Bankroll Management

Nice to see you again! Today I will list more terms that will come up as you work to win money in casinos for USA players. I must admit that I am having fun going in order according to the alphabet. If nothing else it prevents me from sitting here for minutes on end trying to decide between all the poker terms in the dictionary.

I chose ICM for the letter “I”, which stands for Independent Chip Model. If you enjoy SnGs on Tiger Gaming, ICM is incredibly important. It basically gives tournament chips a cash value so that you can make the right decision when someone is all-in.

The letter J does not have a lot of variety when it comes to poker terms, so I will just quickly define “jam”. If you find a good poker video and the instructor says he likes a jam, he is saying that he likes going all-in. You can use it in place of “shove” or “push”.

I picked “kill” for the letter K. If you decide to play live poker instead of Craps online one night, one of your options will probably be a kill game. When someone wins two pots in a row, they are required to pay an extra blind the next hand. A half kill requires just 1.5 times the big blind while a full kill is 2 times the big blind. Passive players that lose a lot of money on US poker sites might like kill tables because they have the ability to stifle hyper-aggression.

When someone calls, raises, or bets “light”, they are representing a much stronger hand than the one they actually have. Imagine that you are on your Bwin Poker download and you get dealt 92 in the small blind. A person with a high steal percentage raises on the cut-off, and you decide to 3-bet because you assume he is weak a large percentage of the time. He is probably raising light in late position, and you are 3-betting light from your position. These spots are common on money poker sites.

We have gone through another four terms just now, so that is it for today. In a few weeks I will get started again with the letter M. This gives you plenty of time to practice your game. Full Tilt is a good site if you want somewhere new to play. Full Tilt Poker是世界上最大的在线扑克平台之一，马上到我们的Full Tilt Poker下载页面，和世界各地的扑克高手在线切磋。

Time for another entry full of poker terms you might want to know if you play in casinos for USA players. Last time I left off at the letter E.

Whether you play ring games or tournaments on the best Euro poker sites, it is important to know about “effective stacks”. When two players are in a pot, the most either can wager is the amount of chips in the shortest stack, also known as the effective stack. For example, if Player A has 2,000 chips but Player B only has 1,500, the effective stack is 1,500.

The next term I would like to describe is “flip”, something that can occur when friends get together for friendly games on their Titanpoker download. Basically the players involved in a flip agree to go all-in preflop with whichever cards are dealt to them. A flip can also be used to describe a 50/50 situation, usually when players are all-in preflop. For example, if you are playing a tournament on Tiger Gaming and you get it all-in preflop with QQ vs AK, this is a flip situation because you are around 50% to win the hand.

For the letter G, I chose the phrase “gutshot”. When you have a gutshot straight draw, you are basically hoping for one of 4 outs to complete your straight. For example, say you chose to play poker rather than earn that Bingo bonus, and you get dealt 78 preflop. You raise and the flop comes 59K. You have a gutshot because you need a 6 to make a straight, which is four outs. This is also known as an inside straight draw.

“Hero fold” is my H phrase. When you make you a hero fold, you are making a difficult fold with a relatively strong hand. Perhaps you are playing on one of the best Mac poker sites and you are against a passive player that never raises. You get dealt 22 and flop bottom set on an uncoordinated board, but when you bet, your opponent raises! Laying down a set to a single raise is definitely an example of a hero fold. It may seem nitty, but unlike a free slots download, poker requires a lot of discipline and sometimes big laydowns are necessary.

That is my last term for this entry, but I will be sure to continue on when I update this blog next month. In the meantime, be sure to play lots of hands and get lots of practice. If you haven’t already made an account at PokerStars, I highly recommend it. ¡Aprende de los profesionales y mejora tus habilidades, todo con solo descargar PokerStars!

A few months ago I went over a number of common poker terms that are important to know if you read up on strategy for winning in US poker rooms. I am going to do the same thing for my next few articles. To entertain myself, I will go in order through the alphabet and choose one term per letter. Hopefully these next few entries help you out.

To start off, let’s go over the term “ante”. You will want to know about this word for sure if you play tournaments on a PokerStars download. An ante is a bet that all players must make before they receive hands before the flop. The amount of an ante varies, but it is usually around 1/10 of the big blind.

Here’s a word for which you probably already know the definition: “bluff”. When you bet or raise in a way that causes your hand to look stronger than it actually is, you are bluffing. Doing this can make players fold hands that are better than yours. To see some very brave bluffs in action, I encourage you to watch a few Daniels Room poker hands next time you’re on PokerStars!

For C, my favorite letter, let’s look at “chip dumping”, something that your poker site should be looking out for if it is one of the top Texas Hold’em sites online. Chip dumping means to lose chips to another player purposely. This can occur when two people are colluding in a tournament or cash game, but the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent when you consider that chip dumping can also be used for money laundering. This is why the best US poker sites want their security team watching for suspicious activity on the virtual felt.

When you are studying on free poker training sites, you might need to know about “dirty outs”. An out is dirty when it gives your opponent a better hand even when it improves yours. For example, imagine you are at a cash table to earn the bonus you got with your Titanpoker bonus code and flop a straight draw on a board with two hearts. If the turn brings a third heart but also makes you a straight at the same time, this could be a dirty out since someone may have also made a flush.

I am going to stop here, but I will be back sometime in October. Before the next time we meet, be sure to find some literature or watch some videos on beating US poker sites. See you next month!

This entry is going to go over a training site that focuses on Sit ‘n’ Go (SNG) tournaments. SNGs are tourneys that don’t start until they’ve reached a predetermined number of entrants. For example, you can register for a one table SNG, and the cards start being dealt once the 9th player registers. Most SNGs have one or two tables, but they can also be heads-up or over 20 tables. Your favorite US poker rooms should offer SNGs, even if they’re smaller European or flash poker sites.

SitnGoGrinders.com specializes in SNG tournaments. Because the payout structure of a SNG is known from the start, there are specific tactics that can be employed to ensure higher profits. You’ll learn some important tips on SitnGo Grinders from their videos and articles, and their instructors are proven winners. While you won’t find free poker training here, you’ll still probably find the membership fee a bargain. They have chosen to avoid registration fees, and the cost per month is around $20. You’ll get the best deal if you pay for a year in advance as $129 will give you access for a full year and then each month after that is just $10.

SitnGo Grinders is one of the newer training sites out there, so they don’t have as many videos as some of the older sites. They release a new video daily, so the video selection should keep growing at a decent pace. I doubt you’ll be disappointed with the selection right off the bat, anyway. 6 max and multi-table SNGs played on money poker sites have hundreds of videos to their name. There are close to a hundred videos for full ring and heads-up games, which is still enough to keep you watching for quite a while.

Several of the coaches play on PokerStars, the room that advertises Daniels Room poker. These players really took advantage of the PokerStars bonus code and VIP program because the majority of them have earned either Supernova or Supernova Elite status. This shows that they are true grinders of the game, hence the name chosen for the site! This site is an excellent choice for beginner players, but seasoned players will also benefit as there are some videos that have some upper level thinking.

If you play mostly ring games on your Bwin Poker download, I do not recommend this site to you. If you’re a multi-table tournament player, you won’t have any videos targeted to your game either, although you might still find the site useful for learning MTT endgame. Even though you can’t learn alternate forms of poker on SitnGoGrinders.com, it’s still an excellent site given its prices. This site is a must have for any player looking to make SNGs their game of choice.

So far I’ve introduced two training sites that focus on ring games in US poker rooms, so this time I’m going to talk about a site that makes videos for tournaments. Poker Pwnage is a pretty fresh face in the industry, and their primary objective is to create poker videos for people that prefer tournament poker. If you want to join, you must pay $35 as your membership fee and then monthly it’s $24.99. Comparing it to the sites from the previous entries, it’s cheaper than Cardrunners but more expensive than GrinderSchool.

If you just can’t win any of the tournaments you play on your Full Tilt Poker download, you might want to seriously consider a Poker Pwnage membership. They have made 300+ online poker videos, and they were produced by some very successful tournament poker players. In fact, a couple of the instructors have done quite well in WSOP 2010 so far. David “GhettoFabolous” Randall won an impressive $270,000 for third in Event 11, and “Chardrian” Dresel-Velasquez took fifth in Event 12 for $43,000.

If you prefer Sit-N-Go’s over MTT poker, you’ll also benefit from Poker Pwnage. The videos feature buy-ins from $10 to over $100, and if you don’t like full ring games, you can learn about short handed or heads-up instead. You’ll find a lot of beginner strategy, but it’s possible to also find some advanced tactics. Even if you’ve been playing since the Moneymaker boom, you’ll still learn a few things from these videos.

You will not find a lot of videos for cash games, so you shouldn’t bother with this site if you’re even remotely a cash game player. Right now there are only five cash videos, and there’s no reason to believe that another one will be released in the near future. If you mostly sit at Draw tables after using a PokerStars Bonus Code, you should also forget about this site. They feature strictly Hold Em, and until another form of poker starts to become more popular, we probably won’t see this changed anytime soon.

Really though, there are so many training sites that feature almost exclusively cash games, so it’s really nice to know that Poker Pwnage has something for the tournament players. When you subscribe to the site, you can be positive that the education you will get will be from a tried and true professional with a solid win rate. After you’ve gone through the video catalogue, it’s possible that you will not find yourself making another poker deposit on TigerGaming for the rest of your poker career!

In the previous article, I went over GrinderSchool, a training site that puts out poker videos for beginner players trying out US poker rooms. Now I will tell you about Cardrunners, possibly the most recognized and admired training sites on the internet today. It was founded by Taylor Caby and Andrew Wiggins, and in 2008 they formed a partnership with Full Tilt. The site has a wide selection of online poker videos for almost any buy-in you want to learn about.

If you make an account at Cardrunners, you’ll be able to view a limited number of free poker videos, but you’ll need to pay a membership fee to view the best content. You might find the fees a bit high, especially if you’re a low stakes player, because first there is a $100 sign up fee, and then you must pay $30 per month to keep accessing the site. If you’re serious about becoming a better player, you’ll learn that these fees are worth it, though. Today there are more than 1800 poker videos on their site for streaming and download, and every week 7 or more are released.

Like we saw with GrinderSchool a couple weeks ago, cash games receive special treatment at Cardrunners. There is an excellent choice of videos for No Limit Holdem 6-max since it’s become the most popular form of poker recently, and their No Limit Holdem Full Ring selection has has gotten bigger when compared with a year or two ago. If you’re more into Texas Hold Em hands in either Limit or Heads-Up, you’ll also have a very good selection of videos to view.

If you’re a Sit-N-Go player or if you prefer Rush Poker tournaments, Cardrunners might not be the absolute best choice because their specialty is most certainly ring games. That’s not to say they don’t have a lot of tournament videos because they have plenty, and they cover pretty much every buy-in. For those that play both cash and tournaments, Cardrunners is a good choice as they still have several videos for MTTs and Sit-N-Go’s to go with their top notch ring game choices.

If Rush Poker Omaha has been giving you a hard time, Cardrunners offers some of the best videos out of all the training sites out there. The same can be said for other types of poker like HORSE or Stud. You might be slightly disappointed with your choices if Omaha is your game of choice, but you’re not going to find better than Cardrunners for these games right now.

When you get some experience with real money poker sites, Cardrunners is a fabulous choice if you don’t mind putting up money for some beneficial poker videos. They’re undeniably the number one way to go for ring game enthusiasts, and if you want to learn a bit about tournaments, they will help you out there, as well. All in all, you can’t go wrong with putting your money into a Cardrunners membership.

Let’s briefly go back in time a few weeks: I introduced a number of useful poker tools that have the ability to help you learn the game. We learned that you should take advantage of a hand converter, always use bankroll management, and be sure to have a poker odds table at your desk. I also wrote that it’s useful to find a variety of free poker videos since they really help you to see how winning players think, and they don’t cost anything. If you’ve already gone and downloaded every free video that you can find, though, you might be wondering what’s next. By now your bankroll should be growing, so it’s time to invest a bit of money to grow even more as a player. My next few articles are going feature some of the poker training sites that you have the option to subscribe to if you’ve learned to love videos.

I’m choosing to start with GrinderSchool as it caters to beginner players. For as little as $10/month, you will have access to 600+ online poker videos made by players that have proven they are able to win at the levels featured in their videos. GrinderSchool features 7 videos each week, and while most of them show No Limit Hold Em, usually 4 every month are videos for other games like Omaha or Razz.

The cash game coverage for No Limit Hold Em is excellent at GrinderSchool. The site has several short-handed and full ring poker videos of a variety of stakes that new players can really benefit from. If you play mainly heads-up or Limit, though, you might not be as happy. There are, of course, a few videos for each game, but perhaps not enough to make it worth it for those that frequently participate in those types of poker. The same can be said for those that want help with Omaha or other less frequently played poker games like Draw.

If you prefer Rush Poker tournaments over cash games, GrinderSchool can still benefit you. Videos are also abundant for tournament players, and most of them were created by some talented players. The videos capture buy-ins from a paltry $2 to a healthy $55, and most of the videos participate in a 3 to 9 part series. If you enjoy playing in tournaments outside your bankroll, you also have the option to view satellites videos.

If MTT poker isn’t your thing but you like Sit-N-Go’s, GrinderSchool is an excellent choice for you. The SNG videos feature mostly the site’s founder, but recently joining the team were a couple new high quality instructors. The buy-ins featured in these videos start as low as $1 and go up to $33, and while beginner concepts are brought up quite often, there is also a fair amount of more advanced discussion.

Overall, GrinderSchool is an excellent site for inexperienced players trying real money poker sites. We’ve already seen how low the monthly cost is, and with no sign up fee, it’s almost a no-brainer! It’s true that it’s not the best site for those that prefer the less popular types of poker, but there isn’t a better training site out there for low stake No Limit Hold Em players.

I discussed the subject of pot odds in the most recent article, and today I should introduce a related subject and talk about implied odds. Last entry showed that bankroll management is a big deal for all poker players because sometimes you’ll find yourself in spots where you’ll be forced to call a bet when you’re on a draw. You’re of course going to lose a few of these pots, and at times it’s tough to avoid these spots despite employing a correct poker hands order. Implied odds will have the same “put your money in while behind” theme. This time, however, it’s to make money on future streets rather than because it’s mathematically correct to do it at the time.

To see what I mean, let’s go back to the example of flopping a flush draw from the last entry. We were playing a tournament on a Full Tilt Poker download and we flopped a flush draw. This time, though, let’s assume that our opponent just raises 600 more rather than all his chips. If the pot has 1,000 chips and the raise is 600 more, we saw last time that we do not have the odds to call and hit our flush. A little extra information, though, might turn this into a winning situation. Imagine that he has 1,000 chips behind and we know that he will call the rest on the river no matter what. For simplicity, we will also assume that he will check the turn. So now, instead of pot odds, we can calculate implied odds to see if it’s going to make sense to call. There are 1,000 chips in the pot and he has 1,000 chips behind. Since we expect those chips to be in the pot by the river, you can consider that the pot has 2,000 chips rather than just 1,000. You need to call 600 chips to win 2,000 in the pot and 600 / 2,000 = 30%. Since you are around 33% to hit your flush by the river, this call has positive expectation when implied odds are considered.

It should be clear that a poker odds chart combined with pot odds and implied odds can be very powerful. An inexperienced individual could potentially lose money in a couple different ways with a draw after the flop. The first way is he could call a bet without correct pot odds, and we’ve seen that this yields a negative expectation. Or maybe he knows about pot odds but doesn’t understand implied odds, so in another situation he’ll fold when he actually has the implied odds to call. In both cash games and MTT poker, you must understand both pot odds and implied odds to maximize your expectation in all drawing situations.

I would like to end on a cautionary note, however. Sometimes players will start calling with 100% of their draws when they learn about implied odds because they are overly optimistic regarding their opponent. When you’re counting future bets, you must be absolutely sure that you are actually going to get them. For instance, say you’re receiving poker hands in a ring game and you turn a set, but it appears it wasn’t the best card because it also gave your opponent a flush. You start calculating your implied odds when he raises because the only way you can win this hand is by hitting a full house on the river. For this calculation, you must decide whether or not he’s likely to pay you off on a paired river. He might not do so because he might realize that you hit a boat! Don’t forget that it’s the future bets that make these calls profitable, and if the future bets don’t happen, you cannot call with positive expectation.

Let’s talk about poker odds, something I briefly talked about when I wrote about poker hands order. It’s true that good starting hands preflop often do well after the flop, too. Sometimes, though, your hand becomes a drawing hand on the flop and you’ll need to catch a card to improve to the best hand. If you’re a good player, you’ll be aware of the fact that things aren’t always going to go your way and sometimes you’re going to lose pots (which is why I stress bankroll management so much). There will definitely be times when it is correct to put the rest of your chips in the pot even if you’re not a favorite to win the hand. Being aware of pot odds will help you sort out when to fold and when to go ahead and try to hit your cards.

A large number of people think that poker is only about gambling and don’t see that math is also a big factor. But don’t worry, it’s nothing like the calculus you hated in university. There are plenty of tools out there to help you out so that you don’t have to do the math yourself. For poker odds, you’re going to want to use a poker odds chart, a tool I introduced in the poker hand order entry. As we saw previously, this chart will come in handy when you find yourself in a pot and you’re not sure whether or not your hand is better than your opponent’s. 

Let me give you an additional example to remind you how it works. Say you’re receiving poker hands in a $0.50/$1.00 NL cash game and you are given AQ. You choose to raise with this hand preflop to $4, and an extremely loose player reraises you to $14. He does this pretty often, so maybe you should go all-in to try to make it look like you’re bluffing? You do this, and to your surprise, he snap calls with 44! Which hand is a favorite to win? The poker odds chart shows us that you’re only 46% to win the showdown. You can see that the chart is useful for calculating odds so that we don’t have to memorize them all.

Now I think it’s time to go over pot odds. You use this when you’re playing a hand and get into a situation where you need to call a bet, but you’re not sure if it’s a good idea. As an example, pretend you prefer a Full Tilt Poker download and you’re playing a small tournament. You get into a pot with one opponent and bet a flopped flush draw, and your opponent responds by moving all-in. You decide that he has an overpair and so you just have 9 outs for the flush. Which is better, calling or folding?

If you have a flush draw on the flop and you get to see both the turn and the river, you will hit your flush approximately 1/3 of the time. With these odds, in order for it to be correct to call here, the pot must be more than twice as much as the amount you are required to call. For example, if the pot is 1,000 chips, you need to be calling less than 500 chips for the call to be corret. If you have to put in 485, then a call is correct. If you have to call 1,200, you do not have the odds to call.

This article has showed you that learning about odds is required for all forms of this game including MTT poker and cash games. You have a much better chance if you understand odds because a large number of players out there don’t know how important they are. Be sure to come back to this blog in a couple weeks because I will update it with another entry to help you improve at poker. Good luck at the tables!