The Poker Blog

By Tony Guerrera

Poker is about much more than just your cards. It’s also about how your opponents play. Putting opponents on hand distributions is a big part of determining how your opponents play, but it’s only half of what you need to do when you read your opponents. You also need to predict how your opponents respond to your actions:

1.) If your hand compares unfavorably to your opponents’ hand distributions, lines of play may exist that will force your opponents to fold often enough for you to show a long-term profit.

2.) Suppose you’re in a hand of no-limit hold’em, and you put an opponent on a range of weak hands that are all better than your hand. For example, you missed a straight draw with 87, and you put your opponent on ace-high or bottom pair. Many foes will fold to bets on the river with such hands–but not all of them. Bluffing is only a good play if your opponent is the type who will fold such hands.

3.) If your hand compares favorably to your opponents’ hand distributions, size your bets such that you extract value or take pots down immediately depending on what the circumstances dictate..

4.) Know when you’re against a tricky opponent capable of inducing a mistake from you when you have a good–but not–great hand. Ideally, when in such a situation, you should employ lines of play that allow you to see showdowns relatively easily and cheaply. You don’t want to fold too many winners; simultaneously, you don’t want to lose lots of chips in big pots when you’re beaten.

Once you’re able to put your opponents on accurate hand and action distributions, you can have complete control over your table. You’ll know how to make as many chips as possible with your very good hands, you’ll know how to maximize value while minimizing losses with your decent–but not great–hands, and you’ll find ways to win chips even when you’re not getting good hole cards or hitting flops. To be a good player, you need to be good at accomplishing all of these tasks.

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

Win big with small change at Pacific Poker’s new 1¢/2¢ ring games!

Cents make sense and at Pacific Poker’s 1¢/2¢ tables in Money Play they also make dollars now that it’s cheaper to play and more thrilling than ever!

Make your money go a long way - log in now, click on the Ring Games tab, locate our 1¢/2¢ tables and start making dollars from cents!

Think you have what it takes to be the WSOP* Main Event Champion? Win your Main Event seat through Full Tilt Poker and you could have an extra 10 million reasons to smile.

For the fourth year running, we’re the only place where you can find $10 Million Main Event Mania – the world’s biggest poker promotion. Qualifying for this incredible opportunity couldn’t be easier – just win your WSOP* Main Event entry through our site and you’re in the Main Event and in the race for $10 Million in extra cash free from Full Tilt Poker.

Go on to win the Main Event after earning your tournament entry on our site and you’ll take home the first-place prize money plus $10 million more. To earn your shot at this amazing prize, just play for your entry to the Big Dance in any of our great qualifier tournaments, including the:

• 150 Seat Main Event Guarantee
• Race to the Main Event Giveaway
• $200 Tuesday Main Event Guarantee
• $300 Wednesday Main Event Guarantee
• $1K Thursday Main Event Guarantee
• $500 Sunday Main Event Guarantee

We’ll award at least 15 $12K Main Event prize packages each week through June 22nd, so there’s plenty of opportunity for you to win your way to the biggest poker tournament in the world. Take your seat in Vegas and you could leave the table with the first-place prize money and an extra $10 million courtesy of Full Tilt Poker.

With so many ways to win and our $10 Million Main Event Mania, you’d be crazy to play for your Main Event entry anywhere else.

*World Series of Poker and WSOP are trademarks of Harrah’s License Company, LLC (”Harrahs”). Harrah’s does not sponsor or endorse, and is not associated or affiliated with Full Tilt Poker or its products, services, promotions or tournaments.

ParadisePoker are now offering a 100% up to €500 bonus to every new player. If you make a first transfer of €500 they will credit your pending account with a bonus of another €500 . If you decide to transfer less than that for the first time they will match exactly the amount you transfer.

This is one of the most generous signup bonus in planet poker, every customer can get up to €500. Start playing today at any of their cash tables or real money tournaments and you will be earning points against your bonus.

By Tony Guerrera

Situation 1: Joe Schmoe is playing in a fullhanded no-limit hold’em ring game. Action folds to Joe, and he raises with A♣9♣ from the cutoff. The button and the blinds call, and the flop is A♥A♦9♦. The blinds check to Joe, and he makes a pot-sized bet fueled by two hopes:

1.) One of his opponents has the case ace and will go over the top.
2.) An opponent with a pocket pair will call on the flop
3.) An opponent with a flush draw will call or semibluff

All three of Joe’s opponents dash Joe’s hopes and quickly fold.
Situation 2: Joe Schmoe is playing shorthanded no-limit hold’em. In 100 hands of play there’s only been one reraise preflop. Joe raised from the button, the small blind reraised, and Joe folded. This happened around hand #50 of Joe’s session.
During hands #101 and #102, Joe (who has been playing somewhat aggressively but far from manically) opens from the button and the cutoff with raises. Both times, the same player reraises. After not doing much for 8 hands, Joe opens for a raise with JJ. Joe is reraised again–this time by a different player who has never reraised preflop. Being that this is the third time in the span of about 10 hands that he’s been reraised preflop, Joe has faith in his JJ, goes over the top, and ends up losing 100 big blinds versus his opponent’s AA.

Hope and faith adversely affect our poker playing. In situation #1, Joe needs to think about his opponents. Instead of betting pot and hoping, he should think realistically about his opponents’ distributions. In many–but not all–games, a half-pot bet (or even something slightly less) will be ideal. A pot-sized bet might actually force a player with the case ace out of the pot if he has a bad kicker to accompany it. And anyone who mucks an ace with a bad kicker here will do the same with a pocket pair. Instead of betting big and hoping for a monster confrontation, Joe should bet smaller and get value from his hand.

In situation #2, a lot of things happen within a short span of time, and Joe makes a common mistake. At a table where no preflop reraising is happening, the reality of the game is that players are waiting for cards. The player who reraised Joe twice in a row probably had big hands both times. It could be possible that the different player who reraises him the third time observed Joe’s reaction to the prior two reraises, but the texture of the table dictates that Joe probably ran into another big hand. If preflop reraises begins happening regularly–on the order of once every two orbits or so–Joe can reason that the dynamic of the game has changed. But by letting faith replace reason with a hand like JJ and a random short spurt of events, Joe got himself into a lot of trouble.

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

The clocks have gone forward so you’ve lost an hour’s sleep and it’s April so you can expect a few showers - but it’s not all bad news. The 32Red 30 Day Poker Festival began on the 1st April.

The prizes steadily increase throughout the month until they reach their $3,200 Freeroll Finale on 30th April.

They have a special event every day throughout the 30 Day Festival, here are some highlights…

9th April - $500 Double Bounty Tournament
14th April – 33,000 Redback Giveaway
15th April - $1,000 Freeroll
21st April – 49,500 Redback Giveaway
26th April - $1000 Added BTB Tourney
30th April - $3,200 Freeroll

Purple Lounge Poker Room have re-designed their poker software to bring players an even better poker playing experience.

Re-sizeable tables and Mini-view

Their tables are now re-sizeable, allowing you to play more games at once while still managing to keep an eye on the all the action. With Mini-View you can cut down the graphics on your screen, leaving you with just the important information you need to win. (Tip when using Mini-view: Move tables by clicking in the middle of them!)

Avatars and Improved Visuals and Sounds

Let the other players know who they are up against by uploading a picture of yourself to be displayed at the table, and enjoy the enhanced animations and sounds. If this is affecting your play, no problem. Just visit the Options menu to customise or turn these off.

Discover What Hands Other’s Were Holding

Use the hand replay feature to find out what the other players called you to the river with, even if they muck their hand! All of the above features and many, many more are customisable by you the player, meaning the choice is yours as to how you play!

IF you have not tried Purple Lounge before, get over there now and take the opportunity to earn a $1000 bonus and to take part in their $20K freeroll.

By Tony Guerrera

Texas hold’em, seven card stud, Omaha, razz, Mexican poker, blind man’s bluff — the list of playable poker variants extends pretty much as far as your imagination can take you with a deck of cards. And the same can be said for the number of ways each poker variant can be played: cash games and several different tournament formats.
When playing in a cash game, the chips on the table are directly equivalent to cash (a $1 chip represents $1), and you may cash out or add more chips at any time. Generally, chips aren’t directly equivalent to cash in a tournament. You can’t just take the payout for first place and divide by the number of chips in play to find out how much each chip is worth (the exception being if you’re playing a winner-take-all tournament). When playing in a tournament, your goal is to maximize your monetary expected value, which is equal to P(1st)(Payout for 1st) + P(2nd)(Payout for 2nd) +…+P(nth)(Payout for nth)–P(kth) is the probability that you’ll finish in kth place.

At a given time in a tournament, your probability of finishing in each place will be a strong function of the relative stack sizes. And the monetary expected value associated with each stack distribution is a function of the payout structure. When evaluating the monetary expected value of a tournament decision, you need to evaluate the distribution of possible stack distributions that will result from a particular move. For some payout structures -– particularly top-heavy ones –- you won’t mind taking risks that are just barely above neutral chip expected value. For other payout structures–like the relatively flat ones found in satellites and many single table tournaments–you’ll prefer to avoid big confrontations with marginal edges, looking to keep pots small in such situations and folding if action gets too heavy.

Poker is a game of situations, but those situations aren’t just defined by the cards and how your opponents play. They’re also defined by the structure of the game you’re playing in. You can have the same cards and be playing against an opponent who plays identically regardless of format, and optimal play can dictate taking completely different lines of play depending on the format. Those who say that it’s tough to be good at cash games, single table tournaments, and multitable tournaments tend to be those who play the same regardless of the poker format they’re playing. Account for the game format, and you’ll be able to succeed in whatever form of poker you’re playing.

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

Lace up your running shoes and get ready to Race to the Main Event because Full Tilt Poker is offering you the chance to win one of 50 completely free seats at the world’s biggest poker tournament.

Full Tilt Poker’s exclusive Race to the Main Event began on Saturday, March 1st when they started holding daily Freeroll tournaments that will run through Sunday, June 22nd. By the time the race ends, 50 players will have won free seats at the 2008 WSOP* Main Event.

To claim your free $10,000 tournament entry, just look for one of their Main Event Race – Round 1 SNGs running around the clock. Win one of these SNGs and you’ll qualify to play in one the Main Event Race – Round 2 Freerolls running four times each day.

Take either first or second place in one of these daily Preliminary Freerolls to advance to the Main Event Race – Finals Freerolls held each Sunday at 16:30 ET (21:30 GMT). Reach the podium in one of these tournaments by placing first, second or third and they will reward your performance by giving you a completely free WSOP* Main Event entry worth $10,000.

Play Online Poker

September 27 - October 4, 2008
Radisson Aruba Resort & Casino
Game On - 2008 Aruba Poker Classic Announced

Minutes after wrapping up the 2007 Aruba Poker Classic, Ultimate Poker’s email inbox became flooded with enquiries about next year’s Aruba Poker Classic. It was unanimous. Poker players for around the world, entertainment celebrities and the international media thought the 6th annual Aruba Poker Classic was one of the best poker tournaments of all time. Well, they’re about to outdo themselves.

The 2008 Aruba Poker Classic will kick off on September 27th, 2008 and run through October 4th. For the 7th year in a row, the tournament will be held at the luxurious Radisson Aruba Resort and Casino.

The Biggest News is the Prize Pool

With 750 players expected to descend on the island of Aruba, they’re estimating an unprecedented $4 Million prize pool. As if that isn’t exciting enough, they’re also guaranteeing a first place prize of $1 Million. That’s $200,000 more than what was won by Travis Rice, the poker player from Fort Worth, Texas who finished first in the 2007 Texas Hold’em tournament (for those without a calculator or basic math skills, Travis left Aruba with $800,000).

About the 2008 Aruba Poker Classic

The 2008 Aruba Poker Classic isn’t just any old land-based poker tournament on a gorgeous island paradise. It’s an unforgettable experience with your favorite UB players unlike anything you could ever imagine.

There isn’t a postcard large enough to write home about the experiences you’ll have at the 2008 Aruba Poker Classic.

Go head-to-head with Phil Hellmuth, Annie Duke, and some of the world’s best poker professionals in nonstop poker tournaments and cash games. Rub elbows with Hollywood celebrities at exclusive Aruba parties that make the wildest Las Vegas shindigs seem tame. Re-energize by soaking up the sun on the world’s best beach and get ready to do it all over again tomorrow.

Qualify Soon

Their tournaments team is putting together an incredible schedule to help you win your way to the 2008 Aruba Poker Classic. Online qualifiers were launched in January 2008. To win your way there for next to nothing, you’ll need the UltimateBet software so click on the banner below!