by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 15, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Earlier this week, I started a thread in the SSNL forum here on the FTR Forums that asked the following: You’re getting all-in pre-flop heads-up. Would you rather get in $23 with 55 percent equity, or would you rather get in $11 with 60 percent...
by Carl Sampson | Jun 15, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Recently I have switched poker sites again, I do this periodically if I find good games and plenty of fish. I don’t play anywhere near as much poker these days and most of that is at between NL50 and NL200 full-ring NLHE. Recently I have been watching the games...
by Fnord | Jun 12, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The key to table selection is having a good seat at a great table. Beware, there is such a thing as a bad seat at a great table. I primarily look at games with 6-8 players and a large pot size. I do this so I’m less likely to join a game that’s already...
by spoonitnow | Jun 12, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This is the fourth part in a series dealing with the key ideas that can be used to accelerate the process of gaining a feel for equities in different spots. In this week’s edition, we’re going to discuss some major cases for when the turn comes and how you...
by spoonitnow | Jun 11, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Surprisingly I couldn’t find any posts detailing this, so I’m going to do my thing. A Common Scenario With 100bb effective stacks, EP opens for 4x preflop, there are 2 callers, and we call on the button with 9 8 . Both of the blinds call. The flop pot is...
by spoonitnow | Jun 9, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
The Most Important Series I’ve Ever Written Back in late 2013, I wrote a five-part series that did something that I still think is pretty incredible: I taught a process for doing complex expected value (EV) calculations without requiring any kind of advanced...
by spoonitnow | Jun 8, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A lot of people get caught up thinking about what cards are going to come after the flop when they are considering a continuation bet. However, it’s usually more important to think about betting and position. When you’re considering making a continuation...
by Jack Sawyer | Jun 8, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Out of all the strategic aspects at play in any given poker game, there is none more important than table position. Players who can manipulate the hand-to-hand shift in the betting patterns will have a greater chance to be successful, regardless of the cards in their...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 8, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction A lot of the time in poker, we get caught up on the idea of wanting to know if something is profitable or not. We often make mistakes in our game because we’re taking an aggressive action that we have deemed to be profitable since we have made a...
by spoonitnow | Jun 8, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Introduction As part of the free NLHE Foundations Course, I’ve been providing a “hold my hand” approach to different types of analysis that you can do to learn about poker. If you want to take part, go to the link above, post in the thread, and...
by bigspenda73 | Jun 7, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
#5 Hand-Reading Being able to process information from your opponent, the texture of the board, and past experiences will help you become a better hand-reader. Improving your hand-reading skills will allow you to make more “correct” decisions in a session, thus...
by givememyleg | Jun 6, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
After familiarizing yourself with key poker fundamentals such as bankroll management, positional awareness, and aggression, there are a few other aspects of your game you can improve to take the next step in your poker playing career. One of the best ways to improve...
by spoonitnow | Jun 6, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In the context of poker, preparation could mean a number of different things, but we’re going to focus specifically on a few instances here. First, we’re going to look at how to and the advantages of preparing when you make a bet or raise. Second,...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 6, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Learning to deal with ranges is hard enough as it is, but there are a number of ideas about handling no-limit hold’em ranges that are a bit mislead. In this forum thread, I asked about the questions that people had about learning to work with...
by Fnord | Jun 5, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This is a discussion taken out of our very popular poker forum. A beginner was asking about what we mean by position and why it’s important. Some of our more experienced players eloquently described the importance of position in the game of Texas Hold’em. FNORD:...
by spoonitnow | Jun 5, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The alpha value is one of the most important numbers in a discussion of poker because it gives you a lot of information with a simple calculation. However, it’s often applied incorrectly because of a lack of understanding of what it can and should be used for....
by cobere | Jun 4, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Recently the world’s largest poker site, PokerStars, announced the way they were handling the minimum/maximum buy-in amounts at their cash game tables. This mainly affects NL/PL Hold’em as well as Pot-Limit Omaha games as shallow/deep stacks in limit games...
by bigspenda73 | Jun 4, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Most players who are new to online poker will start at the lowest stakes possible, commonly known as “Microstakes”. In general, microstakes are considered to be any poker stakes up to $0.10/$0.25 blinds in NL and $0.50/$1.00 in Limit games. The concept of...
by Carl Sampson | Jun 4, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Having spent around twenty years in the gambling industry in one capacity or another and numerous years in online poker, you cannot help but become aware of the seedier side of the industry. But this applies to all fields, it doesn’t matter what it is or how high...
by sauce123 | Jun 3, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
So everyone who reads and posts in this forum knows how to evaluate a HH, knows about preflop, knows about continuation betting and knows something about hand values and hand ranges. Perhaps the most important thing about poker though, and why some "bad"...
by sauce123 | Jun 3, 2019 | Featured Strategy, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Sauce123 destroys the competition. Trust me. He put together a really solid, concise guide to beating the 6-max no limit holdem tables – particularly on US friendly poker rooms Post-UIGEA (when many poker rooms closed their doors to US players, ultimately making...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 3, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In this week’s edition of [spoonitnow strategy], we’re going to look at some considerations for bluffing. We’re going to look at the role of position, the role of outs and when each is important for improving the EV of your bluffs. What...
by meeloche | Jun 3, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Balance by Meeloche Simple Definition as it applies to poker: Taking the same line as a bluff as you would for value, example a cbet on an AK9 board with 78o. The point is not to bluff 50% of the time and value bet 50% of the time on the example board, but to credibly...
by IowaSkinsFan | Jun 3, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
There are many names of hands in poker. For example we often call pocket Ace’s pocket rockets, or Ace-King off suit big slick. There are also names for the type of hands we get. A pair is normally referred to as a “made hand,” and four cards to a flush or straight are...
by Marshall28 | Jun 2, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I decided to write this entry because I feel like I’m responding with the same answers to the same questions over and over and over about playing in 3bet pots. I think this forum could definitely benefit from this article and it will make it much easier the next...
by spoonitnow | Jun 2, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Our objective here is to start to use second-level thinking principles to anticipate the strategies of regular opponents. This information will be used in tandem with other information we know about our opponents to formulate strategies used to exploit them. The State...
by bigspenda73 | Jun 2, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, Featured Beginner Poker, Featured Cash Games, Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One seemingly simple concept in No-Limit Texas Hold’em which tends to get a large amount of discussion is continuation betting. For those unfamiliar with the term a continuation bet (c-bet) is a bet by the pre-flop raiser on the flop. The term refers to this...
by Carl Sampson | Jun 2, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
As you begin to peel away the surface of no-limit Hold’em and in particular, no-limit Hold’em cash games, it becomes apparent that the game itself has design problems. What in heavens name do I mean? Well to put it in plain English, what other field of...
by IowaSkinsFan | Jun 2, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
From now on every Friday I will be taking some of the strategy discussion from the forums, sum up some of the cool content in case you missed it, and make my own comments on the issues discussed. In the high stakes forum this week, there was a hand posted by...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 2, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
The terms attack and defense in poker are almost always used in an effort to describe the idea of initiative. We have this idea of aggression in poker as being represented by the actions that put more unmatched money into the pot like betting and raising, and then we...
by spoonitnow | Jun 2, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction This is part four in the NLHE Foundations Series. I’ve designed this series to give players a clear path from the beginner to intermediate levels in no-limit hold’em. There’s a lot more to this series than these posts because...
by Carl Sampson | Jun 2, 2019 | Cash Games, Live Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Whether you are playing live poker or online poker it really makes no difference, your opponents will still be watching how you play. If you think that low-stakes online players be it at limit, no-limit or whatever do not fit into this category then think again. They...
by bigspenda73 | Jun 1, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the recent trends in online poker is the introduction of No Limit Hold’em cash games with an Ante. Major sites such as FullTilt, UB (formerly UltimateBet), and Absolute Poker have added these games to their lobby looking to attract more players. Ante games tend...
by spoonitnow | Jun 1, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
In any poker game, we have a strategy, and our opponents have their own strategies. How these strategies match up determines who makes money and how much money is made. So far, this series has been looking at concepts and ideas that have the point of developing one...
by Carl Sampson | Jun 1, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Actually, I almost didn’t write this article simply because I thought that writing it might be a waste of time. The reason being is that the vast majority of players who read this will probably, through a combination of conceit and egotism, think that I am not...
by Fnord | May 31, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Since this has come up a couple times on this board, please correct any errors. I only have the equivalent of a minor in math. There are a lot of factors not included in this simplistic analysis such as straits, quads, flushes, other pair on board and bluffing....
by spoonitnow | May 31, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In last week’s article, we looked at some of the reasons why equity isn’t the end-all, be-all of evaluating how two ranges will perform against each other. With that out of the way, we’re going to be able to get into the nitty gritty aspects of the...
by Carl Sampson | May 30, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A few years ago I wrote an article for a poker magazine called “coming in under the radar”. In that article I mentioned playing lower stakes games than you normally would and taking advantage of weaker players. In essence, online poker has grown up an awful lot since...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 30, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
A while back, I wrote the EV Calculations Tutorial series to help people to deal with the math side of poker. We followed a very simple process that kept our analysis organized and clean, and we did so only requiring basic addition and multiplication. While this is...
by Fnord | May 30, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
General Approach: Buy-in for 50bb. Re-load when you drop below 40bb. At 75bb re-evaluate table conditions. If you don’t like your seat or table, nit it up until your blinds hit, then leave. Tend to leave if you drop 100bb at a table. Advantages to a less than...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 29, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
I’m going to pick back up on the NL 2-7 Single Draw series later, but because of popualr interest, we’re going to look at a different topic today. This week’s topic is that of multiway pots, why they are different and how you should adjust to them....
by carlcarlsoniv | May 29, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
In this week’s column, we’re going to investigate the idea of betting to protect your hand. A number of people bet with the excuse of protecting their hand almost every chance that they get. On the other hand, a lot of people dismiss this concept as being...
by spoonitnow | May 29, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This is the first of a series of poker articles that I’ll be writing each week here at FlopTurnRiver. The objective of this article is to present what I think is an excellent approach to studying poker that will be central to my future articles. The Problems...
by spoonitnow | May 29, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at a number of different ideas and concepts that have the overall goal of helping players to learn how to build up a better feel for equity in different spots. Here we’re going to finish off this series by...
by spoonitnow | May 28, 2019 | Cash Games, Featured Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the things that I’ve seen people struggle with is getting a feel for how different ranges come together on boards to create equities. It’s one thing to be able to get a relatively good idea of what both you and your opponent’s ranges look like...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 28, 2019 | Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Something I like to do, and what I always advocate people who seek poker help from me, is to break down the elements of poker so we can understand concepts behind them and further apply them. I feel like most of the problems with people stuck at low and midstakes is...
by FlopTurnRiver | May 27, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Limit Hold’em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Limit Texas Holdem vs. No Limit Texas Holdem – the debate goes on. Which game should you master? Well, everyone here at FTR has their own opinion. We have very skilled and profitable players profiting from both forms of the game. I have my opinion too, and No Limit...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 27, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Back in part 1 of the Bluff or Check? series, we briefly looked at the concepts that govern firing the second barrel. Also known as a turn continuation bet, we’re talking about betting again as a bluff or semi-bluff when we’re called on the...
by aokrongly | May 26, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Beginners generally have trouble knowing how much to bet when they hit a hand. For the most part they know to “take away the other guy’s pot odds,” but there’s more to betting than that. Because… tell me if this happens to you… You...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 26, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If you read my posts in the forums, you’ll notice I’ll throw around this word manipulation without too much explanation. In my earlier blog, I did write an article about manipulation where I talked about it in terms of bet sizing. Well, my old blog is gone now, and as...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 26, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Below you will see an interesting discussion on river check/raises which took place in the High Stakes forum. It started with ISF showing hands and posters such as Sauce123, Massimo, Toadstool, and gabe adding their replies. View the check raise theory...
by edwarda | May 26, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Bluffing: it’s perhaps the most exciting part of poker. When executed perfectly, the bluff can convince your opponent of anything, and win you their chip stack without a decent hand to in sight. Like the players say, cards only matter when you turn them over....
by givememyleg | May 26, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If poker was all about exercising knowledge, then it would be basically all too easy to earn money at the game, but life is never that easy is it? For instance many authors have written excellent poker books without the effects of having written that book having any...
by spoonitnow | May 26, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction More than seven years ago, I wrote a post titled Blind Stealing 101. A lot has changed in terms of what’s fashionable and what’s well-known in the online poker world. For a fun piece of evidence of this, note that the standard size of an open...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 25, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
In last week’s column, we looked at the idea of betting to protect your hand. One of the main themes with last week’s column and what we’re going to talk about this week is that a lot of people get into habits of how they think about their range...
by Renton | May 25, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In poker, we attempt to make money by playing the best we can, making what we feel is the most profitable play in every scenario, making as few mistakes as possible. Assuming you know the exact hand range of your opponent, there is almost always a clear best play, and...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
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...
by Carl Sampson | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the years, many people have asked me for advice on what is the “perfect” strategy for certain types of games. I think people get somewhat seduced by the thought that something as complex as poker can be simplified to a few basic strategies that can be...
by Carl Sampson | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I was watching a NL100 full-ring game on Pokerloco yesterday when the following hand came down which I thought was somewhat instructive. It was folded around to our hero who raised from the hijack to $3.50. The button called as he had done several times already. Both...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A lot of people don’t think about their bet sizing much. They have a “standard” bet size they use in nearly all situations, in hopes of not giving away further information as well as not wanting to make a mistake by betting too much or too little. However, some go a...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week we started looking at the relationship between bluffing and semi-bluffing for the purposes of being able to construct examples to study that allow us to build our intuition, or our feel for the game. We specifically looked at scenarios where we only had nut...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
When it comes to getting better in an early stage of your career, hand reading is a premium. You can understand poker as much as you’d like, but it’s not going to help if you can’t read hands well. It’s hard to know what to do when you have no idea what your opponents...
by spoonitnow | May 24, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction I’ve been doing the free NLHE Foundations Course here on FlopTurnRiver to give players a straight-forward path to go from the beginner levels to the intermediate levels with a mind towards being able to systematically improve over time. If you want...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
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, 2, overpair,...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 23, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
When I interviewed Kingsofcards for my weekly interview, one comment he made about heads up changing his game rung a bell with me. Until after playing HU, when playing 6 max I never really took into account bet sizing, timing tells or things like that nearly as much...
by spoonitnow | May 23, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
People who know how I approach things will be able to tell you that I focus primarily on depth instead of breadth. However, this week’s column is going to be a bit different. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been laying out a way to think about the...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 23, 2019 | Cash Games, Featured Cash Games, Featured Heads Up, Heads Up, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
After about 2 months of playing 90% HU, I have become really confident in my game and feel like I have knowledge to share about it. Initially, I wanted to write a strategy guide but my thoughts are just so scrambled Idk that I could organize it. My thoughts will be in...
by FlopTurnRiver | May 22, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the most difficult and yet crucial decisions you will make when playing no limit Texas holdem will be whether to even play your hand. This decision should not be made haphazardly. Hitting your card on the flop only to end up with the second best hand can be...
by spoonitnow | May 21, 2019 | Cash Games, Featured Cash Games, Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A few people have been posting stats threads lately and I’ve seen a trend that really needs to be addressed. Most of the people I’ve seen stats on are not stealing blinds nearly enough, and aren’t defending their blinds nearly enough. I’ve...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 21, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Gah, I got this idea in my head and thought I’d write it down. A month ago I essentially explained to my AIM buddies something I was thinking about in a lot of depth, as it was a concept that was integral in killing tight passive games. Pretty much everything I...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 21, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Why You People Need Help I’ve seen quite a few posts recently in the Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em forum that center around a multi-player hand that was handled in a really poor way just because someone didn’t adhere to the basics concepts that drive...
by spoonitnow | May 21, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
List of Topics: 1. Introduction to Hand Combinations 2. How to Calculate Possible Combinations of a Pocket Pair Hand 3. How to Calculate Possible Combinations of a Non-Pocket Pair Hand 4. Brief Discussion of Blockers 5. Effect of Blockers on a Villain’s Range...
by Carl Sampson | May 20, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I play my poker a lot differently these days. My operation has switched from high-stakes single tabling to far lower stakes and multi-tabling. So in a way this is going from high-stakes-low overlay-low turnover to low-stakes-higher overlay-higher turnover. This suits...
by chardrian | May 20, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Live Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
For many U.S. players, Black Friday has meant the end of playing poker online. For those players, the only way to currently play poker without the worry of legality or cashouts is to go to a brick and mortar cardroom and play honest to god live poker. I happen to be...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 20, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
For the original ISF theorem post go here: ISF Theorem When I wrote ISF Theorem a half year ago, I was at a very frustrating point in my game. I was a very marginal winner at 200nl and was going on two straight losing months, which was absolutely devastating to my...
by spoonitnow | May 20, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Open limping before the flop in no-limit hold’em cash games is almost always the sign of a loose/passive, weak player. However, this doesn’t have to be the case, and you can definitely add open limping to your game in the right circumstances...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 20, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In my first strategy post on forming ranges, I mostly touched on preflop. But postflop, as we all know, is where the big money is at. And it’s postflop where forming ranges is the most important, it’s just a whole lot harder! The basic premise of forming ranges is...
by carlcarlsoniv | May 20, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
This is part 3 in the Back to Basics series. In this series, we take basic concepts and look at them in a little more depth than beginners typically do. The idea here is to fill in some knowledge gaps and play better poker on a fundamental level. In this week’s...
by Carl Sampson | May 19, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I wrote an article on FlopTurnRiver a couple of weeks ago about the merits of multi-tabling. I feel that there are deeper strategic consequences behind what was in that article. With poker there is an almost pendulum like motion with regards to what tactics and...
by IowaSkinsFan | May 19, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
These thoughts about manipulation keep running through my mind and it’s keeping me awake, so I decided I’d write them down. A few months ago I got really into manipulation and made some pretty good blog posts about it. Eventually, I got more into exploring...
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