It is safe to say that the reason a lot of players end up making bad calls in situations where they obviously should have thrown their hand in the much is because of curiosity.  Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us.  Does the other player really have a flush?  Is he trying to bluff me and make me look foolish?  These are all thoughts that every poker player is plagued by, which is why it can be very hard to lay down your hand even though from an outsiders point of view it doesn’t make much sense to call.

An interesting experiment, though it’ll never happen, would be to see how many players would fold instead of call if the winning player was forced to flip over his hand after scooping up the chips.  I think that a lot of times we call because we need the validation of knowing what the other player has, no necessarily because we are confident that we have the winning hand.

Think of how many times you’ve heard a player say “Will you show me if I fold?”  Some very talented players will use that sentence as a ploy to try and get information out of another player, but most of the time it’s being asked just out of the curiosity of wanting to know what the other player has.  Eliminating the mystery may increase the overall call/fold discipline at the table, plus it would probably make bluffing a little bit easier since players won’t have to call in order to see the hand to learn whether or not they were bluffed.

The main reason why this theory will never take off though is because it will give your opponents too much information.  Pros and other experienced players rely on keeping as much information as possible from their opponents.  If someone is forced to show you that they bluffed you four times in the last hour, they won’t be able to pull off too many more bluffs for the rest of the session.  So basically, curiosity benefits the strong players and punishes the beginners and novices that can’t handle not knowing.  Fight the urge, trust me.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Bluffing in Texas Hold’em is practically mandatory at all levels of the game, with the general exception of when you are playing low-limit poker against really inexperienced players.  Bluffing adds another way of winning chips to your arsenal, something that will come in handy when the deck starts to run cold for extended periods of time, which will inevitably happen more than you want it to.  However, firing a random bet at the pot isn’t a very effective way to pull off a bluff and you’ll just end up donating chips to your opponent’s stack.

Unless your opponent has absolutely nothing, the bluff you make needs to make sense to the situation.  There are a lot of players that will show a lot of weakness throughout an entire hand and then out of nowhere they’ll fire a pot-sized bet on the river.  These half-assed attempts to pick up the pot will not work very often against keen, experienced players that have a good read on your poker ability.  They’ll end up calling you with extremely marginal hands like third pair.

Whenever you’re about to bluff, ask yourself if you would fold if the situation was reversed and someone was betting into you in this position.  If you’re heads-up against a very weak/tight opponent that auto-folds to any bet unless they hit top pair, then by all means continue to put pressure on that player by betting into them as often as possible.  The same can be said for continuation bets, you’ll almost always want to fire one of these out after the flop as long as your position is good and there aren’t too many other players in the pot.

Always be aware of how your opponent has played the hand as this will give you a lot of the information you’ll need to figure out whether or not a bluff can work.  If you really feel like your opponent has a drawing hand and didn’t catch the card they needed, you can now make an educated bluff based on situational information.  If you’re opponent raised before the flop though and the board comes A-Q-J, you won’t want to make any bluffs toward this hand as it is very likely that you’re opponent made his hand or even worse, flopped a monster.

Firing off random bluffs will only work against weak players and players with no hand.  Stay aware of how the action is progressing from hand to hand and build up knowledge of every player at the table.  All of these little bits of information will make it far easier for you to make smart bluffs as opposed to slinging in chips in the wrong situations.

By: Chris Iaquinta

When it comes to poker, most of just think of it in terms of strategy, technique, luck and all of the other things that play a factor in whether or not we win/loss a hand.  There is however a very important side to the game that many of us ignore when first getting into the game, and that is the lifestyle that comes with playing a lot of poker.  If you are a casual player, poker really won’t affect your life that much.  You’ll a few online tournaments or hit the local card room maybe once a month and then on with the rest of your life.  However, it is very easy for players to get heavily addicted to the game, and while I don’t really discourage that, you should be prepared for what that love affair can bring.

If you’re a loner, I heavily suggest that you stick with online poker. Grinding out endless hours with live opponents can get tedious on a number of levels, especially when you are subjected to their countless personalities, many of which are negative and angry.  As humans, we adapt to what we know and take on the traits of those that we spend a lot of time around.  So if you spend all day with happy people, you will be happier.  Well, don’t expect to find a lot of that happiness at the live tables.  Instead, expect to get called a donkey every half hour and eat at least one meal per day in the poker room deli by yourself or with another miserable regular who loves to spend all his time recounting bad beat stories.

Poker can also be a mental grind if you play too much.  Sitting in a chair for hours on end and having to concentrate intently for that entire period can be very taxing and leave you tense, tired and irritable for all the other things you do with your life.  Because of this, you need to make sure that you’re still doing things in life that give you pure pleasure.  Poker’s only fun when you’re winning, while other things are fun almost all the time.  Don’t abandon the other enjoyable things you like just because you want to play a ton of poker.  Go read a book during the day and then log into some SNGs at night, just keep a good balance of positive influence.

By: Chris Iaquinta

One of the most common questions I get asked by players new to competitive poker (by competitive I mean poker played outside of a casual home game), is why so many veterans like to raise frequently pre-flop when they can just call/check and see a low-risk flop?  In theory the question makes sense, after all why would any of us want to add extra chips to the pot when we can wait for the flop to see if we made our hand or not?

Raising pre-flop is done for a couple of primary reasons, which range from table image to card protection.  One of the main things that raising does is create an perception of strength.  It will tell the other players at the table that you have a premium hand (whether you do or not), and force them to make a decision on how to proceed in the hand.  This strength can also help you on the flop if you are heads-up against an opponent and they check the flop.  Since you have already raise pre-flop, you can now make a continuation bet on the flop, thus putting more pressure on your opponent than if you had just called pre-flop and then checked on the flop.  Most opponents will fold to a continuation bet if they didn’t hit their hand strongly, allowing you to pick up the pot whether you hit your hand or not.

The other main reason players raise pre-flop is to try and protect their hand as much as possible.  When you have hands like A-Q, 10-10 and K-Q, you don’t want to simply call pre-flop and see a cheap flop.  Why?  Well, say five other people limp-in as well and the flop comes Q-J-7 and you have pocket tens.  You have no idea what anyone else in the hand has, though you can at least suspect that no one has a premium hand since they didn’t raise pre-flop.  However, they could’ve very easily limped with Q-10 or K-J, hands they would’ve folded if you raised pre-flop with your 10s.

It’s almost always better to be the aggressor in a hand than on the defensive, as if you raise, you are giving yourself more ways to win the hand, while if you just check or call your opponents bet, you’re only going to win if you can beat their hand in a showdown.  Raising pre-flop is not a guaranteed strategy for winning, but it will help get all of the marginal hands to fold and put you in position to stay in control for the rest of the hand, especially if you are last to act.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Overbetting is not something that only exists in games frequented by newer and less experienced poker players, you can in fact find it at even the higher levels of play, albeit a lot less often.  Overbetting normally happens for a few reasons including a general lack of bet-sizing knowledge, and the thought that betting too much will yield different or better results.  The truth is, overbetting is a play that rarely makes sense, and will only utilized by skilled players when they are trying to confuse their opponent into believing they are bluffing at the pot.

In most overbet scenarios, you can bet a much smaller amount and still get the same amount of information and/or effect.  Let’s say that you hit top pair on the flop and there’s two hearts showing and now you want to make it hard for someone with a flush draw to call.  If there’s $80 in the pot and you bet out $200, that is a gross overbet.  If anything it will only serve to give your opponent good idea of what your hand range is.  You wouldn’t have likely bet two and a half times the pot with a monster hand like a set, nor would you have with a flush draw.  This pretty much puts you on top pair, two pair or overpair.

Now if you had just made a pot-sized bet, most of the same reactions would have happened.  You would get called or likely raised by someone with a very strong hand, while anyone with a marginal hand or weak to medium flush draw will have folded.  You’ve now put far less chips at stake but acquired the desired result as well.

Another time a lot of inexperienced players will make huge overbets and even unnecessary all-in bets is when they have a huge hand and are uncomfortable with playing on fourth street and the river.  These players want to make as few decisions as possible because they don’t have a lot of confidence in their poker ability. As a result they will shove all their chips in the middle with top pair or better.  Now imagine the likely outcome.  You will not get called by someone with just a decent hand, or someone with a drawing hand.  More often than not the only time you’ll get called by pushing all-in early is by someone with a monster hand or a hand with unusually high drawing potential (such as a straight flush draw).  Now you’ve minimized the amount of chips you can win, but also put your whole stack at risk since you will probably only get called when you’re beat.  This isn’t exactly smart poker.

The best way to win at poker is to maximize the amount of chips you rake in with the pots you win.  By scaring away opponents too early and too often with giant bets and raises, you are limiting how much you win in these given hands.  Learn the basic betting structures so that you can pull as much profit as possible from every winning hand.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Your table image during a poker game can have a dramatic effect on how the other players at the table will act against you and just how effectively you can use certain strategies and techniques.  Knowing how other players perceive is something you need to have a grasp of.  If you think you’re playing well in a session but your table image is that of a timid/weak player, then your opponents will make treat you like a timid/weak player and try to zero in on you.

Now there are some very good players that like to come off as weak, as they can then use that camouflage to win chips off unsuspecting opponents.  This will only work though in causes where you aren’t regularly playing against the same players over and over again though.  For the most part it is better to have a strong table image, an image that tells the other players that you know what you’re doing and that they shouldn’t try and bluff you that often, which in turn means your own bluffs will work with a higher percentage.

In order to successfully build this image you need to focus on the little things that other good players will recognize, such as making correctly-sized bets and just a general strong understanding of what’s going on at the table.  Also understand that there’s a big difference between knowing what you’re doing and acting like you know what you’re doing.  Every since the poker boom, tables have become filled with players that have watched too much poker TV and seen “Rounders” a million times, and they try to use their knowledge of poker lingo and pop culture to make up for the huge holes in their playing style.

These players are easy to spot, they normally never shut up about something they’ve recently watched on poker TV, plus they’ll be spouting lame poker sayings every two seconds and constantly relaying exaggerated bad beat stories.  Very few experienced, skillful poker players talk and act like this, and giving in to this type of behavior will just make you look silly to the others at the table.

Instead, the easiest way to strengthen your table image is just good, solid poker.  Don’t get caught making a lot of good calls or plays, flip over good starting hands, and act respectfully and professionally.  This will identify to the your opponents that you know what you’re doing, which means that you can now build your strategy based on around the knowledge that you have a good understanding of how you are perceived by the others at the table.

By: Chris Iaqunita

Thanks to the glamorization of online poker, more and more players have taken an interest in starting to dabble in playing multiple cash game and/or tournaments at once.  Most of us figure that if our favorite pros can do it then so can we since all it’ll require is a little extra focus, right?  Well, kinda.  While yes, you will need to increase the amount of focus your putting forth in order to pay attention to more than one game, there are other factors at play that will determine whether or not you can win at more than one table at a time.

The main thing you need to realize is that with the more and more tables you’re playing at, the less and less you’ll be able to pay attention to the finer details of any one individual game.  Because of this, the majority of your strategic decisions are going to be based around hand selection and positioning.  If you do not have a very strong understanding of what to do with every possible hand combination in every position, you will make numerous bad raises, calls and folds, which will completely defeat the purpose of how many players want to multi-table in the first place.

If you’re still wanting to play at least two tables at once, the next thing you must understand is that you cannot stay at the same table limit that you were at when playing just a single game.  If your standard game is $1/$2 no-limit hold’em, then you’ll want to drop down to at least $.50/$1 if not lower when you start to play at more than one table.  The reason behind this is that it will take some time before you can comfortable play at two tables with the same effectiveness as you did at one table.  In the beginning you’ll just be struggling to keep up with two tables-worth of action, at which time you won’t want to be risking the same kind of money you were before moving to multi-tabling.

So if you’re dead set on making the move to multiple tables, make sure you have the right tools in your strategic arsenal, and secondly, have the discipline to be able to move down in table limits so that you aren’t risking too much of your bankroll at any one time.

By: Chris Iaquinta

I would say that a fair number of poker players are interested in improving their game, though the methods of which they use to try and enhance their abilities might not always be the best choice.  Since the poker boom, books and DVDs have become some of the most popular training tools that new players flock to when wanting to increase their poker knowledge and skill, and while these are all good ways to add layers to your overall tactical and strategic methods, there are a lot of important aspects that often go unnoticed, especially when it comes to knowing your opponent.

Now when I say knowing your opponent, I don’t mean that you need to actually know him in the sense that you two are friends and on a first name basis.  I’m talking about knowing your opponents on a poker level, knowing how advanced (or inexperienced) of a player they are, what types of plays they make, if they bluff a lot, etc.  Far too many poker players will pay no attention to the opponents they play against, which is a huge mistake especially if you happen to play against the same people over and over again either at a local card room or even online.

Poker players rely heavily on getting any little edge over the other players as they can.  Sometimes that edge can come in the form of getting a lot of premium hands, but that’s the type of edge that will come and go, while knowledge of a particular player is something that can stay with you forever.  Imagine playing against someone that you have never met before.  Are they raising pre-flop because they’re overly aggressive or just because they happen to be getting a lot of good starting hands at the moment?  Are they bluffing on the river with that pot-sized bet?  Without any prior insight to this opponent you cannot add any edge to your decision-making.

Now take the opposite end of that scenario.  Now you’re sitting with opponents that you not only recognize, but also have been paying attention to the way they play.  If one player has the tendency to constantly bluff at the pot on the river and you know this, then you can call them with marginal hands, something you probably wouldn’t do against someone you don’t know.  In the long run you’ll start to see that this information is invaluable.  In live games the best you may be able to do is just take mental notes of the others at the table, however most online card rooms provide extensive note-taking tools that will let you bring up entire histories of the players you are constantly matched up against.  Do not overlook this aspect of your game any longer, you literally cannot afford it.

By: Chris Iaquinta