Poker is about information. The more information you have, the better you play. Some information is only available for an instant and if you aren’t looking you will miss it. This brings us to the seemingly simple question of: “When should you look at your hole cards?”

The answer is: “When you are least likely to miss other information at the table.”

If there is one piece of advice that beginning poker players should take and use without fail, it is this: “You should not look at your hole cards until it is your turn to act.” The obvious reason is the one just given, you want to be looking at other players when they see their hole cards. Do they smile? Do they look at their chips? Do they hesitate before betting? There are literally dozens of tips and tells a player might give in the moment immediately after they look at their cards.

The flip side of that advice is that if you don’t look at your cards until it is your turn to act, then no one ahead of you in the hand can get any read on you. Even if you are giving off subtle clues to your hand, if you don’t look, they can’t see.

Many beginning players want to see their cards fast because they want time to think about their decision. This problem is easily solved by taking the same amount of time to make every decision. Always pause for a moment after seeing your cards whether you are folding, calling or raising, that way no one gets a “time” read on you.

The bottomline for a good poker player is simply that you must be gaining information and not giving away information; one way to do that is to watch other players as they peek at their hole cards and not look at your cards until it is time for you to act. Cardinal rule, easy to do but watch at the tables how many players ignore this simply concept. Don’t you be one of them.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #72

There are two ways to win the pot in poker. Either you showdown the best hand or you bet enough to get your opponent(s) to fold their hands. Calculating the chances of forcing the other players to fold and give you the pot is something we call “Fold Equity”. Here is a simply example.

You are on the button in a limit Hold’em game. All players fold to you and you have 55, often beginning players will simply call the big blind; they will limp in. If a five hits the flop-jackpot! If not, then they can toss the hand away and wait for the next deal. However, let’s suppose we could see the hole cards of the blinds. The small blind has 96o and the big blind has 73o. If you raise with your hand, both blinds are likely to fold and you win the pot right there. You see by simply calling the big blind, you have forfeited the possibility of one or both of the blinds folding; you have given up the fold equity.

If you do simply limp in than any flop with a 9, 7 or 6 beats you or if the flop is AJ10 and either blind bets, you have to fold. Any bet from either blind, they get to act first, will force you to fold useless one of the two remaining fives has hit the flop. A raise gives you the chance at winning the pot or narrowing the field. Fold equity is only gained if you raise.

One more point, fold equity can be a very complicated calculation in pot limit and no limit betting. The point is that taking fold equity into consideration before you bet is always a consideration to the complete poker player.

Read more about Fold Equity in this thread on our online poker forum.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #71

There are a small number of hands that Hold’em players invariably say are hard to play. Ace-King is one of those hands. Players also mention small pocket pairs, but if you listen more often than not the hand that comes up will be Jack/Jack.

So just why are pocket jacks so hard to play?

First of all, a starting pair of jacks is a good hand. In most lists of best starting hands jacks rank fifth. [AA, KK, QQ, AKs, JJ]. The problem lies with what other players will call your raise with (you are raising with those jacks, right?). You know that players will play high cards and since you already have two of them in your hand, your callers are likely to hold some combination of aces, kings and queens. Now comes the flop, three of the remaining 50 unseen cards come out and 12 of them are not good for you (four aces, four kings and four queens). There is an 24% chance at least one overcard will come on the flop and you could quickly be second best with your two jacks.

Secondly, let’s say you get a good flop-three cards all cards smaller then your jacks; you have an overpair to the board. Now how much do you have to bet to get the AK or AQ or even KQ to fold and give you the pot? In a no-limit game you probably can win the pot right here but in limit hold’em you just get to put in one bet and the two big cards might call because you could be holding only big cards yourself or they figure they have some kind of pot odds to call.

Jacks are tricky but remember pocket jacks are a good starting hand. Jacks win 77%+ of the time against any random hand and 57% when up against AK. Even better if no ace or king hits the flop, you are 75% to win and a good player will laydown that AK to your bet.

Jacks should make you money but you will also be surprised how often you hear these words at the table: “I hate playing pocket jacks!”

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #70

At every poker tournament you will see satellites being run. Basically, a satellite is a small tournament that awards a seat in a bigger tournament to the winner or winners, but not always because satellites are also played for cash.

A single table satellite (STS) is a one table mini-tournament. Players pay a set buy-in and the prize pool is fixed. Either the winner gets all the money or there may be prizes for first and second and online even third gets some cash. At major tournaments they play STSs for cash or for tournament “chits” for a bigger multi-table tournament (MTT). They way this works is that let’s say ten players put up $110 for a seat in a STS, the winner will receive an entry into a $1,000 MTT and the house makes the $10 per player. For $110 you can win a seat in a $1,000 buy-in tournament.

At major tournaments you will also see Super Satellites; these are multi-table events giving out seats in a bigger MTT. Often super satellites are played for the main event. So when the main event is a $10,000 buy-in, supers may run from $200 to $1,000. Often super satellites are rebuy tournaments and big ones can give away dozens of seats to the main event. Mega-satellites are simply big buy-in supers; at WPT and WSOP events the mega-satellites are $1,000 for the $10,000 main event.

The bottom-line on satellites is that they fall into two categories. First, the cash single table satellites, which run all day, every day online. Second, the satellites that award entries to bigger tournaments, which provide an inexpensive shot for players to play in a big event.

You heard often about a new player going deep in a major tournament after they “satellited in”, this is how they did it. Satellites are a great way for beginning players to “take a shot” at playing with the big boys without investing their whole bankroll.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #69