The Poker Lab Rat

Doyle Brunson’s poker site (Doyles Room) has extended their ultra popular QuickDraw freeroll tournament series for one more week. They’re fast. They’re free - and you can win real money without risking any of your own.

No buy-in, no rake requirement, 2 minute blinds! The action is crazy-fast so you really do end up hoping that the flop is with you, as chip stacks swell or sink in the turn of a card. Don’t miss out on the addictively fun action. Some of the PokerLabRat.com team really enjoyed last week’s freerolls.

You can even rebuy into these freerolls for just $1 (real money) - but that’s your call!

Check out the timetable (left) and register now for some freeroll action.

Doyles Room poker plays on the latest Microgaming Poker Network software and welcomes players from around the world including Americans from 39 States.

Jennifer Tilly
Poker is an extreme sport. You can’t sit out and say, “Oh well, this is good enough.” You have to be always swinging through trees. You are never safe.

Paul Wasicka
I can’t tell you what it’s like to win a WSOP event. People who aren’t big time wear bling (WSOP bracelets) to “prove” they are. The WSOP gives out scores of those bracelets every year. Me? I’m just here to bring home the bacon.

Annie Duke
All-in is an easy choice. It is the choice that takes the least thought. It is, in fact, an abdication of choice. It’s like abandoning responsibility: if you are bluffing, the skill comes in determining the smallest bet that will still matter to your opponent, the smallest bet that will tell a good story about the strength of your hand and will get your opponent to fold….and determining that bet amount is hard – certainly much harder than just making the choice to go all-in.

Mike Caro
In poker and real life, you’re sometimes seeing an illusion of success. Don’t; let it discourage you. Keep plodding. Keep making correct decisions. If you do that, you’ll leave most of the weak players far behind – and keep gaining on the lucky ones as they begin to falter.

Mike Matusow
I’m considered the best Omaha Hi-Lo player in the world. And I believe I am! But as good as I am at Omaha, most people say that’s not my best game; they say I’m better at No Limit Hold’em. So I’ve got real good at a couple of games and, when I’m on my game, there’s not many better than me. My biggest problem is – what makes Ivey so good is that his concentration is so good – whereas I mentally slip a lot.

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Ever player poker on a heart shaped table? Ever wanted to?

I personally haven’t felt the need. I have, however, always liked the elegantly simple layout of Carbon Poker’s navy blue table…Anyways, the crew at Carbon Poker just couldn’t resist laying on some of the frilly girlie pink stuff and consider Valentine’s Day is not just for lovers - it’s for poker players too.

Carbon Poker’s special February Heart Attack promotion will be offering players over $30,000 in freerolls (and they are smart enough to offer both Euro and US friendly start times).

There will be daily Heart Breaker Poker Tournaments, with a prize pool of $500 on weekdays and $1000 on Saturday and Sunday’s throughout February. On Valentine’s Day there will be a special $5,000 prize pool.

Now here’s another weird bit (as if heart shaped poker tables & cupid backed playing cards wasn’t enough): Half of each prize pool is paid as usual, but the other half will be paid to the top five players with the most consecutive hearts hole cards during the tournament. A leaderboard will run during the tournament so you can see how your streak of hole card hearts is stacking up against the rest of the field. The top five will be paid out 1st - 40%, 2nd - 24%, 3rd - 18%, 4th - 12% and 5th - 6%.

Easy. OK, well, I guess this is at least a unique twist on the usual Valentine’s celebrations - and probably one you should take advantage of!

Click here if you’re not yet a member at Carbon Poker or to find out more about this freeroll series.  Get really to add some February tournament dates in your poker diary!

You can’t be afraid when you play in the cash games. You have to have a certain disrespect for money. If you have, say, $500,000 in front of you, you can’t think, “Oh man. I can buy a house”. You have to think about making the right decisions and seeing what’s in front of you as chips instead of money. Many people can’t be successful as cash players because they think, “If I lose this in a half-hour it would be devastating.” You have to be able to go on with your life. All my gambling experience has made me better equipped for being able to deal with losing money.

I’ve been doing a lot better in tournaments. Before I would play cash games all night – 14, 15 hours – and go right into the poker tournament. I would end up not playing my best. I’m going to prepare better for the poker tournaments I play in. I’m going to try the best I can. In a lot of poker tournaments, if there’s a good cash game going on the side, I wouldn’t try too hard because I would want to go get into that game.

It was hard for the top players in tournaments because there were cash games going on where you could go and make more money. It’s tough to gear down for a poker tournament when the most you can win is $500,000 or $600,000. You play for that every day in big cash games. I would feel I had wasted all that time and could have been playing in a cash game. I love cash games and making real money, but I just decided I wasn’t going to waste my time or money by not giving my best at tournaments. That’s why I’ve been doing a lot better in poker tournaments.

So why do I play in tournaments? I like them; they’re very competitive – very intense down to the end. It’s much more intense than a cash game when you get to the final table.

I’m pretty stoic at the poker table. It comes naturally. It’s just concentration and paying attention to what’s going on. When I lose a tough hand, it doesn’t bother me that much. Not that I’m not emotional or concerned with what’s going on. It’s just another poker hand, it’s not that big a deal. I’ll get lucky and win hands I shouldn’t and lose hands I shouldn’t lose. I try not to put too much into any one hand of poker.

Poker is about living in the moment. Just like golf, it’s one shot at a time. You don’t want to get too ahead of yourself. On the golf course, you don’t think five shots ahead. You think only about your next shot. And of you have a bad shot, you don’t want to think about that. You forget it and move on. That’s why poker and golf are so similar when you’re playing at a competitive level.

Phil Ivy plays online at FullTiltPoker.com. Join him sometime at a table – all pros are highlighted in red in the poker room lobby when they’re registered at a table. Check it out!

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I wrote On Cavemen and Poker Players, a while back, and talked about the importance of learning to control your emotions at the poker table. Since then, I’ve had time to further refine my views on this topic, especially when it comes to the concept of tilt.

To begin, let me state the obvious: tilt happens to everyone. In fact, it’s safe to say that tilt is one of the most feared words - and concepts - in poker. So, what causes tilt? Well, that’s different for everyone. For some, it’s a bad run of cards or continuously getting unlucky when you’re opponents hit their miracle two and three-outers on the river. For others, it’s just playing poorly for an extended period of time.

No matter the cause, however, the fact remains that once most players do finally go on tilt, all bets are off and their games suffer. They end up playing the wrong cards in the wrong situations or at the wrong times and losing a lot of chips. For some players, this can be the beginning of a vicious cycle that feeds upon itself and, eventually, destroys their confidence along with their bankrolls.

Knowing what causes tilt is one thing, but the bigger question is, what is tilt? Personally, I believe it’s a chemical reaction that takes place in your brain. It’s similar to the primal emotion of being in danger, coded into our DNA just as if we’re in the forest being hunted so many thousands or years ago. Instead of being chased by some wild animal, we’re being hunted by other players looking to gun us down with another bad beat.

The effect of this primal emotion is enormous - your whole chemistry changes and you go into a different frame of mind that will completely change the way you play the game. The key to stopping this from happening and going on tilt is the ability to separate yourself from that emotion. Rather than playing based on that primal instinct, you should continue to play smart, thoughtful poker without worrying about your short-term results.

In order to achieve this, you must train yourself to believe that winning and losing at the poker table, at least over a short period of time, both have the same meaning. This might seem counterintuitive at first, because the object of the game is always to win. But you have to accept the fact that you can’t win every hand and that losing is a part of the game.

Look at how you approach a coin flip situation. If you’re winning at the time you’re faced with a coin flip, you’re going to be more hesitant to take that chance because you don’t want to risk losing what you’ve already won (and possibly more). If, on the other hand, you’re presented with the same situation when you’re losing, then you’re probably going to be more willing to take the risk and go for the coin flip because you want to win your money back. Either way, I think both cases are detrimental to your game because in either situation, you’re more worried about the short-term outcome rather than about playing solid poker over the long term, which is what being a winning player is really all about.

When you become indifferent to winning or losing over the short term, you won’t have to worry about going on tilt because you’re focusing simply on playing good poker. That’s all that matters at the end of the day - playing well. As poker players, we can do nothing more than to play our best game and let the cards fall as they may. When you adopt this attitude, your long-term results will take a turn for the better, no matter what kind of variance you face over the short term.

Ben Roberts

Nicknamed “Gentleman Ben”, Ben Roberts is the UK’s most successful cash game player. He was born in Persia, but moved to London when he was a teenager.

If you want to learn more about Ben, join him at the table on FullTiltPoker.com.

Check out our professional poker tips directory for other poker tips and comment by Ben Roberts & other top pro players

If you’ve been hankering to try Doyles Room poker (a leading member of the Microgaming Poker Network) - or are just looking for some really free freeroll tournaments - now’s the time.

DoylesRoom.com are running a series of no buy-in, no rake requirement, freerolls with 2 minute blinds! (And you can recharge your bankroll for $1 real money, real quick if you want to!)

QuickDraw Freerolls, What are they?

It’s a full on Texas Hold’em tournament where the action is fast and the blinds escalate every 2 minutes. If you expect to win, you’ll have to be on your feet and on your game. Everyone starts out with 1,000 tournament chips and although it’s a freeroll, you can rebuy for $1 or with Action Points. Consider the rebuy a little bit of bad beat insurance, or maybe your way to never miss the bubble again!

Register now, space is limited. Don’t miss out on any of the 9 events spread out over the next 5 days at Doyles Room!

Players from around the world, including 39 US States are welcome to play poker at Doyles Room. Check out the latest poker review on this stylish and popular online poker room.

Dan Harrington former lawyer turned poker pro on what he wanted to be growing up:
It’s really simple, I always knew I wanted a job where I could draw a big fat paycheck and would get paid for doing absolutely nothing.
(Dan’s won $5.5 million to date in tournament winnings)

Jennifer Tilly on the sportsmanship of the English poker pros:
The English have a thing they do when they leave the table. They stand up and shake everybody’s hand, and say “Well played” to the person who knocked them out. In America, they say “I can’t believe you sucked out on me!” or “What a donkey call”, or, (contemptuously) “Nice river!”

Jennifer again, commenting on the realization that her card handling technique was making her fairly transparent at the table: I can’t believe he saw my cards, and even more astonishing, I can’t believe he told me! How many players would give up that kind of edge? …After that, I am very careful to slide the cards off the glass completely flat.

Phil Gordon when asked to name the player he just can’t get a read on:
John Juanda. For some reason he is the toughest player I play against on a regular basis. He’s capable of changing speeds at any moment. He just has my telephone number. I just don’t understand it. Every time we’re in a pot and I call him, he turns over the nuts. And every time we’re in a pot and I fold, he turns over a complete bluff.

Joe Hachem when asked if he’d describe himself as a gambler:
Oh, no. I don’t play any table games. I don’t sports bet. It just doesn’t interest me. Poker is my passion, it’s my only gambling. I don’t understand how people can stay from not being broke if they’re gonna gamble.

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Most people are familiar with the differences between one-table Sit & Go tournaments (SNGs) and other forms of poker. Because these tournaments only pay the top three finishers at a nine-handed table, the standard strategy is to play conservatively until the tournament becomes short-handed and then become more aggressive during short-handed play.

Many newer SNG players favor these nine-handed tournaments because the blinds only increase every six minutes, providing a good amount of play. While these are great tournaments, I also encourage people to try other types of SNGs, including turbos where the blinds increase every three minutes, and six-handed games where you start off playing short-handed and only the top-two finishers are paid.

For really fast-paced excitement, however, I play six-handed turbo SNGs where I’m facing both short tables and quick blinds. The structure of these SNGs forces me to play each hand more carefully as the combination of fast blinds and short-handed play means one mistake can be crippling or even fatal. They also let me finish in time for dinner.

Succeeding in these tournaments requires making some adjustments to your standard SNG strategy. As with any short-handed table, one of the most important things you need to do is open up your starting hand requirements - but not too much. You shouldn’t be playing trash, especially in early position, but you should be willing to see more flops in hopes of hitting a big hand. That said, you shouldn’t play with the intention of stealing blinds - especially in the early going - as there’s just not enough value in that play to make it worthwhile.

This leads me to the biggest mistake I see many people make in these kinds of games, which is playing too loose. For some reason, people think they have to go crazy at short-handed tables in an effort to pick up chips early on. Generally, one or two players go broke right away and, all of a sudden, you have four people left at the table with only two spots getting paid.

Once you’ve lost a couple players, there’s usually one person who’s built up a big chip stack and plays too aggressively in an effort to bully the rest of the table. You have to hang tough in this situation, even if you’re sitting on just around 1,000 chips. The bully wants to double you up, so you might as well let him.

If you are lucky enough to double up or accumulate chips early on, don’t give them up easily. Instead of siphoning off your chips by calling raises out of position or trying to steal too much, pick your spots carefully and continue to play tight, aggressive poker.

Because these short-handed tournaments only pay out two places, you should begin applying more pressure on your competition as you approach the bubble. Your goal should be to finish first, as you’ll earn three times your buy-in as opposed to just doubling your buy-in for second place. Look for the player who is just seeking to squeeze their way into the money and attack their stack as much as possible in order to force their hand and hopefully, induce a mistake. At this point, the quickly rising blinds should force the bubble boy to push all-in with a less than stellar hand.

Overall, it’s a simple but effective strategy. Play relatively tight and put yourself in a position to double up through the table bully in the early to middle stages, and then attack when you reach the bubble. This will put you in position to make the money and play heads-up for the win.
Scott Fischman - Who? Well, there’s nothing as yet online Full Tilt about this Full Tilt Poker sponsorer pro. Scott has previously pushed a competing poker brand so we’re not too sure what’s going on here.

Wikipedia, that ubiquitous source of all (at times even dubious) knowledge, says: Scott Fischman (born 1981 in Langhorne, Pennsylvania) is an American professional poker player based in Las Vegas, Nevada.At the 2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) he became the youngest person ever to win two WSOP bracelets. At the age of 23 he won one at no limit hold’em and the other at H.O.R.S.E..

Check out the latest pro tips and poker tutorials from professional players here.

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This dude is GOOD! Howard Lederer has claimed one of the most prestigious titles in tournament poker, the Aussie Millions $100K No-Limit Hold‘em Main event.

Lederer out-played what many would consider an elite field of 25 top poker professionals, that included fellow members of Team Full Tilt* Phil Ivey, Chris Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, and John Juanda.

Having entered the final table as one of the short stacks, Lederer demonstrated great patience and timing to slowly accumulate chips to become the chip leader with just three competitors remaining. After starting heads-up play with a 2-1 chip advantage over second-place finisher Mark Teltscher, it took more than and an hour of heads-up play to take out the title and the $1.25 million first-place prize.

The final hand pitted Lederer’s two pair of Aces and Jacks against Teltschers two pair of 7s and 8s.

The victory is the largest single tournament payday Lederer has ever earned, bringing his career tournament earnings to nearly $5 million.

For the latest tips and poker advice from Howard Lederer

*Team Full Tilt is a select group professional poker players, including Gus Hansen, Chris Ferguson, Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, Erik Seidel, Andy Bloch, Phil Gordon, John Juanda, Mike Matusow, Clonie Gowen, Jennifer Harman and Allen Cunningham who have collectively won 32 WSOP bracelets.

Full Tilt Poker offers all players the opportunity to learn, chat and play poker with the best poker professionals in the game.

Full Tilt accepts players from around the world including the USA and has a growing reputation for some of the best cash game poker on the Internet.

Those two concepts aren’t trivial. They combine to form a key to a meadow where money grows! The key unlocks the 20-ton gateway to your success at Texas Hold’em poker.

Your most important decisions involve your first two cards

You need to be more selective about which hands you play. No matter how good you are, if you play every Hold’em hand, you will lose. So, you’ve got to discipline yourself not to play most hands. You need to realise – and remind yourself frequently – that every time you fold a starting hand correctly, you’ve earned money. You grow richer as you fold.

That’s an easier concept to grasp intellectually than it is emotionally. They money you earn is the same money you didn’t lose by pursuing a pot when it wasn’t profitable. Sure, you’re abandoning all chance of winning the pot by folding, but you must learn never to think in terms of winning pots. Your eventual profit doesn’t come from winning pots; it comes from making good decisions.

The Truth

If you imagine how mush you’d win or lose if you played all similar pots to their conclusion, you can see the truth. The truth is that even if you win the pot you’ve actually lost money if all those similar pots averaged together would have resulted in a loss. Over time, you will win or lose approximately what you mathematically expect on each hand, regardless of the immediate outcome. Over the years, all those savings will add up. That money remains in your pocket, and you can spend it.

Of course in determining which hands to play and which to fold, you need to remember that the earlier your position, the more selective you need to be. That’s because the earlier you enter a pot, the more apt you are to act first on subsequent betting rounds. And acting first is a distinct disadvantage, because opponents get to see what you do before making their decisions.

In the earliest positions, in a full-handed game (9 or 10 players), you might even be so selective that you only play pairs of Aces, Kings or Queens, plus Ace-King (suited or unsuited). Depending on the playing styles and abilities of your opponents, you might liberalize that, but not greatly. In later positions, after opponents fold, you can become much more relaxed about the hands you select. For instance, in the dealer position, you can raise with King-Jack and show a reasonable profit.

But this item is not about starting hands. I just want you to understand the concept that selectivity is vital and you can play more freely in later positions. The weaker your opponents, the more starting hands you can play, because you can gain ground by outplaying them on future betting rounds.

If you don’t fold, the flop will usually disappoint you.

If you do not grasp this, you’ll go through your whole Hold’em life feeling cheated by fate. Unless you hold a pair of Aces or Kings, most of the time the flop will leave you vulnerable. Usually you won’t connect in ways that will help your hand. If you hold 7-7, then any flopped card higher than a seven means opponents might have made a higher pair. If you begin with Ace-King and don’t pair or make an unlikely straight on the flop, you’re in trouble. Most of the time, you’re going to be in trouble when you see the flop!

The Key

Remember the two parts that form the key. First, the most important decisions you make involve how you play on the first round of betting, and you need to fold most of the time. By folding, you actually earn money. Second, when you decide to play, the flop will usually make you unhappy and if you could you’d have the dealer reshuffle and deal the flop again.

To maximise poker profit, raise less frequently before the flop than most aggressive players do. This isn’t because you’re a wimp. I teach an aggressive, but selective style of poker. But before the flop in Hold’em isn’t always the best place to display this style.

Yes, there are times when you can dominate opponents by pre-flop aggressive play, sometimes chasing them away; but pre-flop raises are vastly over rated. Even if you have an advantage, it may not be enough to justify a raise. Poker theory tells us that you often need a substantial advantage to raise, because you can face re-raises from opponents who, unexpectedly, have even bigger advantages. But the fact that the flop will usually disappoint us diminishes the perceived advantage of most Hold’em starting hands.

If Texas Hold’em poker were played by dealing one communal card at a time, followed by separate betting rounds, it would make more sense to raise aggressively with quality starting hands. But with three cards at once in the flop, the prospects for both you and your opponents are defined by the flop. You’ll usually be disappointed, and so will they. We really don’t know what’s what until the flop.

Often the value is in waiting and seeing what develops on the flop. Then if you have a great advantage, you can pursue it. The most profitable Texas Hold’em poker style is to play more aggressively after seeing the flop than before it. Not always, but usually.

Skillful players often give weaker opponents too much of a chance by building a big pot before the flop. Often, they would have better control of inferior opponents by waiting. Against an opponent of equal ability, it would be perfectly fine to move all in with 10-10 against K-J. You’d have a slight advantage. But against a weak opponent, you really want to see the flop. Then, if the flop is A-K-6, you can cheaply abandon your hand. And if the flop is A-10-4 or 6-4-2, you can become the aggressor.
 
If you are aware that Texas Hold’em Poker is a game where the flop defines your hand and will usually disappoint you, you won’t be frustrated by “bad” flops. And you can tailor your game in accordance with this great truth. Use the key.

Mike Caro

Play poker online with the Mad Genius of Poker, Mike Caro at Doyles Room. Doyles Room is a member of the Microgaming Poker Network and accepts players from around the World, including Americans from 39 States.

For more poker tips and advice from Mike Caro, Doyle Brunson and other top professional poker players check out the PokerLabRat Pro Poker Tips Directory.