The Toll Men

Online poker rooms continually draw newcomers who think they know how to play poker after just a few friendly home games or watching it on TV. The fact is that most of these players have no clue about the subtle nuances involved and often play badly - frequently trying to bluff, constantly calling to the last card, and refusing to lay down what is obviously second-best hand.

When you encounter these types of poker players, then use some of these strategies to win their chips. The most important thing to remember is to always have a good decent starting hand before deploying these strategies:

* Fake weakness when you have a good hand against bad players who always attempt to steal pots. This over use of aggression makes these players easy targets for check raises and slow playing the nuts. Don’t raise when you do have the nuts. Instead let these players drive the betting.

* Thwart their game plan. Novices often rely on bluffing to win, so be alert for opportunities to call them.

* Attack their small bets. Amateurs will often make only small bets on the turn or river when they are holding a mediocre hand that might win. Make large raises against these meager bets.

* Isolate bad players and play them heads up as often as possible. It’s in your best interest to drive other players away with a big bet so you can focus on the one bad player.

There’s a lot more to think about than just the possibility of your poker online opponent folding when you are trying to bluff someone out of a hand. Sure, when we put pressure on someone with a hand that we are sure probably isn’t the best we are hoping that the end result will be that they fold. But another part of that equation, in the computation of its value against an end result and over time, is how often we’ll end up sucking out when we do get called by a poker hand that is ahead of us.

For instance, if a board is low cards, such as 2 5 9, often we might imagine we can steal the pot from other players by going all in over their bet. They likely don’t have a hand they’d love to play. Now, is it better to make this play with a hand like AK or pocket fours? When you get called, some amount of the time your poker opponent is going to make that play with top pair, pocket nines, or another pair around there, like tens, jacks, etc. Though again we hope they lay down, if we do get called we’d rather have the overcards than the underpair, though the pair is theoretically ahead of the ace king. If the 10s call us, when we have the underpair, we’re dead to two outs, where as with AK, we have 6 outs. Thus, the shoving equity is better with the overcards. Another thing to consider.

If you’re an online poker fan, it may strike you as odd the first time you go to play a live game and more importantly, you’ll most likely find yourself frustrated.

Not frustrated because you can’t beat the game you’re playing, but frustrated mostly at the speed. Playing poker online you can look at the table you’re joining and see how many hands are playing per hour. You can even join turbo games where the time to make decisions are limited more so than they would be regularly.

In a live game however, you don’t get the same treatment. You get nearly as much time as you want to make decisions (and so do the other players), and you don’t have an option of a turbo dealer. Even the fastest dealers in the casinos, can’t keep up with the mind numbing speed of the computer algorithm that has the cards shuffled, cut, and dealt in less than a second.

But there are some distinct advantages to live games that you won’t find online. In many casinos, there are your regulars who play daily and your tourists. The majority of the poker players you’ll find, especially at the lower stakes will be these tourists, so the competition will be pretty soft. Compare this with online play where through the week many of the players are regulars at even the lower stakes, and the competition of a .25/.50 game is as intense as a 5/10 game at a live casino.

So if you do decide to try your hand at a live game, just remember, patience will be even more important when selecting which hands to play, and your reads will be more important too, since you won’t have an automated system or the help of any software to give you information about the players’ stats. But play your cards right and you can make a live game very profitable. Perhaps even more profitable than an online game if you know how to approach the game.

When you’re playing against savvy poker online players, it’s almost impossible to go through a game at the casino online without at least getting bluffed a few times. And there will be times during those bluffs where you’re going to want to keep the player honest. Well if you insist, I’m going to let you in on some online poker tips to make your hero call a little more effective. First things first. You have to understand the situation. Are you in position or out of position to make the call. Let’s say a player raises under the gun. If that happens you automatically have to give him more respect than if he raised in late position. Next, think about your own hand. How strong is it. You should have close to the nuts if you’re going to make the hero call. Say you have A-10 and the flop comes A-J-10. You’ve got top and bottom pair; A-J beats you as does KQ for the straight. So in a situation like this one, you’ll have to analyze the play of the raiser. Is KQ in his opening range? Did he preflop raise? This is something you should be thinking about. Next, you have to decide how much it’s worth. So you’ll be looking at Pot Odds in a contextual setting. If you’re on the bubble of the money in a tournament, is it really worth it to risk all or most of your stack just to try to put out the bluffing bandit? I would certainly say not to and wait for a more opportune time to strike. Maybe you’re in a ring game though, and you have his stack dwarfed and he pushes 10 all-in into a 5 dollar pot and you have 100 behind you. You’d be more prone to call here as it couldn’t cause you as much damage and you could possibly be paid off with a higher probability. So basically what it comes down to is analysis. The context of the game, the texture of the flop, and the relative strength of your hand against the other player’s probable holdings.

Playing online poker offers several advantages. It is easy to get involved in online poker, alls you need is an internet connection. Most online poker sites also offer a range of play levels to help beginners get the feeling of the game before throwing them to the sharks. Also online poker tends to save money from traveling, booking a hotel room, and eating out. However perhaps the biggest advantage to online poker is you never have to say you’re sorry.

Think about it for a minute. Unless you personally know the other people at the virtual online poker table, chances are you will never meet them face to face. This means that our socially designed feelings of fair competition no longer apply. This in turn means you don’t have to worry about hurting another person’s feelings. Sure if you win a game of online poker someone is going to loose, but because it is a virtual world, you don’t have to see their face. This means you don’t have to worry about not playing your best game for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. This means you can play with a ruthless abandon you may not be comfortable with when real people are sitting across from the poker table. In the end this is a huge advantage.

Yet despite the fact there is really no reason, there are many people who will still look at their opponents with sympathy. In fact, it is not unknown for people who play online poker to look at the people they play with as close friends. Why this happens is still not completely understood, however many people feel that it occurs because in online poker, as with any other online interaction, people can make the people they are interacting with whoever they want them to be. Still, this does not mean you ever have to say your sorry.

I was recently in a cardroom in a horse track in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, it is legal to have tournament poker and limit cash games via a charity rake. So, they also are allowed to have limit pit games like blackjack, craps, and roulette. After I bubbled a tournament, which had some of the softest play in the universe, I tried some of the pit games out. The roulette was a joke, they paid 30-1 on a number instead of 35-1. All of the payouts were adjusted in the house’s favor. Blackjack was equally bad. The house took half your bet on a push and limited your options on splitting and doubling down. Craps only paid even money on 6 and 8. All of these games had a max bet of $4. So, after seeing the poor quality of these games, I decided to play a little 2/4 limit holdem poker. As usually in limit, the play was awful. People calling with straight draws on 3-flush boards, never folding bottom pair in hopes of hitting trips or 2 pair by the river. These are things that are great if you have a lot of time with these players, but in the short run, you can lose. And I did. I straddled with aces, and raised it up when it got back to me and lost to j,6 when they flopped a six and turned a jack. Limit holdem poker with idiots is probably the most frustrating game in the world. I hope to never play it again.