Marcus Bateman : HID Poker

How to stop your hand shaking when playing poker

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:17:28 +0000

One of the most obvious and hard to disguise tells amongst live players is their hands shaking. This tell nearly always indicates strength contrary to what seems to be the intuitive explanation for such a tell - that someone is nervous and probably bluffing.

Your hands shake when you play poker through large amounts of adrenalin being released in your body - something you have very little control over on the face of it - but there are key ways to avoid this tell, and they can teach us a lot about good poker habits as well.

Is loose aggressive poker more profitable?

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:10:45 +0000

One of the most common questions that gets asked by players who just start to appreciate the differences in styles that it is possible to play at the poker table is whether or not loose aggressive - or LAG - poker is the most profitable style.

The answer to this is that it depends purely on your skill level, and understanding why and how LAG can be more profitable - but also possibly more damaging - is crucial to understanding which style will suit you best.

What hands to re-raise with in Omaha

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:05:10 +0000

Re-raising more hands than just aces in Omaha is key to taking your game to the next level. If you only ever re-raise with hands that include aces in them, you make it extremely easy for your opponent just to call your raise, try and flop two pair or better, and then win the rest of your stack on the flop or turn if they hit, or simply fold if they miss.

Poker is a hard way to make an easy living

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:10:55 +0000

As the old saying goes: 'Poker is a hard way to make an easy living', and understanding why such a seemingly contradictory statement is true is important to dealing with the hard times of poker.

Poker is an extremely savage game - it's mix of luck and skill produces huge swings even for the best players - and it is often extremely unfair. Saying that, moaning about your luck when playing poker is a lot like complaining about getting wet if you go swimming, and it is extremely important that you are able to deal with the swings when you sit down at the tables.

Know your comfort zone

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:07:16 +0000

Only a few people seem to be able to deal with the very highest stakes. When millionaire Andy Beal took on the worlds best, he was actually able to win in one of the sessions when he pushed the stakes up to the highest ever played - a mind boggling $100,000/$200,000 blind game of limit hold'em - simply because he pushed even the very highest stake players outside of their comfort zone.

How to let go of a good hand

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:43:39 +0000

One of the most common bad beat stories you will ever hear tends to have the words: 'I was sure he had me beat, but I had to call with my set/straight/flush/full house'. This phrase points to one of the hardest features of poker, and one which is crucial to overcome if you want to take your game to the highest level.

Try to think about pot sizes over numerous streets

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:51:39 +0000

One of the most obvious leaks you see amongst weak big bet players is a failure to think about a hand in the context of all of its streets. As in big bet games you can adjust the size of your bets, it gives you the invaluable tool of being able to force multi street mistakes from opponents who only look at the bet in front of them at each point.

Information clues when running good

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:10:53 +0000

One of the interesting features of poker is that how players run directly affects the information you give out - and receive from - your opponents. This is because the strength of the hands you are hitting drastically changes the amount of knowledge you have to give out, and this can have a snowball effect that has to be considered and adapted to.

Three barrel bluffing

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 12:49:16 +0000

There is perhaps no trickier opponent in pot limit and no limit games than one who is able to three barrel bluff well. The ability to fire at all three streets with air or a missed draw makes your opponents life incredibly hard, as they desperately struggle to work out when you have it and when you don't.

Low stake reads - Understanding the problems with vast player pools

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:32:51 +0000

One of the most annoying things when trying to build a bankroll is the truly vast numbers of players at the lower stakes. This means you hardly ever know you are sitting at the same table with the same players (unless you actively search for players you know are weak), and this can be frustrating beyond all measure when trying to establish accurate reads on players.

To be a winning poker player you have to learn to lose!

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:58:46 +0000

Everybody hates losing. Everyone who has ever put in serious hours at the poker table knows the pain of running bad and losing when you should be winning, and dealing with the losses that poker throws at you is arguably the hardest aspect of poker.

Being able to keep playing well in the face of extreme adversity is the hallmark of all the truly great players, and is a feat which is extremely important to master if you want to ensure long term success.

Don't pay off the tight players!

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:01:57 +0000

At all but the highest limits, you always have a genre of player who basically never bluff. They sit back, wait for big hands, and get steadily paid off by the very weak players. They make much less money than good observant players, due to the fact that they actually lose to good players because of their tightness and predictability - and are only making money from the very weakest players.

Using hand histories

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:17:43 +0000

I was recently watching a beginning poker player friend of mine play a few sit and goes with the aim of me giving them some tips on their play after the session. Like most things in poker, I quickly saw a leak in their game which seemed completely obvious to me, but that they had not even considered a problem - that of using hand histories well.

Abandoning balance against weak players

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:25:31 +0000

If you watch mid and high stakes hold'em games, you will quickly see that there is a great deal of pre flop raising and re-raising.

These players are fully aware that they are in a bloody war of attrition for the blinds, and are constantly trying to isolate players and balance their range of raising hands to stop them becoming easy to read and exploit. This is necessary against other strong players, but against very weak players, playing like this is a pointless and dangerous exercise.

Mass multi tabling

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:29:02 +0000

Mass multi tabling refers roughly to playing ten tables or more at once. In the most extreme cases, some players have taken this ability to well over twenty tables at once, and here I want to look at the pros and cons of such a strategy, and some tips on how to achieve it if you feel it is right for you.