Poker Books

Shut up donk! Poker is a skill game!

Shut up donk! Poker is a skill game!
      
          I have been playing poker since 2004, I have been playing poker full time since 2005. I play all kinds of poker, hold em, horse, razz, stud, badugi, Omaha, 8 game. I have played hundreds of hours in ring games, and thousands of tournaments and sit and gos.

          I have encountered thousands of bad beats, I have encountered thousands of good plays. Each day playing poker is different from the next. Some days I run good, some days I run bad. Some days I bluff a lot, and some days I do not.

        One thing that remains the same each and every time I play poker is, the skill it takes to play. I am so sick of people saying poker is a game of chance, a game of luck. If it were a game of chance and luck, would I be able to make plays based on numbers and math? Would I be able to read my opponents and determine what my next move is based on them?

      Luck will only get you so far in poker, you have to have skill, you have to be able to make the big decisions when it really counts. Being able to pull the trigger, go all in with a hand that is weak, that takes skill, and some guts. There is no easy decision in poker, and that is because of the real skill involved. If poker was a luck game, there would be no poker pros.

   Going all in with 63 suited and going up against AA and winning. The skill involved in that is being able to push with the 63 not winning with it.

This is is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill”

Dancing with JC Tran

Dancing with JC Tran

JC Tran is truly a great poker player. In fact, I'd call him a natural-born Texas Hold'em player. He's a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and was the World Poker Tour Season Five Player of the Year.

In my opinion, there just aren't that many Hold'em players of his caliber among the top professionals in the world today. Don't get me wrong, there are a bunch of natural talents in the game today, but many of those specialize in other games, like Seven Card Stud or Pot Limit Omaha. For some reason, Texas Hold'em just doesn't come that easy to those other guys.

So, here's this week's hand.

JC and I were playing in the Premiere League IV playoff tournament in Las Vegas last week. We were facing off against each other in our second heat when this sick hand came up.

With six players remaining and the blinds at $3,000/$6,000, JC limped in with 5s-4s. Two other players folded and I made it $30,000 to go with 10-2 offsuit from the small blind.

Let me digress for a moment. It's important to note that there had been some recent playing history between JC and me.

First, I had reraised JC four times with absolutely nothing within the prior twenty minutes and never once showed a single bluff. Second, JC had reraised me only a few minutes earlier. Third, I had raised or reraised eight out of the last ten hands that were dealt. And fourth, JC and I both started this hand with around $300,000 in chips.

Okay, back to the hand.

JC called my raise with his 5s-4s and the flop came Ad-9h-2s. I bet $35,000 and JC called.

The 7h fell on the turn and I bet out $48,000. JC, following through with his bluff, calmly counted out a big raise to $109,000.

I paused for a while, considering all my options. I was thinking that there were no draws on the flop so he probably had me beat. I also had a vague feeling that he could have had a hand like J-10, in which case I had him beat, but I couldn't beat any sort of real hand. One more thing, he had another $150,000 remaining in his stack.

My conclusion: I had to either move all-in or fold. I decided to fold.

Believe it or not, I don't really mind the way I played this hand although it could be argued that a more conservative approach would have been better. When I busted out in sixth place and received a mere three points in the league standings, I certainly had to reconsider my super-aggressive play.

I could have easily ramped down my aggression and cruised into at least a fifth place finish but that's not what I decided to do.

I like my $35,000 bet on the flop and I like my $48,000 bet on the turn. The turn bet should have forced JC to fold - it would have worked against 97% of the players in the world, but not JC. I give him a ton of credit for his strong play in this hand. No wonder he's the defending Premiere League Champion.

If I had thought that JC was capable of making such an aggressive raise at the end, perhaps I would have made the super-hero move and shoved all-in over the top which would have forced JC to fold his hand. Now that would have been an amazing personal highlight reel play!

The fact is, either JC or I could have won this hand. It was just a matter of who blinked first -- and this time it was me!

-Phil Hellmuth

I am hosting a Full tilt Poker tournament

214

Cashout Tournament Strategies

Eric Froehlich

February 16th, 2010

Full Tilt Poker’s Cashout Tournaments provide players the option to leave the tournament at any time before the final table and get the cash value of what their stack is worth. With the options of cashing out part of your chip stack or your entire stack and exiting a tournament, we players are presented with a whole new variety of options to consider.
In Cashout Tournaments, half of the buy-in goes into the Cashout prize pool, and the other half into the tournament prize pool. The ability to cash out in 10% increments of the starting stack (for example, if you start with 3,000 chips, you can cash out as little as 300 chips and keep cashing out in increments of 300) can drastically alter the way you approach these tournaments. With most pros, the goal in a tournament is first place. Cashing in a tournament or lowering variance is not a major concern the vast majority of the time. If that’s your only goal, removing chips from your stack is not going to be an option you employ very often. For most players, however, while first place is certainly always going to be the number one goal, there are other factors involved.
Often times, the best opportunity to cash out is going to be early in the tournament. You can get back some of the money you put up in the buy-in and navigate a slightly shorter stack while the blinds are still small and chip away to get back to where you started and beyond. The real key to knowing when to implement the Cashout option is how much the money means to you. There’s certainly a real advantage in a poker tournament when you triple up very early and have that bigger stack, but for a lot of players, securing that automatic Freeroll in a tournament is going to be even more advantageous (remember that with the 3,000 chip starting stack, should you increase your stack to 9,000, each 300 chips will allow you to cash out for 10% of what you put into the Cashout pool – 6,000 chips will get your full buy-in back and still leave you with a starting stack!). The ability to give peace of mind, guaranteeing that you can’t lose any money in the tournament, might allow you to play a stronger game as you go on.
The Cashout Tournaments also provide a few other opportunities poker players have never seen before. There isn’t a player out there who hasn’t been playing their tournament and just had something “come up” or something they absolutely had to do. Maybe you were already on a time crunch with just a few free hours to spare and were looking to play a little poker. I would advise any player in this position to join a Cashout Tournament rather than risk running out of time in another MTT. The full Cashout option allows you to play and still get money out of the work you did, even if you can’t complete the whole thing!
My strategy going into Cashout Tournaments would be to cash out little by little. I might take a little off the top here and there, while trying to retain a relatively decent stack. I always like to have the biggest stack at the table so I can get maximum value out of my hands, but in the cases where I have quite a bit more chips than anyone else, getting a little bit of money for my chips becomes quite appealing. Later on in the tournament, I would consider cashing out a little bit here and there, while still trying to keep my stack above 15 big blinds, and preferably above 20 big blinds. Maintaining this stack size makes sure that I’m not so short that my hand is forced while still having enough chips to re-raise all-in and have enough chips that someone can fold.
The full Cashout option is one I would reserve for mostly emergencies and other such events that come up unexpectedly. Tournament life is such a valuable thing that I would never give up my last chip in a Cashout Tournament unless I had to leave, but cashing down to a shorter stack and trying to double up can be highly effective and fun as well. Many people like to start with short stacks in cash games and take away a lot of the decision work. Cashing out to 10 big blinds or less and beginning to play shove or fold poker is something many people hate, but many others love.
One final tip to keep in mind is that you will also have the ability to practice valuable tournament skills by utilizing the Cashout option. If you need more experience playing a shorter stack effectively, you can cash out a portion of your stack. This allows you to make additional money without having to actually dump off chips, and you can work on improving that portion of your poker game, as well.

A Nub plays rush poker 3 - FINAL

Pokerticians

213

Two High-Stakes Pokerticians

Jim McManus

February 9th, 2010

A year before Barack Obama launched his presidential campaign, a reporter asked him if he had a hidden talent. “I’m a pretty good poker player,” he said. That talent, nurtured by his maternal grandfather and then in a low-stakes weekly game with Illinois politicians, is one Obama shares with a host of previous presidents. Yet, only two of them played for serious money, and both were remarkably successful.
Dwight Eisenhower played Stud and Draw for sizable stakes as a young army officer because he needed the money. But he got so good that by the time he reached the higher echelons of the military, he decided to give up the game because he was leaving so many of his tablemates broke.
Eisenhower had learned to play as an eight-year-old in Abilene, Kansas during hunting trips with a guide named Bob Davis, who made him memorize the odds of completing various draws. “He dinned percentages into my head night after night around a campfire,” Ike recalled, “using a greasy pack of nicked cards that must have been a dozen years old. We played for matches and whenever my box of matches was exhausted, I’d have to roll in my blankets and go to sleep.” As an upperclassman at West Point in 1915, he attended “cadet dances only now and then, preferring to devote my time to poker.” He used poker winnings to pay for his dress uniform as well as gifts for Mamie Dowd, a wealthy Denver debutante. Those gifts included her engagement ring, which she accepted on Valentine’s Day, 1916.
Eisenhower was not only a strong player, he was dedicated to keeping the game honest. While stationed at Camp Colt in Pennsylvania, he learned that a well-connected junior officer had used a marked deck in a Stud game. Capt. Eisenhower told him to resign or face a court-martial. When the cheater’s father and Congressman requested that he be allowed to transfer to another unit, Eisenhower firmly explained that no officer could be effective in the field without personal integrity. Even though a more senior officer eventually greased the way for the transfer, Eisenhower never backed down.
While stationed at Fort Meade under Col. George Patton, Capt. Eisenhower continued to dominate the action among his fellow officers. Their highest-stakes game was reserved for bachelors and married men who could comfortably afford to lose. One player who ignored this rule wound up losing so much to Ike that he was forced to cash in his wife’s war bonds to make good on his I.O.U. Eisenhower reluctantly accepted payment, but he felt so guilty afterward that he conspired with others in the game to lose the money back to the man. “This was not achieved easily,” said Eisenhower. “One of the hardest things known to man is to make a fellow win in poker who plays as if bent on losing every nickel.” He then persuaded Col. Patton to ban poker at the fort, if only to keep the same fellow from squandering any more money. The sour experience was enough to convince Eisenhower that, as an officer, “I had to quit playing. It was not because I didn’t enjoy the excitement of the game – I really love to play. But it had become clear that it was no game to play in the Army.”
Any kind of gambling was an anathema in East Whittier, the Quaker suburb of Los Angeles where Richard Nixon grew up. But it didn’t take long for Nixon to become a ruthless poker player when he joined the Navy in World War II. “I found playing poker instructive as well as entertaining and profitable,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I learned that people who have the cards are usually the ones who talk the least and the softest; those who are bluffing tend to talk loudly and give themselves away.”
While serving in the Solomon Islands, Lt. Nixon was invited to a small dinner party for the celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh, who was testing prototype planes for the Air Force. Instead, he attended a poker game he had previously agreed to host. “In the intense loneliness and boredom of the South Pacific, our poker games were more than idle pastimes,” he wrote, “and the etiquette surrounding them was taken very seriously.”
Nixon liked to compare notes with other strong players, and persuaded one expert, Jim Stewart, to coach him on Five-Card Draw strategy. Nixon’s term for such preparations was “war-gaming.” He began to make serious money playing tight-aggressive poker. He was “as good a poker player as, if not better than, anyone we had ever seen,” said one fellow officer. “I once saw him bluff a Lieutenant Commander out of $1,500 with a pair of deuces.”
By the end of the war, Nixon had won $8,000, a genuinely whopping haul in the forties. Upon discharge, he used it to bankroll his first congressional campaign. In November 1946, he defeated the popular Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, in part by accusing him of being a draft-dodging communist. Four years later, he defeated Helen Gahagan Douglas, a three-term congresswoman, in a mudslinging race for the U.S. Senate. After Nixon claimed the attractive former actress was “pink right down to her underwear,” she retorted with a nickname that stuck: “Tricky Dick;” an unfortunate handle for a politician, of course, but one that any poker stud would be proud of.

A Nub plays rush poker 2

A Nub plays rush poker

212

The Basics Of Rush Poker*

Howard Lederer

February 2nd, 2010

Full Tilt Poker recently released a revolutionary new form of online poker: Rush Poker*. If you’re not familiar with the game, I encourage you to give it a try. Instead of the players sitting in a 6 or 9-handed game, they are seated in a game that has up to 2,000 players in it. All players are seated at a normal table, but as soon as you decide to fold, instead of waiting for the hand to finish and playing the next hand against the same players, you are immediately seated with a different group of players and play your next hand. This allows players to play around 300 hands per hour instead of the usual 80.

The excitement level isn’t the only thing that makes this game different than normal online poker. Playing against a different group of players each hand means you will need to make a few other adjustments to your normal ring-game strategy to succeed at Rush Poker*.

One big mistake that is tempting to make is to play too tight, waiting for only premium hands. It easy to find yourself folding any marginal hand, as you will have a chance to get a monster the next hand with no waiting. But, you must not forget that you’re still paying blinds. And if you tighten up your starting requirements too much, those blinds with eat away at your stack. In fact, I would suggest that opening a few speculative hands (like suited connectors in middle to late positions) is a good way to try to steal a few blinds. However, you should give any 3-bet a lot of respect. Players won’t be as likely to 3-bet light when a new hand is just seconds away.

One habit that is harder to break is playing off a table image. In Rush Poker*, you don’t have one. Just because you have stolen a few blinds lately, doesn’t mean you should be worried your opponents are aware of it. In fact, they have no way of knowing, as they weren’t seated with you when you were making those steals. If you just slow played a big pair, don’t be afraid to try it again next time. Instead of worrying about protecting your table image, you should be ruthlessly exploiting basic strategy and punishing what should be the more predictable hand ranges of your opponents.

Playing good poker is all about making the proper adjustments to your strategy, given different playing conditions. Rush Poker* presents very different conditions than a regular ring game, so making the proper adjustments will be a must. Make those adjustments, and you’ll find yourself having a lot of success while you have loads of fun playing the fastest game on the Internet.