Having position bestows an enormous advantage. But to make the most of the advantage, you have to employ what I call tactics of ambiguous aggression. You make plenty of bets and raises in position. Sometimes those bets and raises imply a strong hand, and they signify more bets and raises to come. Other times those [...]

Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. An image enters the eye and hits the back of the retina. Almost immediately the brain goes to work trying to fill in the blanks. Was only half of a face in view? Just the back of a head? The brain seamlessly fills in the missing information, creating an image [...]

It happens to us all more times than we’d like to count. We build a nice pot with pocket kings and then the flop comes and… BAM! There’s the ace. The way you handle it depends a lot on your opponents, the stack sizes, and more. Let’s look at a Pocket Kings Flop An Ace… [...]

Almost everyone is familiar with a per-hand rake. In each pot, the house takes out a few dollars as its cut. In live play, this rake is often taken $1 for every $10 in the pot, capped at $4 per pot (in the United States), So if the final pot Beat The Rake|836|3.95|USD|| [...]

Have you heard someone say that they’re raising in order to sweeten the pot? Do you think they’re nuts? Or is there method to their madness?
Recently a reader asked me whether his skepticism about pot-sweetening raises was justified, or if he was missing out on a valuable weapon for his Sweetening The Pot In No-Limit|816|3.95|USD|| [...]

Some people have the advantage (and sometimes disadvantage) of playing against the same lineup again and again. Whether it’s a home game with the same eight players each week or it’s a nosebleed online game where only a dozen or two names pop in and out, poker is a different Starting A Session The Right [...]

It’s a common question that takes many forms. “How many hands do I have to play before I know I’m a winner?” That’s the most standard form of the question. “If I’ve won $12 per 100 hands for the last 10,000 hands, does that mean I can move up?” A When Do I Know I’m [...]

Dry boards sometimes offer a golden opportunity to get extra value for your medium strength hands like top pair. Many players are always looking to sniff out a bluff on a dry board, and you can use that fact to your advantage if you have a hand that beats a Extracting Bonus Value On Dry [...]

As long as I’ve been writing about poker, I have heard two questions asked again and again. First, is pocket aces really the best hand? Or are some other hands better? And second, should you limp into the pot sometimes, or should you always raise? I’d like to put these Pocket Aces And Limping In|773|3.95|USD|| [...]

One of the most disappointing events in any no-limit game is getting stacked. With the monetary loss often also comes a sense of embarrassment and self-doubt. “Did I do it wrong? Should I have approached the hand completely differently?” Every decision gets scrutinized.
I want to talk about a hand submitted On Getting Stacked|765|3.95|USD|| [...]