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…

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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:

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.

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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.

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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 BetOnline and Bookmaker Poker – join him at a table some time!
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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.

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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.

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Playing in your first couple of poker tournaments can be an intimidating experience. Many new players get wrapped up in the action and make basic mistakes that they should never make. We all have to start somewhere and learn the game along the way, but here’s a list of basic mistakes that no one should be making at the tables . . .

Playing too many hands is the most common of rookie mistakes. Novice players don’t understand that rag hands have a lower winning percentage than premium ones. They’ll play anything hoping to hit two pair or trips. This mistake just bleeds their chip stack quickly until they get knocked out of the tournament. They need to learn some starting hand strategy and tighten up their game.

Pricing in their opponents is the most common mistake a rookie will make when they have the lead in a hand. Instead of knowing to bet their hand for value, rookie players often bet too small of an amount when they’re leading early on. Doing this allows their opponents to call the bet with drawing hands because the pot odds are low enough to justify the call. If enough players are still in the hand, the rookie player’s lead will often get out-drawn and they’ll lose the hand.

Chasing a straight with the sucker end is another situation where rookies get into big trouble. If a board is 6-J-10 and they hold 9-8, even if the queen comes on a later street they could still be way behind. It’s a good move to only call bets if you do hit the queen, and not to raise in that situation. A big bet from an opponent will usually tell them that someone has the bigger straight. This can also apply to a small flush when the hand has some other callers in it.

Going all-in pre-flop is another mistake that rookies often make. This move is dangerous at the best of times, even with pocket aces. Most times the rookie will not get any action on their hand, and if they do it’s from a big hand. The only time you’ll want to go all-in pre-flop is if a short-stack player has tried to force the action. Then you can go all-in to isolate them from other callers with your dominant hand.

Bluffing too often is a common rookie mistake for the aggressive type of rookie. These players use the all-in bet as a way to steal pots, but this play will eventually backfire on them and cost them a big amount of chips in a hand they shouldn’t even have even been in. They should limit their bluffs so they can be hidden, and it looks like they have the goods every time they have to show their cards at showdown.

Getting emotional is another one you’ll see. Novice players don’t understand that poker has a lot of losing for every player, and they give up, or tilt out, when things go wrong for a while. They will give up after a bad beat, and essentially throw away their final chips because they figure they can’t come back. They let frustration take over and dump chips for no reason – other than they’re not strong-minded enough to accept that they can’t win them all.

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Fifth Street is the big decision point in Seven-Card Stud because that’s the critical juncture in the hand when you have to put in your first big bet. While it’s nice to have a made hand at this point, you don’t always need one to put in a raise on Fifth Street. If you have a big draw, that can be enough to warrant raising your opponent. Some players don’t think like this, and I believe that’s a costly mistake.

Here’s an example of a situation where I believe raising with a draw is the correct play. Let’s say your opponent is showing an Ace, and you have a 7 of diamonds up and a 6 and 7 of spades in the hole, giving you a pair of 7s. You and your opponent are the only players involved in the hand, and he opens with a raise. You call.

On the turn your opponent catches an offsuit Jack and bets. You catch the 9 of spades. You have a pretty nice hand at this point. Not only do you have a pair of 7s, but you also have three cards to a flush and three cards to a straight so there are a lot of cards you can catch that will give you a big draw. You definitely want to call in this spot.

On Fifth Street your opponent catches a 6 so now he has an Ace, Jack, and 6 showing. You catch the deuce of spades, which is a very interesting card. You now have a pair of 7s and four spades to a flush, but your opponent is unaware of how strong you are because one of your 7s and two of your spades are hidden.

Your opponent leads out with a bet once again. Now here’s the question. Should you simply call or should you raise? Even if your opponent has two Aces, I would prefer to have two 7s and four spades in this situation so you should be aggressive and put in a raise. You should do this for a couple of reasons. First, even if he does have a pair of Aces, you’re still the favorite. You are about a 58 percent favorite to win the hand so you’re getting the best of it right now.

The other reason you should raise is that it will get you a free card if you fail to hit your draw. Let’s say you go ahead and raise on Fifth Street, and your opponent calls. Since he called your raise, you can be pretty certain he has a pair that can beat your 7s. Then on Sixth Street he catches a 4 and you catch the 3 of diamonds, a card that doesn’t help your hand at all.

If your opponent is a weak player, he is probably going to check it to you because he’s going to be scared of that raise you put in on Fifth Street. If he does in fact check, then you succeeded in accomplishing exactly what you set out to do. You got extra money into the pot on Fifth Street when you had the best of it, and now that you missed your draw and don’t have the best of it anymore you’re happy to get a free card. Now you have one more shot at drawing out on him.

This is a clear example of why it pays to be aggressive on Fifth Street in Seven-Card Stud. Some players would just call in this situation, but I think that’s a big mistake. Being aggressive and sticking in a raise has two clear advantages over simply calling. It will get more money into the pot those times you do make your hand, and it will get you a free card those times you don’t. The bottom line is that you need to be aggressive when playing Seven-Card Stud because it’s the aggressive player who usually wins.

Keith is a native Midwesterner, born in Dayton, Ohio and indisputably one of the best 7-Card Stud players in the world.

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The semi-bluff is one of the most powerful weapons in any poker player’s arsenal. If there’s a decent chance you can steal a pot by semi-bluffing, you should usually take it. But, as with any play you make at the table, the semi-bluff is always most effective when you use it at the correct time in the correct situation. Semi-bluff too much and your opponents will know when you’re on the draw; semi-bluff too little and your opponents will know to fold whenever you bet. The key to semi-bluffing is to always mix things up and never become too predictable with your betting patterns.

Let’s say that you’ve flopped the nut flush draw and are pretty certain your opponent has connected with the flop in some way, be it top pair or maybe even a set. A lot of players like to check-raise as a semi-bluff in this spot. There are a couple of problems with this play: first, if you always check-raise in this spot then your opponent will be able to put you on a draw very easily. Second, if your opponent really does have a hand, there’s no need to check-raise here because there’s no way he’s folding and there’s a good chance he’ll pay you off anyway if you hit your hand.

A better move in this spot might be not semi-bluffing and just calling instead. This way, if you hit your flush on the turn, your options are wide open – checking, calling or raising are all viable plays − and your opponent won’t be able to put you on a hand quite as easily. By not semi-bluffing, you increase your chances of winning a bigger pot when your opponent actually has a strong hand. There are players out there who’ll assume you’re not on the draw if you don’t semi-bluff, so use that to your advantage.

Now, if you don’t think that your opponent has a strong hand or your draw isn’t that strong (say a low flush draw), this is the perfect time for a semi-bluff. The semi-bluff should be used as a tool to steal pots when the opportunity arises, not as a means of building big pots.

Another good way to mix up your semi-bluffing game plan is to wait until the turn to semi-bluff rather than always doing it on the flop. This can be a dangerous play because you’ve only got one card to come on the turn and you’re not getting the same odds. But it also means that your opponent is less likely to think that you’re semi-bluffing and put you on the draw. It looks pretty strong if you call on the flop and then raise on the turn; your opponent might think you’ve flopped the nuts and throw away a pretty strong hand.

Another advantage to semi-bluffing on the turn rather than the flop is that you could pick up additional outs on the turn. Say you have a gut-shot straight draw on the flop and then pick up a flush draw on the turn. You’ve just gone from four outs to about 12, which might be worth a shot at taking down the pot right then and there. A lot of players will also have trouble putting you on the flush draw in this spot; it’s just harder to see that flush draw on the turn than it is on the flop.

Once again, the key to a good semi-bluff is picking the right spot to pull it off. Choose poorly and you could stand to lose a good portion of your stack; choose well and you could throw your opponents off balance and hit them where it hurts when you make your hand.

Andy Bloch plays online at BetOnline and Bookmaker Poker sites – join him and other top pros at a table sometime. It’s a great way to learn some new tricks, make some money or just show off your skills.

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Deciding how active you want to be at the beginning of a tournament depends heavily on what type of tournament you’re playing in. If it’s a standard Sit & Go, I always recommend playing tight and conserving chips early. If it’s a Multi-Table Tournament or a Shootout Tournament then you should consider a more active style in the early phase.

Part of the goal in doing this is to accumulate chips. But another part of the goal is to establish an image that will help get you chips later. It can be a rewarding way to play, but you need to understand that there’s also a downside to the image this type of play will create.

When you put constant pressure on other players, it’s eventually going to make them fight back. You don’t have to raise large amounts and you don’t have to get involved in huge pots, but by raising with a lot of hands, your opponents are going to play back at you with a wider and wider range of hands. They’re going to start calling and three-betting with more marginal hands, and that’s going to open them up and make them susceptible to giving you their chips more often.

If you’re looking to accumulate chips, you don’t want your table locked down in super-tight mode. You don’t want to have to grind out a few chips every orbit – you want to get into your opponents’ heads and provoke them into spewing chips. You’ll find that once one player at the table does it, it tends to have a domino effect and lead other people to start making mistakes.

The downside, however, is that your bluffs won’t work very often, and that’s something you have to be aware of. For example, let’s say I’ve been playing a lot of pots and developed a loose image in a six-handed table, and I’m dealt A-Q suited under the gun. That’s a good hand at a full table, and it’s even better six-handed. So I make a pot-sized raise, and the big blind calls. The flop is J-10-6, which isn’t exactly a hit for me, but it isn’t a total miss; I have a straight draw and two over cards. I’m going to make a normal continuation bet and I figure my opponent can’t call me without a decent hand. In this case, I bet, he calls and the turn is a three, so I decide to give it one more shot and raise my bet a little bit because I want him to fold. Instead, he calls.

A four now falls on the river. I didn’t hit anything and he’s clearly shown that he’s ready to call anything; I can’t expect to bet him off the hand. In my mind, I’m putting him on a hand possibly as weak as 10-2, but I don’t think I can get him to lay that down, so I check, give up the pot and he wins with 6-7.

Of course I’m going to be a little frustrated to learn that he called twice with third pair. He had to have put me on A-K or A-Q or thought I was raising under the gun with rags and, the truth is, people will begin to think that way because I’ve raised a lot of pots. Because of this, people are going to start calling me extremely light.

In the short-term, that can be a bad thing; but in the long-term, it should be good. If the same hand happens later but I have A-J or Aces or Kings, or even some trash hand that connects, I’m going to get paid off.

This is why the positives of playing an active style early ultimately outweigh the negatives. Even if you lose a pot because your image keeps people hanging around, it can set you up to win an even bigger pot later on.

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