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 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 players how to improve their game. However, what I would like to do is provide some tips for limit players who are thinking about learning no-limit cash games.

Marginal Hands
This is the fourth column in a series that highlights some of the hands discussed in the new book Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume II, by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet. In this book, each author chose one tournament, and discussed the key hands from once he made the money all the way down to heads-up play. In this column, I’ve chosen one hand from each author in which he three-bet preflop with a marginal hand.

Examples of when not to do so
This is the third column in a series that highlights some of the hands discussed in the new book Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume II, by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet. In this book, each author chose one tournament, and discussed the key hands from once he made the money all the way down to heads-up play. In this column, I’ve chosen a couple of hands from Apestyles, in which he illustrates examples of when he decided not to continuation-bet.

The situation dictates how they are played
Volume II of the Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time series by Eric “Rizen” Lynch, Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet was recently released. In this book, each author chose one tournament, and discussed the key hands from once he made the money all the way down to heads-up play. For this column, I decided to choose some hands from Lynch’s analysis that look at different situations for playing small or medium pocket pairs.

Note that all of the hands are roughly the same, small or medium pocket pairs, but the situation changes the action significantly. In one hand, Rizen folds 7-7, and in the next, he discusses the possibility of four-betting with 6-6!

Eric “Rizen” Lynch provides a hand analysis
A few months ago, I wrote an article about how some players are misapplying expected value calculations. The column focused on a particular play of shoving a wide range of hands when playing heads up with 20 big blinds. If you do the math, you discover that pushing all in is perfect strategically: You could play with your hand faceup and it would still be profitable. That column discussed several different factors that you should consider, but one key factor is that just because a play is profitable, it doesn’t mean you should make it. You should be making the most profitable play.

I own Dimat Enterprises, which publishes poker books, and after writing that column, I was reviewing a new book that’s coming out in January, Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand at a Time, Volume II. The book has three authors — Jon “PearlJammer” Turner, Eric “Rizen” Lynch, and Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet. Each author walks through the key hands of a tournament that he played, from the bubble through heads-up play. One of the hands from Rizen illustrates that the optimal play depends on the particular opponent you are facing, and it makes for a great follow-up to the column I wrote.

A questionable play
There is a long-standing argument in the poker world between the math guys and the instinct guys. I have always been a proponent of the math side, as every decision made in poker has an underlying mathematical foundation (whether you realize it or not). Of course, I also wrote a book called Texas Hold’em Odds and Probabilities, so I might be biased. Some instinct guys will say that you sometimes have to throw math out the window, but they are missing the point. If your instincts make you feel like your opponent is bluffing, you increase the probability that your opponent is bluffing in the mathematical calculation. If your instincts tell you that your opponent has the nuts, you increase the probability of this in the calculation. Many players don’t know that they are using math, but their instincts and experience lead them close to what the mathematical calculation would conclude.

Analysis of a Josh Arieh versus Phil Ivey hand
My new book, Texas Hold'em Odds and Probabilities: Limit, No-Limit, and Tournament Strategies, was released recently, and I think it will help a lot of players in developing a good mathematical understanding of the game. The book does more than just show you how to calculate the odds; more importantly, the focus is on how to apply odds to make better decisions.

The book includes an analysis of an interesting hand that came up in the 2004 Borgata Open between Josh Arieh and Phil Ivey that I thought would be interesting to discuss in this column.

There are always two key decisions you must make when taking the initiative in no-limit hold’em while playing a hand. Are you going to play, and if so, how much do you want to bet? The amount of your bet is always very important. If you bet too little with a good hand, you could be inviting your opponent to hit a long shot that might cost you your entire stack. If you bet too much, you might find yourself in a situation in which you are winning only small pots and losing large pots. A key part of the decision in determining how much to bet depends on the pot odds and implied pot odds.