The players get all their chips in before the flop and when they turn their cards face up, someone says: “It’s a coin-flip.” What they mean is that the two hands are just about 50/50 to win the hand after the flop, turn and river cards come out. This is also often referred to as a “race”.

The most common example of a race situation is two overcards to a small pair. One player holds AKo against another players 55. The fives are 55% to win, the AK is 45%. Make that AK suited and we are now 52%-48%.

You will hear tournaments players saying that in a big tournament with lots of entrants, you must “win the races”. Or on the first day or a multi-day tournament that might say: “Avoid the coin-flips early.”

The point is that many times decisions and hands are played with very close odds for either player to win or lose. Knowing those exact odds may not be as important as knowing when you want or need to take a coin-flip and when it is better to pass and not get involved in a race for all your chips.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #157

In nearly any sporting endeavor, game of skill or chance, we hear sayings like: “Never give up”, “Keep on trying”, “The game isn’t over until the clock runs out.” Well in poker the most common situation requiring patience and faith is when you are in a tournament and have a short, short, short stack. You are nearly out, to come back will require a lot of luck and it will have to happen soon. In those situations you will hear the famous phrase:

“A Chip and a Chair.”

The meaning is very simple. As long as you have a chip, you are in the game. You have a seat at the table as long as you can make a bet or even part of a bet in a tournament. Everyone who has been around poker for any period of time can tell you about players coming back from super short stacks to win tournaments. Even more often players who are very short in chips, will hang on and stay in their chair while other players bust out. A short stack may not win but they can move up many places in the prize pool by playing those last chips wisely and patiently.

So, when you are short-stacked don’t get frustrated, don’t get impatient. You have a chip and a chair and that means you are still in the game.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #156

There is a great advantage to be had when you have an aggressive player on your left. Any seat one, two or even three seats to your left will work. If you are playing tight or at least appearing to be tight, which means you are not mixing it up with the aggressive player (this works even better if you have more than one of these players to your left). What you want to do is let the aggressive players bet your big hands for you. Let’s say you get dealt AK in early position, you just call and sure enough, just like every hand, the aggressor raises. You just call the raise. Then the flop hits Kxx, you check he bets. The turn is a blank, no flush out there, you check, he bets, you check-raise.

Now you would be happy to take the pot down right here, but the beauty of many aggressive players is that they not only play aggressive, they get their egos involved and they hate folding to a raise. They don’t want to tarnish the aggressive image, so he calls and he calls the river bet too.

The aggressive player on your left can make you a lot of money and you only have to learn to check to them and let them be themselves. They can’t help it.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #155

You may well encountered the term LAG when reading poker books and forums. LAG refers to Loose-and-Aggressive. Be very clear that Loose and Aggressive are not the same when referring to poker styles. Loose refers either to how many pots or hands someone plays. A loose player is in a lot of pots and a tight players plays very few pots. But you can be loose-aggressive or tight-aggressive and good players are somewhere in between.

An aggressive player is more likely to be betting and raising, as opposed to calling and checking. You can play very tight but still be aggressive, if when you play you are betting and raising the pot. A loose player simply plays a lot of pots, but an aggressive player may play a few hands or a lot of hands but when the aggressive player is in the pot, you will know it.

If players are playing loose than you can afford to play more hands. However, if players are being aggressive you should play tight. Loose is not the same as aggressive and the response to aggressive is not the same as the response to loose. If you play aggressive, you love loose players. If you are loose, you want tight players. Being able to change your style in response to the table dynamics is the sign of a good, solid, loose, tight, aggressive player.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #154

An aggressive poker player always is can be a winning poker player. The aggressive player always comes into the pot for a raise. The aggressive player will always make the continuation bet on the flop. The aggressive player pressures other players, forcing them to put chips in the pot or fold. Maximum bets, raises and re-raises are the hallmarks of the aggressive player.

Aggressive players are very difficult to play against if your style is tight and passive. The reason aggressive players play the way they do, is precisely because other players will lay down hands to them simply because of the aggression.

But it does take skill to correctly execute the ‘All Aggressive All the Time’ method of playing poker. Depending on your mastery of this skill level, aggressive play can be a long-term winning strategy or it can be a very fast way to loose a lot of money.

Always read your aggressive opponent for his skill level and you will determine rather quickly if it matches his level of aggression. If not, he is just another fast fish for you to devour.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #153

In poker will call a conservative player a passive player because they never take command of a pot unless they have the absolute nutz. They are easy to read and therefore easy to defeat.

A passive player usually bets the minimum and will fold if the cards are not in his or her favor. Conservative play is a way to minimize your losses but conversely it will also minimize your winnings. Any good player at the table will recognize the passive player, when the passive player bets more than the minimum, you fold because they have a monster. On the other side of the coin, the passive player can be pushed off or bluffed off any hand where they do not hold the guaranteed winner. Why? Because they are passive.

Passive players are predictable, they instill no fear in their opponents and just mathematically they will not be dealt enough premium hands to be a threat over an extended period of time, like an entire tournament. You certainly should be passive when the cards are not coming your way and the rest of your table is hyper-aggressive but cards or no cards, you can’t remain passive and be a winning poker player over the long term.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #152

Poker calculators are a valuable tool for beginning players. You are wondering just how much of an underdog those pocket Jacks are to an overpair or how far ahead 99 is to AK0? The poker calculator will run stimulations of various hands before the flop, as well as after the flop, turn and river.

Reviewing your play is made much easier and much clearer when you use a poker calculator. For several years the best available free calculator was Poker Stove and it is still the poker calculator of choice for many players. But as more and more poker websites wanted their own versions of the poker calculator, there have been advances to what they can calculate, how fast they do it and the simplicity of the software interface.

Our current favorite is found here, they have one for Texas Hold’em, another for Omaha Hi and one for Omaha Hi-Lo. This really is only one of dozens of calculators out there. Check out several to find the one with the interface and details you are most comfortable with.

One tip: some calculators offer a “Monte Carlo” option, which simply means that using the MC option will result in your getting your statistics with only about a million hands simulated instead of the complete run, which can go into the tens of millions and take a long time. Monte Carlo may tell you that you are a 53.2% favorite, when complete run would tell you that actually you are a 53.194% favorite. I think a million simulated hands is sufficient for our purposes.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #151

Here is another statistic about the pocket aces. At a full table of ten players there is a 1 in 22 chance that on any random deal one player will be dealt aces. Now since only one time in ten are those aces going to be yours, how can you use this statistic?

Well let’s think about this. When you are dealt pocket kings, there is a one in twenty-two chance you are facing pocket aces. Ouch! On the other hand, twenty-one times out of twenty-two you have those monster kings and you need to win some chips with those Big Boys.

Now be careful with this statistic (22 to 1) because … well let me show you. (Note: what follows is the faulty application of statistics)

If there is a 22-1 chance of aces when you have kings.

Would there be an 11-1 chance of aces or kings against you when you have queens?

Or would there be a 5.5-1 chance of aces, kings or queens against your pocket jacks.

Then it would be 2.75-1 that your pocket tens are beat by a larger pair.

You see where this is going? By the time you get to pocket eights, it would statistically guaranteed that there is a bigger pair out against you and you would never win with two deuces. NOT TRUE! Statistics can be our friends but be careful of stringing them out too far or you might actually believe that the poker gods really do hate you 54% of the time.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #150

Tournament Director’s Association Rule #37: Showdown

At the end of last round of betting, the player who made the last aggressive action in that betting round must show first. If there was no bet the player to the left of the button shows first and so on clockwise.

This may seem just another etiquette rule but this one causes a lot of ill-tempered players complain. Here is the issue. Many players will muck their hand when they see they are beaten. However, if they called the final bet of the hand or checked down the river, then any player at the table may ask to see their cards. Many professionals will tell you that this is very bad form and that you should only ask to see a players cards if you believe they are guilty of some infraction.

The rule has not been clarified because the members of the Tournament Director’s Association cannot agree on which way the rule should read. So Rule #37 is at best only half a solution and is already on the agenda for the next Tournament Director’s Association meeting.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #149

OK, you’ve decided to see a flop with a small pocket pair; what exactly are your chances? No matter what pair you are holding the odds of flopping a set or even quads are 7.1 to 1 against you.

So what question should you be asking yourself before you make the call? It might seem obvious to simply ask yourself: “Is this hand worth playing if I am going to lay it down after 6 out of 7 flops?” You will nearly always fold to any bet after the flop when you pair does not improve. But the question is too simplistic for a good poker decision. Why? Well you might be laying it down 6 out of 7 times but if each of those hands cost you a single bet, then you have to ask: “How many bets will I win when I do hit my set?”

The key to winning when your small pocket pair turns into a set is simply that your hand will be well disguised. For example: you play 44 and there are two other players in the hand. The flop comes: A94. If even one of those other two player has a ace, you are going to make a lot with your baby set and if they get another ace on the turn or river, Jackpot! They have a set of aces and you have a full house!

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #148