Several Reviews Of Today’s More Popular Poker Books.

Finding a good poker book these days is not quite as easy as it seems. There are more and more poker books popping up everyday. Especially books on no limit holdem. I am going to be reviewing several books on poker. Here are the covers I will briefly discuss: Harrington on Holdem Vol I, II and III, Mike Caro’s book of poker tells, and Sklansky ’s Holdem Poker For Advanced Players.

I am reviewing these books on poker theory and tells because they have been most helpful to me in becoming a profitable poker player. Educating yourself on no limit holdem is not to difficult to do with all the books out there. Just visit Amazon and type in no limit holdem and you will get lots of selections. I recommend Amazon for this because they have a big selection, you can buy the books used for a fair price and their are reviews of the books right below the book. These reviews are written by people that have purchased and read the book. I have found some of them helpful and found them to be truthful because not all of them are good. So if you are looking for a book on holdem I think Amazon is a good source.

Review of Dan Harrington ’s Volume I-III: Dan Harrington has been a successful No Limit Tournament player for a long time now. He has 3 books out that are actually best used as a set. Volume I talks about the beginning stages of a poker tournament and hand selection. Its a great book for beginners that want to learn the basic idea behind playing in tournaments. Harrington goes over lots of different things in this book that every beginner should know. The big one is hand selection and odds. He talks about how to play tight aggressive which is his playing style. The next Book Volume II assumes that you have read Volume I so it goes right in and builds on the principals from the first book. Volume II talks about the end game, meaning towards the middle or close to the money stage of the tournament where blinds are high and people tend to get real tight. If you combine the knowledge of these two books and have a little talent for the game of poker you will soon be successful in playing no limit poker tournaments. I know after I read these two books I made significant changes to my game and went from being a hit and miss tournament player to consistently making the final table or at least close too. No matter what you do you can not always win in my opinion however if you follow the Poker strategies Harrington lays out in these two books you can get pretty close consistently. Volume III is actually a test of your knowledge. What you will find in all of Harrington’s books which I really like is that he will explain a theory and then give several scenarios where it can apply. This way not only do you get an explanation of the tactic but also a couple of examples of where the tactic fits in to your game. Well Vol. III is basically the test it is full of scenarios for you to navigate thru and after wards the book scores you. Now depending on your score you can go back and review certain parts of the other two books to improve that aspect of your game. This is almost like having a pro go over your game and then show you the flaws you need to improve upon.

Sklansky ’s Holdem Poker For Advanced Players: Let me start of by saying that this book is not an easy read or at least it wasn’t for me, however Holdem Poker For Advanced Players has lots of gems in it and is well worth reading. I have actually read the book 3 times now and I pick up something I missed every time. This book is definitely not for total beginners but if you have logged some time at the poker table you will find it very useful. I have found this book to be helpful in playing cash games rather then tournament style poker. Most of the theories in the book are more geared towards cash play in my opinion. The book splits different tactics in to different types of games. It talks about average games, tough games and loose games for example and then gives you advice on the hands you should be playing according to the game you are sitting in. This book is definitely worth reading over an over if you play in cash games. You will find that if you use tournament tactics in cash games you are not going to be as successful.

Mike Caro ’s Book of Poker Tells: Mike Caro’s book of poker tells is a great read for any poker player that is interested in reading their opponents. This book is full of poker tells that you will see at the poker table and how to interpret them. Their are different types of tells. You have tells that suggest a strong hand and tells that suggest a weak hand. This book by the mad genius of poker is an eye opener to anyone that is trying to figure out what their opponent is doing. This is the aspect of poker that deals with playing the player not the cards. I say this because if I can read a player properly the cards he are not as important. For example lets say you notice that a player is weak and is wanting to lay the hand down. Now with this information you make a bet and he folds the winning hand. If you could do that would that not put big time bucks in your pocket? Or lets say you have a tough call to make and you pick up something on the player that lets you know he has you beat and you fold therefore saving you money. This is what Mike Caro’s Book of Poker Tells tries to teach you. I can honestly say that at least on one occasion the only reason I made the final table was because I read this book. I made 3 tough reads that got me in the money. This is not the only time that tells that are talked about in this book have made it possible for me to get out of a hand or to make the right call. If you are serious about playing live poker I highly recommend this book on poker tells.

I hope these poker book reviews have been helpful in giving some insight in to the books mentioned above.

Sit And Go Strategy – Part 1

Online poker is booming and many players joining the poker tables online are getting weaker by the day. Poker tournaments are played around the clock online as well as sit and go’s. Sit and Go’s are the next big thing to hit online poker and it is a guaranteed way to make some money. What a sit and go basically is, is a online poker tournament consisting of 9 players. The top 3 player’s make it to the money. The break down for winning the sit n go is as follows:

3rd place = 20% of the total prize pool

2nd place = 30% of the total prize pool

1st place = 50% of the total prize pool

As you can see, 1st place is nearly triple of 3rd place so when you play sit and go’s a common mistake most players make is just trying to make it in the money. Almost every poker tournament you will be in and there is 4 players’s remaining (1 shy of the money), everyone will start playing extremely TIGHT. This is where you need to take advantage of these player’s and start playing AGGRESSIVE. Take down their blinds and make them pay for playing tight. Many ebook poker books will not share with you this strategy, but I definitely am. I have made hundred’s of thousands of dollars since 2001 playing sit and go’s online. Poker sit n go’s are played around the clock online, and you will always be able to find a game. Once you master single table sit and go’s it will be time for you to start multi-tabling them. Multi-tablling sit and go’s are playing more than one sit and go at a time. I HIGHLY recommend not starting multi-tabling poker tournament sit and go’s until you start to win them frequently by playing 1 at a time and making a profit. Once you master single table sit n go’s then I advise you to play multi-table.

Full tilt poker or Pokerstars definitely has the best interface and graphics for multi-tabling sit and go’s. When you deposit in fulltilt poker or Poker stars they equally match whatever you deposit. That’s right; they give you a 100% deposit bonus. Take advantage of this bonus especially to build your bankroll. Playing sit and go’s online will definitely give you lots of poker practice for cheap. You can deposit 50 bucks and get 100% deposit bonus which will give you 100 bucks. If you play 2 dollar sit n go’s, not only will you get lots of practice but you can make some serious cash if you learn poker and the proper sit n go strategy. There are many weak players’ out there waiting for you to take their money. The faster you get up to speed on winning sit and go’s, the faster you will be earning a stable income. Sit n go’s have let me quit my day job, all I do now is multi-table sit and go’s all day. It beats working 9-5.

Winning Sit And Go No Limit Texas Holdem Tournament Strategy.

No Limit Texas Holdem has become one of the most popular types of poker played. No Limit Holdem Poker Tournaments have become especially popular since you can enter a tournament for as little as a $1 up to $1000’s of dollars depending on your pocket book. Since No Limit Holdem has been televised it has grown in popularity. One of the nuances of this type of pokers new found popularity is the emergence of Sit and Go Poker Tournaments. These tournaments are mini versions of their bigger counterparts. The Entry field is usually limited to one table. Their are also bigger Sit n Go tournaments that consist of 5 or 6 tables or more. One other differentiation of these types of tournaments is that they form when enough players sign up, for example if you have a 10 man Sit and Go it will start as soon as 10 players pay the entry fee.

The Structure of Sit and Go poker games is much like regular tournaments. Blinds go up anywhere from every 6 to 15 minutes and the starting stacks are usually somewhere in between 1500 to 3500 in chips. You will find Sit and Go poker tournaments at most online poker rooms as well as some brick and mortar casino poker rooms. Usually the top 3 players are paid out in a 10 man sit and go. Depending on the Sit and Go structure the payout varies. It is best to look at the tournament lobby and find out what the set up is.

Below are some tips for playing Sit n Go Poker Tournaments:

First of all try and find a game that has a decent chip stack and slow moving blinds. Generally a decent structure looks like 1500 in chips and 8 minute blinds. the more minutes and the more chips the more the game will favor skill versus luck. This is mainly because if you are not in a hurry to play you can play a tight aggressive strategy which is ideal for most tournaments.

I would try a medium buy in of 10 dollars up to twenty dollars to start with depending on what you can afford. If the buy in is really low expect the game to be super wild. I therefore favor games at least 10 and up to start with. Ideally you will win enough to get a bank roll big enough to move up to higher stakes games.

The ideal strategy for these games is to play a tight aggressive game until the blinds get high enough to warrant a change in strategy. Usually if you will fold all your marginal hands in the beginning and be patient by the time you reach the second or third blinds level several players will have been knocked out. So hand selection is important. Early in the tournament play hands like: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK, AQ, 1010, and AJ aggressively raise for value and play the hand as you usually would. If you meet much resistance with some of the lower pairs or you don’t catch a pair fold and don’t invest to much. Limp in with any pocket pair 99 to maybe 55 or 66 and hope to spike a set if you don’t get out. If someone raises preflop fold. The main idea here is to not get involved in hands that will break you early on since only the last 3 players remaining get paid you want to let the other guys knock themselves out. Every time someone gets knocked out you get closer to the money. some of these games you will see get crazy early on. Just stay out of the way and let the crazies kill themselves off.

Once you get down to about 5 players and the blinds get high you want to loosen up some of your hand selection and try and run some positional raises. If you have been playing tight then you should have a tight enough table image now to get away with some steals. Don’t over do it but raise in late pos with hands like A8 all the way to A3 if no one has entered the pot before you. If you have been playing tight the other players should have picked up on this and give you some respect. When you get down to 4, players will really start to tighten up because they are so close to a money finish. Once you see that happening take advantage and try to make some steal bets. Down get overly involved if you meet too much resistance get out of there unless you have a hand that you can win with. This style of play is usually the reverse of what your weaker opponents will do. Usually they will play a lot of hands early and deplete a certain amount of their chips early on and try to get lucky. Then they will tighten up when the blinds get higher. Since ideally the best way to play is the opposite of what everyone else is doing this poker tournament strategy advocates playing tight early and then loosening up later in the game to try and build a chip stack that will carry you in to the money.

Once you get down to 3 and you have hit the money. You can either get real aggressive and try for first place or sit tight and let the other guys take each other out and go for a sure second. This depends on your stack. If you get to 4 to 5 times the blinds and you are third make a move. If you can steal some blinds or win a showdown you should be guaranteed second. Their is a piece of poker tournament software that I used called sit and go shark which was really a great tool in finding a working strategy for this type of game. It is still available but unfortunately does not work in many poker room’s where U.S. players can currently play for money.

I hope this helps to give an idea of how to play no limit holdem sit and go poker tournaments. Their is more to it then can be stuffed in to just one article, however just making these few adjustments should help get you in the money more often in these types of poker tournaments. Its really a general strategy advocated for tournaments by many of today’s successful poker pro’s.

Learn How to Become a Successful Texas Holdem Poker Player?

Turn your poker table and let’s have a close look at your previous defeats. Put it out of your mind and ascertain a new passion to play and win. Are you using Texas holdem strategy in your game? If not, surely it is being applied against you by your opponents.
The fame of Texas Holdem poker has taken the people by storm. According to figures about 100 million people are playing Texas holdem worldwide. Many recent trends like online gaming and TV shows publicity like World Series of poker and world poker tour have provided this popularity some extra boom. Analysts sketch this fame as gold rush which has made it trendy like strip poker.

Obviously, the most important decision about playing Texas holdem poker is to decide which starting hand to play and which one to skip. For this many important factors like starting hand groups, your table position, number of players and chip positions counts very much. Remember as late you start, the more number of starting hands you should play. As the number of players drop down to 6 or 7, forget about chasing flush and also the straight draws which results waste chips and bring you at risk. When the number of players drops down to 4, you should open up carefully and prefer to play for more hands. At this stage you should prefer to protect your blinds and steel occasionally. Let the smaller stacks be knocked out or blinded to double up.

As the game is down to 3 players, keep head up and avoid engaging yourself in big stacks. You should also avoid confrontation unless you are holding a pair, king or ace. Now tighten up your game and hang on to see if you can gain 2nd place. Once you’re heads up, become pushy and play more aggressively. Surely it is the time of game to raise a lot. It is important to keep the track of your chip stack size against blinds and other people’s stack. If you are short on poker chips, try to play tighter and wait for good hand. When you acquire a chance of good hand, extract all possible chips that you can get. If you are a big stack you should be careful as people will try to use you for doubling. At this stage avoid unnecessary confrontation; push around everyone with your big stack and try to steel blinds without taking risk of too many chips in the process.

Well, according to poker rules this is a quick overview of improved starting hands strategy to adjust you in a better place throughout the tournament. Finally, best wishes for you at Texas holdem poker tables!

Texas Hold’em Poker Starting Hands

Many first-time Poker players think that when the river card flops down, that’s where you win or lose the hand. But, that’s just no so. No, winning or losing the hand begins with your first two cards.

In fact, many losing poker players could turn around their fortunes just by playing their first two cards better. Poker is full of all sorts of things you need to learn, but learning how to play your starting hand is perhaps the most important. Unless you’re on the blinds, you get a free look at your possibility for the hand.

Your first two cards and the action before you determines if it’s time to jump in or bail out. Over the rest of this article, I’ll present some random hands to help you better understand what types of starting hands are good to play and when. If you’re new to game, there’s one word I want you to learn-tight. Your play should be very tight.

Starting Hand: AA or KK

This is a great hand to get. You’re already a leg up on the other players most of the time. Generally, you want to hit the pot strong. More experienced players will sometimes “bait” opponents into the pot, but new players should always raise or re-raise with this hand.

Starting Hand: AK – Big Slick

Suited or not, this is another good hand to get into the action with. As with the AA or KK, don’t limp into the pot unless you know what you’re doing. Come strong or don’t come at all. Raise or re-raise with this hand.

Starting Hand: Ace and any other non-face.

It never fails. A new poker player sees an Ace is his or her hand and immediately jumps into the hand. Wrong. Just because you have an Ace doesn’t mean your hand is worth a hill of beans-unless you’re playing head-to-head poker.

As with any hand, there are times when any two cards could work. New players should be very cautious with Ace hands. If the other card is low and non-suited, it’s best to dump the hand.

The mistake new poker players make is anteing up to see the flop. Doesn’t seem like much, but this act will cost you a lot of money and in the end, you’ll be a loser for it. The margin between profiting and losing in poker is razor thin. Don’t pay to see flops unless you have a good hand.

Remember, smart play starts from the moment you sit down (virtually or in real life) at the poker table. Use every chip, every move wisely.

The best starting hands in Texas holdem poker – Part 3

Thousands of words have been written about the best starting hands in Hold’em. All such advice is “good” and “correct” advice. What’s important to realize however is that to become a reasonably competent Texas Hold’em player, you must move beyond these starting hand concepts, and incorporate other key concepts into your play that frequently relegate the starting hand to a second or even third priority in your pre-flop thinking and betting action.

The first concept is position. Position refers to when you will act relative to all the other players at the table, after the flop, in the first cycle of betting. Last is not just “best”, it is dramatically “best”. The reason is that you have the maximal information by the time you act on the other players statements (via checking, betting, folding or raising) about the values of their hands. Poker is a game of “incomplete information”, and more information is more power in poker.

In general in serious poker games (i.e., much of the time in small stakes on-line games, and just about always in larger stakes games) a series of folds around to the person in last position (“on the button”, or the “dealer” position) will result in that person making a raise. It is right to do so, completely independent of what cards are held. The reason for this is two-fold: first, the two remaining players to act (the little blind and big blind) in all likelihood have weak hands, AND they will be in poor position (first and/or second to act) relative to our position on the button in all successive betting rounds. This creates tremendous pressure on these players to have very credible starting cards…which is not extremely common. Hence, “fold – fold” is the typical result, and the button has just “stolen the blinds”. To be a winning Texas Hold’em player, you must make this play a very large percentage of the time in this situation.

In a “tight” Texas Hold’em game, where players are generally following the prescribed rules for what two cards to enter the pot with, such blind stealing can be expanded to positions back one from the button (the “cut-off” position) or even further. The further back (further towards the “front” of the betting vs. the rear) you are, the more you would prefer to have SOME value in your starting two cards…but not necessarily to the standards typically listed in starting hand lists by position.

The second general factor that must be considered in initiating action with less than the prescribed

Understanding HORSE Poker Rules

There are many reasons as to why this might be so, but in the opinion of most poker experts it is because the average poker player is becoming more sophisticated. Poker used to be won by the people that knew the right starting hands, but now being a winning poker player requires a lot more than that and that is precisely why games like horse that are far more sophisticated are getting to be more popular.

If you want to become a horse poker player, the first thing you need to do is understand the poker rules. The game of poker is what is known as a forced rotation game. This means that rather than the dealer deciding which game you are going to play and rather than you playing the same game for each hand that you are at a particular table, the game is rotated between hands at set intervals that everyone knows about before the game starts. No matter what else happens in hands and in between hands, the rotation from one game to the other will take place at the exact same time intervals. This is what is meant by the term forced rotation.

There are five poker variants that are played through in horse poker and they are hold em, omaha/8, razz, seven card stud and seven card stud/8. The acronym horse poker comes from taking the first letter in each name and the second letter in seven card stud/8 and it is perhaps the most prestigious tournament in the world, even more so than the main event at the world series of poker. As previously mentioned, horse poker rules dictate a forced rotation. In cash games, this usually happens every 1-3 rotations around the table and in tournaments it usually happens every level. In other words, every time the blinds go up, a rotation occurs from one poker variant to the next. In tournaments, the final table is usually one of no limit texas hold em as opposed to the limit variant that was played throughout the rest of the tournament.

Now that you know the basic horse poker rules, one thing should be absolutely obvious to you. In order to be a good poker player, you are going to need to be a good player in five different poker variants. You might be able to get away with one weakness if you accumulate chips through the other rounds and then fold your way through the weak game whenever it comes up, but if you have two or more weaknesses out of the five games (and in some cases even if you have just the one weakness), you will get eaten alive by the other players. Horse poker is not a game for the faint-hearted and that is why the wsop bracelet for horse is sought after by the best players in the world.

Sit and Go Poker Strategy: Playing in the Small Blind

Playing poker while in the blinds is almost guaranteed to be a losing proposition, especially the small blind because you often have to turn down great odds while holding brutally weak hole cards. In sit and go tournaments, it’s critical that you don’t lose your cool over having to fold too much from the small blind, because what you are actually doing is making it as profitable as the unfortunate position can be.

If you are using a poker calculator like tournament indicator while playing sit and go tournaments, you will find that the odds display will show that to “fill up the small blind” are actually favorable to call almost any hand when there are multiple limpers. It’s fair to call in some of the spots, but most times you should still fold with the real bad Group 9 (or worse) Sklansky hands like J3os, 92os, or 84os. You should be looking for one, two or three gapped connectors, suited cards with an ace or face, and T5s for straight potential.

The advantage of calling with a wide variety of hands in a passive mode from the small blind is that your opponents will not be able to put you on a hand after the flop. So your AJos or your 68s can turn into monsters, but the successful strategy is to keep those hands very cheap to see pre-flop. Don’t get caught out of position against multiple players, with weak hole cards calling raises.

One of the biggest challenges in playing in the small blind is psychological, in that you may always feel you are being pushed around. That can be very frustrating, but that’s also what you should feel here because your position is always inferior after the flop. It’s like that age old office desk strategy during negotiations. The big guy behind the desk is always in a bigger, more expensive chair looking down on you. He too has “position”.

When playing the small blind in online NL hold’em tournaments, self control is a critical piece of your skill set, where you are constantly fighting the urge to fight back with a re-raise or “taking a stand” as they call it. Still, it is most prudent, especially in the lower levels to be more tight and passive in the early stages, and simply wait for the chips to come to you. Given time and patience, the aggressive players are often too aggressive and you will eventually win bigger pots by letting them give you chips, rather than starting little fights over small pots, in the early blind stages.

The Perfect Home Poker Game

• Ok so the chips are on the table, the beers are in the fridge you have your finest pair of all black sunglasses on stand by… so, is that all the bases covered for your home poker game? Well no is the simple answer. Don’t worry though this article gives you all the info to help you on your way to having a fine night of poker.What’s the Buy-In and what are the Stakes?

  Ok this is the most important part of the whole evening. Get this wrong, and the night may turn sour very fast. Make sure you set your limits before you start and don’t change them. Keep it friendly; remember the idea is to have a good night not to make it so your mate Terry can’t pay the rent.

  Set the blinds, amount of re-buys, and structure (limit, no-limit or pot limit) before you start. Make sure everyone is happy.

   Equipment

  This sounds easy but trust me something will be forgotten if you don’t double check everything. You will at least need all the items on this list to make sure you have a decent game.

  Cards x 2 decks minimum (one always gets damaged)
  Pastillion x1 this goes at the bottom of the deck so no one knows or can see the bottom card.
  Dealer button x 1
  Chips

Keep your players happy – if you want to be seen as a good host, make sure that you keep the players happy with a few pizzas and a good stock of beer. As a host collect a small flat fee from each player at the start of the night to cover food and drinks and this is a good way to keep everyone happy while not shelling out too much of your own money. Remember that a happy poker player will often spend (lose hopefully) more money than an unhappy one.