By Wil Wheaton
During this year’s WSOP, I had the extreme pleasure and good fortune to sit in on a few strategy lectures that Barry Tanenbaum gave in the Poker Stars hospitality suite. I was so impressed, and learned so much from the brief sessions, I hired Barry for a two-hour private consultation to identify and plug a few holes I thought I had in my no-limit tournament game. They helped tremendously — even though I didn’t make it far in the Main Event (my own fault for getting a case of the stupids) I subsequently used Barry’s advice at a Legends of Poker preliminary event and finished 40th out of 395, and in my first WWdN after returning home from the WSOP, where I final-tabled.

In other words, Barry Tanenbaum is The Man, and when he speaks, people who want to improve their game should listen.

Every week, Barry posts a Thought of the Week at his blog, which provides insight into a specific poker strategy or concept, and every week I read it and get one step closer to growing a level in poker.

This week, Barry addresses open-limping in hold’em, and why you should never do it:

read rest of article at Card Squad

Posted by Beck @ Steal The Blinds
I’ve been playing a fair number of low-stakes ($10+1 - $20+2) SNGs lately, and have been meeting with a great deal of success. I can safely attribute much of that success to many of the great posts on SNG play written by other bloggers out there. As such, I wanted to give something back, but couldn’t really think of a topic that hadn’t been covered. Then I hit on the idea of discussing specifically 4 handed play (i.e. when the original 9 or 10 players have dwindled to 4, with only the final 3 being paid) not as in SNGs which start out with only 4 players). That’s where I feel my game is at its strongest, and If I last that long, I routinely go from 3rd-4th place to 1st-2nd place by the time the bubble pops.

Play on the bubble in any tournament, obviously, is a very different dynamic from play at any other point. Everyone is terrified of getting knocked out one off the money, and there are substantial advantages to be gained as a consequence of the simple fact that your opponents are cognizant of the potential to merely fold their way into the money. The last thing they want to do is take a risk which could knock them out in 4th after having spent close to an hour slogging it out in the trenches of a one table war.

The way to take advantage of this timidity is to…. read rest of article at Steal The Blinds

If you know something about poker, you know that you should be folding a lot of your starting hands, right? And what are the best hands, the one you should be playing with? There are a lot of lists available, and some desktop backgrounds to the online poker player.

In the book “Hold’em Poker for Advanced Players” (see below) , David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth divide the starting hands in groups, in a simple but effective way, and we will show our version below.

Before that, let’s remember some poker glossary:

So, JTs = a Jack and a 10 of the same suit. AQo means an Ace and a Queen, with different suits. Axs = an Ace and a small card, like 5 for example, both of the same suit. Pairs are always off-suit, since we only use one deck in Texas Hold’em.

Connectors = consecutive cards, like 8 and 7, which makes it easier to do a straight. Suited connectors are even better, since they also increase the chances of a flush.

Now let’s see the groups. You already know, or will learn right now, that position is tremendously important in Texas Hold’em. The key to success in this game is….  read rest of article at The Online Poker Life

Hand reading is one of the toughest skills for many aspiring poker players. It’s easy to read a book and learn about pot odds, learn about playing aggressively, and so forth. But many players, especially many new players, are lost at sea when it comes to hand reading. They don’t even know where to start.

A lot of hand reading is deductive reasoning coupled with thousands of hands worth of observation with a little psychology thrown in. In other words, it’s a fairly complex process. But some hand reading is pleasantly simple.

The most simple form is the “giveaway” where your opponent does one thing that’s just a dead giveaway about what they have. You may not be able to nail it down to two exact cards, but you can narrow their range enough that you can really take advantage.

Every player performs a “giveaway” once in a while, but the inexperienced and amateur players you’ll find in your local $1-$2 NL game or home game probably do them all the time. Obviously, every player is different, but here are four common preflop “giveaways” that I see and exploit a lot while I play….  read rest of article at Noted Poker Authority

by Jim Woods
You’re seated at a $1/$2 NL holdem table where the action has been moderate. You’ve limped in late position with suited 87 and no one raised. Five players see the J 3 4 flop. When the first three players check, you figure, “Hell, SOMEONE has to win this $10 pot,” so you buckle your chinstrap and fire in ten bucks. Why?

You can think of LOTS of reasons, right? “That flop probably missed everyone. I have position on all but one player. My opponents may think that there are lots of hands containing a jack with which I might have limped. Even if I don’t win the pot now, I’ll probably scare out the only player behind me and then be in primo position for the rest of the hand. C’mon, Woodsie, you wuss — I didn’t come here to WATCH!”

In my humble opinion, none of those are good reasons. There are plenty of holdem flops and turns that DON’T warrant a bet. So someone exclaims “Pot for sale!” after a checkaround or two–who cares? I don’t know about you, but I don’t sit down at a poker table to watch, either. I want to go home a winner, and bets like the one above aren’t usually in the winning formula.

Let’s review. First, it’s a $1/$2 game, so the odds are high that your bet will be called, even by people who didn’t hit the flop. Picture, for example, a player with 65 offsuit–think he’ll be too afraid to call you, even out of position? Further, suppose you make a pair of 7’s on the turn. He’ll check, and you’ll…. read rest of article at PokerPages.com