Playing more poker isn’t the only way to win more money at the tables. Education is just as important as every second you spend playing hands. Education will help you to make all the right decisions in nearly every situation. Just as you dedicate a certain amount of time a day to playing; you should be spending an equal amount of time bettering yourself at the game by all sorts of education. There are articles, videos, and forums that you can view to become better. All of these will help build your knowledge of poker, which will in turn make you money.

Poker Forums (Hand Histories):

When you are actually playing poker you are learning, but there is a lot of down time because you are folding a lot of hands. When you read forum posts, they are strictly the interesting hands that you would have questions about if you yourself came across them on the tables. Not only do you get to review the hand and see what yourself and others think about the situation, but you also have no risk of your own money involved! The best thing about education is that for the most part it doesn’t cost you anything. Posting your own hand histories is very important as well. This makes it possible for other people to see the approach you took in the hand and your reasoning, letting them give you feedback about what you did well and what you did poorly.

Poker Videos:

Another great form of education is watching pro videos. Watching a professional play can help show you the right plays to make and more importantly WHY. When you watch a video, you should be taking notes. This helps you to look for key things that you are doing wrong when you yourself play. If you are unsure about situations to re-raise then you can watch a few videos and look for that specifically. Having the ability to do this is extremely useful especially with monitoring your own play. If you see that you aren’t stealing the blinds enough then you can watch for how often a professional does it to help you get on track with your steal attempts. Taking notes will help the learning process a lot because it forces you to answer the question “Why am I taking this action in this situation?” which will ultimately help you to better understand the game as a whole.

Poker Strategy Articles:

Strategy articles are also a good source of information intake. You can find strategy articles on almost any element of the game. By reading strategy articles you can look at a certain aspect of the game and have it broken down for you. Taking notes on strategy articles is also a good idea. Again, understanding why you do certain things will help you in situations like it. If you read an article about loosening up on the button, you might not read about the exact situation that you will be in, but you will read about a situation much like it. Taking notes to help understand “why” will help you relate the situations with one another, increasing your ability to make the right play.

Education is the heart of bettering your skill level of poker. The more you know the better you are. The better you are the more money you make which is the ultimate goal. Reading articles, posting and responding on poker forums, and watching videos will all build your foundation of skill at poker. Taking notes will force you to understand the game more and ultimately win more money.

It’s that time of year when millions of people decide to stop smoking, start an exercise regime, or change one of endless other things in their life. For the 90% of the population who decide to do something different for the new year, it usually lasts until the 2nd week of January. Yes that’s very negative from me, but it’s pretty accurate. Good luck to all of you who do decide to make changes and let’s hope you’re in the 10% group.

Of course this is a poker blog, so let’s talk poker. The key to success at poker is improving your game, plugging leaks (don’t say you have none!), and doing it all over again. While you should always be studying poker, reading the latest poker strategy books, articles, analyzing your stats, etc - now is a good a time as any to reflect on your game and start afresh for the 2010. Here’s a brief list of what I’m going to do come January 1st 2010:

* Spend more time reviewing my hands after each session. I usually play 90 minute cash game sessions, and I might have a quick look at some hands. From January 1st I’m going to play 75 minute sessions and spend 15 minutes or more reviewing some poker hands - ones I played well, and ones I played badly.

* Controlling Tilt. I try my best to avoid tilting, but I know I could do better. I’m going to play much closer attention to this part of my game, and if I feel myself tilting I’ll leave the tables immediately. I think this one will have a massive impact on my bottom line.

* Table Selection. I’m going to be more selective in which tables I play at, and stop being lazy by sitting in a poker game with no fish. I’m going to leave and rejoin tables regardless of how well or badly I’m doing, but based on the quality of the table. I should do this anyway, but I often fail.

* Play at more online poker sites. I keep meaning to play at more online poker rooms, but I always seem to end up on Full Tilt. I might (haven’t decided on this yet) avoid playing on Full Tilt completely in January. You could say I’m going on a Full Tilt detox. Though I think this one will only last till the 2nd week of January.

* Blog more. I’ve been a little lazy updating the blog lately, so I’ll try harder with this.

Well that’ll do for me. If you’re making any plans for 2010 then good luck with them - see you at the tables!

Recently I’ve been playing more pot limit cash games in place of no limit hold’em. On many online poker sites there just isn’t the choice of playing pot limit hold’em, so it’s really just limited to the two big sites; Full Tilt and Poker Stars. My preferred choice at the moment is Full Tilt, simply because it’s the best site for cash games due to offering rakeback.

The reason I like pot limit games rather than no limit is quite simple. I find it more skilful and there’s less players who are willing to make huge pre-flop bets - which I like to avoid. Usually players who make pre-flop bets that are 20x the big blind, usually fall into one single category; maniacs. Don’t get me wrong it’s good to play these donkeys, but I prefer to commit chips post-flop, rather than pre-flop. Calling huge bets pre-flop without premium hands is far too risky. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve had QQ and faced someone holding AA or KK, who made massive oversized bets pre-flop. This just doesn’t happen in pot limit.

Now you might be thinking the players must be better at pot limit. But this isn’t what I’ve discovered at Full Tilt. There are a lot of players “playing scared” so it’s easy to win. I am finding a better win rate at pot limit than I have been with no limit.

If you’re used to playing no limit hold’em then you’ll have to learn to adjust to pot limit play. Obviously you are constrained and can only bet the size of the pot. Slow playing monster hands down to the river is a poor strategy. Because once you get to the river pot may be so small that it barely becomes worth winning. But as with any successful cash game strategy - you should be building big pots for the big hands, and keeping pots small for the not so big hands. So pot limit hold’em suits players who like to play the correct cash game strategy.

I’ve been thinking again about my recent (and very long) post on equity vs. survival in MTTs - and by survival I don’t mean playing too tight-weak-passive, and as a result have no chance of making the money, let alone winning. This is of course not a long term winning poker strategy, and not what I was advocating.

Maybe an example is the way to explain it better. I read recently a report about Hellmuth playing in a big event. At one point he had the nut flush draw and two overcards, giving him 15 outs with two cards to come. The other guy had a pair and went all in. Hellmuth could have called for all his chips at a point where at worst he was likely to be around 50/50 to win, and he was getting much better pot odds that that. He folded rather than risk going out. Some of the other pros criticised the play saying he had the odds to call. But it isn’t so daft if you think you are the better player and if your priority is winning this particular tournament rather than, say, moving across to the cash game in the corner or signing up to an event online. Basically by calling you are agreeing to take a close gamble, and if the other guy is the weaker player that is exactly what he wants. Why give a poor player what he wants?

I remember Sklansky in Theory of Poker talking about the (few) times when you might give up +EV. He says that you are right to do this if by giving up a small edge now you will be alive to take a bigger edge later. That kind of fits with my thesis: if you see your current stack of tournament chips as a finite resource then you are right to wait for the best opportunity before committing them. This is because losing knocks you out of the game. But if you see this current tournament stack as just one buy in (because you can buy into another tournament in a few minutes if you lose) then you are right to take every edge. This is because if you lose, you are still in the game. It depends what you mean when you talk about ‘the game’.

As I said previously, when I first read Harrington I was shocked by the number of times he recommends calling with marginal hands in tournaments. What surprised me wasn’t the fact that he played the hands, but that he let somebody else go all in and then called for all his chips, even when he had a big stack and could have passed the gamble. So it was the (apparently) passive nature of his play that alarmed me.

Anyway, I hope this gives some of you food for thought!

I used to be firmly in the ’survival’ camp for MTTs, and one of the things I struggled with when I first read Dan Harrington’s books was his willingness to call with marginal hands - regardless of survival odds - if he thought he was getting the right pot odds. I guess my ’survivalist’ thinking was based on books I read before I came to Harrington - in particular books by TJ Cloutier and David Sklansky. (In fact a lot of Cloutier’s published advice can be summed up as ‘take no chances, stick around and hope to get lucky at the end’ - the perfect survivalist creed!)

A lot of survival thinking is based on the assumption that once you are out of the tournament you are in some sense ‘finished’. That’s clearly true if you are a small-time player who has won a once-in-a-lifetime seat in a major event. This could be your only shot at playing in a big event, so early on you might choose to fold your JJ against your opponent’s massive all-in with AK even though you are getting the odds to make calling correct.

The idea that you are ‘finished’ if you bust is also true (to a lesser extent) if you are a big-time pro playing an event that means a lot to you (the WSOP main event, say). Although you can buy in again next year you only have a limited number of years left to play that particular event. This was even more true when people like Cloutier and Sklansky were learning their trade - for years the only tournaments were the WSOP events - but it also seems to influence younger players like Phil Hellmuth, who fold a lot of 50/50s quite deep into tournaments. Hellmuth seems to think he is so good that he will always find better spots to get his money in. But I wonder also if his desire for bracelets and prestige influences him. In his mind each opportunity to win an event is a one-off chance, so the tighter, more survivalist poker is a natural way for him to play.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the idea of being ‘finished’ once you bust out just doesn’t apply so much these days, which is why Harrington’s approach is probably more correct more of the time. This is especially true with day-to-day online MTTs. If I bust out of my 8pm MTT in the first hand I just buy into the 8.10 event on another site. My approach becomes more like that of a traditional cash game player - take all the value you can get, and reach into your bankroll when you need to buy back in.

To some extent, then, I feel that your personal priorities should dictate how you play. In my case, if the event is big, a rarity, prestigious, or if I travelled a long way to get there or was down to my last buy in then I would be right to play more in survival mode and turn down small EV edges in order to stay in the tourney. The same applies if the only game open if I bust out is a cash game. But if it was just another $50 MTT on Poker Stars or something I should be more inclined to take even small amounts of value, because at the end of the year that is what leads to the best return. And if I actually preferred cash games I would be right to take small edges in tournaments so that if I was going to bust out I could do it sooner rather than later and move over to my favourite game earlier.

Some might say that in turning down small edges in big tournaments I would be giving up too much. I think that’s probably right if you view all results at the end of the year as a whole, because by taking every small edge I can I will make more long term. However, I think I’m right too that a more cautious approach might increase my chance of doing well in this particular event.

Put another way, if I call with a good draw all-in against nine other players in the first hand of every MTT I play, and this situation repeats every day for a year, then at the end of the year I will have a ton of money because when I win that hand I will usually make the final table of the event. But if I need to survive this particular pot , because it is the only one this year that could get me a bracelet or a major cash finish, I might be right to fold the draw and wait for a situation where I am actually favourite to win the hand.

In all this I’m assuming that equity in tournaments is the same concept as in cash games - which seems to be Harrington’s point of view as well. This isn’t strictly true, because in a cash game every chip has the same cash value while in a tournament the more chips you win the less they are worth. (Malmuth explains this at length in every book he ever wrote. ) Despite this, most people now seem to agree that going for the win (as opposed to surviving into a slightly higher finish) is the best long-term approach to MTTs.