The Poker Blog

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By Tony Guerrera Two types of odds are important in poker: card odds and payout odds. And payout odds can be broken down into three categories: pot odds, implied odds, and reverse implied odds. Understanding all these types of odds will help you make sound decisions at the tables.

Card Odds

Card odds have to do with hitting poker hands. Suppose you have a flush draw on the turn. Not accounting for reads you may have on your opponents, there are 46 unknown cards in the deck, 9 of which give you a flush. The odds against you hitting your flush are 37:9 (4.11:1).

To draw profitably, your payout odds need to exceed your card odds. In this example, your payout odds need to be at least $4.11:$1.

Pot Odds

Your pot odds are the ratio of the amount of money in the pot to the amount of money you need to call. Let’s take the flush draw example from above. Say the pot is $400 going into the turn, and you have a single opponent who bets $200. $400 + $200 = $600, so you are getting $600:$200 = $3:$1 pot odds.

Implied Odds

Implied odds refer to money that you’ll win on future betting rounds if you hit your draw. Suppose that if you call the $200 and hit your draw, you’ll win $400 more on the river. If that’s the case, you’re receiving an additional $400:$200 = $2:$1 on your preflop call. Accounting for implied odds, you’re getting $5:$1 instead of $3:$1 on your money.

Reverse Implied Odds

Of course, there’s a chance that you hit your flush draw and still lose. Perhaps he hits a better flush, or your flush out gives your opponent a boat or quads. This means you’re actually getting less than $5:$1 on the money. The precise adjustment for reverse implied odds depends heavily on your opponents’ hand distributions and can take awhile to figure out precisely (I remember the work I put in for some of the examples in Killer Poker By The Numbers). Since you usually won’t know exactly how much your opponents will bet anyway, just know that you should get a rough idea of how much you stand to lose and roughly how often you’ll lose it.

Honestly Assess All Situations

The two biggest mistakes that people make when evaluating their payout odds are:

1.) Assuming that their implied odds are bigger than they truly are
2.) Neglecting to take reverse implied odds into account.

Being a pessimist or an optimist won’t do you any good at the poker tables. Instead, be a realist, and watch the profits roll in.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers. Visit him online at http://www.killerpokerbythenumbers.com

by Elizabeth Tudor.

Sometimes in poker, you have a great hand. Sometimes you don’t. But not having the best hand does not automatically make you a loser. If you are able to convince other players that your hand is better than it really is, you may be able to bluff your way to victory. If you can master the art of bluffing, you will have a valuable tool that can help you increase your winnings. Here are some pointers for bluffing successfully.

• Bluff when the board indicates that someone could “possibly” have a good hand. For example, if three cards of the same suit are on the board, someone could be holding the fourth card, giving them a flush. If you bet like you are that someone, you might convince the other players that you are. If you can do that, the other players will fold, and you will win the poker hand.

• If it is apparent that another player is looking for a reason to fold, put down a bet that is large enough to give them the reason they are looking for.

• Pay attention to the betting habits of other players. A novice player may bluff too often. An experienced player may be tougher to figure out, but that is the player that really needs to be watched closely.

• Wait before you bluff. If players ahead of you are folding, checking or calling, you have a better idea of what hands they may have then if you attempt to bluff early.

• Don’t bluff loose tables unless all of the loose players have already folded. In general, though, loose players tend to play more hands and stay with weaker hands. Bluffing works best at tight tables where players are more likely to fold.

• Use caution when bluffing if you are playing with weak or inexperienced players. These players may not pay attention to your bluff and won’t notice that you are acting like you have a strong hand. They may stay in simply because they don’t notice what you are doing.

• It is much less likely that someone will call your bluff if the table’s limits are high. At low limit tables, there is not much of an advantage to bluffing since it is highly likely that someone will take a chance and call your bluff.

• Use common bluffing scenarios to your advantage but be careful that the stronger players at the table do not notice and turn things against you. For example, suppose it is the late position pre-flop and two players follow you. Your hand does not seem good but everyone else has folded so far. If you bluff here, the remaining two players are likely to think you have a good hand.

• Don’t bluff too often. Other players who are paying attention to you won’t continue to fall for it. Of course, if you have a good hand right after bluffing successfully, you have an advantage because other players may think you are bluffing again when you’re not.

• Don’t bet with a pattern. Other players will figure it out if they are paying attention. Find a strategy that will keep other players guessing.

In order to be a good poker player, you need to be skilled at bluffing. This will take some practice, trial and error since bluffing is an art, not a science. By varying your approach, you can make it most effective. Once you have mastered the art of bluffing, you will have a winning edge that can lead to big profits.

Elizabeth Tudor is a mature and experienced poker gambler. Currently she works as a gambling consultant and an article writer for www.pokerlogic.org site, helping other players to make their gambling experience more pleasant and productive.

>“#$%(&%#(&$)@&!!!”, I said for what seemed like the 10th time. Yes, I just got sucked out again on the river by a 2-outer and have now lost my last four sit-and-go tournaments in the same way. The donkey across the table has pulled one of the two or three cards in the deck that they needed to beat me after the flop. Those are known as bad beats, and as any player who plays regularly can tell you it seems to happen all the time.

Bad beats happen to the best poker players, the worst poker players, and everyone in between. There really isn’t a definition of what a bad beat is, but I would say it’s any time that you have your money in the pot and have at least a 75 percent chance of winning the hand. There are plenty of times where you have a 50/50, 55/45 or 60/40 chance of winning and you lose, but those aren’t really bad beats. They’re just part of the game. The times when you are in a “race” with someone, meaning one of you has a pocket pair and the other has two cards larger than your pair, are really not much more than a 50-55 percent chance for the person holding the pair to win. Also, a situation similar to this, where you have one overcard and your opponent has two cards higher than your kicker, you are only a 60 percent favorite to win.

The bad beats I’m talking about are the ones where you dominate your opponent, either with a higher pocket pair than his, a pair with a higher kicker or some other situation where he is a huge underdog once all the money goes in. Those are the ones that make you feel like you’ve been punched in the gut when you lose, and your reaction to these bad beats can make or break you as a poker player.

There is actually some good news in a continued string of bad beats. Bad beats happen to good players more often than they do to bad ones because the good players realize they have the best of it and get all their money in with the best hand more often. While a long run of beats will hurt your bottom line, you can take solace in the fact that you are playing solid poker. In the long run, getting your money in with the best hand a large percentage of the time is going to make you a ton of money. It’s hard to remember that sometimes when you’ve just been rivered, but if you can control your emotions and not go on tilt, you’ll be much better off. The key is just to tell yourself you made the right play and get on with it.

One way to lessen the effect of a bad beat in a tournament is to try to stay away from going all-in as much as possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve suffered a stomach punch but still had enough chips to come back and do well. In fact, just the other day I was down to $40 in chips in a sit-and-go and came back to win. The saying “a chip and a chair” really does apply, so while you do want to maximize your profits when you have the best of it, you also want to try to insure that you don’t get yourself knocked out of a tournament if the fish catches what he’s looking for. You can be aggressive without over-betting.

As I said, bad beats happen to everyone who sits down at the table, but if you can remember that they are part of the game, don’t go on tilt when they do happen, leave yourself some wiggle room, and know that you are actually playing very well, you can live to fight another day.

By Chris Goudey
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

When is a great opening poker hand a bad hand? The answer is pretty simple. A great opening poker hand is a bad hand when you play it poorly, and I recently saw a shining example of that.

A couple of weeks ago I was in the poker room at Binion’s, playing on a $3-$6 limit Texas Hold’em table with the framed pictures of the previous World Series of Poker main events on the wall to the left of me. It really is an incredible place, and if you ever get the chance I highly recommend playing there. The casino doesn’t host the tournament anymore, but it has the pictures of all the winners when it did, and it is nice to see that piece of history.

I was watching the eight other players until the blind got around to me. You have the option when you sit down of posting the big blind right away and playing immediately or waiting until it comes to you. I was four hands away from the big blind, so I decided to watch the action.

A lot of players want to start playing right away and there probably isn’t anything wrong with that, but I prefer to watch some hands and get a feel for the table before putting out any chips.

On the second hand I saw the guy with the button check his bet after three of the six previous players called the blind. The small blind called and the big blind raised. The other players who had previously called called again, except for the small blind who folded.

The flop came 5d, 8h, 6h. The players all checked to the button, who bet $3. The big blind called, and one of the three players folded.

The turn was a 10c. Again the players checked to the button, and he bet $6. The big blind raised another $6. That chased out the remaining two players and left only the button, who called the raise.

The flop was a Qs. The action was on the big blind, and he bet $6. The button called and turned over a pair of aces. The big blind flipped up a 4h and 7c for a straight and took the pot.

It was hard for me to believe what I saw. I couldn’t believe the button had played that hand so poorly.

His first mistake was not raising on the opening bet. What two cards are better than a pair of aces? If you have the best hand, for God sakes, bet it. I would have probably raised on everything from a pair of 10s on up. I might not have the best hand with a pair of 10s, but chances are I am going to know where I stand with them. If someone comes over the top and re-raises me, I know that they have a pair as well. The possibility is there for someone with a better pair to check and try and slow play them, but I am getting to see a flop and maybe make a set.

And this knucklehead was on the button! If ever there was a perfect situation to raise, it would be then. But by being too timid, he let the big blind see the flop for free. If he had raised the blind, unless he was playing with an equally poor player, the big blind would have folded. One or two of the other three players might have stuck around to see the flop, but when it came up 5d, 8h, 6h, it probably couldn’t have helped their hands and they would have folded.

But with the big blind flopping a straight, he is sitting with two worthless aces. It could have been a real disaster if he had gotten an ace on the turn. Now he is thinking that he has a superior hand and could have lost a lot of money.

Aggression in poker is key, and the big blind proved that by raising on the opening round with a worthless 4-7 off-suit. The big blind was as timid as a guy with 7-2 off-suit, and he got burned for it.

He busted out shortly thereafter, which wasn’t a surprise. I just wondered if he learned anything from the experience.

By John Reger
WagerWeb.com Contributing Writer

In addition to my fantasy sports career (see my page on Inspin.com’s Fantasy section), I also make my living playing small-to-medium stakes poker on several different sites (including Inspinpoker.com). I am a winning player overall, and I will share some weekly tips with you that help put some food on my table and some extra zeroes in my account.

The two types of poker I play are No Limit and Limit Hold’Em, both cash games and tournaments. I’ve been playing for about four years, and to me the most important thing to remember when trying to be a successful poker player is to stay within your bankroll limits. It doesn’t matter if you play $2-$4 Limit or $100-$200 No Limit, if you don’t have the funds to enter the game, you can’t win.

Poker has great variance, and your bankroll must be able to sustain a prolonged streak of losing. Even the best players will have bad runs lasting months, and in some cases years. When you make a big score in a tournament or have a good night in a cash game, keep that money aside and save it for when you need it. Don’t go out and blow it all at the blackjack or craps tables. If you must play other table games, then have a separate bankroll for that, but don’t use your poker money for anything but poker.

The beauty of playing online poker is how quickly you can win money compared to sitting in a home game or at the casino. You see probably 3-4 times as many hands online as you would playing live, so on a good night you might make a ton of money. The flip side, of course, is you might lose your whole roll in one night, and trust me those are bad times. I speak from experience, as I’ve had to rebuild my bankroll several times (fortunately it hasn’t happened in a long time). Truly successful players, and by that I mean people who are playing poker to make money (as opposed to those just there for the social aspect of the game) will put their winnings in their bankroll and not take it elsewhere. Obviously at some point you’ll want to take some out to pay bills or whatever you are playing for, but the key is to keep your bankroll at a nice, consistent number.

Other experts have recommended you have 300 times the max bet at whatever level you’re playing at as a basic bankroll. This is for Limit poker and tournament play. No Limit cash games are a different ball game, and I’ll discuss those in future columns. If you are playing $20+2 Sit and Go tournaments, you would want to have a bankroll of at least $660. If you are playing $2-$4 limit, for example, you’d want to have a $2,400 bankroll, the max bet being $8 in the final two rounds of betting in a $2-$4 game. I would advocate having even more than that, because with the speed of the game online, you can run through 300 bets pretty quickly if you’re not careful.

My personal bankroll is always going to be 500 times the max bet, so if I were playing $2-$4 limit, I’d be holding $4,000 in my account, or if I were playing $20+2 Sit and Go’s, I’d have $1,100. Once I win at least that amount, then I put half of it in my bank and use the other half to move up a level in play. For instance, if I won $4,000 playing $2-$4, I would stick $2,000 in my bank account and take the $6,000 still in my account and move up to play $3-$6 limit. If I lost $2,000 (taking my account back down to $4,000), I’d move back down to $2-$4 until I was back at that 500 max bet number to move up.

Obviously not everyone is going to have $4,000 or even $1,000 to use as a bankroll. I have friends who have played $2-$4 with $100 in their account and blown it in about 15-20 minutes, and then they wonder why they can’t win. It is much easier to play poker if you have the comfort of knowing that one losing session is not going to cost you your whole bankroll. You have to look at it like a long-term investment.

Future columns will discuss specific strategies in Limit and No Limit, but for now just know that in order to be a winning player, you have to feel comfortable at the table. The easiest way to do that is to know that you can afford to lose, and a well-managed bankroll can give you that.

By Chris Goudey
Inspin.com contributing writer

Adjust Reads From Tight To Loose

No matter what specific variant of poker you’re playing, playing profitable poker is all about mastering the following process:

1. Put your opponents on hand distributions
2. Evaluate your own hand (or put yourself on a hand distribution if you’re playing a game like Blind Man’s Bluff)
3. Predict how your opponents will respond to every possible action you can make
4. Pick the most profitable line of play based on #1-#3

Today, we’ll focus on putting your opponents on hand distributions when you first sit at a table.

Default Distributions
Putting your opponents on hand distributions is all about reading your opponents’ betting patterns and picking off their physical tells. You don’t really have the ability to put your opponents on hand distributions until you’ve carefully observed them play for a few orbits. Does this mean that you should fold the first forty or fifty hands you’re dealt?

Hell no…especially if you’re playing at a shorthanded table or in a tournament. The good news is that you actually have information about players you’ve never seen in your life. Before you even play a single hand, you have all your past poker playing experience to draw upon, meaning that you can assign a default playing profile to each opponent before you see the table play a single hand. This default profile will be the average of all the poker players you typically face…………to read rest of article visit The Poker Betting Column at The Betting Directory.

The Betting Directory are pleased to announce that they have arranged with leading poker information site, Wise Hand Poker, to bring you their “The Wise Hand Of The Day” - a professionally written analysis of the hands that happened on the biggest tournaments in the World.

The latest one is from when Johnny Chan defeated Erik Seidel at the 1988 World Series of Poker to win his second consecutive world title. He was the last man to win two, let alone two in a row, but that wasn’t what made the clip of the final hand iconic; it was it’s bronzing as the ultimate hand of poker in 1998’s Rounders that set it apart from the others.

Read the full details at The Wise Hand of the Day, on The Betting Directory.

NECESSARY TOOL FOR SUPERIOR TABLE SELECTION

Poker Usher is a software tool that can really boost your poker winnings! It helps you improve an incredibly important area of poker that many players don’t even consider when playing online poker: table selection.

We all know it: poker is a game of skill (with a random element), and it’s the difference in skill between players that counts. This skill difference defines your poker profit – in the long run. Thus, logically, if you can find bad players to play with, you’ll make more money from your poker.

Poker Usher retrieves its information from two separate directions. First, it reads all your hand histories as you play and stores them in its database. Then information is extracted about every player you have ever played with, such as how much the player has won or lost, if he is passive or aggressive, how many hands he plays etc.

The other source of information is the poker site itself, for example, Party Poker. When you are about to start playing, Poker Usher connects to the poker site and assembles information about all the active games on your preferred level, computes a softness rating for each table using the database information for the seated players, and displays the tables in a list, softest tables first.

What’s more, you can go ahead and put yourself on the waiting list at the weakest tables – from within Poker Usher! This is cut out to really revolutionize your online poker experience. Usually, poker room lobbies list tables in no particular order and you’ll have a really hard time judging which table is good for you and which is hard to beat. Most players won’t even try, and this could be costly.

As the saying goes: Even if you’re the tenth best player in the world; play against the nine top players and you are bound to lose your money.

A word of caution is in place: Poker Usher is strongly addictive. Once you’ve tried it, entering an online poker room without it will feel awkward. A little like playing football without your glasses if you wear glasses, or with your friend’s glasses on if you don’t. The good tables are displayed with different colored stars and a lot of statistical info, together with the players that are seated and their individual statistics as well.

Also, by adding losing players to your “Buddy list”, you can see right away if any of your favorite losers are playing and subscribe to the next free seat at their table, all from within Poker Usher.

Talk about added value!

When you’ve realized that this heavy-duty tool for superior table selection is a must, please go ahead and try it out FOR FREE!!

For more articles on poker, visit our Poker Betting Column at The Betting Directory.

Disclaimer… We do not promote illegal, underage gambling or gambling to those who live in a jurisdiction where gambling is considered unlawful. The information within this site and email is being presented solely for entertainment purposes. We will not be held responsible for any personal loss of wagers or damages you may incur. Anyone concerned about having a gambling problem can contact Gamblers Anonymous for further information.