Archive for March, 2009

Poker.ladbrokes.com – Trading Carefully When You Have To

Posted by Poker Nut @ 12:00 AM, Thursday Mar 19th, 2009

www.poker.ladbrokes.com – When we are engaged in a game of poker, there will always be moments that for whatever reason, cause us to play very carefully. The most renowned of these is the approaching of ‘the bubble’. This phase of a tournament is renowned for causing play to tighten up, but then the knock on effect of this is that some more skilled players open up a little and take advantage of this with aggressive plays.

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Another situation which most of us will have experienced, is being seated with a loose aggressive player on your left. You never want to flat call preflop with a playable hand because you are worried that our aggressive player will raise, but then this gives you a chance to play a little more carefully. Consider that you will spend a lot of time waiting for a strong hand, and when you do get dealt a powerful hand, you can feign weakness and allow your opponent to build the pot for you. Although we cannot strictly class this as treading carefully, because when you slow play a hand, there is always a danger unless you have an unassailable hand.

Treading carefully in the early stages of a tournament is often a good idea too, as the last thing you want is to end up losing a big pot simply because you weren’t settled into thinking and reading situations with your usual skill.
All in all, playing poker carefully has it’s place, as does playing aggressively, and only you must decide when is the correct moment I feel. poker.ladbrokes.com

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Doylespoker – Paying Attention to the Actions of Individual Players

Posted by Poker Nut @ 12:00 AM, Thursday Mar 12th, 2009

www.doylespoker.com – This is one of the reasons why I always feel that it is better to play one or two tables rather than multi table 12 or more.
In this MTT I had watched a player make a huge all in bet for 10,000 just to pick up the blinds. Two hands later, he made another all in preflop move forcing me after some thought, to fold (7,7).
On this occasion he showed his hand of (6c,4s) which immediately got me thinking that he probably didn’t have much better the last time he moved all in.

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Another few hands passed before I picked up (A,J) in middle position. Our villain who had smugly shown his (6,4) previously was in the big blind, and this immediately made my mind up on how to play my hand. In normal circumstances I would probably have put in a raise considering it had been folded around to me, but I decided to take a calculated risk and flat called. My only concern was that a player between me and the big blind would raise the pot and spoil my plan, but if they didn’t, I knew exactly what our big blind player was planning to do.

With my seemingly weak flat call and the subsequent folds, the small blind flat called, and then the big blind shoved all in just as I felt he would. I quickly shoved my 12,000 in over the top, and the small blind folded. He turned over (J,3) and it was fortunate I was that far in front, but I had still managed to get all my chips in as a strong favourite, even if he had been holding a hand such as (6,4) again. Needless to say my (A,J) held up and I increased my chipstack considerably.

The choice words of one player at the table demonstrated my point beautifully… "You just insta-called for almost all your stack there with A,J off ????". If you hadn’t been paying attention to what this player had been doing on the last orbit of play, my call would have looked pretty reckless, but in fact, it was judged to perfection. doylespoker.com

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