by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 19, 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 spoonitnow | Apr 18, 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 sauce123 | Apr 18, 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 | Apr 15, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Apr 15, 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 biondino | Apr 14, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Apr 13, 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 allabout | Apr 12, 2019 | 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 Carl Sampson | Apr 11, 2019 | 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 IowaSkinsFan | Apr 10, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Apr 10, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Apr 8, 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 spoonitnow | Apr 8, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In last week’s article, we looked at the basic components of EV calculations. We made two very important points that we’re going to use this week: The EV of an event is equal to the EVs of each possible outcome added together. The EV of an individual...
by spoonitnow | Apr 8, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Sometimes there are different ways to try to exploit a player who folds a lot in a certain scenario, and you’re going to have to decide which way will work out the best for you. We’re going to look at the factors that determine how much value we’re...
by Carl Sampson | Apr 8, 2019 | 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 Carl Sampson | Apr 8, 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 spoonitnow | Apr 8, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Last week, we looked at one of the scenarios that helps to form a foundation of poker understanding. This scenario was when we are on the river, heads-up, in position with a single bet left behind. More specifically, we looked at the bluffing frequency of the player...
by Renton | Apr 7, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Apr 6, 2019 | 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 chardrian | Apr 6, 2019 | MTT, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A type of question that continually arises on poker forums deals with whether or not it is advisable to call an all-in bet. Often the question will be something like this: I was dealt XX and raised; someone then moved all-in on me; should I have called or folded? In...
by numbr2intheworld | Apr 5, 2019 | 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 IowaSkinsFan | Apr 5, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Apr 5, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Apr 5, 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 Robb | Apr 5, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
I feel like tons of the noobies in the BC have serious misconceptions about microstakes poker. Here are a few I’ve seen lately. 1. The micros are just too fishy to be beat for any decent win rate. 2. The micros are too hard to be beat since UIGEA. 3. The FTR...
by edwarda | Apr 5, 2019 | 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 IowaSkinsFan | Apr 5, 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 Carl Sampson | Apr 4, 2019 | 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 carlcarlsoniv | Apr 2, 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 spoonitnow | Apr 2, 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 edwarda | Apr 2, 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 aokrongly | Apr 2, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Apr 1, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction If you look over the past few weeks of my strategy column, you’ll see how this week’s topic came together. I had a set of Mental Tricks for Preperation in NLHE which was related to the Basics of Thinking Ahead in Poker. I also covered Double...
by IowaSkinsFan | Apr 1, 2019 | Featured No Limit Hold'em, Featured Strategy, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Amazingly, when I was high yesterday from some horrible weed, I came to a breakthrough thought in my poker game. I called sauce up and explained to him what I just realized and he had no idea why it was so amazing. It took me awhile, but then I realized that the...
by bigspenda73 | Apr 1, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This seemingly simple topic might be one of the most misunderstood by beginners in poker. Learning about reverse implied odds was quite eye-opening for me and led to a large improvement in my ability. Most players, even those new to the game, understand what is meant...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 31, 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 spoonitnow | Mar 30, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
The Fundamentals Poker players have a really bad habit of getting seduced by what appear to be fancy tactics like over-the-top bluffs, laying down big hands and making huge calls with weak hands. In an effort to emulate the professionals who they see making these big...
by FlopTurnRiver | Mar 30, 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 | Mar 30, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
This is the beginning of the Back to Basics series. The point of this series is to use basic EV calculations to examine basic concepts in more depth than a lot of players probably ever have before. You will have needed to work through the EV Calculations Tutorial...
by Fnord | Mar 30, 2019 | 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 Carl Sampson | Mar 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 givememyleg | Mar 29, 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 Renton | Mar 29, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Addendum to Preflop adaptations that must occur Dealing with reraises- When you get reraised from position from a typical player, it sucks, and you’ll have to fold most hands if the reraise is substantial, such as AJ/AQ/KQ and weaker cards than that. Oftentimes it is...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 29, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In last week’s column on dealing with ranges, I talked about how to incorporate both your range and your opponent’s range into a single, cohesive thought process that allows you to exploit players and deal with balance issues at the same time....
by IowaSkinsFan | Mar 29, 2019 | 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 FlopTurnRiver | Mar 28, 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 | Mar 28, 2019 | 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 lolzzz_321 | Mar 28, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Most of us have played poker in one form or another. The game is universal, reaching across the world to unite players of all ages and nations. Let’s get to the basics. Players are each dealt a set number of cards in a predetermined timing system (deal, flop,...
by spoonitnow | Mar 28, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In one of the very first editions of this weekly strategy column, I discussed the importance of being able to break down situations to a basic level to look at how they work. We’ve looked at a lot of theory-heavy material since then, and as I mentioned in last...
by Carl Sampson | Mar 28, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Wherever you go these days, be it on poker forums, poker websites or poker magazines, you will be confronted by a myriad of information concerning how to play certain hands in certain situations. Now before I go any further, there is absolutely nothing wrong with...
by IowaSkinsFan | Mar 27, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Often in HU matches, I’ll come across a player who doesn’t seem to have many leaks. He’ll raise a solid range from the BU, not play too loose OOP, and have a good mix of cbets and two barrels, as well as balanced ranges in other areas. Many when playing, whether it’s...
by FlopTurnRiver | Mar 27, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A pair of Aces is the most powerful hand in Hold’em. Ace King or Big Slick is also a great hand. Aces become very important in head-up situations and some players will raise with any Ace in head-up action. The list below documents some of the math involved in hands...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 27, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction A lot of players, especially newbies, get confused on what to do when their AK misses the flop. This is especially true in 3-bet pots where you aren’t really sure just what you’re supposed to be doing. A lot of players will blindly c-bet, but...
by spoonitnow | Mar 27, 2019 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction This is the fifth part of the NLHE Foundations Series. This series is designed to give a clear set of topics to study and methods for studying that will bring players up to the intermediate levels in no-limit hold’em. People who are signed up in the...
by aokrongly | Mar 26, 2019 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the biggest problems new poker players have is that they play too many hands. A simple but effective first step for new players is to learn the 19 hand strategy. This simple strategy forces the new player to exercise discipline and learn a tight game. Aokrongly...
by IowaSkinsFan | Mar 25, 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 Carl Sampson | Mar 24, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Let’s face it, poker is played by humans for money and sometimes very substantial sums of money. This is the case be it live or online. Unfortunately, my understanding of human nature tells me that there are too many people out there who will stop at nothing to...
by spoonitnow | Mar 24, 2019 | 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 IowaSkinsFan | Mar 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 IowaSkinsFan | Mar 24, 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 FlopTurnRiver | Mar 24, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Mar 23, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I’m sort of at a weird spot in the development of my game. I’m going to type out a bunch of random crap about common drawing spots with straight or flush draws in hopes that it’ll internalize some things I still probably screw up occasionally. Also,...
by spoonitnow | Mar 23, 2019 | 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 FlopTurnRiver | Mar 23, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
There are still some good hands yet to be played, but you must be careful! We are running pretty thin at this point. Here are my Group 6 hands: Group 6: KT QT JT A7s K9s Q9s T9s J9s A5s A6s A4s A3s A2s Again, this group is a clear departure from Sklansky and the...
by IowaSkinsFan | Mar 23, 2019 | 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 chardrian | Mar 23, 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 | Mar 22, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Mar 22, 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 | Mar 22, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Some people have described the feeling of being overwhelmed by all of the things that go into deciding whether or not they should make a continuation bet. We’re going to make our thinking less stressful and more efficient by looking at the question from a...
by bigspenda73 | Mar 22, 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 spoonitnow | Mar 21, 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 meeloche | Mar 21, 2019 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Meeloche presents an interesting approach to table selection. Perhaps there is an alternative to just looking at preflop percentages and pot sizes… My contribution to table selection, maybe even a new idea… When it comes to table selection, we still should...
by Robb | Mar 21, 2019 | 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 spoonitnow | Mar 20, 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 spoonitnow | Mar 20, 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 carlcarlsoniv | Mar 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 spoonitnow | Mar 20, 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 cobere | Mar 19, 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 Carl Sampson | Mar 19, 2019 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A few months ago when I was participating in my NL50 poker challenge, it soon become apparent that there were an awful lot of bad regs at this level in both six max and full-ring, but especially six max. In any form of poker, the fewer players that there is on the...
by givememyleg | Mar 19, 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...
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