Whether you play poker tournaments or cash game poker then it makes no difference, equity is still one of the first things that you think about when you play poker of any description. Let us look at an example to see what I mean here when I talk about equity in a hand. Let us say that it has been folded around to the cut-off and they raised to $12 in a NL400 cash game. You are on the button and you want to three bet this player. Which hand would you rather have to three bet them with…..Jc-10c or 8d-4s? The answer should be fairly obvious and it should be the J-10s.

You simply do not know how your opponent is going to react to your three bet. If you could look into a crystal ball and see that this player would fold to your re-raise then you would be fine to re-raise with either hand. But the fact of the matter is that you cannot possibly know whether or not your opponent will fold. They could easily four bet you and if this happens then you may have to fold the hand as your opponent is representing so much strength in that instance.

But they may call your three bet and if that happens then you want your hand to have as good a chance as possible of winning the pot. A hand like J-10s can make straights and flushes as well as big two pair hands and decent sized pairs. Also your re-raise can help you to represent hands as well and so the play gives you the initiative. So this is why you are better off three betting with a hand that has equity if called. Tournament poker isn’t like this for several reasons and the main one is that you are under time pressure to get chips. Also a three bet in that form of poker is threatening people with tournament extinction and so the re-raise carries with it far more weight.

This is what confuses certain players when they switch to cash games because they see players on tournament poker television shows making some weird and wacky plays. This is little realising that these shows are not only heavily edited but they are also full of players who are chasing chips constantly to try and ward off the ever increasing blind pressure. But in cash games without that same level of urgency then the player is far better off only getting involved in deep stacked situations when their hand has decent equity when called.

But one thing that is certainly needed is money management discipline. This although not guaranteeing success is critical to success all the same! Let’s get one thing absolutely clear here, money management will not make you a winning poker player and if you are a weak player or a beginner then you will lose money irrespective of what you do. But many potentially money making poker players are not realising their money making potential.

A major reason behind this is bad money management and as you learn how to play poker then you will come to understand this more and more. Let us look at an example of this in action. You have $1000 to risk playing poker but this is where you need to be very professional and disciplined before you even start. There will be many things that you cannot control when playing poker and variance is often very severe and this is why you need to fragment your bankroll. As an extreme example then imagine if you sat down in a $5-$10 game with the full $1000. Irrespective of how well you play then your entire $1000 is at serious risk.

Getting aces cracked and you are history for your entire $1000. This is clearly a silly situation to put yourself in and so your bankroll needs to be fragmented, but by how much? Well if you were playing no-limit Texas Hold’em then I would recommend at least twenty buy-ins and so this means not playing any higher than NL50 or $0.25-$0.50 stakes. But here is where it gets interesting because you need to be acutely aware of where your skill level stands in relation to your opponents.

If you are playing better players than you then you will lose money and so you cannot stay at NL50 until you lose the entire $1000. So you need to drop down and play a lower level. So the next level below NL50 may be NL25 and the same twenty buy-ins at NL25 is $500. So if your bankroll of $1000 drops to $500 then you need to be aware of the possibility that you are playing beyond your skill level. So dropping down to NL25 protects your bankroll and your ability to be able to play poker well into the future. But another potential problem could be if you gave an absolute novice $1000 who barely knew how to play poker. Then even starting at NL50 would not be the correct as an apprenticeship at micro-stakes would be what was required.

This means that you are paying $1000/week to the poker site and $52,000/year. This is money taken out of the pots that would have effectively been yours had you been playing in a poker game that had no rake or fees taken from it. So you can imagine why the big poker sites make tens of millions of dollars each year. This money is taken from the poker economy and never returned although sites do return it in other ways by free tournaments, prizes and other such rewards.

The problem is though that many players simply do not bother with these and simply plough on playing poker the way that they want to play it. But imagine if you had lost $20,000 over the space of the that year, playing in a rake free game would have added $52,000 to that total and so instead of a $20k loss you were now looking at profits of $32k. The downside is though that online sites do not give us the entire rake back but as soon as it became common knowledge just how much money was being taken from the player’s then rakeback became an issue.

Applying for rakeback is something that needs to be done from a respectable affiliate but it means essentially that, getting a percentage of your rake back. Around 30% seems to be the industry standard these days but that would equate to $15,600 over the course of the year for our serious player. This is a significant sum of money and it is also a sum of money that can turn losing players into break even players or even winning players. Take someone who lost $10,000 on the actual tables over the course of the year but who got $15,600 in rakeback.

Suddenly this player is no longer a losing poker player and one of the tiny percentage of players who make money from online poker. But when you are also making money from the actual games themselves then rakeback can take you to another level entirely. Imagine a player who was making $20/hour playing online poker and fitting this around their day job which paid them $40,000/year. Moving to playing full-time hours would not only give this player the same $40,000 income but rakeback would now add another $15,600 to that making a total of $55,600/year. It now becomes feasible for this player to play poker full-time if his full-time job is something that he hates doing.

In poker then having a default basic strategy is difficult to explain in regards what this actually means but I will attempt to put it into words as best as I possibly can. It is a way to play poker that makes the player basically know the “correct” course of action for every possible situation that they could encounter at the table. In this way then playing Texas Hold’em becomes similar to playing blackjack in that the correct action is nearly always known.

Developing your “basic” is something that takes work as well as experience. I believe that to play this way although not exciting in the least does allow a player to avoid the pitfalls of getting into trouble when they multi-table. To effectively play numerous tables at once then you need to at least try and automate the process of playing poker. Part of this process is to let the betting do the talking at the lower levels. Do not try to get into situations where you are out thinking yourself.

Higher multiple level thinking is required and is essential at higher levels but not at levels like NL50 and NL100 on some sites although NL100 on some sites can be quite tough. But letting the betting do the talking is a key component of multi-tabling lower levels and it saves time as well as tilt when you make a series of wrong decisions when you try to out level yourself. At the higher levels then the extra level of complexity can leave multi-tabling very difficult at levels like NL400 and NL600.

But at levels like NL50 and NL100 full-ring the there is nearly always some value in these games somewhere and you need patience to sit there and wait for it to come to you. If you are going to play poker without a tracker program at a level like NL50 then you need to make sure that your technique is very strong.

There are flaws in nearly all techniques at the lower levels and one of the biggest ones is in not listening to the betting clearly enough. This often leads to players getting needlessly stacked when they could have got away from the hand. A basic strategy for poker in my mind does not just involve playing the hands but actually reading the game as well and at the lower levels then reading action is easier to do than at the more sophisticated middle limits and also in the erratic low-stakes and micro levels.

In this article we are going to take a look back at the 2009 World Series of Poker and some of the stories that emerged from it.

Multi Bracelet Series

Incredibly one poker player won three bracelets at last years WSOP and a few players won two bracelets. Phil Ivey, regarded as the finest poker player in the world, entered many events and won two of them. Phil won event 8, the $2,500 2-7 Draw Lowball and event 25 the $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low-8 or Better. He then made the November nine and was hotly tipped to become the main event champion. That was not to be but Phil capped a marvellous series where his image as the world’s best poker player was enhanced. Brock Parker also won two bracelets winning event 14, the $2,500 Limit Hold’em Short Handed and he won event 19, the $2,500 Limit Hold’em Short Handed.

The star of the WSOP was undoubtedly Jeff Lisandro who won the triple crown of Stud events winning event 16, the $1,500 Seven Card Stud, event 37, the $10,000 World Championship Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split-8 or Better and event 44 the $2,500 Razz. Although he had to have had some luck this goes down in history as one of the finest ever WSOP performances.

Notable UK Performances

James Akenhead showed that his runners-up position at the 2008 WSOP event 2 was no fluke as he made the November nine eventually finishing in 9th place. He also finished in 9th place in the WSOPE main event and won the Full Tilt Poker Million for $500,000. He is surely to have another chance at a bracelet and is regarded by some players to have talent in the mould of flawed poker genius Stu Ungar.

Roland De Wolfe won another bracelet winning event 27, the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better beating Brett “Getcrunk” Richey into second place. John Kabbaj also won a WSOP bracelet winning event 45, the $10,000 World Championship Pot Limit Hold’em for $633,335. It was a great year for UK poker at the World Series of Poker 2009.

The Main Event

6,494 players contested the $10,000 main event with many more turned away amid a controversial start to the tournament. Phil Ivey, Jeff Shulman and James Akenhead were big names that made the November nine final table. 21 year old Joe Cada beat self-employed tree logger Darvin Moon when things eventually got to heads up into second place and claimed a first prize of $8,547,042. For second place Darvin took home $5,182,601 and thousands of new fans who appreciated his play and dignity in defeat.

Download the poker software at bwin.com and practise your poker tournament game before heading to the WSOP. You will need to be sharp, be able to concentrate for long periods of time and be able to play well under pressure. You can learn all of these things at bwin.com and possibly become one of the stories of this years World Series of Poker 2010.

By Malcolm Clarke

So I will play at the $10-$20 level mainly when I play limit but I also sometimes multi-table at levels like $2-$4, $3-$6 and $5-$10 if the rake is reasonable and I can obtain decent rakeback. I have never had an ego to massage by insisting that I always play at a certain level. In my mind the best poker games are the ones where I have to work the least in order to obtain an hourly rate that I deem to be worth my time. I remember hearing an old saying from the world of Darts some years ago that went “trebles for show and doubles for dough”. Basically this meant that scoring high on the trebles was fine but worth little if you could not finish.

This is similar to poker in many ways. People see and hear about top players playing for high stakes but let me tell you one thing. Many of those top players will not be winning players and the only reason that they are playing at that level is either because they have the money to do so or because it feeds their ego. The high stakes poker games may be very “showy” but for the vast number of players this isn’t really where the money is. There are many players earning $50,000 to $100,000 a year in online cash games. These amounts are being earned in middle stakes games or through lower limits and multi-tabling. This is not as news worthy and flashy as someone who is playing $300-$600 no limit at the Bellagio.

But getting back to the point, at the higher levels in limit hold’em then good players will still find them tough to beat and you can spend more time finding an acceptable game than you can playing. I don’t know about you but if I had to choose between playing forty hours a week at $10-$20 and earning 3 big bets per hour, and sitting and watching and waiting for twenty hours and then only managing twenty hours of playing time in what will be a far tougher game while only earning one big bet per hour at say $20-$40 then I know which game I would rather choose.

One scenario is earning me $2400 a week while the bigger game is earning me a mere $800. If your livelihood depends on playing online poker then it is better to be playing poker and earning say $20 an hour than not playing at all in my opinion. I have played full time in the past although at the time of writing this article, I am no longer a full time player. But there have been times where I have done whatever it takes to earn my money by the end of the month.

I have put in extra hours and played at levels that were well below what I normally played at in order to pay the bills at the end of the month. But I want this series to teach you one thing and that is to be flexible in not just how you are learning poker but also playing poker and this applies to cash games as well as online poker tournaments. Read this series and re-read it but under no circumstances should you blindly copy what I have said. Selecting the proper limit in which to play is not a straight forward process and depends on many factors.

What levels of money you are prepared to play for and lose for one, your bankroll size, your level of skill compared to that of your opponents, the rake, rakeback…..I could go on and on. But I feel that it is worth repeating one more time, finding the proper limit to play at is a key process because playing too high and you will run into the top players and playing too low with the affect of the rake will also kill you and especially without adequate skills.

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

Of course the toughness of the games will vary greatly and also from site to site but in my experience, you really do not want to be paying much more than around two big blinds per hour in rake in most games even if you are a good player. This of course applies to the lower stakes games, the effect of the rake is greatly reduced the higher you play and this is because of the rake cap which is usually $3 in most games.

The only problem of course with playing at the bigger limits is that the effect of the rake may be greatly reduced but the opposition is also a whole lot tougher. Games at the $15-$30 level and above can be very tough to beat and once you reach the $20-$40, $25-$50 and $30-$60 levels then you are going to be locking horns with some very good players.

Before you start to look at yourself and say “well that does not bother me because I am a good player” then you better remember that being a good player online is far different than being a good player in a live casino card room. Good online players are dedicated, they data mine games relentlessly, they use trackers to get information on their opponents, they share and swap data with friends and acquaintances in online poker forums and other avenues, they use sophisticated software to improve their own game and the list goes on.

Do you have this same commitment to improving your game and doing all of the things that I have just listed? Well come on now, answer this question honestly because your future as a winning poker player online could just depend on it……do you? If you are not doing the things that I have just described and have no intention of doing them then you had better shelve all plans about playing at the middle limits and above at any form of poker online.

Playing at the middle limits online and being successful is not just about knowing your poker. Most players at those limits know the game. But the real consistent winners, the ones with the earn rates are the ones who make the effort to do all of the other things that contribute towards the making of a winning online poker player. At this moment in time, I find the $10-$20 level the best for a good strong limit player to earn money at short handed and even heads up. Look out for the third and final part of this series coming soon.

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

As we already know, game selection is critical in all forms of poker but in limit Texas Holdem it can literally be he difference between life and death. You will be presented with numerous problems in limit hold’em. If you play too low then the rake can be your most formidable opponent on the table and if you play too high then you are going to be locking horns with some of the very best players in the world.

If you are going to be serious about your poker and want to treat it more like a business than anything else then you are going to have to look very carefully at just what costs you are incurring as a result of operating that business. The primary cost for an online player of course is the rake. With online limit poker games getting tougher and tighter all the time then it is common knowledge that you could be the best player on the table in many games and yet you are still in the negative expectation camp.

It is really beyond the scope of this article to delve too deeply into anyone subject but take it from me, please do your research as to how much rake you are paying in an average hour. Many sites have game statistics which allow you to see how many hands you are playing per hour or have played, what the average pot is and how many hands you have won. You can use these stats to find out how much rake you are paying. Simply go to the section of the site that explains the rake and this will inform you how much you are paying based on the limits, number of players and pot size. Based on your own individual style, you can then calculate how much rake you are paying per hour.

But the cheapest sites are not always the best to play on as bonuses and rakeback and various other things can greatly impact what is the best site. At this moment in time, many poker sites pay good rakeback and bonuses which are a very nice cushion and one that is vital for low stakes limit players. But these rakeback deals and bonuses change on a daily basis so telling you what are the best deals now would be silly as this will have surely changed by the time you are reading this. Look out for part two of this mini series coming shortly.

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

I don’t multi-table much and also I don’t play as many hours as I used to. Another problem with trackers in a game like no limit hold’em is when you start to play the bigger games. By this I mean games at the $10-$20 level and upwards.

When I play serious no limit then I tend to play at the $25-$50 level online and sometimes at $10-$20. But once you start to play against the calibre of opponents that you find at $25-$50 then you can easily be up against some of the best players in the world. This means that you have to approach the game totally differently and I have my own way of operating that has stood me in very good stead.

Trackers in my opinion lose much of their effectiveness against poker players who are very adept at situational trickiness. I am talking about players who only make certain plays when certain criteria align themselves. They don’t even know what they are going to do themselves until they do it. Or how about the player who makes his mind up before the hand even starts that he is going to try and move you from the pot here even if it means going all in with junk.

You raise pre-flop with A-Q, the player on the button calls you with 6s-4s. The flop comes 10d-7c-2s and you continuation bet the flop and get called. The turn brings the 3h giving your opponent a gutshot draw and you fire again on the turn only to face a big raise or an all in bet. Just how do you combat that? How can you combat with statistics someone who has never previously done something and will not do so again in that session? Fine so you can remember that move for later for when you play him again but the next time, he will come at you in a totally different way than before. He will make you lay down once again but in a different way to last time.

Why? Because he is very good that’s why and your tracker statistics are not going to be of much use to you here. You could get two separate players with the exact same statistics of VPIP (voluntary pot $ in the pot), PFR (pre-flop raise percentage) and AF (aggression factor) and yet the way that they obtain those statistics could be totally different making each player totally unique.

But I have found that at the higher levels that concealing your own play is just as important if not more so than finding out about your opponent and this applies whether you play holdem or Pot Limit Omaha or whatever. No one will ever convince me otherwise and if anyone wants to criticise then fine, they can play poker their way and I will play it my way. I will simply not allow dedicated online professionals to data mine me or swap information about my methods and strategies and likely ranges so that they know how I play before I even sit down.

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

Being able to win one hundred big blinds in one single hand of poker makes many games that would be otherwise negative expectation games profitable. Quite often I have sat in a no limit game myself where everyone has been playing well. But there might be one player who I know from having played with him before who has the capacity to tilt after a couple of beats or who has a certain weakness with laying down big hands and in my mind, this makes the game potentially profitable.

But limit hold’em or even Omaha is not like that, you extract the money in limit piece by piece rather than in one big blow. You have to continually make better decisions over the weaker players and slowly but surely bleed their bankroll while also enduring many beats along the way. But the capacity to only be able to extract a very tiny amount of money from any one situation or pot makes game selection much more important in this form of poker.

Do not get me wrong here, I am not saying that game selection is not important in no limit hold’em. It is critical in all forms of poker and you simply cannot win in any game unless you have some kind of superiority over at least some of the players in your game. This is why it does not necessarily matter how good a player you are or how much you know about the game. That is only part of the overall equation. What matters most is how good you are and how much you know compared to the other players who are seated in your game.

This principle that most players ignore applies to all forms of gambling and not just poker. If you do not choose the correct time and place in which to do battle then you will lose not only the battle but also the war.

There will be many people who buy this book expecting to be told or taught about software like Poker Office. Well I am sorry to disappoint you but you will not find much by way of software my articles. Much of the material regarding cash games in my articles deals with live play anyway so discussing trackers would be pointless. Plus, I am not the world’s greatest expert on it so it would be unfair for me to tell you basic simple stuff or to rehash some previously published material. This is not my style, I want to write my own poker articles using my own methods and theories and not other peoples.

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