Live Poker Blog and Podcasts

By Gabriel James

This article is focussed on Texas Holdem Poker in the Limit variant and the selection of tables before you begin to play.

Are you looking forward to playing a game of Texas Holdem Poker? Not sure of the best way to get started with the greatest advantage point? One of the first steps is the table selection.

Concerns About Table Selection At A Texas Holdem Poker Game

There are some questions to ask before sitting at a table.

When do you want to play? If, like most people, you have a job working 9-5 then you are looking at evenings and weekends.

Perfect!

This is when most recreational players are at the poker tables. You don’t want to be playing during the day because that is when the professionals put in some of their hours. Also, there are a lot of retired folks who want to scratch out some pin money.

The average retired player is probably around sixty-five or older. This would be considered a rock - peddling the nuts and playing tight. You can’t make much money, if any at all, from these guys.

Stereotypes in this day and age are not considered to be politically correct, but in poker if you want to save or win money, it’s a good place to start and your view can always be changed. We will be writing more on psychology and player profiling another day.

The Saturday Night Texas Holdem Poker Game

It’s decided then we are going to play on Saturday night - the busiest night of the week and that guarantees action. We walk in for the first time and hear that beautiful sound. The sound of riffling chips. Action is everywhere but where do you sit?

If it’s your first time you want to sit at the lowest limit available. Usually its $0.5/$1 ($2/$4 if you are playing land based) limit Texas Holdem. There will be a few tables running so you need to know what to look for in picking a good table. You should judge a table by two yardsticks:

1) How loose/tight is the game?
2) How aggressive/passive is the game?

Referring to number one, you want to play in loose games because your opponents are playing more weak hands to see more flops and get lucky. The more mistakes your opponents make, the more you will win.

On the second point, playing in an aggressive or passive game is a little trickier. My preferences are the more aggressive games that are loose. The wilder the better.

My variance will swing with stomach churning ups and downs but inevitably my hand selection abilities will see me through. With this, I will see payoff big time when my hands stand up at showdown.

For most beginners, I would recommend to start in a passive game where your mistakes will not be punished so badly. Also, your opponents will not extract the maximum from you.

So get a feel for the place - watch a few tables in the limit you are interested in playing. Want to play at a passive table? Watch for a lot of “calling stations”. These are where people are calling all the time without much raising going on and it feels like a relaxed friendly table.

If you want aggression and looseness look for people four way capping preflop, a high chip average for the table, and lots of chips in play. If you are prepared to play tight and only premium starting hands be prepared for a roller coaster ride and strap yourself in because this is the table for you.

Once You Find a Table To Play Texas Holdem Poker

You find a ten-handed game and decide to chip up. How much to buy in? I always like to buy in for double the usual amount. This is for two reasons:

1) If you take a couple of bad beats to begin with you may have enough to carry on. There is nothing worse for your ego and confidence than to have to chip up again early on. Plus, if you are short stacked and get heads up (two players left including you) with the nuts (best hand) and there is no cap on betting then you won’t make as much.

2) When other people join the table later and they see your large stack they will give you more respect. Hopefully you can then run more bluffs and appear a much stronger player than if you had less chips.

Use these simple strategies to play your best game and you’ll win out in the end. Just keep your head cool and don’t let emotion play into the game. By picking good tables, you can increase your chances of winning.

Gabriel James is a semi-professional poker player turning over 12,000 hands of Texas Holdem Limit Poker per month online. He writes for TexasHold-EmPoker.com.

By Lise Larsen

Satellite poker tournaments are becoming increasingly popular. Many people are using satellites to work their way to the prestigious and expensive tournaments like the World Series of Poker. What are satellite tournaments? They are generally small tournaments that award a seat (or seats) at a larger tournament as the prize.

Since many of the large poker tournaments are very costly to enter, satellites can be a good entree for a less experienced or cash-poor player. For example, it can cost as much $10,000 to buy a seat at a tournament like WSOP. This is prohibitive for some, however they have a chance by winning a satellite tournaments that can have a buy-in as low as a much more affordable $100.

There are different types of satellites and good players adjust their poker strategies based on the type of tournament they are playing.

Satellite Strategy for Single Winner Tournaments

Some tournaments have only a single winner; these are also known as winner-take-all tournaments. The only way to win one of these satellites is to get all of the chips, so this type of tournament is not well-suited to those with conservative strategies. Of course, luck plays a part, but bold and gutsy play is required to take it all.

Satellite Strategy for Multi-Winner Tournaments

Satellite strategy needs to vary when you play a tournament with multiple winners. Some satellites offer only a winning spots, but tend to have low buy-ins. Others have higher buy-ins but offer more advancement seats to winners. Make sure you look at the number of entrants that will be allowed and figure out how many seats there are per entrant to choose the best satellite.

Once you are in the game, your satellite strategy needs to be based in part on the part of the game you are in. While you need to earn the most chips possible, conservative play in early stages is often rewarded since it will allow you to stay in the game. Since the goal in this style of satellite isn’t to be the winner, but to be one of the last players standing, it is important to play for longevity; hence, a strategy that risks you going broke in early hands s not a good idea.

As the stakes rise, you need to get a little more aggressive. You need to start taking pots. In addition, you do not want to risk your stack getting too small compared to other players, because that will attract aggressive players to attack in order to knock you out of the game. You need to get to the latest stage of the game, but you also need to get there with enough chips to finish the game.

If you manage to enter the final rounds of the game with an ample stack, you need to capitalize on your lead. Since other players may start to be conservative at this point, fearing getting knocked out, you have the opportunity to play more aggressively and scoop up the pots. Consider playing a hand that you might have folded on in the early stages of the game.

Always remember where the money is (or the satellite seats are) and keep your eye on the number of players remaining when implementing your satellite strategy. In addition, it is important to make your play while you have enough chips to make a difference. It is better to get knocked out with a bold play on a nothing hand than to fizzle out when you finally do not have enough chips to ante.

Article by Lise Larsen. She teaches you how to play poker at ChipsAndPoker.com

I see this all the time: A player takes a bad beat or otherwise winds up on the business end of a bad opponent’s poor play. This sets off a tirade of angry expletives and other colorful remarks about mothers, personal injuries, and the wrath of god. Every time I am at a table when someone is telling off another player for poor play, I wonder, “Why?”

In no other aspect of life do people bite the hand that feeds them as much as they do in poker. When a player makes a bad play you should thank them, no matter what the result is. Because results do not matter in poker, all that matters is playing correctly.

Just because your opponent’s poor play worked out for him this time does not mean it will next time or the time after that. A bad play is a bad play no matter the result. Your goal is to make sure that the bad player is still at the table when he makes the same bad play with a different result. Berating your opponent is not the best way to insure they stay at the table.

Many people refer to this as “tapping the aquarium.” Fish do not like to have their aquarium tapped, and the same goes for bad players (also known as fish). Getting angry at a player who plays poorly is like burning your paycheck.

Bad players are your paycheck! They make bad plays that will cost them in the long run but may cost you in the short run. Make sure that you do not do anything to induce your opponent to leave the table before you get to take advantage of their long run losing tendencies. Do not hate your paycheck, see to it that you are there when it cashes out!