The Poker Lab Rat

We can report that the PDC Poker Bad Beat Jackpot has paid out again at Carbon Poker – this time at over $734,000.

Nine players were present at the table to witness Quad Queens beat Quad 7’s – and all the players received massive payouts.

Congrats to the lucky players who were present for the jackpot – especially Ween10, the “losing” holder of quad 7’s who picked up $257,089.81 for his bad beat, and kdawg1979 with his miraculous four Queens who was a $128,544.90 winner.

The seven remaining players at the table were all paid out just over $18,000 simply for being there at Carbon Poker.

Remember :
The Bad Beat Jackpot is triggered at Carbon Poker when a hand of quad 7’s or better is beaten. That is the lowest qualifying hand in the industry – if this happened at another site, the jackpot simply wouldn’t have gone off. 

So what are you waiting for - get into the action at Carbon Poker now.

In the second week of the 2004 Series, I just missed a final table, finishing eleventh in a $2,000 Limit Hold’em event. Daniel (Negreanu) went on to win that tournament for his third bracelet. What I remember most about that tournament was a hand that came up about eight hours into Day One.

“Syracuse Chris” Tsiprailidis had pocket queens, Cecilia Reyes Mortensen was dealt pocket kings, and I looked down at two aces. Not surprisingly, the betting got capped preflop. I really didn’t know what Chris had, but I put Cecilia on kings.

When Q-4-4 flopped, Chris bet out with his full house, queens full of fours, and both Cecilia and I just called. I suspected Chris for the boat at this point, but the size of the pot was sitting on the borderline of being worth a call to try to spike an ace. When the turn came with a king, Chris bet out again and Cecilia ?at-called. The pot was huge by then, but I was sure Cecilia had kings and was laying a trap for us both with her kings full.
 
In a cash game, you still might make a call, but saving a bet in a limit tournament is a lot more important. Although I was almost sure I was beaten, I went in the tank for awhile with my aces, wondering if I could be wrong. If there were two boats against me, they would clearly pay me off if I hit an ace on the river. This one pot would ensure that the winner would go deep in the tournament. I eventually called, hoping for a miracle ace on the river. 

Miracles do happen! When that big fat perfect ace hit on the river, Syracuse Chris led out again and Cecilia raised. I reraised. Chris immediately showed his pocket queens to the spectators sitting behind him and folded. Cecilia went into the tank for about three minutes.

“I can’t believe I only called on the turn. I know you have aces. How could I play this so badly?” she moaned.
 
These were not deep stack tournaments in 2004; saving one bet at this point in a tournament could make a huge difference, but she finally made the call. I showed my aces full, Cecilia showed her kings full, and Chris flipped over his folded queens full.

Everyone at the table went wild when they saw the cards, and tournament players from the other tables came over to stare at the board.

Mike
PS: You can win copies of my new book (Check Raising the Devil) online at FullTiltPoker.

You can play and chat with Mike Matusow, and other top professional poker players online at FullTiltPoker.com. Tables highlighted red in the lobby have a pro registered so check it out! Playing a pro sounds daunting, but really is a great way to learn more about poker.

For the latest player reviews and poker fact sheets on FullTiltPoker.com check out:
>>Gooners Guide to Gambling Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of FullTilt Poker

Phil Hellmuth has probably offered the best advice that a novice player can learn. In his book “Play Poker Like the Pros”, he explains that a good way for a new player to play poker is to only play the top 10 hands. Those hands consist of A-A, K-K, Q-Q, A-K, J-J, 10-10, 9-9, 8-8, A-Q and 7-7. Every other hand you get should be folded, as you learn about the importance of patience and getting into hands with good cards.

This tight style will afford you lots of time to read your opponents and try to learn how they act as they play their game. When you do get one of these hands you’re supposed to play it aggressively because you’re likely to have the highest winning percentage at the time. This top ten hand method works best at a full table of nine players, or early in a tournament setting.

As your game progresses you can start to widen out the hands that you will play. But playing the top ten hands will keep you in the game longer, allowing you watch and learn, instead of going broke from playing too many hands.

This beginner poker strategy tip is from Bodog Poker. Check out the latest poker room Review of Bodog Poker here at PokerLabRat.com.

>>Visit Bodog Poker (Players from around the world except Canada are welcome as members to play poker for free or for real money - USA OK)

If you want to become a complete poker player, you need to learn how to play all the variations of the game. You should do this because it’s no good being the world’s best Hold ’em player when the biggest sucker in town only wants to play Seven-Card Stud. Ideally, you want to be able to play whatever game looks to be the most profitable on any given day.

When I first started playing poker, Five-Card Stud and Five-Card Draw were two of the most popular games, but now they’re both almost completely dead. They got replaced by Seven-Card Stud, which has also decreased in popularity. For a while No-Limit Hold ’em looked like it might be dying out because in the high-stakes cash games the tightest players always won, but it proved to be the perfect game for television so now it’s the most popular game. Because of how prevalent Hold ’em has become, I would advise beginning poker players to start out by learning its many variations, including Limit, No-Limit, cash games, and tournaments.

After Hold ’em, you should learn how to play Omaha, particularly Pot-Limit. Limit Omaha doesn’t work very well because deciding whether or not to call a bet on the river when a third flush card hits and you make a Queen-high flush isn’t a very big decision if you only have to call one bet and there are twelve in the pot. But if you’re playing Pot-Limit and your opponent bets the size of the pot on the river, whether you should call with your Queen-high flush or not becomes a much more difficult decision. In general, Pot-Limit games require a bit more skill than No-Limit games. Because you don’t have the all-in move to fall back on, you have to be equally capable of playing before the flop and after the flop.

Next you should learn the Hi/Lo games, particularly Stud Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo. Another good game is 2-7 Triple Draw, a tremendous action game that’s catching on very quickly. Like the best card games, it has a lot of mathematical elements to it, but there’s also a lot of card reading and bluffing involved. In 2-7, a drawing hand with one card to come is almost always an underdog to a hand that stands pat, so if you have a 9 and you can force your opponent to break his 9 you’ve gained a big advantage.

Beginning poker players are lucky nowadays because they can learn and practice all these games online. When I was starting out, most poker games were private games and you had to pay your dues just to get invited to play. If you were a winning player and you wanted to get invited back, you needed to show up on time, be nice to the suckers, and you couldn’t quit when you were winning a little bit. Even then, there might not be a place at the table for you the following week.

Contrast that with today’s world where you can play on your computer at home any time you want. Playing online offers an unprecedented level of convenience. Let’s say you’re about to go the movies and your girlfriend’s just gotten out of the shower but she’s taking forever to dry her hair. You can actually play an entire Sit & Go while you’re waiting for her. Sit & Gos can be very profitable. They’re also an ideal way to test out new strategies. By studying your hand history afterwards, you can see what worked and what didn’t. You can make notes about how you fared with a big stack and how you did with a short stack, and you can develop new ideas to try out in the future.

I still enjoy playing live because one of my skills is the ability to read people, but there are little tricks you can pick up that will help you gather information about your opponents when you’re playing online. If you’re playing at a single table and one of your opponents is multi-tabling, you can bring up all the tables he’s sitting at and watch how he plays. If he suffers a bad beat on another table, it could affect the way he plays a hand at your table, and you can take advantage of it.

For beginning players, online poker offers a convenient way of gaining a ton of experience in a very short period of time. If you choose to go this route, I suggest you take the time to learn all the games available to you so you’ll never have to pass up an opportunity to play against a big sucker just because he wants to play a game you’re unfamiliar with.

ABOUT STEVE ZOLOTOW: His Nicknames “Z” and “The Bald Eagle”, he has 2 WSOP Bracelets and is a renowned game theorist. Steve Zolotow plays poker online at Full Tilt Poker.

“Learn, Chat and Play With The Pros” is not just the blather of Full Tilt Poker’s marketing team - these really are aspects that we consider make this great poker site stand out. Here’s how:

Learn: Access the Fullt Tilt Poker library of poker lessons written by the game’s best players.  
Chat: Get answers to your questions directly from the FulltTilt pros at the table or in their pro chat sessions
Play: Sit down with any of their 100+ pros, who play more than 1,600 hours every week at Full Tilt Poker

>>Compare FullTilt Poker to the other poker sites we recommend for players from around the world including US based poker players.

Most of the time when you’re engaged in a poker hand, you’ll be thinking about what decisions you will make before you have to make them. For example, if you call a raise with K-Q, you’ll think to yourself: Okay, if I hit top pair, I’m going to play this hand. If I have a gut-shot and two over-cards, I’m going to play this hand. If I have an open-ender and two over-cards, I’m going to play this hand. Otherwise, I’m going to let it go.

However, there will often be times when something happens that causes you to change your strategy mid-hand. Maybe your opponent makes a weak bet that gives you information worth using to your advantage. Or maybe he makes a bet on the river that looks like a value bet and convinces you to fold a hand you were planning on calling with.

It’s always good to enter a hand with a plan, but it’s essential that you be willing to deviate from the plan if the situation calls for it. Every hand requires that you react to your cards and the cards on the board, but it’s equally important that you factor in your opponent and his tendencies.

Here’s a hand that I played recently at the 2009 EPT German Open in Dortmund, where I went on to finish in fourth place. It was late in Day Two, I had been fairly short-stacked for a while and occasionally shoving with decent hands, but I hadn’t yet made a serious bluff in the tournament. We were eight-handed, the player in second position made a very small raise to 8,500 with blinds at 2,000/4,000 and a 500-chip ante, and it folded around to me in the small blind with pocket fives. I had about 70,000 in chips, and all I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going to fold a pocket pair in this situation.

I decided to call rather than raise, knowing the big blind would certainly be priced in to call as well, and he did. The flop came A-8-3. I was obviously looking to flop a set, or maybe something like 2-3-4 or 3-4-6, and this flop was not at all good for my hand, so I checked. The big blind also checked. And the initial raiser made what looked to me like a very weak bet, 12,000 into a 29,500 pot.

I was quite sure from the bet that he didn’t have an Ace, and probably he didn’t have a pair of any kind. It seemed to me that he had a hand like K-J, something in that range. So when he bet 12,000, I considered all of the factors – my read on him, my tight image, and my stack size. I decided to raise 21,000 more, representing that I had perhaps a weak Ace and had committed myself to the pot (even though, in reality, I wasn’t committed and would be willing to fold to a re-raise, leaving myself with about 30,000 in chips).

The big blind folded, and after thinking for a long time, the initial raiser folded also. He simply had to give me credit for a real hand that I wasn’t going to lay down to a re-raise.

This was a situation where I didn’t really intend to commit many chips if I didn’t hit a favorable flop, but I adjusted my decision making based on my opponent’s post-flop action, believing the stage had been set for me to make a move. Always be willing to adjust your plan, and every once in a while you’ll find yourself winning chips that otherwise would have been pushed toward someone else.

ABOUT JOHAN STORAKERS: Swedish player Johan Storakers is based in Stockholm and has won more than $2.4 Million in career tournament earnings… and like many pros and wanna be pros, plays poker online at Full Tilt Poker.

ABOUT FULLTILTPOKER.com: For the latest views and reviews of Full Tilt Poker site check out
>> Full Tilt Poker Review (PokerLabRat.com)
>> FullTiltPoker.com Poker Room Review (GoonersGuide.com)

WHAT’S ON AT FULLTILTPOKER.COM?

Hosts announced for FTOPS XII: Erick Lindgren opens FTOPS XII with a $1 million NL Hold ‘em event on May 6th. WPT Bay 101 winner Steve Brecher hosts Event #12, the $1.5 million 6-max tournament with antes from the start. Howard Lederer’s HEROS Event #14 has a new format, Patrik Antonius hosts the $2 million Two Day Event and Jennifer Harman ends FTOPS XII with the $2.5 million Main Event. Choose your event from the full schedule.

Each pro hosts a matching MiniFTOPS XII event, where you can play for just 1/10th the regular FTOPS buy-in.

Play the 200K Stimulus Qualifier: At least 80 players in the 200K Stimulus Qualifier will win a $2,500 prize package to WSOP’s* Event #4, including the $1,000 entry fee and $1,500 for expenses. Event #4, the Stimulus Special, is likely to have the largest starting field outside of the Main Event and a prize pool of $5 million.

Buy your way in for $30 + $3 or satellite your way in for as little as $1 or 50 Full Tilt Points.
* World Series of Poker and WSOP are trademarks of Harrah’s License Company, LLC (”Harrahs”). Harrah’s does not sponsor or endorse, and is not associated or affiliated with Full Tilt Poker or its products, services, promotions or tournaments …(or for that matter PokerLabRat.com and Red Card Media Limited)

Here’s the latest pro tip from FullTiltPoker.com Professional, Brandon Adams.

Hand coordination is the relative strength of your hand compared to your opponents’ hand, and it’s probably the single biggest factor determining whether you have a good or bad session playing poker. If it’s working in your favor, whenever you flop a monster, one of your opponents will also make a big hand, just not quite as big as yours. In this situation, playing your hand as fast as possible usually gives you the best chance to make the most money.

Say you’re playing Hold ‘em and you’re in a four-way pot, the board comes 9-9-4, and you have pocket fours. You want to play this hand fast for two reasons. The first is that you’re hoping one of your opponents has a 9. If so, he might raise you, allowing you to reraise him. Ideally, he’ll call, then call you again on the turn and the river, and you’ll make a lot of money.

The other reason you want to play this hand fast is that, if you check, it’s quite possible your opponents will also check. Then, if the turn brings a 6 and one of your opponents has pocket sixes and makes a bigger full house, you’re going to lose a huge amount of money. Giving a free card and losing an enormous pot when you could have won a small pot (if only you’d bet) is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in poker.

Now let’s say the flop comes K-J-J, and you have pocket kings. You’re not as likely to cost yourself your entire stack by slowplaying in this situation. It’s extremely unlikely that your opponent is going to be behind on the flop and yet make a hand on the turn that beats you, but I still think you should play it fast. You’ll win more money by betting the whole way because any player holding a jack is, at the very least, going to call you down, and he might even raise you. On the flop you just have to put out the line and hope that one of your opponents has a jack, or better yet, K-J.

If you play it slow in this situation, you’re giving away the strength of your hand. If you check on the flop with the idea of check-raising, then when you do put in the raise you’re telling your opponent you’ve made a huge hand and are giving him the opportunity to lay down a jack. You’ll make far more money by simply betting the whole way.

However, slowplaying a monster is occasionally the better play. Suppose you raise from middle position with A-Q of hearts, the button and the big blind both call, and the flop comes 6-7-2, all hearts. If the big blind checks, you should check too. If the button bets, you can then raise because he’s either buffing, in which case you’re not going to win any more money from him, or he’s also flopped a flush, in which case you want to get your money into the pot as quickly as possible in hopes of winning his entire stack, or he’s flopped a set, in which case he’ll call your check-raise on the flop and he’ll call a big bet on the turn and he might even call a big bet on the river.

If the board pairs on the turn, you should still bet. It’s such a draw heavy board that your opponent might think you only have the ace of hearts in your hand, or the ace of hearts and a pair, or the ace of hearts and another ace. There are a lot of hands he could put you on in this spot besides the nut flush so, even if the board pairs, you should keep betting for value, hoping to get called by a worse hand.

If you bet the turn and your opponent puts in a stiff raise, then you should reevaluate. If you bet the turn and he calls and you bet the river and he raises, then you should fold because you can credibly put him on a full house.

Because hand coordination plays such an important role in determining your long-term success, you need to make as much money as you possibly can when it’s working in your favor, and one of the best ways of doing that is playing fast after you flop a big hand.

About this poker professional:

Brandon plays poker online exclusively at FullTiltPoker.com. Adams is a high-stakes poker player who has been on multiple television programs, including the 2005 Tournament of Champions and the 2007 World Series of Poker, where he finished sixth in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, earning more than $75,000. He’s written a novel (about poker of course!) Author of Broke: A Poker Novel and has one WSOP final appearance to his name.

About FullTiltPoker.com:

Full Tilt is a high-action online poker room renown for it’s high stakes cash game tables and huge team of high profile professional player endorsements. Full Tilt Poker welcomes players from around the world including the United States of America. For the latest views and reviews on FullTiltPoker.com online poker room check out:

>>PokerLabRat.com’s Full Tilt Poker Review
>>Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating at GoonersGuide.com

Compare Full Tilt to other US-friendly online poker sites - or just visit FullTiltPoker.com for a look around!

When most poker players think about tells, they visualize physical actions that occur at the table. For example, the way an opponent’s hands start shaking whenever he has the nuts or the way he handles his chips in certain situations. Online players don’t have this sort of information to work with, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tells in online play. There’s actually a great deal of information that an observant player can pick up on, and much of it can be discovered before you even sit down at a table. I call these important first impressions “pre-game tells.”

One of the most important pre-game tells is the size of your opponent’s buy-in. Whenever I sit down at a table, the first thing I look at is how much my opponents have bought in for in relation to the maximum amount allowed at that table. Most advanced players tend to buy in for as close to the table maximum as possible. They prefer to have as many chips on the table as they can, which gives them plenty of ammunition for bullying their opponents, bluffing, and semi-bluffing.

Weaker and inexperienced players are more inclined to buy in for a much smaller amount, often closer to the table minimum. By buying in short, weaker players are hoping to protect themselves from suffering a huge loss. What they don’t realize is that the more experienced players at the table are going to pick up on this sign of weakness. When I’m selecting a table, these are the types of players I’m looking to sit next to because they generally play scared.  Be careful, though, because there are players who buy in for less than the table maximum that are actually winning players.

When you’re playing on Full Tilt Poker, you can also gauge how experienced your opponents are by simply looking around the table and observing if any of the players possess an Iron Man chip. This chip is awarded to players who play a certain amount of hands each day, in effect rewarding them for being grinders. Because these players play so often, they have spent many hours working on their games and they tend to be some of the better players on the site.  If you are able to earn an Iron Man chip yourself, you may consider removing the icon so you don’t advertise that you are a serious player. 

Another way to find more information about the players sitting at your table is to use Full Tilt Poker’s “Find a Player” feature. Simply click on the “Requests” tab in the lobby, select “Find a Player” and then type in your opponents’ screen names. By doing this, you can find out how many tables each of your opponents is sitting at, which can be an extremely telling bit of information. If one of your opponents is multi-tabling, playing at four or more tables at once, he will generally be a solid player, and quite often you will find that players who play this many tables at once are professionals.

When you add all this information together, it can tell you a great deal about a certain player’s level of experience. If the player you’re interested in bought in for the maximum amount, is sporting an Iron Man chip next to his avatar and is playing at eight tables at once, all signs point towards him being a very solid player, which is something you should keep in mind when you are playing a pot against this player. If most of the table fits this description, you might even consider selecting a different table to play at. On the other hand, if a player bought in for half of the maximum buy-in, doesn’t have an Iron Man Chip, and is only playing at one table, chances are he’s an inexperienced player and you’ll probably want to play as many pots with him as you can.

Because all of this information can be gleaned before you even play a single hand, you would be wise to use it when deciding which table you want to play at. Doing this will greatly increase your chances of having a winning session.

About Taylor Caby: He’s a founding member and instructor at CardRunners.com. Taylor is known for his high-stakes ring-game play - and you can join him at a table online at FullTiltPoker.com.

For the latest poker room reviews on FullTiltPoker check out the following:

>>GoonersGuide.com’s Full Tilt Poker Review
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of FullTilt Poker

>>Compare FullTiltPoker.com to other top online poker rooms that accept players from the USA

For me, poker is a game that is meant to be played joyfully, and the path to playing the game joyfully begins with finding the game that’s right for you and entering it in the right frame of mind.

If you’re going to be an emotional prisoner when it comes to your wins and losses, you won’t play at your best. You need to play with patience, joy and a certain amount of indifference towards winning and losing. You need to be cool, calm, collected and happy. It’s not about your skill level – that’s something you can improve on continuously. It’s about how you feel, as this affects the moves you make more than your skill or playing style.

Once you’ve attained the right mindset, you can proceed to finding the right game. I believe in watching a game for a while before you enter it. This gives you an advantage over your opponents because you can pick up on their tendencies. If you observe the way they play, you can adjust accordingly before they’ve had a chance to adjust to you.

This ties in directly to the concept of playing with joy, because experiencing different games and different opponents is what I think makes the game of poker so wonderful. Every time I wake up in my hotel room, ready to start a new day at the World Series of Poker, I’m excited. I know it is going to be different from the game I had yesterday—and different from every game I’ve ever had, really.

Another beautiful element of the game that I really appreciate is the way it provides me with fresh stimulation. Many people are under the mistaken impression that once you get used to playing the game, it becomes monotonous. This kind of attitude comes from people who are not true poker players. True poker players appreciate the diversity, the changes and the differences from day to day.

Ultimately, finding the right game comes down to finding the highest stakes at which you will be consistently successful. If you’re a beginning player who’s becoming a winning player, you’ll want to step outside your comfort zone and move up in stakes since that’s the only way to increase your earnings. It’s fairly self-explanatory that the higher the games you play, the more you will win; but that’s only if the players you are up against are worse than you. Remember, there’s not much point in being the 9th best player in the world if you only play against the top eight.

Once you’ve found your game, just remember that whenever you’re feeling good, you should go with the flow and play on, and whenever you’re not, you should stop. Either way, you must keep an even temper. When things go right for you, it’s great. When things don’t go right for you, as long as you did your best and you made your best decisions, you can still feel happy about your game. Take your losses gracefully. When you can take your losses well – when your losses and wins have the same meaning to you – then you have the chance to become a great player as opposed to just a good one. Poker is supposed to be a journey of joy, and anything that is a departure from that, is off your path.
Ben Roberts plays poker online at FullTiltPoker.com - join him at a table some time!
For more on Full Tilt Poker read the latest Player Poker Room Reviews here:

>>PokerLabRat.com FullTilt Poker Review
>>Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating at Gooners Guide to Gambling

Latest promotions onsite at FullTiltPoker.com:

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With teachers like Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer and Phil Gordon, you’ll learn using a library of multimedia content, including video, podcasts, hand replayers, interactive quizzes and tests.  Begin with Lessons on key strategies and techniques, view live Sessions to see the theory in action, take a Pro Challenge online at Full Tilt Poker or put your knowledge to the test with an interactive Sit-N-Learn.

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As you may know, I teach that it’s usually wrong to call the big blind early with small pairs, such as 2-2, 3-3, and 4-4. Many things work against these hold ‘em hands, such as (1) you can make three of a kind and lose to a larger three-of-a-kind, (2) if you get lucky enough that your pair might matter, a bigger pair (or bigger two-pair when there’s a major pair on board and your second pair isn’t large enough) might beat you, and (3) two bigger pairs might show up on the board, leaving you with essentially no hand at all.

But if this argument — and the simulation of millions of hands which I’ve done by computer — doesn’t convince you, here’s some more bad news: You usually can afford to call a single raise after you call the blind with a small pair, but not a double raise. So, if you call, and there’s a raise, and then there’s a re-raise, you should usually fold. But in folding, you’re surrendering a first bet without any shot at the pot whatsoever.

When I talk to people who are trying to analyze whether these small pairs are profitable in an early position, they seldom mention the fact that you might have to throw the hand away without seeing the flop. So, even if you can argue that the small pair is a close decision without the forced-to-fold factor, it is not a close decision when that factor is correctly considered. Once again: Seldom play small pairs from an early position, unless you’re in a very loose game with very timid opponents who don’t raise aggressively AND you can outplay those opponents on later betting rounds.

You can chat and play with the “Mad Genius”, Mike Caro, every Wednesday night at 9:30pm ET in the DoylesRoom.com Bounty Tournament.

For the latest player reviews of Doyles Room Poker site (now on the Cake Poker Network and accepting Americans again) check out the following:

>>PokerLabRat.com Doyles Room Poker Review
>>GoonersGuide.com Review and Rating of DoylesRoom.com Poker

Check out the directory of Poker sites we recommend here.

Here’s the latest contribution to PokerLabRat.com from the team at Bodog Poker. Check them out if you’re looking for a no hassle online poker room that welcomes players from around the World including Americans. 

If you’re going to play poker online or in casinos you will run into two types of players - there are the recreational players and the professionals. A recreational player can be anyone from a novice, who barely has a clue how to play, to a weekend grinder who treats poker as a serious hobby. Professional players live the game of poker, and have a lot of experience playing the game and recognizing situations they’ve been in many times before. Both types of player can be beaten if you’re able to recognize their level of play, and then play them accordingly.

A common leak in cash games you’ll encounter in a recreational player is that they’ll play too many hands. They’ve been waiting all week to play poker, and they don’t feel like waiting for pocket aces when they’ve only got four or five hours to play. Recreational players will try to limp into as many pots as they can, hoping to hit a flop in a big way. Professional players are more interested in the long-term gain of poker, so they practice a patient game regardless of how limited a session may be.

Another good way to determine if an opponent is a recreational player is by their river bets. A player making a river bet when the only hands that would possibly pay them off would beat them, or raising a bet with second best when they could have just called, are sure signs of a player who just isn’t into the game that much. A professional player knows not to put himself into a situation where he could easily be getting trapped, when there’s little or no chance the bet can be called.

An easy way to recognize a professional player is if they change playing styles during a session of play. Recreational players play the way they play. The have their moves and they set their traps. They repeat betting patterns over and over again and become predictable. They have their game and they don’t even attempt to change it. Professional players are experienced enough to recognize the tempo of the game, and adjust their playing style to best combat other players. They’ll also change up the way they play to keep everyone guessing on their style.

Online one of the easiest ways to recognize a professional is by the time they take to play. If there’s always a pause when it’s their turn, it’s not because they’re still on dial-up. This player is likely playing numerous tables at once. You should be able to find out how many they’re playing through the poker room software, and any player that’s playing more than four tables at a time tends to be a professional, or at least a really good recreational player that’s very serious about their hobby.

It helps to know if an opponent is a pro or a part-time grinder. There are lots of good recreational players, but there are few bad professionals. Stay out of the games with too many pros in them; it’s always a tough game to beat.

Practice your poker skills. Start playing online poker with Bodog now!

For more on Bodog Poker, check out the latest poker room reviews at:
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of Bodog Poker
>>GoonersGuide.com Bodog Poker Site Review and Rating