So much of poker strategy is centralized around hand selection and reading your opponents, yet one aspect that goes unappreciated time and time again is knowing how much to bet and when.  New and beginning poker players need to be well-versed in correct bet sizes as it plays a pivotal part in all aspects of poker, from protecting your hand to extracting to the most amount of chips out of an opponent.  Betting the wrong amount in any situation can and will often have negative effects on the outcome, even if you end up winning the hand overall.  Let’s take a look at a few types of bets, starting with incorrect methods.

1.  Underbetting:  When someone drastically underbets the pot, it normally means that they are very inexperienced at poker, something that the veterans at the table will pick up on immediately.  An obvious underbet would be to bet $10 on the turn into a pot worth over $150 in a $2-4 no-limit hold’em game.  It sounds ridiculous, but it does happen.  This bet does not benefit you whatsoever.  Any opponent on a draw is going to call if not raise, and if you’re trying to trap an opponent, you have no bet enough to extract maximum value out of the hand.

2.  Overbetting:  You’ll see players overbet a pot a lot in multi-table tournaments and SNG events.  A common overbet in pre-flop play would be when someone raises to more than 3-4 times the blind big, sometimes as high as 8-9 times.  This gives too much info away and limits the effect of the raise.  Opponents will only call with the absolute best premium hands such as AA and KK, though the likely scenario is that the entire table will fold, netting you just the blinds and likely wasting a nice opportunity to win more chips as the hand progressed if you had bet the correct amount.

So what’s the solution?  It depends on the situation.  Typically, especially in a tournament, if you want to put pressure on your opponent and make it hard for them to call with a marginal strength or drawing hand, you want to make about a pot-sized bet, which means if there’s $200 in the pot, you’re going to bet between $160-$200.  If you hold a very strong hand and want to continue to extract chips from your opponent, you then want to bet about half the pot, which in this scenario would be about $100.

The vast majority of experienced players following these betting patterns and so should you.  The last type of bet you need to know about is the “value bet”.  A value bet is when you are very confident on the river that you have the best hand and need to figure out a way to get an opponent to call a bet.  The goal of the value bet is to bet an amount that another player would likely call as long as they had a decent hand.  Betting the full pot amount or overbetting to exceed that of what’s in the pot will quickly result in most players folding without a very strong hand.  However, betting half or a little less than half the pot on the river will sometimes encourage a call by an opponent with a marginal hand, which will help you extract as many chips as possible in the hand, which is the whole point of making correctly-sized bets in the first place.

Chris Iaquinta

In any form of gambling, knowing when to walk away is something that is often difficult and never gets any easier with experience.  It’s like going to the batting cages, whiffing on ten pitches in a row and then packing up and heading home completely unsatisfied.  The reason any of us gamble is to win money, plain and simple, so that when we fail to do so in a session we tend to want to hang around until we accomplish that goal.  The problem is, losing can increase our long term overall losses because of the physical and psychological effects that can befall us from a bad run.  No one ever really wants to quit playing, so here are a few signs to look out for in case you need help identifying when it may be time to walk away.  These do not apply just to poker, but rather practically all forms of gambling.

1.  Poor Decisions – When most players start to loss, their decision-making begins to deteriorate, sometimes to disastrous levels.  In poker they’ll start making loose calls and begin getting overly invested in pots, often times when their hands are of marginal strength at best.  If you notice that during a losing session you start to play too many pots or find yourself calling off bets when you’re pretty sure you’re going to be beat, you may want to consider giving it a rest for at least an hour if not the rest of the night.

2.  Irritability - I don’t know about you, but when I’m winning at cards, I feel great.  I’m much more talkative, I tend to play better because my mind is clearer, and overall I’m just in a better mood.  You won’t see a lot of angry winners at the table, however there is never a shortage of pissed off players that are ready to strangle someone because they’re losing big.  Early signs of irritability include acting confrontational against your opponents or the dealer, or just being in an overall grouchy mood.  You’ll never play your best poker/blackjack or anything else in this mindset and should definitely consider taking a break.

3.  Elevated Risk – This does also fall into the poor decisions category, but it also warrants it’s own little section.  There’s a reason I don’t play a lot of blackjack anymore, I couldn’t handle losing.  If I had two stacks of $10 chips in front of me and lost one of the stacks $10 at a time, I would then bet the entire other stack on the next round and try to instantly get even.  Then when I would lose that stack, I would start pulling out $100 bills and asking the pit boss to let me play the cash and not even let the dealer turn the money into chips.  Like me, a lot of card players and gamblers will increase their bet sizes in all types of games in order to try and win their money back, it’s THE reason why Vegas is racking in all the cash.  I had to actually stop playing blackjack in order to kick that habit, and you want to consider the same path if you find yourself digging bigger holes the deeper your losses get.

By: Chris Iaquinta

The poker boom has affected poker in an almost innumerable amount of ways, but one of the more visual ways it has impacted the game is how the players dress.  Thanks to the expanded television coverage of poker, we have all been treated to an inside look at how some of the more colorful players in the sport dress, act, walk and talk, and new players have been all too eager to jump on the bandwagon and mimic their favorite pros, especially when it comes to how they dress.

While that’s good and all, here are some poker playing gear suggestions that are based on how it’ll affect your game, not necessarily how cool you’ll look.

1.  Comfortable Clothes:  You need to be in complete comfort when you play, especially if you’re settled in for a long session.  All too often I’ll see players at the table wearing tight-fitting clothes that restrict movement and just aren’t meant to be worn for long periods of time.  Personally I like to wear a large hoodie while I play, especially if it’s going to be cold inside the card room.  As for pants, loose jeans should work perfectly, though you may even consider shorts if it’s warm enough.

2.  Sunglasses:  The popular concept about sunglasses at the poker table is that players wear them so that their opponents can’t see their eyes.  While this certainly can be true, most of the people you’re likely playing against don’t even know what to look for in your eyes, so the effort is wasted.  Instead, the main reason the pros wear sunglasses is so that the rest of the table doesn’t know whether or not you’re looking at them and paying attention to what they’re doing.  When players don’t feel like their being watched they’re more likely to give away information through physical tells, something you can then pick up on from the cover of your glasses.

3.  Hat/Headphones:  Adding a hat or headphones or both will complete your attire and give you a more “experienced” look at the table.  The guy wearing the flower-print and khaki pants obviously looks like a tourist and probably plays like one, so he’ll be picked on all day by the aggressive players at the table.  The better you look, the less likely you are to get zeroed out by the rest of the table.  It sounds silly, but it’s true.  You don’t even have to have the headphones plugged in, they’re serving their visual purpose whether you’re listening to music or not.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Are you tracking your poker progress?  While it may be hard to keep tabs on your performance levels in other sports unless of course you have professional statisticians following you around, poker is definitely one of the easier ones when it comes to keeping good records.  You can keep tabs on your wins/losses, plus also keep a journal of sorts where you make mental notes of both bad and good plays, plus anything you might have learned during a previous session.

One of the easiest things to keep track of in your poker progress is your wins/loses.  Simply make a note of how much money you are entering the session with and compare that to how much you come out with at the end of the session.  Just make sure you account for any times you might have had to rebuy.  Keeping good records on your win/losses won’t necessarily improve your poker game, but you should have a good idea of where you stand at financially, especially if you’re playing in a couple different of limit ranges.  If you find that you are consistently posting wins in $2-$4 no-limit and consistent losses in $4-$8 no-limit, now you’ll know which game to stick to for the time being.

As for how to improve your actual playing abilities by using a note system, it depends on what you want to accomplish.  Keeping good notes on other players is easy if you’re playing online, as almost all online poker sites offer some sort of notation option where you can make little one-line comments about players for later reference.  As far as keeping notes on yourself though, you should jot down a few thoughts when you get back from a session.  Do you believe you didn’t pay enough attention or maybe played too many pots?  You may easily forget about your mistakes by the next time you play and could easily fall victim to them all over again.  The only way you’ll ever improve is to identify your flaws and attack them head on.

By: Chris Iaquinta

I just recently played in a home game tournament with some friends and family where the poker ability scale ranged from one female participant who was literally looking down at a “What Beats What” poker cheat sheet while she played, to my father who plays 2-3 live tournaments a week and has been making it in the money with about a 70-75% ratio.  We had 27 players overall, and everyone started with 2,000 in chips with blinds beginning at 20-40.

This tournament served as a prime example of why you need to stay sharp when playing against a table full of players with little to no poker experience/knowledge.  Many of the plays and techniques you’ll learn by trying to correctly advance your poker abilities will only work against a player that also has a basic understanding of when the moment is right to fold, call, raise.

For this mini-tournament I had to throw away almost my entire playbook, as I can’t bluff someone who doesn’t know that they shouldn’t call a pot that represents a third of their overall stack when all they have is third pair.  Instead, I tightened up a little, but at the same time tried to see as many cheap flops as I could with hands that could flop big enough to allow me to extract a lot of chips.

With a table full of inexperienced players, expect to see a lot of people in on the flop, as they’ll limp with almost any two cards.  Raising will get many of them to fold, but you’ll have difficulty making continuation bets post-flop as they’ll happily continue to call off chips with ace high and weak pairs, which will put you in a lot of awkward situations.

In these games I always like to stress patience as the main state of mind to adhere to.  While you sit and wait for strong to premium hands, look around the table and try to ID the styles of all of the other players, it actually shouldn’t be that hard.  Like I mentioned before, I had one player at my table that was literally reading off a cheat sheet because she didn’t know if two pair beat a flush, etc.  Throughout the night she would limp in a lot, fold on the flop when her hand would miss, and over-bet the pot when she had a good hand.  This made her very predictable and easy to play against.

Another player would raise pre-flop with ace-rag and shove with marginal hands like small pocket pairs when he still had a lot of chips left in front of him.  Against a player like this you just want to wait for the opportunity to where your hand likely has him crushed.  For me, it was when I picked up pocket kings in early position and made a minimum raise pre-flop because I felt that he would push all-in over the top of me with any hand that seemed strong enough to him.  Sure enough, he shoved, I called, he turned over pocket threes and was the first person eliminated from the game.

Your biggest asset in a game against beginners is identifying their style, so you should really put a lot of effort into watching how they play and what hands they’re flipping over on the river.  Trap as often as possible when you flop big or make your hand on a following street, as these players will happily bet into you with second and top pair even with a dangerous board on the felt.

As for the tournament itself, three members of my family participated (myself included) and we took the top three spots and chopped the prize money evenly.  The three of use hands down had the most poker experience in the entire room, and just further goes to show that while luck does play a major factor, in the long run it’s skill and game theory that will lead to consistent results.

By: Chris Iaquinta

No matter what online poker site you belong too, you have the option of playing in the “Play Money” section, where you gamble without fake chips and don’t have to deposit any real cash to play.  I’ve often heard inexperienced poker players ask others if heading into the play money sections can serve as a training tool and place to practice one’s poker abilities.  I would agree that you can use the play money rooms to improve certain aspects of your game, however these areas can also hurt your poker skills if you don’t know what exactly to work on while playing in these sessions.

Up front let’s discuss what you can benefit from in the play money games.  The play money rooms should be used for you to learn the basics of poker.  Here you can get an idea of how the action unfolds pre-flop, post-flop, etc.  You can also use this time to become familiar with the poker tools that the particular poker site your playing on offers, such as notetaking abilities.  Play money rooms are a good way for absolute beginners to get their first taste of poker since it is relatively stress free and requires no financial commitment.

However, you should not be using the play money rooms to try and learn poker strategies from others nor try to implement techniques of your own.  The problem with the play money rooms is that the players in these games will not play what most experienced poker enthusiasts would describe as “correct poker”, that is making the right sized bets, calls, raises, folds, etc.

If they’re not playing for real money, a player is going to make terrible calls and raises, which essentially will completely negate any time of accurate strategy you may be trying to test out.  Raise all-in with pocket kings pre-flop and you’re probably going to get 3-5 callers, something that would never happen in a real cash game.  You’ll never be able to bluff your opponent off a hand, and marginal to strong hands will lose a lot of their showdown value since everyone else at the table is happily paying off fake chips in order to try and catch their 5% suckout card.

In the end, use the play money rooms as just a starting point for your poker career, a place to learn the game and understand how the online poker software works.  Afterwards, you can make a small deposit and start out in the very inexpensive cash games that every site offers, some of which literally cost just pennies to play in.

By: Chris Iaquinta

While only the card room you’re playing at can define exactly which poker etiquette rules are mandatory, many players would agree that there is an unspoken set of etiquette laws that most poker enthusiasts abide by at the table.  Following the most basic and simple of these rules will not only endear you to other players at the table, but it might actually improve your own quality of poker life.  Let’s take a look at a few of them.

1.  Not Paying Attention:  The biggest offenders of this rule are typically the players that live in the card room.  You know the type, they play every tournament, eat every meal at the casino diner, and are constantly up on the board for three different cash games.  Since these players are surrounded by poker all the time, it’s easy for them to lose focus during the games they’re playing in.  This will manifest itself when you see these players start watching TV, chat away with the poker room managers, or even just put their head down and completely ignore the game.  The problem with doing all of this is it slows the action down, which is annoying in a cash game, and borderline criminal in a tournament.  If you’re there to play poker, then play poker.  If you want to watch TV, head over to a sports bar.

2.  Demeaning Other Players:  This might be the greatest offense of them all.  No matter what card room I’m in, I always managed to get stuck sitting next to a player (sometimes more than one) who likes to berate and belittle every seemingly bad decision that another player makes in any given hand.  Did they make a bad call?  Guess what, it happens.  What is most alarming is that it’s normally the more experienced players at the table that like to get completely overheated when something doesn’t go their way.  You can only imagine that they’ve made their own bad calls and/or been sucked out on a million times before, yet they still complain about it every time.  Don’t let that be you.

3.  Technical Errors:  This category is for all those mistakes you might make at a table that has to do with disrupting the flow of the actual hand in play.  This could come from acting out of turn, splashing the pot, etc.  There’s no need to do any of these things.  Wait til the action comes around to you before you make your move.  When you make a bet, calmly put your chips in front of you, don’t throw them at the dealer.  Lastly, don’t talk about the hand if you’re not involved in it.  A lot of times you’ll see players that aren’t in the hand openly discussing what cards they think the players who are in the hand have.  It isn’t your place to speak aloud about a hand you’re not involved in, so maintain your silence for the duration of the hand, much like you would want your opponents to do if the roles were reversed.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Are you an emotional person?  Do you like to talk a lot at the table?  Is showing your hand, win or lose, something you do a lot?  These are all common traits associated with players that tend to give away too much information to their opponents when playing poker.  Sure you  might not have to worry about these types of things at your local home game or even in a very small limit table at the local casino, but the rest of the time, especially against skilled players, you’ll want to minimize the information and tells you may not even know you’re giving away.

Everyone has an unique personality, a way that they act, talk and react when they are in a normal state of mind.  However, poker as a game creates tense, stressful and emotional situations where people will start to act outside of their comfort zone and begin to give off signs, both physically and emotionally, that will alert other players that something is up.  This can be something as simple as a very talkative player that all of a sudden becomes mute and doesn’t say a word after looking down at their cards.  Perhaps they just realized they have pocket aces and now want to quiet down so they can focus on the hand.  Someone that has been playing with you for the last few hours will definitely notice that.

Another area where players all but completely hand over their strategic game plans is when they show their hand a lot to their opponents, regardless of whether or not they win or lose.  Showing your hand can sometimes be the right play if you’re doing it for the right reason, but I always see far too many players flip up their drawing hand or bluff for no reason whatsoever.  All this does is let your opponent know to watch out for the next time you play a hand exactly the same way, this way they can have an idea of what your hole cards are.

The point is that if you’re going to take your poker seriously, you need to worry about more than just hand selection and bet sizes, you need a table persona.  A table persona is the person you become when you play poker.  This person can act almost identically the way you normally do, but with a heightened sense of awareness.  Learn to recognize the way you act when you have a big hand, when you’re bluffing, etc.  See if you can start to act the same way all the time no matter what hand you have, in essence developing a “poker face”.

Being self-aware of the way you move, talk and react at the poker table will allow you to camouflage your play and protect yourself from giving away too much information.  If you move the same way no matter if you’re bluffing or value-betting, your opponents won’t be able to use this information to make a decision on how to react.  Failing to do so only makes it easier for them to get your chips.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Generally, experienced players like to recommend that newer/novice level poker players play their big starting hands very aggressively, and I have to agree.  Pocket aces do not guarantee a victory, even when raised with pre-flop, and limping with such a hand only allows other players to get involved with weak hands that may flop big.  Does that mean it’s impossible to slowplay a big hand?  Of course not, but the circumstances for making a decision to do so have to be right.

Let’s take a look at playing pocket aces aggressively and then passively, both from early position.  In the aggressive scenario, you raise about three times the big blind in early position.  Anyone with weak starting hands, small pocket pairs, suited connectors and the like will probably end up folding.  If you do get any callers it will likely be from players will hands like A-K, K-Q, medium pocket pairs, and big suited connectors.  Now when the flop comes, you should have a fairly good idea of where you stand considering that the players still in the hand had to call a raise in order to stick around.  If the flop comes K-K-10 and there are two players in the hand, you’ll know that it is very possible one of them stuck around to see the flop with a hand like K-Q in late position.  You may not win the hand now, but at least you can hopefully lose the minimum.  Getting this extra information came from playing pocket aces the way most experienced players would in early position.

Now let’s do the reverse.  You limp in early position with pocket aces and five other players also limp.  The flop comes Q-J-8 with two hearts.  How strong are you right now in the hand?  The problem is, you really have no idea.  It’s unlikely that another player would limp with a hand like Q-Q, so you can usually rule out trip queens in this situation.  But what about Q-J, or pocket eights, or K-10?  By letting players limp in to see a cheap flop when you hold a huge pocket pair, you’re opening up the possibilities for them to get lucky on the flop, turn or river, and the whole time you’ll be hard pressed to know exactly where you stand.

When you slowplay a huge hand pre-flop, you want to try and make sure that doing so is going to not put you in very uncomfortable situation.  If the table you’re playing at is very tight and you’re worried that raising with your aces pre-flop is going to drive away all of your opponents, you may want to try and limp in with aces in middle to late position and hopefully get no more than 2-3 other limpers.  From there you will probably want to play your aces aggressively on the flop, if for no other reason than to try and get some information as to just how strong your hand now is.

Slowplaying a hand like AA or KK in a tournament could make a little more sense, but again it depends on the scenario.  If someone else at my table is short stacked and I have to act before them pre-flop, I may check with my big pocket pair with hopes that they’ll push all-in.  In both a cash game and tournament I would also probably limp in with a big hand if I were in the small blind or big blind and only had one or two callers following me to the flop.

So in the end, yes there are definitely circumstances where you can try and slowplay your big hands pre-flop, but always try to make sure that you are doing so in situations that will put you at the least amount of risk as possible.

By: Chris Iaquinta