Posts tagged Correctly
Advanced Poker Strategy – Using Your Table Position Correctly
Apr 29th
There are 3 areas of position in poker: the early position, middle position and late position. It is in relation to the button that goes around the table. Most beginner players do not take their position into account much, which is not right. This article will briefly explain the concept of table position, and how you can use your position to your advantage.
Advanced Poker Strategy Part 1: Early Position
The players to the immediate left of the big blind are players in the early position. Being in the early position means that the player is one of the first to act when the action starts. Being in the early position is considered to be a disadvantage. By being one of the first players to act, good opponents will usually have effective strategies to disrupt your play when they see what the early players do first.
Advanced Poker Strategy Part 2: Middle Position
Players to the left of players in the early position are in the middle position. Being in the middle position allows a player to watch the early position players first, but he still needs to consider the late position actions.
Advanced Poker Strategy Part 3: Late Position
Players in the late position are the last players to act in the round. Being in the late position allows a player to be in a situation where the hand has been checked around you, and have the opportunity to make a bluff at the pot and win it right there. Thus being in a late position is considered to be an advantage.
Being in the late position also gives a player an opportunity to be in a steal situation. If players ahead are checking while you are in a late position, it is a good sign that your opponents are not holding anything valuable, thus making bluffing safer. A player in the early or middle position would not know their opponents’ hand strength behind them, and randomly betting would be a very dangerous thing to do. It also allows a player to do a semi-bluff. This involves raising a player who bet out in the early or middle position, when he is drawing to a better hand. By doing this, your opponent would possibly get intimidated and fold if he only had an average hand, and makes him put the brakes on his own action and check to you on the turn if he calls your raise.
Being in different positions affects your current hand value significantly. Generally, being in an early position requires a player to play stronger hands, whereas being in a late position gives a player the option of playing drawing hands.
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Poker Tournament Strategy – Assessing Prize Structure Correctly
Mar 28th
There are many times in an online poker tournament that your opponent makes questionable plays with sub-par hands that leave you asking yourself things like: “What on Earth was he thinking?” Of course in the online poker world that is a very charitable way to rephrase it, but I hope you get the meaning. It’s usually even more astounding when such seemingly poor plays get rewarded, and all of a sudden, donky boy in seat 4 is the tournament chip leader, poised for a nice payout.
The reasoning of this article is not necessarily justification for the all the questionable plays that you see, but to perhaps enlighten you as to why some of the plays are made as a result of certain players really knowing and understanding the payout structure of a tournament.
Let’ take for example the 180 player multi-table sit and go tournaments at Poker Stars. This tournament pays the top 18 players or 10 percent of the field no matter what buy in you select. For the $4 buy in tournaments, first place can win you $216, a whopping ROI of 4800%. If you make the final table in 9th place you make about 300% ROI, nice but paltry compared to first, nonetheless a profit.
Here is where payouts get a little more complicated or for some, more simple, in this tournament. From 18th place to 10th place you earn $8.64 prize money or 100% ROI. All of these positions pay exactly the same.
Now making the money is no simple task, but it can be done on regular basis with a solid strategy behind you and a good hold of your emotions. That’s a good strategy for building your bankroll, but it’s not going to elevate your game level too soon either, by just inching into the money then fading away.
It’s during the in-the-money (ITM) stage that your risk window should be wide open, especially when the payouts for half the field are exactly identical. Shooting for that 4,800% ROI should much more analysis with regard to your tournament M and Q, as well as your hole cards. In fact, you can say that sitting in 14th place of 17 players left, while you are in the Orange MZone, your hole cards can actually matter very little compared to other factors.
This is also true if you were actually in 1st of 17 players left with a very healthy Green MZone stack and are faced with an all-in bet from a Red Mzone stack. In this spot should call with a wide array of hands like King-x suited, all kinds of connectors, any ace, any pair, and any two face cards. Some will call with any King or Queen as well. There is a poker calculator called Tournament Indicator that has a very unique feature called Match cards that lets you know how your hand measures up to potential hands your opponent may be pushing with.
The point is, in tournaments, you need to be aware of all of the indicators as well as the payout structure and marry that with your bankroll expectations. If you are able to do that with some precision, you may in fact realize that the donkey knew more than he let on.
Marty Smith has a free Poker Tournament Strategy video series that you can get just by signing up with email. he also reviews and tests all the online poker odds calculators on the market so you can watch them in action before you decide to buy that is right for you.