have to play that hand. You have to play hands, and you have to keep betting. The only hands you want to be folding are crap like 7-2 or 2-3. Unless it’s a terrible hand, you should be playing it every time—at least calling if not raising.

Basically, what you want to do is get your opponent so sick of you being in there all the time that he’s going to start taking stands with hands like A-7. He’s just going to go crazy, and hopefully you’ll have something. People are often not prepared for the onslaught of aggression that you throw at them. You want to take the other guy out of his comfort zone and just jab, jab, jab as much as you can to get him thinking, Wow, this guy’s crazy, and hopefully you’ll have the better hand when the guy puts all his money in.

Of course, there are times to be cautious. When you raise and your opponent re-raises, that’s often your signal to let it go. In any kind of poker game, when someone puts in big money and they’re committing their whole stack, they usually have a hand. That’s why you want to jab. You don’t want to put in big money on a bluff. You want to just take little jabs.

But I don’t recommend slow-playing in heads-up action. When I played Daniel Negreanu at the National Heads-Up Championship, he raised on the button, and I smooth-called out of the big blind with pocket tens. If I re-raise there, and he moves me in, I’m either a 50-50 with my tens, or he’s beating me. But if I just call, he’s never going to put me on a pair of tens. So I just smooth-called, and when the flop came 10-7-2, most people would check that big hand, but I disagree with that. Always bet out your big hands, because the other guy’s not going to think you flopped a big hand. So I bet out, Daniel came over the top, and we got all the money in. He never put me on a set, and he told me that was a great bet.

Here’s a mistake I made in that same Heads-Up tournament: When I played against Phil Hellmuth, I had him full-blown steaming, and I was just picking on him. I was just raising him and raising him and he just kept folding and folding. He was just waiting for hands. And, eventually, he started making hands, and I didn’t adjust my game and slow down. I sensed the momentum turning, and I didn’t go with it. You have to know when things are going your way and when things aren’t going your way, and when things aren’t going your way and you’re losing pots, stop. Put the brakes on. Kick back a little bit. But when you’re winning, of course, keep jamming.

But the main thing is, people fold too many hands. If you have 9-7, and it comes Q-9-3, and the opponent bets, a lot of people fold with second pair. That’s a mistake, unless you have some great read on the other guy. In heads-up, second pair is a monster. You can’t let your opponent bluff you into folding a monster.

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Short-Handed Goals

An exploration of the strategic adjustments you should make for short-handed play, through the eyes of two-time WSOP bracelet winner Mark Seif

The folks running the 2006 World Series of Poker made a highly controversial decision when the time came to start this year’s 25th event, the $2,000 No-Limit Hold ’Em Shootout. With 600 players signed up, rather than start with 60 tables of 10, as would be expected, the WSOP organizers chose to go with 100 tables of six, leaving themselves with nice, neat tables of 10 later in the tournament. Some players were aghast at on-the-fly decision, others were not. One pro who certainly didn’t mind too much—at least not from a strategic point-of-view—was Mark Seif. That’s because Seif, an on-air analyst for the Professional Poker Tour and one of the stars of Absolute Poker’s stable, has the utmost confidence in his short-handed skills, which were precisely what was needed to survive the first round with only six players at each table.

“Poker, of course, is highly situational,” Seif explained to ALL IN, giving the standard disclaimer he gives as an instructor who teaches at WPT Boot Camps. “The opponents I’m up against, the amount of my stack, the amount of their stacks, the structure of the blinds and antes, how long the rounds are—all of that is critical to determining how you’re going to play, whether it’s short-handed or full table. But clearly those elements are more of a factor in short-handed play, because (a) hand values go up as the number of players go down, and (b) you have to make more difficult decisions with more marginal hands. And that’s why most people believe it takes more skill to be good at short-handed play or even heads-up play than at a full table. You simply have to make tougher decisions holding more marginal hands.”

Seif likes to illustrate his point with an exaggerated example.

“Let’s say we’re at a 20-person table. What hands would you play if you’re under the gun? You’re waiting for aces, kings, or A-K. Why? Because with 20 hands out there, chances are very good that somebody’s going to have a very big hand, and with 20 people getting cards and who knows how many seeing the flop, you’re going to have to hit the flop pretty hard or have the nut draw in order to stay in the hand. The opposite is true too. When you’re heads-up, you don’t have to hit anything. Any hand that has any sort of showdown value, meaning it can win without improving, is a pretty good hand heads-up: any ace; sometimes, any king; certainly any pair, even deuces. At a short-handed table, I’m going to play hands like J-8 and J-9 far more often than I would in a full ring game. And if I’m playing heads up, I may even raise on the button with a hand like J-9 suited.”

Using those exaggerated examples, you can see how vastly different the starting-hand requirements are with 19 opponents versus a single opponent. Though the degrees are obviously diminished, the same basic principles hold true as you adjust from nine- or 10-handed to, say, five- or six-handed. And no matter how many players are at the table, if you’re going to play a hand, you typically want to raise pre-flop to make it as short-handed a situation as possible after the flop.

“The most dramatic change in how you’re going to play comes in the difference from heads up to three-handed,” Seif explained. “You want to try to get heads up after the flop, because if there’s a third player in the hand, you’ve doubled the number of opponents  you’re up against.

“The only way to win a No-Limit tournament is to get heads up as often as possible. And the reasons for that are simple. The first reason is, you have the highest likelihood of winning the pot when you are heads up. Even aces, against several opponents, is not a favorite to win the hand. It’s the most favored, but it’s not a favorite to win. And another reason why you want to get heads up as often as you can is it gives you the best opportunity to outplay your opponent. If you see a flop five ways, somebody’s going to hit that flop, and no matter what I want to do, I’m not going to be able to do it.”

When playing short-handed poker, the blinds come around that much more often than at a full table, so you have no choice but to play more hands—and if you’re paying attention, you have the opportunity to learn about your opponents that much more quickly.

“With short-handed play, it’s much easier to identify who the strong players are and who the weak players are, because like I said, you’re forced to make more decisions and you have to play more marginal hands. That’s a very important concept,” Seif emphasized. “If you’re four-handed or five-handed, and you notice that one guy’s hardly playing at all, that’s a weakness, that’s a red flag. In the wild, that would be a gazelle with a limp. You will be able to determine who is weak and who is strong more quickly when you’re short-handed. Are they capable of that check-raise bluff? Are they going to bet or raise with a draw on the turn, relying on that fold equity? How do they play the nut flush draw when it’s checked to them on the flop? It takes a lot longer to get the answers to those questions at a full table.”

And that’s part of why Seif had no problem with Day One of the $2,000 Shootout event becoming a short-handed affair. Short-handed play favors the superior players, those who can get inside the minds of their opponents and who can play marginal hands with maximum effectiveness.

And wouldn’t you know, Seif won his six-handed table. Even though he was nearly eliminated very early on, he battled back and proved that, whether short-handed or short-stacked, he’s never short on self-belief.

The G-Spot: Calling for Value

Poker Instructional: How to bet against passive & aggresive players and extract maximal value from your hands. When thinking about how to extract maximal value from our good hands, our minds usually turn towards aggressive play. We think about the bet amount that will yield the highest possible profits. Against passive opponents, this instinct to bet is usually correct. Against aggressive opponent, it can cost you money. Don’t Deter Aggressive Opponents Some opponents pounce on any signs of weakness. Check the turn to them after betting the flop, and they will bet into you. Some of them will call you with absolutely nothing on the flop with the intention of bluffing on the turn or the river–especially when scare cards hit. However, if you continually show aggression, these opponents will fold.

Your aggressive opponents will bet with a much larger range of hands than they will call with. When you have monster hands, trap these opponents for lots of chips by raising the bets you induce from them. When you have good (but vulnerable) hands like top-pair-top-kicker, simply call these opponents down. Think of Value Betting in Position on the River To consider why check-calling with good (but vulnerable) hands can sometimes be optimal, let’s think about when to bet in position on the river. When you’re last to act on the river and a single opponent has checked to you, a good value bet is one which will be called by a worse hand more than half of the time. Your opponents’ calling distribution determines the efficacy of a value bet. Extending this line of thought, to determine how to get the most value out of your hands, simply weigh your opponents’ calling distributions versus their betting distributions. Viewing things through this filter, it becomes clear that: 1.) You get value by playing aggressively against passive opponents because their calling distributions are much wider than their betting distributions 2.) You get value by playing passively against aggressive opponents because their betting distributions are much wider than their calling distributions Playing passively may result in you having to make some tricky decisions, but when it comes down to it, it’s all about playing the distribution match-ups. Provided that your read on your opponents’ betting and calling distributions are accurate, you’ll come out ahead in the long run. Everything Is Situational Of course, you shouldn’t always be aggressive against passive opponents, and you shouldn’t always be passive against aggressive opponents. As long as you realize that “calling for value” is a valid line of play, you’ll be fine. See beyond the tight-aggressive rhetoric from the pundits, and realize that passive play can be just as much of a weapon as aggressive play. The keys, as always, are using the right weapon for the right job and having a logically defined reason for every action you take. Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers.