The Poker Lab Rat

No Limit Poker - Over Betting Strategy to Catch the “Heroes”

No limit Texas hold’em betting is about getting value on the hand that you have.

If you have a big hand, you want to get big value on it. But it’s no secret that a value bet is a sign that you have a good hand, and you’re betting the most you think will get called by your opponent. These days it seems that the “value” bet is no longer good value.

Depending on the situation, betting a typical value bet amount at the end of a hand in today’s game may not be the best move anymore. If the situation is right you could get much more “value” on your big hand if you make a bet that’s way too much for the situation normally.

Today’s poker player watches lots of TV action and they want to make tough calls when they think that a player may be bluffing so that they can look like their TV heroes at the showdown. If you’re in a hand against a player like this, making an over bet will often look like a desperation bluff (to him). If that opponent has a hand that’s good enough, they’ll make the “hero call” on your big hand.

The move works the best when you’ve been making smaller bets on the earlier streets and there are possible straight or flush draws on the board. If no cards come for the straight or flush, and you suddenly make a big bet, many experienced players will think you were semi-bluffing all the way, and now you’re making a desperation bet because you missed your draw.

Remember the whole point is to out-think your opponent - so you have to pitch this at the right level - if you are playing against a player who is thinking one step ahead then you need to be two steps.

This poker tip was brought to you by Bodog Poker where you can get an extra 110% bonus poker chips on your first poker deposit

2009 WSOP - Phil Ivey wins 2nd bracelet of series - 7th overall

Phil Ivey does it again in Event #25 of the 2009 WSOP winning his 7th WSOP gold bracelet - and his second in ten days.

Ivey, was the eventual winner of Event 25 - $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo 8-or-better and is now tied for sixth on the all-time wins list.

Carbon Poker Bad Beat Jackpot struck - $734,000 paid out!

We can report that the PDC Poker Bad Beat Jackpot has paid out again at Carbon Poker – this time at over $734,000.

Nine players were present at the table to witness Quad Queens beat Quad 7’s – and all the players received massive payouts.

Congrats to the lucky players who were present for the jackpot – especially Ween10, the “losing” holder of quad 7’s who picked up $257,089.81 for his bad beat, and kdawg1979 with his miraculous four Queens who was a $128,544.90 winner.

The seven remaining players at the table were all paid out just over $18,000 simply for being there at Carbon Poker.

Remember :
The Bad Beat Jackpot is triggered at Carbon Poker when a hand of quad 7’s or better is beaten. That is the lowest qualifying hand in the industry – if this happened at another site, the jackpot simply wouldn’t have gone off.

So what are you waiting for - get into the action at Carbon Poker now.

Mike Matusow on Poker: Check-Raising the Devil

In the second week of the 2004 Series, I just missed a final table, finishing eleventh in a $2,000 Limit Hold’em event. Daniel (Negreanu) went on to win that tournament for his third bracelet. What I remember most about that tournament was a hand that came up about eight hours into Day One.

“Syracuse Chris” Tsiprailidis had pocket queens, Cecilia Reyes Mortensen was dealt pocket kings, and I looked down at two aces. Not surprisingly, the betting got capped preflop. I really didn’t know what Chris had, but I put Cecilia on kings.

When Q-4-4 flopped, Chris bet out with his full house, queens full of fours, and both Cecilia and I just called. I suspected Chris for the boat at this point, but the size of the pot was sitting on the borderline of being worth a call to try to spike an ace. When the turn came with a king, Chris bet out again and Cecilia ?at-called. The pot was huge by then, but I was sure Cecilia had kings and was laying a trap for us both with her kings full.

In a cash game, you still might make a call, but saving a bet in a limit tournament is a lot more important. Although I was almost sure I was beaten, I went in the tank for awhile with my aces, wondering if I could be wrong. If there were two boats against me, they would clearly pay me off if I hit an ace on the river. This one pot would ensure that the winner would go deep in the tournament. I eventually called, hoping for a miracle ace on the river.

Miracles do happen! When that big fat perfect ace hit on the river, Syracuse Chris led out again and Cecilia raised. I reraised. Chris immediately showed his pocket queens to the spectators sitting behind him and folded. Cecilia went into the tank for about three minutes.

“I can’t believe I only called on the turn. I know you have aces. How could I play this so badly?” she moaned.

These were not deep stack tournaments in 2004; saving one bet at this point in a tournament could make a huge difference, but she finally made the call. I showed my aces full, Cecilia showed her kings full, and Chris flipped over his folded queens full.

Everyone at the table went wild when they saw the cards, and tournament players from the other tables came over to stare at the board.

Mike
PS: You can win copies of my new book (Check Raising the Devil) online at FullTiltPoker.

You can play and chat with Mike Matusow, and other top professional poker players online at FullTiltPoker.com. Tables highlighted red in the lobby have a pro registered so check it out! Playing a pro sounds daunting, but really is a great way to learn more about poker.

For the latest player reviews and poker fact sheets on FullTiltPoker.com check out:
>>Gooners Guide to Gambling Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating
>>PokerLabRat.com’s Review of FullTilt Poker

Playing Pocket Jacks - A Video Warning ..

Daniel Negreanu says it hard to play pocket jacks. The creator of this video completely disagrees with him - and made this video to prove him wrong.

Or here is a direct link if your browser is not showing it correctly
It’s easy to play Pocket Jacks - Video Tutorial

Be warned that the language gets a little strong throughout the video when the play does not QUITE go as the narrator planned - don’t play this one out loud in the office !

:-)

Beginner Poker Strategies - Playing the top 10 hands

Phil Hellmuth has probably offered the best advice that a novice player can learn. In his book “Play Poker Like the Pros”, he explains that a good way for a new player to play poker is to only play the top 10 hands. Those hands consist of A-A, K-K, Q-Q, A-K, J-J, 10-10, 9-9, 8-8, A-Q and 7-7. Every other hand you get should be folded, as you learn about the importance of patience and getting into hands with good cards.

This tight style will afford you lots of time to read your opponents and try to learn how they act as they play their game. When you do get one of these hands you’re supposed to play it aggressively because you’re likely to have the highest winning percentage at the time. This top ten hand method works best at a full table of nine players, or early in a tournament setting.

As your game progresses you can start to widen out the hands that you will play. But playing the top ten hands will keep you in the game longer, allowing you watch and learn, instead of going broke from playing too many hands.

This beginner poker strategy tip is from Bodog Poker. Check out the latest poker room Review of Bodog Poker here at PokerLabRat.com.

>>Visit Bodog Poker (Players from around the world except Canada are welcome as members to play poker for free or for real money - USA OK)

Pro Tips: Becoming a Complete Poker Player

If you want to become a complete poker player, you need to learn how to play all the variations of the game. You should do this because it’s no good being the world’s best Hold ’em player when the biggest sucker in town only wants to play Seven-Card Stud. Ideally, you want to be able to play whatever game looks to be the most profitable on any given day.

When I first started playing poker, Five-Card Stud and Five-Card Draw were two of the most popular games, but now they’re both almost completely dead. They got replaced by Seven-Card Stud, which has also decreased in popularity. For a while No-Limit Hold ’em looked like it might be dying out because in the high-stakes cash games the tightest players always won, but it proved to be the perfect game for television so now it’s the most popular game. Because of how prevalent Hold ’em has become, I would advise beginning poker players to start out by learning its many variations, including Limit, No-Limit, cash games, and tournaments.

After Hold ’em, you should learn how to play Omaha, particularly Pot-Limit. Limit Omaha doesn’t work very well because deciding whether or not to call a bet on the river when a third flush card hits and you make a Queen-high flush isn’t a very big decision if you only have to call one bet and there are twelve in the pot. But if you’re playing Pot-Limit and your opponent bets the size of the pot on the river, whether you should call with your Queen-high flush or not becomes a much more difficult decision. In general, Pot-Limit games require a bit more skill than No-Limit games. Because you don’t have the all-in move to fall back on, you have to be equally capable of playing before the flop and after the flop.

Next you should learn the Hi/Lo games, particularly Stud Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo. Another good game is 2-7 Triple Draw, a tremendous action game that’s catching on very quickly. Like the best card games, it has a lot of mathematical elements to it, but there’s also a lot of card reading and bluffing involved. In 2-7, a drawing hand with one card to come is almost always an underdog to a hand that stands pat, so if you have a 9 and you can force your opponent to break his 9 you’ve gained a big advantage.

Beginning poker players are lucky nowadays because they can learn and practice all these games online. When I was starting out, most poker games were private games and you had to pay your dues just to get invited to play. If you were a winning player and you wanted to get invited back, you needed to show up on time, be nice to the suckers, and you couldn’t quit when you were winning a little bit. Even then, there might not be a place at the table for you the following week.

Contrast that with today’s world where you can play on your computer at home any time you want. Playing online offers an unprecedented level of convenience. Let’s say you’re about to go the movies and your girlfriend’s just gotten out of the shower but she’s taking forever to dry her hair. You can actually play an entire Sit & Go while you’re waiting for her. Sit & Gos can be very profitable. They’re also an ideal way to test out new strategies. By studying your hand history afterwards, you can see what worked and what didn’t. You can make notes about how you fared with a big stack and how you did with a short stack, and you can develop new ideas to try out in the future.

I still enjoy playing live because one of my skills is the ability to read people, but there are little tricks you can pick up that will help you gather information about your opponents when you’re playing online. If you’re playing at a single table and one of your opponents is multi-tabling, you can bring up all the tables he’s sitting at and watch how he plays. If he suffers a bad beat on another table, it could affect the way he plays a hand at your table, and you can take advantage of it.

For beginning players, online poker offers a convenient way of gaining a ton of experience in a very short period of time. If you choose to go this route, I suggest you take the time to learn all the games available to you so you’ll never have to pass up an opportunity to play against a big sucker just because he wants to play a game you’re unfamiliar with.

ABOUT STEVE ZOLOTOW: His Nicknames “Z” and “The Bald Eagle”, he has 2 WSOP Bracelets and is a renowned game theorist. Steve Zolotow plays poker online at Full Tilt Poker.

“Learn, Chat and Play With The Pros” is not just the blather of Full Tilt Poker’s marketing team - these really are aspects that we consider make this great poker site stand out. Here’s how:

Learn: Access the Fullt Tilt Poker library of poker lessons written by the game’s best players.
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>>Compare FullTilt Poker to the other poker sites we recommend for players from around the world including US based poker players.

Professional Poker Tip: Adjusting strategy mid-hand

Most of the time when you’re engaged in a poker hand, you’ll be thinking about what decisions you will make before you have to make them. For example, if you call a raise with K-Q, you’ll think to yourself: Okay, if I hit top pair, I’m going to play this hand. If I have a gut-shot and two over-cards, I’m going to play this hand. If I have an open-ender and two over-cards, I’m going to play this hand. Otherwise, I’m going to let it go.

However, there will often be times when something happens that causes you to change your strategy mid-hand. Maybe your opponent makes a weak bet that gives you information worth using to your advantage. Or maybe he makes a bet on the river that looks like a value bet and convinces you to fold a hand you were planning on calling with.

It’s always good to enter a hand with a plan, but it’s essential that you be willing to deviate from the plan if the situation calls for it. Every hand requires that you react to your cards and the cards on the board, but it’s equally important that you factor in your opponent and his tendencies.

Here’s a hand that I played recently at the 2009 EPT German Open in Dortmund, where I went on to finish in fourth place. It was late in Day Two, I had been fairly short-stacked for a while and occasionally shoving with decent hands, but I hadn’t yet made a serious bluff in the tournament. We were eight-handed, the player in second position made a very small raise to 8,500 with blinds at 2,000/4,000 and a 500-chip ante, and it folded around to me in the small blind with pocket fives. I had about 70,000 in chips, and all I knew for sure was that I wasn’t going to fold a pocket pair in this situation.

I decided to call rather than raise, knowing the big blind would certainly be priced in to call as well, and he did. The flop came A-8-3. I was obviously looking to flop a set, or maybe something like 2-3-4 or 3-4-6, and this flop was not at all good for my hand, so I checked. The big blind also checked. And the initial raiser made what looked to me like a very weak bet, 12,000 into a 29,500 pot.

I was quite sure from the bet that he didn’t have an Ace, and probably he didn’t have a pair of any kind. It seemed to me that he had a hand like K-J, something in that range. So when he bet 12,000, I considered all of the factors – my read on him, my tight image, and my stack size. I decided to raise 21,000 more, representing that I had perhaps a weak Ace and had committed myself to the pot (even though, in reality, I wasn’t committed and would be willing to fold to a re-raise, leaving myself with about 30,000 in chips).

The big blind folded, and after thinking for a long time, the initial raiser folded also. He simply had to give me credit for a real hand that I wasn’t going to lay down to a re-raise.

This was a situation where I didn’t really intend to commit many chips if I didn’t hit a favorable flop, but I adjusted my decision making based on my opponent’s post-flop action, believing the stage had been set for me to make a move. Always be willing to adjust your plan, and every once in a while you’ll find yourself winning chips that otherwise would have been pushed toward someone else.

ABOUT JOHAN STORAKERS: Swedish player Johan Storakers is based in Stockholm and has won more than $2.4 Million in career tournament earnings… and like many pros and wanna be pros, plays poker online at Full Tilt Poker.

ABOUT FULLTILTPOKER.com: For the latest views and reviews of Full Tilt Poker site check out
>> Full Tilt Poker Review (PokerLabRat.com)
>> FullTiltPoker.com Poker Room Review (GoonersGuide.com)

WHAT’S ON AT FULLTILTPOKER.COM?

Hosts announced for FTOPS XII: Erick Lindgren opens FTOPS XII with a $1 million NL Hold ‘em event on May 6th. WPT Bay 101 winner Steve Brecher hosts Event #12, the $1.5 million 6-max tournament with antes from the start. Howard Lederer’s HEROS Event #14 has a new format, Patrik Antonius hosts the $2 million Two Day Event and Jennifer Harman ends FTOPS XII with the $2.5 million Main Event. Choose your event from the full schedule.

Each pro hosts a matching MiniFTOPS XII event, where you can play for just 1/10th the regular FTOPS buy-in.

Play the 200K Stimulus Qualifier: At least 80 players in the 200K Stimulus Qualifier will win a $2,500 prize package to WSOP’s* Event #4, including the $1,000 entry fee and $1,500 for expenses. Event #4, the Stimulus Special, is likely to have the largest starting field outside of the Main Event and a prize pool of $5 million.

Buy your way in for $30 + $3 or satellite your way in for as little as $1 or 50 Full Tilt Points.
* 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 …(or for that matter PokerLabRat.com and Red Card Media Limited)

Poker Hand Coordination: Tips by the pros

Here’s the latest pro tip from FullTiltPoker.com Professional, Brandon Adams.

Hand coordination is the relative strength of your hand compared to your opponents’ hand, and it’s probably the single biggest factor determining whether you have a good or bad session playing poker. If it’s working in your favor, whenever you flop a monster, one of your opponents will also make a big hand, just not quite as big as yours. In this situation, playing your hand as fast as possible usually gives you the best chance to make the most money.

Say you’re playing Hold ‘em and you’re in a four-way pot, the board comes 9-9-4, and you have pocket fours. You want to play this hand fast for two reasons. The first is that you’re hoping one of your opponents has a 9. If so, he might raise you, allowing you to reraise him. Ideally, he’ll call, then call you again on the turn and the river, and you’ll make a lot of money.

The other reason you want to play this hand fast is that, if you check, it’s quite possible your opponents will also check. Then, if the turn brings a 6 and one of your opponents has pocket sixes and makes a bigger full house, you’re going to lose a huge amount of money. Giving a free card and losing an enormous pot when you could have won a small pot (if only you’d bet) is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in poker.

Now let’s say the flop comes K-J-J, and you have pocket kings. You’re not as likely to cost yourself your entire stack by slowplaying in this situation. It’s extremely unlikely that your opponent is going to be behind on the flop and yet make a hand on the turn that beats you, but I still think you should play it fast. You’ll win more money by betting the whole way because any player holding a jack is, at the very least, going to call you down, and he might even raise you. On the flop you just have to put out the line and hope that one of your opponents has a jack, or better yet, K-J.

If you play it slow in this situation, you’re giving away the strength of your hand. If you check on the flop with the idea of check-raising, then when you do put in the raise you’re telling your opponent you’ve made a huge hand and are giving him the opportunity to lay down a jack. You’ll make far more money by simply betting the whole way.

However, slowplaying a monster is occasionally the better play. Suppose you raise from middle position with A-Q of hearts, the button and the big blind both call, and the flop comes 6-7-2, all hearts. If the big blind checks, you should check too. If the button bets, you can then raise because he’s either buffing, in which case you’re not going to win any more money from him, or he’s also flopped a flush, in which case you want to get your money into the pot as quickly as possible in hopes of winning his entire stack, or he’s flopped a set, in which case he’ll call your check-raise on the flop and he’ll call a big bet on the turn and he might even call a big bet on the river.

If the board pairs on the turn, you should still bet. It’s such a draw heavy board that your opponent might think you only have the ace of hearts in your hand, or the ace of hearts and a pair, or the ace of hearts and another ace. There are a lot of hands he could put you on in this spot besides the nut flush so, even if the board pairs, you should keep betting for value, hoping to get called by a worse hand.

If you bet the turn and your opponent puts in a stiff raise, then you should reevaluate. If you bet the turn and he calls and you bet the river and he raises, then you should fold because you can credibly put him on a full house.

Because hand coordination plays such an important role in determining your long-term success, you need to make as much money as you possibly can when it’s working in your favor, and one of the best ways of doing that is playing fast after you flop a big hand.

About this poker professional:

Brandon plays poker online exclusively at FullTiltPoker.com. Adams is a high-stakes poker player who has been on multiple television programs, including the 2005 Tournament of Champions and the 2007 World Series of Poker, where he finished sixth in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, earning more than $75,000. He’s written a novel (about poker of course!) Author of Broke: A Poker Novel and has one WSOP final appearance to his name.

About FullTiltPoker.com:

Full Tilt is a high-action online poker room renown for it’s high stakes cash game tables and huge team of high profile professional player endorsements. Full Tilt Poker welcomes players from around the world including the United States of America. For the latest views and reviews on FullTiltPoker.com online poker room check out:

>>PokerLabRat.com’s Full Tilt Poker Review
>>Full Tilt Poker Review and Rating at GoonersGuide.com

Compare Full Tilt to other US-friendly online poker sites - or just visit FullTiltPoker.com for a look around!

Irish Poker Open attracts 700 starters

AFTER A tough Budget and a difficult year for the Irish economy, you couldn’t blame the organisers of the €3,500 entry Irish Open poker championships for feeling tetchy in the run-up to the event.

Since last year’s tournament, which 667 people entered, consumer spending has dropped, the dole queues have extended and the tide of disposable income which brought about the worldwide poker boom has slowed to a trickle.

However, despite the prevailing economic wind, 701 players turned up at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin Friday afternoon to take their seat in the event, more eager than ever to compete for a prize pool of more than €2.2 million.

The eventual winner of the Texas Hold’em event, which runs until Easter Monday (13th April), will take home some €600,000.

“We had to work much harder to get the numbers this year,” said Paul Burke of tournament host Paddy Power. “A lot of poker players don’t have the same disposable income they had this time last year. If we had got 600 players we would have been very happy.”