The Online Poker Bible

Ok I know its been ages since my last post and you have probably been wondering what  have I been doing. I have been asking myself the same question every day. Playing poker , working and oh yeah moving country. I know its a big one and this has taken up most  of my  time. Anyway I’m back and cant wait to start writing again.

Before I jump straight back into it all, I would love to know what  do you want to read . What is the important information that you are searching for and how can I help ? Obviously poker related please.

So much has happened since I last posted, for me the biggest change is that I can no longer play and earn on Full Tilt. I was really finding rush poker very profitable and now I am trying to adapt again to Paddy Power. Ah well what can you do! Its not to bad but it will take some time to get used to.

One of the first and probably most important things to learn when playing Texas Hold’em is which starting hands are worth playing — and which you should fold. This is crucial as it prevents you from entering pots with weak hands that can lose you a lot of money.

A big problem for new poker players is that they tend to play too many hands. A simple but effective first step for new players is to learn how to make correct starting hand selections

Deciding whether or not those two pocket cards you’re first dealt are playable is an important decision, because while you have to be in it to win it, you also can’t lose money that you haven’t bet. Since the two pocket cards are the only thing that make your hand better or worse than any other players, it’s important that they are good strong cards.   

Is table position important in starting hand selection? 

A good Hold’em player will adjust their starting hand selection standards depending on their table position. It’s quite reasonable to bring down our starting hand requirements if you have good position (LP/BUTTON). A strong position presents an advantage over your opponents as you get to see their actions before you have to act so you don’t necessarily need as strong a starting hand to play with. You will be obtaining information from the way your opponent plays during the game and by having them acting first can allow you to play some marginal hands. (89s) 

This is shown quite clearly in the starting hand chart below.

 

 

 

If you are starting out in poker, this chart can give you a good idea of which hands to play from what position. In no-limit poker, it really is about position and the size of the bet. Sometimes you don’t even need a good hand to take the pot. Although I would say this is a more advanced poker strategy. If you stay close to this chart you will notice a big difference in your game.

 

Face Cards and Kickers 

I’ve said it before and ill say it again; too many beginner level poker players are not strict enough with their starting hand selection. This is why even after hitting top pair your opponent beats you with a better kicker. It is important to have two face cards instead of one, because the size of our kicker can play a huge role in determining who the winner of the pot will be. So if you are entering a pot, make sure both cards are good.

(A5) an ace with a low kicker is going to lose you more money then it makes. This knowledge is exploited by most good poker players. Just make sure when you are entering a pot you are the one with the better kicker every time and take the money from the players who are entering the pots with weaker hands than you.

 

So try to remember as much of the chart as possible can and I hope it make a difference for you on the tables.

Gina-TheOnlinePokerBible

 

Technorati Tags: Starting Hands, Texas Hold'em

Position is a vital concept in poker that is often touched upon in books about Texas hold’em. In online poker, position means everything; this fact is greatly underestimated by many beginner poker players.  Your poker table position can be the difference between winning and losing a hand, what your online poker strategy should be and what you should expect from all the other players.

 

This article will teach you what position is, how to recognize it, where to apply it and how to take advantage of position into your game. Not understanding position with its many advantages and disadvantages is the easiest way to lose lots of money in internet poker, so pay attention.

 

 

Position Diagram

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

·        The seats shown in red to the left of the button are EARLY POSITION (EP)

·        The seats shown in green to the right of the button are LATE POSITION (LP)

·        The seats in between these shown in blue are MIDDLE POSITION (MP)

 

 

 Early Position (EP)

 At a full game with ten players, being in early position means that you are one of the first players to act when the action starts, this also applies to 6 player tables. This means that before the flop, the players immediately to the left of the big blind are considered to be in early position. UTG or “Under the Gun” for short is an expression used for the very first person to act after the blinds. This connotation is given, because the UTG is forced to start the action.

So in early position you should be much  more selective about the hands you decide to  play, because you will have very little  information on your opponents hand strength  at each stage of the hand because you are first to act.

In the majority of situations in poker, having early position is often a disadvantage. Not only will you be one of the first to act, your opponents will always be able to react to what you do after they have seen the action you have taken. This is a huge advantage to your opponents because good players will usually come up with ways of disrupting or exploiting your play when they are able to simply wait to see what you do first.

 

High quality hands are the only ones worth a try when seated in early position. Marginal hands should be avoided.

The hands you can afford to stay in the game while in early position:

High pairs: Ace-Ace, King-King, Queen-Queen, Jack-Jack
High suited cards: Ace-King, Ace-Queen, King-Queen, Ace-Jack, King-Jack, Queen-Jack, Jack-10 High unsuited cards: Ace-King, Ace-Queen, King-Queen

Middle Position (MP)

The players to the left of the early position players (On a 10 player table usually starting at the 4th player to the left of the button) are called the middle position players. These are shown in blue seats on the diagram above. Like early position, being in MP has few advantages and quite a few drawbacks. Some of the positives would be that you have positional advantage over the EP (red seats).This means you can afford to play a few more hands in these positions as you do not have as many people left to act behind you. However, if all of the players in the EP (red seats) folded, that will mean that you will be the first to act on each round. This again is quite a big disadvantage .Another thing to think about is that you still have players in late position acting behind you. This could leave a middle position player open to what is called the “squeeze” play.

 

The squeeze is when you get trapped in a difficult situation, when you are trying to call a bet by a player in EP, but are getting by another opponent in late position. This is dangerous because you may be wanting to slow down the action when you are holding a marginal hand or are wary of your opponent acting behind you in LP, but the EP player is either too aggressive or has a good hand himself and is forcing you to commit more chips to the hand.I will go into more detail about the “squeeze” play in future articles (advanced strategy)

 

The hands you can afford to stand in the game while in middle position:
High suited cards: Ace-10, King-10, Queen-10
High unsuited cards: Ace-Jack, Ace-10, King-Jack
Middle pairs: 10-10, 9-9, 8-8

 Late Position (LP)

 

The last few players to act in the round (sitting left of the button) are considered the late position players (green seats). Late position has different terms for the second last person to end the action. This position is called the cut-off (or CO for short), who is the second to last person to act.

Being In LP (green seats) there is a high chance that you will be last to, or one of the last to act on each round. This is where you can loosen up your starting hands even further

Being in late position is a very big advantage in poker and especially Texas hold’em, because of the dynamics of the game.

Late Position players are granted the privilege of seeing all their opponents make their bets, before they are required to make their moves. Based on this precious information, they can act with confidence and eventually have a much higher win rate. Already knowing what to expect, they can afford to stay in the game with a much larger range of hands. Unlike players in previous positions, their poker strategy is based predominantly on information

When in late position, you are often finding yourself in situations where the hand has been checked around to you (nobody has bet at the pot) this is a great opportunity to make a steal (bluff) at the blinds and take the pot right there.

 

The hands you can afford to stand in the game while in Late Position:

 

Suited Connectors: 9-10, 7-8, 5-6

Small Pairs: 2s, 3s, 4s,

Ace little: A-8, A-6

The Button

The Button (yellow seat) is the best seat in the hand, because on every round except for before the flop, you will be last to act no matter what. This is why you should look to play as many hands as possible (within reason) from the button, as you have a big advantage in the hand when you are last to act. This is a very important factor in making playing poker online.

 Position Strategy in Texas Hold’em

Now that you know and understand the various positions (early, mid and late), how do you use this in your game?

If you have position over another player, it means that you are acting after them on each round; you always need to be constantly aware of your position when playing poker. I know this is very easy to forget sometimes when you are often too concerned playing your hand and not paying attention to how your position is affecting you.

Say for example you are playing a game of $1/2 NL hold’em and you look down at your hold cards and see a hand like 89s (that’s eight and nine of the same suit). You are UTG (under the gun, first to act) and wonder if you should play this hand or not. In this example, a hand like 89s plays well when there are many players in the pot, because it’s a drawing hand that relies on pot odds rather than beating people out of a hand. The problem you face is that you don’t know yet what the other players at the table might have, if they will be any raisers or if there will be any re-raisers after you. In Late Position though realising that 89s (drawing Hand) does well in multi way pots you can safely call behind action, rather than bet out and create action yourself. Drawing hands play well from Late Position because you can safely play this hand or toss it away after you can see all the action before it comes to you. However, since you are UTG and in early position, you should now realize that this hand is unsafe to play in EP and this should be an easy decision to pre-flop fold.

 

It’s really important to understand that position and information go hand in hand.

You call a pre-flop raiser while on the button, when the flop hits you make middle pair. It’s a hand but not really a great one to bet out with. Your opponent that is first to act checks, showing signs of weakness. So you could use this information to bet out and take the pot because they have shown weakness and your hand is probable good. Even if it wasn’t you could attempt to bluff knowing your opponent has not hit his hand. This is the power of position. If you were first to act, you probably would check not thinking your middle pair was that strong. Any reasonably sized bet from your opponent would make you fold fearing a stronger hand.

 

Let’s Sum It Up

I really think that table position is easily one of the most underestimated factors by amateur players in respects to playing online poker. Table position is so important that often hands can be won or lost based solely on your position alone, irrespective of the strength of the cards that you and your opponent hold.

To make money Playing Poker Online you need to be constantly aware of your Position

 

That’s it from me on this subject but my next article about advanced position strategy will be on relative position.

 

Gina-TheOnlinePokerBible

 

 

Technorati Tags: Beginners Strategy, position

Bankroll Management, so you don’t go broke!

The following article is one of the key principles to becoming a successful online poker player. There are plenty of sites good around the internet advising you on how to build your bankroll. There is also a lot of good advice when it comes to not mixing up your bankroll with your household budget – money that is supposed to pay your mortgage and heating. This really should not be gambled with. Now, no advice is applicable to everyone, but this much is clear. Without the proper Bankroll Management skills, the best players in the world would go broke.

 

The Basic Rules of Bankroll Management

	Protected / loose	Unprotected / tight
Limit Hold’em	300 BIG BLINDS	150 BIG BLINDS
NL Hold’em	20 BUY INS	10 BUY INS
SnG	40  ENTRIES	20 ENTRIES
MTT	80 ENTRIES	40 ENTRIES

 

 So What Does Bankroll Management Really Mean?

 

“Bankroll management” is where you choose to play at certain limits to avoid losing all of your Bankroll due to a bad runs of cards. For example, if losing 10BB in a pot makes you for even a moment consider how much money that “actually” is, you’re probably out of your league, bankroll wise. And bad beats happen, even though they suck. Cold Streaks can lose a large portion of your bankroll in a single bad session, even with 400BB in it.  Believe me I know from experience L 

So if you’re “playing within your bankroll” this should not affect you too much and you will be in a position to make it back in your next session.

However if you are “playing out of your bankroll” higher limits where there is too great a chance of losing all of your poker money , not only will it be a huge blow to your ego, you will not have the resources to even try and make your loses back. To manage your Bankroll Correctly you would have to either move down in table limits or increase your bankroll.

 

 How Does Variance Affect My Bankroll?

Variance is a very important reason why you should be careful choosing the limit you play.

Variance basically means “ups and downs”, when you fluctuate from have an amazing run of cards to a really bad run, resulting in varying profit and losses. If you play for any lengthily period of time, there will surely be periods where the cards just don’t fall your way and you will be consistently losing money. You need to make sure you have a Bankroll large enough to absorb the downswings. 

So if we are playing online poker or sitting at a live table, we really want to give ourselves the best chance to make the most amount of profit we can without putting ourselves at risk of going broke.

 

 

Choosing a Limit to Play?

If you are playing pot limit or no limit poker, the safe recommended size of your bankroll is 10- 20 times the full buy-in of where you want to play. This means that if you want to have the best chance of making money at a 0.10c/0.20c game where the maximum buy-in is $20, you should have a bankroll of at least $200-$400. But what’s really important to remember is even if you can afford to start with a larger bankroll on higher limits tables, there is a huge advantage of playing hundreds of hands while  Slowly moving up the limits,  this will outweigh any poker book you might have read  with a sledge hammer of practical experience. Take your time and don’t be in any rush.

 

 

Online Poker as a Career

If you intend to take up poker as a career and winnings are your main source of income, your bankroll needs to be a lot bigger. A general rule would be to increase it by 50%. Remember your day to day expenses will need to come from your winnings and NOT your bankroll so that bankroll needs to have the ability to withstand the variance of not only your poker but also your costs of living.

In order to protect your winnings you should make scheduled cash-outs. As a winning player, withdraw some percentage of your winnings and bring your bankroll back to its base level. This allows you to separate the cash you need to use as a player and the cash you have secured as winnings. The key point here is to look at your bankroll cash in a different light as your winnings cash. It’s tough to do because they are both the same thing (money) but your bankroll is to a poker player what tools are to a car mechanic. It’s your mechanism to continue making more money. What you are looking to AVOID is any kind of emergency where you have to withdraw large chunks of my Bankroll due to oversight in cost of living expenses. It would be the same as a mechanic selling his tools to pay a bill rather than fixing more cars.

Sometimes a mechanic will take some of the money he has earned and re-invest it in better tools that allow him to work on more expensive jobs, when you take your winnings and add to your bankroll, this is how you begin to move up levels

 

 

When Is It Time Change Your Level?

Changing level/limit is directly related to the current balance of your Bankroll, if you have been going through a bad run of cards like we had discussed above and your Bankroll has now dropped below your 10-20 Full Buy Ins, then you should also drop down a level so that you are “playing within your Bankroll”. When you have built it back up enough you can then move back up a level.

With the same principle, if your Bankroll has increased and is large enough to handle the next limit up, it would make sense to move up a limit once you feel comfortable that you can beat this level.

There has been times I have just wanted to see what the next limit is like and if I feel that I can beat or even compete I will  ‘taking a shot’. There is no harm in trying this as long as you stick to good bankroll management rules for most of the time you play online poker.

 Lets finish with Coin Flipping

Lets Look at the famous poker analogy – coin flipping. So you have $5.00 and I offer you $2.00 every time heads lands. If tails lands you give me $1.00. Who would pass up this bet? Of course not, easy money you say!  Let’s think about this for a minute. Let’s say you are just plain unlucky and the first 5 flips it only lands heads one time. You are down to $2.00 even though the odds seem to be in your favor. Two more bad flips and you are going broke!

Now imagine if you had $80.00 and you took the same exact bet. That $3 you lost isn’t nearly as big of a deal because you have plenty of more money and you can wait until your luck evens out again and you get back to a 50% win rate with heads landing.

In a nutshell, if you flip a coin enough times it will land on heads roughly half the time and tails the other half. However, it won’t rotate evenly between the two. For the first 10 times it might land heads. And other times it might land tails many more times than it does heads. This is due to luck. We have absolutely no control over it and it will happen regardless of any attempts made to try chance things.

 

There will be times when luck is in your favour, all the cards go your way and it seems like you can do no wrong. We’ve all been there (and love it!), but it never lasts. There will also be times when you are playing your best game (or at least you think you are!) but the cards just don’t seem to go in your favour–your opponent catches that one-outer on the river, or your draws never seem to complete. It is during these bad runs that you must have a large enough bankroll to continue playing through the negative swing until your luck balances out. 

 

 

That’s it from me

Gina -The Online Poker Bible

Technorati Tags: poker strategy

Welcome to the online poker bible blog. Here I will be posting some of the hottest tips and tricks to make money playing poker online, some interesting news stories and even some occasional gossip.

I really hope you enjoy my blog and I would love to hear from the readers in the comments section. If you like what you read you can add us to your favourite blog RSS reader. Enjoy! Gina – TheOnlinePokerBible.com

Technorati Tags: online poker

My name’s Gina, or online “NUTUPAA” Anyways, I’ve wanted to contribute what bits of information or my own point of view on wonderful game of poker for a long time. I really love reading poker related blogs myself but sometimes feel that for new players starting out or even longer term online players the information I read is not all ways relevant. When I started playing, I wanted to know can I really make regular money, is every blog/site recommending a poker room for their own financial gain and what are the best tools available to me to up my game and cash in. So hopefully I can cover some of these subjects for everybody on my The Online Poker Bible Blog.

A bit about me… I’m 30 years old and for the last 10 years I have run and managed a large profitable retail business .A bricks and mortar business in today’s world have its obvious highs and lows and this made me consider other sources of income and pleasure.  I have always considered myself a better-than-average recreational poker player. I have been playing poker “seriously” for three years now. By “serious”, I mean I have been playing, learning, studying, and tracking my game.

I play mostly online Texas Holdem, but sometimes live games usually consisting of low-limit local tourneys or cash games. I play online at Titan and Full Tilt Poker, but have also played at a few others, (Party Poker, Pokerstars, etc.).  Again, I mostly enjoy online cash games, but I do play some single and multi table tourneys as well.

I thinks the point of my contributions will be, well, whatever I feel like getting of my chest, but I can see myself mostly writing about really trying to make a online poker career, I will try to cover a bit about players and event profile, but mostly, I think I’ll be focusing on strategy, again, from my point of view. 

By now you’re probably thinking “who the hell cares about your opinion, and can I really learn anything new that I can’t get somewhere else”. My honest answer to that’s easy, I’m not going to be going through my undiscovered super strategy to making millions playing poker online , I really don’t have one YET! .  What I do hope however is to provide a different perspective, and maybe show you how I and many other like me have built a career playing poker.

I Hope that you have had as such fun reading this as I have had writing it , and hopefully all future posts wont completely suck for you guys either!

Until next time,

Gina

 

Technorati Tags: online poker, online poker bible