Have you ever found that sometimes you start tournaments well and in others you just can't get 'tuned in'? Sometimes you make finals but when the money counts you make mistakes and have difficulty focusing? What should you do about it?

This is the second of a two-part article on schooling. The first part can be found here.

Schooling is a controversial poker concept describing the behavior of groups of weak players, typically in low-limit games. The theory suggests that a large number of loose players in a limit hold’em game help each other out by pooling outs and giving each other better pot odds. In fact, some say that games with too many players are actually harder to beat than games with only a few loose players.

selected as the Article of the Month, February 2007
The contest articles can also be viewed at the Internet Texas Holdem Forum

Turbos have taken off lately due to their reputation as a quick and exciting way to play tournament poker. In this two-part article, I’ll explain how to adapt your game as you move through the blind levels of a Turbo SNG. The first part will explore early and middle play, and the second part will focus on bubble and heads-up play. My SNG of choice is the Stars NL 2-Table Turbo, so the blind levels illustrated below directly correspond to it.

You are dealt AcKc in early position, and you raise your premium holding. Three players cold-call your raise, as do both the blinds.

The flop is a nice looking Kh6s4s. You bet and all five opponents call.

The turn is 9c. You bet and three of your five opponents call.

The river is Qd. You bet and get raised. You make a crying call and are shown JdTs for the straight.

When in a confrontation, you always have two innate options available to you, which are as old as nature itself: fight or flight. You can choose to stand your ground, or you can retreat. When it comes to No-Limit Texas Holdem, you always have three options available to you: raise, fold, or call. Raising, I would argue, is the same as the aforementioned fighting option, while folding is your chance to retreat from the hand. Calling, on the other hand, does not correlate with either of the laws of the animal kingdom. And if I had a parallel to draw from nature, it would be that of burying your head in the sand.

Congratulations, you have made it to the final table.

Ahhh, I remember my first final table. It lasted all of one hand. I got pocket sevens, went all in under the gun, and got called by Aces. At the time, I was delighted at winning $60. Now, of course, such would not be good enough. Any tournament player should at least be looking towards the final table as their goal whenever they enter an MTT. Merely cashing in a tournament is not worth the time that has been invested in it. With usually about 60 percent of the buy-ins being shared at the final table, simply making it to the final nine will be a financially-rewarding experience. And every player eliminated from that point forward will be shouting “cha-ching!” in his or her head.

I’d like to start my ITH tenure with what will be a lesson in sucking eggs for many of you I am sure…but a nice, simple article to help you guys gets to know me. I heard a quote recently (no idea who said it so if anyone knows could they PM me?). It went something along the lines of: “Whoever invented poker was clever; whoever invented the chip was a genius.”

Many people like to throw around the term "implied pot odds." The problem is that there is sometimes confusion with the definition. Implied pot odds should include the amount of bets you expect to win from your opponent. Some say, or at least act in such a way, that implied pot odds include the amount of bets you could win from your opponent. Expectation and potential are two very different things. To clarify and to ensure that you have the correct mindset when making strategic decisions, a much better term to use in your poker vocabulary is effective implied pot odds.

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.

A backdoor draw is one in which you need to hit a card on both the turn and river to improve your hand. For example, you hold the Ac 4c and the flop is Qs 9c 6d. A club on the turn and the river would give you a flush. Backdoor draws are of little value by themselves, as you rarely are getting sufficient implied pot odds to draw solely on the merits of a backdoor draw; however, sometimes they add just enough value to your hand to draw when you have other outs, such as overcards or bottom pair and an overcard. I often hear people at the poker table say, “I had middle pair and a backdoor-flush draw.” Backdoor-flush draws should rarely impact your strategy, yet I frequently hear players talking about them.

As I sift through the ITH forums, it seems there is a recurring theme, whereby beginning to intermediate players make play errors due to misunderstanding certain concepts. After a long time noticing this, I thought it was time to compile an explanation for some of the most commonly misunderstood concepts in poker.

My favorite scene it Matt Damon’s other movie (Good Will Hunting) occurs in the Cambridge bar typically occupied by mostly Harvard students. His buddy had been trying to impress some women when he was interrupted by another bar patron whose main goal was to make these townies feel inadequate and embarrassed. Damon’s character, who happens to be an unassuming genius, steps in and disarms the situation by unmasking the protagonist as the plagiarizing bully that he truly is. Just after the Harvard student takes one more jab by reminding Damon that he’ll never have the degree to accompany his supreme knowledge base, our hero closes the scene by stating that he’ll, at least, never be unoriginal.

In a series of articles, I hope to give some advice on how to improve your limit play. In this article, I am going to talk about the skills you can develop through just playing one table. In future articles I am going to look at what you can learn from playing shorthanded, the importance of game selection and the forgotten skill of seat selection and finally why you should distance yourself from your bankroll.