Of all the ways we sabotage ourselves at the poker table few are more pervasive, and ultimately more costly, than impatience. It can seep into every aspect of our game, impact almost every decision we make, without us even realizing it. Like an expert pickpocket, impatience can whisk away our money and even after we know the money is gone, we still can’t figure out who was responsible for the loss. From the starting hands that we play, to the way we deal with borderline decisions, to the basic decision of whether or not to play at all, the inability to wait is killing us at the poker table.

We live in a world of instant gratification. We want instant meals, so we stuff ourselves with fast food and junk food. Then we want a fad diet or magic pill to immediately get rid of the inconvenient weight gain and other physical problems that follow. From cell phones to pocket computers to the Twittering craze, the modern world has wired us — both literally and figuratively — to do, say, and get whatever we want, whenever we want it. But ever since the Donner Party decided that it would be a good idea to shave a little time off their trip to California by taking a quick shortcut through the mountains, the American penchant for more-sooner-faster has been getting us into trouble. And while Americans didn’t invent the concept of instant gratification, we sure seem to have perfected it.

As most of us know only too well, a live poker session can turn into a repetitive marathon of folding that would tempt even the most patient player into making a loose call. But winning poker is about being selective. Wading through all the garbage cards, missed flops, poor positions, and just all-out bad situations until the moment is right to pounce. If we want to win, that’s what we must do, and any poker player with even a modicum of training knows this. So why is it that so many of us, including even the top pros, can have so much difficulty putting this knowledge into practice at the poker table? Why is it so hard to wait?

The online poker card rooms have done their part to help us make an end run around this problem. Cyberspace has introduced the poker world to multi-tabling, turbo tournaments, and the latest antidote to the waiting game, Rush Poker. And there’s no question that for the majority of players these things can help. But at best these “quick fixes” are still only a partial solution, something to take the edge off the inevitable boredom that comes with playing a selective game. At the core of skilled poker play is the ability to say “No.” To out-of-position calls and I-just-wanna-see-a-flop calls, to playing when we’re tired or on tilt – the winning player must be willing to say nay.

At worst, cyber-hyper-poker can lull us into a false sense of security, making us believe that patience is no longer something we need to cultivate in our game. If we’re not careful, we can click ourselves into believing that it’s actually possible to win at poker by saying “Yes” all the time. And it’s not.

While the temptation to play too many hands is the most obvious way that impatience corrupts our game, it’s not the only way. Right-now-itis can also coax us into playing the game when we know perfectly well that we shouldn’t be going anywhere near a poker table, whether it’s because we’re tired, mentally stressed, or just plain sick. But we go ahead and play anyway, for no other reason than we don’t want to wait. And on a related note, impatience can also lead us to keep playing on tilt, even when we know without a doubt that we should really get up and quit. Either way it’s the same stupid deal — the desire to play now is more powerful than the desire to play well.

And when we are faced with the inevitable borderline decision at the poker table, impatience can cost us there too. In a borderline situation, of course we should take a moment and think before committing to action. Reviewing the play of the hand, calculating the pot odds – all this and more should be running through our minds any time that we are faced with a difficult decision. But realistically how often do we do this, even when the stakes are high? Rather than do all that tedious mental homework, it’s just so much easier to go with a first impulse, a “gut instinct.” And while it’s certainly true that many of the great poker players in history have earned tremendous fame and fortune by trusting their gut instincts, it’s also true that only a tiny sliver of a fraction of the rest of us can even begin to aspire to that level of poker talent.

For the rest of us mere mortals, we must learn to be patient. It seems almost counter-intuitive that patience – the will to not act – should be so necessary to win an action-oriented game. After all, “You’ve gotta be out of it to win it” just doesn’t have quite the same ring. But it’s true nonetheless. To illustrate the connection between patience and success, let’s leave the world of poker for a moment and look at the famous “marshmallow experiment” performed at Stanford University in the 1960s. Psychologist Walter Mischel took a group of four-year-old children and, one by one, offered them a marshmallow. The deal was, they could choose to eat the marshmallow right away, or if they just waited a few minutes until the examiner came back from an errand, they would get two marshmallows to eat.

What makes the study so fascinating is that Mischel was able to follow-up and revisit these same children 18 years later. And it turned out that the “grabbers” —the children who gobbled down the first marshmallow before the examiner returned – scored an average of 210 points lower on their SAT scores than the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow. The simple question of whether or not a four-year-old could wait a few minutes before eating a treat turned out to be a better predictor of future SAT scores than IQ, economic status, or the parents’ level of education. The “delayers” also turned out to be better-adjusted and more dependable overall.

Who’d guess that a simple thing like the ability to wait a few minutes could be such a powerful predictor of future success? But the next time you’re at a poker table and faced with the decision of playing now or playing well, it’s something to keep in mind.

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The Scenario

There are two players involved in a pot. After the flop Player A, who is first to act, decides to have a stab at it and makes a bet. Player B stares him down and then asks for a chip count. While Player A is counting his chips, Player B mucks his cards but cups his hands to make it look like he still has cards. He then states that he is all-in. Player B has no cards but neither Player A nor the dealer notice this, and he mucks his cards without spotting the scam. The dealer pushes the chips towards Player B, but an observant bystander points out what occurred. Who should win this pot? And what is the ruling for this type of behavior?

Kelli’s Ruling

There is a famous hand that T.J. Cloutier calls his “mystery hand” where he was heads up against an opponent for a large pot when suddenly the dealer mucked T.J.’s cards on accident. His opponent did not notice, so T.J., with his great poker face, kept right on betting and his opponent eventually folded the hand. The dealer awarded T.J a large pot without cards. This makes for a great story, but the reality is a player should not be awarded a pot without an active hand. The dealer would likely have awarded the opponent the pot had he not felt guilty about his first mistake. Protect your hand at all times, even from dealers.

Related posts:

1. Ruling! #1 – Is a Mucked Hand a Dead Hand?
2. Ruling! #9 – The Blinds Went Up
3. Ruling! #12 – Asleep at the Table

Split-pot games are different by nature than games like Texas hold’em, where the high hand is usually the only winner. Whenever the pot is split in hold’em, it’s because two or more identical high hands were made incidentally, and not by strategic design.

Things are different in Omaha/8 and in 7-stud/8, where someone always makes a high hand, but a low hand can win half the pot too, as long as it qualifies for the low side of the pot.

This arrangement – splitting a pot between two players – changes the basic nature of the relationship between the cost of betting and the portion of the pot that’s likely to be won.

We’ll use Omaha/8 to illustrate our points. As long as the flop doesn’t contain three cards with the rank of nine through king (remember, an ace counts as both a high and low card), there’s a chance that the best high hand will have to split the pot with the best low hand, and it’s a foregone conclusion that anyone with a one-way low hand will have to split the pot with a high hand.

Why Scooping a Pot Can Be More than Twice as Good as Splitting It

If you are playing in a Texas hold’em game, where presumably there’ll be only one winner, and you have two opponents, you figure to earn two dollars in profit for every dollar you have to invest to win the pot.

You bet a dollar. Joe and Tom call a dollar each. If you win, you get three dollars. One dollar is your investment; the other two dollars represent the profit you made by winning. The objective of split pot games is to scoop the entire pot, not to split it. If you follow the money, the reason for this objective becomes crystal clear.

Now, instead of playing hold’em, imagine you’re playing Omaha/8 against the same two opponents. You bet a dollar and are called by Joe and Tom. That same three dollars comprises the pot. But if you win the high side of the pot and Joe takes the low end, you’ll each come away with a dollar-and-a-half. One dollar represents your investment and the remaining fifty cents is your profit.

The cost to call was identical – a dollar each time – but the return on your investment was substantially less. In this case, you earned fifty cents on your dollar. In the hold’em game, your profit was two dollars – four times as much!

Suppose you had five opponents. In the hold’em game, you’d invest that same dollar and if you won after everyone called, you’d walk away with a total of six dollars, of which five was pure profit.

If it was a split-pot game and you captured half of it, your cost would still be a dollar but you’d walk away with three dollars whenever you won the pot. Two of those dollars would be the return on your investment.

The Relationship Between the Cost to Play and Your Return on Investment Says One Thing Clearly: Play to Scoop the Pot

It’s clear that the relationship between the cost to play a pot and your return on investment for winning argues strongly for trying to win the entire pot rather than playing poker hands that result in having to share the spoils with a neighbor.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t ever play hands that have a shot at winning only half the pot. Far from it. Profit is profit. But your big winnings in split-pot games will come when you’re able to win a hand in both directions and scoop the entire pot – low as well as high – or win with a high hand when you have numerous opponents chasing a low draw that never pans out.

If you have enough opponents, splitting the pot is profitable, and you can and should play some one-way hands.

But my point is to make it crystal clear that your orientation and mind set in any split-pot game is to be greedy and scoop the entire thing.

The mathematical relationship between your investment and potential reward supports this approach. Regardless of whether you’re playing a one-winner game, such as Texas hold’em, or a split-pot game like Omaha/8, your investment costs are the same.

But in a split pot game, your rewards are reduced substantially any time you decide to play for only half the pot.

As a general rule, if you only have a shot a winning half the pot, trying to win the low end offers better value than going just for the high side. Why? Because it is easier to catch a card that will make your nut low than to catch a card for the nut high. As an added bonus, low hands can become high hands a lot more readily than high hands can go low.

Here are some examples. Suppose you hold A-2 in an Omaha/8 game with a board containing two non-counterfitting low cards and one high card, but no straight draws. You have 12 outs to make your nut low.

You hold the AK and the flop shows 2 or 3 low cards with two clubs. You have 9 outs, some of which make the low or can even improve a low hand you’ve already made.

It’s not quite the same when you’re drawing for the best high hand. Suppose you hold T-9 and the flop is 8-7-2, all of different suits. You have 8 outs that can improve your holding to a straight, and in all liklihood you’ll have to split the pot with a low hand even if you complete your hand.

Suppose you have 8-8 and the flop is 8-7-3. Now you have 10 outs for the likely high winner if the turn is lower than an 8, and only 1 out for the nut high.

If you have 9-8 in your hand and the flop is 9-8-2, you have 4 outs if no card higher than a 9 comes on the turn.

Guideline: Look for a return of 4-to-1 or better on one-way draws, and avoid falling into the self-deceptive trap of using implied odds to justify making these kind of plays. Implied odds really only factor into two-way and scoop hands.

Say you are playing $10-$20 Omaha/8 and there is $80 in the pot. If there is a $20 bet and you call and scoop, you will get 5-to-1 on your call, but if you can only split, then you are only getting 2.5-to-1 on the cost of your call.

There’s a reason why split-pot games are predicated on scoops instead of split pots, and that reason is the unbalanced relationship between the return on investment when you scoop and the return you’ll earn when you split the pot. While the cost to call is the same regardless of whether you’re trying to scoop or hoping for a split pot, the return earned on a scooped pot is much more favorable.

Related posts:

1. Cash Games or Tournament Poker
2. Get Invited Back to Home Games
3. Multi Strike Poker

Right between the eyes is a description which normally refers to a top notch shot which stops a foe in his tracks. Other phrases used to depict this type of excellent marksmanship include; bull’s-eye, on target, score ten, right down the middle and drop him in his tracks. All these phrases conjure up the illusion of a vanquished foe. We’ve all been unfortunate enough to have played the vanquished foe on the green felt either through the superior play of our opponents or the scorn of the Poker Gods. While I can’t help you with the scorn of the Poker Gods, today I’ll suggest several ways some players almost place a big red target on their chest and dare the rest of the table to take a shot at them.

Students of poker, I believe, would be in consensus that consistently winning is a tough road which takes a high degree of commitment not only in learning the game of poker, but in the ability to exercise discipline and not allow emotion to dictate actions. While I think we should all be able to agree with the last sentence, I’ve noticed serious students of the game do some incredibly dumb things to encourage opponents to take shots at them in an attempt to hit them right between the eyes! Let me share a few of these so you may determine whether or not they resonate in your game.

Exit Strategy:

The first of these mistakes which embolden opponents is to signal the table that you will only be playing until the blinds come around to you. Players do this by actually announcing this to the table (how dumb is that?) or by racking up prematurely which announces their plans. More astute players realize that racked up players tend to tighten up because they don’t want to fritter away chips that they have already imagined as coin of the realm in their pockets. This knowledge emboldens them to take shots at the departing player who will be more likely to fold. There is no good reason to provide advance knowledge as to your plans.

Short Stacks:

Another common mistake encouraging foes to take advantage of you is playing with a short stack. Now I know some will disagree with me and believe that entering a game with a short stack is a good poker strategy which can enable you to make a quick hit with limited down side risk. To these folks I say, “You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but guess the news – you’re wrong”! I believe short stacks look like easy prey to deep stacks and can be bullied unmercifully and are usually targeted by stronger, more savvy poker players in possession of deep stacks.

Playing Style:

Another way some players invite target practice by opponents is by a style of play that is totally predictable. This is usually exemplified by a weak/tight mode of play. These rocks sit there waiting for the right position and very strong hands and then still like to see a cheap flop to make sure they are way ahead of the pack. If this behavior applies to you, realize you really need to mix up your game and step outside your current comfort zone. If you’re sitting there playing scared poker you become a target for the more experienced players who can smell fear several tables away.

Emotional Demeanor:

I’ve written about this one many times – if you find yourself losing, remain stoic and do not become emotionally demonstrative by whining and moaning about your misfortune. In fact, I like to make a re-buy if I’ve been losing so newcomers to the game will not conclude that I’m struggling by viewing my depleted stack. Whining players are on the edge, or worse, of tilt. The whiners are the regular targets of more emotionally grounded players. If you do become so upset as to be unable to control your emotions, then do yourself and your bankroll a favor and take the rest of the day off. Allow your bankroll to live to fight another day.

Observational Behavior:

This is another aspect of the game about which I’ve frequently written. You absolutely should always be studying your opponents for clues as to their poker prowess. One thing I always look for is who else at the table is regularly scanning the rest of the table, including me. I put “The Scanners” in a different category than the players, who are not paying attention to anything but the television, the cocktail waitresses and their crossword puzzles. That should tell you that if you do not regularly pay close attention, those who do will put a bull’s-eye on your forehead.

Here is the good news. If any of these scenarios are part of your poker game, they are easily eradicated. As we know, the vagaries of poker make it challenging enough to win without inviting opponents to attempt to hit us “Right Between the Eyes”. Look at the aforementioned foibles in two ways – first, if they are part of your game, eliminate them immediately and second, look for opponents that place a target right between their eyes and take aim at their chips! Happy hunting!

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“Schtick that Sticks”

Everyone knows that poker players are actors. All of us, even the newest fish in the pond, knows that it’s important not to give away our hands by looking pleased with good cards or displeased with bad ones. At the very least we learn to act dispassionate.

So here’s the question. Since everyone knows that everyone knows about acting in poker, does it do any good to act? One might conclude that bad players are too oblivious to notice what you’re doing; and good player won’t be fooled. Your best bet, according to conventional poker wisdom, is to display no tells whatsoever – to be inscrutable, rather than to try and fake out your opponent by acting.

But here’s a different take – one that I’ve developed over decades at the felt and in front of the computer. Done correctly, acting does work. The key is to use the right act for the right moment against the right opponent. I call it “schtick that sticks”.

It’s true that against the best in the poker world, you are best to be inscrutable. Great players are expert at divining the true measure of your hand by reading what you do and don’t do at the table. But against lesser opponents, I find that there are things you can do that can cause them to do exactly what you want them to do – not 100% of the time of course. And you may not even be successful more than 20% of the time. But even if your acting helps you 1% of the time, if it doesn’t hurt your game then it will show a profit in the long run.

Here’s an example from a game I was in recently.

I was playing $2/5 no limit at Mohegan Sun – a great poker room in eastern Connecticut. I was at a table with two good (but not great) players and a remaining table of mediocre players. I didn’t judge any to be full-time poker professionals.

I had been rocking around for about an hour – giving very little action – and getting very little when I raised. I had successfully come over the top a couple of times to win some modest pots. But other than that, I was generally inactive.

Two players to my left was one of the two good players at the table. He was aggressive, but not wild, and in general seemed to know what he was doing. He didn’t talk much, but I read him for a guy who knew a lot about the game.

I had raised the big blind with a pair of tens – Making it $20 – a typical if slightly large pre-flop raise. He made it $45. The other players folded. I figured that, tight image that I had, he might be trying to steal from me with his reraise. I called. There was about $100 in the pot.

The flop was three low cards – with two of them spades. I checked. My opponent bet $50. He seemed a little quick with the bet. I wasn’t sure but I thought that he looked a bit weak – just making a continuation bet into what he saw as my weakness because of my check. He had another $900 or so behind him. I had about $600 at this point. If he had AA, KK, QQ, JJ or trips, of course, I was crushed. But I figured he might have any two big cards or even a mid-sized or small pair at this point, and those possibilities greatly outweighed, in my mind, the chances he was very strong.

So I raised to $100.

My opponent called.

The turn paired the board. I bet $150, hoping he’d fold. He called. That surprised me. I started to think that he might have a premium pair after all.

The river was a low spade, making a flush possible.

I had $350 or so left in my stack. He had me covered. The pot was $600. The conventional play here is to check, hoping either that he is weak and will bluff into me so I can call and win, or that he’ll check it down and I can show down a winner.

But those plays only work if, in fact, I have the better hand. And I wasn’t sure any more. I thought he might have a big pair. So I tried some schtick – hoping to improve my chances that I could bet and get him to fold.

I said something really cheesy, like, “Well, I guess I’ll try a bet.” as I pushed in all of my chips.

In short, I exhibited the classic weak means strong tell. I was betting that he was good enough to recognize it as such but not so good that he would see through it to the true weakness that I held.

He smiled, looked at his downcards, flashed me his Queens, and then mucked them.

Sure, he might well have mucked them anyway, given my all-in shove. Even so, I can’t help but think that my schtick made at least some difference – maybe the difference between his calling and folding.

There are many variations on this theme. Sometimes I’ll use some theater, like staring at the board, to convince my opponent that the board didn’t help me – hoping to induce a bet so I can raise. Other times I’ll give off some hints of weakness by rechecking my downcards when it’s my turn to bet, and then thrusting my chips forcefully – looking to the experienced player like a bluff on my part (the strong means weak tell).

I find there is one other bit of acting that generally works well. Against new players – especially innocent ones (like women who have rarely played in a casino for example) – I find that acting extremely earnest can work to my advantage by convincing innocent opponents to do what I tell them to do. On more than five occasions I’ve gotten a woman to lay down her hand by telling her, very sincerely, that I had a very big hand and that I really thought she should fold for her own best interests. It’s important that you be able to fake sincerity to do this – and that you set it up by being a friendly, affable, and helpful player beforehand. But here’s an exchange that actually occurred.

I had been conversing with a woman on my left, asking her about what she did, where she was from, and the like. I told her, honestly, what I did, about my wife and kids, and about playing poker regularly in a casino. We struck up a poker table friendship. In this particular hand, she had been leading the betting and I had been calling with a flush draw – starting with JT suited. She raised to $10 before the flop. I called. She bet $10 on the flop. There were two of my suit. I called. She checked on the turn after I checked. On the river I looked at her and smiled and then I said that I had hit trips. I bet $30. She checked her down cards. I said, as sincerely as I could muster, “I really think I have you beat and you should fold”. She smiled, looked down, flashed me her Kings, and then mucked her hand. I didn’t even have a pair – just JT and a busted flush draw.

I suppose that for the finicky, this may raise ethical questions. But for me, all forms of acting and deception are perfectly okay at the poker table (in some clubs in the UK, I’ve been told, this kind of coffee housing is prohibited). The bottom line is this: acting does work against all but the best poker players. Just be careful that in your acting you’re not exposing yourself more than you think you are. You don’t want your schtick to get stuck on you!

Related posts:

1. The Slow Guy at the Poker Table
2. Buying the Perfect Poker Table
3. What Are Friends For?

Way back in poker’s dark ages (the years prior to 2003, before Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker’s main event after gaining entry via a $40 online satellite) no-limit hold’em was a game played during tournaments in brick-and-mortar casinos by experienced cardsmiths who honed their game over years of play. But once TV caught up with the democratization of poker courtesy of very inexpensive satellite tournaments available everywhere online, everyone who fancied him or herself a poker player – new and old alike – wanted to compete like the pros they saw on the small screen, and no-limit hold’em replaced fixed-limit hold’em as the game of choice.

This led to a veritable feast of knowledge and information about the game in all its varied iterations – tournaments, cash games, sit ‘n’ go tourneys, six-handed games, and even micro-limit games. You name it; someone wrote a book about it. Books led to online poker teaching sites, and a plethora of poker “boot camps” held in casinos – usually in conjunction with a major tournament series – all across the world.

The result was that everyone was playing no-limit hold’em, and with all of the learning opportunities that were available for the taking and the ability to play thousands of hands and hundreds of tournaments in a shorter time period online that one could ever imagine playing in a brick-and-mortar casino, skill levels increased rapidly and dramatically.

But while everyone was becoming pretty adept at no-limit hold’em, most folks weren’t paying much attention to other forms of poker. While the average skill level in no-limit hold’em was rising every year, most of us still played all of the other games just about the way we did years ago, which really points to an opportunity to make a score in those games. Trouble is, when you walk into a brick-and-mortar casino, not many other games are spread. A rotation of mixed games can be found occasionally, albeit at stakes higher than many people can afford or are comfortable playing.

And while you can find Omaha and 7-stud/8 games online, many of the players who populate them are strong players, since the overwhelming majority of new players venturing online come there for one thing and one thing only—to play no-limit hold’em.

But in brick-and-mortar casinos, at least in the United States, you can still find a cornucopia of fixed-limit hold’em games, and along with it, a lot of opportunity for savvy players. Moreover, the very nature of the game provides some advantages that you won’t find in no-limit games.

For one, there seems to be a real skill difference between the habitués of traditional casino poker games and those who have played and prospered online. Online poker players tend to be more aggressive, more experienced, more knowledgeable, and more skillful. Online is where many of the new and improved poker strategies were developed, honed, promulgated, and learned – and someone who has no experience playing online is likely to have missed out on much of poker’s information explosion. And while fixed-limit hold’em is a very different game than no-limit hold’em, a good no-limit player should be able to adapt to a fixed-limit game in short order.

Another advantage offered by fixed-limit games can be found in its diminished variance. When all of your money is potentially at risk on every hand, one misstep, one lucky draw by an opponent, or one unforeseen and unexpected hand, can really spoil your day and your bankroll too.

But in a fixed-limit game, where the amount of exposure on any one wagering round is limited to a bet and some predefined number of raises, one bad play can still hurt, but it can also be overcome without facing the sort of oblivion that happens when your entire stash is snatched right out from under you.

Every player goes through protracted streaks of good luck and bad, but in no-limit it hurts a lot worse. You needn’t look any further than Isildur1, the enigmatic Swede who, during the period from November through December 2009, won and lost some of the biggest pots ever seen in poker. At one point he was up over $5 million, only to lose $4 million in one disastrous night and go broke a few days later.

He rose and fell like a rocket, and while some of it was undoubtedly attributable to his hyper aggressive playing style, a lot of it was caused by nothing more than the variance anyone can expect to encounter in a no-limit game. And while it’s true that he wouldn’t have won as much if he was playing fixed-limit poker, it’s equally true that he wouldn’t be broke now either.

Mitigating against the extreme variance in no-limit games is the very reason many casinos offer a hybrid game of sorts: no-limit with a cap on the amount of a player’s buy-in. Because there’s a limit on how much a player can buy-in for, it’s less likely that anyone will bust his bankroll on any single hand. The game is different too. It plays somewhat more like a spread-limit game than deep-stacked no-limit poker.

Of course you have to adjust when coming from no-limit to fixed-limit games, but those adjustments aren’t extensive. Starting hands change dramatically, and hands that can build top pair with top kicker are much more playable in fixed-limit hold’em than they are in no-limit. You’ll see hands like KJ played regularly in a fixed-limit game, and a player holding KJ who sees a flop of K-T-4 or J-8-3 is likely to play it through to the river, unless the wagering goes through the roof, or a flush card pops up on the turn and it’s bet and raised before it’s time for top pair, top kicker to act.

While the concept of implied odds are important in fixed-limit hold’em, they are not as important as they are in a no-limit game, which is a game that’s all about implied odds. The lack of a cap on the amount that can be wagered really makes it profitable in the long run to take some thin draws if you believe you can capture an opponent’s entire stack if it pans out.

There are myriad other differences between the two games, but that’s the subject of a different article. The point of this one is to tell you that opportunities abound in fixed-limit cash games in brick-and-mortar casinos and online casinos too. If you feel you’ve run up against no-limit hold’em’s brick wall and the opposition is improving just as rapidly as you are, and it’s all you can do to hold your head above water while hoping to take down a couple of really big pots but fearing a major hit to your bankroll when the variance is running the other way, take solace in the fact that the pickings look pretty good in the fixed-limit patch.

And it’s enjoyable too. After all, you get to play a few more hands, your entire stack is seldom in jeopardy, and your opponents have not been as dedicated, by and large, to upgrading their skills over the past few years as the no-limit crowd has. Give it a try. You might be glad you did.

Related posts:

1. Micro-Limit Online Poker – Part I

“The Kids Are Alright” or “Teenage Wasteland”?

In 1989, Phil Hellmuth set the record for the youngest winner of the World Series of Poker Main Event at the age of twenty-four. His record lasted for nineteen years, until Danish pro Peter Eastgate won the 2008 Main Event title at twenty-two years of age. Eastgate’s mark barely lasted twelve months when Joe Cada won the 2009 Main Event a week before he celebrated his twenty-second birthday.

While Cada holds the record for the WSOP Main Event (for now), he is still not the youngest player to win a major tournament. Many younger players take advantage of the opportunity to play in tournaments overseas, where the legal gambling age is eighteen. In September 2007, Annette Obrestad won the first World Series of Poker Europe Main Event the day before her nineteenth birthday and took home GBP 1 million. In December, Harrison Gimbel won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and earned US$2.2 million at the ripe old age of nineteen.

With the success of so many players who are barely old enough to legally drink their celebratory champagne, what does this say about many of the veterans and legends of the game? Has the game passed by the greats like TJ Cloutier and Doyle Brunson? Should the “young veterans” like Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey be though of as dinosaurs lumbering towards extinction at the hands of these youngsters? Or do these “old dogs” still have some new tricks?

In this piece, we’ll look at some of the advantages that these teens and twenty-somethings have over their elders, as well as some of the pitfalls that can come with their sudden success.

Go long or go home

Many major tournaments may last up to five days; the WSOP Main Event stretches for nearly two weeks. Each day, players sit at the table for up to sixteen hours, faced with life-or-death decisions on a constant basis. The level of physical and mental stamina required to stay alert for such long periods can be compared to that of a marathon runner. Younger bodies and brains are much better equipped to deal with the stresses involved in such a grueling contest.

Information Overload

The young poker player of today has so many more advantages of those of years past when it comes to information on the game. Instead of spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars learning the game by trial and error, players today have access to books, videos and websites that teach the finer points of many different varieties of poker.

Practice makes (nearly) perfect

One of the biggest contributing factors to the success of younger players is their access to online poker sites. With both tournaments and cash games available around the clock, many players get much of the practice they need before they ever darken the door of a live cardroom. Also, the ability to play multiple cash-game tables and tournaments simultaneously (with some online players reportedly playing as many as sixty tables at once) allows players to see numerous scenarios against different types of opponents in a much shorter time, shortening the game’s learning curve by several years.

No strings attached

For many of these young players, life on the poker tournament circuit is a grand adventure: traveling to exotic destinations, staying at the finest hotels, and playing cards for a living. Most of them are not concerned with paying a mortgage, providing for children or maintaining a marriage. Without many of the same concerns as older players, their minds are free to focus on hoe they can improve their skills and grow their bankrolls.

Do all of these advantages mean that every poker player over twenty-five should take up bridge? Not yet, at least. The codgers and curmudgeons of the game can still exploit some of the weaknesses of younger players.

Be cool

Experienced players are often much less prone to “tilt” or give in to emotional impulses than youngsters. When you see an opponent hit a one-outer on the river for the first time, it feels like he’s reached across the table and ripped your heart out of your chest. When it happens for the hundredth time, you shrug and wait for the next hand. While the older poker players may not have the physical endurance of the younger generation, they frequently possess the emotional maturity and self-control required for a successful poker career (unless their last name is either Hellmuth or Matusow).

Money talks

In the case of younger players, their money usually says, “Use me to buy that new car! Spend me to get a big-screen TV! I’ll get you that new video game system!” With experienced players, it frequently says, “Invest me in things that will give you a solid rate of return. Save me for when you start to run bad. Let me help you make more of me.” Since many older players have weathered the bad times, they know better how to survive them when they (inevitably) arrive.

Shooting stars burn out

Between their accelerated learning curve and their spendthrift habits, many young players who experience their success early often succumb to burnout. Also, when the cards start to turn against them, they start to panic and may consider leaving the game for good. Veteran players understand the variance is part of the game and that the “long run” is long than most young players realize.

Running a high (attention) deficit

One drawback that comes from the young player’s experience of playing multiple tables at once is that they often neglect to pay attention to what a player at a single table does that can change the complexion of the game. The advent of Rush Poker on Full Tilt Poker is most clear example of “Attention Deficit Poker”. Experienced players, even those who play online, understand that poker is a game of people played with cards, not the other way around.

Without question, these young online poker phenoms are changing the game, just as players like Negreanu and Ivey changed it before them, and just as Doyle, Slim and Puggy changed it before them. In a few years, another generation, brought up on the latest technology, will change it yet again. The famous saying goes that poker takes “a minute to learn and a lifetime to master”. As the game continues to evolve, only one lifetime may not be enough.

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1. Cash Games or Tournament Poker
2. To Cash or Not to Cash? – The Ups and Downs of Tournament Poker

The debate over whether poker is a game of luck or skill has raged on for what seems like forever. The premise that poker is a game of skill is the central issue in attempting to get the UIGEA overturned in the United States or at least having poker exempted. I believe that if you are on this website and reading this article your general feeling is that there is more skill than luck involved in succeeding at the game of poker. Even so, I’m sure you have come into contact with people that are not devotees to poker and believe you to be just a gambler. I always chuckle at these folks because even if it was true – so what, buzz off, mind your own business, take a hike and kiss my something or other!

Many prominent people in the poker industry have weighed in on the issue and have expressed some diverse and entertaining points of view. A top name in tournament circles and a former WSOP main event bracelet winner, who I can’t name but whose initials are Phil Hellmuth (oops), has put forth some opinions on this subject. My favorite Phil Hellmuth quote is “Poker is 100% skill and 50% luck”. Hellmuth has never aspired to win the world’s humility contest as evidenced by his most famous quote on the subject of luck in poker – “If it wasn’t for luck, I guess I’d win every tournament”. My favorite quote on the subject comes from British author Anthony Holden in Big Deal, “Poker is not a form of gambling; on the contrary, gambling is a style of playing poker – a loose and losing style, at that”.

As the debate goes on, many times the general populace lumps poker along side other games of chance such as casino games which have a built in house advantage such as roulette and craps. We should all acquire simple, yet insightful, arguments to defend the game we love from these hooligans that just don’t understand how much skill is really involved. I, Tom “TIME” Leonard, will, in this article, share with you the quintessential answer to the skill versus luck debate when comparing poker, a game of skill, to casino games with their built in house advantage.

We’ll get to the promised quintessential answer but first let’s explore the reasoning in support of the answer. In any game that involves a degree of chance, a player’s knowledge of the underpinnings of the game, coupled with the discipline to control one’s emotions, will enhance the likelihood of prevailing. The primary difference between casino games with built in house edges and playing poker is simply the number of trials embarked upon. In poker, if you are a knowledgeable, disciplined player, the longer you play the better the chances that the short term luck, which is inherent in the game, will flatten out. Conversely, in the play of casino games, the longer you play the more certain it is that you will lose. That is why Las Vegas and other gambling venues have been able to build their Palaces of Chance. The chance part relates to the player not the casino owner. In fact, many of the casino industry’s most popular games only give them a very slight edge but it is the extraordinary number of trials that assures them their profit. In their poker rooms, which are only offered as a necessary accommodation to their client base, they only profit from either cutting the pots or assessing a time charge. They also hope that when you’re done playing poker you will participate in one of the house games.

There is no question that the magnitude of luck in poker is tied to two criteria. One is the number of trials and the other is the skill level of the participant. Weak, undisciplined players must rely on luck because they do not bring enough skill to the table. While one can never beat the casino’s games over the long haul, the same dynamic is at play in terms of your level of knowledge about the game. If you know little about the game and are not disciplined, you will just lose your money much quicker than your knowledgeable counterpart. The difference is the certainty of losing over time. It is the reason there really is no such occupation as a professional roulette or craps player versus a professional poker player.

I promised to share with you the quintessential answer to the luck versus skill debate and here it is. If you are truly a knowledgeable and disciplined poker player, you have to be unlucky to lose, while in a game of pure chance you need to be lucky to win. Certainly there is an element of luck involved in poker and in part that is what makes it so much fun. However, if you continue to work on your game and the skills which are necessary to become a winning poker player, you won’t need to be lucky to win. In fact, as you continue to deepen your knowledge of the game and hone your skills, you will distance yourself from the legions of weak players and you will actually have to be unlucky to lose!

So, the next time a friend, neighbor or family member questions your dedication to the game of poker, implying you might be a degenerate gambler, you now have a reasoned response. If that doesn’t work, you can always just tell them to frig off!

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1. There’s No Such Thing as Luck

If you’re falling, dive – Joseph Campbell.

We’ve all been through it at one time or another. The endless parade of garbage cards, punctuated by a few promising hands that never hold up. Top pair beaten by two pair. Two pair crushed by a set. Draws that can never quite get there – and on those few miraculous occasions when they do, doomed to run up against something better. But most of all, the suck-outs. The idiot who called you all the way down with bottom pair, only to spike trips on the river. The moron who cold-called your raise with 8-3 suited and flopped two pair. And while part of you knows that it’s good to have these strategically-challenged halfwits in your game, that you should want opponents who call with longshot junk, none of that seems to matter because right now they’re beating you senseless.

Bad beats and losing sessions are an unavoidable part of poker. The trick is knowing how to handle them. When nothing is going your way and your chips keep evaporating as fast as you can buy them, far too many poker players don’t know how to cope. So they turn a small setback into a large loss, or a large loss into a soul-crushing, bankroll-busting disaster.

Even if most of us were as skilled at poker as we think we are, losing is inevitable. The partial role of luck in poker dictates that we will end up in the red sometimes. But it’s amazing how often we forget that. Perhaps not in our brains, but in our hearts and our wallets, we want to be exempt from this rule. We want to be special, above it all. And when the deck smacks us around and remind us that we are not, some of us can react badly.

Nobody likes to fall, especially not in front of other people, and most especially not in front of our adversaries. At best it’s embarrassing. At worst it can be a severe blow to one’s confidence. In that sense, the poker player mired in a brutal losing streak is like a dying man going through Elisabeth Kϋbler-Ross’s five stages of grief. First there is denial: I am not losing – I’m going to get my money back any minute now. Then comes anger: How could that piece of #@*% call me with that garbage? I did everything right! It’s all his fault! Next comes bargaining: Just let me get back even again and I swear I’ll quit! Then depression rolls in: No matter what I do, I’m always going to lose anyway. Go ahead, take my money, see if I care! (Now he has just passed what Mike Caro refers to as the “threshold of misery.”) And finally there is acceptance: Okay. I got my butt kicked. I’m done.

But if we know these occasional falls are unavoidable, there is something we can do about it. We can control the fall. In the words of Joseph Campbell, “If you’re falling, dive.” To dive instead of falling means that you manage the descent. You control the landing. You minimize the damage. In poker, this begins with skipping over the first four stages of grief and jumping right ahead to acceptance. Accept that this session will probably end up as an uncomfortably large negative number in your records. Accept that the arrogant dingbat in Seat 3 is going to get the better of you for now. Accept that you probably won’t be able to get your money back today – or perhaps not even tomorrow or next week. And most importantly, accept that you might be playing on tilt.

If the losing streak is bad enough that it’s causing you even the tiniest twinge of emotional distress, you are by definition on tilt. If you call with just one hand that you should have folded because you’re impatient to get back even, if you muck just one hand you should have called because you’re gun-shy of losing again, you are playing on tilt. And by continuing to play even when you know that you are compromised, you’ve essentially given up. You have lost control of the fall. So instead of a short fall with a soft landing, now you’re plummeting wildly into depths unknown – and by the time you finally do hit the ground, god only knows how much money you’ll have left.

For starters, take a break. A few minutes, an hour, a week – however long it takes get your head screwed back on straight. Go for a walk, see a movie, do anything to get your mind off the game for awhile. When you return to the poker table, you’ll have a fresh perspective on the situation and the next hand you play will be as a thinking, rational player, as opposed to the free-falling tilt-o-rama that you were before.

Something else you can do when the cards conspire against you and that awful sinking feeling takes over is to tighten up your starting standards. Pass on the marginal and speculative hands – especially if you’re facing a raise or have reason to believe that the pot will be raised – and stick with the solid, premium holdings. That’s one way to at least slow your descent until you get a chance to catch your breath and regroup.

But perhaps the best way to turn a fall into a dive is simply to learn from it. After the session is over and you’re able to analyze things in a clear, logical manner, review the action in your mind. As much as you can, go over the individual hands. Did you make all the right plays? Did you push out any frustration calls or hot-tempered raises? Did you make any spineless folds? You must be brutally honest with yourself here, or else the entire review will be less than worthless and you’ll learn nothing. In which case you’re doomed to repeat the entire debacle. But if you can figure out just one valuable piece of information – if you can identify a trigger that puts you on tilt, or discern a destructive pattern in the way you responded to losing – and then use that information to your advantage in future games, you can still gain a victory from this loss.

Of course it’s unpleasant to go through a losing session, to be card-dead for hours and accumulate a mass of bad-beat stories. But learning how to manage these losses, and the tilt that almost invariably follows, is an indispensible part of becoming a successful poker player. You can’t control luck, you can’t control the cards, but you can control how you respond to bad luck and bad cards. And that’s the way to be the greatest loser.

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Situation: 2004 World Series of Poker Final Table

Stacks :

Greg Raymer 7,920,000
Josh Arieh 3,890,000
Matt Dean 3,435,000
David Williams 3,250,000
Glenn Hughes 2,375,000
Dan Harrington 2,320,000
Al Kruk 2,175,000

This often discussed hand from the 2004 WSOP main event final table involved eventual winner Greg Raymer, along with professionals Josh Arieh, David Williams, and former main event winner Dan Harrington.

Pre-Flop:

Arieh started the action by raising 220,000 with K9. Raymer called with A2. Harrington raised 1,200,000 from the button with 62. After the small blind folded, David Williams folded AQ in the big blind.

The Analysis

We’ll examine this hand from the perspective of each protagonist, so you can analyze and evaluate the decisions you’d be confronted with if you were in their shoes.

You’re Josh Arieh: Your reputation is that of an aggressive player, and you haven’t disappointed anyone yet. You and chip leader Greg Raymer have been the most aggressive competitors at the final table. You have 3.89 million, which puts you in second place, though certainly not by anything resembling a commanding margin. You’re way behind Raymer who has twice as many chips as you do, and your lead over the five players behind you is not really substantial. Matt Dean, in third place trails you by less than half a million chips, while Dan Harrington, who is next to last with a 2,320,000 chip count, trails you by 1.5 million. Any one of your opponents who is fortunate enough to double up – even Al Kruk, currently in last place – would vault over you into second place.

You raise 220,000, which is typical for you. After all, you’re not going to fold that hand so you make a prudent raise of slightly more than 5 percent of your stack that’s designed to drive marginal hands, particularly any weak ace, from calling. You’d like to win the pot right there, without a flop. But even if you have to play this pot heads up, your king may be good, and you will certainly make a continuation bet if a king falls, and will probably make a continuation bet if any ace or queen hits the board too.

There’s no sense in making a large raise here. You’re out of position, and you realize that if anyone else has a really big hand, he’ll simply re-raise and you’ll be forced to toss you hand away. Your small raise sends the same message as a larger one, with far less risk to your chips.

You’re Greg Raymer: You’re the tournament leader with slightly more than twice as many chips as Josh Arieh, who’s in second place. Both of you have been aggressive at the final table and that’s resulted in some obvious animosity between the two of you. You probably read Arieh’s 220,000 raise for just what it is: an attempt to win the pot right there, or play against one opponent.

You call for slightly less than three percent of your stack. With A2 you want to see a flop on the cheap and you’re hoping to make a big hand against a large field, where you can stack off at least one of your opponents. There’s no sense raising with this hand. If Arieh has a really big hand he’ll re-raise and you’ll simply have to fold – plus a larger raise won’t attract the large field you’re hoping for. You would have liked this situation even more if Arieh just called, allowing you to call behind him in hopes of attracting other callers too, allowing you to play your implied odds type hand for all the value you could milk out of it if you were to get lucky on the flop.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” you’re probably hoping as you call, “if I can flop a monster and bust that smack-talking Arieh!”

You’re Dan Harrington: You’re next-to-last in chip count and realize you’ve got to start gathering chips if you hope to position yourself to win this tournament. You know your nickname “Action Dan” is a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat sarcastic reference to your reputation as a guy who plays only the highest quality hands. And your manner at the table supports this. You don’t engage in trash-talking, you are quiet, taciturn, and somewhat withdrawn. You are viewed as quiet, conservative, straight-forward, and cautious.

You don’t have any personal vendettas at the table, so no one will call you out of anger or spite, and you realize that each of your opponents respects your game, your reputation, and your style of play.

You know you need to start harvesting chips, and understand that your selective play has earned you a license to steal at least one pot and maybe more. When you raise, you realize that all of your opponents will credit you for a legitimately big hand, and if you are called or re-raised, you can be certain your opponent has a huge holding.

You put Arieh on a wide range of possible hands because he has been so aggressive, and you figure Raymer for exactly the kind of hand he has – one that’s worth a call because of it’s implied odds potential, but it’s probably not a big hand at all. It’s a hand Raymer can afford to play simply because his chip lead is so large. He can afford to play this kind of hand. Others can’t.

You raise half your stack. If you’ve read your opponents correctly and understand how they perceive you, it’s clear that without a pocket pair of kings or aces, they won’t be able to call. If you are re-raised and have to surrender the hand, you’ll drop from next-to-last into last place, and although that’s not desirable, it’s not all that much of a fall.

You’re David Williams: You’ve got AQ. That’s a pretty good hand, but you’re currently in the middle of a tightly-bunched pack of players who are all hovering around the 3 million mark. The last thing you want to do is go up against Action Dan Harrington, a guy who invariably has the goods when he raises, without the best of hands. And AQ is not the best of hands – not now, not here, not against Harrington’s presumed range of re-raising hands. Although you have Harrington out-chipped, he has enough left to put you in a world of hurt if you were to call and find yourself trapped by a subsequent all-in bet. If that scenario played out and you lost, you’d be down below the one million chip mark – firmly ensconced in last place.

If you’re Williams, you’re saying to yourself: “I hate to let AQ go. If it was just Raymer or just Arieh, I’d reraise without a moment’s hesitation. But it’s Harrington … Action Dan Harrington, and when he raises the range of hands he’s likely to play is pretty small. I’m guessing he has AA, KK, maybe QQ or AK, and all of them are way ahead of me. I’ll save my chips for a better situation.”

You flip your cards to the center of the table with a nearly imperceptible sigh.

You’re Josh Arieh (again): “Caught speeding,” you’re thinking. “I don’t know what Harrington has, but given the range of hands he raises with, there’s no chance my hand is good. Not only do I have to worry about Harrington, but Raymer called when I raised. He just limped in. He could have anything, from a drawing hand that he was hoping to play inexpensively, to a pocket pair of aces that he called with in order to lure me into a trap.”

You’re Greg Raymer (again): You’re thinking, “It’s down to Harrington and me. I have an ace, but knowing Dan, he’s probably ahead of me at this point. If he has an ace in his hand, I’m dominated to three outs. My chances of making a flush don’t justify the payoff when it’s heads-up. If Harrington has pocket kings, my only chance is to flop an ace and that’s a bad bargain too. Well, I limped in just to see if I could get a look at the flop inexpensively – and that’s not happening.

“I’ll just sit here, stare him down and talk to him, but I know Dan won’t give anything away. I can’t read him for anything other than a hand I can’t beat.

“Give him the money,” you say as you push your cards toward the dealer.

Summary:

The drama and the lessons of this hand are not in what happened. Actually, nothing much really happened. Arieh raised, Raymer called, Harrington re-raised, and everyone folded. Everything of importance took place between each player’s ears. All of the drama was mental, perceptual, and psychological.

Harrington needed chips. He realized it and so did everyone else. But Harrington had a license to steal. And his opponents probably realized that too. Nevertheless, even if you know Harrington will bluff at some point, you don’t know when he’ll pull the trigger. And with his reputation for tight and cautious play, Harrington used his license to steal to stealthily snatch those chips out from under the noses of everyone who was actively sniffing around this pot.

Everyone involved in this hand made correct decisions under the circumstances, but Action Dan was the most audacious and came away the winner by forcing a decision on his opponents that none of them could call. Harrington played completely against type to win a pot by re-raising with 62! I’m sure none of Harrington’s opponents realized until they watched replays of the final table on TV what well-executed larceny that was.

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1. Dan Harrington Profile