by Tyson Tanaka | Jul 7, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jul 6, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the things that a lot of people have a big misunderstanding about is the difference between equity and expected value. We’re going to look at a few examples in this week’s article that should help players to develop some clarity on this issue....
by Tyson Tanaka | Jul 5, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
(This is a post I wrote a while back which I hope will be useful for newcomers to micro-stakes NL. It should be useful up to 25NL, but it’s specifically aimed at the player of a few weeks’ experience, who understands the basics, but doesn’t know much...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jul 5, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jul 3, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Written by Carl Sampson, aka The Dean, 2009. Years ago the continuation bet was a very little known poker concept. This was knowledge that only regular strong players tended to have. This is not the case anymore and continuation betting is so basic that it basically...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jul 1, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Last week, we looked at a very specific question that gets asked a lot about 3-bet pots: How to Play AK When You Miss the Flop. We discussed a number of topics briefly, and there was a good response to the article, so we’re going to parlay that into...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 28, 2020 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Jun 27, 2020 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Jun 27, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 27, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 26, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
How hard can it be to continually make money in the nosebleed games on Full Tilt Poker? I reckon it must be pretty damn hard to do it year in and year out. If it was that easy then people like Brian Townsend wouldn’t have been found guilty of multi-accounting (sorry...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 26, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 26, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
As a follow on to the article that I wrote a few weeks ago regarding the likelihood of cheating in online poker increasing through necessity, here I want to talk about the effects of coaching sites, training tools and other types of software that all enable people to...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 24, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the past three weeks, we have been building up to this week’s material. This week, we’re going to look at how to use what we’ve learned so far to perform EV calculations for extremely complicated scenarios. The math involved does not change at...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 24, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Introduction After reading through the latest gut wrenching 19 hands chart thread, I am going to try an experiment. We don’t have enough people writing interesting and informative articles around here anymore. The stickies are becoming stale and outdated. I...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 24, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Some players at a full, 10 person Limit Hold’em table will play any ace at any time. Those who have read Sklansky know that Ace-little unsuited does not make it into his 8 hand groupings and often times should not be played from early position. Suppose you are in...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 23, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Let’s face it, we all know how important aggression is in poker. But years ago I used to remark how easy it was to be aggressive and that anyone could do it. If I told a novice player to empty the clip every time he entered a pot then his violent aggression...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 23, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 23, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If you haven’t read part 1 and part 2, then you’ll need to go ahead and do that before you jump into this week’s article because I’m going to assume that you know and completely understand the contents of those two parts. This week, we’re...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 22, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If your head starts to swim at the thought of hand ranges and default ranges and all the rest of the technical poker jargon, then don’t worry. If you are an experienced player then you will already be used to subconsciously placing your opponents on possible...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 22, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 22, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 22, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 22, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Back in my very first edition of this strategy column, I outlined what I believe to be a very efficient method for approaching the process of learning in poker. Later on, I expanded on these ideas in late 2014 in my original article An Introduction to...
by givememyleg | Jun 21, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 21, 2020 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Jun 21, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week, we took an initial look at the [0, 1] model for ranges and looked at a couple of examples of how it can be put to work for us. We tied this into our previous discussion of how to calculate the EV of different types of situations, and we looked at how to use...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 21, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 21, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Progression through the micros naturally trends us toward unbalanced lines. We start playing basic TAGG, then learn to steal blinds more, to cbet more. Hey, it works. When we face better competition at 100nl or higher, the lack of balance is very exploitable. Trust me...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 20, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week, we started a series called Back to Basics which is going to look at “basic” concepts in more depth than players have probably used before. Our first part of this series was on Implied Odds, and we’re going to continue with this theme in Part 2 this...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 20, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 20, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Leveling is an in-game battle of psychology. It stems from this: Level 0: What do I have? Level 1: What does my opponent have? Level 2: What does my opponent think I have? Level 3: What does my opponent think that I think they have? Level 4: What does my opponent...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 19, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy, Poker Tools
How I used problem-solving theory to study cbets and villain profiles The problem is I suck at poker. But I’m reasonably good at problem solving. George Polya’s quintessential research studied great problem-solvers and suggested this simple format:...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
There is a tremendous sub-culture of players who see small pocket pairs and get carried away with their profit potential. Personally I play pocket pairs very sparingly in full-ring NLHE games. The modern online poker environment is getting tougher by the month and...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
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 ranges. Made hands were then...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 18, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 18, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 17, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Group 1: any two cards Group 2: any two cards you found in your wallet (Blockbuster, Visa, library card) Har har! Not really. But yes, the starting requirements are a lot looser and a lot more vague than in a full ring game. I don’t consult a chart – a lot...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 17, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Over the past few weeks, we have looked at exploiting our opponents in flop situations. Our focus has been on looking at our ranges on a conceptual level, but now we’re going to look more at the process of exploitation. The goal with this week’s article is...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 17, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 16, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
#4 Adjusting to Certain Player Types Poker is not an easy game. There are so many variables that a lot of the time it could be classified as a glorified guessing game. We are presented with many different opponents, all who have different ideas on optimal plays. To...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 16, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
I think I just had a really cool epiphany. Danny and I just watched the new movie 21 tonight (meh). Obviously, when two poker players see that movie there is going to be some gambling discussion afterwards. One thing lead to another and I brought up the subject of why...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 16, 2020 | 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 16, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Late last year, I had a series of EV Calculation tutorials that offered players a way to do even complex EV calculations with simple addition and multiplication (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5). Recently, someone posted in the Beginner’s Circle asking...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 16, 2020 | 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...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 16, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 15, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 15, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
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...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 15, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
After the Big 10 starting hands, I do not necessarily automatically raise pre-flop from any position. My play becomes more selective. Group 3: AQ 99 88 77 ATs KJs Sklansky’s Group 3 has been slightly re-arranged by the Carnegie Mellon group, which I’ve further...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 14, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This week’s article is the beginning of a new series about expected value calculations. A lot of people have expressed an interest in having a good set of tutorials explaining how to do more math-related things since that’s something I’m kind of...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 14, 2020 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
It’s one of the scariest feelings in poker – You’ve just lost a huge pot to a three-to-one underdog and given up most of your stack. As you watch the opponent sort your chips and integrate them into his pile, a sickening realization creeps up on you…...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 14, 2020 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
NLHE Foundations Course This is the first lesson in the free No-Limit Hold’em Foundations course that I’m running here on FlopTurnRiver. There’s a lot more to these lessons than what you see here. If you would like to take part in this, all you have...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 14, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 13, 2020 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
This is the third installment in the No-Limit Hold’em Foundations Course. Before you read this lesson, you should have completed lesson 1 and lesson 2, and this includes doing the exercises and posting them in the forum threads for each lesson. Also make sure to...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 13, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In part 1 of this series, we introduced the common idea of not knowing what to do when you miss the flop. We covered a number of ideas to think about to show that there’s a lot to learn, and now we’re going to look at the specifics of some of...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 12, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
There are many players in the online poker community who use some sort of tracking software. I have never been one to go with the masses and while others have been knocking themselves out using PokerTracker or Hold’em manager, I have and will always continue to use...
by givememyleg | Jun 12, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the past twelve months, I have been observing the lower stakes no-limit games and playing in them quite extensively including around 100k hands at NL50. I have been observing the games on Pokerloco recently which is a site that is situated on Ongame. I have been...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I’m going to try to tie this in as much as possible the points I made in my post on blind stealing, Blind Stealing 101. I think that for the people who don’t already raise behind limpers often, it will be best if they think of it as an extension of blind...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This advice was written for 200NL or lower 6Max games. It applies when effective stacks are 80-125BB preflop. Please deviate from this strategy as necessary when you have either developed good reads or know your opponent has certain assumptions about the way you play....
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 11, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 11, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 10, 2020 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I have to admit, most of my articles give advice that is hard to understand. When you don’t understand preliminary concepts to the ideas of talking about, it’s almost impossible to truly understand anything I or high stakes players talk about. In later articles I’m...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 10, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In last week’s edition of this series, we looked at some specific things that you can tell about the flop texture that will give you a good idea of which types of flops are good for continuation betting with all other factors being considered equal....
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 10, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I have to say that I absolutely love poker but I guess that I have written enough articles now for FlopTurnRiver for you to already now that. In this article I want to look at the concept of pot control. This is something that has been expanded over the past few years...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 10, 2020 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The indepth discussion on the bet/fold and the check/call: I’d like to discuss a really simple concept that is killing your winrate. I discovered it not to long ago. It’s really not that hard, but truthfully for the 1/2 grinder who just can’t seem to...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 10, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 10, 2020 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Jun 10, 2020 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Jun 10, 2020 | Featured Strategy, No Limit Hold'em
The Problem With Questions on General Situations There’s an inherent problem with trying to answer poker questions about general situations, and that problem is that the answer is almost always “it depends” followed by a list of things that it could...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 9, 2020 | 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 Tyson Tanaka | Jun 9, 2020 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The semi-bluff: know it, use it, love it. To be a poker rock star (i.e. you turn a profit!), it is necessary to have in your arsenal of moves. David Slansky defines the semi-bluff as “a bet with a hand which, if called, does not figure to be the best hand at the...
by carlcarlsoniv | Jun 9, 2020 | No Limit Hold'em
In the Back to Basics series, we’re taking concepts that you probably learned early in your poker career and looking at them from a more detailed standpoint than you likely did when you first learned about them. This week, we’re going to look at...
by Tyson Tanaka | Jun 9, 2020 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Let’s suppose, just for purposes of illustration, that you and I are both playing in our local casino’s 10/20 Limit Hold ‘Em game. We both play about the same number of hours per year, and we are similar-style players. Let’s just be...
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