Getting The Most Out Of Suited Connectors

When I watch YouTube videos of the pros playing it never ceases to amaze me how many players will open or raise with nothing more than a couple of suited connectors.  Statistics have shown that suited cards only increase your chances at showdown by about 3%, so I could never understand the fascination.

But just because suited connectors aren’t as powerful as some players believe, it doesn’t make them unplayable.  While suited connectors only provide a slight edge over non-suited cards at showdown, there are some advantages they provide earlier in the hand.  First and foremost is the power of the semi-bluff.  Suited cards open up the opportunity for you to semi-bluff at hands you wouldn’t normally bet if they were non- suited.  For example, if you are holding the J and 10 of spades and the board falls Qh, 8s and 6s, you have a great opportunity here to semi-bluff for a flush draw.  A semi-bluff will always give you the opportunity to win a pot with nothing more than a draw. And anytime you can pick up chips with a weak or drawing hand is a good thing!  Picking up small pots on a continuous basis will eventually turn your short stack into a large stack, especially in tournament settings when you are in it for the long haul.

Another advantage suited connectors can provide is when they give you the opportunity to win a big pot, when you do make your draw.  When you’re holding a straight and/or flush draw,  you can call a decent sized bet and complete your hand.  With only a straight draw, more often than not you are usually forced to fold.

The following guidelines will help you play your suited hands based on stack size considerations:

If you have 15 big blinds or less, which is considered short-stacked, especially in tournament play, the more aggressive move is to move all-in with two suited cards provided that you are the first player to act, you are in late position and you still have fold equity.  Some players may disagree that this play is too aggressive, but the new poker mathematics show that this is the right move.

When you are in the 50 big blind range you shouldn’t be looking to play a big hand if you flopped a flush draw.  Your primary goal in this case should be to manuever the betting so you can give yourself a couple of ways to win, either by hitting your hand or by getting your opponent to fold.  In other words, you should try to be the one who gets the last bet in.  A good aggressive player will be the one who is doing the betting or the raising, because you really don’t want to find yourself in a spot where you’re calling off your stack with nothing but a draw.

If you find yourself playing with a stack size of 100 big blinds or more, you should be very careful about playing a huge pot with a medium flush draw or even a “made” medium size flush.  Be cautious if your opponent is willing to go ‘all-in’ because if you are not holding the big hand, the odds are that he probably is. Play smaller flushes as calling hands rather than betting them more aggressively like you would if you are sitting in front of a smaller stack.  This gives you a couple of advantages.  One, you keep the pot size small in case you aren’t holding the nuts and two, you end up trapping your opponent who may hit top pair on the river because he doesn’t think you have the flush.

Defence on the Poker Felt

One tricky betting scenario is when you are able to entice your opponent to call or raise your bet.  Consider the scenario where most of the players at the table are evenly stacked and the blinds are at $15/30. You look down and see pocket 88’s and decide to raise from middle position.  You get called by the big blind who you think is riding high with an A-9.  The flop falls:  As, 8d and 3d.  What a flop!  Middle set, but you don’t want to give away the strength of your hand, so how do you bet to get the most out of your opponent?  You really want to try and make your hand look weaker than it actually is and there are a few ways to do this.  If you are acting first and your opponent isn’t overly-aggressive, you can make a relatively small bet, maybe half the pot, and hope that he calls.  Assuming he doesn’t raise, we can bet again on the turn or check and hope he takes the lead thinking his ace is good.  If he does raise on the flop, you should call and re-evaluate on the turn.

If your opponent is likely to lead out on his own, you should check your hand in the hopes that he bets for you.  Depending on how strong you think his hand is, you can either just call his bet to see the turn, then put in a raise of your own, in order to build the pot even more.  If your opponent is first to act and checks to you, bet your hand and hope for a call, but maybe a smarter play would be to not bet here and check behind him so your opponent  feels more confident about betting his ace on the turn.

Defensive betting is when you try to entice either a call or a fold from an opponent while preventing them from leading out or raising your hand.  Why bet defensively?  Usually you are making these kinds of bets when there is a draw, and you haven’t made your hand yet.  For example, let’s say you’ve loosened up your game and decide to play 7s-8s in middle position.  You get called by the button and now you are looking at a board of Ks, 10s and 5c.  You really have nothing more than a flush draw, and while checking here is okay, it may not be the best way to play it because you may be giving up some potential profit in the event that you hit.  Then, at the same time you are giving your opponent a chance to make a bet that may force you to fold your hand.  You may also want to bet here because 50-60% of the time, you are going to win the pot.  The trick to betting defensively is to find a number big enough to provoke either a call or a fold from your opponent, while keeping the bet cheap enough that it is not costing you too much to hit your draw.  Often times a bet of about 1/3 the pot is the right size bet to accomplish this goal.

Luck and the Loose Table

As you develop your skills and strategies by playing and practicing at the tables, you will find very quickly that a lot of money can be made at the tables that are considered “loose”.  In this article, we are going to try and explain how some loose games differ from others.

Before a discussion can begin regarding strategies, you should know that there are different types of loose games that you are likely to encounter.  The first game is called a loose/passive game.  In this situation you will find a lot of players who like to limp into the pot pre-flop.  Most players in these games will not raise before the flop without a solid starting hand.  Because there tends to be so many limpers in loose passive games, often you can enter the pot for very little money, which means that you can play loosely yourself since generally there is little fear that there will be an opponent that will raise behind you.  As a result, you will find yourself playing in a lot of multi-way pots.  These games often provide good opportunities to limp in early position with speculative hands like small pairs and suited Ace’s, where you are hoping to hit a set or make a flush, since your initial investment is minimal.

In a loose/aggressive game, you will find that players will be making a lot more pre-flop raises, often with a much wider hand range.  Since most pots are raised, you are less likely to have a lot of players seeing the flop in these kind of games.  Because there is more pre-flop raising in loose/aggressive games, you should be looking to play more high percentage hands like big pairs, AK, and AQ.  Playing speculative hands can also be profitable in these types of games, but only if you are in position.  Playing speculative hands out of position will often become too expensive to justify.

In either type of game you can expect to see a wide variety of hands at showdown which makes it harder to steal pots in loose games because an opponent is more likely to hit the flop, especially in a multi-way pot.  Don’t ever feel like you need to get caught up in the action or build a pot in a loose game.  It only takes a key hand or two to bring you some nice profits and turn things around.  In loose/aggressive games especially, your opponents will tend to overplay hands such as top pair which means that you will have the opportunity to sit back and trap them with your big hand.

The Powerful Semi-Bluff

While bluffing can sometimes be one of the most thrilling plays in poker, it can also be one of the scariest.  Especially for cash game players who are risking real money when they put their chips into the middle with nothing but air.  Semi-bluffing can provide many of the same rewards that bluffing can, but with the added benefit that you still may be able to make a winning hand even if you get called.  Semi-bluffing means that you are betting with a hand that would currently lose at showdown, but the hand also has the potential to improve.

For example let’s say you are holding the 10H and JH and the flop falls 7H, 8H and A-D. Even though you are technically behind if you bet, your hand still has a chance of winning at showdown if you catch a heart or a 9. Even better, you could win the pot immediately if your opponents aren’t carrying an Ace.

You can semi-bluff your hand either in or out of position, and each option offers different risks and benefits.  The first benefit of semi-bluffing from out of position is that sometimes by leading out, you can take the pot right away by forcing your opponents to fold.  In cases where your opponent does not fold, a semi-bluff can work as a defensive bet. You take control of the game by enticing your opponent to call for a smaller amount that he would have eventually bet on his own.  Also, semi-bluffing from out of position can be very deceptive since your opponents will often give you credit for having a made hand rather than some kind of draw.  If your opponent raises your semi-bluff on the flop, you may want to call and reevaluate your hand on the turn, but occasionally you can continue your semi-bluff and put in a big re-raise.  You can do this either when your draw is very unlikely to hit or when you suspect your opponent does not have a huge hand.  If you think your opponent is very strong, you can check-call hoping to make your hand on the turn.  If you think he’s weak, you can lead out with another semi-bluff on the turn.

Your semi-bluffing options are slightly different when you are in position.  In this case, betting your hand when your opponents check to you can often be enough to just take the pot down right away.  Remember though that by doing so you are re-opening the betting and giving a tricky opponent the chance to check-raise you into folding a hand that could have improved with a free card.  With this in mind, take careful note of who you are up against in the hand.  If you are up against a weak or predictable opponent you can semi-bluff without much fear.  Against a tricky or more aggressive opponent, then you need to think about whether or not your hand can stand up to a check-raise before you bet.

Preying on the Tight Players

If a loose player gets involved in too many hands pre-flop, a tight player doesn’t play enough.  That’s how you can tell the difference between your opponents at the table.  This can make determining their range of hands fairly easy as tight players are often unwilling to play with anything less than a premium holding.  Because tight players are opposite of loose players when it comes to their playing strategies, it only makes sense that you will need to alter your approach when playing hands against these tight players.

When you play tighter against a loose opponent, you stand to profit by playing more aggressively against tight opponents. During pre-flop play this means that you should raise more hands against tight opponents.  For example, if you have an opponent in the blinds that is playing really tight, and you are in late position, you will probably want to raise every single time.  If you see an opponent who likes to limp into the pot with marginal hands, like Q-10 suited or a medium pocket pair, you can often push them off their hand by offering a pre-flop raise. By the same token, if you see a tight player who doesn’t defend his big blind with anything other than a big hand, don’t be afraid to open up your game and steal the blinds by raising pre-flop.  Many players like to raise with weak hands like 10-7 or 6-4 in these spots rather than mediocre hands like Q-J or 10-9, because they are easier to get away from if they are re-raised.  If by chance you do call a raise from a tight player while holding a mediocre hand, be careful if you flop top pair and your tight opponent is putting in a lot of money. It’s probable that your opponent has you beat with an over-pair or a set, or even with a better kicker.

Another key to this strategy is to watch how a tight player reacts once they become involved in hand before the flop.  Some tight players will open-raise the pot with a good hand, but fold to a re-raise because they are not willing to risk their chips with anything less than a premium hand.  Other tight players will become ‘sticky’ once they’ve opened a pot and their stubbornness will force them to not want to lay down their hand to anything less than a huge re-raise. Only re-raise tight players who will show that they can lay down a hand that they really wanted to play.

After the flop the best way to profit against tight opponents is to bet or raise them off their hands or in other words, bluff them!  While this is a very effective play against a tight and timid opponent, you need to be careful when you are facing a tight and talented player.  The tight and talented player is very skilled in trapping aggressive opponents and inducing them into bluffing off their chips in bad times.

As the game gets short-handed, you will need to become a little more careful against some tight opponents.  Some of those tight players will not be able to adjust to a shorter table, which means that you can continue to play aggressively against them without fear.  But the talented tight player will be changing up their game as the situation changes and they are likely to loosen up their ranges, just as you are. Pay close attention to these players and exercise caution if they start to play back at you more frequently in short-handed situations.

Finally, remember that position is always your friend.  If there is an all-in raise during a particular hand, make sure you are the one making it!  Where a loose player will often fold because they have a weak hand, tight players are likely to fold in these spots because they fear they have an inferior hand.

Stealing in Poker Tournament Play

To be a successful tournament player you need to learn how to steal pots from your opponents in order to increase your chip stacks.  There are moments at every table, where the opportunity to steal presents itself and a good poker player will become adapt at picking the best spots to steal. As the blinds and antes go up in a tournament, you need to keep increasing your chip stack in order to prevent yourself from getting short-stacked. Obviously if you are on a lucky streak you can increase your chip stack by just winning a big hand against another player who may also have a hand.  But that doesn’t happen too often and the blinds and antes don’t wait for you to get a hand against hand situation, so that means that you’re going to have to steal to survive in a tournament.

As the blinds and antes keep going up, stealing allows you to buy time until you do get the lucky moment of having a big hand and winning a large pot.  Successful players certainly understand this concept, and more importantly they recognize that there are plenty of spots in a tournament that you can steal pots with a very high percentage of hitting success.

The most obvious spots to steal in a tournament are at the bubbles.  The final table bubble is a great opportunity to steal because players want to say they made it to the final table. Of course any money bubble is also a good opportunity, because this is when players start to tighten up their games as they want to ensure that they walk away with some cash.  An experience poker player will agree that this is not a good strategy because the ultimate goal is to win the tournament, not just walk away with the minimum cash.  More importantly you don’t want to make it to the final table with the smallest chip stack and then be the first one out.  There are lots of players out there that do consider making the cash almost as good as winning the tournament.  So this makes the bubble an excellent opportunity to just sneak in there, open up your game and steal pots to exploit your opponents’ tight play.  These tight players will be playing way too conservatively and they will be reluctant to give up any of their money right before the bubble bursts.  When you start to open pots they will be less likely to play back at you, unless they have very strong hands.  When they raise, you can re-raise them because they will not want to put any more chips at risk right before the bubble.

You should also be looking for very tight opponents who are reluctant to defend their blinds with anything less than a really good hand.  You should attack these types of player’s blinds as often as possible.  Remember, you may not be the only one at the table who is figuring out these types of blinds strategy, so if you see other players, particularly players to your right who are also attacking those blinds, sometimes you can re-steal with a well-timed three-bet.  Also, look for players that raise too many times from late position, and look for spots where you can re-raise them out of the pot since they will fold with most of the range they’ve been opening or raising with.

You should also be looking for very tight opponents who are reluctant to defend their blinds with anything less that a really good hand.  Attacking these types of player’s blinds as often as possible is another great stealing strategy.  Remember, you may not be the only one at the table who is figuring out these blinds strategy so if you see other players, particularly players to your right who are also attacking those blinds, sometimes you can re-steal with a well-timed three-bet.  Also, look for players that raise too many times from late position, and look for spots where you can re-raise them out of the pot since they will fold with most of the range they’ve been opening with.

Your steal plays will be more effective if you don’t play like a maniac.  Always maintain a solid image at the table, because it will always end up working in your favor.

What To Do When You Reach The Final Table

Even though tournaments tend to get “loose” once the money bubble bursts, things tend to tighten up again as players approach the final table.  A lot of the pros will say that you should consider the late stages of the tournament as a “new and smaller” tournament and adjust your play accordingly.

Just as making the money is overvalued by many players, so is reaching the final table.  This means that players will tend to tighten up their games and become more susceptible to pressure applied by more aggressive opponents.  The best time to really step up the pressure on your opponents is when the multi-tabled tournament reaches about 15 players.  This is when the final table is fast approaching and is so tantalizing close!  Think about it!  There are just six players left that have to be eliminated before the remaining players take center stage.  And even more importantly, with just 15 or fewer players left, the remaining tables are short-handed, and this can be important for two reasons.  First, when the play becomes short-handed, you will start to see the blinds come around much faster and you can’t afford to sit back and wait for premium hands.  You need to play a wider range of starting hands to maintain your stack. Secondly, it is a fact that many of your opponents will naturally be tightening up their game at this point, so you need to begin to re-establish your ‘maniac’ table image which will help you when you do actually reach the final table.

Once the final table bursts, be prepared to tighten up your game again.  Just as many players loosen up their game after making the money, those players whose goal it was to make the final table will start to gamble again, especially if they are short-stacked.  This means you are going to want stronger hands when you decide to get involved in a pot.  You also need to remember that once you reach the final table, you are no longer short-handed, and the blinds will be coming around at a much slower pace, so you can afford to sit back and wait for those stronger hands, or even the speculative hands, if you are in position.

Remember that the loose aggressive image that you developed during the time of short-handed play just before the final table, will be working in your favor once you are playing a tighter game.  Because you were playing so aggressive just a short time earlier, your opponents will tend to over-play weaker hands against you because they won’t give you credit for having a good hand.



How to Play the Turn

We’ve all heard someone say how their fate changed on the turn of a card.  One card here, one card there, a card away from a championship….in poker, sometimes the fate of your hand often changes with the turn card. 

The key to playing the turn is to understand when you want to shut down any further betting and knowing when to leave the betting open.  Closing the action simply means that your opponent can’t bet again on that round.  For example, if your opponent checks to you and you check behind him, then you’ve closed the action and you will both see the River card.  On the other hand, if your opponent checks to you and you bet out, the action is still open and you are giving your opponent a chance to call or raise you. Likewise if your opponent bets the turn and you call, you are closing the action, but if your opponent bets and you raise, you are leaving the action open, giving your opponent the opportunity to three-bet against you or maybe move all-in. 

The reason this is important is because many times you may be holding the best hand on the turn, but it’s not strong enough to withstand a raise or a re-raise from your opponent. This is often true if you’re holding something like top pair, which can be especially vulnerable.  If you only have one pair on the turn then opening up the action to your opponent is dangerous because if you get check-raised, you are most likely going to have to fold AND you may well be folding the best hand.

Here’s an example.  Let’s say you have KC and JH and the board is KS, 9D, 4C and the turn is 7H.  If your opponent checks to you, checking back isn’t bad because the board isn’t dangerous and giving your opponent a free card isn’t likely to hurt your hand.  In other words, it’s unlikely your opponent has a straight draw and the board isn’t textured to show a flush draw. However, betting here may cause you trouble if you already have your opponent beat. They are probably intending to do one of two things after you bet, fold or check/raise.  If your opponent folds, then your bet will earn you nothing, of course you do win the pot, but you don’t make any more money from the hand.  If your opponent decides to check/raise you, your original bet will have made you loose the entire pot, because you would probably fold KJ, which is even a worse outcome.

If you are up against a better hand than yours, then betting isn’t good either.  If you check,  then you lose absolutely no money on the turn, but if you bet, you lose the amount of money that you bet in addition to whatever money was already in the pot. Betting marginal hands can be costly on the turn and raising them can be profitable, because when you raise on the turn you are putting the pressure on your opponent. For example, you may raise with a 9-10 on a K-9-4-7 board and by raising you could potentially force your opponent to fold the K-J hand.  You can raise by either check/raising out of position or by just raising when you are in position.  Either way it is a very strong play because it makes it very hard for your opponent to call, even if they are holding a hand like KQ. 

So remember, raising on the Flop can often signal weakness, raising on the Turn will usually signal strength, which is why it is a more effective play. In short, closing the action on the turn with a marginal hand is generally a smart move.

Who is Updating the Money Lists?!

Recently Erik Seidel moved up to 3^rd from 11^th on the Poker All-Time Money List after taking down the $250,000 buy-in Super High Roller’s Event at Aussie Millions.  After that happened, a debate erupted in regards to the validity of today’s current list.  The #1 source for tracking the all-time  money winners is Hendon Mob’s website and they’ve recently added three new lists to help better determine who really is on top.

The three new lists essentially filter out particular results based on certain criteria.  One list counts only the open events, regardless of the buy-in amount.  Another list excludes the events that are greater than $50,000, but counts non-open events.  The third new list excludes both non-open events and any event over $50K.  An open event is defined as an event that has no restrictions on entry.  Events such as Poker After Dark, Women’s Events and made for TV events will fall under this category.

As most of you may know, Daniel Negreanu is in the top spot for the original All-Time Money list.  On the new lists however, Negreanu tops the list that includes all events under $50,000 and the list for all open events under $50,000.  On the all-time list that includes all open events regardless of buy-in, Erik Seidel has taken over the top spot with $13.53 million where Negreanu trails with a meager $13.34 million.

We understand that these lists only track the gross proceeds from tournaments and do not factor in buy-ins, bust-outs, etc.  Some people feel that in order to really see who is making the most money in tournament poker, all of these particulars should be tracked.  In an effort to keep attracting new players with the promise of huge payouts in tournaments, the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim.  For instance, poker tournament officials probably do not want people to realize facts such as Bill Edler winning $2.7 million in 2007, a big fat zero for 2008 and has won only $42K since.

But the lists just keep on coming and we keep on reading them.

Playing Poker Professionally

I’ve been reading so much about poker lately and finally had to ask myself, “Why would anyone want to become a professional poker player?  I know so many people that envy the life of the professional poker player, and why not?  Who wouldn’t want to set their own hours, play a game they love for a living, and if they want, travel around the world playing in high-stakes tournaments?

There is no Poker Pro College that poker players graduate from and even players who lose money playing poker will tell you that they have turned professional for one of two reasons:  they can make more money playing poker that they could at any other job, or they simply enjoy the poker lifestyle so much that they will take losing over winning just to be a part of it.  Only a small percentage of players will view poker-playing as a career for life.  I suppose you could get lucky and win enough at a tournament, something like the main event at the WSOP, but consider your odds and then consider buying a lottery ticket.  I’m talking about becoming the type of player that you can actually make a solid living at it and that is not so easy to do.

Generally speaking a player would have to log in over 500 hours of poker to come up with some type of measure to consider their hourly rate.  There are plenty of websites out there with tools that will help you figure out what you are actually making when you are playing.  A solid poker professional will be able to figure out how to use poker to maximize their income, and poker pros understand and accept that their bread and butter is based on skill, the size of their bankroll, guts and luck.

It’s not always fun and games though. If you are playing online at home, there is no human interaction and poker can become very monotonous very quickly.  Since a poker professional is primarily interested in making money, he will probably concentrate on the one game that provides his highest hourly rate.  This can become very boring, very fast.  Also, and this is probably the most important thing to consider, poker can have a highly variable income.  Based on my own data, my standard deviation per hour is 6 times my hourly rate.  What this basically means is that if I made a $100 an hour, there is about a 68% chance that in any one hour I’d make between $500 and $700.  And if the odds change and the luck drifts out the window, I could make much less than that, but I have to be able to cover myself.
What a true professional worries about is not the luck of the cards but the changes in the poker market. Professionals need to play against poor players, the fishes. If a pro is playing against a bunch of pros, then very little money might be made.  But luckily, (no pun intended) there are more online sites offering brilliant bonuses and the virtual casino is so lifelike, that you really feel as if you are in a real brick and mortar casino.

It is probably a good thing for poker professionals that being a full-time poker player is not too appealing of a job. If many people became pros, then the competition would be too tough to make much money at poker!