The Poker Lab Rat

Most players, even serious ones, suffer much greater poker losses than they should. One reason is that their losses are “reversed manufactured.” (Reverse manufactured just means that those losses are the necessary byproduct of trying to manufacture a winning streak).

Oh, fine, but what does “manufacture a winning streak” mean. How can you manufacture a win? It’s amazingly easy. All you have to do is refuse to settle for a loss and accept small wins whenever you need to. The only requirement is that you fight back when you’re behind, hoping to break into the plus column, then quit happy if you succeed, rejoicing in the notion that you overcame adversity, struggled to restack your chips, and are now going home to rest victorious. It will feel like a proud accomplishment to you, but it shouldn’t.

How you won

Let’s look at how it might have just happened. You’re a medium-limit player, not competing quite large enough to make a good living, but large enough to supplement your income or to barely get by without a job when required. In this way, you’re like the majority of winning poker players - somewhere between just eking out a profit and professional wage-earner status.

Anyway, today you sit down in a $10/$20 hold ‘em game, supposedly hoping to make a profit by showing off your Sunday-best poker skills. Sad stuff happens right away, though. Down goes a king-high heart flush, which you flopped, when a player holding the ace of hearts and deuce of diamonds sees a fourth heart come on the river. Next you flop three jacks, but they finish third when two opponents hit straights. Then there’s that devastating hand where you got bluffed out of your birdcage by Bruno, who never, ever did that before. And it gets worse. The little medium hands that can go either North or South, all go South. Losses pile up. Misery surrounds you.

But somewhere deep, deep inside, you maintain your faith and conviction, and the spirit strikes you. You fight back. Hours pass. You grow weary. Hours pass. You fight to stay alert and wait for your luck to change. Hours pass.

It’s now 3:40 in the morning and you need to be up at 8:30. Suddenly several pots are pushed to you. Then a small setback. Then you win more pots. After a string of pots go your way, you win a really big one. Is your recovery complete? You don’t know, because you haven’t had time to count your chips.

“Deal me out one hand,” you tell the table. You need to stack these newly won chips, count them, find out where you stand. Down $135, put 10 of these $5 chips here, down $85 now, put these two $25 chips off to the side, down $35, oops, three more $5 chips under a $20 bill, exactly even, and that leaves these three $1 chips, change from the rake, so up $3! You did it! Your winning streak continues!

Time to go

“Deal me out!” you announce. “It’s getting later than I thought.”  “Don’t you wanna play till your blind?” someone asks. “You’ve got another hand coming.” You’re tempted, after all, you can just fold everything except aces - even aces if you really want to. But you just wave away the suggestion. “Nah, deal around me.” And within minutes you’re cashed out and on your way home. As you’re leaving, a friend asks you how you did tonight. Your chest puffs out proudly and you say, “I won a tiny bit. Nothing that matters, but that’s 19 winning days in a row.”

Signs of trouble, my friends. Bad signs of trouble. You’re manufacturing that win streak just so you can make yourself feel good about it. But you’re not manufacturing profit. Sure, you think you’re making profit, but really you’re putting your bankroll at risk. You have tallied a lot of wins - a couple when you got off to a fast start and kept on winning, a few short ones when you started fast, but faltered and quit before you found yourself in the negative column, some where you’d come from behind and quit when you got ahead. And, of course, tonight when you’d stuck it out and turned a major loss into a tiny win.

Speaking of tiny wins, that’s exactly the kind you’re likely to have when you strive to extend a winning streak. That’s simply because you’re willing to settle for them. You’ll quit with small wins when you’ve been winning more to keep from dropping below break even. And you’ll gladly cash out with a small win if you’ve been losing and get ahead. However, there is no such thing as a small loss. You won’t accept one. It’s either a win or a big loss. You need to keep that winning streak alive if you can, right?

The wrong time to play

But, all together, this strategy means you’re playing more hours than you should when you were losing, because you’re trying to catch up. And it means you’re playing fewer hours when you’re winning, because you’re eager to cash out and add to your win streak. By manufacturing a win streak, by forcing small wins, you’re also putting yourself in grave danger of manufacturing huge losses - you simply won’t experience them as long as your luck holds and your winning streak is extended.

You see, when you try hard as you can to dig yourself out, you risk digging yourself deeper. It’s like that popular advice, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” I think those words were tailored for poker. Beware! On the few occasions that you won’t be able to experience the glory of cashing out with that $3 profit and puffing up proudly, you’re likely to suffer painful losses and depart pitifully from the poker table, all chance of recovery now hopeless. Maybe chance of recovery tomorrow will be hopeless, too. You will have lost way more than you should have. And I’m not talking about a magic stop-loss or predetermined limit on how much you should risk in a game.

Listen closely. I’m saying something different. I’m saying you lost much more than you should because you played poker in the worst of circumstances. When you’re winning, opponents are usually intimidated by you. They’re less likely to play their best games, less likely to make daring bets and raises with winning hands and extract every penny of profit from you. This means you can make value bets that can push your profits to the limit. Opponents who are intimidated usually keep calling in frustration, but seldom raise with anything but obviously strong hands. In doing so, they neglect to take advantage of all their edges, so you rule the table, and your profit soars.

Conversely, when you’re losing, opponents are inspired. They play better against you specifically. They think, “Hey, there’s someone I can beat. There’s someone who’s unluckier than I am.” And they single you out for money extraction.

So, I don’t like to hear about long manufactured winning streaks, because I know that those invite huge manufactured losses, too. And, in the long run, long winning streaks usually mean that you’ve played most of your time under bad circumstances and limited the time you’ve played under good circumstances. And that isn’t a smooth path to poker profit.

You can chat and play with the “Mad Genius”, Mike Caro, every Wednesday night at 9:30pm ET at the DoylesRoom Bounty Tournament. Check it out as you get your first buy-in back.

ABOUT DOYLES ROOM: 
Doyles Room is operated by the DBPN (Doyle Brunson Poker Network), and is the fastest growing member of the popular Microgaming Poker Network. Pros Doyle Brunson & Mike Caro endorse and stand behind this top rating online poker room.

Claim a 110% deposit match bonus up to $550 on your initial deposit at Doyles Room Poker. Bonus Code:GOG110b  It’s easy too: when you earn the equivalent of your Bonus x 300 in Action Points your 110% Bonus will be automatically deposited into your account as extra bankroll. DoylesRooom.com also offers regular re-up bonuses & giveaways. 

Poker is a game of choices. Some of these choices are fairly straight forward and simple while others take a lot of thought. The thing is that when all is said and done, there may not be just one correct path to winning a given hand; it’s all up to you to decide what road to travel.

With that in mind, we asked Team Full Tilt’s Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson to share their thoughts on one of poker’s trickiest decisions – the coin flip. Should players be willing to put everything on the line in a coin flip situation? Here are two different sides to the coin flip question:

Chris Says:

For the most part, coin flips are something that I tend to avoid. You never want to take on a negative EV proposition, so you can pretty easily fold a hand like A-K when you’re certain your opponent is holding a high pocket pair like Jacks or Queens. Some players are willing to take a negative EV coin flip early on in a big tournament in order to accumulate chips, but this is an incorrect decision (unless you’re trying to catch an early flight or make like Ivey to the golf course).

Of course, there are a couple of situations where pressing a coin flip can be the right move. For example, if you think your opponents are better players than you, then it might be correct to take a coin flip. When you’re outclassed in a game and are certain that you’ll be outplayed after the flop, taking a coin flip can help even the playing field.

By that same token, you should be willing to press a coin flip situation every chance you get against a player who thinks he’s better than you. Make him avoid taking the coin flip by raising and putting a lot of pressure on him to make that decision. If he really thinks of himself as the superior player, he’ll want to avoid that situation and keep folding until he gets the chance to try and outplay you after the flop. He may think he’s the better player, but if you put a lot of pressure on him, you may end up outplaying him.

Howard Says:

I think people try to avoid them too much, especially after they’ve already committed chips to the pot. If the pot has 1,000 in it and you have to put your last 500 chips in to make the call, you’re getting 2-1 on your money – yet people dodge this situation all the time. It’s just wrong; you should love to take 2-1 on a coin flip even if you only have a 48% chance of winning.

When you have a hand like A-K and you could be running into Aces or Kings, committing chips to a coin flip is obviously not something you should be looking to do. But at the same time, when you’re getting 2-1 on your money in a likely coin flip situation, I think its right to take the flip. It’s a pretty big disaster if you’re holding Jacks and don’t want to flip against something like A-K, but it turns out your opponent has pocket 9s.

The whole point of a coin flip is that yes, sometimes you have the classic A-K versus Queens race. But what about all the times you have A-K and the other player has A-Q. When you have a hand where you aren’t in a coin flip, you likely have your opponent dominated, and you should take that proposition every time.

With that said, there are obviously times when you should not be looking to take a coin flip. When you’re in a situation where you have a lot more chips than your opponent, this is a good time not to take that flip. The more of an advantage you have over the other player, the less willing you should be to take the coin flip. Avoid that situation by not committing too many chips to the pot and waiting until after the flop to outplay the competition.

As you can see, there’s no one right way to approach a coin flip situation. There are always two sides to every coin.

Join top professional poker players like Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer online at Full Tilt Poker.

Playing and chatting to a pro is lots of fun. These guys usually interact well - they started out as newbies or wannabes too… The Full Tilt Poker site rates highly for high stakes cash game play but also offers some excellent tournament poker. It is popular with players from all over the globe now, including Americans from all States.

Check out the latest detailed poker room review of FullTiltPoker.com here
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Here’s the latest poker article from the team at Bodog Poker that we thought we’d share:

Mike Caro’s nickname as ‘The Mad Genius of Poker’ is well chosen. Resembling a cross between Sigmund Freud and Dr Emmett Brown from the Back to the Future trilogy, if someone told you that he could travel back in time to find out why you grasp your earlobes in times of stress, you would nod your head.

Luckily for us mortals of the felt, Caro is now more famous as a leading poker ‘theorist’ and seems happier playing with statistical tables. To this end, he founded the ‘Mike Caro University of Poker, Gambling and Life Strategy’ and was one of a handful of individuals who believed online poker could be a money-spinner.

His theories, when extricated from some of the ‘Life Strategy’, are always worthy of consideration. In one of his lectures, he compares poker to the game Rock, Paper, Scissors.

For the rules of the latter game, there is no optimum strategy to win every time - rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock. If you are to have any edge over your opponent, you have to predict how he’ll play. Caro then expands the metaphor to poker and offers a practical example.

He puts three hands on the table, asks his opponent to pick one, and then he chooses the ideal one of the remaining two. (It is not a perfect comparison to Rock, Paper, Scissors as he knows his opponent’s choice before he acts.)

The hands are: 4c,4h  /  Jh,10h  /  Ac, Ks

It makes his point well - if his opponent picks the two fours, Caro opts for jack-ten and will win 53% of the time; likewise, if the sucker chooses AK, Mad Genius awards himself 44 and profits in 54% of the battles; and finally, if his hapless student fancies jack-ten, AK is snatched up and Caro takes 59%.

He then indulges his love of mumbo-jumbo and goes a bit Lion-King by suggesting that the above is an example of the ‘circle of strength’. He calls this, with a nod again to both mysticism and ego, ‘Caro’s Conception’

It states: ‘ In life, strength is sometimes circular. Therefore, the conqueror can be an underdog to an entity too weak even to defeat what has already been conquered.’

In lay-men’s terms, this means that it can be a mistake to believe there is ‘a best hand’ and the key to survival is adaptability. Therefore, and back to a Friday night’s online session, when you are staring at leagues of multi-tabling rocks, you have to work out how to become paper. It is here that some of Caro’s points stumble. He argues that rocks lose out because they are unobservant and fail to steal pots - which is true, but only to a point.

In a tournament, with increasing blinds they lose out - but in online cash games, spread across twelve tables, they have the time to wait and there are usually plenty of fish to pay them off. Their hourly rate may suffer but they rarely lose money as they are only investing in premium hands.

It is possible to beat rocks but it is a task about as pleasurable and time-consuming as papering the Grand Canyon. It is better, when possible, to leave the quarry and look elsewhere. If that is not possible, steal blinds, don’t ever call their all-in bets unless you have the nuts, stay patient and make more from the looser players.

Good luck.

Playing against rocks can make a person question their life strategy. Indeed, play for the real thing and get your party pants down to Bodog Poker. (Players from around the world including the USA are welcome)

(…and you can play and chat online with Mike Caro - if you dare - at Doyles Room Poker)

>>Compare top rating online poker rooms that accept USA residents (including Bodog Poker and Doyles Room) here at PokerLabRat.com

>>Latest Poker room review of Bodog Poker
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F1 Poker Competition  for UK based poker players

Ladbrokes Poker is inviting all UK based poker players to try their luck at winning “The Ultimate Silverstone Driving Experience“. A day’s racing at Silverstone sounds a lot of fun and as it’s free to enter, you’ve really got nothing to lose! 

Ladbrokes operates Europe’s busiest online poker room (powered by Microgaming Poker software). It’s very popular with European and UK poker players as Ladbrokes offers some of the most lucrative cash games on the net, excellent tournament poker including satellites into most in-the-flesh local and International poker events as well as a great selection of player promotions and competitions.

In their latest promotion you can win a day of racing at Silverstone (the famous British Grand Prix circuit) in a selection of ‘really cool’ cars. Fancy doing handbrake turns around a purpose-built gravel rally stage? Want top try a unique off-road course in an ATV?. If you win this free-to-enter poker tournament you’ll experience all of the following*:

Ferrari 360 f1™ Modena, Porsche 911 Carrera 4, Formula Silverstone single seater, Lotus Exige, Ford Fiesta Street Group ‘n’ Rally car, Caterham 7, Peugeot 206 GTI rally car, Land Rover Defender, Honda TRX 350 ATV

* N.B. the activity line up may be subject to change, but equally amazing alternatives will be available! This is Ladbrokes, they won’t rip you off!

So how do I enter?

By playing poker in free-to-enter qualifiers!  Each day from 20th July to 31st July, there are free 1 Hour Qualifying Sessions that lead on to the main event on August 3rd – “The Ladbrokes F1 Poker Tournament“. Here’s how it works:

Qualifying Session: Each night at 20:00 BST, from 20th – 31st July, there’ll be a free-to-enter F1 Poker Qualifier tournament. After 1 hour of play, the tournament will be paused, and if your chip stack is within the top 20% of the field at that time, you will qualify for the Main Event. If you don’t make it through the qualifier, don’t worry - you can enter as many qualifiers as you want until you get through!

Main Event: On August 3rd at 12:00 BST, during the Hungary Grand Prix, all successful qualifiers will be able to play in the Ladbrokes F1 Poker main event. Your chip stacks from qualifying will be re-set, and the “race” will not stop until there is a winner. Play poker online while watching all the action from the Hungary Grand Prix on TV!

$5,000 of Prizes!

Win the F1 Poker Main Event and you will win the driving experience of a lifetime (list of activities above). There will also be runner up prizes as follows:

1st: Ultimate Driving Experience at Silverstone PLUS $600 into your poker account!
2nd: $600, 3rd: $400, 4th: $300, 5th: $200, 6th – 10th: $100, 11th – 20th: $50, 21st – 40th: $25

Check out Ladbrokes Poker and register for a F1 qualifier today!
For more info read the latest Ladbrokes Poker Review at PokerLabRat.com
Compare Ladbrokes Poker to other top rated poker sites popular with UK and European players.

In poker, two decision making concepts come into play:
1. You should usually make the decision that has the best chance of success, even if in retrospect other decisions might have been better
2. When you hold a superior hand, you want your opponents to bond to the pot

Here’s an example of common bad decision making that violates these precepts:

You’re playing Hold’em. The game is nine-handed and you’re two seats to the right of the button before the flop. Everyone else has folded. You peek at your cards and, OMG, you have A-A! In an instant flash of brilliance you decide, cleverly, just to call. You reason that this will invite opponents into the pot and set a trap.

And that might work perfectly. On rare occasions I will choose this tactic, just to confuse astute opponents and set the stage for making more money on future hands when I’ll be able to play lesser cards more safely because others will remember that I could hold a monster. But that tactic isn’t the most profitable way to play this specific hand right now.

If you have Aces in early position, you might just call, hoping others will raise and you’ll build a bigger pot with a significant advantage. But here, in your fairly late position, analysis shows that you’ll make more profit on your Aces by raising. I suggest a minimum raise or a little more. If the big blind is $100, try wagering $200 to $250. As a standard tactic, just calling is poor, because many opponents become suspicious of a big hand. They’ve been there and done that themselves. They might surmise that your call means you have either a fairly weak hand or a speculative one, such as 8c-7c. But they’ll also be alert to the possibility that you’re trapping. If you raise though, that act seems natural to your opponents who expect you to leverage your late position. Oddly the possibility that you hold a big pair will often seem less likely to them than if you just call. And you’ll be able to bet after seeing the flop with much more likelihood of being called – especially if non-threatening cards flop.

In their Heads

Opponents put you on hands. If you raise on your first two cards, they’re thinking you’re trying to buy the pot on the flop and they’re likely to call if they connect in any manner whatsoever, including just holding high overcards. But there’s an even bigger reason why making a small raise is the best tactic. You’re getting players to bond. They now feel that they have an “investment” in the pot. That’s bonding.

So, clearly in common poker situations, almost any decision might turn out to be ideal. And you should sometimes choose an unusual tactic to keep sophisticated foes off guard. But the choices that have the best chance of winning the most money most of the time are the ones you should routinely choose. Also, when you have a quality hand, you should try to bond opponents to the pot, which you crave.

In poker and in life, always consider whether making someone else bond will benefit you. Then make the decision that has the biggest shot at long-range profit, keeping in mind that it might not work as well right now as a seemingly inferior choice might. In poker and beyond, the trick is to steadfastly do what’s most likely to succeed.

Mike Caro  
You can play and chat with Mike Caro “The Mad Genius of Poker” online at DoylesRoom Poker.

ABOUT DOYLES ROOM:

Doyles Room is a leading poker site on the Microgaming Poker Network and welcomes players from around the world including Americans from 39 States.  Poker Legend Doyle Brunson’s personal reputation is behind this site - safe and secure. “Doyles Den” (a private area on the Microgaming Poker Network is reserved just for Doyles Room Players and has a great atmosphere!) This poker site also offers some excellent casino side games - blackjack, roulette, slots, too.

For more info on this popular online poker site read the latest Doyles Room Poker Review here at PokerLabRat.com or compare Doyles Room to other top ranking poker sites accepting US players here.

The final nine players to contest the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event have been found - and they will start playing the final table … in … in .. 117 days time?!

Chip count :
Dennis Phillips - 26,295,000
Ivan Demidov - 24,400,000
Scott Montgomery - 19,690,000
Peter Eastgate - 18,375,000
Ylon Schwartz - 12,525,000
Darus Suharto - 12,520,000
David ‘Chino’ Rheem - 10,230,000
Craig Marquis - 10,210,000
Kelly Kim - 2,620,000

No names, no stars, no angle, but then ESPN and the poker press have 117 days to build this into something other than a story about 9 nobodies playing for the  first prize of $9.1m …

See you on November 9th 2008.

If you don’t think poker is a competitive sport, chances are you’ve never made it to the late stages of a major tournament where the only thing higher than the blinds is the pressure of playing for thousands - or even millions - of dollars in prize money.

As a former basketball player, I can compare the pressure of a WSOP final table to the final minutes of a playoff game where every play is crucial and any mistake can mean the difference between walking away a champion or a runner-up. From the crowds on the rails to the lights, TV cameras and reporters running around the floor, everything around you is amplified. Let the pressure and the circus atmosphere distract you, and you can easily watch your tournament slip away.

Pros who have been in these situations before - whether they’re athletes on the court or players on the felt - understand the key to wining in this atmosphere is to maintain focus on the task at hand and to block out everything else that doesn’t matter. TV cameras? Forget ‘em. Railbirds? Block them out. Bear down and play, and let the rest take care of itself.

Unlike other sports, poker has one more X factor that you have to learn to deal with - the money ladder where finishing just one spot higher can mean thousands or even hundreds of thousands of additional dollars in prize money. For players who haven’t gone deep in major tournaments, thinking about the short-term money jumps can be just as distracting as any TV camera. Succeeding at this stage takes focus on a single goal. For me, that goal is winning.

In my experience, tournaments can be divided into two distinct parts; in the money and out of the money. Before the bubble, my goal is to make the money. I want to cash and, hopefully, put myself in a position to win. After the bubble breaks, I aim to win. For me, and many other pros, the real tournament doesn’t start until after we’ve reached the money and its here where I really try to concentrate on making the smartest long-term strategic decisions I can in order to secure a win.

A hand from Event #1 of this year’s WSOP illustrates my point. We had reached four-handed play where the difference in finishing first and fourth was more than $500,000 when I got involved in a pot with Andy Bloch. I was holding pocket 7s and led out at a flop of Q-Q-3 only to have Andy make a pot-sized raise behind me. Though I don’t know what Andy was holding, I’m guessing that he may have had over-cards and, possibly, a flush draw. While my two pair of 7s and Queens may have very well been good, it would cost me my entire stack on what was essentially a coin flip in order to find out. In the end, I laid my hand down and looked for a better spot.

Why, you may ask. Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, I had a big enough stack at this point that I wasn’t committed to continuing with the hand and, while folding to Andy cost me some chips, I could still fold and sit comfortably in second chip position at the table. Secondly, and even more importantly, even if I was ahead of Andy on the flop, my read gave him 13 outs (approximately, a 40% chance) to make his hand. With my tournament life on the line if I called, I just wasn’t getting the odds to gamble.

While making the tough hero call in front of friends, family and the ESPN cameras may have been a great poker moment that earned me a few minutes of glory, I did my best to block all of that out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand - winning the tournament. By focusing on the game plan I devised earlier, I was able to walk away from a marginal situation with only a small loss and move onto the next hand.

In the end, my decision to pass on the possible short-term gain I could have realized in this hand paid off, as I went on to defeat Andy after we reached heads-up play. I’ll take a WSOP bracelet over a few minutes of television glory any day.

ABOUT NENAD:
Born in Serbia and raised in Canada, Nenad scored his biggest victory ever in June 2008, defeating Team Full Tilt’s Andy Bloch in heads-up play to claim a WSOP bracelet in the $10K Pot-Limit Hold ‘em event. The victory earned him nearly $795,000. Despite his success in tournaments, Nenad considers himself a cash game player.

You can play him online at FullTiltPoker.com
For more on this top ranking US-friendly online poker room see Full Tilt Poker Review.
Check out PokerLabRat.com for the latest poker room ranking and reviews 

In Mike Caro’s previous blog posting on PokerLabRat.com he shared a list of truths about poker. This blog covers some poker fiction (ie false statements).  It’s not a quiz, because you don’t get to answer the questions. He does.

THE FALSE GROUP. Everything on this list is false.

After about 1,000 hours of play, everyone’s luck at poker is about equal, and skill alone determines who does better. (Don’t expect your luck to even out in 1,000 hours. It may not even out for your lifetime. Even if you did get precisely your fair share of flushes and full houses, you might not win your fair share of them. Additionally, there are all sorts of luck factors that influence your success, not the least of which is whether you happen to be available to play when that out-of-towner decides to unload $1 million. Your job is to do the best you can with the cards you’re dealt. A break-even player with $50,000 worth of overall bad luck for the year will lose $50,000. But if you learn skills that make you $120,000 better than break-even and you suffer $50,000 worth of misfortune, you’ll still win $70,000. That’s the secret. Your job isn’t making sure the cards are distributed fairly. Somebody else already has that job. Your job is to look at the cards you’re dealt and to make the most profitable decisions about them.)

On average, the top female poker players earn more money than the top male poker players. (Why is that false? What about question #1 in the True Group? Not a conflict. It’s the difference between what most intelligent women are capable of winning and what they actually are winning right now.)

There is more skill involved in limit hold ‘em than in no-limit hold ‘em. (You’re right, how could that possibly be true, although we hear the claim made quite often. In no limit, you need to make the same decisions about whether to bet or raise, but you also have to make decisions about how much to bet or raise. The only strong argument to the contrary is that in no-limit games, the all-in factor comes into play often. After someone is all-in, there are no subsequent decisions and the cards are simply dealt out with no further skill involved. This argument isn’t strong enough, however.)

On average, top professional blackjack players earn more than top professional poker players. (Not even close. Top poker pros earn a lot more.)

You can win a lot of extra profit by aggravating opponents and putting them emotionally on tilt. (Opponents may get aggravated, but they’ll usually decide that you’re just no fun to lose to. And when they decide that, they play better against you.)

Mike Caro is the greatest poker player alive, but nobody knows it. (Somebody knows it. See, it was a trick question. Speaking as a friend of Mike’s, I know he gets tired of hearing, “Those who can, do; those who can’t teach.” Whenever he hears people say that, he wants to slap their clubby little faces, because he personally was doing long before he was teaching. And he’s still doing; and if they don’t shut up, and if they have any money, he might have to do it to them, too. Got it?)

Any world-class player has an advantage against a well-programmed computer poker opponent, because the computer cannot use psychology. (Maybe the computer can’t use psychology or maybe it can. But in any case, the human can’t use psychology, so - at worst - this is a push from the computer’s point of view. If both opponents are forced to ignore psychology, the battle will be resolved on a purely computational basis. If the computer is properly programmed, it won’t lose, no matter how much psychology its opponent understands.)

A predetermined stop-loss specifying the maximum amount you should lose in a game will save you money. (This is not true in any honest game where you are not incapacitated, you feel like playing, and the opponents are beatable. The more hours you play under favorable conditions, the more you’ll win. You earn an average amount per hour. Consider that your wage. More hours, more money - just like most other jobs).

You can chat and play with the “Mad Genius”, Mike Caro, every Wednesday night at 9:30pm ET when the DoylesRoom Bounty Tournament returns on July 23rd.

Poker Education is a “big thing” at Doyles Room Poker - great for beginners but also those who’ve been around a bit! Check it out.

>>Detailed Review of Doyles Room Poker
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Day five of the 2008 Main event at the World Series of Poker is now in the books, and 110 players were eliminated today, taking the field down to just 79 players.

Some of the biggest names were eliminated today with Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham and Hoyt Corkins all taking the long walk after coming so close to the hugely awaited final table.

As is becoming commonplace with the main event - the leaderboard is dominated by players with little previous TV exposure :

Mark Ketteringham: 5,700,000
Andrew Brokos: 4,100,000
Tiffany Michelle: 3,800,000
Jamal Kunbuz: 3,500,000
Albert Kim: 3,400,000
Nikolay Losev: 3,400,000
Alfred Fernandez: 3,100,000
Steve Lade: 3,000,000
Judet Cristian: 2,900,000
Aaron Gordon: 2,900,000

Average Stack: 1,732,658

But there are still a couple of well known publicity seekers as Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow in the hunt for the final table.

There are just 189 players left after day four of the WSOP and 11 time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth is amongst them - with around 500,000 chips - slightly lower than the tournament average for 725,000.

Johnny Chan was bidding to win his 11th bracelet in this event as well, but he busted out earlier in the day when his A7 came up against pocket 8’s and Chan could not improve his hand with the board.

Top five leaders :
Jeremy Joseph: 3,100,000
Cristian Dragomir: 2,065,000
David Rheem: 2,000,000
Nikolay Losev: 1,800,000
Andrew Rosskamm: 1,745,000

The field has three more days to whittle the 189 players down to the final nine players who will then contest the final table … in November ?!