A poker player’s worst enemy is very often himself, not the other people at the table. Aside from poor poker strategy, a player is his own worst enemy when he lets emotions guide his decisions. The poker player is then said to be ‘on tilt’.

What does being on tilt mean?

Tilt is a state of mind that is feared by both new and experienced players for very good reasons. It usually occurs when a player repeatedly gets his premium holdings beaten by some dude who plays almost anything and always seems to get lucky. In frustration over his ridiculously unfair bad luck the player starts to play badly. Tilting also occurs when a player is tired or bored because he never gets any playable hands, or when some real life problem makes him astray. There are many factors which can be a cause of tilt in online poker.

The effects of tilt can cause various problems on the affected player. He may fold good hands just because he knows that he will be outdrawn anyway. He may play overly aggressive and try the most unlikely bluffs to win a pot. He might play starting hands that he normally would have folded without a thought. Whatever it is that the tilt causes the player to do it will definitely cost money. Even just a few hours of serious tilting can eat up the earnings from many days at the tables – and minutes at the online poker tables!

I’m not stupid so I won’t throw my money away!

You may think: “I’m smart and have a good portion of self control, I won’t be so stupid that I let my emotions take control over my play.” Yes you will! Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but sooner or later a series of losses will make you mad and you this will affect your decisions negatively. And this will cost you. And it will happen more than once. You have been warned!

That is some bad news, huh? Well, the good news is that since you know about this problem you can be prepared and therefore avoid any heavier losses caused by the dreaded tilt. You now know how important it is to control your temper at the table and by training this skill you’ll gradually be better at avoiding tilt, or at least identifying it earlier and quiting a session when you can see it’s negatively affecting your game.

Also, you now know that when you get that feeling of murderous rage after losing a pot that “should have been yours” the best thing to do, unless you can calm down quickly, is to stop playing immediately and come back some other time. Don’t play when you lose the most and enjoy it the least. Don’t play when you’re on tilt – and if you can do this then you’ll be streets ahead of the competition, because tilt is the biggest profit killer among online poker players.

It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been slacking! If I told you I’ve spent all this time reviewing my poker hands, I’d be lying. But I have recently spent some time looking over hands – and I found some massive leaks in my game. I’m aware that there are still a lot of poker players who don’t review their hands. So, my comeback post is going to focus on the importance of reviewing your poker hands.

In order to improve your poker game and gain an edge over your opponents it’s important to regularly analyse how you played hands and fix leaks or flawed logic. There are hand replaying tools out there if you prefer the more visual version, but even reading the raw hand history itself is also fine. The most obvious place to start is your losing hands. How many big blinds did you have left? What position did you get involved from? How did the betting go? (was it all-in pre-flop, or all-in on the flop with a hand, or chasing a draw, etc). Note down these details along with obviously the starting hand. As you go through more of your losing hands you will likely start to see trends that can indicate weaknesses. For example you might always find yourself pushing all-in from a short stack, or you might bust regularly with weak aces, getting dominating calls.

When you look at hands individually try not to be too results orientated. i.e. just because you lost the hand doesn’t necessarily mean you played it badly. Don’t try to fit a better line to all hands with the benefit of hindsight, some hands you can just write-off as unlucky. Take 5 minutes on the crucial hands to think through the betting line and if anything else could have been done better. And don’t just focus on hands you’ve lost, but pick out winning hands too. Yes, you might have won the hand, but was there a better way of playing it?

There are some great tools to help you analyze your poker hands, some are free, others are not. Some of the paid options include Poker Tracker and Hold’em Manager (I prefer Hold’em Manager – just a personal preference). These allow you to filter hand types or hand groups, so you can more easily see leaks. For example you may want to pull up the outcomes of all low pocket pairs. If these are showing as a loss then it could be that you’re over playing them.

If you find you’re regularly getting knocked out from a shortstack of around 12BBs or less, then you should go back over some of those whole tournaments and details. Are you passing up good chances to build a stack. Are you playing too cautiously and fearing your opponents have a decent hand too often? Sometimes it is better to take some more risks when your stack is more in the 20-30BB range rather than getting chipped down so often.

Another crucial anaylsis method is to use simulators. One of my favorite sites is Hold’em Resources, which is completely free. Use their tools to simulate the equity of your crucial hands. Pick out or note down hands where you had more than a 30% chip swing and got a showdown. Run the hands through a simulator at the points where the majority of chips went in. From this you will be able to simulate the EV of the hand, and compare the EV to the pot odds. So if it’s costing you 2000 chips to win a potential pot of 7000 then the pot odds are 2000/7000 or 26.6%. In ratios that is 2:7 or 1:3.5. Now if the simulated EV for your hand when those chips went in is greater than 26.6% then it was a good decision. There are some sites that take this process to a slighlty higher level such as Poker Stove (another free tool), where the simulation will be done against an opponent’s range of cards rather than their specific cards. Obviously whatever you use it is only really as good as the data you put in it, so if you are trying to work with ranges then take some time to think through what is most realistic.

It is also useful to discuss some hands with others and poker forums are ideal for this. You will usually get a very wide range of answers so the importance is to concentrate on the ones that make most sense to you. There are a lot of bad players out there and they will be offering opinions too. So use the forum replies to make you think more and consider different lines, or approaches, or elements, or factors. Never just blindly take the advice as gospel.

And remember, don’t rush to change a million things at once, but try to incorporate elements and see how they work out for you at your level.

Okay, this isn’t my hot cash game tip…. but one I recently read in an article by the excellent Victoria Coren, titled; How Do You Measure a Poker Player?  Here’s Victoria’s tip:

A great cash player gives the impression of playing far more loosely than he really does.

This might seem very obvious, but the greatest words of wisdom usually are. I couldn’t agree more with Victoria’s hot tip. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot more recently – my table image in live cash games.

When you play poker online you can sit for hours playing like a rock – and since players come and go with such frequency your table image doesn’t really matter too much. Of course online poker is a game of stats these days, and many people will be tracking your hand history – and the stats don’t usually lie. But when it comes to live poker you can foster an image of a loose aggressive, and there are no HUDs to counter the story you’re projecting.

In the past I would sit down at a cash game, one where I have no history with the players, and just patiently wait for the right cards. I might have folding everything for a good few laps before there was anything playable. By that time I was probably labelled as a rock. So when I did pick up a monster, guess what? Yeah that’s right…. no action. It’s amazing how quickly the other players will form an image of you as a player. That’s why now I take a different approach. I still play a very solid game, but I make a point of playing a few hands soon after sitting down – ideally the very first hand. It doesn’t have to mean big bets or even showing a bluff – in fact I prefer not to show my cards at all and keep my opponents guessing.

I find this new approach helps to dispel the notion that I might be a rock, which is what I am really. That first impression will last a long time – and can pay dividends. Now I just need to figure out if a flush beats a straight 🙂

Most online poker rooms include a feature that allows you to take notes on your opponents. This is extremely useful. Even though many online card rooms have enormous user bases, you’ll be surprised to find yourself playing against some of the same players frequently. By taking notes on these players, you can categorize and remember their strategies, and you’ll be better prepared to play against them and beat them in the future.

Learning Abbreviations

When preparing to take notes on your opponents, your first step is to learn and use some basic abbreviations. The pace of play in online poker is often very fast compared to live poker, and you’ll need to be able to take notes quickly and efficiently. Some abbreviations deal with betting position; EP is early position, MP is middle position, LP is late position, BTN is button, SB is small blind, BB is big blind. Other abbreviations have to do with betting strategies; PFR is preflop raise, 3x is three times the size of the big blind, C-bet is continuation bet, Chk is check, VB is value bet.

Some abbreviations indicate the types of hands that players are pursuing; Fdrw is a flush Draw, SDrw is straight draw, Gut is a gutshot straight draw, Back is a backdoor flush draw, TP is top pair, MP is a mid pair, BP is a bottom pair. Other notes might be an indication of what to do (or what not to do) against a particular player. For example, DNB means Do Not Bluff. You can obviously change these abbreviations as you see fit. As long as the system is efficient and works for you, your note taking will be useful.

Taking Notes on Playing Styles

When you start to utilize note taking in online poker, you should begin by paying careful attention to your opponents’ playing styles. You can categorize your adversaries in one of four ways: Tight-aggressive, Tight-passive, Loose-aggressive, and Loose-passive. A tight player brings only premium hands to the flop, and only brings a hand to the showdown when it’s still strong. Looser players see more flops and often end up in the showdown with a garbage hand.

An aggressive player will bet aggressively, while a passive player won’t invest much money in the pot regardless of the strength of his hand. These qualities can be used in combination when you’re taking your notes. It is advisable to use the first few hands of a poker game to categorize each player into one of these playing styles.

Other Considerations for Note Taking in Online Poker

After you establish a note on your opponent’s general playing style, you can start asking yourself more specific questions in order to make your notes more complete. Is your opponent calling excessively? Are they pursuing draws too often? Are they paying too much to bring these draws to the flop? Do they place too much value on top pair? Are they making sure to bring a good kicker to the showdown? What is the average size of their bets, and do their betting amounts directly correlate with the strength of their hand?

Alternatively, they might be using uniform betting sizes to cover their tracks and prevent you from detecting a betting tell. These are all important things to take note of when playing online poker.

The Importance of Consistency in Note Taking in Online Poker

As you’re taking notes, you’ll be able to choose whatever format works best for you. You might decide that your note will be a description of their playing style, their average bet size, the types of hands their playing, and any other warnings to remember about that player. Whatever you choose, make sure you’re consistent. If you make a note of Do Not Bluff for one player, be sure to make the same note for every player who you’ve decided can’t be bluffed. Incomplete or inconsistent notes can be misleading when you see a player two weeks after your first encounter with him.