Entries from October 2007 ↓

If you haven’t yet read the newest article on gaming law on Card Player you should probably do so. It is not illegal to play poker online, the only thing it does is make it harder to get money onto online gaming sites.

I personally have seen the games become a bit tougher after the legislation was first presented. I think many recreational players probably got scared by the new “law” that it would somehow get the government mad at them or something.

But things seem to be looking pretty good lately, the games are still growing and new players seem to be finding their way back to the online card rooms. I’ve always been on the positive side of things, I hope the Poker Players Alliance will get the whole online gaming legalized in the US because it is just weird to keep sportsbetting legal and not like poker.

I guess that happens when the government can’t make money on poker, I mean, you need to fund the government so it can take over more stuff right?

Read the whole Card Player article here.

This just in. Beginning March 4, 2008 the IRS will require all tournament sponsors to report tourmanet winnings of more than $5,000.

Check out the whole article in Business Journal Phoenix.

When I was around 12 I started playing ice-hockey in my towns hockey team, that lasted for about 4 years. Even when I wasn’t part of a team me and my friends used to get together and play on our neighbour hood football field which was covered with ice during the winters.

I have always been in pretty good shape and have gotten used to the benefits of exercise. There have always been periods of severe inactivity

But I always come back to some form of exercise and each time I “start again” I am stunned of the benefits and how it makes me feel.

What benefits have I noticed? Everyone is different so you might not have the same things, I hope my benefits encourage you to try it out, if you are not already doing it.

1. Emotional Balance

I have always been a person with lots of energy, hyper-active at times And when I have so much excessive energy and when something goes wrong, it all turns to frustration and the feeling is pretty overwhelming because it can lead to blaming myself for weird things.

When I started exercising my emotions slowly started becoming more balanced, because of a more healthy diet and exercising. There are some days when I feel a very weird energy build-up and it feels like I just have to do something.

When I exercise this feeling becomes neutralized, it gives me a way to get rid of that excess energy. This means I have more emotional control at the poker table.

2. Stamina

I am slowly building my endurance, both physically and mentally. I can focus longer and think about situations with more clarity. I shouldn’t say that I can play longer poker sessions because that might be misleading.

I don’t recommend playing long sessions (more than 60 minutes at a time) because after a certain amount of time your ability to focus plummets.

What I can say is that my ability to focus while playing poker has become longer since I started exercising.

3. Discipline

When you do something regularly you will naturally run into days where you just don’t feel like doing it. This is how you build discipline, by doing things that you do not always want to do.

And I am not saying that you should do something you hate, if you hate exercising all you have to do is re-frame it. Ask yourself why you hate exercising?

Is it because it is laborious? Are you focusing on the tiresome aspects of exercising? I will bet you that this is the case if you think exercising sucks.

What would happen if you thought about how good you would feel, how you would look and how this might improve your whole life? Wouldn’t you feel a bit better focusing on that instead?

So when you feel like just watching some TV and eating a cookie or two, think about how good you would feel after your workout and how GOOD you would feel after a year of working out regularly and then get off your ass and exercise! That is discipline.

The more I exercise the bigger my discipline muscle gets, I can get myself to play poker on a consistent basis even when I do not feel like it. Sometimes though, you have to realize when it is time to take longer breaks from poker to avoid burn-out.

4. Self-Confidence

My self-confidence always goes up when I’ve been exercising a while. Partly because my body is in shape and because I am in shape mentally. So many psychological benefits come from working out regularly.

Self-confidence also helps me assess poker games better and helps me to gather the confidence in taking shots at higher stakes in a calculated manner.

These are the main four things I have experienced while exercising, all I can say is that I feel great and it works for me otherwise I would slowly go insane and tilt all my money away

I’ve been helping my brother learn No-limit hold’em the past couple weeks, and he recently made the discovery that a little bit of planning goes a long way. We’ve talked about pot-control, inducing bluffs, and other somewhat complicated concepts. He summarized it in a much simpler, more effective way.

He told me that when the flop comes down, he looks at the board, and at his cards, and asks himself “How big a pot do I want with this hand?” Once he has the answer, the actual play of the hand is easier.

A couple example hands:

Hand 1, a small pot hand:

.50/1.00 NL, $100 effective stacks.

Hero raises As2s to $3 on the button. The BB, a somewhat loose but not terrible player, calls.

The flop is: Ad 4h 4s (pot: $6.50)

How big a pot do we want with this hand? Not a very big one. If we get the remaining $97 into this $6 pot we will undoubtably lose.

There are no draws, so our opponent will rarely have a worse calling hand, and any Ace or better is ahead of us. With that in mind, we would want to get one, perhaps two streets of small betting in at the most to get value from pocket pairs.

If we decide to bet the flop and get raised, a possibly tough decision (is he bluffing? does he really have a 4?) becomes simpler: The pot is getting bigger than is acceptable for our hand’s strength, so we fold.

If bet-folding is uncomfortable, perhaps we check the flop, and our opponent makes a midsized turn bet. We call, intending to call a midsized river bet – hopefully we have induced a bluff.

Things have gotten much simpler now that we know how big we want the pot to be. If our opponent tries to force the pot larger than we are happy with, we simply fold and save some $.

Hand 2, getting value:

.50/1.00 NL, hero has $100 and villain has $25

Folded to hero on the cutoff whe raises to $3 with JhJd. The villain on the button, an unknown shortstack, calls.

Flop: Td 8d 7c (pot: $7.50)

Our opponent has $22 left in a $7.50 pot. With so little left to bet and so many draws out we are happy to get $22 in the pot.

So, we bet full pot ($7.50) so our opponent gets as close to allin as possible before the board can scare him or us. Villain minraises to $15, we stick to the plan and shove, and he calls. (pot: $51.50)

Villain shows Jc8c for middle pair and a gutshot. The turn is a K and the river an A – our Jacks hold up, but the turn and river would have made it very difficult to get villain’s whole stack had we played it slower. Or worse, if we tried to induce bluffs we might have ended up getting pushed off the best hand!

Planning is a powerful tool in NL. Take a look at the flop, and the board before you take an action. Ask yourself “how big of a pot do I want?” With a little practice even tough decisions can become much easier.

As Henri mentioned, I’m Dan Pickering – Poker Pro and Coach – and I’m really excited to be a part of ThePokerHowTo.  I’ll be writing regular blog posts about the life of a poker pro, along with plenty of strategy articles and hand discussions.

I’m working on a “Life Story” in the same fashion as Henri’s which will be up by mid-next week.  I’m also going to L.A. this weekend to play live, which should make for some good blog entries and an analysis of live play versus online play.

I’m stoked to be here, and excited about the new strategy information and blog entries to come!