The Poker Mag

After recent downturns in the economies of many poker playing nations, it is perhaps important to consider he potential effect such changes might have on the world of poker.

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When looking logically at live poker and online poker, we can see that there are potential changes in differing levels of play. As an example, it is generally acceped that people look to spend less money during financially difficult times, and it wold be easy to think that poker would be one of the first hobbies that people cut back on. Upon closer inspection however, we can see that playing small stakes poker online for an evening can still be a useful way to save money.

You could spend a whole evening playing an MTT, which can then result in far less financial outlay than other usual activities such as going out for drinks or a meal. For the above reasons, I do not feel that changes in the financial climate will bring about a downturn in online poker activity at mid to low stakes. If we examine the high stakes tables online, there is little to suggest people are trying to save money by not playing poker either.

Live events however, will often include going to places where you can buy drinks or food, and potentially spend quite heavily if you do not make money in the game itself. For this reason you can see the possibilities for a knock on effect from financial changes, are there. Overall though, if we look closely at the situation, there is no reason why online poker should suffer from any form of recession, in fact, it may even prosper due to increasing numbers of low to mid stakes live players staying at home.

This years WSOP main event finally reached it’s conclusion early in November, with the record from the previous year of youngest ever poker champion, being broken in the process.

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The World Series of Poker final table had been billed as a clash of the big stacked, yet inexperienced Darvin Moon, and fans favourite poker player, Phil Ivey. Events did not unfold as many would have hoped however, as Phil Ivey got his remaining 6 million poker chips into the middle with (A,K) against Moons (A,Q), only to fall victim to a queen on the flop.

Meanwhile, other short stacks were struggling too, with James Akenhead managing a triple up, only for his hopes of making poker history to implode shortly afterwards, when his (K,K) walked straight into (A,A). Joe Cada endured a difficult time early on too, slipping down to less than 3 million chips at one point. Shortly afterwards though, Cadas poker tournament began to drastically turn around, as he got his chips in behind on a few different occasions only to be shown clemency by the poker powers that be. After getting back into the biggest poker tournament of his life, Cada never looked back, eventually getting heads up with Darvin Moon, who had a similar stack size to that which he started with.

The heads up battle swung back and forth several times before eventually being won by Cada, who made a fantastic call for his tournament life shortly before the final poker hand. At the tender age of 21, Joe cada is our new main event champion, and as a dedicated online poker player, many would argue the better player heads up, won.

It was once said that ‘Poker is a hard way to make an easy living’. There is a great deal of truth in this saying, as to battle on, trusting in your knowledge that good poker play will be rewarded in time, is often difficult when you are having a rough week or month.

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Sometimes you can see the weakest poker players at the table make novice mistakes and get lucky all night long, whilst you make good reads to preserve the remnants of your dwindling chipstack. This test of temprament and resolve, is one of the aspects of poker that make it so difficult to be consistently successful at.

As poker players, we must always examine hands that go wrong and search for ways we could have logically played them differently, considering potential alternate outcomes in the process. Through this process we should understand the ways to play certain poker scenarios that will be most profitable over the long run. If you feel you are doing this successfully but still losing, there really isn’t anything you can comfort yourself with other than the fact that luck is a necessary variable, and we will all fall victim to it some of the time.

If you can maintain enthusiasm, discipline, and calm when the worst befalls you, then you are halfway to being a successful poker player in the long term. Experience and a dedication to being a student of poker also help, but nothing will completely negate misfortune when it wishes to hurt you most. If you have a will to succeed in making money at poker, you simply have to meet bad luck with a galvanized determination to play better every single week.

The best poker hands can be described in several ways, and will of course be different in differing forms of poker too.

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If you are looking for a best starting hand in a game such as Omaha, you will be looking at hands like (A,A,K,K) double suited, or similar kinds of hands. As soon as we look at Omaha hi/lo, the best starting hands involve cards such as (A,A,2,3) double suited. The Omaha high best hand, is still strong as a starting poker hand in the hi/lo format, but the different rules for splitting the pot, change the best hand possible hand. It becomes more important in this instance to include cards which give the best shot at picking up both halves of the pot.

In poker games such as Seven Card Stud, starting hands such as high pairs that are concealed, or even trips in your first three cards are strong starting points. Texas Holdem starting hands which are strongest include, (A,A) (K,K) (A,K). These hands have a high chance of dominating opposing poker hands preflop, and whilst this does not mean you are a certainty to win, it drastically increases your chances. The best poker hands can be viewed in a different way however, because as players, we can count our best ever hands as a brilliant fold or bluff we made, rather than simply making a Royal Flush or being dealt a great starting hand.

In short, the best poker hands would be more accurately viewed as those hands when we played to the best of our poker abilities, either earning extra chips, or losing the minimum in the process. Even if you do lose a hand which you played exceptionally well, you should still be fairly happy, because other factors such as misfortune, are always beyond our control.

Poker has developed as a game rather quietly during it’s early history, always being known as a game for hustlers and cheats until around 40 years ago.

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During that time the game developed many different formats and variations of the game, with each of these providing it’s own challenge to poker players. Around the early 1970’s the World Series of Poker began to bring the game a little more into the public eye, attracting the best players in the world, and giving them a chance to test their skills against each other.

This gradually caught the attention of the potential players out there who had at least a passing interest in the game, and the exploits of great poker players such as Johnny Moss and Doyle Brunson began to inspire.
With televised poker games came the under table camera, and later on, the internet provided a place for players to learn the game from the comfort of their own home. This opened the world of poker to the masses, and pretty soon the game started to grow much faster than before.

Over the past ten years or so, poker has experienced a huge boom in popularity, stretching to many countries across the globe.  Texas Holdem has been the favoured game for a long time now, but some might argue the tables are beginning to turn in terms of the most popular poker game today. With the passing years, Holdem players have become tougher to beat as their expertise grows, and so the best in the world have begun to embrace Omaha a little more. This is undoubtedly still a game where players make plenty of mistakes, and so the potential for profitable situations for experienced players is good. It is the belief of many (including myself) that Omaha will become the next big poker game in due course, but there will always be a place in the hearts of most poker players, for Texas Holdem.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know when to try and extract the most from a fairly strong poker hand and when to play it safe. Unless your poker opponent is intent on forcing you into a decision for all your poker chips, you will usually have the chance to either make a raise or reraise on the river, or simply be careful and pick up what is already in the middle.

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Poker can be a cruel game sometimes, and so getting all your chips in preflop when you are in front is often the best way to leave poker situations to luck. If you feel you are a better poker player than most of your opponents, you would often be better off waiting for the correct moment to allow them to make mistakes. If you get a lot of poker chips into a pot on the turn or river, you are leaving far less to luck, and so it is advisable to follow this path where possible.

If you know you are going to make more correct decisions than the next player, you want to give yourself the chance to gradually, but steadily, build a stack in this way. Often the blinds in a poker tournament can make it increasingly difficult to do this, but in the early stages, it should be relatively easy to use your poker skill to your benefit. Despite the fact that bad beats can still hurt you on the river if your money goes in good on the turn, you ensure your opponents are at least drawing thin if you can read poker hands fairly well.

The best poker hands you can make are not often seen at the poker tables. The Royal Flush is the biggest possible poker hand, and is rare to find.

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When looking at the best possible poker hands, it is important to remember that having a very strong hand is all well and good, but if nobody else has anything to put chips in with, it isn’t much use. With that in mind, you could say that the best possible poker hands will always be those that are fractionally better than anyone elses at the table. I would happily take an Ace Flush against a King Flush rather than a Royal Flush against Ace high, because I will be paid off in the first instance.

The best hands are not always the standard poker hands which you find in games such as Holdem, as there are also variants that require a different type of hand to be made. These games are hi/lo variants usually, although there are other different games such as Badugi, but that isn’ really a form of poker as such. This hi/lo aspect applies to Razz too, which is recognised as a poker game, but only involves players trying to make the lowest unpaired five card hand.

In the cases of hi/lo games, (A,2,3,4,5) would be the best possible poker hand as the Ace counts as low. You could of course look at the best poker hands in terms of memorable poker hands, and most players will have a few of these type of hands. Hands can be memorable for a number of reasons, but usually it is a case of a final hand having won you a tournament, an extremely strong hand, or even simply a huge bluff. The best poker hands can be examined in many different ways but overall, you have to say that any hand you win is a good one.

There are many poker strategies circling the net as well as in numerous published book. Although some strategies work when you’re having a lucky run, some methods prove to be a waste of times where others do not.

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Fans that play Texas Hold Em will come across many “so-called” winning methods and ways of grabbing the win 90% of the time, and there are some indeed that keep you in the game longer than usual. One is quite a popular method that some Texas Hold Em players swear by, but like all poker methods, concentration and good judge of character is involved.

You may have heard of the term “floater” in the poker world and there are many players that say they come out on top of many poker games by “playing the floater”. Basic maths and good judging skills come into playing the game as a floater, but a lot of it is certainly common sense. So, you’re in a late position. The big blind player bets, the following poker player throws his cards down and folds and now all eyes are on you. The floater would see that the big blind didn’t bet confidently and guesses he probably has a single card with a couple of different suited cards. The floater would also guess that the big blind placed a continuation bet and he had missed the flop. The floater would then call his bet and continue to bet around three quarters of the pot until winning the round, judging the person can vaguely guess the big blind’s cards after viewing his own hands and folded poker hands.

Being a floater is exceptionally touch and go, but the theory is that it doesn’t matter what your cards are as being a floater simply means bluffing your way through the entire game – granted you don’t have an utterly hopeless hand.

Whether you are on the receiving end of aggressive poker plays, or hoping to implement them yourself, you should try to develop a good idea of the reactions you will face, or present to your aggressive opponent.

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The easy answer to defending against aggressive poker plays is to sit tight and wait for a big hand to trap them with. This can work perfectly in many cases, but the flaw with this plan is that blinds and the possibility of no strong hand presenting itself, mean that you don’t always get the chance.If you are short handed with high blinds or are simply too short to wait for a premium poker hand, you have to either carefully pick the best spot you can find with the cards you are dealt, or come out reraising when you sense weakness.

Playing an aggressive poker player at their own game and making an aggressive reraise is by nature, a risky thing to do if you aren’t picking up good cards. You might have to raise with weak poker hands, but usually you only have to succeed once or twice. The key point is that if an aggressive poker player thinks you will start reraising and fighting them for pots, they will start looking for easier targets. As the aggressor at the poker table you will usually find you are faced with the aforementioned trapping poker plays and smooth calls when someone picks up a strong hand. If you know players at the table are aware you are bluffing fairly frequently, be prepared to back off when you get called.

In the process of being faced with such trapping poker tactics, you should be aware that you can often manage to be given free cards when you are drawing to big hands fom position. Players might check to you, waiting for the inevitable raise, only to find you check behind. Suddenly your bottom pair turns into trips or you hit that gutshot Straight, where usually you wouldn’t have been given the chance because poker players wouldn’t be waiting to play back at an anticipated raise.

Making the decision to get involved in a poker pot can be swayed by several factors, with your poker hand strength, position, and tendancies of the poker players in the blinds, all playing their part.

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Another point which can sway your decision is whether you have poker chips already invested in a pot. Often in the case where you have chips invested, you will be more inclined to flat call from the small blind, or call a small raise from the big blind with a marginal poker hand. This can work out perfectly if you catch the flop well of course, but then poker isn’t kind enough for that to happen every other hand.

If you find yourself calling with a weaker poker hand in this situation, you will very often be playing the hand out of position. Being out of position often leaves you in a situation of either having to show your weakness when you miss a flop by checking, or alternatively, bet out with a half hit poker hand, or no hand at all.

That temptation to bluff is always there when you make the decision to not give up that marginal poker hand preflop, and you can be left being faced with either a reraise, or a flat call. The flat call can often be the worst of these options in fact, because the pressure is immediately back on to you to act first on a turn card that will very often have not improved your poker hand.

The best way to avoid these problems are to be very particular about how you play on the flop, not getting aggressive with second pairs, draws, or other marginal poker hands. You always have the option to get creative with a check raise if your opponent chooses to bet, as often they will be betting solely on the merit of the weakness shown by your check.