Royal Flush Poker

www.pkr.com – When talking about positional bets, what I really mean, is making bets which require you to be in a certain position for them to work. The most obvious of these, and probably the most used, is the blind steal. When you are sitting in very late position and the action has been folded around to you, you know there are not many hands you need to force out in order to pick up the pot, and so a reasonable bet can often achieve this, regardless of the cards you happen to be holding.

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Another positional raise you can make is the tester bet. Again, you should ideally be in late position once the flop has come down, and if the action is checked to you, put out a bet to try and pick the pot up there and then. If you do this too often however, you might find that players will check to you even when they do have a hand, so be careful.

Another more complex play would be the reraise with nothing, which you can use in the following circumstances: You ideally want to be second last to act, with an aggressive player last to act. The flop comes down and the action is checked to you (or you are first to act with only 2 players in the pot), you check, Mr aggressive raises to try and pick up the pot, and you come over the top with a substantial reraise.
Of course most aspects of betting involve position in poker, but there are some plays which are rendered useless if the position isn’t set up right, and these should be used more sparingly.

www.pkr.com – There are many established players in the world today who would tell you that playing too many hands or playing too loose is one of the biggest mistakes players make. Personally I feel that this statement is correct for the most part, although such things are also highly dependant upon the player in question. In the hands of the right player, aggressive play is a weapon that can often have many positive effects upon a tournament you might be involved in.

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Consider Phil Ivey for instance, or Gus Hansen, these players seem to play quite a variety of hands in some circumstances, and make a great profit from playing the game. So it would be rather narrow minded to say you should always play certain hands and throw away others, or that tight play is the most profitable.
If you have an excellent instinct for when to apply pressure and when not to, and you also have a good reading ability, I feel that getting involved in more pots won’t be damaging at all, and in tournament play, can even be the catalyst for you building up a healthy chip lead. there is risk attached to loose play of course, but then there is risk attached to any hand you play. One of the main points to consider, is that if you can play aggressively without losing big pots, you can put yourself in a rgeat position to win a tournament.
The person who plays tight and conservative might have more chance of making it to the final table, but with a comparitively low stack to the aggressive player.

As a seperate point, it is always worth noting that if you are the first raiser into a pot, you always give yourself that extra chance of picking up the pot uncontested, but those hat play very conservatively, will not be picking up these extra chips.

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www.betfairpoker.com - In many ways poker revolves around getting your opponent to think the wrong situation has occured, but you must be aware that your opponents estimations of the strength of your hand, are a work in progress. they will be picking up on what you are doing and form logical conclusions as to why, with their estimate of the cards you are holding, being changeable.

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The following example demonstrates this well. Say you have (7,8) in the small blind and it has been folded around to you, and you put in a fairly small raise. The first possibility that will cross your skilled opponents mind is that you are raising quite small perhaps because you have a strong hand and do not want to force them out of the pot. If the flop comes down without an Ace, king, or queen, and you miss completely, your opponent is beginning to put you on a hand like (A,J) (A,Q) or (A,K) as soon as you check to them.

I often use this play, as I know that most of the time I will induce a raise from my opponent. Why would I induce a raise when I have nothing you might ask, but the point is that my opponent will suddenly change their opinion of the cards I am holding the moment I reraise. By far the most logical conclusion they will come to if I reraise them, is that I have an overpair in the hole, or a pair that has made a set. That possibility will always be in their minds, but whilst the original check will cause them to begin discounting the idea, the moment I reraise, it doesn’t just bring that possibility back into their minds, it reinforces it. This is because they know if I had such a hand, the betting both on, and before the flop would tie in.

You must remember that in poker, when trying to mislead your opponent, you have to make sure the betting matches up to the hand you are trying to represent.

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www.skypoker.co.uk – In serious poker games, players always use a standard deck of 52 cards, but in home games sometimes, players will decide to use wild cards. Sometimes these can be depicted by certain cards such as ‘deuces wild’ or ‘one eyed Jacks’ and there are usually two wild cards to a deck if playing in this fashion.

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The role of wild cards is to basically become whatever card you wish it to be in order to complete your hand. Sometimes you get ‘Joker’ cards in a new deck of playing cards which are used for the same purpose, and these can be very powerful in a game of poker. You can of course end up with simply a pair when you have a joker in your hand, but most of the time you will make a far stronger hand.

Mike Caro wrote a section in Doyle Brunsons book ‘Super System’ which details the changing odds of making hands when there is a joker present in the deck. The fact that these odds were included would suggest that jokers were used a lot in days gone by, although they have become obsolete in big games these days. personally I much prefer playing without such wild cards, because it makes it far more difficult to work out your opponents hand.

With two Jokers in the deck, a player could make unlikely hands to beat your naturally made strong hand, and in a way this doesn’t seem right. Whatever your opinions on wild cards, I think it is probable they will rarely be used during a game, and if they are, be prepared to see some stronger hands being made.

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