Champion of Poker

So with $325 in the pot in this hand of no limit Texas Holdem poker, the flop came 10d-6d-2c giving me a gutshot draw and nothing else. The big blind bet out $175 and I called the bet making a total of $675 in the pot. I like to float (call with the intention of stealing later) in situations like these. I suspect that my opponent will fire again on the turn because they feel that they have to. I could be calling on a draw and if a non straightening card or a non diamond falls on the turn then they may think that I called on the flop with some draw that has failed to improve.

But in my mind the presence of the flush draw provides me with extra outs because it allows me to represent the flush if it hits. My opponent also had a big enough stack to make another bet on the turn as long as it wasn’t too big and then to pass when I moved all in. Here my opponent bet $475 on the turn and I moved in for the rest of my money…..they almost timed out before folding.

This is a style of play that can rapidly get noticed and if you stay on any site for too long then you are going to find that your aggressive raises are getting called more often even by the weaker stacks and this can happen in any form of poker and even in poker tournaments online. This is why I pay careful attention and keep a record of who I have played against. Although it has to be said that players watch games without you knowing about it and they also share information with their friends. When you factor in things like tracking software into the equation then there could easily be a whole library of information out there all waiting to be used against you after a very short space of time.

This is why at the higher levels, I switch poker sites frequently. It is something that I believe in and something that has earned me a lot of money. This is why I really pay no attention to people who criticise my methods, they may say that I played a certain hand incorrectly and they are probably right in some instances. No one plays correct poker all the time but I am convinced that the way that I operate (or have operated in the past) has been totally correct for me personally and especially in the bigger games.

You do not need to resort to this measure in small games against weak players, their overall bad play will simply make it profitable along with sound play on your part, rakeback and sign up bonuses and all the rest of it.

But in this situation where several thousand dollars are going into the middle in just one hand of poker then I really don’t see how important rakeback is. A great rakeback deal certainly would not sway me into staying on any one particular site because the penalties for the other players figuring out my style would be severe and cost me far more money than I could ever earn with rakeback.

I also think that it is worth mentioning what size stacks I like to attack when I have used this method. I like to target the middle sized stacks. So in this game with a maximum buy in of $5000 and with some players sitting on more than that and some on much less, I like to target the players who have between $2000 to $3000 on the table.

This strategy does not work as well against big stacks for the reasons mentioned earlier but it is also vulnerable against small stacks as well. Small stacks really are sitting down hoping to get lucky the vast majority of the time. I have yet to see a player sit down with $1000 in a $25-$50 game and then proceed to throw their money around. So when they start to commit chips, they can have a tendency to go all the way and especially if their starting stack has dwindled further.

Against small stacks, I cannot take advantage of the fear element once they have decided to commit. It’s a bit like a person who is about to take a bungee jump for the very first time. They are afraid to move and are almost frozen with fear but once they propel their body forward then there is no going back. The bigger poker stacks have a way back, they can get involved in a hand for a percentage of their stack and fold and still have a workable stack.

So what this means is that I will only get involved against big stacks and small stacks when I have some kind of a hand. Obviously when I say “involved” what I actually mean is to make a big move. I will only look to make big moves in general against medium stacks because in my experience, it is these that demonstrate the most fear.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”