Blinds

Solid play from the blind positions is crucial to being a winning poker player, especially in Texas Hold'em. Yet few players focus on blind play nor consider it of anywhere near the same importance as starting hands outside the blinds. (More on playing the blinds.)If you were simply to be away from a brick and mortar Holdem table when it was your turn to take the blinds, you would lose about three big bets in an hour (assuming the button orbits the table four times an hour). In contrast, a solid win rate is one big bet an hour. Clearly then, to make that win rate, you would have to make four big bets an hour when in the other positions -- not counting the additional amount you would need to win to offset the house rake.A difference between good Holdem players and less-good ones is that a good player will more often bet second pair when good and fold it when it's a loser. Thus, even though everyone gets approximately the same cards in a game with very high short-term random luck, the good player will extract a little positive value from marginally good situations and save from losing a little negative value in marginally bad situations. That phenomenon is not difficult to understand (even if challenging to do).What occurs in blind play is very similar. Better players take more value from their opponents' blinds while losing less while in their own blinds. Some players mistakenly only try to do the first: attack other blinds. But that is actually the less important skill. Playing from the blinds well not only has the benefit of earning us some profit, it encourages weaker players to similarly play from the blinds, where they will tend to play in an unprofitable way -- not just because they will play relatively poorly from out of position, but because the more hands weaker players play, the more likely they are to get frustrated and go on tilt. It's an absolute: if you play with players who do go on tilt, doing small things to encourage them to play more hands directly leads to them going ontiltmore often.Some players simply are unable to comprehend the concept of playing when you are an underdog, but have pot odds to do so. This is one enormous difference between great players and merely good ones. If someone raises your big blind and everyone folds, you're getting 3.5 to 1 on calling the raise. It does not matter at all if your opponent is a favorite in this situation. What matters is if mathematically those 3.5 to 1 pot odds are profitable to you. You don't have to win anywhere near half the time to make this call be profitable. You merely need to extract more value from the pot than you put into it. That's it. Get some of that 3.5 bets worth of value. After you call there will be 4.5 small bets in the pot. You should be quite happy to regularly get back the equity of 1.5 or 1.7 or 2.1 small bets. Even 1.1 is a good return. It makes no difference at all if your opponent does better than that. What matters to us is we took the most profitable action available to us.One of the most intimidating plays in Holdem is to call a raise before the flop from the big blind, and check/call after the flop when the flop comes out a bunch of low rags. Watch this sometime. You can almost hear the pre-flop raiser's brain say: "Uh-oh". The point here is not to advocate that you often make this play, but only to emphasize that playing against a player in the big blind (much less so in the small blind) is a difficult thing to do -- especially if they are solid player. The range of hands the blind player could have is not easy to pinpoint, for one thing. People often say they hate playing from the blinds against a pre-flop raiser because it is hard. It's hard to play against a player who has better cards than you. That's true, but the reverse is also true. It's very difficult to play against a tough/solid/tricky player in the big blind (assuming the raiser doesn't flop a no-brainer hand) who could be playing a very wide variety of cards.

Omaha

Here are some principles to keep in mind whenever you're playing Omaha. I'll keep it short and sweet, because there isn't really much that needs to be said about each of them. If anyone does want more in depth information about any of these, please leave me a comment and I will tell you whatever you need to know.1) If you're not drawing to the nuts, you're drawing dead. In Omaha you will more often then not be playing draws on the flop, and maybe even the turn. Rarely will you flop a made hand that is likely to still be the nuts by the end of the hand. So, when you are playing a draw, make sure you are drawing to the nuts, because if you are not, and it hits, you will often find yourself with the 2nd best hand.With players having 4 cards apiece, if you are drawing to a king-high flush, the odds are fairly good that someone else is drawing to an ace-high flush, and if your card hits, you will actually be dead in the pot. So make sure you are the one drawing to the nuts.2) One of the differences between a winning Omaha player and a losing Omaha player is a winning Omaha player can fold three-of-a-kind.Three of a kind is a drawing hand, not a made hand like in Hold'em. Trips and sets get more people in trouble playing omaha than anything, except for maybe Principle #1 above. TOAK (three-of a kind) is a VERY vulnerable hand. You are really just drawing to a full house, and if you don't make it and there are three to a straight or three to a flush on the board, you should probably fold. You will save yourself a LOT of money/chips.Winning players are the ones who know when their hand is vulnerable, and have the discipline to follow through with that knowledge and fold.3) There is NO SUCH THING as slow-playing in Omaha. This is something else that costs players a lot of pots. Thinking that their set is safe on a rainbow flop, many players try to get fancy and try to slow-play, allowing someone else to catch a better hand. Then, when they do try to speed up, they find themselves a big underdog. One card in Omaha can mean the difference between being a big favorite and a big underdog. You never know what card will give another player better trips in a situation like this, but if you bet your trips, you will probably push out someone who would have made a better set.If you have a hand, bet. That's all there is to it.4) Don't go overboard with betting. Just because you are allowed to bet the pot, does NOT mean that you should. Preflop, if you have a big hand, you might want to bet the pot to isolate/create value, but after the pot, take it easy. Evaluate the situation before going hell-bent for leather. Too many people just bet the pot at every opportunity and end up losing far more than they should. Understand the art of pot manipulation and take advantage of it. It will allow you to win more and lose less.5) Keep bluffing to a minimum. Omaha is not a bluffing game. This is another mistake that costs players a lot of chips. There are probably going to be several players in the pot, and you have no idea what the flop could have given one of them. There are INFREQUENT situations where a bluff might be appropriate, but they are few and far between, so don't bother.If you don't have a real hand, don't bet, you might run into someone who does.6) Look for reasons to fold, not reasons to call. It is human nature to try to find reasons to call bets, rather than fold. You must learn to override that impulse. A backdoor 10-high flush draw is not a reason to call, it is a reason to fold. If you can't immediately see a reason to call, don't look for one.So many people find excuses to stay in the pot, and then, when they make their excuse hand, they find themselves with the 2nd best hand, or worse. If it isn't obvious why you should call, you probably shouldn't.

stop moaning and start thinking

A friend of mine told me about a hand that knocked him out of a tournament recently. He had AK against 88. The flop came a King and the guy rivered an 8. My friend bemoaned to me that he lost the tournament to a guy who was over a 20 to 1 underdog. "Wow, that’s really unlucky!" I said. I felt really horrible for my friend who had gotten knocked out on such a long shot. Bad Beat, right? The problem was that when I saw the tournament on TV it turned out that all the money had gone in before the flop. That means the hand was a race, basically either hand was even money to win. Granted, a King did flop and the guy did hit an 8 on the river. The order the cards fell is certainly painful. It is always hard to have your hopes raised so high only to have them dashed when the river takes the tournament away from you. But the fact is that when the money goes in before the flop it is a 5 card hand. 5 cards are going to hit the board no matter what and the order those cards hit is, frankly, irrelevant. Why do I bring this up? Does it really matter if my friend wants to say he lost to a 20 to 1 shot instead of an even money shot? Yes, it really does. Critical thinking is one of the most important aspects of being a good player. This includes looking with a critical eye at every session of poker we play and not allowing our emotions to get involved in our evaluation and recounting of the poker we play. Bemoaning your bad beats is terribly unproductive. Poker has luck involved. That is a plain fact. Sometimes the vagaries of statistics bite you and a big favorite will lose. Your opponent may only have a 5% chance of winning a pot but, guess what? That 5% is going to hit sometimes and sometimes it will be in a crucial situation. I know it is not fun but it happens to all of us. Obsessing about bad luck, and in the case of my friend, recreating history to be worse than it was is counterproductive. Pondering your ill fate takes you out of the game. It makes you feel like a loser. It undermines your confidence. And as a true competitor you need to always play with supreme confidence. You need to feel like a winner at all times. Rather than focus on bad luck, you should always focus on the play of hands. Perhaps you could have played the hand you lost differently and avoided the bad situation. In the case of my friend, he moved in before the flop. Wouldn’t it be more productive to explore the possibility of a flat call before the flop and a move-in after the flop when the board hit a King? I am not saying that is the right play, but exploring it as a possibility is certainly more productive than just moaning about the loss. The fact is that I probably would have moved in pre-flop as well, in which case you just shrug your shoulders at losing the race. But a flat call certainly would have won the pot so it is worth exploring the option. You shouldn’t just explore hands you lose either. Sometimes we play hands we win poorly. Sometimes we play them well. Sometimes we play hands we lose poorly. Sometimes we play those well too. Focusing on the win or loss itself is not worth it and will undermine your ability to improve your game. Focusing instead on the play of the hand…well now you have my attention. That is the fastest road to improvement. As poker players, we all have a tendency to overemphasize skill when we are winning and bad luck when we are losing. Don’t wallow in your bad luck when you are running poorly. Instead, take a good hard look at how you could have played differently. Sometimes you will find you just got unlucky. Other times you will find that you made mistakes that created the bad luck you might otherwise be unproductively wallowing in. Likewise, don’t celebrate your immense skill when you are winning. That is just as bad as wallowing in your bad luck. Take a cold hard look at how much of your good luck streak is a result of your playing really well and how much of it is just things mathematically going your way. So many times you will find that you were playing just as well while losing as while winning but you happened to win all your 50/50 shots on the winning streak while losing them on the losing streak. Remember poker is a game that requires us all to be honest with ourselves. That kind of honesty is challenging in both our personal lives and our professional lives. But in poker, in particular, the kind of cold-hearted evaluation that eliminates emotional involvement in the outcome is supremely important to our growth as expert players.

playing the maniac

Female poker players will find that their opponents often play them differently than the men at the same table. One of the most common types of player that woman will come across is the “maniac.” The maniac can be described as a super aggressive player with a loose style of poker. Men will often fall into this category when playing women, raising and bluffing far too often. The smart female player will have an arsenal of tools in her poker toolbox to maximize profit against a player like this. And, of course, this applies to men as well, since there can be a maniac at any table. Playing an amped up game is the main characteristic of this type of player. The maniac shows aggression on steroids—he plays very loose poker, raising and bluffing way too much. Clearly, this is generally a non-optimal style of play. But the maniac does have one thing going for him—when he wins a pot it is much bigger than it is supposed to be. Because his style is so aggressive, he creates big pots for himself. Bigger pots are the maniac’s reward for playing so fast and loose. Many people take the wrong tactic in playing a maniac. They decide that since the maniac is playing so loosely, that they should open up their game against him by not only playing more hands, but playing those hands more aggressively. The theory here is that since the maniac is playing so many hands, that you should lower your hand values yourself. And since the maniac is raising every street, you can raise him back with much weaker holdings because the probability increases significantly that your hand is the best hand against a guy who plays everything. The premise of this is true—if you are facing someone who raises a lot then your weaker holdings go up in valuation against him. And generally in poker when you think you have the best hand, you should raise. Good logic - but wrong execution. All this accomplishes is turning you into a maniac as well. The problem is that building huge pots for the maniac plays right into his hand. The one important feature of maniac play that allows them to survive is that the pots they win are much bigger than they should be. He creates huge pots so people are much more likely to raise him back—even better yet, cap it with the maniac. So if this is his big advantage, should you be aiding and abetting him? Should you be helping him create huge pots? No. The way to punish a maniac is to keep his pots small. And the way to do this is to isolate him whenever possible if you think you have the best hand, and then go totally passive. If you are on his left, re-raise the maniac to knock the rest of the field out of the pot. If you are on his right, raise into him knowing he will re-raise and knock out the field. Now you have him isolated. Now what? If you are in position and the maniac is betting into you after the flop, just call. If you are out of position, just check and call. The reason for this tactic is this: chances are that he is bluffing. If you raise, you will get him to fold and lose all the money he would have continued to bluff off on later streets. Against a maniac you should wait until the river to raise when you think you have the best hand. Never discourage him from bluffing off his money. This is probably the most important aspect of playing the maniac, make sure you allow him to bluff every last penny. This means that the pots you win are bigger than they would be if you were to raise when the maniac had nothing. But just calling accomplishes another important thing as well. When the maniac does have you beat, he makes not one extra bet from you. While just calling will often make a bigger pot for you by letting the maniac bluff off extra bets, it makes a smaller pot for the maniac by not rewarding him with extra raises. The fact is you will win the majority of pots from the guy because when you enter the pot against him you will almost always start with the best hand against him. By keeping the pots small, you reduce your variance against him—winning lots and lots of normal sized pots, enough of which are much bigger than they should be because you don’t discourage the bluff. And when he does suck out on you, his pot is much smaller than he would like it to be to reap the rewards of his maniacal ways. When he does just plain have you beat, it is the same thing. If you are always isolating the maniac and then only raising on the river, you will maximize your profits and reduce your variance against those people trying to prove how much they can bully a girl!

Men

God Bless Men As a woman playing this great game of poker you have a distinct advantage over your male counterparts. You might think it is your clearly superior brain. You might think it is your ability to multi-task. You might think it is your more intuitive nature. Yes, all those are qualities that women excel at but, no, that is not what I am thinking of. I am thinking of the mere fact of you being a woman. What on earth could I mean by "the mere fact of being a woman?" Well there is an interesting thing that happens when you put a woman at a poker table-and all you men out there should be paying close attention to this: Some men become unhinged-they forget they are playing a ruthless game in which emotion should be separated from strategy-they forget that the gender of your opponent should make no difference in how you play the game. And that is a good thing for all us girls. So for your poker pleasure, here are two types of men you might encounter at the table and the ways to profit from them: 1) The Flirter: Yes, you will meet a lot of flirters at the table. These are men who can't get past the fact that when confronted with a woman they begin to think with the wrong part of their body. They see you a girl rather than an opponent. They see you as a conquest. They see you having cocktails with them. Profit from these guys-and I don't mean go out on a date with them (umless you want to). If and only if you are comfortable with it you should flirt right back at them. Engage them. Let them think they have a chance with you. Let them think that flirting with them is the most fun you have had at a poker table in years. What will this get you? Bets saved. These guys don't want to take your money. They want to take you on a date. So they will often not raise you when they should. They will not put the kind of pressure on you they should. They won't bluff as often as they should. And sometimes they will go so far as to out and out tell you when you are beat. Oh, the number of times in my early career that I had a guy say, "Honey, don't call, I have a flush." And then show me his cards. All those bets you save by being friendly with your flirter are money earned. And money earned-well, now, isn't that the whole goal of poker? 2) The Angry Chauvinist: Poker is a boys' game, right? Men go to their Wednesday Night game to escape the old lady, right? Well, I certainly don't think so but there are men out there that do and when confronted with "the old lady" at the poker table these kinds of men get bent out of shape. They are offended by your mere presence at the table. I mean, how dare a women invade their male sanctuary and have the audacity to sit down at the table and ruin their good time? You can really profit of this type. They are angry that you are there. If you are comfortable with it, antagonize them. Giggle girlishly when you win pots. Check raise them at every opportunity. Show them your bluffs. The mere fact that you are there already pisses them off, so piss them off more. What will this get you? Extra bets. Men like this don't want a girl to beat them. They want to show you who's boss. They will bluff you too often. The will call you too often. So play value poker against these guys. Run the nuts into them. They will be calling stations against you. Make sure you call them down more often than another opponent since, make no mistake, these guys are trying to bluff you much more than they should be. All those extra bets, those extra bluffs that you call down, the extra bets that they pay off on the river because they don't want to lose to a chick, those extra bets are money earned. And, again, well isn't that the whole goal of poker? Now, all this being said, be aware that you will find fewer men who fall into these traps as you move up in limits. As the limits get higher, you encounter more and more pros and the pros tend to have more control over these aspects of their personalities. But although there are fewer of them, you still will find men like this at any limit you play. I hope for the men out there that you have taken notes and that this will improve your game as much as it improves the games of the women out there reading this.

omaha hilo connection low cards

Another big mistake players make is overestimating the strength of connecting low cards that contain no ace. A hand like 2 3 4 5 might look very strong because of all the wheel possibilities but in reality it is not at all strong. Your flush feature is only 5-high. In order to flop the nut low or the wheel wrap you need an Ace to fall. And as I've said above it is never a good idea to wholly rely on exactly one card to fall when the flop hits. When your hand contains an A2 it is very easy to flop the nut low draw. Without that all-important ace you are most likely to flop the third best low draw when the low draw hits. For example, when any two low cards 3 and higher hit (34, 35, 36, 37or 38) A2 and A4 or A5 will be drawing better than you. You can only have the third best draw by definition and it is never a good idea to chase a draw when you can only make third best. When you make a straight with this hand, your best high feature, unless it is exactly a wheel, it will generally not be the nut straight. So if the board is 456KQ you have the bottom straight and the third nut low. You will have to pay it off because your hand could win both ways will but you will often be scooped, particularly if the pot is multi-way. So the negative implied odds of this hand are substantial. It is important in Omaha 8/b to always consider the probability that your hand can make the nuts. Unlike in hold'em where one pair is the most likely hand to win a pot in Omaha 8/b the nuts is the most likely hand to win. So it is important to try to always put yourself in the position where that is what you are drawing for.

Omaha hilo AA

Perhaps because the best hand in Omaha 8/b is AA23 double suited most players greatly overestimate the value of having AA in their hand. AA can make top set but Aces also play for low meaning that you are guaranteeing one piece to a low board when you flop a set. Because of this the aces have some of the same drawbacks as deuces through eights. Of course, being able to flop top set mitigates these drawbacks, but this still needs to be taken into account. Because of this, when you play AA you need to have some other feature to your hand-suited cards, other connecting low cards (AA34) or connecting high cards (AAKQ). A A 7 8 is actually a hand that you can throw away from early position and you should never call a raise with unless you are in the big blind. With this hand you have no good low features and no suits. The only feature is AA so really you are either hoping that your one pair will stand up, which rarely happens in Omaha 8/b, or that you will flop a set, which is a) less likely to stand up in Omaha 8/b than hold'em and b) increasing the likelihood that you are only gunning for half the pot by putting an Ace out there. Unless you are raising out of steal position, limping in in the small blind or playing out of the big blind you should never play this hand.

Omaha hilo A-2

Speaking of A2, although you can always play a hand containing these cards don't overestimate the value of having them in your hand. Remember that everyone plays A2 and it happens quite often that when you have these two cards someone else does too, leaving you drawing at a half of the low side of the pot. So if A2 is the only feature to your hand, remember to always play with some caution. A 2 9 6 is a hand like this. Limping in rather than raising would probably be the preferred play with a hand like this-waiting to see what hits the board. You have no strong high features to the hand and your back up low features (if an A or a 2 hits the board) are quite weak by virtue of containing a 6. This hand is weak enough that I would not call a double raise from an early position player with this hand, despite the A2 feature. It is too likely that either the first or second raiser or both also has the A2 feature and you have nothing else really working in the hand. In reality, I would much rather have a hand like A 3 4 5 than A296 no suits. With the first hand you have two suits, one to the Ace and 4 wheel cards. Even if a deuce doesn't hit the board you still have a good chance at the low side. You have lots of straight and wheel possibilities in the hand and all your back up lows are strong. Therefore this hand is much stronger than a hand that just contains a stranded A2.

Omaha hilo small pairs

One of the biggest mistakes many players make is overestimating the value of their small pairs. Small pairs (22 thru 88) really don't have a lot of value in Omaha 8/b. This is for two main reasons. First, when you flop a set the likelihood of there being an overset is greatly increased by the mere fact that your opponents have four cards in their hand instead of two. Set under set is always a situation to be avoided. Second, and more importantly, is the fact that when you flop a set you are putting one piece to a low on the board. By this I mean that, by definition, if you flop a set of deuces thru eights there is necessarily at least one low card on the board. Why is this so bad? Because it greatly increases the likely the board will qualify for low and that you will be getting half of the pot only. Necessarily, if you get half of the pot instead of the whole pot you are reducing the odds the pot is laying you by half. Compare this situation to flopping a set of nines thru Kings. Then just the opposite happens: you are removing a spot for a low card to hit, thus increasing the likelihood that no low will qualify. This is why high pairs are so much more powerful than baby pairs. Because of this difference between high and low pairs, low pairs actually weaken your hand rather than strengthen it. Even if your cards are strongly related to the pair, you cannot play. So hands like 8 8 7 6 are completely unplayable. This is despite having lots of straight possibilities, a possible set and two possible flushes. When you make a straight there is almost always a low qualified (e.g. the board is 456). When you make a flush it is never the nut flush. And when you flop a set there is a likely low available and it is rarely the top set. This is a hand you could fold in the big blind to a raise. You would certainly fold it in the small blind. To play a small pair, the other two cards must have very strong low features and you must realize that the addition of the pair only marginally improves the quality of your hand. As an example, A 3 3 6 is playable because of the strong low features (A36) with the pair. Also, you have an ace high suit. But it is important to understand that this hand is not much better than having just A 3 6 with no fourth card! In contrast A 4 4 9 is only marginally playable because the low feature A4, is very weak. The 9 is totally unrelated. The only thing really going for this hand is the Ace-high suit. Because of this, this is a hand you can call a raise with in the big blind. You can call a raise out of the small blind if the raise has come from a steal position. You can limp in late or in the small blind. And you can raise from late when no one has entered in front of you. But you should not otherwise enter the pot. Hands like 2 2 3 4 and 6 6 2 3 are even worse than the above example. Even though you have lots of low cards working, you will only flop the nut low draw when an Ace hits and it is never a good idea to be relying on exactly one card to hit the board. When you make flushes with these hands they are never the nuts, unlike with the A 4 4 9 example. Your sets will always be weak and when you hit them there is a likelihood of a low qualifying. These are hands with huge negative implied odds. You will often end up chasing half the pot with the second best hand and just paying off to the nuts, as when the board is 4 5 K 7 Q. Even with the 2 2 3 4 you still only have the third best low (A2 and A3 beat you) and you have very far from the nut flush. You will often be scooped in this pot yet you really have to pay it off even so because you hand is a two-way hand-it could be best for high or low. Therefore, these hands should only be played from steal position or in the big blind. You should never call a raise with these hands unless you are in the big blind. This is particularly important since hands that raise in Omaha 8/b almost always contain an Ace and this, by definition, takes away one of the four aces you desperately need to flop! Hands with small pairs and very weak low features are always unplayable unless you are in the blind or in steal position. So 8 8 A 5 is absolutely terrible. You have no suit, a small pair and a terrible low possibility. 6 6 5 A is similarly bad even with the ace-high suit. Don't be fooled into playing these hands just because you have two wheel cards or an Ace high flush possibility. You are essentially playing with only two useful cards in your hand, which is almost never a good idea unless you have exactly A2.

Omaha hilo Pairs

One of the key issues in Omaha 8/b is that you always want to have more than two cards working. In fact, the only hand you could justify playing out of any position where you only know two of your cards would be one that contains A2. When your hand is not playing at all for low this becomes more important. When you are playing a hand with only high features all four of your cards need to be working. What I mean by this is that all four of your cards have to be related to each other in some way. If you are playing big pairs (by this I mean any pair 99 and above) the other two cards need to be strongly related to the pair. So, K K T 3 is a completely unplayable hand. You have exactly two kings, a hanging three unrelated to any of the other cards and no suited cards that would give you a flush feature. The only flop you would truly be happy with is one that gives you Kings full. This is a hand that if you were raised in the big blind you could throw it away. Certainly you would never call a raise with this hand in the small blind. As a contrast consider K K 2 3. This is an incredibly powerful hand, one that you could play out of any position at the table. You have two suits, spades and diamonds, you have a big pair, kings, and you have two relatively strong low cards, 23. You are playing for high and low and have multiple high features to your hand. Plus, when an ace hits the board, you will often still have the nut low draw (as in a board of A 4 T) and you might often have the nut flush draw also (A T 4). You can flop many powerful hands with this and it is a hand that is easy to get away from. If the board is 2 5 6 for example you have an easy fold. As another contrast, consider hands like Q Q J T and J T T 9. Again these two hands are eminently playable because all four of your cards are strongly related. Further, when you make your hand you will almost always be getting the whole pot as flopping these hands well generally means high cards will hit the board. You have lots of straight possibilities. It is easy to flop a high wrap-a very powerful Omaha hand. If the board hits with a 98K, for example, and you have QQJT you can make a straight with a 7, T, J or Q. This is called a total wrap, when any of four possible cards makes your straight. Further, when you make your hand with the Q this also gives you a set so that when the board pairs you still have a very powerful hand. So big pairs can be very powerful starting hands but only if you have two strongly related other cards in your hand as well.

Movin on up

One of the most important skills in becoming a great professional poker player is money management. In fact, money management is, in some ways, much more important than talent. I have seen many good poker players go broke because of poor money management skills: playing too high for their bankroll, playing in the pit, or jumping into games that are too high for the game they regularly play. It is obvious why the first two are examples of poor money management skills. If you only have a bankroll of $1000 then playing $20/$40 is a terrible idea as you can go broke in one play. Taking your poker bankroll and playing pit games such as craps where skill does not count is obviously poor money management. But what do I mean by the last example. Shouldn't you sometimes jump into a game that is higher than you generally play if the game is great? No! Let's say you generally play between $10/$20 and $15/$30 hold'em. You walk into the poker room one day, or log onto the computer, and you see a fantastic $30/$60 game with a big $15/$30 sucker in it. What is going to happen to your bankroll if you play in this game? Let's consider the downside. If you play in this game, it is twice as big as the highest game you generally play in. This means you'll make twice as much, right? Wrong. The pros playing in the game are going to be much better than you; after all they consistently beat a game twice as big as you play in. Consider how bad the suckers have to be in order to outweigh the fact that you are playing with pros who frankly play on a different level than you do. What often happens is that even though you can pound on the suckers in the game, you become merely a holding station for the suckers' money on its way to the better pros in the game. So if you want to take a shot at a big game you had better consider how much more skilled than you the pros sitting at the table are. It all comes down to simple risk versus reward. If you are a great $15/$30 player maybe you are beating the game for a full big bet an hour, $30. If you jump up to take a shot at what looks like juicy a $30/$60 game what happens to your earn vs. variance? With the significantly better pros in the game, combined with the fact that you may be playing out of your comfort level, you may now only be taking ½ a big bet an hour out of the game, or $30. That's the same $30/hour you were taking out of the $15/$30 game with twice the risk! You are earning the same amount per hour but having to fade the variance of a $30/$60 game rather than a $15/$30. In fact the risk is probably more than double as a juicy game is generally wilder; and the wilder the game, the higher the variance. If you are only moving up when the game is really juicy then you are specifically choosing to jump up in high variance situations. So even if you did increase your earn to say ¾ of a big bet per hour, or $45, you are still having to endure significantly larger fluctuations in your bankroll, fluctuations your $15/$30 bankroll may not be able to endure. I know you are thinking that if the game is good enough maybe you could take out a full big bet an hour and double your earnings. Then you should certainly jump up, right? I still say no. For there is still the simple fact that, in the short term, luck is very powerful in poker and on any given day the best player in the game might be the biggest loser of the day if luck isn't with him. If you want to take a shot at a game you had better make sure that game goes more than every once in a while. Otherwise, a bad day in the game, no matter how good the game, could ruin your whole month. If you jump into a big game and have bad luck it could wipe out all the hard work you have done in the smaller game in one fell swoop. That's right, poof! Your profits for a month of hard work are gone because you jumped into a wild, albeit great, game double the size of the game you generally play. So consider the risk when you see that juicy game. It might not be as juicy for your bankroll as it looks!

The 30 bet rule

When I first started playing poker, someone gave me a great piece of advice. He told me to never lose more than 30 big bets in a game, give or take. That means I shouldn't lose more than $180 in a $3-$6 game, $600 in a $10-$20 game and so on. What a great piece of advice that was, one of the most important he ever gave me for money management, so I'm going to pass it on to you here: "Don't ever go off for more than 30 big bets in a poker game!" When you are first starting out as a poker player it is very difficult to judge whether you are a good player or a bad one. Until you have a lot of experience and table hours under your belt there is no way for you to effectively judge your skill level. More importantly, until you have played a lot of hours it is difficult for you to judge your level of skill compared to the other players at your table. One thing the 30 bet rule does for you is limit your losses in games where you might be the sucker. Until you are able to accurately judge how you play compared to others in your game, loss limiting with the 30 bet rule effectively stops you from dumping off large sums of money in games you may not be able to beat. This is always a good strategy for bankroll health! Even if you have enough experience and table hours to judge whether you are good, better or worse than the game you have chosen, loss limiting is still a good strategy. When we are losing it is difficult to accurately judge exactly how much losing affects our play. Even great champions will often be in a game they could generally beat soundly but because they are losing. They become a dog to the game and don't realize it. When you are losing, your table image erodes and table image is very important to how much money you can take out of a game. Other players are also more likely to play hands strong and fast against you, bluff at you and generally will be more likely to run you down which will take away your ability to bluff. All of this really eats into your earnings. Not only will your table image erode when you are losing but your skills will erode as well! As you go into the mindset of wanting to reduce your loss on losing hands you will play hands softer than called for, back off hands, and won't raise when appropriate. And we all know that passive play is a recipe for losing play. Losing generally makes us all more passive. Yet, there are those of us who steam... we chase hands we would normally fold or play hands we would normally never get involved in and the like. Steaming is another recipe for losing. By limiting your losses to 30 big bets, you are effectively minimizing the time you spend playing with a poor table image, playing passively, or steaming at the table and maximizing the amount of time you spend playing your A-game. If you don't go beyond 30 big bets, you won't dump off large sums when you are playing poorly or are in a bad game and might not be able to soundly assess your circumstances. Loss limiting acts as an objective stop-gap. So always listen to big brother... keep your losses small!

Omaha hilo The value of connecting cards

The final mistake I will discuss is the underestimation of the value of connecting high cards. Many players think that hands like K Q J T are quite weak when, in fact, they are quite strong. This is due several factors. First, when you flop this hand well there is almost never a possibility of a low being available. Hands that kill the low are always more valuable because when you win with the hand you will win the whole pot. The strongest hands in Omaha 8/b are hands that have scooping potential. There are two types of scooping hands: ones that have two way potential like AA23 and ones that have only high potential like AAKQ. Hands that have only high potential are, for this reason, strong. The second factor that makes high straight cards so valuable is that it is a hand that you rarely get trapped with. Either you flop the hand well (as when the board comes T93, QQ9, or AQT for example) or you flop it very poorly (23Q, 578, K52 for example). Unlike with low straight cards where you can have the idiot end of the straight with a bad low that you have to pay off with high straight cards you either flop the nut draw or you don't. There is really just no gray area with hands like these-as long as you are capable of throwing away your one pair flops when there are dangerous low cards out there. Because there is no gray area these hands are very easy to get away from on the flop. And since you will almost exclusively be gunning for the whole pot when you make these hands, thus scooping, these hands are very valuable and can be played from any position for a raise-particularly when you have suited features with them. I hope that these mistakes have given you something to think about. The main lesson about hand selection in Omaha eight-or-better you should take away with you is that the fact that everyone gets four hole cards means that you have to be pickier about what you play. It is much more important than in any other game that has no wild cards that your hand be one that can easily make the nuts. The strength of the winning hand as compared to stud or hold'em in always much greater. In stud two pair will generally win the pot. In hold'em one pair will generally win. In Omaha 8/b both these hands will generally lose. Because your opponents have four cards the strength of the winning hand is greatly increased so you, as a player, need to play hands that are likely to make the nuts when you make your hand. If you always keep this in mind you will be well on your way to becoming a winning Omaha 8/b player.

R.I.P John Harkness

The following below was a tribute to john harkness from a fellow writer

December 18, 2007John Harkness, 1954–2007We’re going to take a break from our usual Torontoist style in this post because the passing of John Harkness, the film critic for Now magazine since its inception in 1981, is something that has particular importance for me. As the writer of Torontoist's weekly “Film Friday” column, which, as you know, very often quotes the reviews from local critics, I have probably quoted John Harkness more than anyone.There’s a funny story in this, because although in the process of writing the Film Friday column I’ve met and got to know a fair number of Toronto’s critics, I was always too intimidated by John Harkness to ever introduce myself to him (even though I saw him at countless screenings and events). Last week, at the Canada’s Top Ten event, I spotted him chatting with another critic, and thought, “well, might as well introduce myself now, so it doesn’t have to be awkward any more.”I walked up to him and told him that I was from Torontoist, and I wrote the Film Friday column. He said, “Oh, the Torontoist. I’ve heard of you. You seem to be obsessed with me and Jason Anderson.”A little flummoxed, the only thing I could think of to say was, “Well, I am.”My introduction to John Harkness didn’t go particularly well, honestly, and if it wasn’t for the fact that, due to circumstance, I will never see him at another screening, it would certainly still be awkward. But I don’t regret telling him I was obsessed with him, because John Harkness was—is—Canada’s most important film critic. In a previous Film Friday, someone asked what there was to respect about a critic, and I said, “the ability to write well, and express their opinions in a clear and interesting manner.”In my humble opinion, that was the very least that John Harkness did.Born in Montreal, John Harkness grew up in Halifax and Sarnia, and studied under Andrew Sarris in Cinema Studies at Columbia University. As well as writing for Now, John also wrote for publications including Sight And Sound and Take One. He was a huge supporter of the Toronto International Film Festival and Cinematheque Ontario. He was also, we’re told, really, really good at poker.John Harkness was 53 years old.

John Harkness

I learned of the death of a good friend John Harkness, I just cant believe he is gone, for those of you that dont know him or never played poker with him, he was a very good poker player and also a film critic. I have had the pleasure of playing poker with john since pokerstars opened and I enjoyed every table we ever played on together. I have played on countless cash tables with john. john just like me, loved omaha hilo pl with a passion and he was very very good. when I was in a sit n go with him I knew what I was up against. I am truly going to miss my friend, he would always have something good to say to me and he was never ever out of line at the tables, john was the true definition of a respectable poker player. While John was obviously very knowledgeable about the film industry, hisreal passion was his hobby -- collecting watches. He could go on forhours about stuff that I knew nothing about, but it was OK since I couldtell he was enjoying talking about it.John also participated in the beta testing for Pokerstars. For histrouble, he received a very small ownership position in the company.December 18, 2007 at 6:56 PM EST John Harkness, the film critic for NOW Magazine since its beginning on Sept. 10, 1981, was found dead in his home in Toronto on Tuesday, according to Michael Hollet, the tabloid's editor and publisher. Mr. Harkness, who was 53 had been suffering from high cholesterol. "He had never missed a deadline in 26 years," Mr. Hollet said Tuesday fternoon, "so we sent somebody to his house when his copy didn't arrive." That is when they found his body and called the police. Born in Montreal in 1954, Mr. Harkness grew up in Halifax and Sarnia. He earned a degree in English literature from Carleton University in Ottawa before doing graduate work in Cinema Studies at Columbia University in New York City, where he studied under critic Andrew Sarris. "John Harkness was simply the best film critic in Canada over the last 26 years," said Mr. Hollet in a press release. "He has been an essential element of NOW magazine's success and his unique vision and bravery and art in expressing it inspired all of us at NOW to strive." Mr. Harkness also wrote for Sight And Sound, Take One, and the Cinematheque Ontario program and spent several years as a trade reporter for Screen International and Cinema Canada. His book on the Oscars, The Academy Awards Handbook, is currently in its eighth edition. besides being a film critic and author john loved to play poker with a passion, I will miss you john it is strange how one can become such close friends online, I will miss my friend dearly, R.I.P john harkness