Your opponent – perhaps sensing weakness or perhaps taking leave of his senses – pushes out a huge bet and dares you to call. If he has the hand he’s supposed to have, you’re crushed. But you think something is amiss and decide that this is it. You’re going to take a stand. Just after [...]

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 typical bluff catcher. In particular, [...]

Many tournament players make a consistent mistake. They focus too much on conserving their chips and preserving their “tournament life,” and in doing so they leave big pots hanging out to dry.
I see it frequently when I play tournaments. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. The blinds are 200-400, and the big blind [...]

When you’re out of position with a made hand, the most common decision is whether to bet your hand for value or to check it, looking to induce a bluff.
I find that most players tend to make this decision more based on their overall style than on any individual situation. Some players tend to bet [...]

Recently I benefited from a serious case of what I call adjustment tilt. I was in a live $2-$5 no-limit game. Most of the players, including me, had helped to start the game a few hours earlier, so we were familiar with each others’ play.
Some of the players had modestly weak-tight tendencies, so I made [...]

Slowplaying is seemingly one of the most tempting no-limit strategies. Flop a huge hand, and, in the immortal words of Elmer Fudd, be vewy vewy quiet. It fits with the image of poker as a game of deception; little do your opponents know that you’re waiting in the weeds ready The Pitfalls Of Slowplaying|465|3.95|USD|| [...]

This is a rapid fire article on playing small pocket pairs preflop in 6-max no-limit. By small pairs I mean roughly 66 and worse. I’m going to give you some basic rules of thumb and an outline of the general reasoning behind them. I’m not going to go in-depth because Playing Small Pocket Pairs Preflop [...]

I was playing $0.10-$0.25 on Full Tilt today while making a video for Stoxpoker, and I came across a common bluffing situation that’s often quite profitable. The situation occurs in a multiway pot when you have position on the preflop raiser. If everyone checks to the raiser, and the Firing A Position Bet When The [...]

When was the last time you three-barrel bluffed? Was it months ago? Years? Never?
Let me back up a bit. A three-barrel bluff is when you make a bluff bet on all three of the postflop streets. You bet the flop and get called. You bet the turn and get called. Firing The Third Barrel|460|3.95|USD|| [...]

The river value min-raise is a play I use with some frequency. I most typically try it when I’m heads-up with position on the river, and I have a hand I was planning to bet for value if checked to. But instead of checking, my opponent bets. And, given the The River Value Min-Raise|459|3.95|USD|| [...]