09 September 2010
What Is Meta-Game and Does It Really Matter?
You may have heard the term ‘meta-game’ bandied around, but what is it? Generally speaking, it refers to strategies and actions that transcend the obvious dynamics of a game – in simple terms, it’s “thinking outside the box”.
05 September 2010
The Octopus is Psychic
The cover of last month’s magazine brought a tingle of pride to the guys at Bluff Towers. After having put James Akenhead on the cover before the WSOP last year, we’ve only gone and done it again. This time, we put Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi on the cover, and then he went on to make the final nine.
01 September 2010
Suited connectors
Dear Dr Tom
I know that it is usually correct to call before the flop with any small pair, if stacks are deep enough, in the hope of flopping a set, but what about other implied odds hands like 5-6 suited? Should I play them like small pairs or take advantage of my deception and 3-bet
bluff?
Matt, London
My Main Event
My first table at this year’s Main Event was a little more difficult than one could reasonably expect. It included Vanessa Rousso, who may not always play optimally in marginal spots, but is never going to throw her chips away, and also Brian Hastings, who is very good player and very good reader of the game, but fortunately for me was running bad, and no matter how good you are, if you’re running bad you’re not going to win any race you enter.
14 August 2010
How strong is your macro-game?
There are many different player attributes that contribute towards profitability. At MyPokerLab, we split these attributes into two groups: micro-game and macro-game.
29 July 2010
Combating the LAGfish
In the good old days, categorising players was quite easy. The dimensions of “tight or loose” and “passive or aggressive” gave us a two by two matrix with four rough categories of player (such as TAG, for tight and aggressive, or LAG for loose and aggressive). This provided a template for pigeonholing players. Granted, reality is never so easy, but for everyday grinding, this was a remarkably simple and useful approach.
Six-max… the FAQs
Dear Dr Tom
I’ve recently moved from playing nine-handed NL to six-max cash games. I like them and I feel they suit my game, but the swings seem to be bigger. Any specific advice for this particular form of poker? I play anything up to 0.25//0.50.
Owen,
Kingston
Playing like a micro-durrrr
If you were to read an item of poker strategy before 2003, or even as little as four years ago, you would find a myriad of what can now only be described as "Hellmuth-esque" tactics for beating the game: play super-tight, value-bet well and time your (rare) bluffs wisely.
02 July 2010
Ask the Right Questions
Have you ever asked a fellow player “Should I 3-Bet from the big blind with
A-Q when an opponent raises on the button?”
Is this a great question?
Nope.
Is this a terrible question?
Nope.
So what is it?
Well, in a word, incomplete.
01 July 2010
Five ways to pretend to be good at poker
At the WSOP you can really play some poker. Without the distractions of everyday life back home, for the last four days I’ve basically done nothing but wake up, shuffle around for a couple of hours, head to the Rio, play poker for 12 hours, come back to my hotel and fail to get to sleep because I’ve been playing too much poker.