It seems only to be common sense and is a mantra that sticks with new poker players for quite some time.

However, like most thing in life, things are rarely so black and white and a new player who is quickly progressing to being a not so new player should realise that there are times when it is necessary to go against the aforementioned mantra, in order to get the best out of a game.

It is often more valuable to quickly take stock of whether three out of the following four conditions are satisfied when contemplating a raise.

The first to consider is whether or not you have a big hand but feel that if you were to raise this would be a signal to your opponent, leading to him throwing away his hand.

A second factor, similar to the first but worthy of vigilant consideration is whether or not there is some chance that a stronger hand than yours is held, this should usually be contemplated upon the strength of the betting from your opponents.

The next consideration is how much of your chip stack you are committing to the pot if you continue to raise, if it is markedly less than your opponents you may be committing chip suicide.

And the final factor is, naturally, giving a free card which must leave little risk that your opposition can draw to a better hand off a flat call.

If you note that three out of four of these criteria are satisfied during a hand, it may be worth your while to simply opt for a flat call.

It is always worth remembering that with big raises come big risks, the only difference between the professional and the novice is knowing when to take the big risks…

]]> http://www.completeonlinepoker.com/hands/when-is-it-right-to-raise-145/feed/ 0 http://www.completeonlinepoker.com/general/play-poker-stay-healthy-142/ http://www.completeonlinepoker.com/general/play-poker-stay-healthy-142/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:47:06 +0000 admin http://www.completeonlinepoker.com/?p=142 One of the great pitfalls in the world of poker is trying to maintain a level of fitness.

It does not take much to fall into bad habits, especially when playing online. It is hard enough for the professionals who play live action games but they at least have the workout of walking through the bustling casino.

However, online poker players only have a short walk to the computer desk to start their game. Hardly a marathon.

This does not mean that you should concede defeat and fall victim to an unforgiving schedule that leaves you feeling less than active. By following a few simple tips you can shrug off the notion that it is a competition between being a competitive online poker player or being healthy.

One of the biggest advantages that competitive poker players have is being your own boss, you make the rules and you run your own schedule. Use this to your advantage.

Your body craves routine and you will feel a great deal better in yourself if you manage to provide it with one.

This means no sitting at the tables until 6pm one day then catching a few winks in the afternoon days later. Try to develop some consistency, build a routine and stick to it.

Diet is another aspect of a poker players life that come be very easily overlooked, yet it vital to maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

This means providing yourself with the adequate nutritional intake that your body needs.

No sitting at he desk devouring snacks and sugary drinks.

Try and stick to a regular meal schedule and remember the basic food groups, after all, you cannot expect to give your best performance at the tables if you do not have the right fuel.

The final point is equally as important as the above. Get a little exercise.

There is no need to be trying to become an Olympiad between sessions at the table but a walk around the block every day and a few light exercises will not only keep you feeling a lot better but will have the added benefit of keeping your mind on your poker and not on deteriorating health.

Some people may already be very familiar with this process and perhaps even do it without conscious awareness of the skills involved, however, playing on multiple tables during one poker session in known as multitabling, and like most things of any worth, it requires its own special considerations.

Unless you are rather unlucky, it is usually the case that the profit will outweigh the loss when choosing to play on multiple tables.

Unfortunately, knowing that multitabling is a good idea may not be enough for some people. If, like me, you can get overwhelmed with your head engrossed in one game, what chance do you have of trying to run seven or eight games simultaneously?!

Well, luckily, there are a few simple tips that can aid your performance when trying to take on this kind of endevour.

The first of these is may seem painfully obvious, yet you would be surprised how often it is overlooked…

Choose a quiet surrounding for yourself, if you cannot hear yourself think, then what hope do you have of applying any meaningful concentration to the sessions?

Make sure you are comfortable.

After all, you are likely to be in these games for the long haul, a comfortable chair and the right temperature can make all the difference in keeping your mind sharply focused on playing poker properly, instead of mentally shortlisting chiropractors.

Another important but often ignored improvement to aid multitabling is having a suitably fast computer system, if your PC cannot handle multiple games and is slow to react, you could very well be missing vital tells, hands or even the opportunity to bet on a winning hand.

Waiting for the first two windows to load while you are clicking on the eighth is not an experience I would advocate.

A simple tip that can bring new benefits to multtabling is making sure you can see all games being played at the same time. Not only does it negate the aforementioned problem but it allows you to become a better analyst of the trends and patterns that generally appear within poker.

The final and most obvious tip for playing on multiple tables is to practise.

Like it or not, practise makes perfect and the only way to see significant improvement in a new skill, such as multitabling, is to practise.

These will affect the ebb and flow of a game, adding intricacy and intrigue along the way, however, one thing that this ability to control or influence the game cannot affect is how much money a table is capable of paying out.

It is, after all, the tables you choose to sit at which will establish your win rate for any given session.

It should then stand to reason that table selection is equally as important as making the right moves during a game.

First things first, choosing what table you are going to park yourself at IS vitally important.

The first thing to consider when choosing a table is a reflection of what sort of player YOU are, you will therefore be able to choose a table which is more suited to the particulars of your playing style.

An example of this would be if you are a very tight player, then it would be wise for you choose a loose table because it would be more likely that your pre flop raises will be met, even if you have a great hand.

Thanks to the convenience of modern technology, it is pretty easy to see which tables are weak and strong. Due the fact many poker rooms offer statistic about the table, it is merely a case of seeing what percentage of players are seeing the flop.

It is also worth checking out the number of hands being played per hour and the average size of the pot.

The final aspect of a table to be mindful of is the calibre of the opposition, after all, they are the people standing in the way of you, the table and a pay out.

 So should you really play these hands like this? Well clearly the game of hold’em is all about bluffing, and you can bluff with confidence pre flop if you have a Queen or King, as you know you could easily hit something. But if you only have one King or Queen then the possibility that someone else has the other one is high, so bluffing like this is dangerous, and takes confidence.

 Now the ultimate hand in poker pre-flop is usually seen as pocket aces, a pair of ace cards. But a lot of players fail to realise that all they have is a pair, fair enough its the best pair, but it is still easily beaten by something as small as a 5 6, if 4 7 8 9 comes, then you are in deep trouble, and you know that if you have pocket aces you will be putting a sizable amount of chips into the middle of the table. You usually try to mask your hand by not betting a stupid amount, either that or you are all in, there is no worse feeling to loose with Ace Ace when your all in, especially to a couple of low cards that, in your opinion you would have to be mad to play.

 I wouldn’t say that you shouldn’t play a pair of aces but I would say be careful when playing it, remember that although pre flop you are favourite to win, unless you manage to get people off the hand pre-flop and take the blinds, you are in as risky territory than if you just went in with a pair of two’s.

Crazy as it might seem, it is entirely possible to observe the actions and habits of an opponent online.

It is important to remember, that like a live game, it’s is also entirely possible for a player to be giving off a fake tell, or it may even be possible that it is a coincidence that the tell is perceived to exist during a hand.

So in what form do these digital slip ups show themselves?

The first comes in the form of Advance Action Buttons.

These can be useful be taking advantage of players who utilise those little checked boxes to tell the poker software what to do when their turn comes.

For instance it is possible to steal the blind of a person next to you who is instantly folding based on what hole cards they are dealt, these players are not creative in their play and should always be greeted with a raise if everyone else has folded to you.

Bet timing is another classic online poker tell.

This concerns how long it takes a player to act in order to pick up a clue from the strength of his hand, which is usually an indication that player is on a draw.

Table captaining is a third kind of online tell.

This is when a player in a game is constantly criticising the playing attempts of his opponents, blaming them for a bad session and generally thinking that the poker he plays his perfect.

There are rare exceptions to table captains but for the most part they are bad players and should be treated with your usual competent game.

A final tell tale sign is bizarre betting.

Players usually make nice clean bets, a multiple of the pot with even numbers, however, it could be the tell of a bad hand when a player makes a bet that seems messy.

The equivalent of a shop pricing an item at 9.99 instead of 10 to try and subtly mislead the customer.

However, this is not a steadfast rule you, you may end up coming across them a lot less if you are having a bad run, or maybe more if you’re on a streak!

A big mistake amongst less experienced players is to push your entire stack into the pot straight away.

This mentality can also affect the seemingly more experienced players too, players see the enticing pocket pair and instinctively, though despite initial reactions, this is not a smart move…

This is because the ultimate aim of playing poker, whether online, a cash game or a tournament, is to play your hand as profitable as possible.

Players tend to seldom utilise the power that Pocket Aces provide, that power lies in the ability the chance to build up the pot early, or take down the pot quickly.

When viewing the game logically, if you’re dealt Pocket Aces in early position and raise, you should therefore have been called only by players who are holding perhaps Ace/King or Ace/Queen or a paint pair.

With Pocket Aces, you already hold two ace cards so the likelihood of your opponent having an ace is low, so it’s a safe assumption to say they are holding a paint pair.

So the idea with Pocket Aces is making players call you, and even re-raise, thereby building up the pot and making your surefire hand all the more profitable…

Unfortunately it seems, most players don’t often feel like playing poker and will simply push all their chips in pre-flop, squandering a golden opportunity to earn themselves some chips.

It may just be a few chips and one hand but it all adds up, and getting into the right habits on surefire hands is what separates the men from the boys.

Though, as unusual as it may sound, many poor poker players have the ability to generally put most of their opponents on a hand.

So why are they still ‘losing’ players? Simple. They remain losing players because they do not have the ability to ‘execute’ based on what they have read in their opponent.

They know what they could and should be doing to win, but alas, they fail to act when they should.

So, what are the common mistakes that are made by these players and how can you avoid being one of them?

Well, the first of these common mistakes is calling in order to prove you were right. A player will call simply to satisfy their own intuition, to prove that they have read a tight player’s hand correctly.

This is entirely redundant. After all, what is the point of putting your opponent on a hand if you do not act on your read?

A second common mistake is to make a silly change of mind during a hand. This is a real trap that you must train yourself out of.

A common vice of many poker players is the ability to entirely fabricate a hand that you can beat and then attribute this hand to your opponent.

Usually your first instinct is correct, if you think you should fold on a hand then you probably should.

The final, and perhaps most common mistake is to show everybody the hand that you just lost on. Simply throwing away money in order to get to a showdown, in order to show everybody what bad fortune you have had by losing on a strong hand.

By avoiding these common traps you will be able to ‘execute’ on the successful reads that you are more than likely already making.

 What I want to say is, the best players will realise that everyone has troubles when playing a round, so its up to you whether you want to share your troubles with people you are trying to beat, or dump them on your opponents. Even a 3 can win a hand, and they don’t know what you have, so why not just play it? You are trying to play a battle of wits, fair enough some times you know someone has the ‘nuts’ (unbeatable hand) then fold away. But for all your opponents know you have a flush, straight or whatever.

 Players need to realise a hand is only as bad as it is played, professional players can win with 3, 7 or 2,6 purely because they are putting their trouble hands on the heads of their less experienced players. I can see what a lot of people will be thinking, O.K so I play this rubbish hand and get called then I get called an idiot for playing that hand. But then my argument would be that it is my money and I will play whichever hand I like, and also it did make you think twice, or it did win so it clearly wasn’t that bad.

 In summery, I would like to suggest to up and coming players that before you fold you trouble hand, think, you are playing a percentage game, not only for what comes down on the flop, but how likely your rivals are to call your cards. I would suggest that this tactic works best in live games rather than online lounges, purely because you don’t know if your playing a pro or a novice. The aim of poker is to convince your opponents that you have the ‘nuts’, not that you do, you just need to make them think you do.