Poker Concorde

At last years WSOP, we saw a resurgence of the professional players, as several bracelets were won by well known pros. The previous year had seen most of the bracelets won by unknown players. Whilst I have nothing against unknown players making a name for themselves, it is always nice to see those that dedicate much of their life to the game, being rewarded with bracelets.

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This year so far, the professionals have again been picking up a few bracelets, and the biggest success story so far is that of Phil Ivey. At the time of writing this, he has picked up 2 poker bracelets this year, taking his career total to 7. The first of these bracelets came in Event 8, the $2,500 No Limit, Deuce to Seven Draw. He picked up just over $96,000 for his win, in an event that had a relatively small field due to the fact that the game is rather obscure.

This takes nothing away from the achievement however, when you consider that many World Series bracelet hunting pros look to enter this type of tournament due to it’s smaller field. The second of Phil Iveys bracelets this year, was claimed in Event 25, the $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud hi/lo. Again, the starting field of 376 players was relatively small, but there were plenty of pros to be found at the tables.

Phil Iveys second bracelet win also netted him over $220,000, and probably much more in side bets with fellow professional players. Other familiar players to have picked up a bracelet this year include Daniel Alaei, Jeff Lisandro, Roland de Wolfe, and J.C Tran. There are events yet to be played too, so let us hope to see more great plays, and players, at the final tables of this years WSOP.

Many online poker schools will give you the basics of how to play Holdem and Omaha, but not all will teach you how to play Five Card Draw.

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Some online poker rooms will offer Five Card Draw, with single draw being by far the most commonly played. For those who have never played this game, here are a few basic rules and tips. At the start of the game, blinds are placed, and each player is dealt 5 cards. The action moves around the table clockwise as normal, and each player has a chance to put in a preflop raise, with Limit or Pot Limit being the most common formats.

After this round of betting is complete, each poker player has the chance to draw as many cards as they please, once. Bear in mind that you are trying to make all the usual poker hands from the 5 cards you are holding, with the usual hand rankings being the same.

After this, there is one final round of betting before the hands are turned over, and the pot is won.
The draw itself can give you a lot more information than you think, and with fairly low stakes play, you will find these scenarios are common.

If a poker player looks keen to raise or reraise preflop and then draws one card, they are extremely likely to have had two pair pre-draw. The chance will be very high that they still have two pair afterwards too. If a player seems content to flat call or limp in and then draws one, they may very well have a strong draw such as four cards to a Flush or Straight.

Raises followed by draws of two cards usually signify either a set, or a strong pair with a retained high card. Players who draw three cards will almost certainly always have a single pair of some sort. Bear these points in mind, and look for poker schools onsite to give you more detailed information, and you should be beating the Five Card Draw games in no time.

Tom Dwan was born in New Jersey, July 1986, and in the past year or two, has become very well known on the poker circuit. His exploits in the game began with online play, as he quickly moved through to the biggest tables and started to make his living there.

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His erratic plays have certainly provided excitement and talking points on shows such as High Stakes Poker. It is sometimes difficult to tell whether he is very clever and talented, or reckless and insane with his plays. Either way, Tom Dwan is certainly the name everyone has been talking about recently, partly due to his online challenge involving a million dollar side bet.

This challenge has been taking place on Full Tilt, and covers 50,000 multi tabled hands in either Holdem or Omaha. Patrick Antonius is currently undertaking the challenge, and it has certainly made for interesting viewing. Opinion seems to be very divided over Tom Dwan I feel, as there will always be those who think that playing premium hands in the correct way constitutes playing poker well.

Of course they are right to an extent, but these same people cannot see any skill in Tom Dwan getting involved with weaker hands and ending up winning the pot. The point here though, is that Dwan often seems to get involved with a weaker hand, but still outplays his opponents on the Flop and Turn quite often, which is a very difficult skill in itself.
In my opinion, if you enjoy getting involved on the flop, mixing up your play and starting hands, you will always be a dangerous opponent. Tom Dwan seems to mix this, with a fearless nature when it comes to money, and that can be a very difficult combination to play against.

There are a number of different poker game varieties that can be played when it comes to poker, and online play has led to different tournament formats emerging too. The most commonly offered games online are Texas Holdem, Omaha, and Seven Card Stud, in that order. Often you will find hi/lo variations of Stud and Omaha offered, and some sites will offer other lesser played games such as Five Card Draw or Razz.

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Having this choice of game is nice to see from a players perspective, but it is not solely the option of game variety that is available to us. We also have the option of playing a cash game, a single table tournament (STT) or even a multi table tournament (MTT). Within these choices you will sometimes find further options such as bounty tournaments, satellites and other special types of MTT.

In many ways you could say that we are spoilt for choice when we play online, and that is undoubtedly one of the aspects of online play that makes it so popular.

Whilst you might find tables fill more slowly in the lesser known games, I certainly feel it is worth the time to play them as they all involve different challenges. Putting your poker skill to the test with a new challenge in this way is enjoyable, as well as helpful to your poker development I feel.

Apart from anything else, it can also bring renewed enthusiasm to your game if you become tired of non stop Holdem.

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As you play a poker game with opposing players, you should be picking up on their ways of playing draws, mediocre starting hands, and strong hands. I think that multi tabling limits the chances to do this, but I feel it is key in giving yourself some sort of edge in the game, as a recent SnG online demonstrated to me.

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My eventual heads up opponent would not put down any strong starting hand at all, would call most raises preflop with a draw or mediocre starting hand, and was drawing strange numbers of cards with certain hands. This made them tricky to play against, and left me unable to pick up blinds through pure aggression preflop. I knew I had to try something a little different, and sat back to play a patient game, trying to keep my chipstack on an even keel. I knew that my capability of making the right folds would work in my favour against his apparent lack of knowledge about where his ‘fold’ button was situated.

I started with considerably less poker chips though, and knew there was a chance that I might not be able to turn things around in time anyway, but luckily I found a favourable situation in time. My opponent could not fold their Two Pair, and doubled me up, despite having enough chances to sense danger with the game being Pot Limit.

I then proceeded to pick up a few pots post draw when my opponent drew one, as I had seen him often drawing to inside Straight draws amongst other long shots. I walked into a two pair once or twice, but I was adapting my usual play to single out his weaknesses, and was wearing his stack down. I eventually got a little lucky to be dealt a pat hand against his Two Pair, and that was enough to take the rest of the poker chips in play.

With online play, there is always a danger of players being disconnected, and this could lead to a key hand being automatically folded which would be very frustrating for the player involved. Due to this potential possibility though, there have been changes made in recent years to include protection from this eventuality. If a player finds themselves disconnected in the middle of a hand, the hands will be turned over as if the player is already all in and the remaining cards will be dealt, followed by the pot being awarded to the best hand.

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Personally, I am all in favour of having some sort of protection in place for this possibility, but I really don’t feel that the current system is working. Whilst it does serve the function it was intended for, it also opens the door for players to abuse the system. I saw a suspected example of this a few days ago when two players were involved in a cash game.

There had been raises and reraises on the flop and turn, and a big pot was developing. When the river came down, one of the players shoved all their remaining money in. after a few seconds the other player disconnected, the bet was forced to be taken back and the hands were turned over. One player had made two pair Aces up and the player who had mysteriously disconnected, had (A,K) for top pair. I do not know for certain of course, but it would seem that the disconnected player couldn’t be sure if their hand was good, and effectively blocked their opponent from being able to raise them on the river by disconnecting themselves.
If this is what is taking place among a minority of players as I suspect, it needs to be stopped pretty quickly, as it is completely unlawful and unethical.

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This week, it has been demonstrated to me that in any poker tournament, as long as you are still in the tournament, anything is possible. I had seen one player suffer a bad beat and fall to 2,400 in chips. He had been playing well up to the point as usual, but after suffering his bad beat, looked resigned to his tournament being over. He shoved all his chips in the next hand and doubled up, then did the same thing on the next hand, ultimately losing. I can sympathise with that dejected feeling after seeing all your hard work undone by poor luck, but as I mentioned to him after he had doubled up, he still had enough chips to get himself back into contention.

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At that time I was sitting with around 700 chips, and in some ways, I understandably expected to join him at the bar within a few more hands. Despite expecting this to be the case, I did not openly invite it by doing anything reckless, because deep down I know that with poker, there is always a glimmer of hope whilst you are still in your seat.
It can be hard to feel like carrying on when you see your chips decimated simply beacuse you made the correct decision, but always remember that same luck that saved your opponent, may decide to save you, when it counts.
That same player came back later on in the evening to watch, when there were three of us remaining in the tournament, and upon seeing my sizeable chipstack, he said with a smile "you were right, I shouldn’t have given up".
However tough it might be to recover when you find yourself shortstacked in this way, you have to firstly check the blind sizes and their proximity to you, then simply do what you can to stay alive.

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After Wednesdays live game in which I came back from the brink of elimination to win, you might think I had used all my luck for the week. Nevertheless, I decided to go to Saturdays live game as well to see if my good run could continue. It was a rocky start and from 6,000 I had a few hands go awry in the first hour and slipped down to around 3,000.

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Our table was down to four handed as we waited for one more player to go out before splitting tables, and with blinds of 200/400 coming round quickly to exert pressure, I felt I had to act. I picked up (A,3) as the second player to act, and after the first hand folded, did something I probably shouldn’t. I usually do not like playing smaller Aces because when you raise you find yourself dominated by a bigger Ace so often. This was my immediate concern when my all in move was called, even though any Ace four handed is quite strong. My opponent had (Ah,Qh) but luckily I caught a three on the turn to double up.

After another pot where I managed to represent a 5 for a straight with enough effect to force (K,K) to fold on the turn, I had around 8,000. My 8,000 turned to 14,000 just before the final table when I slow played (A,Q) beautifully inducing a bet on a flop of (A,A,J) followed by an all in bluff on the turn (2).
The end came at the final table when I raised to 2,000 preflop with (Q,Q). There was one caller and the flop came down (8,6,2). I moved all in, not wanting to give my opponent the chance to catch an Ace or King on the turn. After much thought, he called, showing (J,J). The river was an extremely unlucky (Jd), which was an unfortunate way to go.

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Players who like to make aggressive plays will always hold problems for their opponents, especially when the blinds escalate. The key problem is that when you feel you have a strong enough hand to take a flop with, there is a fairly strong chance you will not hit the flop particularly well. Then of course your aggressive opponent leads out with a bet, and you feel you have to fold your hand, rather than get caught up in a pot with middle pair or worse.

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The most obvious way to combat this type of play is to wait until you have a strong hand, and then slow play your opponent and allow them to build the pot for you. The problem with this is again, that you do not make such strong hands very often, and if you are shorthanded with large blinds, you cannot wait for excellent hands to come along.
This leaves us with our more risky, but sometimes necessary option, and that is to play them at their own game. If you know your opponent likes to force players out of pots, it might be worth checking on a flop, waiting for the inevitable raise, and then making a strong reraise.

Our aggressive player will think the check was made to lure them in against a strong hand, and often they will fold. You only have to make this type of raise, or reraise when you have nothing, on one occassion I find. If you show the hand afterwards, you can sometimes deter this type of player from getting aggressive against you. Once they know you have the courage to reraise them with nothing simply because you know that they are pushing you around, you should see this type of player give you more room to play quite often.

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SNG is an often used abbreviation for the term ‘Sit n Go’. This basically means one table of players either six or ten, and when all are seated, the tournament automatically begins. This type of tournament is popular with many players, partly due to the fact that there is no waiting around for a tournament start time, provided the site has a decent flow of player traffic.

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One of the advantages of SNG tournaments I feel, is the fact that they force the player to become accustomed to battling it out short handed. As players begin to fall at a table and the blinds begin to rise, this becomes perfect practice for the very different short handed type of play.

Aside from this, single table tournaments are usually less damaging to your bankroll than large scale MTT’s. The reason for this is that in an SNG you will cash a lot more often due to the small number of players that are involved, although you will not win as much money. In a multi table tournament you are aiming for one big win and will probably fall short of your target more often than in an SNG.

Usually I play MTT tournaments when I am playing online, but I certainly feel it is beneficial to poker skills development to take some time to play SNG tournaments too. Even if you only ever intend to play Multi Table Tournaments, you need to know how to switch you style of play if you make it to the last five players or so.