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.

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.

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.

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!

Taking The “Blinds” Strategy Seriously

In Texas Hold’em there is no ante, instead there are blinds that serve the same purpose. Big and small blinds are forced bets that rotate around the table getting the action started. Without the blinds, everyone would just wait until they had a perfect hand to play, which would bring the action to a screeching halt.  There are two blinds: a small blind and a big blind.

The big blind is typically set as the amount of the pre-flop bet and the small blind is usually half of the big blind. For example, in a $10-20 limit poker game, the big blind is $10 and the small blind is $5.

If you want to win at poker, it is important to understand the blinds and take the notion of blind strategy seriously. Every round you’re forced to play both a big blind and a small blind. In online poker, you’ll receive between 60 and 70 hands per hour. (More if you’re multi-tabling.) At a full table, this means you’ll be posting blinds 6 or 7 times per hour. In a $10/$20 game, that’s between $90 and $105 each hour.

Use the simple poker blinds formula below to try and figure out how much money you put in the pot for blinds each hour:

(Rounds per hour x big blind post amount) + (Rounds per hour x small blind post amount) = Total dollars put in the pot from blinds.

In my opinion, there are two perspectives to consider when thinking about the blinds:

• Defensive – You want to protect your blinds when you’re in the blinds.
• Offensive – You want to steal the other players’ blinds when you can.

Being able to steal blinds is necessary to be a winning player in a tough game. Stealing blinds in the tough games become more important because players are usually playing tighter.  Take advantage of your table position and play aggressively, raising pre-flop.  If you succeed and the blinds fold, you’ve won a free hand of poker. And of course you have the advantage of stealing a blind from any position if you’re holding a premium starting hand.

You’ll need to defend your blinds from this strategy from other players as well. Good poker players know when to be selective about the hands they play. But if your blinds are stolen every round by a raise, then you’re losing a significant amount of money. The bottom line is that dealing with the blinds is something you’ll have to learn how to do to be a successful player. Especially in tournament play.

Doyle Brunson’s Tournament Tips

Doyle Brunson’s Poker Strategy Tips

Doyle Brunson, poker legend and fearsome opponent in all forms of the game has a reputation built on aggression – he wins pot after pot because his opponents know he is happy to get all his chips in without so much as a draw!  It may then come as a surprise to some that, for tournaments, Doyle Brunson’s poker strategy advice is to play very tight, at least in the beginning levels. For the first couple of blind levels Doyle is happy to sit back and be content with the pots that the cards allow him to win.

This type of survivalist poker tournament strategy allows professional players to survive the ‘minefield’ of amateur players found at the start of tournaments. The strategy involves raising with medium strength cards (mid-pairs / unsuited high cards etc) but never calling with them. Taking small stabs at pots, but backing off when resistance is encountered.

When you are entering mid-stage of the poker tournament, Doyle’s strategy involves careful assessment of many situational factors. These include the tendencies of opponents, but more importantly their stack sizes. Small and Large stacks are far more likely to call your big bets (though for different reasons) so caution should be exercised with them.

Aggressive and positive poker, which is Doyle Brunson’s trademark, kicks in later in the middle stages. This takes the form of gradually increasing aggression levels in order to put pressure on your opponents who will be afraid of busting out. According to Brunson, the key tournament strategy here is to keep accumulating chips – staying ahead of the blinds and antes will enable you to choose when to bet big rather than be forced to play without solid values.

Doyle’s poker tournament strategy for the final table involves careful evaluation of your opponents and their chip stacks. While Brunson advises always playing to win, there are times when a number of short stacked opponents mean that tight play would guarantee you one of the higher playing places. If your goal is to win and you are second in chips, Doyle advises that you target the chip leader, play aggressively and try to overtake him.