With over 200 wins, 1000 final tables, & over 6 million dollars in both live texas holdem and internet poker tournament cashes, the authors analyze real texas holdem hands to demonstrate their thought processes & strategies they use.
The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success
By Ian Taylor, aka Piemaster and myself, Matthew Hilger. At the risk of sounding too self-promoting, I can honestly say that for some texas holdem players this will be the most important
internet poker book that they ever read. As the sub-title suggests, a good understanding of the concepts in this internet poker book is essential if you want
to
succeed. Players at all levels ought to gain new insights from the book, or at least reinforce ideas that they already have.
1. How often does each starting hand win against a specific or random hand?
2. What are the odds of your opponent holding a pocket pair when he raises?
3. What is the probability that an over-card will flop when you hold JJ?
4. How do you determine if drawing is profitable or not Texas Hold'em Odds & Probabilities answers all of these & more. Every poker decision you make is in some way related to odds & probabilities.
Internet Texas Holdem : Winning Strategies from an Internet Poker Pro
A comprehensive overview of Texas Holdem including general internet poker concepts such as probability and odds, bluffing, raising
& check-raising. Various deceptive tactics are also discussed such as free cards, slowplaying, and inducing bluffs and calls. You'll
learn the correct texas holdem strategies for starting hand play as well as playing on the flop, turn, and river, & the the differences in strategies between Internet and live play & practice on over 200 actual hands.
Internet Texas Holdem provides it's services for free, funded partly by Internet Poker Rooms. So make sure to use Internet Texas Holdem's Bonus Codes for signups & deposits
I've been fortunate enough to cash in three of the last four main events at the World Series of Poker. Looking back, I've learned a lot about playing in the main event, and I think I probably haven't exploited bubble situations as much as I should have. This column will share some of those lessons.
Before discussing the WSOP bubble, we need to first define what a bubble is. Typically, players refer to the cash bubble and the final-table bubble. These are the two most distinct "bubbles" in a tournament. Most players want to cash, especially when getting close to the money. There is also a certain amount of distinction and accomplishment that comes with making a final table, so players often refer to the final-table bubble. The World Poker Tour has a distinct TV bubble, since it shows only the final six players on its broadcast.
The World Series of Poker has another bubble that most players don't recognize. I call it the day-one bubble. It is a unique bubble situation, probably unlike any other tournament, as there is no cash on the line. The day-one bubble is simply the result of so many players who are playing the main event whose primary goal is to survive day one (note that players typically don't make the money until day three of the main event).
This may surprise many, but it is indeed a special situation that can be exploited. In 2005, I was sitting at a table of unknowns, except for Doyle Brunson. I was on an amazing early run, busting out many players, including Doyle, and was the chip leader after a few hours of play. One particular player at that table still sticks in my memory. She was a rather young schoolteacher, and basically a beginning poker player who was very much out of her league and playing extremely tight. She commented, "I just want to survive until day two." She was the one who enlightened me regarding the day-one bubble. There are many other players just like her who just want to survive until day two. Once players make the dinner break, they start sensing that this "achievement" is within their grasp.
This is a great time to pour on the aggression against the amateur players who appear to have this goal. They will be playing tight, not looking to bluff, and will be playing very straightforward poker. These are great players to play against, as you can steal so many pots post-flop. So, be sure to remember the day-one bubble!
Last fall I wrote a column titled "Improving Your Texas Holdem Game." That column discussed how long-term poker players sometimes reach a point where they become less keen on learning and improving their game. Ian Taylor described in The Poker Mindset (which I co-authored) some of the reasons why our desire to learn might start to wane. These include:
Illusions of Mastery
Loss of Enthusiasm
Stagnation
The column went on to describe a lot of the tools we have at our disposal to improve our game: books, magazines, DVDs, poker forums, poker trackers, online videos, poker coaches, texas holdem lessons, simulations, and, finally, experience/self-analysis. In this column, I want to discuss experience in more detail, as I think many players fail in this regard in terms of improving their texas holdem game. Are you practicing the right things to give you the maximum value out of your experience?
Every year at about this time, I am always thinking about what I need to do to better prepare for the World Series of Poker, so I want to look specifically at large multitable tournaments.
People always say that there is no substitute for experience. There is merit to this argument, but experience for the sake of experience will not dramatically improve your game. You need to focus your experience on those things that will have the biggest impact on your results.
Let's say that you play mostly the large multitable internet poker tournaments with hundreds of entrants. Through experience, you will learn a lot of deep-stack strategy to do quite well in the early stages of the tournament. Obviously, every tournament you play, you will gain some experience in that stage of the internet poker tournament, so the more tournaments you play, the more experience and knowledge you gain.
Over the years, there has been a lot of debate over which form of texas holdem is the best test of poker players. This column introduces a new form of texas hold'em that I call mixed hold'em. Mixed hold'em is simple at its core, but would completely change the action of play, creating a lot of excitement for poker players and audiences alike. Before discussing this new form, let's look a little at the current debates in the poker world over the different forms of hold'em.
Many have argued that pot-limit texas hold'em is the best test and should be used more frequently for major texas holdem tournaments. Despite this argument, no-limit texas holdem is by far the most popular form of hold'em played in tournaments, and is more popular than ever in cash games.
Let's look at the advantages and disadvantages of each of the current forms of texas holdem.
Limit Texas Holdem: Creates a lot of multiway pots and post-flop action. The main criticism of limit texas holdem is that it is difficult to protect your hand. In regard to television, limit hold'em isn't very exciting, since the drama of all-in bets is missing.
Pot-limit Texas Hold'em: Allows for more flops than no-limit, especially in tournaments, where players often must resort to preflop all-in moves to survive the increasing blinds. By allowing pot-size bets, players can better protect their hands post-flop than in limit hold'em. One drawback of pot-limit hold'em is that dealers are not always proficient in counting the size of the pot, which can sometimes slow down play.
No-limit Texas Hold'em: Creates a lot of excitement and drama for television. The main problem with no-limit hold'em is that players can push all in frequently before the flop, which sometimes results in a boring game. Better players excel in post-flop play, so no-limit hold'em also reduces the gap in skill level between the professional and amateur player (this can be either a good or bad thing, depending on your perspective).
Mixed Texas Hold'em is simply a combination of the three games above. Before the flop, you play limit; on the flop, you play pot-limit; and on the turn and river, you play no-limit. This would basically create a lot of post-flop action, which is great for the players and fun, and would create more interesting hands for television.
Tournaments currently reward players for their preflopskills. Mixed texas hold'em would reward players for their post-flop skills. Given that preflop action is limit and the bets can go way up after the flop, there will be a lot of incentive to see flops. However, once players get to the flop, they can start protecting their hands by using pot-size bets, but must tread carefully due to the threat of no-limit bets on upcoming streets. Once players get to the turn, all-in bets are permitted, giving the game the drama of all-in bluffs and calls, putting players to the test with difficult decisions.
We all have an idea of the archetypical bad limit texas holdem player or ‘fish’ as they are often called. They are very loose, very passive, chase terrible draws, don’t value bet or protect their hand enough etc. The Poker Tracker fans out there might describe this player as something like 80/4/0.2 (at a full ring table), with these stats representing the percentage of time they voluntarily put money in the pot, the percentage of the time they raise pre-flop and their post-flop aggression factor (ratio of raises to calls) respectively. These types of players are extremely common, especially at the lower limits, but also at the mid-limits and sometimes even the higher limits.
Or at least they were in 2004, but this is 2008.
2008 isn’t as convenient as 2004. In 2008 a large proportion of those terrible texas holdem players who used to donate money have either quit, got better or only play at the micro-limits where they can afford to spew money indefinitely. Sure, you will still find a few terrible texas holdem players at the internet poker tables, but maybe only one or two per table at low limits and at the mid and high limits, you may have to hunt around a lot to find any at all. As most people have noticed by now, games are getting harder. It seems a long time ago that I was winning 2 big bets per 100 hands. Margins are slimmer, because the pool of bad texas holdem players has diminished.
But that isn’t to say that there are no bad internet poker players at all any more. ‘Bad’ is a relative term, and in recent times we have had to adjust our expectations downwards a bit with regards to the type of players we can hope to find at the internet poker tables. It isn’t as easy as it was in 2004, but you didn’t expect the good times to last forever did you? Maybe the 80/4/0.2 fish are a rare species in this day and age, but there is still money to be won from internet poker players who make a multitude of mistakes. In this texas holdem strategy article we will look at the kind of internet poker players that donate money in 2008. The ‘New Generation Fish’ that you need to exploit in order to come out a winner. Let’s take a stroll around the four corners of the loose/tight, passive/aggressive matrix to see who we find there.
After listening to Ed Miller speak at last year’s ITH convention, I made up my mind that I wanted to learn how to play no-limit texas holdem cash games. Given their popularity at the moment it seemed silly not to have this game in my arsenal. Six months later I am now reasonably confident playing the game and have some nice positive numbers over a decent-sized sample. I still consider myself a relative newbie at the game. Don’t worry, I’m certainly not going to sit here and try to tell no-limit texas holdem players how to improve their game. However, what I would like to do is provide some tips for limit texas holdem players who are thinking about learning no-limit texas holdem cash games.
Limit and no-limit hold’em are theoretically quite similar. The only significant difference is the amount you are allowed to bet at a time. Naturally this means that if you are an accomplished limit player, you should have at least a reasonable idea how to play no-limit hold’em. In fact, if you have a strong theoretical grasp of poker, you may even find you can win right away, at least at the lower limits. Nevertheless, the games are different enough that no-limit hold’em provides many trappings for the limit player. In fact, the apparent similarity of the games can ambush them, as they carry habits over from their limit game that can be disastrous in the big-bet version of the game.
In this article, I will identify ten things that a limit texas holdem player will have to adapt to when playing no-limit holdem. They are the ten things that I found most fundamental when trying to master no-limit cash games coming from a limit background. Hopefully identifying them here may help other limit players looking to make the transition.
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I've been fortunate enough to cash in three of the last four main events at the World Series of Poker. Looking back, I've learned a lot about playing in the main event, and I think I probably haven't exploited bubble situations as much as I should have. This column will share some of those lessons.
We all have an idea of the archetypical bad 
