Today we have a quick Q&A about playing in a game with a time charge. A time charge is a way for the house to profit from the game. In lieu of a rake on each pot, in a time game the house simply collects a fixed fee from each player at the beginning of [...]

The river really separates the pros from the amateurs. I don’t mean that pros tremble in fear of the river card while amateurs gleefully plan their latest bad beat. Quite the opposite, the river is probably the betting round where pro players generate the greatest edge over their amateur adversaries.
Amateur players tend not to bet [...]

Recently on the message board I fielded two questions about big pocket pair hands played in live no-limit games. I want to share these two hands with all my readers.
The first question comes from Slam. You can read the entire discussion on the message board. Slam asks:
I’m holding my own with all of my $100 [...]

I don’t know who the first person was who claimed online poker was rigged, but I’m pretty sure they’re older than the Baby Jesus. Unfortunately, the ubiquitous wolf-criers and Chicken Littles have turned any claim that online poker is “rigged” into a bad joke in the eyes of many people.
While the vast majority of accusations [...]

Recently I published an answer to the mother of all poker questions, Can A No-Limit Game Be Too Loose? The short answer is, no. For the long answer, read the article.
This really is, however, the mother of all poker questions, both because it’s an extremely important question and because for many players it will never, [...]

It is the mother of all poker questions. I’ve probably seen a variant of this question asked almost a thousand times. Can a game be too good or too loose or too soft? Do you actually want some good players in your game? Can a bunch of schooling fish turn even the best player into [...]

In no-limit, fairly frequently you have to lay down “big” hands like top pair, top kicker or a medium two pair because your opponent is representing something even bigger. Unfortunately, these are also sometimes hands you want to beat your opponent into the pot with. It can be hard to figure out if this is [...]

In Part 2 of Moving Up: Beyond Winrate And Bankroll, I discussed how the relative strength of your hand reading skills versus your opponents’ is a big factor in whether you’re ready to move up or not. The river betting round is the one that allows you to benefit most from sharp hand reading, [...]

The isolation play is one of the most profitable weapons in the professional cash game player’s arsenal. Yet it is also one of the least understood by most amateur players. Teaching the play thoroughly would take a book, not an article, so my goal here is merely to try to shed some light on [...]

In Part 1 of Moving Up: Beyond Winrate And Bankroll, I claimed that the two factors most cited in discussions of moving up, winrate and bankroll, don’t tell the whole story. If you’re thinking about moving up, you should consider some other factors just as much.
The first factor is your overall comfort level at your [...]