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

The Dry Pot or the Dry Pot Bet can be a little controversial. Here is a basic example: Player X moves all in pre-flop and gets two callers (Y & Z). After the flop, only two players have chips to bet but there is no money yet in the side pot or the “dry pot”. If one of the players (Y) bets and the other (Z) folds, the dry pot bettor wins zero chips with this bet. All the chips are still in the main pot and will be contested between the all in player (X) and the player (Y) who made the dry pot bet. Player Z has been pushed out of the hand by the dry pot bet, so to that extent player Y has perhaps benefited by getting the hand heads up. Now there are four outcomes to this scenario:

1. Player X wins the hand and continues to play.

2. Player Y wins the hand and Player X is eliminated.

3. Player Y wins the hand and Player X is eliminated but if Player Z had not folded to the dry pot bet, he would have won the pot.

4. Player X wins the hand over player Y but would have lost the hand to Player Z, if Player Y had not made the dry pot bet. Player X survives only because the dry pot bet caused the winning hand (Z) to fold.

What most players object to is, of course, option #4. Why not check the hand down, they say, and give both players the chance to knock out the all in player. A player making the dry pot bet are clearly hoping to win under scenario #3. Probably the only valid complaint a player might make is that bluffing into a dry pot is just a bad poker play, which can have serious consequences for everyone involved when a short stack is given a new life by a bad dry pot bet.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #193

One of the most difficult aspects of poker is learning to judge just how good (or how bad) your own game is. You really can’t judge the competition unless you can measure them against your own game. I mean how much good does it do you to know the table is full of intermediate players, if you have no clue as to how you stack up against intermediate players? Poker is profitable for winning players because less talented players who overrate their own game and are therefore willing to sit down at a table where they clearly are at a huge deficit in raw poker skill.

The best players at any level really don’t want to play each other but they will start a game with some empty seats to see who they can get to sit down with them. Many players, who cannot assess their own skill level, will take those seats. Regardless of how good your are, there are games out there where you will be the fish and plenty of sharks waiting for you to sit down.

Be honest with yourself when assessing your own game. Keep good records and know which games are losing propositions for you. Understand that there are profitable games and losing games at every level. What you want to do is to play for profit at the tables that you can compete fairly or better yet run over. You also want to be improving your game to move up to play for bigger stakes against better players. Only honesty about how good your game is will get you there.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #192

Sometimes it just happens, you are an average stack in a tournament and just not getting any real hands, when you look down and see pocket aces. And if that weren’t enough, a player raises in front of you and gets two callers. You reraise big and get it heads up and the poor soul with the KK, gives you his entire stack. Two hands later, you are still stacking all those chips and you get AK and hit a five player flop with QJ10 and the guy with the JJ hands you his stack. The run continues and you go from average stack to the chip leader in about an hour. The big pairs just keep coming and when they don’t you hit the flop so hard with your rags in the big blind that you trap another player.

You are Getting Hit Over the Head by the Deck. Also called “Getting Hit by the Deck”. In other poker parlance, we might say you are “On a Rush” but whatever you want to call a really big run of cards, it will happen and you should play it strong. Now true mathematical players will tell you that a good run of cards can end on one hand and become a horrible bad streak on the next. What they miss is the human factor. When you are on a run of cards, when the deck is hitting you over the head, everyone at your table knows it and they will be wary of you. No matter how analytical a player may be, when he sees someone on a hot streak, there is a very strong tendency to stay out of the way of the hot player.

Use this to your advantage. When you have a big card rush, play more hands, even though other players will not believe you have a hand every time; they also know that you are getting hit over the head by the deck and they will avoid you and you will accumulate more chips than the rush really should give you. Remember card players can be superstitious and they also can get hit over the head.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #191

Congratulations! You have made a final table. The question now comes up: Is there an optimal strategy for playing a final table?

Well, not to dodge the question but…. it depends! Stack size is important and, of course, reads on your opponents. But at a final table, what is really most important is the prize pool. If this is a small tournament, you might not even be in the money yet when you reach the final table. So knowing the prize pool is important in final table play. Most tournaments are very top heavy in the payouts. Generally speaking as much as 1/2 to 2/3 of the prize pool will be in the first three places. So winning is paramount and finishing high is next in line.

Often beginning players will be hanging on to finish a place or two high, we call that ladder climbing. Conservative play at a final table may move you up but you will not win by playing tight. You can do that your first tournament or two but a good players goes for the win and not just making the money.

In tournaments the money is always weighted heavily towards the top three places, so aiming for the win is the only thing that you should be interested in. The major edge the top players have is that they all have a winning mindset. When they make a final table it’s not their first and they know it won’t be their last either. They take advantage of the fact that a lot of players are merely looking to climb one step further up the pay ladder, with each rung worth an increasing amount of money. You need to form that winning state of mind too.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #190