Using Leverage in Poker

Leverage in poker is most effective in a no limit game when you have a deep stack. When you make a bet at the pot, an opponent may be reluctant to call not because of the initial bet, but because he may be anticipating bets on future streets. Depending on the situation, you may win many pots on the flop or turn with minimal risk, simply because an opponent is not prepared to call bigger bets down the line.

However, if you wish to gain leverage, you must be sure that your opponent fears losing his chips. A bet made in later stages of a multi-table tournament with large prizes is not the same as a bet in a free poker tournament.

How to Gain Leverage in Poker

The way you gain leverage when you play poker online is by showing your opponents that you are an aggressive player who is willing to make big bets and are controlling most pots you’re involved in. If you are the type of player who makes one bet, then gives up and checks it down to the river, you will not get any leverage on your bets.

Similarly, if you are a short stack, you have no leverage because opponents know exactly how big a threat you are. In the same vein, if you are facing a short stack you have little leverage because this player is much more likely to be willing to commit himself to the pot if he likes his hand.

Notes on Leverage

Leverage is only one tool in a poker arsenal and should be used wisely. Try to determine which situations will create fear in your opponents and use your loose, dangerous image to push marginal hands. When you have strong hands, try to play in such a way that keeps your opponents relaxed and unsuspecting until the moment you bring the hammer down.

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In any poker tournament, no one wants to be the one to burst the bubble, in other words no one ever wants to be the last person to be eliminated before a prize is awarded. Experienced successful tournament players will tell you one of the most important stages in tournament play is the period that the bubble approaches. This is when players start to tighten up, and those players who came to win all of a sudden just came to try and cash. Small stacks are holding on for dear life, and a lot of the times big stack players will just try and ride it out till the bubble has burst.

No where is this more evident than in Sit n Go tournaments. Players at this point have invested a fair amount of time into the tournament, and they do not want to exit without getting at least a little bit of money back. This can work to your advantage, allowing you to take down pots by playing aggressively and not having to showdown your cards. Even though you may play more liberally in this period, you must always be aware of how your opponents are playing, this is probably the single most important factor in winning or losing. It becomes quite apparent which players at the table are fearful of busting out of the tournament before being in the money. Be cautious about just….continue reading article at PokerMunch.com

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Heads-Up Poker Tip #1 – Position

Acting last after the flop is a huge advantage in poker. You get to see your opponent’s action before you make a decision on what to do. This allows you to win more with your good hands and lose the least when you are behind. In heads-up poker you will have position (the small blind / dealer button) half of the time – make sure you use this to your full advantage.

Heads-Up Poker Tip #2 – Aggression

Pre-flop your opponent will not have a strong hand most of the time. Combine this with the fact that unpaired hands will only hit the flop 1/3rd of the time and it is easy to see how aggression will win many pots when playing heads-up. After all, if you do not raise then you have not given your opponent an opportunity to fold!

Heads-Up Poker Tip #3 – Pot Control

Over time everyone gets their fair share of good and bad hands. Winners in poker make sure that they win bigger than average pots and lose smaller than average pots. Decide whether you have a ‘big-pot’ hand during play and plan your bets to win as many of your opponents chips as possible. Conversely manage the pot with a vulnerable hand so as to lose the least if you happen to be behind.

Heads-Up Poker Tip #4 – Reading Your Opponent

Work out as early in the heads-up game as possible what hands your opponent raises, checks and calls your bets with. Is this opponent likely to raise strongly with a flush draw? Will this opponent check a monster hand looking to check-raise or lead straight out? Will this player raise a marginal hand on the river if you have shown weakness, or instead call and see a showdown?

Heads-Up Poker Tip #5 – Adapting To Your Opponent

In order to take advantage of your reads on an opponent you must be ready to adapt your play. If they are too tight then… continue reading at Heads-Up-Poker.org

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We start by looking at the reason why small pocket pairs are so valuable – the opportunity to hit a hidden monster hand. Next the circumstances in which small pairs are playable before the flop are covered. Finally we look at how to play small pocket pairs when you miss the flop entirely.

If we define small pocket pairs as 22 through to 66 it is easy to see that you will rarely hit an over-pair to the flop with them. The real value of these hands comes the one in eight times that you flop a set with your small pair. In these circumstances you can win many times your initial bet by taking the entire stack of an opponent, for example if someone holds pocket aces.

The potential for a big reward from a small investment is known as your ‘implied odds’. That is to say the times you hit you will often win a huge pot – this makes up for the times when you miss your hand and need to fold to betting action on the flop.

When playing a hand with implied odds value such as small pocket pairs the critical factor is the size of the bet pre-flop compared to your potential gain. On average you will flop a set once every…. continue reading at Niche Poker

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Before I talk about some tricky situations that develop in the big blind, I want to note that you can make your life a little easier by folding some hands pre-flop. If you’re holding a medium Ace and you’re facing an early position raise from a player who you know plays only good cards up front, then fold. It may seem like you’re getting a nice price to continue, but in this spot, you’re only going to get into trouble. When you miss the flop completely, it’s going to be tough to continue and, if you hit an Ace, you may lose a lot to a hand that has you dominated. I’d rather play 6-7 against an early position raise from a tight player than A-7.

There are some hole cards that are just hopeless. If I’m facing a raise from any position and I find something like…. read rest of article at Full Tilt Poker

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I get a kick out of the whole stare down thing after an opponent makes a bet on the river. Even though the bettor never flinches, the staring continues because one player (mistakenly) hopes that if he stares long enough, he’ll somehow figure out if the other player is bluffing or not.

That’s just not how you read people, and that’s not the right time to start searching for tells.

The subtle tells you pick up at the poker table will often occur well before you’re faced with your big decision. Why? Because tells happen early. To make a good read, you must pay attention to the action at the beginning of the hand, even though the table action doesn’t yet seem exciting.

It’s just very unlikely that you’ll discover a physical tell on the river that will miraculously sway your decision. It’s much more effective to look for revealing tells pre-flop, post-flop, or possibly as late as the turn card.

Here are a few pointers to help you know what to look for before the flop.

Let’s say you observe an opponent gobbling down a messy meal while seated at the table. Well, here’s a rule of thumb: Players generally get a bit more conservative when they’re…. continue reading at Falls Church News-Press

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This was a great tourney. Jack McClelland started us with 30,000 in chips without starting the limits at 1,000-2,000 right off the bat. We also had 90-minute levels, so there was a lot of play. This was no all-in donkeyfest, which many formerly great events have become.

While I usually advocate an aggressive gambling style in tournaments, this type of tournament requires a more laid-back, selective style. Now, I’m not saying that you should play passively; I’m just saying that you have more time to pick your spots, so you should take it. I laid down more hands in this tournament than I have in the past year, literally.

That’s what this column is about, laying down big hands. It’s tough to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, especially in a slow-paced tourney like this one.

I usually believe that when faced with a decision in a tournament, you’re always better off erring on the play side (calling or raising) as opposed to the laydown side. You normally don’t have much time, and may never see another big hand again before the antes eat you up.

This is what I hate about contemporary tournament poker. Any idiot who is aggressive enough can win a tournament with minimal poker-playing skill. Ever notice that many of these tournament champs get… continue reading at SwissPoker.ch

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Before you commit any chips to the pot, you want to identify the types of players who are likely to be in the hand with you. If you’re at a loose table where your opponents are playing a wide range of hands, you’re going to want to play smaller pots unless you’re sure that you’re way ahead or, preferably, holding the nuts.

Say you’re in a hand with something big like pocket Queens and a player who’s been involved in a lot of pots calls your pre-flop raise. The flop comes J-9-7, and you’re out of position. You need to be very careful about betting here because a loose-aggressive player is going to put you to the test. I’d recommend check-calling or check-raising rather than putting out a continuation bet and giving your opponent a chance to re-raise you or, possibly, flat call with the intention of pushing you off the hand on a later street by making a large bet you can’t call if a scare card falls on the turn or river.

Having position against these types of players makes it much easier for you to control the pot, as you’ll be able to turn the table on them and call or re-raise their initial bets. If they come back over the top, you can…. continue reading at FullTilt

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In poker, image matters.

Throughout a tournament, your table image will help determine how much action you’ll get and, ultimately, how you can manipulate your opponents into making big calls or big laydowns at the wrong times.

While establishing a loose, aggressive image early on can help build your initial chip stack, I believe it’s important to develop a tight table image in the later stages of a tournament because it gives you the ability to maneuver at the times when the chips matter most.

When the action is folded around, some players will always raise from the cutoff and the button. The problem with this play is that’s its predictable and can be easily exploited. If you always raise from the button, the players in the blinds catch on sooner or later and will put in a big re-raise with any two cards. You will also find players just calling you with a much wider range of hands from the blinds before putting in a big check-raise on the flop.

Why do they do this? Because you have been presenting a loose table image by raising any time the action is passed to you. During late-stage play, this image … continue reading at Full Tilt Poker

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This covering of the suprasternal notch is a relatively significant tell. It can be used to detect when a person is bluffing, both in life and in poker. I remember one FBI investigation in which we thought an armed and dangerous fugitive might be hiding out at his mother’s home. Another agent and I went to the woman’s house, and when we knocked at the door, she came outside to meet us. We showed our identification and began asking her a series of questions. When I inquired, “Is your son in the house?” she put her hand to her suprasternal notch and said, “No, he’s not.” I noted her behavior, and we continued with our questioning. After a few minutes I asked, “Is it possible that while you were at work, your son could have sneaked into the house?” Once again, she put her hand up to her neck dimple and replied, “No, I’d know that.” I was now confident that her son was in the house, because the only time she moved her hand to her neck was when I suggested that possibility. To make absolutely sure my assumption was correct, we continued to speak with the woman until, as we prepared to leave, I made one last inquiry: “Just so I can finalize my records, you’re positive he’s not in the house, right?” For a third time, her hand went to her neck as she affirmed her earlier answer. I was now certain the woman was lying. A search of the house turned up her missing son hiding in a bedroom closet.

There’s an interesting footnote to this neck tell. When I was shooting a television special with Annie Duke, I noticed that when something disturbed her, she pacified by covering her suprasternal notch. I said to her, “You really need to watch that neck-touching response, because if I can see it, so can your opponents at the poker table. I suspect you might display that behavior when you’re bluffing, and other players might decipher it and realize you have a weak hand.” After I identified the behavior, she actually recognized she had been touching her neck in such a manner and said she would make an effort to stop. To her credit – she is an incredible person and poker player – I haven’t seen her doing it at the tables since our discussion.

Tells of the Feet: As I emphasize in our book Read ’em and Reap, the feet are the most honest part of our body; thus foot nonverbals normally provide very reliable information. Women don’t…. read rest of article at Bluff Magazine

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