Bluffing with a Call

The tricks of the trade: bluffing with a call

You have weak cards, but you sense that you may be able to steal the pot. Usually, a raise or re-raise is your best weapon. However, there are some situations in the game where a flat call can be very effective in setting up a steal of the pot.

The strength of the play relies on the fact that, in some situations, a flat call looks stronger than a raise.

This kind of play relies on be able to pick up the pot if your opponent checks or bets weakly on a later street, and so has more chance to be successful if you are in position. Read more

The Art of Bluffing

The Art of Bluffing

If you were to learn poker just from TV shows, you would believe that the game is all about bluffing. This is not quite the case, but the skills of creating a good bluff and spotting a bad one are integral to the game.

What is a good Poker bluff?

When someone is telling a lie, the tale they tell must be consistent with the facts available. If parts of the tale do not fit with what you can see, you become suspicious.

And so in poker, a good bluff is one that tells a believable story. The “lie” you are telling is that your hand has connected with the board in a big way. The tale you tell must mirror that.

This means that when you bluff, your sequence of raises and re-raises should look like they would do if you held a good hand.  The bad bluffer plays his big hands in one way, and his bluffs in another.   Read more

32Red Poker’s New Software Review by Stuart Rutter

Exciting changes on 32Red Poker

A few months ago, the lobbies on 32Red were changed in a makeover that made the site look even better, and gave much easier access to all the different parts of the site. The powers that be at 32Red Poker have been working hard, as two weeks ago we were given new-look tables, with even more possibilities. Read more

Stack Size

Stack Size

Stack Size in Poker, and how it is even more important than you think…

Example #1

You hold , call a raise from the small blind, and hit a great flop of , which gives you a straight flush draw. You decide to play aggressively with a semi-bluff, to give yourself two chances of winning the pot. What is the best way to do this? Is it

a) Moving all-in straight away, b) Check-raising all-in c) Check raising, and moving all-in on the turn

Read more

Disguising the Strength or Weakness of a Hand

The disguise level of a hand

Many poker players are keenly aware of their outs and pot odds throughout the hand, but there is one factor that few are aware of – their disguise level.

The disguise level is a measure of how well hidden your hand is. The highest disguise level comes when

1) There are many cards which will concern your opponent if they come, but actually do not help your hand at all.

     and

2) The cards that do improve your hand will not concern your opponent Read more

Tournament Strategy – Part 1

Tournament strategy

“What’s the right way to play in a live tournament, or in an online poker tournament?”

There is no such thing as a correct way to play in a poker tournament. In fact, the most important thing to realise is that best strategy changes greatly with the different phases of the tournament. We’ll take a look in the next two articles at what opportunities the different phases bring:

At the start of the tournament

Early in a tournament, you will not have had time to feel out the play of the other players. Whilst this remains the case, it is best not to play too aggressively, and not to be too tricky. Read more

Bankroll Management

Bankroll management

It is not the most glamorous of poker skills, but even if your bluffing is well timed, your reading ability sharp and your courage ice-cold, poor bankroll management can bring you straight back down to earth.

Why is it important?

Imagine a player who plays without any care for managing his bankroll. He starts off on the smallest poker tournaments with $30 in his account. Incredibly, he reaches the final table on his first try, and wins $120. Full of confidence, he takes on the cash games, and builds up the levels. He is quickly becoming a great player, and has amazingly built up to $1000. He splits this between two different $4/8 tables, to see just how much he can make. Read more

TrickyRock on the EPT: Prague

TrickyRock’s European Poker Tour comes crashing down to earth

The European poker trip was flying, but it just came to an abrupt end. The fact that I am now on the flight back home from Prague means that it’s not good news from today’s EPT Main Event.

The seventh hour of play saw the end of my struggle, as I lost my race to get back into the tournament, with my  unable to outdraw the  of my opponent. It was a day on which nothing seemed to go right, and served as a reminder that tournament poker throws up as many frustrating days as it does the kind of great day that I had before the final table in Paris. Read more

TrickyRock Takes on the Best in Paris

Sorry guys, I won’t be home for a while…

I am currently in the air between Paris and Prague, where the next installment of the EPT starts tomorrow, in what has become an unlikely and unexpected poker road trip. Though it is a lot of fun to travel to these kind of places, I am already missing the people and comforts of home. For the first time, I can feel a tiny bit of sympathy for the older English guys, and the way things used to be.

Read more

Nonesense Statements in Poker

Annoying/Funny Poker Statements

Nonsense statements in poker

One of the most interesting parts of playing live poker are the friendly discussions about the game – its bad beats, and the situations it throws up. I feel that the internet is making people more knowledgeable about the way they talk about the game, but there are still some nonsense comments that come up again and again. They can be funny, but are also informative about the areas of the game that they wrongly describe.

Read more

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