Moving On Up
Improving your game to the next level...
For the past couple of weeks, I have been travelling the country, going all the way out to Vancouver and back hosting some corporate poker events. And part of my duties at these events was to teach an advanced hold ‘em poker seminar for the folks that attended these events. And it gave me an opportunity to reflect on the basic premises of moving from beginner to intermediate poker player. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a look at what I came up with.
1) Information: poker is a game of information. Learning to uncover and decipher information is the difference between an amateur and Phil Ivey. Amateurs often commit the sin of simply calling all the time. And I try to teach them that calling often provides you with little or no information about what your opponents might have. Often, too, I have players ask me questions about how I would play a certain hand that they had encountered. They are often shocked when I ask them a series of questions before I can answer. ‘What were the blinds? What was your stack size? What was your opponents stack size? How active had their opponent been in the game?’ All of this is relevant and crucial to how a hand played out. Information. The more information you can put together, the better your decision making will be.
2) Position: If you don’t play position in poker, you will not win. It’s just that simple. I often relate the story of the oh-so-modest Phil Hellmuth’s unfortunate experiment with position. Hellmuth spotted an inferior player the dealer button in a heads up match. The lesser player crushed Hellmuth. Handily. You cannot play poker consistently out of position and win. A hand that is worth playing on the button should often be thrown away instantly in early position. Playing position simply relates back to the first point: acting last gives you the benefit of having more information before you have to make a decision.
3) You cannot bluff a bad player. Repeat after me. You cannot bluff a bad player. Bad players cannot see past the two cards they hold in their hand. They don’t see flops that contain flush or straight possibilities, or over cards. They only see their own cards, and as a result, they can’t be bluffed. It is also more difficult to read bad players than you might think. That’s because they show strength with weak hands because they really do believe their hands are good! Pocket fives on an Ace/king/queen flop? Still a good hand in the bad players minds...
4) Learn the math. Learning to calculate outs, and hand percentages is simple. Its basic math, and very easy to learn. Once you learn it, you will stop making idiotic gutshot straight calls. Pot odds vs card odds is a basic skill. Learn it, and you will instantly improve.
5) Don’t tap the aquarium. I have discussed this before in this space, and it still bears repeating. When someone makes a bad play at the table that turns lucky and beats you, SHUT UP! Just say ‘nice hand’, and hope they make the same mistake again. WHY do people insist on telling bad players about their mistakes? So that they get better and can now beat you? Seriously... just shut up.
6) Tells. People love to learn about tells. When I’m teaching these little seminars, I try to pass on a few tips, but the best tip I can give anyone is... Joe Navarro. The ex-FBI agent is simply brilliant and MANDATORY reading for anyone who wants to improve their poker game. Go to his website (www.navarropoker.com) and order a book or video. It is an investment that you will never regret.
The great thing about poker is that it’s easy to learn. But, like many of these types of things, the more you learn, the more you realize you need to learn. So keep studying, learning, and improving. Not too much, though... I don’t need the competition.