With all that said I want to share a few tips and a bit of knowledge I have picked up over the course of playing in no limit hold ‘em cash games. Most of my advice pertains to full-ring, as that is my game, but equally a good choice of opponents and situations in 6-max and heads-up scenarios is crucial.

What Makes A Good Table?

• Not many short stackers
• Not many regulars
• Loose pre-flop and post-flop play
  • Look for large % of players seeing flops and large pots
• Full stacked aggressive players and fish to your right
• Short stacks and tight/predictable players to your left

Time of Day/Day of the Week
If you only have a few hours to devote to poker a week then you want to make sure you schedule your time to best take advantage of the peak player times. With the majority of poker traffic coming out of North America the absolute best time to be playing is night time in the US & Canada. Additionally, the games are at there best with lots of casual players on Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sunday afternoon.

The more traffic at any time the more choice you will have in games to play in. Not only that though the peak periods of night time and weekends are when the most casual players will be in the games. It can be a real reg-fest in the middle of a weekday. That said, it is always night time somewhere in the world and there are fish to be found.

Bankroll
You might see the juiciest table in the world where everyone at the table is a massive donkey, but if you aren’t properly bankrolled for those stakes you shouldn’t be playing. What use is a juicy game if you are risking busting your poker bankroll just by sitting down?

Statistics and Monitoring
If the site you play on allows data-mining then that can be a great source of information before you have sat at the table and played any hands with the players. Poker Tracker and Hold ‘Em Manager are great for keeping records of player’s statistics and hand histories. Once you have played a fair amount of hands at a certain level you should get an idea of who the good regulars are, who the exploitable regulars are and some of the fish that frequent the games. Additionally, if you play just about every day and see a table with players you have never seen before with odd stack sizes, chances are that it is a great game.

Note Taking
One thing that can really help speed up your table selection process is good note taking during your sessions. You will thank yourself later when you got to sit down at a table and you already know some information about your opponents. It can help you determine whether to sit down at all, where to sit and help you immediately cash in on profitable situations. A great thing you can do on Full Tilt Poker and some other sites is colour code certain opponents. It is a great idea to colour your players according to their type, that way you can see if there are too many short stacks or regulars in the Lobby before you even open the table.

Starting Tables/Playing Short Handed
An excellent method to find yourself at an awesome table is to be there when it starts. Non-regular players don’t join wait lists, they want to sit down and start playing straight away. Additionally, tables that have been running a while slowly lose their bad players as they go bust.

Starting full-ring tables is actually a great way to learn to play short-handed. Full ring regulars and the less adept players that join new tables are great to play against when the games are short because they don’t adjust well. Generally, short-handed play won’t last long as the tables fill up pretty quickly.

50BB Min & Deep Stacked Tables
Short stacks, while generally not very good, take up a valuable seat at the table that could be occupied by a poor full stack player. Additionally, it can be annoying to constantly have to monitor and adjust your play for short stacks at the table when you are multi-tabling. The solution is to play at the 50 big blind minimum tables at PokerStars or the deep stack tables at Full Tilt Poker. There probably aren’t enough of these tables around to play at them exclsuively, but where possible you should try and use them and maximise your skill edge against deep stacked opponents.

Choosing Your Seat
Choosing the right seat at the table can often be overlooked when it comes to game selection. You generally want to have position on the good aggressive players and shouldn’t mind being out of position against tighter more passive players. Where possible you want to be to the left of fish so you get to play lots of pots against them and have position a lot of the time when you do. Without knowing much about the players, try and sit to the left of the deep stacks as you want as much position edge as possible when the big money decisions come up.

Baluga Theorem
When you are the pre-flop raiser, you c-bet the flop and have your turn bet raised your one pair hands probably aren’t good.

Yeti Theorem
A flop 3-bet on a dry board (usually a paired one) it is often a bluff.

Zeebo Theorem
Nobody ever folds a full house. Mostly a reference to boards with three of a kind on them and people’s inability to fold any pair because it is not a full house.

Clarkmeister Theorem
In a heads-up situation on the river when you are out of position and a 4 flush hits, it is a great situation to bluff.

Yvesaint Theorem
If you hold 22 a 3 will flop, if you fold 33 a 2 will flop… kinda stupid.

If you’ve got any more then post a comment and I will build on the list.

You aren’t going to always be playing your A game, it might be fatigue, intoxication, tilt or something else. I feel like having confidence when you are playing poker is just as important a psychological factor as the aforementioned circumstances. Without self-belief you can end up playing timid, being indecisive, more prone to tilt & frustration and let negative thoughts get in the way of the logical thought process needed to play a hand correctly.

Maintaining Perspective during Downswings
Most people can play good poker when they are running well, but often times the difference between a good win rate and a decent one is how well you play when things aren’t going your way. Having faith in your ability can really keep your head straight during the tough times and stop you from derailing yourself. My first tip when it comes to maintaining a level head about yourself at these stages is to take heart in your past results.

Here, I’m assuming you have been a proven winning player over a decent sample and that this downswing, while significant in the short term, is probably just a momentary glitch in your poker life. Even experienced players can have thoughts creep in like ‘the games have changed’, ‘there are less fish’ and ‘maybe my style doesn’t work anymore; but in reality this probably just isn’t the case. While it is important to make changes and adjust your game to a changing environment, it is highly unlikely for that much to change in such a short period of time for you not to be a winning player. And in my opinion when you are battling a self-confidence war, it is about the worst time to make large scale changes to your poker game. Just go back and look at the success you have had in the past, and don’t lose sight of the game plan and decision making processes that got you there.

Your Convictions & Your Bankroll
I want to talk a bit about you and your bankroll. If it doesn’t take much for you to lack self assurance then maybe it is worth thinking about being a little more conservative with your bankroll requirements. When moving up it might be an idea to slowly mix in tables until you feel completely comfortable with what you are doing. It might mean you are an ultra-bankroll nit, but don’t worry about what other people say or what some arbitrary bankroll calculation tells you to do, do what is right for you and your game. Having said all that, don’t let yourself be intimidated by moving up or the players that play above you. It is still a game poker, your opponents will still make mistakes and in reality you are probably putting higher limits games and the players on a pedestal that doesn’t accurately reflect the difference in skill level.

Don’t Let Doubt Retard Your Game; Continue To Take Risks
Confidence issues often manifest themselves into playing a little scared, not taking enough risks and being afraid to make mistakes. Obviously, the goal of poker is to make less mistakes than our opponents, but often times when you get yourself in a mindset of trying to lose big pots, you are actually making the biggest mistake of all. What I am trying to say is that it can often be better to make aggressive mistakes than conservative ones. Never let yourself be afraid at the poker table, try and build your mental strength up to a point where you maintain your smart aggression through thick and thin times. Most importantly, don’t beat yourself up over your errors, everybody makes them and you are only human. Misplayed hands are an opportunity; there is always something to be learned from them.

Study Hard
Part of growing belief in you at the poker table is the work and study you do away from it. The more time you spend educating yourself, analysing old hands, other people’s hands, videos, forums and anything else you can get your hands on the better. With knowledge, less leaks and a greater understanding of your short-comings comes a greater backbone when you are playing. You are far less apt to be sidetracked when the keys to playing winning poker become so far engrained in your brain.

You Know More Than You Think
Ever have ‘one of those sessions’ and come away feeling like you know absolutely nothing about poker? Well maybe something you could do is prove to yourself how much you do actually know. Write an essay, make a strategy post, read a few pages from the first poker book you ever read and realise how far you have come.

Another great thing you can do is coach/mentor a lower stakes player, or maybe someone who has never even played before. You will be amazed at the knowledge that will spew out to them every time they ask you a question. Coaching can also be beneficial as a kind of revision and exploration of ideas for your own game.

Build Trust With Yourself
Certainty in your game comes with a build up of trust with yourself and your own actions. You are never going to play with full self-belief if you constantly let yourself down with poor play, tilt, bad bankroll management, getting drunk and all the other actions that can ruin your poker game. Try and get on top of these problems so that they don’t hold you back from being a confident player.

Confidence, Your Ego, Arrogance & What Other People Think
It’s critical to separate a healthy sense of self-belief from that of over-confidence and letting your ego get in the way. Feelings of knowledge and trust in your skill level need to be separated from those of feeling superior or that you are better than you are actually are. One of the most important factors in believing in yourself is actually knowing your limitations, realising that you are only human, that there are players who have an edge on you and accepting it. Those driven by ego at the poker table believe that they are better than they actually are and subsequently make sub-optimal decisions based upon the false pretence that they have an edge in a spot which they don’t.

Don’t take what other people think of you to heart. I mean it is important to know how other players view your play, a concept of your own image is critical to winning. What I mean is, don’t live and die by the approval of others in the poker community. What should matter to you is whether or not you think/know you are a good winning player, not what other people perceive. Trying to impress other people is a good sign of you letting ego into your game and can often lead to fancy play syndrome and bad game selection.

If All Else Fails, Step Away From the Vehicle
Burnout is a win rate killer. Learn to recognise the signs when the drain of every day poker is getting to you and take steps to remove yourself immediately. When confidence hits an all time low it is time to take a holiday. It is amazing what even just a day or two away from the game can do for your mental health. You come back feeling refreshed and with a new perspective. The time off will give you an opportunity to reflect on the errors you are making and to assess whether or not your game is headed in the right direction. Don’t ever feel like you ‘have to play a session’, play because you want to and are in the right mood to do so. If playing poker has become a chore to you then I would suggest you need to change things up for a while and re-discover your love for it.

Don’t Be Afraid To Take A Step Back To Take Big Step Forward
Remove your ego from the situation and honestly assess whether or not a drop in stakes could actually be the best thing for you. Softer competition and less emotion surrounding the money involved surely can’t be a bad thing for re-generating faith in your abilities. It can also be a time to add new moves to your arsenal, work on leaks and further boost your credentials with yourself. If you don’t want to drop down stakes, maybe dropping tables for a while could help to. Having more time to put into your decisions means less mistakes and more self assurance that what you are doing is correct.

There Is More to Life than Poker
This might be shocking to some of you, but there is a whole society outside of poker! Grinding all day long can massively skew your perspective. You can have a bad session and it can seem like the end of the world. No matter how bad a situation there is certainly someone worse off than you somewhere and never forget that. If a poker downswing is the most of your worries, then I would say you are living a pretty damn good life.

A healthy poker mind is one that has a bunch of other interests and passions outside of playing cards. I am also a believer that eating right and exercising are critically important to a winning poker lifestyle.

Combating Aggressive Three-Bettors in NL Hold ’em, Part 1

Combating Aggressive Three-Bettors in NL Hold’em, Part 2

Here are two great articles written by the guys from Stox Poker. Having a read through these really prompted me to look at the mathematics behind three-betting situations. Once I upgrade to Poker Tracker 3 it is something I plan to do a lot more work on. Having once again made 200nl my regular game recently, it is so much more noticeable how much more three-betting there is going on as opposed to 100nl. While the articles here are more geared towards 6-max games where obviously light three-betting is far more rampant, i think it still has a lot of relevance, particularly for late position full ring situations.

Equity & Ranges – As Calculated in PokerStove
Short stack: 51.402%   { 99+, AQs+, AKo }
Us: 48.598% { JJ}

In short, if we call we expect to win 48.598% of the time, so we should fold because we aren’t favourite right? Hold on… we need to know what price we are being laid first.

Cost To Call = 40-4 = 36
Pot Size = 40 + 4 + 0.5 = 44.5

Pot odds (% Equity Needed To Make A Call Profitable) = Cost to call / (Pot Size + Cost To Call)

= 36 / (44.5 + 36) =  44.72%

Conclusion? We only need to have 44.72% equity to call this short stacks all-in profitably if we assume that his range is a pretty standard { 99+, AQs+, AKo } for a short stack, which it will be in the long run against most unknown short stacks. So next time when facing a short stack who wants to stack off against you pre-flop, think about their range and the pot odds being offered before you decide on your actions. Use PokerStove and analyze how TT and AQo and hands like that run in these situations, you might be surprised!