Nordic Poker Roadshow

Below are some beginner Texas holdem poker strategy tips for making more money than your parents, if you can.

Phil Hellmuth told us that it is to good be tight-aggressive at the first round of betting. This will add chips to the pot when you have a strong hand and get rid of limpers. It will lead to larger pots when you think you can win.

Another key recommendation by top winners is not to draw to the idiot side of a straight, meaning draw to the lowest straight when your opponent mat well be drawing to the high side of the straight. Next, Doyle Brunson said that unconnected cards of medium and low level are to muck. A strong poker pro believes that offsuit unconnected cards are shit. But do now forget that Doyle won two WSOP bracelets with T2o, so that this advice with caution.

My sister has mentioned that it is better to play aggressively with a two way draw after the flop. Raise with an Ace or two high over-cards after a a rainbow unpaired board, when that board is not dangerous. If somebody raises at such a worthless flop, it is often better to fold your hand now. The best players suggest to learn to catch bluffers. Try to understand if your opponents bluff to attempt to make you fold. Remember that if a person seems to be a pro and then out of the blue starts to have sad or happy emotions, she is probably making an act.

Trying to be not predictable, you should learn to bluff as well, as this will make you winning some extra cash with very bad players. Top pot winners have said to analyze your competitor for the following reasons: if the opponent can be bluffed, or if he bluffs a lot.

Texas Holdem strategy tips are not just holdem alone, but other related aspects also. Texas Holdem is harder than online blackjack. Remember that you will spend plenty of time with it, so it is better to select the software which fits your personality ideally. After purchasing chips, you can start playing texas holdem. You do not have to be skilled for a great and enjoyable game. Note that some banks do not allow US players to use their credit cards for online gambling transfers.

The story of Joe Cada (WSOP world champion) is much more than most aspiring poker professionals want to aspire to. There are many kids who drop out of school to follow his lead, but beware that this is an extremely perilous road.

I didn’t drop out of college to play online poker. I did poorly as I always do, the only reason I got into college was because I bent over the SATs like I do to TightWad on a nightly basis my freshman year. I have always done very ok in school, I refuse to do homework or study, and basically got through high school on good quiz and test grades.

Getting a college degree in physics, that simply wouldn’t work. Anyhow, after my poor performance freshman year, the University took away my scholarships and financial aid and my parents don’t really rake in the dough. Thus I was in a bit of a bind as to how to pay for my education, that I was basically not taking seriously anyway.

It sounds silly, but I’ve just never been able to apply myself to school. And now that the school wasn’t going to pay for me, and neither were my parents, I’d have to pay myself or get loans to pay for it. It’s hard to spend that much money on something that you don’t have your mind set on trying hard at.

My freshman year was at Tulane in New Orleans and I was much more worried about playing online poker, chasing women, drinking and pretty much doing anything other than attending that 8 AM Engineering Calculus class. I also understand that getting a higher education is not for everyone as well and it also doesn’t take going to college to get it.

If you are not attending classes do yourself a favor if you don’t already do so and pick up some good literature to read in your downtime. If you want some suggestions let me know and I can direct you to a lot of good books that I am sure you will find interesting. But in the meantime keep knocking them dead at the tables.

I just spent $811.95 on 2 home plate tickets to the last game of the Red Sox regular season. In all seriousness I am pumped to see them crush the Yankees right before the playoffs. The girl I am going with is a fan too and has never been to a Red Sox game.

Here are great Texas Hold’em strategy tips for online poker beginners and intermediate players. If you follow these concepts you are guaranteed to make more profits playing online poker, and who knows you might be making more money than your parents playing poker one day.

The first thing all poker pros know is to play high pairs or very strong hands fast pre flop. In order words always raise and reraise premium hands before the flop. This will make the pot larger and thin out the field. It will  lead to juicier pots when you have the advantage.

Another fundamental technique advised by the smartest online poker players is never to draw to the idiot side of a straight draw. The reason is that typically you will either win a bit or lose a lot, because if the pot gets very large it is expected that your opponent has the higher side of the straight.

Next, great poker players say that unconnected cards of medium and low level are normally to fold as soon as possible. To put it blankly, Tom Dwan thinks that offsuit unconnected cards are garbage.

Gus Hansen has often been quoted and has written that you should raise when you have a two-way draw after the flop. This is how you will win the big pots. Also another tip from Gus is to be aggressive with an ace or two high over-cards after a blank flop, when all the flop has is unconnected rainbow cards of medium or low value. Note that Gus Hansen
is known to be a very aggressive player. When a player raises at such garbage flop, it’s better to fold as it usually means he has a strong hand like a set.

Full Tilt pros suggest learning to dare to catch bluffs. Observe to understand if your opponents customarily make bluffs to force you to fold based on your predictability. Catching bluffs is part of poker and if you never attempt that, this is a leak in your game. Similarly you should sometimes bluff otherwise you are too predictable.

Try to be as unpredictable as you can, this is one of the hardest skill to master but it will add money to your bankroll. Top bracelet holders like Phil Ivey and Doyle Brunson have said that you should analyze your opponents to determine if your opponents can be easily forced to fold with no effort, or if they bluff themselves a lot.

Because you will spend a lot with the poker software if you love playing online poker, so it is better to choose a poker room that fits your personality the best. Among the leading poker rooms are pokerstars, full tilt poker and partypoker.

These three poker rooms are the ones with the most traffic and promotions. They are leading brands and can be trusted for their highest security and reputation. Have fun.

I busted out just before the second break in today’s WCOOP event.

I was just never able to get anything going. I flopped a pair of aces with a big kicker, someone flopped a set. I tried to steal the blinds with a marginal hand, I got 3 bet. I picked up QQ, everyone folded to my raise. You know, that kinda thing. No real bad beats to speak of, but nothing really working for me either.

Yesterday I went to hang out with some friends and bought an ipod mini so aside from my pathetic performance in the WCOOP I didn’t get to play at all yesterday. I came back home today at like 5 and hung around for a while and at 11 I said “Hey why don’t I actually play?” So I quickly hopped on 4 $10/$20 6-max tables on Party Poker and came out $705 ahead.

I took some real ugly beats at the beginning. Probably my favorite was 35 in the big blind, SB has J4. The flop is 467, he bets and I call. Turn is a 4 he check raises, I 3 bet, he caps. River is a 4 and he checks. I giggle and check behind. Things worked out in the end obviously cause you don’t make $700 in an hour and fifteen minutes at 4 $10/$20 tables without things going your way obviously. I’m pretty scared of what’s on the other side of this variance hill I’m on currently.

So after quickly throwing away all of my chips in a charity tournament, I decided to put in a real poker session. I plopped down at a $30/$60 table with a mega-fish and 2 6 handed $10/$20 tables. Bing Bam Boom, 15 minutes later I’m up $588 and the session is going good. Then my hands stopped holding up and I started missing flops like it was going out of style. My bluffs weren’t working. It sucked.

My favorite hand was when I raised with K9s and a mega-fish called from the BB with 92s. Flop was AQ4 with one of each of our suits he bet I raised and he called. Turn card was a J of his suit he bet and again I raised feeling strongly that I had the best hand, he called. The river was an offsuit 2. He checked and I had to debate whether to show down my hand that I thought still had a reasonable chance of being best, or betting to gain a little value in getting some sort of hand to fold (doubtful).

I think against his range of hands the check was best, but this one specific time a bluff probably would have worked. Oh well. A solid $842 losing session. Hey, you can win every time, can you?

I played some guy in heads up PLO today. I made short work of him and his $200 stack ($2/$4 blinds), He rebought and I was again chopping away at him, then he started taking forever to make decisions, then he sat out. I made $212 in profit from him.

Then I sat at a real juicy $15/$30 shorthanded game and got my balls kicked in. This included me flopping TPTK in a heads up capped pot with AK and losing to AT, when he nailed a ten on the river. That was fun. AA lost to JJ, JJ lost to AA. All sorts of good stuff. Lost a quick $859. Don’t worry though, I cleared $5 in bonus.

Thanks to the suggestion from my friend Peter, I have decided to read one poker book a week. I’ve always considered myself intelligent and I don’t want to stop gaining knowledge simply because college wasn’t working for me. Book suggestions are welcome, the following are being considered.

Non fIction is a little tougher. Maybe ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra’ by Nietzsche? That was always a fun one, and certainly a challenge for someone who wants so engage in some ‘intelligent’ reading.

I deposited on Carbon Poker so I could get the $600 bonus while I’m setting up my Carbon account with rakeback. I played an hour at 3 $10/$20 shorthanded tables and one heads-up $10/$20 table.

Right off the bat I was down about $800. I made a nice comeback and was up a few hundreds until the fish I was playing heads up with starting getting comically lucky. He literally called my flop check raise, turn bet, and river bet, with jack high with a bad kicker no less. He was so bad. He’d have like J2 on a KQ2 flop and I’d have Q9 and he’d say to himself “I got a pair of 2s, where in the hell am I going?” and just nailed a deuce on the river. It was pretty ugly. I really think I should play more heads up limit though, because I really think I could make good money if I played it more, and it’s really fun. Total damage: $356.75

First thing I did was take advantage of the Full Tilt deposit bonus.  I ran real good at the beginning playing 25NL but it quickly unraveled and I went on the worst run I have ever seen.  Yes I take full blame for having gaping holes in my game, but it was also just a terrible run of luck.  Looking back I realize my good run was really just good luck overcoming my holes and then it caught up to me.

I quickly watched as my bankroll dropped buy-in after buy-in.  Eventually I sucked it up and dropped down as low as you can go to the 10$NL tables deciding I needed to rework my game from the ground up.

The very next thing I did was join CardRunners.com.  It’s basically an online website/poker school and I dove in and absorbed as much as I could.  I knew I was on the right track when my wife started getting annoyed. So I watched as many low level videos as I could. I really haven’t watched the higher levels yet, as I didn’t want to be tempted to try to do tricky plays and thing that might work at those levels.

I started to play and grind away on Full Tilt at their 10NL tables.  I would go up then down then up then down.  You get the idea.  I was playing a Tight-Aggressive (TAG) style of around 18/14 trying to squeeze out any leaks in my game.  It just seemed to me that whenever I had a hand, it got folded around to me and my 3xBB raise.

Yet everytime I put out my standard continuation bet – I would have people calling and coming over the top.  It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t really making any money.  In fact the only reason I stayed afloat was the deposit bonus was basically cushioning me from the rake.

Frustrated I decided to give PokerStars.com a try.  It doesn’t have a real deposit bonus (50$ max right now so nothing special) or rakeback, so I didn’t sign up with them before for these reasons.  But let me tell you I have been walking away from tables consistently doubling or tripling up my buy-ins.  The play here is so Tight-Passive it’s not even funny.

A lot of my big hands get paid off but I bet you most of my money is made by taking down pots on the flop with a rightly timed c-bet. In about 3k hands I have run the $100 tester deposit up to about $300.  I played 2k hands at 10$ and was up 10 buy-ins so I decided to take a shot at 25NL and see if the play was just  as soft.  Well I haven’t looked back and indeed it is thus far.  I am going at a clip of about 36bb/100 right now making about 20$ an hour (as per PokerTracker).

I know it’s a very small sample size but it’s not like I am winning because my flush is hitting or I am being dealt great cards.  I am literally winning via aggression.  Also because these tables are soo passive, that it’s much easier to lay down a hand if someone plays back at you.  Something I had a hard time with at Full Tilt Poker.

And to think I don’t even have a PokerTracker database on the players at PokerStars yet.  That will only help me that much more avoid bad situations and extract as much value out of my hands.

My advice to those that are grinding away on a site: take a break and try a new one, you never know what’s going on over there.  And you might be pleasantly suprised.

A lot of poker is about building a bankroll.

We build a bankroll and conserve it so that we can play at higher and higher levels, so that we can earn more money on an hourly basis. But when we get the bankroll, we may be frightened to take a shot at those higher limits. (I speak from experience here.)

Some forums of blogs have hand histories threads. These threads are for people to post hands that were played by idiots at relatively high levels of poker. The idea is to provide encouragement for people to properly manage their bankrolls, so that they can move up with less fear.

In a sense, these threads will hold some of the same sorts of material that would be covered in other forum sections like a Bad Beats section or a Low Content section. But these specific bankroll management sections are more directed to making you getting a better handle on how you mane your poker bankroll.

Please post comments about hands that your opponents played really, really badly. Show all of the lower limit players how much money is lying around at the higher limit tables, just waiting for decent players to pick it up. These are fun comments to add to this blog. As the blog is moderated I will let you have a link in the comment if you have a nice hand history to show.

This is a No-Limit Hold’em thread. Please post only for games of NL100 and higher. And the higher the better! If someone is a complete donk at NL400 or NL1000 or higher, I want to hear about it. And yes we know that there are donks at the highest limits, or players who play like donks, maybe because they play under the influence.