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Recently, I’ve been searching the internet looking for the best poker blog. I was going to do a top ten list of blogs, but I discovered there are a lot of sub-categories of poker blog, so instead I’ll just focus on the best of each. Here are the three basic categories I found in my search: online site’s poker blog, news poker blog, and player’s poker blog.
A poker blog about an online poker site should be informative, entertaining and focused on their promotions and their customers. It’s easy to do one well, but to do them all is a hard trick to pull off, and as such there is only one that makes my best of list. No online site’s poker blog does it better than the bwin poker blog.
If it is a blog about an online poker site the blog should cover the poker world as a whole and also get down to specifics about the site. Looking through bwin’s blog there is general coverage of an event like the World Series but that will be coupled with focused coverage on their players that have won seats to the Main Event. The blog also has a listing of promotions for that week and does a good job of building their community by covering the action from their online tournament tournaments. Compared to some of the other sites, their poker blog seems to get it right most of the time while the others are scattershot at best. Even if you aren’t a player on their site, there are tidbits you’d enjoy.
In the next category of poker blogs that slant more to the news this was harder to judge. You don’t want to compare them to poker news sites because most blogs don’t have that scope. They fill more of a niche or are a window to one man’s (or a few men’s) view. There are four poker blogs/sites that seemed do a good job of tackling the poker world as a whole, and scratching out a niche of their own in that world. My comprehensive search across the Internet, which may have involved using one search engine repeatedly, turned up these guys: Wicked Chops Poker, Gulf Coast Poker.NET, Pokerati, and BJ Nemeth’s insider look at poker. They are all now on my bookmarks list and daily reads.
Wicked Chops mixes Maxim magazine with the poker world. Sometimes they get investigative, often times they are sarcastic, and other times they are just a good news source and link dump. Oh and they have pictures of pretty people which never hurts. Gulf Coast Poker.NET also covers poker news in a funny and straight to the point kind of way. They always focus on their corner of the poker world first but it’s a great read no matter where you live if you like poker. Pokerati is great about covering big stories and always seems to be in front of poker legislation and legalization topics. BJ Nemeth like all these blogs comes from an intelligent place. He’s not as light as the other three but he’s still a great read and somehow manages to generate a fresh perspective even though he’s a poker industry insider.
The players’ poker blogs cover the spectrum of success. The big names are Tony G, Daniel Negreanu, and Doyle Brunson. Tony G and Negreanu don’t ever sound like they are pulling punches and even better they aren’t shy about covering controversial topics. Doyle’s poker blog is at its best when he’s reminiscing about the old days. Two lesser known pros that have a poker blog worth checking out are Will Souther AKA the Poker Monkey and Terrence “Not Johnny” Chan. Will Souther dishes about anything under the Sun and absolutely nothing is off limits. If you ever wondered what a poker player that lacked a filter would write like just read his blog. Warning, it can be scary but always entertaining. Terrence Chan has a good sense of humor about himself, and a style of writing that makes you come back for more. Shannon Shorr would be in this category too, but he seems to have stopped updating his blog of late. Anyway, check out the selections if you haven’t already next time you need a poker blog fix.

Phil Ivey has them. Daniel Negreanu has them. Phil Helmuth definitely had them and probably still does. Actually, any successful poker pro has them, even unsuccessful pros have them, but you may not have them. What are they? Not buy-ins, not sponsorships, not television presence but skills, plain and simple poker skills.
Skills are not easily learned in poker and it used to be true that you didn’t learn poker skills you earned poker skill. There was truth to this because you couldn’t practice poker like you practice a sport. In sports, you can mimic game situations and skills, but in poker you can’t apply the pressure of putting your money or tournament on the on the line unless your money or tournament was on the line. Sure you can read about what to do, but you won’t know what to do, until you are actually playing and applying what you’ve learned. Just as it’s impossible to be able to kick a ball by reading how you do it, you have to try poker. And it used to be there was nowhere for you to practice. Nobody plays poker unless there something to be won.
To an extent real money poker is more like taking penalty kicks to settle a big soccer game. You can practice all the kicks you want but until you are on the spot in that big game you can’t mimic the pressure. Sometimes, you make the kick, sometimes you don’t but every player that has taken one such kick in that environment is far more prepared than a player that hasn’t.
Therefore, earning poker skills requires experience. Some players used to say that requires paying tuition. Every buy-in lost was a chunk of that tuition. You couldn’t really learn to play poker until you had something to risk. There is and was a lot of truth to that. Course now there are game simulations and free rolls with stakes that are put up by other people. Suddenly, with the birth of online poker, the world changed and players could learn the game without paying to do so–to an extent.
There are no limitations for some. A special few players that claim to have never invested a dime in acquiring their skills can say they never paid real money to acquire skills. Annette Obrestad is said to have built her bankroll by playing and winning free rolls online. Then she took those winnings and gambled them successful to win more money until she was a millionaire. She started a business, herself as a poker prodigy, from an investment of absolutely nothing.
While it’s okay to aspire to that, don’t think just anybody can do it. Anybody can to an extent, play free rolls to learn the game, maybe profit some and then move up to real stakes. There they can learn real money aspects of the game like managing a bankroll, handling a short-term loss without losing your mind, your game, or your newfound bankroll, and learning how to play with better players.
Fortunately, there are bad players at every level, but at the higher levels as you progress they are a far higher concentration of really good players. Acquiring the poker skills necessary to play with them means mixing it up with them. It’s insane to think you’d never lose, and be in a spot where you’d have to put cash back in. It’s poker. In the short run, even the greatest players in the world experience droughts or painful runs of luck.
Learning how to deal with them, is in itself a lesson and an acquiring of additional poker skills. While today’s poker world does have more learning than earning, there is still a good bit of both. Fortunately, unlike the old poker world, before the internet poker boom, you can learn a lot more before you have to start earning it.

A friend asked me what the strangest payment of a bet I had ever heard about. He had a reason for asking; he owed the owner of a local poker room some money and wondered if there were every any strange Poker Room Payment Methods that he might be able to use as an alternative. I guess he was on hard times, and the question immediately made me think of the Seinfeld episode where the judge made Jerry become the Butler of a man he had wronged.

There are a lot of prop bets with strange outcomes that were agreed about before hand, I told him, but I didn’t know of too many poker room payment methods that didn’t involve just forking over the debt in cash. Sure, you could figure out a payment plan, and the man he owed was quite reasonable and always seemed to be understanding, to a point, when players fell on hard times. However, I had never heard of anybody offering any alternative poker room payment methods other than cold hard cash.

My friend said he was thinking about offering to be a valet to the man. I pictured him as a Butler and that made me laugh. When he explained that our friend like to throw back some beers on a weekend and relied on cabs to get him everywhere it started to make sense to me. Yeah, maybe you could offer to be a driver and work it off giving him rides. I pictured him in a driver’s outfit and laughed some more especially as I envisioned him standing next to his almost broken down Volkswagen van.

What’s so funny, he asked. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was, so I sidestepped the question.
He then asked me if I played online because he was thinking about trying to rebuild his bankroll there. I couldn’t help but remind him that poker room payment methods online consist of credit card, debit card, bank draft, and other reasonable money transactions, and that it would be pretty hard to chauffeur around a website. I got him to laugh a little bit.

Of course then he asked me for a loan, and when I said no, that became a staking agreement—which I agreed to. I like my friend, and know he’s a good poker player, he’s just really bad with money. As much as he wins on the table, he’s ready to spend it off of the table. As he says why be in a cash business if you aren’t ready to spend the cash. Next time he talks about the freedom of being a poker player I’ll remind him about having to be a driver and how much freedom that entails.

And yes, the poker room owner took him up on his offer, but no he wasn’t driving his 1970s Volkswagen van. The deal had some interesting caveats that worked out quite well for me friend. Essentially Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights he’d have to be on call. So he wasn’t allowed to drink, as it would kind of defeat the purpose of having a designated driver who had been drinking. He’d also have to be ready to pull up from a game at a moment’s notice.

Incredibly, this did wonders for his already solid poker game. He started to view poker with the correct mentality, it’s one long poker game, not a serious of short games. His leak was trying to beat every game he played in, now he knew he’d have a series of short sessions because the poker room owner liked to bar hop, and my friend would never try to win at every one because at any moment he might be required to drive the guy clear across town.

As a result he stopped forcing things. Of course, not being able to drink, for a guy that liked to drink, only improved his late night play immeasurably too. Best staking arrangement I ever had. He also ended up being able to pay off the rest of the debt after only two months of being a designated driver. We are still waiting to see a little box next to poker room payment options that says “Services Rendered as a Driver” when we play online. I know it’s only a matter of time before all the big sites offer it.

So make sure to play poker at a safe poker site with legit deposit options, such as: https://www.bwin.com/texas-holdem-poker. See you there!

Players who are experienced at one form of poker over another can often find it difficult to switch. I know from personal experience that whenever I switched to the odd Texas Hold em poker tournament then my mindset simply wasn’t right and my mindset was geared more on survival and less on playing an optimal tournament strategy. When you play in ring games and especially in full ring games then patience is a huge factor in the game. Full ring games are often a waiting contest until the value that is in the game makes a mistake and if you are lucky enough then you are the recipient.

You are always playing deep stacked as you can top up when your chip stack falls. But one of the biggest mental barriers for players to overcome in tournament poker is to put their tournament on the line when they can sit and wait a bit longer. Let us look at a situation here to show you what I mean. The blinds are 200-400 and you have 6000 in chips which is 15 big blinds. You open raise with K-J from the button and you make it 1200 and the big blind calls you and the pot becomes 2600 when the big blind calls. The flop comes Q-10-4 rainbow and your opponent who started the hand with 7000 in chips bets 1300 into the pot and you fold.

Folding keeps you in the tournament with a stack of 4800 which is twelve big blinds and so your stack is playable. However who is to say that you will not go card dead and the next level increase will be to 300-600 and so you can become short stacked very quickly. The key for me with regards to playing poker tournaments is to pre-empt these situations and make a move sooner rather than later. In my opinion then this was a situation lost as your opponent could be taking a cheap stab at the pot knowing that they still have 4500 if they have to fold.

If you force the fold with an all in shove on the flop then your stack increases from the original 6000 to 8700 and if you get called and win then you can double through here. What we are trying to ascertain here is why you folded on the flop. If your reason is because you have a cash game mentality then you have something of a problem. Likewise if they have a defensive safety first mindset that is more geared towards surviving than accumulating chips.

I always feel that the art of playing poker tournaments is in trying to balance two equally but very important concepts. These are surviving and also accumulating chips. Both of these factors are vital but if you do not get the balance right then players who play survival tactics to an extreme will likely blind away during the middle stages and players who are too aggressive with regards to accumulating chips will more than likely blow their chips to the first rock that they run into.

Anyone who has ever played poker tournaments will be aware of the following situation. It has been folded to you on the button and you raise to steal the blinds. A short stack big blind shoves all in and now you are a little unsure as to what to do with your mediocre hand of J-10. I will go through a few rules of thumb here that you would do well to remember and it is basically to do with pot odds and your stack size. Let us look at an example and you have 40,000 in chips and you raise to 1200 with blinds of 200-400 and the short stack shoves all in for 1700 then this places 3500 in the pot and it is only 500 more to you to call.

Here you are getting 7/1 pot odds and the call is automatic. Your opponent could have AK and you must still call. As a rule of thumb then anytime that you are getting 3/1 or more and a short stack goes all in then you have a pretty automatic call. If you had raised to 1000 and your opponent shoved all in for 1700 then this puts 3300 into the pot with it being 700 to you to call which is still more than 4/1 and so once again the call is automatic. If your opponent shoved all in for 3000 then this would place 4600 into the pot and it is 2000 more to call if your raise was to 1000. These are odds of 2.3/1 and now the problem gets a little more complex.

If you have a hand like A-3 and there is a chance of domination then you can maybe fold here and it isn’t as straight forward as in the previous examples. However when the pot odds are in the 2/1 to 3/1 price range then you should still contemplate calling with hands that are not dominated as many players shove with small pocket pairs and aces. When the odds fall to less than 2/1 then you are basically using your judgment far more. So this means having knowledge of what your opponent may be doing.

If you think that your opponent is desperately pulling the trigger then you can maybe call with certain hands and fold others. Taking this to an extreme and you raise and your opponent shoves giving you calling odds of even money then you have no call here if your hand is a mere stealing hand. This is where it pays in Texas Hold em poker tournaments to try and ascertain what your opponents are likely to do and with what types of hands. This isn’t always possible if you have not been playing with certain players all that much. But what you need to do if at all possible is restrict the amount of counter play that your opponents have against you. But when you amass chips in tournaments then for once it is you that has the chips and not your opponents and so it will be you who will be faced with short stacks moving in on you.

It is often said that there is very little scope for bluffing in Limit Texas Hold em but yet this is simply not true. There is less scope for bluffing in limit hold’em simply because the betting is structured and so your opponents are always getting decent pot odds to call with even weak hands. Bluffing is easier in no-limit because you have the opportunity to hit your opponent with a sizable amount of money to call when you raise. But in limit hold’em then you can even bluff raise the river profitably in many situations.

Let us have a look at an example, it has been folded around to your opponent who raises from the cut-off and the button and small blind fold. Your hand is J-10 and the flop comes 9-8-4 rainbow and you decide to play your draw passively. You check call the flop and the turn brings the 2c and you check call again. The stakes are $2-$4 and so this betting sequence has placed $21 in the pot. The river card is another deuce and you check with the intention of check raise bluffing.

Your opponent bets $4 after you check and this puts $25 into the pot. Calling isn’t profitable as any pair, ace high, king high or queen high beats you. The pre-flop call was correct getting 3.5-1 pot odds. On the flop after you checked and your opponent bet then with $11 in the pot and only $2 needed to call with a straight draw and overcards then your play was solid again although you maybe could have check-raised bluffed the flop. When your opponent bets the turn then you are still marginal but fine to call as well as you will probably extract some more money on the river.

If you raise the river then this risks $8 for the chance to win the $25 that is already in there and so your pot odds are about 3-1. This means that you only need this bluff to work 25% of the time for it to break even. You should make this percentage because your opponent could have open raised with hands like K-10, Q-10 etc that would find it difficult to call a river check-raise bluff. So there are definite chances to bluff in limit but you have to be very observant so that you can spot them when they arrive.

When you are multi-tabling poker games then you can easily miss chances like this but this is really where the profit comes from in limit hold’em. The game is all about winning pots and when you can win pots in this way then you are really executing major coups in limit hold’em. This is because it is far easier to see the river and showdowns in this form of poker than it is in no-limit because the betting is structured. So when you can deny your opponent from calling the river with what would be the strongest hand then this is what really adds to your bottom line.

It really is amazing when you look at other fields how much similar they really are to poker. I have recently been reading books about electronic day trading and the styles and strategies that some of the leading participants engage in. The similarities are there for all to see when you look hard enough.

I will list a few of them here but this list is certainly not exhaustive in any way. Firstly because both disciplines are executed electronically then the similarities are even more striking. How successful day traders operate and reach the top is strikingly similar to online poker.

I really like to read about how these guys are aggressive with their trading as being aggressive is the hall mark of a top poker player. Also the area of minimising risk and bankroll management is also very high on the agenda of participants in both fields. Most electronic day traders lose money initially, this once again is no different to poker. I think if anyone makes money from online poker immediately then they must have had a very strong live poker background.

In most cases of course then this isn’t enough but learning how to day trade and how to play poker is a process of trial and error and experience is king. For those of you who do not know what electronic day trading is, it is the process of buying and selling stocks and shares within very short time frames usually all within the same day and most of the time within minutes or even seconds of each other.

All this wasn’t possible years ago but just like with online poker, the internet coupled with advances in computer technology and software have made all this possible. But another factor that encompasses both fields lays in the concept of getting out with the minimum loss. In poker let us say that you raised to steal the blinds with a hand like the Js-9s and the big blind re-raised you the size of the pot.

Even if the stacks were deep then you really have no further business being in this hand. You have raised on a steal, you haven’t got away with it and now you have been re-raised. Most top day traders will tell you that stubbornness is one of the primary dangers for losing money. If you take a position and the market proves you wrong then get out and don’t get stubborn trying to prove that you were right all along.

This is exactly the same with Online Texas poker, you have no visual tells to go on and only betting sequences and betting patterns.

But it amazes me how many people in these situations either call the re-raise or re-raise again getting into some ego war. They run all sorts of thoughts through their minds “he is only raising because he thinks that I am stealing” or another one may be “I am not going to let this joker run me off this hand”.

What happens in these situations is that stubbornness gets in the way and losses inevitably ensue. I have seen so many situations over the years where the blinds have got all-in against each other with one of them taking their bluff far further than what they ever should have done. Then one player shows something like K-K while the other one shows A-9 and the guy with the weaker hand ends up losing a hundred big blinds.

Most of the time it is a case of one player getting stubborn and not releasing their hand when they really should have done! But if you look at the lives of professional electronic day traders then you will see that they are really poker players after all.

There is so much literature and theory flying around the Internet on No Limit Texas Holdem that new poker players could be forgiven for thinking that No Limit Holdem is the only poker game you can play. But like many other things, No Limit is chosen specifically for it’s excitement for a spectator and it is particularly suitable to television. Any poker player wishing to be a proficient poker exponent should consider the benefits of learning all of the games. It is possible that No Limit Holdem may not necessarily be your most profitable game out of all the different disciplines of Poker, so let’s look at some of the choices you have.

The game of choice before the Poker Boom was Limit Holdem. This is where bet sizing is taken out of the game as you only have a choice of betting a set amount of chips on each street. This demands from players an acute knowledge of current and potential hand strength and pot odds. As you cannot get your opponent to fold many draws this game is very much skill based. No Limit specialists can find limit Holdem boring due to the lack of big moves, and bluffing is done on a more subtle level. It takes longer to build a chip stack and Limit poker demands discipline and patience.

Pot Limit Omaha is becoming a very popular game online at present. There are some lively high stakes cash games happening right now that you can rail. This game demands discipline in terms of hand strength and you must have the heart to find yourselves in big pots with marginal hands. Unlike Holdem there is more flexibility in what starting hands you can play as you hold four hole cards but this does not make the game easier.

Learning the other disciplines of poker can help you in two main ways. The opportunity to play H.O.R.S.E events where five disciplines of poker are used throughout the tournament can give you an advantage of players who may be experts in three parts of the tournament but weak in two. Few players are good at all the games but for the players who are proficient big money can be made.

The second main benefit of being a good all round poker player is different aspects of one game can be used to help your No Limit game if this is your preferred poker variation. Learning the pot odds involved in limit will help you learn about position, patience and the maths behind drawing. You will also suffer your share of bad beats in Limit as opponents have better odds to draw for the miracle card. Omaha will teach you about overvaluing marginal hands. By having an overall understanding of poker your advantage on the No Limit tables can grow as you understand with more clarity the subtle parts of poker that can only be learned by trying other forms of the game.

Just because No Limit is what everyone seems to enjoy to play does not mean this is your best game. You may discover that when you try Omaha Hi-Lo Split you have a natural understanding of how to draw for the low hand and the mechanics behind splitting the pot with a low hand. For example, if your opponent plays strong high hands like full houses etc, in the right spots you can continue to split pots until you get a low straight that scoops the pot. Your understanding of strategy for the game can see you crush a Holdem specialist that overrates their ability to transfer to other games.

Try the Stud games, Omaha variations and even Draw Poker for a different outlook on poker. They are fun to play and can freshen up your approach if you are growing tired of grinding away at the No Limit tables. Even just trying something new can help your approach to your normal game as it activates your mind. Most online sites have lots of variations of games to play so have a go at some low stakes games and see if you can discover where your next million dollars will come from.

One of the key factors in deciding on whether or not you should make a continuation bet in no-limit Texas Holdem games is the flop texture. When you marry this with the number of opponents along with the betting action then you can devise a good strategy for deciding whether to bet the flop. Let us look at an easy example here to show what I mean. You have open raised with As-Ks to $1.75 in a NL50 game and the cut-off and button have called you along with the big blind. The flop comes 10c-9d-8c and the big blind checks. This flop is simply too dangerous to try and force the hand through by betting. This flop also hits callers rather than raisers and your opponents also know that this board has not likely connected with a raisers hand. So you have several problems with betting in this situation and the first problem is that you have missed the flop. Problem number two is that you are out of position to two players. Problem number three is that you have three opponents and not just one. Problem number four is the flop texture which hits callers very well and a bet will unlikely get rid of all of the players. Problem number five is that your opponents expect a raiser to have missed that flop. Problem number six is that you may have to run an expensive multi-street bluff to win this pot and you may already be drawing almost dead. So it is clear then that the problems that you have in this position are too great and too numerous to merit betting here. If you only had one opponent then betting to represent a large pair or to bully a weak calling hand like 4-4 into folding is viable. Players call raises will all sorts of hands like weak pocket pairs hoping to flop a set or weaker aces like A-Q or A-J and so your A-K could be best against a single player. You need to start thinking about such things if you are going to play better poker post flop in no-limit Texas hold’em. The situation is even less clear when you have players who are loose-aggressive and tricky and who are prepared to play back at you. Let us say that you raise with the Ad-Jd and your opponent calls you with Jc-10c and the flop comes 5d-4s-2c and you bet two thirds of the pot and your opponent calls looking to put pressure on you. The turn card is another four and you bet half bet and get raised and now you have to fold. Marrying flop texture and the number of opponents along with the flop texture and the betting will quantum leap forward your post flop play in no-limit Texas hold’em. But this is surely where it will need to be if you desire to take your game to level where you are making several big bets per hundred hands or if you want to make poker a serious second income stream for yourself.

Antanas Guoga or “Tony G” as he is better known is a well known and very famous Australian poker player. Tony G moved to Australia at the age of 11 after already being the Rubiks Cube champion in his native Lithuania at the young age of 11 years old. Antanas Guoga fist started to play poker when he was 18 years old but he became famous with his wild table talk and sledging that was purely a tactic to intimidate players at the table to give himself a bigger edge over his rivals.

His monumental rant at Ralph Perry in the 2006 Intercontinental Poker Championships is remembered as being one of the most vicious verbal assaults ever in the history of televised poker. However his on screen rants are a far cry from what Tony G is really like away from the poker table and his personality can be quite inoffensive and charming. Of course this makes it look all the more deliberate when he baits people in this way.

He is also one of the most aggressive players on the table which is really connected to his game when you think about it. There is little point in having trashy table talk if you are the most tight aggressive player on the table. The entire point of this line of play is to drag your opponent away from their normal peaceful mental equilibrium in pots that you yourself are in. This means that in order to do this to the optimal effect that you must be constantly raising and re-raising. Then the combination of the table talk and aggressive play can often have a very severe effect on certain people!

If you are playing Online Texas Holdem poker then you will often feel aggrieved and annoyed when the same players keep pounding on you all the time and it makes you want to play back at them. Well imagine if that situation was taken from a live game and you could see your opponent directly and not only were they being very aggressive but also they were targeting and berating you. It is easy to see just how bad this could affect certain people.

But Tony G is also a very strong player in his own right and has many good top tournament results to prove that. He is still waiting for his first major WSOP or WPT title but that will surely be not far from coming for this very aggressive and talented player. Tony G will also be remembered for his colourful sledging on the final table of the European event of the WPT in 2003 at the Aviation Club. On that final table, Guoga basically needled everybody except the eventual winner Christer Johansson who remained coolness personified throughout.

Tony G recently launched his very own poker site a few years ago which brought him even more into the public eye. He was also in the news when he stated of his annoyance that Tiffany Michelle blatantly advertised Ultimate Bet on her clothing when he had personally backed her financially and had asked her to promote his own companies or companies that he was associated with at a recent WSOP main event. Love him or hate him, Tony G is definitely a person who you cannot ignore.