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Tommy Angelo's book, Elements of Poker, has already achieved the status of “classic” and “the best poker book ever” in the hearts and minds of many.
This June, he's our resident experts.
I have spent a lot of time in these columns talking about bad beats, downswings and tilt, which are all related to luck, but sometimes it pays to take a step back and look at the more fundamental question. What exactly constitutes luck in texas holdem?
The first thing to realise is that luck in texas holdem is more or less zero-sum. Any money that you win at poker comes from the other players in the game. Therefore any piece of good luck you experience directly corresponds to bad luck experienced by your opponents either singly or collectively. Likewise any piece of bad luck you experience is reflected in good luck for your opponent. It’s not quite a perfect model, because all the time we have the rake chipping away at our stacks, acting as a leech on the ‘good luck pool’. But for practical purposes we can consider luck to be zero sum. If somebody’s gutshot hits, somebody’s top pair, or other winning hand, got drawn out on. If player A is getting no good cards, then players B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J are collectively winning more than their fair share of pots, with hands that might otherwise have lost.
The logical conclusion is that in any given period about 50% of hold'em players are going to experience more than their share of good luck (be lucky), while the other 50% will experience less than their share (be unlucky). What’s more, over the long term nearly all players will experience luck that approaches ‘average’. Lots of individual pieces of good luck and bad luck, but overall they will largely cancel each other out. Interestingly though, you will rarely find a poker player who considers himself lucky, but you will find hundreds that will swear they are the most unlucky player in the world. This is usually attributed to two factors:
In my last column we looked at the four stages of tilt, where each stage represents a better response (and a better underlying attitude) than the last. To recap the four stages:
Stage 1 – Anger
A player at stage 1 sees only the monetary value of a pot that he loses. When he loses a big hand, his initial reaction is to be angry
Stage 2 – Frustration
Players at stage 2 have learned to remove the more destructive emotions from their reaction when they lose a big pot. Losing big pots will still be painful, but this pain manifests itself more as frustration than anger.
Stage 3 – Acceptance Players at stage 3 understand and accept the realities of poker. They understand that texas holdem contains a lot of short-term luck, and as a result they are destined to lose big pots sometimes.
Stage 4 – Indifference A player at stage 4 will not register any mental anguish from losing a big pot. Rather than feeling anger, frustration, or even acceptance of the texas holdem hand, he will be focused entirely on how his opponents played and what can be learned from the hand. Whether he won or lost is an irrelevant detail.
To further illustrate the difference between the stages, let’s look at a limit texas hold'em strategy hand example from the point of view of a representative player whom we will call Rick.
Breaking Down a Short-Handed Limit Hand
by Matthew Hilger
I recently played an interesting hand during a short-handed 6-max limit hold'em game. The limits were $30-$60. I was in the small blind and the villain was in the big blind.
It was folded to me and I raised with J-T of spades. I love raising with hands like Q-J or J-T. If you don’t hit a pair on the flop, you can still safely bet an A or K by representing top pair. This gives you a high percentage of flops (see texas holdem odds for more info on calculating flop percentage) where you can safely represent some type of good hand.
Welcome to the final part of this series on heads-up limit texas hold’em. In this part we will be looking at the different types of opponent you will encounter and give tips on how to play against them. (see putting someone on an exact hand, in our texas holdem strategy section) Remember that opponent selection is everything when playing heads-up. If your sole opponent is as good or better than you, or even slightly worse, then you will lose money in the long run. Also the game will be vastly different depending on who your opponent is. Think how different a full ring game becomes when a maniac sits down. Well imagine that times ten and that is how much a heads-up game changes when you get a different opponent. There is no such thing as a ‘regular’ heads-up game. How you play should depend entirely on your opponent and each game will be a little bit different.
Remember, the key to successful heads-up limit play is to have a loose, aggressive and unpredictable game. Naturally, this means that opponents who are tight, passive or predictable are the easiest to beat. So to start with we will look at these types of opponents, those who are missing a piece of the three-piece jigsaw.
Welcome to part three of this four-part series on heads-up limit hold’em. Last month we looked at the basic strategy needed to be successful at this game. The first truth we identified is that nearly every question can be answered with ‘it depends’. While this is true in other forms of poker too, it is especially true heads-up. However, we did identify three cornerstones that must be part of your game. You must play:
Loose – Always pre-flop and usually post-flop against the majority of opponents.
Aggressively – You need to play with frequent (but not mindless) aggression.
Unpredictably – Against all but the very worst opponents.
I have a rule on the river that I follow religiously which I appropriately call “The River Rule” - Never try to make a good laydown on the river in Limit Hold'em.
Given the river rule, it isn't easy to get opponents to fold on the river given the size of the pot; however, there are situations here and there which arise which will give you an opportunity to try and steal the pot. The most common example is when you are on a draw and you continue to bet the river hoping that your opponent will fold a busted draw or weak pair.
Most players love to discuss hands when the value of their hand is not so clear. They love discussing middle pairs, or A-K when they miss the flop, or whether or not a bluff is justified in a hand. You don't hear too frequently players discussing hands when they have flopped the nuts (or close to it). The difficult decision of whether to play or fold is eliminated and the betting thereafter seems rather straightforward. However, it is important to make sure you maximize the value of your hand when you flop the nuts. The decision often details whether you should slowplay on the flop or not.
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This month I want to talk a little about luck. 
