I am a big advocate of reviewing hands in order to improve your poker game. In fact, as internet players, it is one of the most powerful tools we have.
The check-back range and the float - What follows is an excerpt from Jeff’s books, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha Volume II: LAG Play and The Short-Handed Workbook.
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.
The possibility of becoming a professional poker player is an alluring one for most players. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to sit at home playing poker all day?
We all have an idea of the archetypical bad limit hold’em 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 only way to make money at poker is through your opponents’ mistakes. Consequently if you make fewer mistakes than your opponents then you will make money in the long term.
Floating back at a floater Occasionally, when you bet from late position, a player who suspects a steal may try to float you from out of position by calling your bet and then betting out on the turn.
It is not a comfortable thought, but every poker player might one day have to deal with the possibility of losing their entire bankroll. There are a number of ways that this might happen, but essentially it will boil down to one of the following:
Pot-Limit Omaha Games Seven general guidelines Editor’s note: This column is an edited excerpt from Jeff Hwang’s book, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small Ball and Short-Handed Play.
Some of the most important decisions you will make during a session are made at the outset, before a single card is dealt to you. In this month’s article I am going to look at those decisions and the thought processes you should go through when making them.
For some reason, poker players love to debate the question of whether or not playing winning poker counts as gambling. Intuitively the answer is yes, but winning poker players often don’t see it that way.
Wrap, bare nut straight heads up It's a 50¢-$1 pot-limit Omaha (PLO) game on the electronic poker tables at Excalibur in Las Vegas, and you are playing heads up.
Naked, weak-stab, and semibluff In my last column, I discussed the basics of floating in pot-limit Omaha (PLO) and identified the key indicators - the weak stab, the continuation-bet, and a possible steal bet - that a float may be in order.
Table chat is a long-standing and accepted part of poker, both online and in live card rooms. When playing online, the amount of chatter varies greatly from table to table.
When I first started to play internet poker, I headed for the texas holdem tables. One day, while distracted, I accidentally joined a single table Pot Limit Omaha Hi Lo tournament.
Three-betting after the flop without the nuts This is a hand from the early days of the now-raging $1-$2 blinds, $5 bring-in ($500 max buy-in) game at Harrah's in St.
Pot-Limit Omaha: FloatingThe key to advanced play Editor's note: The following is a special preview from Jeff Hwang's upcoming book, tentatively titled Pot-Limit Omaha Poker Volume II: Advanced Play.
One of the most important things to keep in mind while playing an R&A tournament is that the first hour offers a very different style of play than just about any other possible Hold ‘em table. Typically, you’ll have a fair share of opponents playing a loose/super-aggressive style (LAGs).
Categorizing starting hands by playability Editor's note: What follows are edited excerpts from Jeff Hwang's book Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy.
Before talking about the merits of single tabling, I should give you a brief history of my playing career. I started playing internet poker three years ago after watching it on TV.
The expertise involved with calculating odds, surmising hand strength with incomplete information, negotiating with bluffers, and staying within a bankroll all offer lessons that my daughters will eventually learn to apply to other aspects of their life journeys. In this world, I think those are especially valuable lessons and applications for women to have learned.
In most things in life, there is little danger in being optimistic. In fact studies have shown that optimists tend to be happier and more successful than pessimists.
Key Concepts - Last issue, I classified starting hands in pot-limit Omaha (PLO) by hand strength, breaking them down into premium, speculative, marginal, and trash (everything else) categories.
One of the most important things to keep in mind while playing an R&A tournament is that the first hour offers a very different style of play than just about any other possible Hold ‘em table. Typically, you’ll have a fair share of opponents playing a loose/super-aggressive style (LAGs).
Big Straight Draws - Before I discuss shorthanded play in a future column, I should first write a bit about big straight draws and the top drawing-hand structures used to flop them.
Anyway, something that really stood out to me was a subject that had nothing to do with actual trading: most of these rare extremely successful traders (including the ones who had families) were completely immersed in the world of the markets. A lot of them were into currencies or foreign markets and would often be in and out of bed during the middle of the night as they glued themselves to their monitors.
Back in the late 90’s, before he became sidetracked with writing songs about Michael Jackson, George Bush and vomit, Eminem released a catchy song entitled ‘Guilty Conscience’. It was a song about the two voices that talk to you, one ‘bad voice’ (played by Eminem) representing temptation to commit crime or do what is wrong and one ‘good voice’ (played by Dr Dre) representing logic, reason and morality.
The betting machine - Editor’s note: What follows is an edited excerpt from Jeff Hwang’s book, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small Ball and Short-Handed Play.
Bluffing in limit hold’em is an interesting science. In loose games it is usually inadvisable to bluff because your opponents will call down with very marginal holdings.
It depends largely on your opponent - What follows is an excerpt from Jeff’s books, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha Volume II: LAG Play and The Short-Handed Workbook.
Across different poker games, there is one thing that can be counted on: there will be players going on tilt. One often hears hold’em players complaining about losing large pots on the river (“oh man, another suckout, I can’t believe this”).
Pot-limit Omaha players are getting shortchanged - A few issues ago in my column on the bankroll schedule for pot-limit Omaha, I mentioned that while a typical buy-in for no-limit hold'em might be 100 big blinds, in order to be reasonably deep in pot-limit Omaha, you should buy in for more like 150 times the big blind.
Some decisions, both game and non-game, are relatively easy to make while others are more difficult. Everyone makes bad decisions from time to time, but the key to being successful is to make as few as possible.
So you’ve mastered the basics. You understand the nature of the game, starting hand qualities, the importance of position, how high and low possibilities affect your pot odds, why a dry A2 is not the second coming…etc.
Don’t quit school to play poker! - Editor’s note: This column is an edited excerpt from Jeff Hwang’s book, Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small Ball and Short-Handed Play.
The five biggest mistakes that average players make Editor's note: What follows is a special excerpt from Jeff Hwang's upcoming book, tentatively titled Pot-Limit Omaha Poker: Advanced Play Vol.
