Anyone who knows me understands that I am also an avid sports bettor although I would say that the number of sports bets that I have in an average year is probably in the 40-50 range. But when I bet or lay something then I dont muck around but this adds to my income at the year end as my selectivity makes my tactics successful.

This is the same with anything else, alot more people out there could be successful sports bettors if they only had less action. This striving to get into action is also what kills alot of poker players as well and it comes across equally so in sports betting.

There is definitely money to be made on the exchanges even though Betfair now represents the most accurate tissue in the industry and especially with the horse racing and football markets. Just because a poker game is populated with good players doesnt make it unbeatable now does it? I would say wish me luck but luck really doesnt enter into it……if I do my money in then it will be my fault and no one elses.

The Dean is sponsored by Pokerheaven and can also be seen at the WPT, Hendon Mob, Blonde Poker, Part Time Poker, 2+2, Poker News and Poker Pro Europe

Prior to June I had been playing online poker on and off for about 2 1/2 years with mixed fortunes. Several good mtt results clearly flattered my (and others!) perception of my own ability and with hindsight I was probably only a marginal winner at small stakes. Several months ago I decided the time was right to give my cash game play a complete overhaul - I read and re-read a couple of books, watched as many training videos as possible and latterly began working with the Dean. The coaching has set me on the right path as I am able to see how little I really understood this game before and also how far there is to go! 

I can currently be found grinding out the $50 NL tables and, with the Dean’s expert help, I plan on gradually working my way up to the higher stakes games and hopefully I can share any interesting experiences and thoughts about climbing the poker ladder I have with you all along the way.

This is basically an account about my early years of not just playing poker in live card rooms but also online as well and my self imposed frustrations that were brought about by my inherent inability to be able to accept negative outcomes, us poker players understand them better as bad beats and negative runs.

Emotional stability has never really been a strength of mine but about a year ago, I undertook to learn all about myself and really understand why I behaved the way that I did and why I have done certain things in the past….if that makes any sense.

So in short, I decided to become my very own shrink and get to the nitty gritty of discovering just who and what I was and I set about this task by reading several books that were recommended to me that would help me in this quest. I knew full well that my inability to remain composed during bad runs had cost me a very substantial amount of money over the years. I have tried numerous times to tell myself to stop doing this without success.

But looking back, it was obvious that I had been setting about doing this in the wrong way. That is a bit like telling someone who is overweight and who wishes to lose some weight to simply stop eating so much food. This is not addressing the real problem and it was obvious to me that this was an area that I myself could not solve without seeking help from some other source.

There have been many times during my poker career where I have often asked myself the question of whether I could even cut it at all in this game and especially during the early years. But after reading what for me was a very revealing and eye opening book, I suddenly realised what my problems were.

That book was called “Neurosis and the Human Self” by Karen Horney which is a book that is dedicated to achieving self realisation. For me this was a ground breaking book although quite old now, its impact has still sent shockwaves not just through my life but also through my poker game.

The content of that book can simply not be covered in this article or done any kind of justice. But in short, what that book did for me was to make me realise for the very first time that my early childhood and formative years were still influencing greatly how I was behaving all these years later. Events at school, my parents methods, humiliating experiences in earlier life and the subsequent knock on effects were all explained to me in great detail by Karen Horney.

I actually found the book quite spooky and sad in many places because it accurately highlighted my failures as a human being in many areas and was almost as though the book had been written about me personally. The more that I studied the more self aware I became. It reached a stage where I actually became amazed that I had become a winning poker player at all with the traumatic past that I had and it appeared to me that I should never have been in the proper psychological state to succeed in a game like poker where personal and emotional discipline is so vitally important.

Well I did succeed but only because of sheer bloody mindedness and perseverance. But the sad fact is that I have lost tremendous amounts of money through lacking discipline in the past that has inhibited my progress. But now I actually understand the core reasons for my behaviour patterns for the very first time. But diagnosis of such problems is really only the beginning because unless the diagnosis leads to a cure then you have still not reached the ultimate goal.

This is where we enter the world of Zen and in fact, the other philosophies from the far east as well and in this I mean Buddhism, Tao and Confucianism. But in this article I am going to explain or at least try to explain the Zen philosophy. Although to attempt to do so is in itself a violation of traditional Zen principles as discovering the power of Zen is something that one experiences rather than being told about it or reading about it.

There are also far better accounts of Zen and eastern philosophy than my article and I freely admit that books like “Zen in the art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel and “Life without Stress” by Dr Arthur Sokoloff are two books that are not only far superior in putting Zen into words than anything that I could ever manage but they are also two books that have changed my life and my poker game as well.

This is an area that nearly all novice and for that matter, intermediate players simply overlook. In fact, many winning and professional players ignore the importance of it as well. Quite simply, the way that you conduct your everyday life away from poker is related to how you will behave at the poker table. Do you seriously think that you can flick a switch at the table and suddenly turn into a poker playing robot?

Do you seriously think that if you become agitated in traffic jams, angered by negative events and suffer from over reaction in general that you can turn all of this off the minute you play poker? You suffer a bad beat, you shrug it off because some book has told you to do so. It happens again and you shrug it off but only now you are not quite as composed as you were the first time. Then it happens again and again and…..SNAP!

Some motorist does something on the road that endangers your safety and you shrug it off. Then it happens again and again and again and SNAP! See the connection, modern western living tests us every single day of our lives. We constantly are in pressure situations and the danger is when we have no emotional outlet from which to escape and something snaps within us.

Learn to Flow

One of the best pieces of advice that I have ever heard was “if you can neither fight nor flee then flow”. The example given concerned a caveman from thousands of years ago who was confronted by a highly dangerous and lethal animal. Instinctively he knew whether the correct choice of fighting or running away was dependent on many factors including how well armed he was at the time.

“Flowing” was not part of the equation and he had but two options. But in modern life we are constantly placed into situations where it is not practical to do either. For instance, let us say that you are in a work environment where you are up for an all important promotion that would mean a big salary increase which knocks on to mean a better standard of living for not only yourself but also your family.

You are not skilled enough to do any other job but your work environment is one of constant conflict and your boss is non other than the boss from hell. You cannot fight him because he is your boss and whatever he says has to be obeyed. You cannot flee either as your families standard of living is depending on you. It is in situations like these when you can neither “fight nor flee” that pressure and stress starts to build.

This is exactly the same with poker. Bad things happen in poker, they are part and parcel of the game. If you try to fight the fundamental nature of poker then you are in for a life of frustration as you are trying to control something that cannot be controlled in the main. Fleeing is not a very palatable option either because this means packing the game in. If you are a winning player then this means losing income and this income could be considerable depending on the individual.

If you are not yet a winning player but are striving to be one then this means giving up on your goal and dream. But there is a third option and that option is to “flow”.  We have all heard the expression “to go with the flow” but yet how many of us have really fully taken on board what this actually means. In fact most old sayings and expressions have deep underlying meanings that can alter and transform a person’s life for the better when fully understood and implemented.

Rather than attempt to fight our surroundings then it is far better to attempt to accept them for what they are and flow with them. An example might be when you are stuck in a traffic jam. Rather than get angry and frustrated and agitated, why not turn on your radio or play your favourite CD and relax. Treat the traffic jam not as an annoying situation but as an opportunity to sit in isolation without interruption and listen to your favourite music. This different outlook to what is an annoying everyday and unavoidable occurrence can be applied to almost everything that could possibly occur in daily life.

Money…..the big evil!

Money is perhaps the biggest reason for why players fail to become successful in poker! Why is this so? Well, this is because we value money so much and we definitely live in a very materialistic world these days where money and possessions equal status and this enables people to have better standards of living, increased status, better image and all of the rest that comes with it.

But it is because poker is played for money that leads so many people to want some of it. In fact they want it so much and are so eager to get it that they simply don’t give themselves enough time to become good enough in order to be able to get it. This leads me onto another very important point that emanates from Zen. This is that we must stop striving to achieve something and just try to let it happen naturally. It is this constant striving to win money in poker that is actually preventing people from being able to do it. Some time ago, I made it my goal in poker NOT to win money but to become absorbed with the sheer process of reading, writing, playing and coaching poker.

To love something for the sheer joy of just doing it irrespective of financial incentives is the ultimate goal that we must all seek not just in poker but in any field. I have always felt that this is a major reason for why students drop out of university. They just did not love the subject that they were studying well enough. To truly be in love with a subject, the individual will feel intense passion and drive not just in those initial first few months but until the day that they die.

Now, whenever I am reading or writing or playing poker then I just do not see that as work but more like an enjoyable hobby and it is this kind of outlook that makes winning automatic. This leads me to quote yet another famous Zen saying and that is that “it is the journey itself that is the true goal”.

The point is that with a game as complex as poker, you can never ever know everything that there is to know. This is undoubtedly a good thing because if we could master poker in a very short space of time then poker would not have the appeal that it does. Imagine for a minute if poker could me mastered as easily as the good old traditional game of noughts and crosses! Poker as a game would never have taken off and this would have been because the game was just too easy.

Yet it is truly amazing that so many players can assume that they know poker all because they have read several books. I am in a position now where I literally have people approaching me from all over the world asking my advice on gambling matters. But that would never have been the case had I simply stopped learning all those years ago by thinking that I knew it all. I literally cannot wait to find out tomorrow what I do not know today.

Zen and the study of other eastern philosophies like Confucianism has highlighted to me that much of what I perceived to be my earlier goals in poker, making money, winning, avoiding tilt etc were actually leading me down the avenue to being stressed and unhappy not just with my poker game but with my everyday life as well.

It can be tremendously difficult when you are totally absorbed with something not to let that interfere with your everyday life and your personal life. When you have just lost 200 big bets at limit hold’em then you could just turn into the type of person that your wife or girlfriend does not want to be around.

My girlfriend can tell when I have had a particularly nasty session because of how dejected and fed up I look. While I don’t start screaming and shouting, my mood still rubs off onto her substantially and she knows when I am having to force a smile and look happy. While I control myself very well at the table these days during bad runs, I still find it difficult to shrug it off away from the table and it certainly does affect my personal life.

But the study and application of Zen cannot be achieved by reading this article or a handful of books for that matter. It is something that one must constantly strive towards and for some Zen practitioners, true enlightenment can come in the blink of an eye from the most obscure of sources and in an instant, a persons life has been totally transformed.

To truly master poker then we must strive to master ourselves. Learning the technical part of the game although complex in its own right is still only half the battle. Many people who come to poker can often succeed over some players who have studied long and hard in a very short space of time due to the fact that they already possessed the required mental outlook not only to poker but also to life in general.

I apologise if this article has left the reader with even more questions regarding Zen and that I have not provided all or even most of the answers. But that in a nutshell is the sheer essence of Zen, it simply cannot easily be put into words but anyone who attempts to broaden their knowledge of eastern philosophy by studying Zen may find something remarkable happening. They may just wake up one day with totally different outlooks not only to life in general but also to how they play poker as well……and that has to be worth taking a look at!

They all possess various goals and ambitions from actually winning a bracelet to getting to a final table or perhaps a more mundane goal like cashing in a world series event and to go home with bragging rights. Many of course do not even bother playing in the events at all and simply concentrate on the mouth watering cash game action that is going on at this time of year.

But while all of the hysteria was happening across the Atlantic which culminated in Jerry Yang winning the main event and all of the millions of dollars that went with it, an ever increasing army of internet professionals prefer to stay at home and make money on their computer.

The world of poker sure looks a whole lot different in your own living room when compared to the glitz and the glamour of being somewhere like Las Vegas or Aruba or maybe Australia, unless you just happen to be lucky enough to be playing online poker in any of those locations of course.

The lure of the greatest poker festival on earth is not strong enough to make hundreds of European online pro’s drag themselves thousands of miles and with the potential to be thousands of pounds down over the space of the trip when everything is taken into consideration.

Air fares, hotel expenses and tournament buy-ins all contribute to the trip being a significant financial commitment. Let’s face it, the chances of cashing huge in the world series are reserved for the lucky few who just happen to hit their cards on the day. As the final table of the 2007 world series of poker $10,000 buy in event gets under way, it is time for one such internet pro to fire up his computer or “cash machine” as he likes to call it and go to work.

The glitz and glamour have no allure for this dedicated cyber shark as at a rate of eighty hands per hour and the facility to multi-table then why does he need to travel thousands of miles for a decent cash game?

So just who is this denizen of the online felt? Well I happen to know him quite well although he can be an annoying egotistical fellow sometimes…..it just happens to be me!

Sitting alongside anyone who does something for a living would be educational but having said that, I don’t always do the correct thing as is well highlighted when I scream at the monitor,

“JESUS…..just how many ******* cards is this guy going to hit today”

Bad beats used to get to me years ago but I have thankfully out grown that now with help from the mystical far east and Zen. There is an awful lot to be learned from such cultures and true enlightenment is something that I am sure has an enormous impact on ones life. Although don’t anyone ask me what that actually is because I sure as hell haven’t found it yet.

Today I am playing in my usual game of $10-$20 NLH at the 6 man tables. I sit down with $2000 after having watched the game for a full 45 minutes. This is something that I have done for quite some time at the bigger no limit games. $2000 may not be a massive buy in by many players standards but some of the people who I know don’t even earn that in a month so that kind of puts it into perspective somewhat.

The telephone rings, I ignore it. I really should get into the habit of turning the ringer off but never do. I always like the phone to be live in case of emergencies. I answer the call when it rings again only to find that it is a call centre from some far away land trying to sell me something. I am abrupt but polite and they get the message and the conversation ends.

“Come on now Carl” I say as I mentally fire myself up. This is no limit hold’em and it only takes one mistake to lose my entire buy in. I don’t recognise any of the players and have not played with any of them before although it has only been a week since I joined the site and I haven’t played much no limit hold’em as I have been concentrating mainly on my new love which is Pot Limit Omaha.

Although results have not been going too well recently and I lost another $1500 yesterday playing $5-$10. I wait for the big blind and see 8h-3c. It is folded to the button who makes it $70 to go and I fold, they are probably raising light but there is no point getting all macho about it on the first hand.

I want these guys to respect my later action and folding allows me to build up the right image when I will be getting involved for much greater amounts of money later on in the session.

These days I am much more varied in what games I play. Back in 2002 when I first turned professional then limit hold’em was the only game that I ever played. But over the years, a combination of boredom and no limit games being potentially more lucrative led to me switching games. Over the past two years I have also dabbled in SNG’s and more recently Pot Limit Omaha.

Just as I am about to open raise with my Ad-Js after it is folded to me in the cut-off, I get a reminder of the tournament that is just about to start somewhere else on the site. Many people have asked me down the years why I do not participate in online poker tournaments. Well the answer or answers in my case are not straight forward.

Firstly I don’t like the structures in online tournaments and think that most of them are crap shoots. I know that some players have done very well in online poker tournaments but they are in the minority to say the very least. Online tournament poker is very tough these days, in fact online poker is tough full stop.

You need to be dedicated and prepared to work very hard on your game if you have any desire to make the game pay. It is my personal belief that the best avenue for players to make money online is in cash game poker and especially games like Pot Limit Omaha.

Another problem for me personally with regards tournament poker is that I tend to suffer from lapses in concentration whenever I have been playing for several hours. This is fine of you are playing cash games as you can just switch off but in tournaments, you are locked in until the end.

But back to the game, I have been drifting which is very easy to do in online poker. I am thinking of too many things that are not connected with the game….I seriously need to stamp out these tendencies.

The big blind thinks for a while and folds and I win the pot uncontested. Over the next couple of hours I am bouncing either side of breaking even, getting a little in front and then a little behind. But there has been a really aggressive player on the table for the past hour or so who has been stealing my thunder. It is starting to get to me and I know that emotion has no part in the game but yet it is happening anyway.

I am in the cut-off with the 8h-7h and it is folded to me and I open raise to $70 and Mr Aggressive who is on the button immediately re-raises to $240. I am fairly certain that he does not have a hand and am pondering whether to flat call and continuation bet the flop regardless of what comes or re-raise him to show him who is boss right here and now.

I re-raise and he immediately moves all in for $2500 and I cannot call……damn it! Was this the time where he really had a hand? I have lost a large chunk of money all because someone’s behaviour had got to me….I should be far too experienced for that. I mentally tell myself to concentrate and then give myself a good pat on the back when I click the “sit out” button.

I can feel myself losing my mental equilibrium and in a game as big as $10-$20, that can be very expensive. I used to have a serious issue with tilt a few years ago and while I did not play this hand badly, I still became upset. However a few years ago I would have played on whereas now I will sit out or leave the table altogether if I feel that I am starting to lose it.

I think that the major problem is that online poker has become such a chore, it is too much like a job. I know that this may sound silly and perhaps it is because that is exactly how I should be treating poker. But I have never really properly got my head away from the fact that poker should be fun. This is how it had all started out years ago when I used to play in small games with my friends round at my house.

Back then, I don’t think that I was overly concerned about winning and losing, Sure…I liked to win just like everybody else. But it slowly but surely became something far more serious and I woke up one day and realised that I was now in a world where poker was no longer fun. I still play the odd live game and this is what I really miss about poker.

Talking and interacting with people, bluffing and reading bluffs face to face and all the rest of it. Although to be quite honest, the slow pace of live poker really does get on my nerves these days but it just goes to show you that you cannot have everything.

Just then I see a name on the waiting list for the $10-$20 game and it is one that I know from a couple of weeks ago. He had tilted badly on that occasion but he had also played badly as well. This was someone who I had to play with and despite my current mental state, I new that I not only could outplay this player but I also knew that he had the capacity to drop a large amount of money and hopefully I would be the recipient once again.

Well several hours later as I am logging off thinking “what the hell happened to all my money”, I reflect on my bad losing session. My target had viciously outdrawn me in two huge pots and left me with a $4800 loss for the day.

After making myself a coffee, I enter into my usual routine of going through the hand histories and analysing just how I played during the day. I have always felt that this is a crucial part of the process in the levels that I play at. I want to know not just how I have played but also if there are areas of my game that need an overhaul.

Despite the fact that I lost my composure earlier in the session, I thought that I played pretty well throughout. I do not always play bad poker when I am upset and I seem to instinctively do the right thing even when I am upset. At the end of my analysis I am pretty happy with how I have played overall, the only black cloud was the daily result but that’s poker and I know that I was only a couple of fluke river cards away from having a good session.

The margins between winning and losing sessions are wafer thin sometimes and in cyberspace, no one can hear you scream when you lose. Although I suppose that I am lucky because I can get to write about my losses in poker magazines and why shouldn’t you be forced to listen to my tails of woe? Besides, it may just prevent you form making the mistakes that I make.

One of the first things that must be pointed out with these types of hands is the massive difference in strength of a hand at the top end like A-K to a hand like J-10 for instance. While all of these hands come under the same title, in no way can they be lumped together as being of roughly the same strength.

In fact the reason why I have chosen to discuss a hand like A-K in the same article as much weaker hands like Q-10 is for the simple reason that so many players simply over value picture cards and especially when they are together. There is a world of difference between flopping top pair top kicker with a hand like A-K on an A-7-4 flop than there is to flopping top pair top kicker with A-10 on a 10-7-4 flop.

Trouble more often than not

In most cases, Broadway cards spell trouble for most players and that is trouble spelt out with a capital T. Texas Hold’em is a game where the side card or kicker assumes crucial importance and this is where many players hurt themselves when they get involved with Broadway hands. Firstly if you are in early position then which of these hands can you comfortably raise with in a full ring game?

Well for a start being suited adds a little something but not an awful lot unless you are playing in a passive game or a game where many players are limping. For the suited nature to really be of major use then you need to make a flush which in most pots will simply not be needed as you will be heads up or three way.

But being suited is definitely worth something and it would be wrong of me to suggest otherwise because it opens up all sorts of extra ways for a player to take a pot down without having the best hand so it is definitely worth something but never go over board with any hand just because it is suited….not even A-K.

So if I was in early position and it had been folded to me then I would certainly raise with A-K and A-Q as well but A-Q is a very dangerous hand to play because if you get re-raised then you could be dominated by a hand like A-K or K-K for instance. One hand that I absolutely loathe in a full ring game is A-J and I will pass this hand on most occasions although it is certainly strong enough to open raise in a six max game but that is for later on in the series. A-J is dangerous because of when you actually make something. A flop like A-10-8 looks good for you and it may well be but there are just so many scenarios where a player who has this type of hand can get into a world of hurt if they are not careful.

If there has already been a raise to my right then I am simply not going to get involved with very many hands at all that fall into the category of Broadway hands. Even if I figure the raiser to be raising on a wide range then my position in a full ring game is still pretty abysmal so even K-Q gets mucked here. A-J goes the same way and A-Q gets somewhat complicated and goes way beyond the length of this article with what I would do with that hand in that situation.

With A-K and facing a raise to my right whether I am in early or even middle position for that matter then I will re-raise and depending on my stack size, even move all in. If you call in this situation then you can get into trouble if there is a re-raise to your left. This is because your apparent weak call has opened the door for someone to try a pick up play and if you are up against a powerhouse then you are not going to be able to tell the difference.

Whereas if you had re-raised then anybody who came over the top of that bet is certainly indicating a very powerful hand indeed because they have raised a raiser and a re-raiser. This leaves A-K looking decidedly second best and it isn’t known as “walking back to Houston” by the old time professional players for nothing.

The advantage of straight forward play

Deception in poker is very important as anytime that your opponent knows the rough content of your hand then this is going to seriously hurt you. But whenever you are playing straight forward poker and your bets and raises are not deceptive in any way then this means that your opponents reactions to you can be respected more than if you had started the process off by being deceptive.

In the last scenario, by calling the raise you actually created the impression that your hand was a lot weaker than A-K so your opponents re-raise cannot be trusted. But if you ran into a big hand to your left, this is your own fault for not re-raising. At least that way, you find out where you stand in the hand.

But position in no limit play is absolutely crucial and you must respect the fact that all hands in hold’em play much better when they have position on their side. As we move onto middle position, it still remains the case that you really should not be getting involved with hands that can cripple you in no limit hold’em and especially in raised pots.

But I see players all the time who limp along in pots with a hand like K-10 simply because there has been no raise. The flop comes 10-6-3 and they lose their entire stack needlessly because someone else with 3-3 had also limped in because it was cheap in the hope of making a big hand. But the difference between their hand and yours was in the ease in which they can get away from their hand. If the flop comes J-6-2, the player with the 3-3 still has a little bit of something but it is so weak that folding is not a problem at all.

Contrast this to that 10-6-3 flop and you can see the difference between that situation and the guy with the K-10 or worse still A-10 because now he is telling himself that “I have top pair top kicker” as though it is a through ticket.

If only life were that easy

What complicates the entire process in poker is the almost infinite number of situations that exist within the game. By this I mean the differences in player types, game types, players moods, stack sizes, game size etc. It is almost an impossibility to experience the same situation twice in poker.

The type of questions that people ask and the answers that they seek indicate their overall level of poker knowledge and sophistication. You simply cannot learn every single situation in poker in the way that you can with a game like blackjack for instance.

But even in middle position, you still cannot play too many hands and especially against raises to you right. But the key difference here is that if it has been folded around to you, hands like K-J, Q-10 etc become raising hands and it is possible that you can take the blinds from middle position as you cannot wait until the “steal seats” in order to raise as this is too obvious and good players will play back at you in most games.

Calling raises is still not advisable and I would simply not get involved with any hand except A-K against a raise in middle position and possibly lesser hands if I knew the raiser to be raising with a wide range. The problem is that middle position is still relatively early in a full ring game and you must remember the golden rule in no limit hold’em….POSITION!

It is possible that I could play more hands in certain types of games. For instance, if the game was really passive then I might limp a little bit more with hands like Q-J in the hope of making a straight and busting someone. Even then I would need my opponents to have deep enough stacks that I could win a big pot and also that there wouldn’t be a raise by anyone on my left. In most games this is not the case so you are better off simply saving your money.

When things start to liven up

Once you get into late position, namely in the cut off and on the button then things get somewhat livelier. Whenever you sit down at any poker table then noticing how the players to your immediate left and right play is very important. This is because the players to your right will be the ones who are attacking your blinds and the players to your left will be the players whose blinds you will be potentially attacking in the future.

As David Sklansky once famously pointed out in his excellent book The Theory of Poker, all poker hands start off as a battle for the antes or in this case blinds. If the people to your left are passive then you can attack them more. But if it had been folded around to me then I would usually raise with any Broadway hand that I had.

In really passive games then you could possibly speculate a bit more as well by limping along after other limpers with connecting Broadway cards and especially if they are suited. But you must be aware that you tend to build hands like top pair with these types of cards and that is precisely the type of hand that can bust you so great care must be exercised.

Do not become blinded by blind money!

One of the biggest errors that I see players make in no limit ring games is that they go overboard with defending their blinds. Some of them seem to think that it is almost a personal attack when their blinds get attacked and feel that they must make a stand with a very wide range of hands like they tend to do in limit play.

Of course the subject of “range” is very important here as you really need to know how often the players to your right are attacking your blinds. Software like Poker Tracker and Poker Office will tell you exactly but you can also do this manually just by taking notes and keeping records of certain players.

If I decide that an opponent is attacking my blinds with a wide range of holdings then I will decide to play back and I will re-raise and not call. If I have a hand like Q-10 for instance then I think that this is a re-raise or fold situation in no limit hold’em. If the guy to my right is a total rock who has not raised in thirty minutes of online play then I would muck most hands.

I would certainly play back with A-K and A-Q and probably A-J and K-Q as well because I feel that those hands could still be ahead of a late position raisers range of hands even though they may be a rock. But a loose raiser is something else and I will re-raise with a much wider range of holdings against this type of player. But even then I will not over do it because I simply do not want to get into an easily identifiable pattern of play that observant opponents could exploit. I hope that these strategies have proved of immense help to you in the way that you handle Broadway cards and I look forward to seeing you next month.

I came by this nickname after my colleagues used to hear me talking about batting techniques whilst watching the Cricket and so the name “Batman” was born. I havent seen my old mates Eddie and Matt for years but I never forgot the name that they gave me.

Well “Batman” returned last night with a lovely $9700 win at $25-$50 NL. To be honest, I got lucky big time but erasing the loss from the other day whilst not being a priority is certainly nice and just what the doctor ordered. I dont know why but I actually felt nervy during the session and that hasnt happened for a while.

So what else has been happening, oh yes…..as of next month I will be a regular contributor to the 2+2 internet poker magazine. For those of you not in the know then 2+2 boasts probably the best collection of poker minds in the world bar none so it is a real honour to be asked to write in depth strategy articles for them which will go beyond the intermediate stuff that I do for my other sources.

But it is actually very refreshing to write advanced material but most magazines dont want it as it goes too far above the level of their average readers. So that has made me very happy simply because of the Kudos that is attached to it.

We will shortly be having a regular contributor to the blog in the form of James Davenport so I hope that you enjoy what he has to say.

The Dean is sponsored by Pokerheaven and can also be seen at Blonde Poker, Part Time Poker, The Hendon Mob, WPT

This is a common misconception and one that I am going to disprove right here and now. Let us firstly look at one of my specialist games which is Limit Texas Hold’em. The conventional view by many people is that if a player is playing at the $200-$400 level for instance and is successful at that level then they could be just as successful in every single level below that.

This is blatantly wrong for numerous reasons and I will be taking a look at the main ones here. While many players do in fact play above their optimal level and lose significant amounts of money, there are also players out there who are playing below the level of which they could be successful. If this was never the case then top football clubs would never try to sign players from lower league clubs and so forth.

The skills and abilities that a player needs in order to be successful at various limits can be vastly different. For instance in a low stakes game like $3-$6 Limit Hold’em then the required skills would be playing in a tight solid mechanical way and with next to no bluffing as bluffing in games with multi-way pots is basically just handing other players your money.

But many players no not want to play in this mechanical robotic way, to them it is akin to watching the proverbial paint dry. But the knock on effect of this is that if you do not have the proper mind set to play at this level then you will lose money plain and simple. A top professional poker player could be an absolute fish in a $3-$6 Limit Hold’em game purely and simply because they lack the inclination to be able to grind it out.

Another factor that could prohibit better players from succeeding in lower limits is that many of them could in fact have technically deficient games. Bear with me hear because I am sure that that din that I can hear over my shoulder is all the howls of derision that may be heading my way after this article goes to press. But depending on just how that particular player earns his money in the bigger games then they may in fact not have the skills to beat a low limit game.

A skilled no limit player for instance or a high limit player would earn a fair chunk of their money through selective aggressive play. Bluffing and getting good players to lay down the best hand is much more easily achieved in high limit play than it is in low limit. This is simply because the sophistication of the average player is significantly higher than it is at low limit. Pressure betting and making moves that require an awful lot of heart and courage can get a player an awful long way in a game like No Limit Texas Hold’em. This takes me on to my next poker myth and that is that bluffing in Limit Hold’em is impossible or at the very least very difficult and not worth the effort.

I have heard this stated many times down the years but most of what you hear is statements that are spewed out by people who are either copying what they have heard from some other source or because they simply do not understand Limit Hold’em. I have even heard top poker players make this statement, obviously they are either referring to low limit poker or they are speaking out of total ignorance about Limit Hold‘em full stop.

If there was no bluffing in Limit Hold’em then the game would essentially be reduced to a card holding contest and I would never have been able to make the kind of living that I have over the past few years. Obviously there is a lot more to this game than bluffing because value betting and extracting and saving bets is a critical skill to have in this form of poker. But let me provide you with an example from a $30-$60 Limit Hold’em game of mine from a few nights ago.

I was in the big blind with a 9s-8s when a solid book type player from middle position raised before the flop. I knew that they either had a premium pair or two Broadway cards to have done this. The mathematics of the situation dictated that they had the latter. Everyone folded around to me and getting well over three to one with a live hand, I called the extra $30.

The flop came 7d-3s-2c missing me completely but also possibly missing him completely as well if they indeed did have two high cards and not a premium pair. I checked, they bet $30 and I check raised to which they called. The turn card was perfect for me, another seven and this gave me the opportunity to represent top pair on the flop and now trips. I bet $60 on the turn and my opponent folded.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have made plays of this nature but it is plays like these that are a large part of my earn rate. Anyone that states that you cannot bluff in Limit Hold’em obviously does not have the ability to be able to spot when a bluff can be launched successfully in this particular form of the game.

This is one of the major reasons why it can be so terribly difficult for any one that is new to poker to succeed at it simply by reading books. Each and every author will have their own ideas and ways to do things. Each author will also likely have their own particularly favourite forms of the game as well. But there are just too many people in poker now making judgments and giving advice in areas that they have little or no knowledge in. These can be big named players as well but just because a player has won a big tournament and got their face on the front cover of a poker magazine certainly does not mean that they are an expert on all of the other poker forms.

There was a $100-$200 game a few months back where I successfully carried off six consecutive bluffs in six consecutive pots with relative ease. But any student cannot be faulted for totally believing what they have read and taking it as gospel and especially if the player giving advice is a named player. But what I sincerely hope that this and the preceding article has underlined is the need for each and every one of you to learn to think for yourself in poker and not be so quick to believe everything what you read or hear. If you can learn to separate the good from the bad then your future in poker should be a profitable one.

I have done an awful lot of research down the years on the stock market and I have noticed that many principles and concepts can be used to great effect in poker and we will be taking a close look at three of the best known golden rules of trading in this article and seeing how each one can just as easily be applied to poker. These three golden rules of successful trading are,

1.  Cut your losses
2.  Letting your profits run
3.  Trade selectively

Of course there is far more to the stock market than simply following these three pieces of wisdom but let us take a look at how each one applies to poker.

Cutting Your Losses

Is it feasible to quit a poker game just because you are losing money? Many mathematician types would argue that it is all one big long game and that it really does not matter when you quit. If all we look at are the mathematics then this piece of well trodden advice is true. But unfortunately, poker is played by human beings and they have emotions that can play havoc with your game.

If losing money in a poker game really and truly does not affect you then there is absolutely no reason to quit the game at all…or is there? It could certainly be possible that the reason for you losing money could just be because you are playing in a game that is too tough for you and the other players have your number. Maybe they are reading your bluffs very accurately or you have a predictable table image.

But one thing is certain, most players do not play as good when they are losing as when they are winning and this certainly applies to me. So if you are losing money then by sheer definition, some of your opponents must be winning that money. This then means that not only could you not be playing at your best because of losses but your opponents are not suffering from the same emotions because their particular session is going well. Thus the gap between your level of play and that of your opposition could have got a whole lot wider since you first sat down. It is true that your losses could be entirely statistically normal and you still have an overlay in the game but if you are not sure then why take the chance and especially if losing money affects you. If you are going to have the inevitable losing run and you are prone to tilt through incurring losses then it makes sense to fragment those losses so it ends up hurting you less and when you hurt less you tilt less. 

Let us say for instance that the poker gods have decreed that you are about to endure a very big 200 big bet downswing at $10-$20 limit hold’em which equates to $4000. Let us also say that you are multi-tabling online so that kind of swing will happen over a much smaller time frame. Each and every one of us has a personal pain threshold be it physical pain or mental pain. Let us also say that in this instance our personal pain threshold when related to poker losses is in the region of $2000 meaning that once you have lost this amount of money that it actually starts to hurt you.

Why not stop at say $2000 and give yourself some time to get over that loss and get it totally out of your system. If you simply plough on through this barrier then not only do you risk playing badly and tilting but as we have already stated, the gap between you and your opponents widens or narrows, whichever the case may be. But if chopping that same $4000 negative swing into two manageable $2000 stints that are separated by enough time for you to absorb the first one then this could just end up saving you an amount of money that was much greater than the $4000 should you have ended up tilting even more money away.

So while cutting your losses in the trading world is done for a totally different reason, it is still worth remembering that cutting your losses is a tactic that can be applied to poker as well. Because if you are prone to playing badly and tilting when you are losing then fragmenting those losses can actually lead to you cutting your losses.

Letting the Profits Run

We have already touched on this above but it still staggers me just how many people quit a poker game just because they get in front. The reasons why people do this are psychological in nature. Deeply embedded within people is the desire to experience something positive in life and poker winnings are indeed that….positive.

So when Joe gets a couple of hundred ahead in his usual $3-$6 game of No Limit then he quits because he likes the idea of recording a win in his diary because it makes him feel good. Yet two players in this game were throwing an absolute party and tilting badly but yet he left the best game that he has been in all year and all because he wanted to clock a win.

Joe was winning money so he was feeling good, his opponents were losing money and were possibly feeling bad, he also has a skill advantage over his opponents so why in gods name is he leaving the game? Well we already know the reason why but that does not stop us from asking the question again all the same. People crave positive experiences in life and shun or try to ignore negative ones. This is a major reason why many players play on when they are losing in an effort to try and get the money back. They don’t want to end the session losing which is a crazy thing to try and do in poker as the game will simply not allow you to win every single session.

Of course the type of person that I am referring to here is the one who quits the game purely and simply in order to clock a win. I am not referring to anyone who leaves a great game for valid reasons like being tired or late for an appointment or some other commitment. But in my experience, too many players do just the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Instead of cutting their losses and letting their profits run they end up running their losses all the way to tilt and cutting short their wins….a recipe for disaster.

Trade Selectively

The very best traders do not trade every single day and certainly do not trade all of the time. This is very similar to poker where one of the worst mistakes that any player can make is getting into action too frequently. But selectivity in poker can mean lots of things. It can mean being selective about what hands you play from what positions. It can mean being selective on what game you play in and at what limits. It could mean being selective at what times of the day or night that you play at and it could also mean being selective on what site you play on or which card room.

Many people fail not just in trading but also in poker through little or poor selectivity. Like the old well known saying goes, “you can be the tenth best poker player in the world but of you sit in a game with the other nine who are better than you then you will be a loser”. The meaning behind this famous quote is to select very carefully the games that you sit in and the opponents that you go up against. In my opinion, the secrets to successful poker are really not secrets at all but something that nearly every player is aware of.

Someone famous once said that “simplicity was the true genius” and this certainly applies to poker. But please do not get me wrong here because in no way am I inferring that poker is a simple game to master but many people do attempt to make the game far more complex than it really is at times. But perhaps the greatest advice and tips that you could give to would be poker players can be found written in numerous books, magazines and websites. Statements that are so widely used that people tend to overlook their importance.

Doing Something About It

It is one thing to read up on poker but it is something else to transfer that information into the poker environment. This is why many successful poker players certainly do not mind writing poker books because they know all too well that the advice that they give will probably be either overlooked or ignored in the heat of battle by the overwhelming number of players. Reading poker books will increase your poker knowledge and that goes without saying but only playing poker will give you skill.

But I have felt for sometime now that one of the best avenues to improve your overall game is by way of coaching videos. This process of learning is not only better than learning from books, in many instances the advice that is being imparted is coming from some of the best internet players in the world. These are people who have proven track records of success in the online environment and are actually the people who are operating at the level that you are trying to get to. For me personally, I have found the quality of advice and the videos on Poker Elite (www.pokerelite.com) to be absolutely first class and even though I have been an online pro for six years, I still improved my game as a result of that site.

So the bottom line is that the most important concepts in poker are plain for everyone to see and are no great secret. But if every player simply did the basics very well then there would be a hell of a lot more poker players earning money and being successful not just in the short term but into the long term as well.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson is a full time poker player, coach and author and can be contacted at www.pokersharkpool.com

But what established Brunson in the public eye was a combination of two further factors. The first being his second world title success the following year in 1977 when he strangely won the title again while holding the same hand (10-2) and making a full house with it on both final hands in 1976 and 1977. But I think that another hugely contributing factor towards the fame that Brunson enjoys now was the launch in 1978 of the book that went onto achieve legendary status amongst poker books.

That book was called Supersystem or as many people are unaware, How I made over $1,000,000 playing poker which was its original title before it actually became known as Supersystem. This was a hugely adventurous book to attempt to compile at the time, in fact the sheer size of the book to anyone who has ever seen it is still very impressive even now…..a full thirty years later.

But for me, the most distinguishing features of the book was the sheer ground breaking knowledge that was incorporated into Brunson’s section on no limit hold’em and the fact that he had somehow managed to gather five of the top poker minds in the world to help him compile the book.  Non other than the then reigning world champion Bobby Baldwin, David “Chip” Reese who went onto to become arguabley the greatest poker player who ever lived, David Sklansky who is perhaps the foremost poker theorist in the world, Mike Caro and Joey Hawthorne.

Even the legendary Amarillo Slim wrote the preface for the book so Supersystem was literally compiled by the who’s who of the poker world at that time. But it was the sheer power of the information that Brunson packed into his section on no limit hold’em that had the entire poker world talking for years to follow.

Brunson’s associates were also writing excellent sections on Draw Poker, Seven Card Stud, Lowball, High Low Split and Limit Hold’em in the book. However as the years have progressed, much of the information in many of those sections is now out of date. For instance the blind structure in the limit games has changed and the split games now use a qualifier for low and Draw poker is rarely played these days.

But despite that, the quality of the information inside this one poker book has led to various people quoting all sorts of superlatives with regards the book. Words like “great”, “ground breaking”, “legendary”, “unique” and “the poker bible” have been used frequently and in this particular case were well deserved.

Absolute Gold

But without a shadow of a doubt, the overwhelming weight of support for Supersystem has come because of what Doyle wrote about his favourite form of poker….No Limit Texas Hold’em. In fact the term “The Cadillac of Poker” has also gone along way towards the book achieving cult status as this is now perhaps the most famous quote in poker.

When Brunson referred to no limit hold’em as being the Cadillac of Poker then what he actually meant was that it was this form of the game that provided the ultimate test of a players ability. This statement too is a little out of date as games like Pot Limit Omaha were not overly popular then and few players realised at the time just how phenomenally complex and difficult that form of poker is.

But for the very first time, students of poker could now start to envisage just how a really great player approached the game and Brunson is truly a great player even now despite his advancing years. But there are still large parts of Supersytem that are mainly misunderstood even now by many players.

So much so that noted poker theorist Mike Caro actually wrote a guide to the book some years later to try and put into word form more clearly the strategies and thought patterns that lay behind Brusnson’s thinking. It is common knowledge that much of what makes a great poker player is very difficult to teach.

Much of what separates people like Brunson from mere ordinary poker playing mortals is difficult to put into words. Brunson bases many of his plays on what he is actually feeling at the time and he has honed those instincts over many years at the tables.

But it is considered insufficient from the view of the reader to be told that the reason why the author made a certain play was because he felt that it was the right thing to do. I do not necessarily agree with this rationale as in my mind, this clearly indicates what stage one has to reach in order to be playing the game at the highest level possible.

In my mind, anyone who has only read this book once or twice simply cannot properly comprehend just what Doyle is really trying to say. I first purchased this book many years ago and I have read the section on No Limit Hold’em more times than I can care to remember. But yet even now, I still pick certain things up about the potential inner workings of Doyle’s mind at the table that I had not picked up previously.

The number of nuances and subtleties in that book are almost endless and for novice poker players whose games are expanding at a very rapid rate (or at least they should be if they are working hard enough) then it is impossible for anyone at that low level to even come close to being able to fully comprehend what Doyle is really saying in that book.

It personally took me countless readings of Doyle’s no limit section and a whole load of further studying to boot to finally comprehend what he was really saying. Up until then, I had merely thought that I understood and it was only when I went back and read my earlier notes that I realised just how far my understanding of what he had written in that book had really come.

So for anyone who has yet to read this absolute classic of a poker book and does not know what I am referring to then I recommend that you read on. Doyle teaches a strategy for cash game poker in Supersytem. His style of play in that book can only be termed as loose aggressive. He is forever putting pressure on his opponents with bets and raises and most of the time it is with insufficient values.

He constantly strives to place his opponents into situations where they have to make very tough decisions and most of the time this is with marginal hands. So Brunson achieved an awful lot of fold equity with his action. Because he would bet and raise on a very wide range of holdings, players found it very difficult to actually put him on a hand and this made many of them extremely fearful which only served to help his game even more.

But perhaps one of the really thought provoking pieces of material in that section is where Doyle talks about how when big pots arise that he nearly always has the worse hand.

This statement takes some explaining but not when you understand it. You see, Doyle liked to be the aggressor and the one doing the bullying and shoving. His style of play was effective and he tried at all costs to impose that style of play onto his opponents. As he states in that book, he does not want anyone to defeat that style of play by becoming more aggressive than him so he will gladly push back harder and even get all in with a drawing hand just so his opponent cannot shove him around.

This type of play with a draw creates an awful lot of fold equity when either fearful opponents or opponents without sufficient strength to call fold their hands. But if he gets called, he still has a large amount of equity in the hand because of his outs to complete his draw so he is never really out on a limb. He says in that book that his constant aggressive play creates an image in the minds of his opponents and the constant procession of small pots that he wins pay for the times when he gets all in with the worse hand.

So what has changed?

Everything changes with time and it is now almost thirty years since Supersystem first went on sale. While the section on no limit play is still a damn good read, the advice in that section is not as powerful as it was then for Doyle and for reasons that I am about to now go into.

Firstly, it must be pointed out that Brunson readily admits in that book that his style of play would struggle to be successful in games where there was not an awful lot of money on the table. An overall lack of money on the table would mean that his aggressive style of pushing players out of the pot through intimidation of losing very large amounts of money would be greatly negated.

This is certainly the case with online no limit games. Many players do not necessarily buy in for the maximum amount anyway and all of the online poker rooms impose limits on the amounts that players can buy in for and this limit is usually set at one hundred times the big blind. This would equal $400 in a $2-$4 and $2000 in a $10-$20 game etc.

This means that unless someone wins and gets ahead, that it can be quite rare to find a player with 200-300 big blinds on the table.  Players tend to be less fearful when they have less to lose and it is this factor that would blunt many of Brunson’s strategies.

Plus there is another factor that also needs to be considered. Many people have now read Supersytem but even more importantly, the general thesis has been roughly replicated in many other areas of poker literature including books, magazines and websites. This means that most players now see the importance of aggression in poker and can also see when other players are stepping out of line.

What this means in a nutshell is that ultra aggressive poker will simply not be tolerated now like it was when this book was first written. Plus I dare say that it was the sheer presence and reputation of Doyle that enabled him to get away with many things a good percentage of the time simply because many players dared not tangle with him in a pot without a good hand.

It is very difficult to attain this level of intimidation in online poker where your opponents are merely staring at an avatar. In many of the games that I play in, unless you achieve the correct level of aggression then you will find that your opening raises will be getting re-raised frequently. The fact of the matter is that if you raise to $70 in a $10-$20 for example and the player on the button re-raises to say $240, then that $240 will represent a much higher percentage of your opponents stack than it would have done in the games that Brunson would have been playing in.

In some cases it could represent as much as a third of your opponents stack and many players will get pot committed far more easily thus making it more difficult to get them off the hand.

But many of the stratagems and advice still holds good today all these years later. The section where Doyle talks about the small connecting cards and the dangerous trap hands is still highly relevant in today’s online games. It does not matter where you are playing poker or against who, it is still crucial to your overall chances of success to balance your game.

You simply cannot let your opponents know that each time that you raise before the flop that you either have Broadway cards or a premium pocket pair. This would just encourage players to call your raises with mediocre hands and wait for you to miss the flop. So you have to inject some level of uncertainty into the minds of your opponents and uncertainty causes fear and fear causes them to fold.

You need your opponents to be guessing about the strength of your hand and you need them to be unsure whether that innocuous looking flop has hit you or not because you are just as likely to play an 8-7 as you would an A-K.

Brunson’s play creates uncertainty in the minds of his opponents. But even this is seriously negated in today’s modern game. Brunson’s opponents were not using note taking facilities against him and were not using PokerTracker or Poker Office to break his game down.

The environment that is online poker in 2008 is a very tough one and your opponents (or at least some of them) may just know a damn site more about your game than you do yourself.

Being one step ahead of the rest

I have always felt that the real art to reading any poker book is not to blindly believe everything that is in it and to try and think for yourself. Unfortunately to get to this stage requires an awful lot of knowledge and experience. It is next to impossible for a novice player to pick up any book and find fault with it simply because novice players do not have the knowledge base to be able to do so.

But the problem with all poker books is that they are a constant in what is a forever changing poker environment. It is that constantly changing environment that makes much of the material out of date in many poker strategy books. But the real test is to try and distinguish between what material is still relevant in the book from the stuff that isn’t and that as previously stated can be a very tricky process for many people.

In fact most novice and intermediate players would simply not doubt anything what they read at all and many would just blindly follow what they read. This in my mind is a major factor for why many poker players fail to make money in poker, many are simply using strategies that are either out of date or attempting to use them in the wrong situations.

But Supersystem is still a classic poker book and one that I would recommend to anyone to read. It still has numerous pieces of nuggets of information that are still highly relevant today and even in online games. For instance it emphasises the use of aggression to win pots and aggression is vital if you have aspirations of becoming a winning poker player.

It highlights the need to balance your game so that you are not predictable to your opponents and it also highlights the difference in what constitutes a good hand in no limit from a dangerous hand. An A-Q in limit play is a good hand even against a raise and the penalty for being trapped under another player that has A-K is not as critical

When it can only cost you a handful of big bets at the most. But take that same A-Q on a flop like A-7-2 rainbow and you could end up losing your entire stack if you are pinned underneath someone else’s A-K. The penalty for being dominated in no limit play can be very severe and many novice players get themselves into all kinds of trouble when they flop a decent but second best hand.

Brunson discusses the trouble hands pretty well in Supersystem and I would advise anyone who is contemplating playing no limit hold’em either online or in a live card room to study them.

But despite the fact that much of the information that is in Supersystem is either very well known or past its sell by date, it is still beyond any shadow of a doubt…..a great book! It literally set the standard for which many other poker books followed. The old saying about “standing on the shoulders of giants” applies perfectly here. I remember reading an interview from the 2001 World Series of Poker winner Carlos Mortensen some while ago who stated that the first time that the read the book, he could not believe that Doyle Brunson was literally giving away the secret of just how to play no limit hold’em.

Fine praise indeed from one of the most respected players in the world of tournament poker, an ex world champion and World Poker Tour winner to boot. In fact Supersystem was such a popular book that it led to a new updated version being published in 2005 called Supersystem 2. The no limit section was left largely untouched but there was valuable input on a whole host of games from some of the greatest names in the modern game.

People like Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu and Doyle’s son Todd who is a world class player himself and regular plays in the big game in Las Vegas. The new version included the very popular Pot Limit Omaha as well as an updated section on limit hold’em written by Jennifer Harman. Supersystem for me is the greatest of all poker books because it broke barriers and introduced to millions of people strategies that had previously been top secret and which were only in the possession of a handful of people world wide. There will never be another book like it that will have the same effect again in my opinion.

Notice how I merely referred to them as connectors and not suited connectors. This is because in No Limit hold’em games then having the connectors suited is a nice bonus but is not really crucial as most pots these days are not multi-way. Which is just as well really as getting trapped underneath someone else’s higher flush is an absolute crippler. Once again we will be looking at full ring games with between eight and ten players active. The term connectors will be used to describe hands from 3-2 all the way to 10-9 as J-10 and higher will come under a separate future heading on Broadway cards.

It is also worth pointing out that connectors do not necessarily have to be connected. As hands that have a gap or even two and three gaps can also be called connectors as they still have straight making potential. For example hands like 7-5,8-6, 9-6 etc can come under the heading of connectors.

Early Position

The number of times that I see people misplay connecting cards are too numerous to mention. I don’t know if it is the influx of televised poker or what but many people seem to be falling in love with this type of hand before the flop. One thing that you must remember with hands like these is that they are speculative hands. This means that you require the situation to be such that you can sneak in very cheap and have the potential to make a lot of money either because a player has a huge stack and because you feel that he has the capacity to lose that stack by making a big mistake.

These crucial points are often overlooked even by players who should certainly know a lot better. So if I have any kind of connector in early position in a full ring game then I will just dump the hand….end of story. Even if you have big stacks after you and you have also identified several players on the table who could possibly go for their entire stack, your position is still terrible and will remain so on every betting round.

It goes without saying then that if I am in early position and there has been a raise to my right or even just a call, I will still dump my hand. I do not know at this stage that there will not be a raise after me and a speculative hand like 8-7 or 7-5 cannot stand a raised pot. You will end up being out of position with the worst hand on too many occasions for the play to be anywhere near profitable.

Do not get confused here with tournament poker tactics. Remember that players in tournaments need to accumulate chips to win the tournament and will be looking to gamble more than they would necessarily do in a normal cash game. This concept gets accentuated on the final table where blinds are coming around rapidly and have escalated to a much higher level thus placing players under more time pressure. Whenever you see players doing this on television then do not be fooled by what you are seeing and then try doing the same in your regular cash game.

Middle Position

Nothing really changes much even when you get to middle position. Once again if you are sitting in a game where the players are passive and have fair sized stacks and also have the capability to lose their entire stack needlessly then you could speculate in un-raised pots a little more but the pot has to be categorically un-raised. Don’t try getting cute by calling an early position raise hoping that you can take the pot away from your opponent who likely holds nothing but high cards.

Remember that your position although better than early position is still not that great and there are several players still to speak after you. The problem with your hand is that you need to hit the flop big time in order to continue and a pre-flop raiser will more than likely fire at the flop irrespective of what arrives so what are you going to do then when you miss?…..or were you hoping to flop a straight or a flush. If you were than I don’t much fancy your chances.

Depending on the game, if it has been folded around to me and I have a tight table image and the game is relatively normal with no aggressive players to my left or there is not much re-raising going off then I may sometimes throw my opponents a curve ball by raising from middle position with a connector whether it is suited or not. You simply cannot wait until you have a premium hand all the time before you raise otherwise your play is just going to be too predictable to your opponents.

But there is one thing that needs to be pointed out here and that is that there are in fact slight differences with regards to middle position. For instance in a nine handed game then after the two blinds, we have the button and the cut-off who are in the two latest positions on the table. This leaves five players in between the blinds and the cut-off in a nine handed game. Early position could certainly be classed as the first two to speak after the big blind but could also involve a third person as well.

So when early position becomes middle position and when middle position becomes late position is not always clear cut and especially when players are regularly sitting out or leaving the game. In a typical ten handed game, I would be much more inclined to raise from say the seat to the right of the cut off than I would the seat that is three seats to the left of the under the gun player despite many theory books stating that both are middle position.

Late Position

It is vital that whenever you sit down at any poker table that you try your hardest to assess the players on your table. There is no room in poker for mental laziness. When I am in late position and I have only just sat down at the table then I will make it my goal to see what the blinds are made of and the people to my left. Those blinds are crucial to my success, if they play back aggressively then I will attack them less but if they are the passive types then I want to know quickly and I will raise from late position with hands like connectors whether they are gapped or not.

Once again if the pot has been raised before it gets to me then I will dump them in the overwhelming number of cases as I just do not want to be going up against premium hands against trigger happy players with small to medium stacks with speculative hands like connectors. So if a player raised before me then I will simply pass the hand. But the main difference with being in late position is that I now have more opportunity to attack the blinds if it has been folded around to me or if there has been numerous limpers then I may take a flyer and limp along in the hope of flopping a big hand and getting paid off.

But these are long shot propositions and straights and flushes do not come along that often and your flush is not even the nuts and could cripple you anyway. If I consider raising with a hand that is weaker than the average conventional raising hand then I will not just do it with any old piece of garbage. It is true that any two cards can win in poker but if you raised with anything then you would simply be raising too often and you would find players coming back at you a lot more. But those little connectors have the capacity to make a big hand that is fiendishly concealed and can break someone…..as long as that someone is not you of course!

The Blinds

I think that one of the most misplayed positions in poker and especially in No Limit hold’em is the play in and around the blinds. In my experience people defend their blinds too much in this version of the game. I don’t know if they have a limit hold’em mentality or what or maybe they instinctively know that the pre-flop raiser is coming in light and are electing to make a stand against this would be aggressor.

But the best play in the majority of cases if it has been raised is to simply fold the hand, this even applies if the raise has come from a steal position. Of course there are indeed exceptions to every rule and if you are constantly getting raised by the same player after it has been folded to them on the button then you cannot simply fold your hand in the big blind all the time otherwise this will just encourage this aggressor to simply raise with anything and take your blind money.

So as long as you have the proper table image of a solid normal type of player then you can play back at this bully every now again on light values. Because after all, they have proven that they are clearly raising without the goods so you can re-raise on weaker hands also. As long as you are not over doing this play then your opponent is going to respect your re-raise and will likely fold. This means that your raises are in fact taking larger chunks of money than if you had simply raised from position and taken the blind money.

This way, you can help to keep aggressive opponents who are in late position in check and your re-raises with connecting hands will have deception both when you flop a concealed monster and when high cards flop that your raise has represented. But the fact of the matter is that if the raises are not coming from overly aggressive players who are making their intentions crystal clear then the best move is to fold connecting hands to a raise.

They are of course ideal for completing the bet in the small blind in un-raised pots as you will be getting excellent odds both in implied odds and pot odds to call the extra small bet with a sound speculative hand like a connector whether it is gapped or not. Well I sincerely hope that this months article on how to play connecting cards has proved highly instructive and I look forward to seeing you next month in another one of my lectures, take care.