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I don’t know about all you guys, but I think when I say this concerns the general public’s opinion it doesn’t seem to be a far-fetched statement: a poker player’s mood is determined by the present-past experiences, happenings and bad beats.  When you are winning and having a good run, it seems you are the Ace and have an aura that owns this planet called Earth. However, on the flip of the coin, if you’re showing a bad day and a losing streak because of bad luck or bad decisions, this can make you feel like avoiding everyone and everything and hating the world. Even the ones living around you can grab note to this change. To put it in a nutshell, you’re feeling a bit down.

I had some time to reflect on this issue the other day and I started wondering if this could be overcome and controlled. Will this just pass with time; will it only take some months, or maybe even years? Could it happen that I will be able to concentrate on long-term results only and forget to focus just on the day-by-day outcomes? Will I be able to think in ’Sklansky-dollars’ and not pay attention to all misfortunes of buy-ins lost? Do I have the ability and self-control to make myself stand up after the fifteenth losing session and call it a day as if nothing happened? I think all of these are good questions and the truth being I have no idea on the answers, the only thing I know for sure is that I will never be able to completely close the door on past results, but I can still control the outcome of future ones.

The importance of knowing your odds in poker is unquestionable. We often find ourselves placed in a situation where our hand is not yet complete, but there is a good chance that it will improve its standing to be the nuts on the turn or the river. But what are the exact chances of this actually happening to you as a punter? A typical example for a situation like this would have to be when a player is waiting for the flush or the straight. Let’s just say we are dealt A 6 suited and the flop contains 2 7 J. At this moment of time we only have an Ace high, but unforeseen is the real value of our hand: we are holding the nut flush draw, but is it worth the money and the wait?

It is inevitable for a serious player to be able to truly answer this question. If we are in the blind concerning our chances, we will not know with certainty whether it is worth calling the opponent’s bet. Did our opponent bet 10 in a pot of 30? Is it really worth becoming a sheep and following him? How can we really answer this question if we are unclear on our chances?

The answer is simple:
In poker terms, the cards that will complement our hand to make it of greater value are called ’outs’. Now considering outs, how many do we have in the case mentioned above?

In total, we can see the deck contains 13 diamond-suit cards, with two of these residing in our hands and two on the board, this leaves us with 13-(2+2)=9 diamonds. In this case it means that we have 9 outs and any of these will make our hand a nut flush. So, what are the odds of one of these cards turning up on the turn or the river?

The table below provides a clear overview of the connection between the number of outs and your odds:

Deep-stacked poker games are getting more and more popular these days, and it seems that most advanced players favor these, opposed to short-stacked tourneys or cash games.

A lot of people think that the size of our starting stack does not really influence the way we should be playing our hands, but this is not true at all. Deep-stacked games are much more complicated and tough than short-stacked ones.

In the case of cash games, the difference is even more evident. If we only have 10 BBs and get a pair of Aces, we push without hesitation. If we have 300 BBs, however, we must think at least twice before doing what we would normally do.

Deep-stacked games are more complicated and more dangerous, this is precisely why sharks favor them so much.
A game can basically be called deep-stacked, if players sit in with more than a 100 BBs, but deep-stacked games with people having four or five hundred BBs are not uncommon either.

2+2 forum member ’LoveisHell’ made an hour long session video available in two parts, originally for CoinFlip.com, in which his main goal is to show the importance of position, so he plays mainly from button and CO. The HU and 6-max specialist from Finland plays NL25 at the FTP tables under the nick ’I Gravity I’. 

Check out this video made by CardPlayer TV, in which Full Tilt Poker high stakes poker professional Brian ‘Stinger’ Hastings shares his insight on value betting and pot control in tournaments.

Although the All Star Week brought shame on the PokerStars Pros, Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew managed to defeat his opponent. Below, you can view his match against Brezi26, with his own commentary.

As I have written in a previous post, PokerStars has organized the yearly All Star Week between 26th July and 1st August, during which Team PokerStars Pro members faced the best non-pro online players (Challengers) at PokerStars, and lost 24-11 to the Challengers.

Nanonoko did his job, though, and posted this video for us to enjoy and learn.

Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates, a specialist of online NLHE heads-ups, has recently released a training video through CardRunners. He is playing six $25/$50 NLHE HU games and is providing us with analysis of his play. Check out this short edition of the video made available on YouTube.

Jungleman12 is reportedly to take the ‘durrrr challenge’ after being asked by Dwan after a NLHE high stakes heads-up game. Though hesitating a bit then, recently he announced on 2+2 that he was probably to play the 50,000 hands with durrrr. This means the first two on the 2010 high stakes profit list would duel which indeed sounds exciting.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here are the Top 5(?) poker tells from Daniel Negreanu. Do you want to know what it means if your opponent glances at their stack? If they reach out to their chips early? If they splash chips aggressively? If they talk gibberish? Well, see for yourself.

Have a nice Monday morning!  

Starting hand guide for no limit holdem 6 max games. This chart is for beginning players and advocates a really tight-aggressive (TAG) preflop starting hand strategy. With some experience you can broaden your preflop starting hand range, also your 3betting and 4betting range.

But in the beginning this is good for inexperienced players, because with this tight preflop strategy they will not get into hard to play postflop situations.

Getting on tilt is one of the many interesting phenomena in poker that happen because of the human nature, and can have a dramatic effect on our gameplay.  I presume that you guys have also experienced how much a mistake or unlucky twist can influence the way we play the hands following it. But what is the reason behind all this?

I need to note here, that the handling of a ’tilt’ is mostly a capability issue, and the perfection of this is just as important as being able to calculate pot odds or to select the starting hands to play. The so-called bad beats need to be looked upon as something occuring necessarily from time to time. But it is not as easy as that...

After two years PokerNews' official poker training and coaching site is back with big names in its line-up. No doubt that this time around PokerNews is looking to make its training site called PokerNews Strategy to work and last. Although there is huge competition in this field, PokerNews is a site backed by reputation and a strong brand name. Tons of poker players visit it on a daily basis.

They have signed Randy "Nanonoko" Lew, who is one of the biggest names in online poker. Nanonoko will be making training videos for the site.

Landy "Nanonoko" Lew

Randy "Nanonoko" Lew will be joined by Josh "LitleBastrd" Tieman, who just won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in Event #6. Tony G and Dustin “neverwin” Woolf and other well known names will also be part of the team line-up.

The site's model is based on its main competitors. As I see they have nothing unique on offer compared to their rivals, even the structure is totaly the same. So they will have to heavily rely on the help of PokerNews.com's traffic and Nanonoko to take off.

Randy Lew, also known as Nanonoko has made a blog entry on his official site which features him playing a hyper turbo HU tournament. It is a quite interesting video, and could help with your gameplay, definitely worth a watch.

In this post I am going to introduce and familiarize you with a few well-known poker truth, the Baluga Theorem. Originally posted on the 2+2 forum, this rule was nicknamed from BalugaWhale, a 2+2 forum poster.

Baluga Theorem: If we have raised preflop and receive a re-raise when holding top pair on the turn, most of time we should re-evaluate the strength of one-pair hands and the right option is to fold.

What does the term ’floating’ exactly mean? Floating, or ’float play’ is usually the weapon of choice for the more experienced poker player. The players who are aware when to raise preflop with AA (always ) and know what situation calls for the use of the c-bet are classified in this group and will make the most of float play.

$0.50/$1  No Limit Holdem

UTG  (Hero) $100
CO  $100
BTN  $325
SB  $126
BB  $100

Pre-Flop: ($1.50, 5 players) Hero is UTG with

Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, BTN raises to $10.50, 2 folds, Hero calls $7.50

Flop: ($22.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $16, Hero calls $16

Turn: ($54.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($54.50, 2 players)

Hero checks, BTN bets $297.15, Hero?

This is a hand was played by one of my proteges. I will be commenting on the play of the hand.