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Posts Tagged ‘Tips’

Mike Sexton – 6 Tips About “Learning To Play Your Position Well In Poker”

In poker they say position is everything. So what is it? Well it’s where a player is seated in relation to the dealer, therefore establishing that player’s place in the order of betting. Therefore certain positions have pro’s and cons to them.

Mike Sexton obviously know’s a fair bit about this and this weeks is all about how to make postion work for you. Last time around you might remember he talked about ‘Changing Gears In Poker’ and you can read those tips here.

Learn To Play Your Position Well

Tip No.1 The earlier your position, the stronger your hole cards should be.

Tip No.2 The later your position in poker, the more types of hands you can safely play.

Tip No.3 The reason for being cautious about the hands you play ‘up front’ is that everybody gets to act after you act.

Tip No.4 When you’re sitting in late position and nobody has raised in front of you, you should raise almost every time when a tight player is in the blinds.

Tip No.5 If you’re the first one to enter the pot, you’re better off to either raise the pot or throw your hand away.

Tip No.6 Generally, if you’re planning to call if somebody bets, you probably are far better off to make the first bet yourself.

In poker when we talk about “changing gears” we’re talking about a player’s capability to alter how they’re play against a rival.

And so in this weeks lesson Mike thought he’d give you a few tips on how and when to change gears. Last time around you might remember he talked about Calling Stations and you can read those tips here.

Learn To Change Gears

1. Being able to change gears is a key to being successful at poker, especially when you’re playing No Limit Hold’em.

2. Changing gears means that you change your tempo, going from tight to loose and vice versa.

3. You have to play tight poker in certain situations, and then change to a faster gear by playing aggressively on other occasions.

4. The great poker players all know how to change gears. They know when it’s time to change from a tight strategy to a loose strategy, and when to go back.

5. Being able to vary your style of play and keep your opponents guessing is what separates average players from great players.

6. When you change gears, you make it tough for your opponent to put you on a hand.

This week Mike’s back with more top tips about how to be successful at poker. Last time around he talked about how to win at poker and you can of course read those 8 Tips here. Although this week’s lesson isn’t very long it’s one of the most important. Here he talks about correct decision making.

Correct Decision Making

1. The great thing about poker is that the more experience you get, the better you are able to make correct decisions.

2. The better your decision making skills in poker, the more you can widen your starting-hand requirements because you understand more about how to play after the flop.

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If you’re new to the fantastic game of poker then one person you should definetly be taking advice from is Mike Sexton. You’ll probably know him as the co-host of the World Poker Tour TV series with Vince Van Patten.

With a very unique manner and his ability to really bring poker alive to the masses Mike has probably single handedly got more people to take up the sport than anyone before or after him.

And so we thought it’d be fun to share his personal tips from over the years with us all. Here we’re going to highlight five tips for the beginner, stay tuned for more!

Mike Sextons 5 Tips For Beginners

Tip No.1 For people who are relatively new to the game, my recommendation is to just play solid poker rather than trying to make any fancy plays.

Tip No.2 If you’re new to poker, wait for good starting hands and play them straightforwardly.

Tip No.3 If you are an inexperienced player, you cannot be successful by playing a lot of pots. You simply have to fold a lot of hands in No Limit Hold’em.

Tip No.4 Don’t get cute with hands like A-3 offsuit, and try to impress everybody by gambling.

Tip No.5 Tom McEnvoy wrote in poker, “Your mission is to put yourself in a position to get lucky.”

Take Your Poker To The Next Level Today!

We’re back with another 3 Great Poker Tips from Mike Sexton, who you’ll probably know the co-host of the World Poker Tour TV series with Vince Van Patten.

Knowing poker inside and out for many people Mike really is the man that introduced them to the world of poker.

His unique manner and ability to bring poker to the masses through his unique commentary style in a simple yet captivating way has resulted in many of us taking up the game.
So once again we thought it’d be fun to share his personal tips from over the years with us all.
So here’s another 3 Tips with plenty more to come:

Tip No.1 Calling stations are dream opponents. They are non-threatening players against whom you can play with confidence.

Tip No.2 The difference between great players and good players is that great players can put their opponents on a hand better than others.

Tip No.3 Once you can put an opponent on a hand, you are going to be more successful than the Average Joes or Janes that you’re playing against.

Mike Sexton knows poker inside and out for many people he’s the man that introduced them to the world of poker.

You’ll probably know him as the co-host of the World Poker Tour TV series next to Vince Van Patten.

Over the years Mike’s ability to bring poker to the masses through his unique commentary style in a simple yet captivating way has resulted in many of us taking up the game.

Here he thought it’d be fun to share his personal tips from over the years with us all.

In this first part we present 3 tips and there’s still plenty more to come:

Tip No.1 The difference between winners and losers in poker is that winners bet most of the time and losers call most of the time.

Tip No.2 To be successful at poker, especially No Limit Hold’em, you need to be an aggressive player. You must take the lead in the pot.

Tip No.3 To illustrate the downfall of continuous calling, we have an old saying in poker: “If you can’t beat a calling station, you can’t beat anybody”.

If you look at Tobias Reinkemeier’s results it’s plain to see that he basically doesn’t play in events with a buy-in of lese than €5,000, he’s a fixture in the high rollers, the super high rollers and the so-big-they-haven’t-come-up-with-a size-to-adequately-describe-them -yet rollers.

The Tough Get Going…

Those events though, according to the German are getting tougher. ““It’s obviously always getting tougher because the businessmen are very smart people. They’ve been successful in other parts of their life so naturally that when they keep playing, especially in tough fields they get better and keep learning.”

Wise words, and he’s come a long way then since his humble poker beginnings, “I played a bit with friends with first, then I saw an advert on TV for poker, where you got $ 50 for free, so why not give it a go. So I signed up, took the $ 50 and never had any intentions of depositing any of my own money. And I started off playing really low like 5c/10c cash games.”

Tobias Top 5 Tips

And he’s therefore in quite a good spot to pass on advice about how to get better here’s his top tips:

1) I think the best way to get better is mainly by playing a lot.

2) You always have to take the game seriously and not get lazy

3)I think a lot of new players over estimate themselves that’s probably the biggest mistake in poker, that players are not realistic about their own ability. It’s always easy when you win to think it’s skill and when you run bad to always say its variance.

4) Bluffing is a big part of the game, for newcomers you have to be careful you really have to look at your opponents and see what they’re doing to make it work.

5) At low stakes when I was starting out I don’t think I really every bluffed because the players would always call so there’s no point in bluffing. The most important thing about bluffing is to know your opponent and know if he’s going to fold or not.

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My moving day is inching ever closer and I’m no closer to figuring out the ‘where‘ portion of it all. I’m actually no closer to moving either as I’ve yet to actually go and get boxes or organise anything. Is it still considered ‘being in denial’ if you’re embracing the denial? I’ve got both arms wrapped tightly around my denial and am giving it a big, warm hug. All of that being said, I suppose I actually should begin to think about packing as I need to be out of here in around a weeks time. Nothing like leaving things til the last minute! I kind of think it gives life that extra bit of spice.

WSOP 2012 time

Thankfully, it’s nearly time for the WSOP in Vegas so that pretty much takes care of my summer plans and I can defer the ‘where to move’ question for at least a couple of months. I’m enjoying everyone’s suggestions on twitter for where I should considering making my new home so keep them coming! In the meantime, I’m cramming as much as possible into my last weeks here in Santa Barbara with my friends. Lots of time spent eating, chatting and walking on the beach. It doesn’t get much better than this!

Full Moon Night

Last weekend was the largest full moon of the year – or as some people liked to call it, the potential werewolf apocalypse. It was absolutely gorgeous! I walked down to the pier with my neighbours to get a proper look at it (and drink wine on the pier, the perfect compliment to moon-gazing) and it was just as impressive as I’d thought. Granted, it looks a little less impressive in this photo where I’m trying to ‘crush’ it, a la Kids In The Hall:

Hopefully the craziness of the full moon didn’t affect any of you during PokerFest II!

Hi Annie: My question is when I get a good hand on the flop, and I want to slow play. What is the correct bet in this situation? For example: I have an Ace High Straight.

Thanks, Theresa

This seems like a simple question but, as with everything in poker, it is actually quite complex.  What it comes down to is the question of when it is appropriate to slow play a hand.  There are several factors that go into the slow play.  Let me touch on a couple.

1) What is the texture of the board?  Is it coordinated or uncoordinated? If the flop is coordinated (like there is two of a suit on the board) then you should not slowplay.  First, if you slowplay and you opponent hits the flush on the turn you have only yourself to blame because you did not make your opponent pay to hit his or her flush. With one to come, a flush is slightly over a 4 to 1 dog to hit.  As long as you bet at least half the pot then you opponent is only getting 3 to 1 at best.  That is bad math for your opponent and good math for you.

Second, If you slowplay a coordinated board then when the texture completes, like the flush card hits, you now make your decisions very difficult for yourself.  This concept is blind to whether or not your opponent actually hit the flush. The problem is that regardless of what your opponent is actually holding, if he bets you now have a tough decision that you did not need to open yourself up to.  By slowplaying the flop you have done nothing to define your opponent’s hand and now, when the flush card hits, you have no idea what he has or whether your hand is good or not.  That means you are more likely to make mistakes on the hand.

2)  How many people are in the pot?  If there a many people in the pot it is almost never correct to slowplay because you can think of almost every board as coordinated.  In a heads up pot if the board has flush and straight possibilities there are usually over 15 scary cards for you.  But in a multiway pot, even if each individual opponent only has a few outs, when you add them all together it can come to the same number of cards out against you as on a board that looks very coordinated.  For example, let’s say you have a hand like A6s and the board comes A62.  Your opponents are holding AQ, AK and JJ.  While each of them individually is in very bad shape against you, as a group they have 8 outs, basically the same as a flush draw.  So it is very important to generally play faster in multiway pot.

3) The last piece of the puzzle to look at is to ask yourself what you would do if you didn’t have such a big hand?  For example, if you have a hand like JJ, you raised preflop and someone in the big blind called.  The board comes KJ3 rainbow.  Your opponent checks to you.  This is a bad time to slowplay the JJ because you would be betting here pretty much every time you get checked to in this heads up pot.  By checking you are alerting you opponent that there is something weird about your hand. 

Let’s say you opponent holds KQ.  If you just bet the pot, which looks like a continuation bet, you are probably going to get a lot of money out of him.  But if you check, the KQ now becomes suspicious of your hand and he is likely to slow down drastically, maybe even getting to fold on the turn.  By slowplaying, which you thought was to extract money out of your opponent, you actually can cost yourself money against someone who has an okay hand but not a great one (which is what people usually have in hold’em).  Against a great hand it works out the same anyway because you are getting that guy’s money anyway.

So, it turns out, slowplaying is usually not correct.