Sometimes you win even when you lose a hand.

We all know that when we miss the flop with our garbage hand played out of the big blind into an unraised pot that when another player bets, we can just fold and move on to the next hand. Sure sometimes you might want to try a bluff or a longshot draw but usually we just fold and move on. We lay down our hand.

But there is a lot more to making a laydown in many circumstances. Take for instance when the flop comes AJ2 and you were playing J2, again from the big blind in an unraised pot. You just got very lucky! Or did you? You check with your bottom two pair, hoping to trap another player holding an ace. Sure enough some one bets and you decide not to let them draw out on you so you reraise. Here is how it goes.

You: J2

Flop: AJ2

You check and into a 150 pot, your opponent bets 100. You raise to 400.

So far, so good. But now your opponent makes it 1,000! What?

Can he have: AA or AJ or JJ or A2 or 22? Or AK, AQ and be drawing to beat you or KK or QQ and again drawing to beat you. Is there a flush draw out there?

Here is the question, is the big reraise worth calling or should you just cut your losses with this garbage hand (J2) and get out of the way? Should you make the laydown? Certainly it depends on a lot of other factors we have not considered, like your read on this opponent. The point is that making a good laydown can save you a lot of chips. A laydown is not a surrender, it is surviving to play another hand.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #204

Two facts are nearly always true at a final table. First the blinds are high and second someone is short stacked. This leads to one of the biggest mistakes that beginning players make at a final table. You simply cannot allow yourself to be blinded off. Your short stack can reach a low point where you will have no course of action other than moving all in and your opponents will have no fear of calling you.

Take this example: blinds are 1,000/2,000 with a 200 ante. If your stack is 10,000 and you move all in, your opponents will definitely think before making the call. If you stack is less than 4,000 they will not. The value in the prize pool to eliminate a player is too high not to call a very short stack. When you make your short stack move is up to you, but the point is that this decision should be based more on the stack and less on the cards. An all in move of 10,000 with 72o is a better move than going all in with AJ and only 3,200. The huge added value of your opponents folding has to be considered.

Getting super short stacked can happen because you lose a pot or because you let yourself get blinded down by being too conservative. At a final table the odds are immensely higher that moving in early with a reasonable stack will succeed over waiting for a monster hand and folding away the blinds while waiting. Short stack play at a final table often determines who wins and who loses but more often who places higher in the money list. Don’t get blinded off is nearly a cardinal rule of final table play. Pick your spot and make your move!

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #202

Playing poker online is different in many ways from live play. Some of the differences are difficult to overcome and others are a great benefit especially to the beginning player. In this series (Online Tips) we will look at some of the best online ideas to help the beginning player.

Online Tip #1: Take notes.

Yes you do have to pay attention to every hand, which means you can’t watch TV or read email while you are playing poker. When you see a player make a certain move, put it in your notes. All of the major sites have note taking options. Just click on a player and open the notes section.

Don’t write: “This player is a donkey!” that is not going to help you. But if the notes says: “Cannot lay down top pair, will call to the river.” Now that is both helpful and potentially profitable. The notes don’t have to be extensive but they should be specific. Trust us, the first time you make a big call and take down a monster pot because of a quick note you wrote two months ago, you will understand how much note taking can help your online game.

By the way, just the practice of watching every hand and looking for a note to take will also help your live game. It is not just about writing down the note but also about getting better and better at seeing the tendencies in your opponents that are worth remembering.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #201

Tournament Director’s Association Rule #31: Exposing Cards: A player who exposes his cards with action pending may incur a penalty, but will have have a dead hand. The penalty will begin at the end of the hand.

I want to say a bit about the TDA here. They and their rules are to be considered a work in progress. They as a group meet periodically to review their current rules and how those rules have worked and not worked over a period of time. They then debate potential new rules and modify the existing rules. Rule #31 is an example of a rule in process.

The idea is that you may not show a card before the hand is complete, the intention is to not influence the other player or players in the hand nor to get a read on a player when they see your card or cards. Many professional players believe that when there is only one player remaining to act that exposing a card is not in any way a violation of the rules of poker and, in fact, is often a good play. But as it stands now, if you expose a card while a hand is in play you MAY be given a penalty after the hand is over. You probably will at least be warned by the floor staff not to expose a card in the future.

Note that your hand is not dead and this is perhaps the most important part of the rule. Hands should not be killed while in play under any but the most dire of circumstances and exposing a card is not and never should be such a circumstance. Your hand plays up or down as long as you  don’t toss it into the muck or pull it out of your sleeve.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #200

Poker is a game of skill. Don’t believe anyone who says poker is a game of luck, but do let them sit at your table because they are not skilled at poker. Now, this is not to say that sometimes you don’t get lucky and win a hand, it happens. Sometimes you are playing for a straight and the board gives you a winning two pair. We call this back-dooring the hand or just a backdoor.

Backdoor simply means that a player makes a hand he didn’t originally intend to make, usually they get it on the river. For example, if the final two cards on the board are hearts and you make a flush, you backdoored a flush. You have a medium pair say 9 of hearts and 9 of clubs. The flop is QJ2 with two heart. Two overcards, so you check and your opponent checks behind you. The turn is the ace of hearts, now there are three hearts on the board and three overcards; you both check again. The river is the 7 of hearts. Your pair has gone nowhere and when you both check again. Surprise, your nine of hearts makes the higher flush and you win with the backdoor flush.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you play well. Sometimes you get lucky and backdoor a winning hand.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #199

You will hear a player say: “Well I gotta call that bet, I am pot committed.” Basically, the player is saying that they have so much of their remaining chip stack in this pot that they have no choice but to move all in. This is one of the most misunderstood concepts in poker and therefore the often misplayed at the tables.

Let’s take an easy one first. In a no limit hold’em tournament, you have 100,000 chips. On the river you bet all in for your last 50,000 chips, one player folds but the other player with only 2,000 chips remaining looks that the pot of over 150,000 and says the magic words: “I’m pot committed.” Well yes, leaving yourself with 2,000 chips when you can win 150,000 might just be a good case for being pot committed.

But what if the situation was that you bet not your last 50,000 but only 10,000 and another player raised all in with more chips than you had. The pot is still over 150,000 and you have 60,000 of your 100,000 already committed to the pot. Are you pot committed? While it is true that folding and having only 40K after starting the hand with 100K is a big hit, you are still in the tournament. If you are beat, you are beat and you should be able to fold and not use the “pc” idea to bust out of the tournament.

Too many player put their remaining chips in the pot, based on chips they had at the beginning of the hand that are already gone into the pot. Being “pot committed” is a decision you make, it is not a fact of life where you must commit your remaining chips. Be careful when you even think you are pot committed.

Join in our Online Poker Forum discussion on being Pot Committed.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #198

A very common bit of poker advice is to play opposite of they way your table is playing. We call that playing against the grain and it is a very good strategy for a poker player. If you table is playing aggressive than you play tight, but if they table is full of rocks than you go loose and open up your game. The reason is quite simple. If the table is throwing around chips like a bunch of maniacs, you can get caught in the melee and lose everything, however, if you hold off until you have a premium hand or a great draw, you can take down a huge pot because the overly aggressive table will overlook your tight play.

On the other side of the equation, when your table is so tight that no one is taking any risks, then you step out and start stealing the blinds and bluffing players off their draws. If the table is going to let you run them over then it is your responsibility to do just that.

Of course, this all points to the another poker axiom: the toughest table is a table full of good players who are all changing up their games every deal. When everyone is paying attention you have a tough table, but until they do: Play against the grain.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #197

If you bet without looking at your cards, you are said to be betting in the dark. You can also bet the flop before the flop is put out and you are also betting in the dark. “In the dark” refers to any action you take at the poker table where you have less than the full information available to you. Now you ask, why would someone bet in the dark?

Betting without looking at your cards is just a way to create action or perhaps to challenge very tight opponents to get into the game. What you will see more often is a player “checking in the dark” after they call a pre-flop bet. They are first to act after the flop and without seeing those cards, they check. This is a more interesting move, as it can conceal a very strong hand or simply be stating the obvious, that the player has no hand or only the type of hand that would call a bet but not bet themselves.

All in all, “in the dark” moves are more showmanship and less skill and beginner’s should avoid them at their chips peril.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #196

Don’t Chase!

One of the cardinal rules of poker is: Don’t chase. The whole idea is that if you are behind in a hand, the odds of you catching up almost never justify chasing after the pot. For instance, you are behind with a small pair and have 16% chance to win the hand. If you play every hand out, you win 16% and you lose 84%. Or, if you can only win 16% of the time then the pot must be laying you very high odds of about 5.4 to 1 to justify continuing in the hand. The most common “chase” situations can be summarized in these three situations:

A. You call a bet to see the next card when holding a drawing hand and the pots odds do not justify the call.

B. You play a drawing hand pre-flop despite the odds and then continue on the flop, turn and even the river because you already have chips invested in the pot.

C. Playing to hit a “miracle card” to win a big pot. Miracle cards offer the worse odds in poker, you can be drawing to as low as one or two outs.

The lesson here is simply: Don’t chase. Certainly play a drawing hand but be ready to muck it, when the odds turn against you.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #195

In this mathematical comparison we look at a common showdown situation where the players share one big card, usually an ace, but they have different kickers. The classic confrontation is AK against AQ. In this case the AK is 72% to win and there is a 5% chance of a tie. However, as the value of the kicker goes down, the chance of the tie goes up. So, for instance, K5 versus K4 carries a 44% chance of a tie and a split pot.

This is sometimes referred to as the “Ax statistic” because an ace with nearly any other card is as likely to win against the bigger ace (about 23%). Meaning if you get it in with A3 against AK, you are just as likely to win as when you have the AQ against the AK; the only advantage of the bigger kicker is when it plays and the amount that it lowers the tie factor.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #194