- regular informative articles and poker news from leading poker experts to help you make more informed bets, increase your edge and chances of poker betting success.

(don't forget to check out our informative articles to help improve your game - see the menu on the right)

Re-Buy Tournaments

As I stated in my last article about speed/turbo tournament strategy, the online poker rooms are coming with up with lots of different types of tourneys to maintain interest among their clientele. Another type of tourney that is popular now is what’s called a re-buy. These are tournaments that will allow you to re-enter if you go broke. All you have to do is click the re-buy icon that pops up, and you’re right back in the mix.

The re-buy tournaments are becoming more popular as the age of the average poker player gets younger. In my last article I talked about how the turbo tourneys were popular because things move at a much faster pace and the tourneys get completed in about two-thirds of the time of a normal tourney. Re-buy tournaments also offer something for those who like fast-moving play, and that is the action offered at the beginning of the tourney.

Normally a re-buy tourney works like this: You buy in for your original amount (let’s say you get 1,500 chips for a $20 entry fee in this instance) and then you can immediately re-buy for another $20 and double your amount of chips and that will give you 3,000 to start with. If you ever get below 1,500, you can re-buy once again. This structure is maintained until the first break of the tourney, at which point you can no longer re-buy. At this point, however, you can do what is called an add-on, where you get one more chunk of chips (in this case we’ll say 2,000 more) for another $20. The nice thing about all these re-buys is they increase the prize pool exponentially. Once the first break comes and everyone has re-bought and added-on to their heart’s content, the real play begins and you go from there.

There are two schools of thought on playing the first break of a re-buy. The first and most prevalent strategy is to play extremely loose, see a ton of flops and go all-in the instant you hit anything on the flop. This strategy uses the “I have plenty of money in my account and can afford to re-buy as often as I need to” outlook, and for some people it works very well. You’ll usually see at least 3 players at your table who re-buy at least 5-6 times and, hey, if they get lucky and catch what they’re looking for, they can be very successful. If you’ve read any of my articles, you know that I definitely tend not to play this way and I don’t in a re-buy, either, but I have seen it work well for those who don’t care about multiple re-buys.

The other school of thought, and the one that I use successfully, is to play the counter-puncher role. I do immediately re-buy when I enter the tourney so I have as big a stack as possible to hit back with. What I’ll do is wait and wait and wait for a premium hand so that when the maniacs go all-in with their mediocre hands, I’ve got them right where I want them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve only re-bought the one time because I doubled up early.

Assuming I hit the break without having to re-buy again and unless I’m in the chip lead or close to it, I’ll always take the opportunity to add-on. Normally I won’t re-buy more than 4 times in the early rounds because at that point with the way I play it doesn’t become a profitable scenario. Usually if I make it through the first break I’ll make the money more often than not, and at the very least will make back my original investment.

Re-buy tournaments are a lot of fun and it’s really a wild scene in that first few rounds as people jockey for position and go for broke. Once you get past that first break, though, it’s just like any other tourney. You need to play tight, aggressive, solid poker and outlast the wackos who have made it through the early mayhem. Those first rounds after the break are where a lot of these guys go broke, though, as the style they used early comes back to haunt them. Going all-in with your QJ offsuit doesn’t work too well at this point, so keep an eye out for those guys who are still in maniac mode and take advantage. Just be patient and the money will come to you. Best of luck!

By Chris Goudey
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

Turbo Tournaments

With the ever-expanding popularity of online poker, there are now many different options a player has when looking to play in a tournament. Every site I play on has what are called sit-and-go tournaments, where you can play almost instantly with a group of strangers from around the world. There are also many variations of regularly scheduled tournaments, where play starts at a certain time. For players like me, who try to squeeze in a tourney in as little time as possible, sit-and-gos (SNG) are the way to go.

A SNG can be played on one table, with 9 or 10 players, or you can play multi-table SNG's with as many as 180 players involved on the site I frequent. Usually a one-table SNG is going to take you about 60-90 minutes to play if the blinds are rising at a normal 10-minute interval. In the last year or two, however, the sites have added a new type of SNG, called a speed or turbo tournament, where the blinds go up much quicker. Usually the blinds go up every 5 minutes in this type of tourney, but I've seen some sites that have the blinds go up as often as every 10 hands.

Obviously, with the blinds moving up at such a rapid pace, it is going to affect the type of strategy you should use when playing them. A one-table SNG turbo tourney generally only takes from 40-50 minutes to play, so you can see things move much more quickly.

With the blinds moving as they do, you can't play a patient game and wait for premium hands like AA and KK. If you sit and wait for too long you're going to get blinded out because things move quicker. You do still have to play fairly tight and play good hands, but you can't be super-tight. I'm not advocating you start going all-in right off the bat, but you need to try to accumulate chips in a much quicker fashion, and you won't be able to do that unless you get in the mix.

In past articles I've talked about how to manage both big and small stacks, but in turbo SNG you really need to use your big stack as a bludgeon. Those blinds move up so quickly that people are going to feel pressured to make a play they probably shouldn't. That's why accumulating chips quickly is so important -- you can start to take advantage later on. When you end up as a short stack in a turbo SNG it is very difficult, because you have less time to decide when to make your move and try to double up. If I have less than 10 times the big blind in a turbo, I'll go all-in with whatever hand I play. I wouldn't be that loose in a regular tourney, but you need to get out of that short-stack status as quickly as you can in a turbo.

One advantage that the turbo SNG's do have is the skill level of the players is much worse overall. The average age of a poker player is much younger now than it used to be, and the turbo tourneys can be quite addicting due to the speed of play involved. They are ideal for the young player who is looking to get things moving. I see guys going all-in with almost anything at any time and almost always they project themselves as a younger player. Of course, anyone can be anything online, but with they way they chat and/or the image they choose to represent themselves, you can tell they're younger. Now I'm not an old man (just hit 40), but I've learned a few things and one of them is patience is indeed a virtue.

Personally, I don't like to play in turbo tournaments if I have a choice, because I feel I'm a better player than most of the people I play against and I like to have the time to prove it. I play a tight-aggressive style, meaning I don't play anything but premium hands unless I'm in good position, and when I do play, I always play like I have the best hand. The problem with playing that way in a turbo tourney is I'm folding tons of hands and I get blinded off if I don't catch good hole cards in the early rounds.

The only time I'll normally play a turbo is if I'm itching to play, and I know I don't have 90 minutes to spend. My overall win rate is much better in regular tournaments, but if I catch good cards early I usually do really well in turbos. What will happen is I'll end up winning them because I got a lot of chips early and force people into bad decisions, or I'll bust out early because I got short and tried to double up quickly. I'll finish in the money a much larger percentage of the time in a regular tournament since I'm more patient than the average player, but if you can get ahead early, there is plenty of money to be made in turbos if you know how to manage your stack size. Best of luck!

By Chris Goudey
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

Patience & Position

Right about the fourth hour of my latest session at the poker table was enough to drive any man insane. I was getting clobbered. Couldn't catch a cold, much less a hand, and I was getting irritated and impatient.

One hand I was dealt Q-10 spades and thought it held promise. It was about the best hand I had gotten in the time I had been sitting there, so I played it. The flop came and not only didn't I pair but no other spade hit the board. I played until the turn, and when a meaningless 4h came up I folded.

The very next hand I got the exact same cards. I thought, This is an omen. It was. No spades, no pairing, no nothing. I threw the cards in the muck and tried to settle my down my blood pressure.

It went like that for most of the night. I wasn't getting anything. At one point I even counted how many consecutive hands I received without getting a face card. I set a new record of 11.

Out of desperation I played 7-2 off-suit and couldn't believe it when the flop came 2, 2, 4. I was sitting with trips and played it aggressively. So did the big blind, and I figured he was protecting his blind.

I was wrong. He had a pair of fours in the hole and out-tripped my three of a kind. All I could do was laugh.

The laughter, though, was to hide my increasing anger. I am used to bad cards, but not for six hours. I would have thought I would have gotten a pair in the hole, or Ace, King or something.

It was demoralizing, and it was affecting my play. I was playing cards I wouldn't dream of playing, because I was so frustrated. It was taking a toll on my bankroll. I was throwing away money and was getting to a dangerous place in my mind.

After what seemed like my 100th beat on a hand, I had had enough. I was playing no-limit, and on the very next hand with 9-10 off-suit I pushed all in. Not only did one person call me, so did two others.

When the flop came K, K, 7, I knew I was in trouble. The next two cards did nothing for me, and I couldn't even pair the board. The winner had a full house.

It was time to go home, and there is no longer walk than the one from a poker table to your car when you have just busted out. The emotion is mostly anger, but there is some pity in there as well.

As tough as it was, I could have avoided the loss I took. Poker is all about patience and position, and I wasn't practicing either, especially the patience. I had to accept that I wasn't getting cards and play my position. You can usually have a certain amount of success if you play at the right times, regardless of what you have in your hand.

Here are a couple of things I could have done differently.

The first is I should have taken a break. Get up from the table, walk around, go in the bathroom, splash some water on your face, anything to break the monotony. When it is going bad, you just further it by not trying to change the momentum.

The other thing I could have done is play position better. When you are in no-limit, you have to play position effectively. If I have bad cards and I am on the button and only the blinds are left, I should have been more aggressive.

That might not win me a lot of money, but it would be a win. Next time I will remember that.

By John Reger
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

Bad Streaks

I’m currently in the middle of one of the worst slumps of my poker career, and it seems I can’t catch a card and all my opponents are catching whatever they need to beat me. If I hadn’t played for so many years now, I’d start to wonder if things would ever turn around.

Here’s a perfect example of the way my luck has gone lately. I made the final table of a pot-limit Hold ‘Em tourney last night, which made me happy because it’s the first final table of a large-entry (this one happened to be 150 people) tourney I’d made in 2-3 weeks. Normally I make the final table of a tourney that big about a third of the time, and it had probably been about 25-30 tourneys since I’d made one. So I get to the table and I’m in a solid third place. The top two players are easily catchable, and there are two very short stacks. At this point the blinds are still low enough that I can play my normal tight-aggressive style, so I sit back and wait. The two shorties get eliminated fairly quickly by one of the stacks below me, so now I’m sitting in fourth with 7 players left.

The first hand after we get to 7 players I pick up KK on the button. One of the players with less chips than me raises ahead of me, and he was definitely not a player I’d think would have AA in that spot so I immediately re-raise. After two more re-raises, we’re all-in. I was definitely correct in my assumption that I had him, as he flipped over AQ off-suit. We go to the flop and I get excited as it comes K-7-9 rainbow (all different suits). I figure I’ve got a set now and I’m money. Well, the poker gods reared their ugly head, and if you play a lot you know what’s coming next. Yep, here comes the J on the turn and of course, the 10 on the river to give him the runner-runner straight. To his credit, he said he was sorry and I couldn’t really fault him because he was pretty much pot-committed after the re-raises pre-flop.

So now I’m the short stack and the next hand, unbelievably, I pick up KK again. Again, the same guy raises ahead of me, and I re-raise all-in. This time he has AK, and then two of the players after me say they folded an A so he has one out (card left that can let him win) if he doesn’t hit a straight or flush. We go to the flop and it doesn’t help either of us, the turn is a blank, and then don’t you know, the lone A comes on the river. In consecutive hands I’ve lost my whole stack to a runner-runner straight and a one-outer.

My best showing in a tourney in weeks and I have to go out like that. I did make a profit in the tourney (ended up with 5 times my buy-in), but to have played things perfectly and still lose just makes me sick.

This is the perfect example of the way my recent play has gone, just not at the final-table level, and is a true sign of a bad streak. Now, as I have been constantly telling myself, poker is all about making correct decisions, and I can take solace in the fact that it’s just the luck factor that’s beating me, not the fact that I’m playing poorly. I pride myself in the fact that I rarely go on tilt and can fold 10 hands in a row after a killer beat if I don’t get the cards.

What smart poker players know is that with the thousands of hands they play, they are going to run into streaks like this. The key is to not get too down on yourself and keep plugging away. Sometimes it does a player some good to take a couple of days off to recharge the mind-set. I’ve done that twice in the past 2 weeks and I thought it would help, but as you can tell, it didn’t. The thing not to do is to keep playing when you’re frustrated or tired. I always play better earlier in the day when my mind is fresh. If I’ve had a bad day, I always want to fall into the trap of playing late at night to catch up, but it ends up just compounding the problem because I’m tired.

Here’s the great thing about poker, and gambling in general, however: Just as soon as you get done with this horrible streak, you could run great for the next month. All the suckouts you’ve been receiving could turn into missed draws and double you up time after time. A profitable player is one who is going to ride these streaks as long as they can and make the winnings they receive during those times outweigh the losses they take during the bad runs.

Anyway, it’s early in the morning, I’ve had a good night’s sleep and hopefully today is the day I get over this bad streak and start the run of a lifetime!

By Chris Goudey
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

Food Speaks

There is no better sport than poker. What other sport allows its participants to drink beer, smoke cigars and eat hoagies during the action? It’s a nice change of pace to play a game and not worry about the problems associated with physical action and sweat. As satisfying as it is to park yourself at a table all day and be concerned only with avoiding bed sores, there is a risk if you literally plan on spending breakfast, lunch and dinner at the poker table.

Food at the poker might bring a player plenty of nourishment, but while he is eating a meal, the other players are also satisfying their appetite for knowledge. As a good rule of thumb, avoid eating at the poker table. The main issue with eating is not that it might lead to a mess, but players who eat at the table are prone to giving away significant tells.

Recently, I was playing in a tournament and involved in a hand with just one other player. I had pocket Queens and was trying to slow play them (a mistake in hindsight); after my opponent just kept calling my bets, the third diamond hit on the river. After he saw that diamond, which also gave me top two pair, he made an over bet, leaned back and devoured a large portion of cheese fries. I was contemplating whether he had the flush or was just representing it in an attempt to buy the pot. I ultimately folded my strong hand because of my feeling that he was so sure of his hand, he could finally relax and dive into the plate of cheese fries that was just calling out his name. If he was concerned about losing this large pot, he probably would’ve been too nervous to ingest all that Cheez Whiz.

Thankfully, he showed his low flush, which validated my play.

If I had not seen him come to a level of ease and eat the food, I would have thought he was bluffing and paid him off in the end. Mr. Cheese Fry could have added to the pot if he just waited to eat. Of course, it is hard for anybody to say no to a piping hot plate of artificial cheese, so why even be tempted and allow it at the table in the first place?

Hunger pains felt during the course of a tournament or an extended stay at a cash game should be treated as a strong signal that it is the perfect time to leave the table for a much needed refresher. Consider taking breaks an important part of your strategy since remaining at the table too long saps concentration and mental energy.

Another way food can distract a player is the moment following its arrival at the table. A person eating is clearly craving food at that particular moment. Since most people like to savor their food, the others at the table should be fairly confident the one with the plate in front of him will only play premium hands. Playing a hand with newly delivered food is a monumental tell. Since the player has a decision to make – eat the food or play the hand? – The final selection will come down to what is better. A hamburger is much better than J-4 unsuited, therefore that is an easy decision, drop the cards and grab the quarter-pounder. A hamburger loses some appeal when the cards next to it are pocket 10s. If a player all of a sudden loses interest in his food and focuses entirely at his hand, everybody else at the table should only get involved with a top-level starting hand.

Once again, the hungry man wouldn’t be giving off that tell if he just decided to leave the table for a brief food break.

If the combination of food and poker is so important to a player, then he should stick to the anonymous world of online poker where opponents have no idea what everybody at the table is doing. A player can be involved with a hand, eat dinner and write a story about poker all at the same time. Physical tells don’t exist online.

Djlaskfjlfkjsdflkjsdflsdkjflsdkfjsdljsdl/vksd.

Sorry about that, I just dropped my chilidog on the keyboard when I saw the pocket rockets.

By Aaron J. Moore
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

Start Slow

One of the most important decisions you make in poker could be the first one, and it could set the tone for the rest of the evening.

That choice is what level of Texas Hold'em you want to play. There are obviously several, but don’t be lulled into a bigger game than you can handle just because you have visions of big pots.
There is no easier way to lose money than to get into a situation you can’t handle. You’ll bust out quicker than any bad beat.

I watched a guy last week show up at a $3-$6 table and sit down. He was nervous, the signs were obvious. He knocked his chips over after he stacked them. When he called a bet his hands visibly shook as he threw the chips into the pot.
He didn’t know when to post the blind or when it was his turn to bet. The dealer attended to him, prodding him when it was his turn.

During one of the rare hands he was out of, I engaged him in conversation to try and figure out if this was an act or not.
Unfortunately for him, it was not. It was the second time he had ever been in a poker room. I asked him why he picked this level to play at, and he said because the list was the shortest.

He dug into his wallet a couple of more times before he was finally finished, a mere three hours after he sat down. He lost $300 in that time and had the look of total defeat when he finally rose from the table.

The lesson for him, if he chose to learn it, is an important one. Know your limitations and accept them. Play at a table you are comfortable on and learn the nuances of the game.

That is what is so valuable about online poker. No one sees some of your mistakes online and the people that do see, it doesn’t matter. You are anonymous. It is better to make those mistakes online than to do it in person, because I guarantee you people will remember. I don’t even know that guy’s name whom I was talking to, but I sure remember what he looks like, and the next time he shows up at my table I’ll know that he is an inexperienced player.

A good way to start is to play $1-$2 for at least 10 trips to the card club. You aren’t going to make much money, resign yourself to that fact, but also know that this is a learning experience. The guys who play those tables are usually perpetual losers. They play too many hands, they chase too many flushes and straights and they complain every time they lose. Every beat to them is a bad beat, and unfortunately you get to hear about them all.

It will help you lose the rabbit ears. I don’t even hear the complaining anymore, which is good, because when you get to the higher level games, complaining is used as a tool to throw you off your own game.

Move to $2-$4, and the dream chasers are still there, trying to fill their flushes and straights, but there is more skill there. You still aren’t going to chase them off with aggressive bets, but you will learn a little bit more.

The $3-$6 table is where skill really begins to take hold. The players don’t chase as much, and the ones that do aren’t around long because of the pot sizes. This is where you should spend a good amount of time. I am a pretty decent player, but I still play this level because it fits in my comfort zone.

When you move to the $4-$8 table, expect at least one professional at your table. This is a good place for them to shark a little bit and take money off players who are not as seasoned as them and maybe a little loose with their chips. Identify them and stay away, unless you feel you have them beat. You will know you have them beat because they will fold.

The bigger games can be lucrative, but also have bigger players there. They have been playing for years and have honed their skills. You should do the same whatever table you choose to sit down at.

By John Reger
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

top of page

INSTRUCTIONS

- get full instructions on how to play your favourite game.

Baccarat
Backgammon
Blackjack
Mahjong
Poker
Roulette
Rummy

BETTING NEWS & INFO.

BOXING
GOLF
HORSE RACING
MAH JONG
POKER BLOG
PREMIERSHIP
SPORTS NEWS (UK)
THE GAMBLING BILL

ARTICLES

read our informative articles to improve your chances of winning or visit our eStore for a wide selection of books, games and software related to all areas of gambling and betting.

Backgammon:-
Backgammon for Poker Players

Bingo
5p Bingo
A Question of Numbers
How to play Bingo
Online Bingo
Online Bingo - Is it Safe?
The Philistines Bingo