I have had many discussions with friends about whether PLO is dangerous for online poker players and on the whole we agree that for a new player it is better to focus on Texas Hold’em poker whilst you hone your knowledge of strategy and the other fundamental concepts. PLO is like a heightened from of Hold ‘em, it charges you more in terms of pot size to make the decisions you have learned in Holdem. Good decisions therefore earn you more and bad decisions cost you more.

A bankroll can be lost in a shorter space of time in PLO by going on tilt because the pots are bigger more regularly than in Hold ‘em. In Texas Holdem the chances of getting a big hand versus big hand confrontation are reasonable, but they do not happen that much. When they do, the money tends to go in and you flip for the pot. You will get such a situation quite often in Texas Hold ‘em if you play regularly.

In PLO, because you hold four hole cards instead of two there are more opportunities for you and your opponents to hit (perceived) strong hands and therefore you get a hand (and face a strong hand) more often per round that any other form of Poker. Many Holdem players do not make the necessary adjustments in realising that stronger hands are not necessarily so strong in PLO and they are willing to get their money in lighter than they should. This promotes players to play more hands than what standard PLO strategy would recommend and the game gets a little crazy as a result.

Bankroll management must be used and never forgotten in order to be a good PLO player. Any deviation from recommended bankroll management “law” will be cruelly exposed. You will not notice this if you go on a winning streak but when things go wrong you will be more inclined to panic if you are playing too high in this swingy poker game where losses can really hurt. PLO can lead to big profits which is why I think it is a good game to play, but with plenty of caution.

To play PLO I would increase the amount of buy-ins in your bankroll considerably. This will compensate for you “paying tuition” to learn some of the moves in the early days and also for the swings involved. Sometimes your straights, flushes and even full houses will be beaten so much you will be sure online poker is rigged against you but that is the game. Any frustration and emotion is heightened in this volatile game so being in control and fundamentally strong at tilt control is important before you attempt to play PLO. If your bankroll is not large enough yet to play PLO then wait and continue to study the game whilst it becomes large enough.

The good thing is that mastering these concepts at PLO will make Texas Hold ‘em seem far more relaxed and friendly as a game to you. Hopefully this new perspective on Poker will result in additional profits. PLO is an exciting game that demands respect and if you learn the correct strategies you can make a lot of money from it as it is a far less solved game than Texas Hold ‘em.

By Malcolm Clarke

In the movie “The Color of Money” Paul Newman’s character Eddie Felson is quoted as saying, “The best is the guy with the most; the best is the guy with the most in any walk of life”. We can excuse “Fast Eddie” a slight inaccuracy in regards to internet poker as it had not been invented in 1986! You will have heard pros say that the chips are a way of keeping score in Poker so if you have the most chips surely you must be the best player?

There is a difference between having the most poker skills and being the best poker player. You not only have to have an excellent grasp of poker theory you must be able to manage the emotion involved with wagering large amounts of money. You must also be able to play your best poker game after a large loss and a large win and series of them in a row. This is part of the reason poker bots are so feared, they deal with this aspect of play by simply not being aware of it and this can give them a big advantage over us emotional humans.

From a skills perspective a good player is an excellent hand reader. This involves analysing parts of the game like the players stack size, their betting tendencies often focusing on very subtle parts of their playing patterns and putting it all together to form opinions on what their hand ranges are. No-one is perfect but as long as you reach a point where you make the right decision most of the time you are going to do well. Good players make better decisions further into hands where the pots are larger. Sometimes when you watch poker on TV you forget they cannot see their opponents cards, their hand reading sometimes appears to be that good.

Players should not have a complete disregard for money because when bankroll management is required it should be utilised. A fearless gambler is great when they are winning because they maximise their winning potential but when losing it is hard for them to slow down and the natural reaction to panic and attempt to bet big to chase the losses can take over. This can be devastating to a bankroll. Many years work building a bankroll can be undone in a large downswing. Part of pokers skill is managing the downswing and ensuring that you maintain what should be a winning game when luck is more even and that you keep money around. Again this is something that the top players do very well, but there are professionals who only survive thanks to income they receive outside of poker. They are still great players, but they do not manage their bankroll properly.

To be a great poker player you need great hand reading skills, pot control awareness and implementation skills, a sound grasp of the math and theory behind poker and a sensible regard for your bankroll. Few players have the total package, but working on each part of what makes the perfect poker player will see you make huge strides in improving into a good poker player who profits from the game long term.

There is also no rule that exists saying you must play at a higher level. Some of the best players in the world grind it out at lower levels showing an excellent profit. It is comfortable for them and there is no reason to ever leave your comfort zone.

By Malcolm Clarke

This brings up a serious point about poker and once again it just shows how many areas of the game are down to each specific individual. Irrespective of what you learn or from who, you are never going to be able to emulate another human beings attitude towards money and risk.

This is something that many poker players never ever get to master, they are great theoreticians and they know a vast amount of things but putting money and sometimes sizeable money on the line does not come easy. Even if you do it then can you do it and still feel comfortable about it without it affecting your poker game….few can.

If the money is affecting you then you are not playing optimal poker and if you are not playing optimal poker then the gap (if there is one) between you and your opponents just got a whole lot narrower. If you sense that an opponent has bet just trying to pick the pot up and you fold instead of re-raising because you are afraid to put money at risk with no hand then the money is affecting you.

The top poker players in the world are NOT the most knowledgeable about the game, but they have one very important thing in common……they don’t blink when it comes to risking vast amounts of money. But these players are totally different animals to me, they thrive and get off on playing with large amounts of money and the greater the amount the more the kick.

There must be some chemical reaction taking place in their brain because I have played poker for a long time but I have never come close to this type of mindset. These players have become immune to playing for massive amounts of money but that does not necessarily make them great players in my book. If you put most of them into a tough $30-$60 Limit Hold’em game full of working pro’s then they would lose.

Yet make the game $2000-$4000 Limit and they suddenly come alive and the adrenalin is flowing like rocket fuel. This is why it is sheer madness that many players try and emulate them. They are trying to emulate something that they cannot possibly touch and that is their own psychological and physiological make up. You are what you are, sure you can improve your game and be better than 99.99% of the players out there but changing your character and personality is a completely different thing.

Many players who play in these “nosebleed” games are addicted gamblers who also wager huge sums of money on other sports which they have no expertise in whatsoever. They crave action like a junkie craves a fix and because they have big money they are able to play for huge stakes. It is fortunate that some of them are very good poker players because they need to be because of their bad habits.

I have heard many people say that their dream is to play in the world series or to play in Las Vegas or to play on television. If they manage one of these then they think that they have made it in poker. I know players who have managed all three and are still broke. Playing in the World Series is not an achievement, all you have to do is get yourself over there with a bit of money and you are in.

Success in poker is measured by TWO things, money won and time played. Anybody who tells me that have picked up $20,000 coming second in an online poker tournament is not going to impress me if they have only been playing for a year. You are still in the short-term after twelve months. Likewise if some dude says that they have been playing poker for thirty years….so what! How much money have they won in that thirty years is what I want to know.

So what I am trying to say here is to be very careful and do not jump in regardless of what hype you happen to hear because that is what it is….hype. The people who are at the top in poker need fresh novices coming in at the bottom so they can earn their seven figure salaries. They know that these people at the bottom need heroes and something to believe otherwise they will pack it in.

I make money from poker but I do it and have done it on MY terms and my schedule and not because of some rubbish that I have heard or read.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

But I have seen it many times and I am sure you have committed the sin many times yourself, you called with a hand when you KNEW full well that you were beat. Your calling instinct took over and it was as though you were not in control of the hand for that split second. All top poker professionals have this character flaw but some have it more than others.

I am sure that you will have seen some player on television try to explain why he has just called his entire stack off thinking that a player was bluffing, they try to get away with it by saying that they “had a read” on the player and this was why they made the call.

But televised poker rarely shows players calling their money off simply because it does not make for good television. They edit the program and show successful bluffs, bluffs that were picked off and big pots with big hand vs big hand unless it was a hand where someone got knocked out. So beware of that calling reflex but look out for it in others as well.

There comes a time in every poker players life when they are facing an out and out bully on their table. Being the bully is something that I rarely am over all simply because at the level that I play at the players will simply not stand for it for long. I try to be the bully in selected moments when I am in a pot (selective aggression) and I feel that this style works better for me personally rather than playing in a maniac kind of a way.

But you will encounter these players on your table and like I said in an earlier piece, it is very important where these people are sat in relation to you on your table.

Firstly you have to establish what type of a bully they are. Are they being a bully in general by betting and raising almost anything that moves or are they a selective bully type like me. The selective bully is far more difficult to combat because they are playing in such a way that it seems like they are not bullying at all but just betting their strong hand that seems to come around with the correct frequency which makes it look like they have a hand even more.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

This makes bluffing in certain situations quite risky and especially in online poker play where all a player has to do to call is to click a mouse button. Plus what we have here is an underlying principle that is very important, hopefully as you are playing you will be taking notes on the other players. You might not be able to see their faces but their betting patterns will reveal many things to you.

But one of the things that I look out for are the constant callers. Either they are suffering from this calling reflex or maybe curiosity just gets the better of them and they just have to know what you have and so they stick the money in. You have to know who these people are because bluffing at the wrong times in no limit poker can be expensive. Just because a player has called your bluff does not make it a good call if they have called for the wrong reason.

Bu the sheer pace of online play means that a player can have called without thinking the situation through and in many instances they do not have the time to think it through anyway so they call on reflex. Now let me tell you a little secret that I have that enables me to win certain pots online when I am bluffing. Because when I am bluffing I want my opponent to fold then I need to assist him with that fold and I do this sometimes by giving them a moment of pause.

In the blink of an eye the action is on me and I am heads up with one other player. It is on the turn and I have bet the flop and been called. What I don’t want is to bet immediately, this gives my opponent less time to think, I want him to think that his hand is second best and that carrying on is futile. So I pause to allow him time to THINK IN MY TIME as well as his own. This just slows the game down a little bit and stops them from getting carried away and calling you with something weak like third pair.

Don’t get me wrong here, there are not many situations where I can utilise this play but I need to make you away of the calling reflex action. Because the style of play that I am teaching you is aggressive, what you do not want to see happen is for you to end up bluffing your money off to the tight passive players who only ever check/call. Please look out for the second part of this article coming shortly.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Another player who shares this view is Phil himself. He is known to have an extremely high opinion of his own playing ability and anyone beating him in a pot can expect a lecture on why he remains the best. He is quoted as saying, “If no luck was involved I would win every tournament I guess”. Over the years he has somewhat played up to this image, particularly as the TV cameras follow his progress at every tournament he participates in, which has helped keep him in the spotlight.

His poker brand is helped by his attire he wears to play poker. He wears an all black outfit to every tournament in keeping with his affiliation and alleged ownership interests in the poker room Ultimate Bet. Part of his brand has become grand entrances to the World Series of Poker Main Event. In 2007 he had 11 models (one for every bracelet he has won) escort him in a racing car to the main event but crashed the racing car outside the casino after losing control of it. He assured everyone this was not staged. Some of the models could not enter the casino after not having ID with them. This was a bit of a PR disaster for Hellmuth who attracts criticism from fellow professionals for his entrances into the WSOP event.

Controversy and poker come hand in hand with Hellmuth. When the UB cheating scandal broke and it was revealed that the site had knowingly cheated players out of a reputed $22 million, despite being its most focal player Hellmuth refused to comment on the issue. Todd Witteles, known as Dan Druff online, sat on the TV table with Hellmuth in the 2009 WSOP main event and asked him on camera about the scandal. Hellmuth was spared having to answer by a floor person who said they could not continue the argument. In the 2008 main event he was given a penalty for continually berating an opponent after losing a hand, videos of the confrontation have achieved cult status on YouTube.

Hellmuth released a book in 2009 called “Deal Me In” via his publishing company which contained the very personal stories of the trials and tribulations of twenty fellow poker professionals in their poker life story. This also included his own rise to the top. It was a very honest and hard hitting account of the highs and the lows of being a poker player. From his “Poker Brat” company you can also buy Phil Hellmuth branded and non-branded clothing from his online store.

Phil Hellmuth no longer needs profits at the poker table to survive and he is the best example of a player nurturing an image into a profitable business. Daniel Negreanu, to a lesser extent but still very successfully, is another example. Whether or not you like Phil’s behaviour at the table you cannot help admire how he has cultivated his brand over the years to remain one of the most successful and profitable poker entrepreneurs in the world.

By Malcolm Clarke

Why Bother Check-Raising?

In order to check first you must be in early position in the hand. Being in early position is not an advantage as late position, as we all know, is better. Many opponents will bet into you with any two cards. Your subsequent raise not only (potentially) wins the pot at this point but reminds opponents that you are capable of making this move. Later in the cash game or tournament you may check to hopefully earn a free card. Remembering you may be planning to check raise, your opponent with less than a premium hand may check back which is good for you in that situation.

Check-raising strengthens your status in early position in an otherwise weak situation. It must not be over-used, however, as if you are called it gets progressively more difficult to continue given your position and likelihood your hand may be beaten as the bets get bigger on each street.

Check Raise as a Bluff

Have you heard of the squeeze play from early position in a cash game? This is similar but often in this case you do not have Aces, as it appears. A check raise looks like a really strong move or a blatant bluff. Before you implement this strategy reflect on how your opponents may perceive your play so far, they may think you are very loose and consider the move a bluff or perhaps you have played tight and therefore look like a rock? If you have a tight image a check raise should get most hands to fold.

You will regularly see a check raise with a strong drawing hand in cash games as it gives players a second chance to winning the pot. It also sets up a final barrel bluff on the turn or river if the players miss their draw. If you are called on the check raise and then raised on the turn you should consider what hands your opponents could have then work out if pot odds allow you to continue.

Check Raise to Build the Pot

Because check raising is done so frequently with drawing hands it can look like a steal more than a pot building strategy. So use it as a pot building strategy! Many players dislike the check raise but it is a vital mechanism to reign in the late position players who steal every pot when checked to. By check raising on the flop you may gain bets you would otherwise lose making a similar bet resulting in a fold on the turn.

There is nothing wrong with check raising and players who moan about it are too passive or scared to have a go at using it. It will make you money in Holdem if you use it correctly and observe your opponents carefully before trying it. It is a good tool to have in a cash game situation.

By Malcolm Clarke

His reasons are because the information that goes into the odds compilation is incomplete and the 11-1 is only an estimate and could therefore be inaccurate. This means that the price of 12 or 13-1 may be insufficient to provide him with an overlay.

This problem of incomplete information also applies to poker because we cannot see our opponents cards (at least I never get to see them). On many occasions, we simply do not know how much it will cost us to play on or how much more money will subsequently enter the pot.

Imagine for a minute that you are seated in the big blind with a hand like 7-5 in a multi-way un-raised pot. The flop comes A-6-3 rainbow. The small blind bets out and it is now on you. Let us say there were four limpers and the small blind called as well. The pot is now offering you 7-1 and it is 11-1 to hit your hand. This is a very complex problem because all sorts of factors are at work here.

1. Will my hand win the pot if it improves.
2. My call will not close the betting.
3. Are my opponents capable of paying me off if I hit the hand?
4. My hand could get counterfeited and I could end up splitting the pot with another straight.
5. What types of players are to act after me?
6. Is the pot raised or not.
7. Does the flop texture indicate that a call will likely get raised?

The list could go on, it is fair to say that no player in the world has the ability to accurately calculate implied odds in limit Texas Hold’em on a consistent basis especially in complex scenarios and especially in speeded up internet play. In this problem, I would take a leaf out of my friends book and refuse to call unless I could be fairly certain of a substantial overlay. The two most important things to consider in this situation are.

1. How likely am I to get raised if I call
2. Will the pot reach a level that is substantially more than the minimum 11 small bets that I currently need for the play to break even.

The closer you are in your estimation, the better you will be. No two situations are the same because no two table line ups are the same. As always, there is no substitute for table awareness. Unfortunately, this means a lot of hard work but whoever said poker was easy. But that is the intense fascination with the game and I for one love it.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Many authors have written about the subject of implied odds without fully underlining the fact of how difficult a subject it really is. There are many factors at work when attempting to estimate the future size of a pot. For instance, the overall caliber of your opponents will have a substantial effect on any future action that you will receive after you make your hand.

Good players are far less likely to pay you off in many circumstances and the implied odds that you thought you were receiving on the flop may not have even been there at all.

The quality of the opposition is rarely discussed when attempting to debate the subject of implied odds and yet it is by far the most important factor to take into account. Another crucial element in the problem is the type of hand that you are drawing to and how concealed it is.

Flush draws are far more obvious than straight draws and straight draws also differ widely when it comes to how concealed they are. Gut-shots and double belly buster straight draws will drag more money into the pot on average than a far less concealed open ended draw.

When you couple this with the complexity of all the different player types that you will encounter on the poker table, we have the makings of a very difficult subject.

We could easily envisage many situations where two players are in the exact same seat with the same hand, same flop and same pot size. Yet, one may have a relatively straight forward call and the other an easy fold.

I have always been a very keen poker student as well as a very active player. During my studies, I have never been afraid to use concepts and principles from other fields of endeavour that are non-poker related.

I have always believed that if you are flexible in your thinking, then important facts and ideas can emerge in areas where most people would fail to look.

One such example involves the sport of horse racing and the work of professional gamblers in that field. One very successful pro punter who I happen to know personally has been using a very successful handicapping system for years.

Historically, his system has been providing him with very accurate odds for horses in certain types of races. However, he once revealed to me that he will not get involved with a bet unless he has a significant overlay.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

These players are under a bit of pressure to perform and people expect fireworks when they play with TV cameras wanting action at the tables. Despite Luke Schwartz having a very bad reputation at the table, when you watch interviews in particular very recent ones, he comes across as an engaging and polite young man. Whether you play Texas Holdem, Stud, Razz, PLO or Draw poker you should be aware of where to draw the line and behave in a way to keep poker fun for everyone.

Relating to live play, you should never pick up the hole cards of an opponent and look to see if they were bluffing when they fold their hand. Annie Duke, a professional poker player from America, was accused of this cash games in Las Vegas and you can expect a very angry reaction from players if you do this. Players have a right to fold and not show their hands and this action is very bad poker etiquette.

Trash talking is more common online in the poker rooms chat box. Due to the nature of the Internet you will encounter banter at the tables that you would not necessarily hear at a live table because players can hide behind their computer screen. You should not take it personally and, within reason, you can reply but do not let things like this distract you from playing your best and observing your opponents. Never use racist, slanderous or threatening chat. You may mean these things partly in jest but apart from the obvious reasons you should refrain from such behaviour, poker rooms are likely to ban your chat and in the worst case scenario, ban you completely from playing at their site.

In live play you should keep your emotions in check and always stay in control. Players like Tony G use table talk to put you under pressure and make you feel uneasy and try to get you to let go of your emotional control. Players getting angry and shouting back at him will not bother players like Tony, but it has succeeded in making you feel angry enough to respond. Whilst you are shouting you are not thinking correctly about how to get his chips so your opponent has the advantage during this exchange.

Things like splashing the pot is not good poker etiquette either. Be professional at all times, remember that a sponsor or potential staker could be watching for quality new players and will not be impressed by your breaking of the unwritten rules. In any community setting, there are rules of behaviour that are expected to be adhered to. A T.V. extra, for example, signs a contract to not talk to the principal actors and distract them prior to filming. It seems irrelevant, but it is important to that profession. Proper behaviour and presentation of yourself in poker is important too.

You will make far more friends in poker and no matter how you behave the cards will be dealt as the poker gods decide. Therefore I find it easier to be pleasant at the table, talk to people and have them open up to you. By acting impersonally, you risk them withdrawing into their shell and becoming even harder to read. There is always going to be one idiot at a poker table, don’t let it be you and be a pleasure to play poker with at all times.

By Malcolm Clarke