Poker: Master Your Game.

Click here to learn how to play poker. understanding winning hand combinations in poker Understanding variations of poker Understanding the importance of play position in poker. Understanding your opponents. Understanding advanced strategies for poker. Understand going All-In. Mastering your game. Understand the approriate kind of poker play for you. Understanding real world poker. Understand chipleading. Dealing with a small stack. Understand the relationship between poker and psychology. Understanding tournaments.

Risk Assessment:

Risk assessment is one of the most important elements of Texas Hold'EM poker. Like many games, risk must be assessed at every stage of the game and you will need to evaluate it in order to minimise negative happenings. Poker is often considered simply as a game of chance, but it should be redefined as a game of risk, which has a very different meaning. Each time you are dealt your two cards, you have two central questions you should be asking yourself: Is this hand worth playing? How much money should I be willing to wager in order to defend this hand? It is said that a good poker player will be prepared to wager all he has got if he judges his hand to be strong enough. Your judgment is therefore very important and should take into consideration several factors. For example, taking the situation of being in tournament, where once you have run out of chips you will definitely be out of the game. In tournaments most players base their game on the principles of Dan Harrington, the (once) grand master of chess and proficient theorist of poker. Let us call X the following value; the total of your chips, divided by the sum of the small and big blinds at table. X is the indicator of the maximum number of rounds you can go without playing, and paying only the blinds. In tournaments, we know that the blinds augment progressively and become higher and higher in value.

 

Four situations present themselves:

1) When X is higher than 20, you are in a very comfortable situation where risk is minimal; do not go all-in, except when you have a maximum hand, i.e. the best hand possible. Do not hesitate to steal small blows by bluffing, but never play your whole tournament on a medium hand or on a badly presented bluff.
2) When X is between 10 and 20, it is time to play a more aggressive game of poker. Here again, you should only go all-in only when pushed to the limit, you have time to watch the game and wait for some good hands, then play them intelligently.
3) When X is between 5 and 10 you have to play, in a very aggressive fashion, hands that are less good than you usually would have when playing aggressively. This is the time of double or quits where you should be prepared to go all-in for every hand in which you participate.
4) When X is less than 5, at the first good hand go all-in. Steal other player's blinds and believe in a higher power! You will realise with time that as long as you have a chip left on the table in a tournament, you can come back, doubling or tripling several times.

Therefore, as you can tell, your attitude to risk will vary enormously depending on how the tournament is progressing. Players who have only just begun entering tournaments often have the tendency to play in a reverse manner to the techniques described above; the more their number of chips reduces and the blinds get larger, the less aggressively and the more tightly they will play their game. This type of attitude will give you a quick exit out of the game, especially in a tournament situation, where with regards to risk assessment you need to admit the fact that bad luck can knock you off your feet at any moment- without allowing this fear to influence your playing strategies.

In poker it is very important to be aware of the statistical values of your hand, and with those relating to the flop or the turn. You will often find yourself in tricky situations regarding dealing; you possess four cards which may transform themselves into full, colour or suit. This is what is known in poker as calculating the outs, this means making a mental list of the cards which can bring you a very strong hand.

 

OUTS AFTER THE FLOP

NUMBER OF OUTS	% AT TURN	% AT FLOP	% OF TOUCHES AT TURN & FLOP
1	2.13	2.7	4.26
2	4.26	2.35	8.42
3	6.38	6.52	12.49
4	8.51	8.70	16.47
5	10.64	10.87	20.35
6	12.77	13.04	24.14
7	14.89	15.22	27.84
8	17.02	17.39	31.45
9	19.15	19.57	34.97
10	21.28	21.74	38.39
11	23.40	23.91	41.72
12	25.53	26.09	44.96
13	27.66	28.26	48.10
14	29.79	30.43	51.16
15	31.91	32.61	54.12
16	34.04	34.78	56.98
17	36.17	36.96	59.76
18	38.30	39.13	62.44
19	40.43	41.30	65.03
20	42.55	43.48	67.53
21	44.68	45.64	69.94
22	46.81	47.83	72.25

In terms of the probability calculus it is necessary to know how to evaluate the likelihood of winning. As was stated above, nothing is worth risking all your money on for winning a less important pot, especially at the beginning of a tournament. You must therefore try and determine your hope of wining. This is calculated as follows: hope of profit= chances x the winning pot - the price paid to enter in the pot.

You will thus be able to better evaluate the worth of playing a particular hand:

1) If the hope of winning is negative, you are playing a bad round, because statistically, in the long term, your losses will be greater than your gains.
2) If the hope of winning is close to 0, you have a 50/50 chance. Try, therefore, to raise the value in the pot by raising a small amount; if your opponent follows you, your hope of winning rises.
3) If the hope of winning is positive, you can make a good choice. Because in the short-term you may lose, over the long-term, you will win more than you lose.

At this point seeing as you are becoming familiar with all the different statistical possibilities in poker, we will offer you some other very useful percentages to calculate your chance of winning and to better understand the force of your cards and the intelligence of raising.

PROBABILITIES OF WINNING BY GOING ALL-IN PRE-FLOP

HEAD TO HEAD	%	FULL TABLE	%
A-A	85.2	A-A	31.1
K-K	82.4	K-K	26.1
Q-Q	79.9	Q-Q	22.1
J-J	77.5	A-K COLOUR	20.6
10-10	75.1	J-J	19.3
9-9	72.1	A-Q COLOUR	19.2
8-8	69.2	K-Q COLOUR	18.7
A-K COLOUR	67.1	A-J COLOUR	18.2
7-7	66.2	K-J COLOUR	17.7
A-Q COLOUR	66.2	A-10 COLOUR	17.4
A-J COLOUR	65.5	Q-J COLOUR	17.2
A-K	65.3	10-10	17.2

PROBABILITIES OF DISTRIBUTION OF PRIVATE CARDS

ASSORTED TYPE	51%
CARDS OF THE SAME COLOUR	24%
CARDS OF THE SAME COLOUR & CONSECUTIVE	4%
PAIRS	6%
AT LEAST ONE CARD AND ONE ACE	5%
PAIR OF ACES, PAIR OF KINGS, ACE-KING	2%
ACE-KING (ACE-QUEEN, ACE-JACK, ETC.)	1%
GET THREE-OF-A-KIND AT THE HAND	19%
GET COLOURS AT THE HAND	6%
GET FULL AT THE HAND	8%

THE PRESENCE OF AN ACE PRE-FLOP

NUMBER OF PLAYERS	ONLY YOU POSSESS AN ACE	NO PLAYERS HAVE AN ACE
2	88%	85%
3	77%	71%
4	66%	59%
5	59%	49%
6	50%	40%
7	43%	32%
8	36%	26%
9	31%	20%
10	25%	16%

How to feel comfortable at the table:

When you are playing poker in a casino you are allowed to get up from the table anytime during the game, in order to join other poker tables. This is obviously not the way it works in a tournament situation, where the organisers determine where you sit. This section will, therefore, address those players who play cash-games and not tournaments.

It is very important for you as a player to feel comfortable at the table. All the best players will tell you how important it is to be psychologically at ease in order to play the best games that you are capable of and not to fall into the trap-falls of your adversaries. Feeling at ease at the table does not mean that you have to be the strongest player; it just means that you have confidence in your ability to be able to match the game of your opponents, and this allows you to practice your poker skills in tranquillity.

Even your placement at the table is important, aside from the rules on positioning (- see link above), choose a place with plenty of leg room and space to pose your belongings, etc. Speak amicably with your fellow players, poker is a social game, and having conversations with them will help you to understand more about them and possibly their playing techniques. Also, holding conversations with your opponents will allow you to pass the time in a more interesting way when you are not in play.

During the long-play cash games, it is not unusual to see several new players appear at the table, replacing those who have left. A table, at which you have been winning for several hours at a time, can quickly be transformed into a nightmare; you can end up losing all your accumulated profits in a matter of minutes. At the moment that you sense an opponent is too strong a player for you, leave the table. This should typically happen when a very aggressive player joins the table, maybe they are not as good as you, but if they do not count their expenditures, do you really have what it takes to deal with their raises and go all-in when required, against their pockets full of cash?

Evaluate well the situation:

This section could appear to contradict the section dedicated to the slowplay within this collection of poker articles. In contrast though, it is just a middle point; never forget that in poker the objective is to get as many of your opponents chips as possible. And that the fewer chips you have in hand the fewer the potential chips you can win off your opponents, particularly in the no-limit version. You have to therefore, pay as much attention to trying to get chips off your opponents as you pay to keeping your own. However, saying this, you must not be afraid to gamble and lose your chips; you just have to keep in mind that every chip that you have not lost is equivalent to a chip won!

Any decisions taken must be considered in terms of potential consequences and be made in an optimal fashion. You have time to take these decisions, never rush yourself, and mentally evaluate the different possibilities your opponents can take. Remind yourself of how they have played similar hands previously, and observe both their manner and their speech.

When a player implements an instant re-raise, you will probably have the instinct to follow and to pay immediately. Psychologically if an opponent launches a bet very quickly, just after you have raised a large amount, you will grit your teeth and pay the value needed to continue in the game. In these circumstances, you should rest and allow yourself some time to calmly reflect on the game.

As you have already seen, tournament game play is a lot more sensitive to the problems of going all-in on a single blow. You should not give too much weight to your cards, but you should however, be persuaded of the fact that your hand is stronger than that of your opponents. Very strong hands do not carry as much weight if your opponents hand is more superior. A pair of Kings, if the flop reveals an Ace, is the perfect example of a strong hand transformed into a nightmare. An Ace-King with a flop of Ace-Queen can become very problematic if you think that your opponents have managed a pair.

The chancy side of poker is that the game can mean a card being dealt that can instantly transform the entire round, and you should always take this into account when deciding what, and how, to wager. What is thus of interest in this case, is to go all-in at the flop with a pair of kings when a pair of Aces becomes a possibility. In the same note, you may prefer to frighten your opponents by going all-in yourself.

Playing a strong hand implicates two things; if you play it, be prepared to play, potentially, to full tilt (i.e. all the way to an all-in) if you esteem that the hands of your opponents are inferior. Be equally prepared to fold, at the point at which you believe your hand has become weaker to that of your opponents. Because, never forget, a hand that at the start is marginal can transform into a very good hand if several important cards are dealt...

 

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