ISF’s Blog

There has been a request for a beginners guide to equity so that’s going to be the article for this week.
Equity is our mathematical chance of our hand or hand range winning the hand against our opponents hand or hand range. For example, the hand AA has 80% equity against TT, which has 20% equity [continue]

We are pleased this week to have with us Johan “busto_soon” Van Til, one of the top online tournament players in the world. The 26 year old from the Netherlands has been playing professionally for 2 and a half years. Van Til has a fabulous resume of wins, including several in the $109 rebuy on [continue]

Lots of big names won last Sunday, as poker players prepared to break on Monday for the NCAA basketball championship.
High stakes cash game player Vaga_Lion took home the gold in the Poker Stars Sunday Million for a cool $216,576. He beat out a tough final table including 6th place finisher and top 100 tournmanet player [continue]

(If you haven’t read part one, click link below and then come back when you’re finished)
In an article from a few months ago, I explained the real differences between draws and made hands. In summary, draws and made hands weren’t simply names for hands, but actually each of them have certain equity qualities versus different [continue]

You hear a lot about the Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth, and Phil Ivey, but how about a young online stud named Phil D’Auteuil? Phil “takechip” D’Auteuil from Quebec, Canada recently burst onto the online poker scene, winning over $700,000 in the past 3 months, half a million of which came in February. I would give [continue]

Poker Stars had its buy in raised to $1050 this week, creating a gigantic prize pool of over 1.8 million dollars! The spoils went to UH Big Tex, who won $366,698 for the victory. The 2nd place finish of Governator may not be a victory in the literal sense, but his $185,031 score was the [continue]

                We are on the river with 97s on a JJ922 board. Our opponent has bet 3/4ths the pot into us, and we are put in a tough spot. We know from the past streets that our hand look weak and our donk opponent, who seems to never fold (ever), could easily have a J, [continue]

Jonathan “JonnyCosmo” McGowan’s didn’t look like much a few years ago. The 22 year old journalism major was just plodding along at San Diego State University, and was only showing gradual improvement at his poker hobby as well. But with the help of fellow poker playing friends and hard work McGowan has catapulted into poker [continue]

A player named Tsipor took down the Poker Star’s Sunday Million this week for nearly $210,000. He beat out a tough final table consisting of cash game regulars jaywks, blacenegro, and  tourney profressional pbdrunks. Pbdrunks continued his success in 2008 with another final table in the Sunday Second Chance, receiving 3rd for $28,680. He fell [continue]

The most repeated advice in poker. We’ve all heard it before.
Position, Position, Position.
The proof is in the pudding. Our statistics show that we win much more money on the button than we do UTG. But the advice to play in position is not very powerful when we have no idea why. That’s why, in this [continue]