The longer I’ve played poker, the more I’ve become convinced that a single concept is truly at the core of nearly all successful strategies. It’s a concept that is as important playing no-limit hold’em as it is at limit stud eight-or-better. This central concept is extracting thin value. It’s a simple Thin Value|974|3.95|USD|| idea. On [...]

Last issue I wrote about how the most useful way to read hands relies on the concept of hand ranges. Because your opponents do not provide you perfect information with their checks, bets, and raises, you cannot quickly narrow down their holdings to just one or a few hands. Board Textures And Hand Ranges|971|3.95|USD|| Instead, [...]

Reading hands is a critical poker skill. The better you can key in on the sort of hands your opponents have, the better decisions you will make, and the better your results will be. Most players use some sort of hand reading process to inform their decisions. But not all hand Reading Hands Using Hand [...]

Last issue I discussed five ways that running particularly good for a while can negatively affect your play. In this article, I’ll talk about how running bad for a prolonged period of time can get in your head and have you making bad decisions. Running bad is the boogeyman for every The Pitfalls Of Running [...]

I’ve always thought that one of the worst things that can happen to new poker players is for them to run really good right out of the gate. If they rack up a number of big wins early on, a couple of bad things can happen. First, they get unrealistic The Pitfalls Of Running Good|944|3.95|USD|| [...]

Stacking your opponent is the ultimate no-limit high. There’s nothing more exhilarating than winning a huge pot. But, beyond that, stacking opponents is a critical no-limit skill. I’ve noticed that the best players tend to be far more adept than the average player at encouraging opponents to part with all …Login/Register for more.

Cash games tend to be relatively static. The blinds don’t change. The stack sizes can vary, but they tend to vary from fairly deep to really deep. And after any hand you can get up from the table and cash your chips in for dollars. So each chip is always The Three Stages Of A [...]

Whenever I have a bad session, I spend the next hour or two doing a post-mortem in my head. What went wrong? Could I have done something different to play better and (presumably) lose less money? I go through all the significant hands and analyze my play. Should I have Are You Paying Off Too [...]

One common scenario confounds nearly every beginning hold’em player. People ask me about it time and time again. If they hold a big pocket pair, and an overcard comes on the flop, they are lost. They are doubly lost if they have to navigate the minefield of an overcard from Alas, An Overcard|934|3.95|USD|| out of [...]

In my last article, I discussed how the relative strength of your hand reading skills versus your opponents’ can help determine whether you’re ready to move up to higher stakes games. The river betting round is the one that allows you to benefit most from sharp hand reading, so it’s Bluffing And Moving Up|930|3.95|USD|| a [...]