The Poker Lab Rat

After honing their games online for awhile, many players decide to take the next step and test their skills in a live poker room. For some, the transition comes easily but, for others, the differences between playing at a computer and at a live table can be difficult to overcome.

For many online players, one of the hardest adjustments to make is to the speed – or slowness – of live play. Where you may easily see 50, 60 or more hands an hour if you multi-table at home, you’ll be lucky to see 20 or more hands during an hour of live play. The game just doesn’t move as fast. Some players adjust to the “boredom” of live play by listening to music and zoning out while they’re not involved in a hand.

While I don’t personally object to listening to music at the table, I prefer to chat with some of the players seated near me during the game. First of all, there’s a nice social aspect to playing live – if you have a good table – that you just don’t get online. Secondly, chatting with your fellow tablemates may help you to determine what kind of players they are. Is the guy next to you just killing time at a $5/$10 table while he’s waiting for a bigger game? Is he in town on vacation and just playing a little poker for the fun of it? Is he a regular?

These little bits of information can help you categorize your opponents and determine what kinds of players they might be; serious, casual, aggressive, etc. Remember, the more information you can gather, the better decisions you’ll be able to make when you’re involved in a big hand. This brings me to another important distinction between online and live play – focusing on your opponent.

When you’re playing online, you’re working with a much more limited amount of information than you are live. Sure, you may be able to calculate how often a player raises or re-raises from the button and keep track of their statistics, but when you get right down to it, you’re playing your game based on your two hole cards and the patterns you can establish about your opponents. When you’re playing live poker, on the other hand, you have a lot more information that you can factor into your decisions.

How is your opponent betting or sitting at the table? Are they confident? Do they look scared? Does your opponent’s demeanor change when they’re involved in a hand? Do they talk more? Less? Are they tilting? Drunk? Loose? Because of all of the extra information available to you at a live game, I believe it’s much easier to make reads on your opponents and, in turn, to put them on a very specific range of hands – or hand – if you’re really paying attention to what’s going on at the table. One of the biggest mistakes I see many online players make when they first start playing live is that they overlook this extra information and play a very “general” game rather than focusing in on a specific opponent.

My advice for these players is simple; slow down, focus, think. While you don’t want to take two minutes to contemplate every single play, there’s nothing wrong with going into the tank every once in awhile during a live game or tournament. If you’re paying attention to the action and your opponents, there’s a lot more information that you have to process and this sometimes takes some time. Think about how the hand has played out – and about how your opponent has played the hand – and you’ll find that your game will improve.

ABOUT JORDAN  ’iMsoLucky0′ MORGAN

Oklahoma based, Morgan has amassed over $1 million in career earnings to date and has made 2 WSOP Final Tables with 8 WSOP cash finishes to his name. Jordan “iMsoLucky0” Morgan plays online at Full Tilt Poker and has won numerous online tournaments, including Full Tilt Poker’s weekly $750K event. Join him at a table sometime!

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Day 1b of the main event is now complete after 1,157 players started and whittled down to 621 players who would come back for Day 2.

There were plenty of high profile eliminations with former champions Greg Reymer, and Jamie Gold going early and Daniel Negreanu, Lee Watkinson, Ted Forrest, Kenny Tran and Irish player Andy Black also all taking the long lonely walk of elimination.

Leading the way is Ben Sarnoff who built his stack to 177,000. Just behind Sarnoff is Brian Schaedlich with 156,000. He qualified via a $130 satellite at Mountaineer Race Track in West Virginia. This is Schaedlich’s first time in Las Vegas.

Robert Mizrachi managed to build his stack to 131,000 and finds himself in fourth spot. Two spots behind him is Canadian Marc Karam with 113,000. 2008 WSOP Player-of-the-Year Erick Lindgren found himself at the feature table for the entire day and wound up in the top 20 in chips with 93,325.

The 616 players who survived the day will return on Tuesday at Noon PT and combine with the 636 players left from Day 1a action. Mark Garner fron Day 1a is still the current overall chip leader with 194,900.

It has begun!

The “main event” of the WSOP - the World Championship No-Limit Texas Hold’em (Event 54) started on Thursday, as Day 1A got underway. It’s known as “1A” because there are so many potential entrants that the organisers have split the first day into FOUR seperate sections.

So Day 1a finished and Mark Garner leads the way with 194,900. Garner, who finished 25th in 2006, made a run late in the day to finish on top.

Although the organisers had allowed for up to 3,000 entrants each day only 1,297 players started playing today and by the end only 636 of those remained.

One TV personality who lasted the day was celebrities former sitcom star Ray Romano who finished up t with 61,025 in chips and was happy with his play.

Romano said “I played tight as all hell and I got a couple of hands and I made a little bit of money, but I could have made more money. I fell asleep reading Doyle Brunson’s book last night.”

You can buy a copy of Doyle Brunson’s Super Series at the PokerLabrat.com Amazon Poker book page … and check out which other books the poker pro’s recommend too …

Here’s an interesting opinion piece off the Bodog Beat News Ticker:

It is now a mere 2 days until the main event of the WSOP begins.

Established in 1968, it was originally little more than a home game as the players had to receive the nod before they could attend. Clearly this was against the spirit of poker. Benny Binion, casino owner and card sharp, hauled it to over to Binion’s Horseshoe and started the process that caused it to evolve to the current format.

In 1971, there were only 6 entrants and the first prize was a mere $30,000. In 2006, swelled by online qualifiers, the tournament saw 8,773 hopefuls contribute a $10,000 entry fee which ultimately handed Jamie Gold a 12m dollar pay day.

It is big business and it appeals to a wide audience, which presumably explains why the event attracts a wide range of sponsors, including a Pepsi branded energy drink and a medicine to cure erectile dysfunction. (Intriguingly, it was originally claimed that Coca-Cola had a stiffening effect on its male drinkers so maybe the cola wars are now being fought under cover.)

With so much money on the table, it was inevitable that it would be subject to corporate take-over and attract the interests of TV.

In 2004, Harrah’s Entertainment bought The Horseshoe and the WSOP brands. In 2005, the company moved the events to Harrah’s Casino and they, in their ultimate wisdom, have decided to plonk the start date for this year’s final tournament on July 3.

However, it is the latest act of tinkering that is causing the greatest consternation: on July 14, the field will be reduced to 9 players but they will have to wait 114 days until they resume the action.

Between July 14 and November 9, ESPN will air tapes of the action up to the final table and then will cover the action live.

In my humble opinion it is simply unacceptable.

Poker has a history of marathon one-to-one battles in which the participants gradually reveal their strengths and weaknesses. The original point of the contest was to be the last man standing after a battle of endurance and mental strength. Now, with the players experiencing such a huge gap, they will be able to receive coaching or watch tapes of their opponents. No one will return to the game playing in the same style they were using in July.

The lucky, inexperienced punter has the potential to return as a Wikiplayer, having absorbed comment from a variety of sources and having had his kinks ironed out. However, it favours the established pros and they know it: Daniel Negreanu, has said:”You’re going to see some really kind of more sophisticated play [with a] different dynamic.”

If you need a translator, what he actually said is: TV has been good to me and I’m not going to stir controversy by criticising a ludicrous decision. It is possible that it will attract more people to poker but it still makes little sense as a scheduling decision. The majority of ESPN’s poker viewers have far more distractions for their couch time in November: the NFL, NBA and NHL.

In July, even the most ardent of baseball fans can appreciate a respite to the near constant thwacking of its season and poker offers the thrill of risk that is not replicated on the golf course. If you are still in any doubt that is a terrible decision, consider the giant of the latter sport, Tiger Woods.

He plays events over four consecutive days and, typically, triumphs over the psychological and environmental conditions. He combines tremendous skill with sublime intuition but also displays great mental toughness and it gives him a great edge over his opponents.

If the final round were subject to a hiatus, would it not slightly dent your perception of a truly magnificent champion?

We will definitely be keeping you posted with news, but in the meantime play poker online with Bodog Poker.

For more info on popular US-friendly online poker site Bodog Poker check out the latest Bodog Poker review here at PokerLabRat.com.

Thuan “Scotty” Nguyen, the man best-known for the use of the word “baby” in nearly every other sentence, won the prestigious $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship in the early hours of Monday morning, after a titantic final table.

The first five players were eliminated in a little less than six hours – the final two eliminations didn’t come for another five hours and 45 minutes. In that time the three players combined to play 178 hands.

Erick Lindgren eventually finished in 3rd place winning $781,440 as he was eliminated by Nguyen in a Stud hand sometime early on Monday morning around 4:30am.

That left Michael De Michelle and Nguyen in a heads-up contest that lasted only about 40 minutes before Nguyen won a stud-8 hand to claim the bracelet, the Chip Reese memorial trophy and $1,989,120 in first place prize money.

HONOUR ROLL - THE LAST 16
————————————
1. Scotty Nguyen $1,989,120
2. Mike DeMichele $1,243,200
3. Erick Lindgren $781,440
4. Matt Glantz $568,320
5. Lyle Berman $444,000
6. Barry Greenstein $355,200
7. Huck Seed $284,160
8. Patrick Bueno $230,880
9. Ralph Perry $177,600
10. Raymond Davis $177,600
11. David Bach $159,840
12. Phil Ivey $159,840
13. Daniel Negreanu $142,080
14. Joseph Michael $142,080
15. Andrew Bloch $124,320
16. Doyle Brunson $124,320

Recently, Andy Bloch blogged about the perils and pitfalls of playing big cards - A-K, A-Q, etc. - when they don’t connect with the flop. Like Andy, I think learning to play these kinds of hands well, adds an important weapon to any player’s arsenal. Of course, like any weapon, you have to approach these hands carefully to ensure that they don’t blow up in your face.

One of the most important safety tips I can give in regards to “big” hands is to be especially cautious when you’re playing them from early position. I believe in this so strongly in fact that I won’t even play A-Q unsuited from under the gun at a full table. It’s just too easy to get into trouble with this hand and cost yourself valuable chips.

In my opinion, the smartest thing you can do with hands like A-K in early position is mix up your play as much as possible. That means you’re going to sometimes want to raise with these hands and, at other times, you’re going to want to limp with them. Why? Because by mixing up how you play in early position, you’ll make it harder for your opponents to figure out what kinds of hands you really are playing. Of course, there are some other things to keep in mind when adopting this strategy, the most important of which is that if you’re going to limp with big hands in early position, you also need to limp with small hands like 6-7 suited.

By the same token, if you’re going to be raising with hands like A-K, you also need to sometimes raise with your smaller hands. Of course, you don’t want to play complete garbage from under the gun, but you shouldn’t be scared to sometimes pop the pot with a less than premium holding. If you get called, you may hit something like two pair on the flop and, if you get re-raised before the flop, you can easily throw your hand away without costing yourself too many chips. Again, it comes down to keeping your opponents off-guard.

While some players argue that you should always raise your big hands, I think limping with something like A-K in early position provides another potential benefit. For example, let’s say I limp from under the gun and three other players limp behind me before the button puts in a raise. Because of the amount of money in the pot, it’s likely that the button is raising with a very wide range of hands. Depending on my read, I might just flat-call his raise and try to out-play him after the flop or I might even re-raise before the flop and try to take down a substantial pot right then and there.

If I had raised with my A-K in this position, chances are that none of the limpers would have put any chips in the pot and I might only get flat called by the player on the button. By limping with my hand, I can get some extra money in the pot and put myself in a position to re-raise pre-flop. If the button was just trying to steal from position, he’s likely to lay down and let me take the pot. If he calls, I can play the hand cautiously if I miss the flop and, possibly, take a down a monster pot if I connect.

Of course, there’s no “right” way to play a hand like A-K from early position. Instead, look around your table and determine what kind of opponents you’re facing, and how aggressively you want to play against them. Mix up your game and you should be able to make your big hands pay off at crucial times.

KT

A resident of Downey, California, Kenny is one of the best cash game players in the world. He’s also “not bad” at tournament play with over $2 Million in Career Tournament Earnings to his name plus a WSOP bracelet (Winner of the 2008 WSOP $10K Heads-Up No-Limit Hold ‘em World Championship).

Kenny Tran plays online exclusively at FullTiltPoker.com - and you can join him at a table!

Nows a great time to join Full Tilt Poker as not only can you grab an extra $600 to add to your bankroll they’re also running fun Poker Happy Hours where you can double your poker points just for playing the same games that you’d normally play. There’s also some excellent tournament opportunities too like ”The Doubles”, where you can earn your share of a progressive jackpot on top of your tournament winnings.

>>For more on FullTiltPoker.com check out the latest Full Tilt Poker Room Review here.

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“Seldom Re-raise As The Big Blind In Hold’em”
by Mike Caro

First, you need to know that I frequently re-raise as the big blind when an aggressive, blind-stealing-type opponent raises in the small blind after everyone else folds. I don’t need a very strong hand to justify that re-raise, because even if I’m beat by a mediocre hand, the re-raise gives me psychological leverage to add to my positional advantage. Remember, I’ll get to act last on all betting rounds.

But in all other circumstances, while you should vary your play, and you can certainly sometimes justify re-raising when you’re in the big blind position, usually you’ll make more money by waiting to see the flop. Among the many reasons for this, these important ones come to mind:

If the small blind isn’t involved in the pot, you will have the disadvantage of acting first on all future betting rounds.
With all but aces and, perhaps, kings, the strength of your hand is not usually defined until after you see the flop. You really don’t know if it is strong or weak. Unlike stud games where your strength often changes slowly, one card at a time, the three-card flop strongly defines your hand in hold ‘em. Although your cards may be strong enough for you to believe that you have a likelihood of having the best hand, that edge is usually not enough to justify a re-raise and risk facing yet another raise from a rare hand that might truly dominate you. This is especially true because of your poor position.

Why announce that you have a fairly strong hand if you don’t have to? The very tiny edge of pushing a hand you think might be slightly better than your opponents’ hands is often overwhelmed by the fact that you are giving away information unnecessarily. Of course, this show of strength can sometimes work in your favor (and you CAN use it deceptively with weak hands), but it is more likely to work against you by chasing away weak callers and the long-range profit they might supply on future betting rounds. If you just call, opponents will think you might have anything, from very weak hands to moderately strong ones or better. You keep your options open on future betting rounds, and you can fold more easily, having invested less, if the flop disappoints you.

For these reasons and others, I recommend usually not re-raising in the big blind with moderately strong hands, except when isolated with only the small blind.

You can chat and play with the “Mad Genius”, Mike Caro, every Wednesday night at 9:30pm ET in the DoylesRoom Bounty Tournament.
For the latest info on DoylesRoom Poker check out our Doyles Room Poker Review here at PokerLabRat.com

We’ve all had moments in good old fashioned brick and mortar casinos where our senses become overwhelmed by an environment that we have no control over. From uncomfortable chairs to overflowing A/C to the guy sitting next to you who obviously hasn’t bathed since the last time the Cleveland Indians won the Series, playing live poker can be a less than pleasant experience at times.

That’s why one of the biggest advantages of playing online poker versus live poker is the ability to control your environment. By standardizing all the variables of game play and setting your poker playing environment to your liking, you can maximize your focus and take that next step toward becoming a winning player.

So how do you control your environment? Well, let’s start at the beginning. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to be very anal about your poker playing environment. That means you turn off your phone and shut down whatever program you use for instant messaging. Even if you’re just playing for fun, you should still be taking poker seriously (unless you’re just looking to flip away your roll). Along those same lines, make sure to turn off the TV, stop surfing the web and answering emails. This is about minimizing distraction in an effort to maximize focus, and one of the pitfalls of online poker is all the readily available procrastination devices at your fingertips.

Now that you’re distraction free, tune the other variables in the house to your liking. Is the temperature in the house comfortable? Check. Do you have water and soda within reach and a tasty meal ready to go in the fridge? Check. What about music? I always like to have some music going in the background, but nothing too loud or distracting (if you’re singing along with the lyrics, it means you’re not focusing on poker).

So you’ve got all the peripherals taken care of, now comes the game play itself. Go through the options in the game lobby and set everything to your liking. Most of it is up to you, but personally, I like to roll with the animation off (so the game runs smoother) and “highlight bet amount” turned on. For those of you who don’t know, when you turn on “highlight bet amount” it makes it so the bet amount is always highlighted when it’s your turn to act. That means all you have to do is type in the amount you’d like to bet when it’s your turn - no having to manually highlight the number yourself or fumble around with the bet slider. I also like to set the game background to plain brown, especially when you’ve played down to the final table. That bright blue “hockey rink” final table background can be distracting, so I always switch it off.

Once again, you’re doing all of this because it’s to your advantage, not just because you’re a control freak. By controlling your environment, you give yourself the best chance to maximize your focus on the game and be a winning player. This is far and away one of the biggest assets available to all online poker players.

Scott Fischman progressed from professional dealer to the other side of the table as a pro player in his early 20’s. He now plays online at FullTilt Poker.com - join him at table sometime. (Players from around the world including the USA are welcome at Full Tilt Poker room).

Scott’s vital poker stats are:
Over $2.1 million in career earnings
2 WSOP bracelets
10 WSOP cash finishes

>>For more info on Full Tilt check out the latest FullTiltPoker review at PokerLabRat.com. 
>>More poker tips from professional players

Dario Minieri won his first World Series of Poker bracelet and $528,418 on Wednesday after his pocket queens held up to eliminate his final opponent in one of the wildest final tables of the 2008 WSOP.

Minieri won Event #31 ($2,500 No Limit Hold ‘em/Six Handed) after coming into the 6-handed final table as the big stack and dominated early on winning 21 of the first 50 pots.

Stuart Marshak, John O’Shea and Kevin Song were all eliminated during this early period. Minieri had opened up a massive chip lead when play reached three handed and it looked like the his two opponents, Seth Fischer and Justin Filtz, might be playing for second place.

But Fischer got a couple of big pot suck-outs to double up against Minieri and then eliminate Filtz to get into heads-up play at relatively even chip stacks.

Around 30 minutes into heads-up Fischer raised from the button with chip lead and Minieri moved all-in. Fischer called instantly and turned over pocket kings, while Minieri turned over 3-4 of spades, stood up and put on his coat, expecting the hand to be his last.

The flop came 2-8-J with two spades, giving Minieri a flush draw and pulling the crowd to the edge of their seats. The turn was the four of diamonds, giving Minieri even more outs, and the river was another four, sending the pot to Minieri.

Minieri picked up queens the next hand to increase his chip lead and the match was all over a few hands later when Fischer moved all-in pre-flop with K-10 and was called by Minieri, who once again held pocket queens.

The ladies held and Minieri had his his first WSOP bracelet and $528,418 in cash while
Fischer collected $330,519 for second.

—–

So remember - all you need to do to win a bracelet is to bust KK with a flush draw and then get the dealer to hand you pocket Queens often - simple huh?

Eons ago, well, in 1983, Mike Caro published a document called Poker Plan 3 (PP3). Here’s an extract from a more recent article by Caro that may be of interest. This guy has succesfully taught - and through his books and online poker university continues to teach - some of the best poker players on the planet. They’re not neccessarily the “teen idol tournament stars” but he’s helped create a huge number of good, solid profitable poker players - many of whom are now professionals… Interested?  

How the missions work

I called PP3 “a structured, precise game plan for mastering poker.” The introduction explained the concept. “Each time you play, I will give you one mission to accomplish. Sometimes it will be a single thing and sometimes it will be short series of related objectives. Except for fulfilling your very specific daily goal, you should simply play your normal best game of poker.”

Then I gave a warning. “Here’s a problem: You may decide that some of the missions are trivial or unimportant. You may feel you already use some of these tools effectively, and therefore, it may seem reasonable to skip the mission. DON’T SKIP THE MISSION! You may not now understand why it’s necessary to do some of the things I instruct, but once you’ve successfully completed your 15th mission, you WILL understand.”

The point of the game plan is to force you to go out and accomplish the task of the day - even if it seems like something you already understand. Understanding and actually doing it are two very different things. There are short follow-ups that you are instructed to read AFTER you accomplished the mission. Now that you know what to do, here is another mission from Poker Plan 3.

In PP3, this was Mission 3. You’re going to like this mission. It’s fun because it deals with the most primitive nature of poker. You get to choose an opponent as your target. You will study that player and examine his weaknesses, then you’ll try to bluff him … twice.

That’s just the first part of the mission. In the second part, you’ll concentrate on just two players of your choice, observing and making comparisons. The ability to focus in poker is almost a secret art. Yet all world class professional players use this art effectively — whether they know it or not.

You can study a whole table of opponents all at once and, no matter how hard you concentrate, the information you gain about their habits is apt to be trivial. One of the most important things I can teach you is: Don’t watch too many things. Instead you must watch selectively. On this mission you’re going to try to focus on one opponent and then on two at once. You won’t excel at this right away. But the realization of the power behind this method will hit you almost immediately. Pretty soon you’ll be focusing unconsciously, isolating on what’s really important.

Something I’ve discovered while talking with professional poker players is that the good-but-not-great players try to take as much as they can into consideration. Their minds work feverishly and with great effort as they struggle to grasp everything.

The truly great players do quite the opposite. While they take very many factors into consideration, and while they seem to be aware of everything, they really spend most of their energy focusing on one goal (and no more than two players). True, they’re aware of many other things, but they usually focus on one thing. The rest comes naturally and unconsciously, as they soon will for you. In fact, each of these missions puts something new in your head that will keep helping you win, whether you concentrate or not.

You see, these missions are evidence that you should only focus on one main thing. As you undertake the later missions, you’ll be surprised how many times your previous missions will reward you — often when you least expect It. So, right now, let’s focus …

Today’s mission, part 1.

Isolate on the player to your left. Watch every hand he or she plays and study the gestures. Remember to listen for voice tells.

Don’t try to draw conclusions! Drawing conclusions is a mistake. Observation is the key. Usually the major conclusions will come to you effortlessly.

So, study that opponent to your left. Try to find an opportunity to bluff him. Keep these things in mind:

Most players are easier to bluff after they’ve come from behind and have just gotten even - especially if forfeiting the money they have in the current pot will not put them behind again.

Most players are easier to bluff after you’ve made some friendly gesture. If you’ve shared a joke or let the player share your hand while he’s out of a pot, it could be a good time to bluff. If you’ve accepted coffee from or bought coffee for this opponent, it could be a good time to bluff.

Most players are easier to bluff when they’re conspicuously looking at you or at their chips.

You can get away with a large share of bluffs if you bet decisively while a player is reaching for his chips as if to call. That’s because the player is usually just trying to prevent your bet.

Also, keep in mind that it’s much easier for your bluff to succeed if you make a sizable bet in a no-limit or pot-limit game than if you are confined to betting a fixed limit. You have two hours to run two bluffs against your target to your left.

Today’s mission, part 2.
Simply try to focus on two players at the same time. Pick these players at will, but don’t include the one who figured in your bluff exercise.

—STOP READING THIS UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED TODAY’S MISSION —

Follow-Up: Don’t worry if your bluffs failed. In limit poker, because the pots can be many times the size of the bet, your bluffs can fail most of the time and still be profitable. The point is, in Part 1, you became very familiar with one player, and you learned things about him that would otherwise have escaped you. You tried to bluff, and whether or not you succeeded, you took that action with a better understanding of your opponent’s behavior. You might have gotten unlucky and targeted an opponent who was difficult to bluff. That doesn’t matter, either. The value is in having accomplished the mission and knowing how to apply this type of observation to your future games.

Let’s talk about part two. Answer these questions about the two players you focused on: (1) Which was more conservative? (2) Which had the better emotional control? (3) Which would be easier overall to bluff? (4) Did either player seem to dominate the other? That’s all.

The main thing that PP3 taught with this mission is that you need to learn to focus on one thing at a time. You can learn to be conscious of other things going on at the same time, but this should happen automatically. Your focus should be on one thing. When you try to monitor many things, you usually fail. You’d be surprised how many more things you will be aware of, when you concentrate on one thing at the poker table. It’s magic

Mike Caro plays poker online exclusively at Doyles Room. Join him at a table sometime! The team at PokerLabRat.com find Doyles Room a great site to build your bankroll - you might too!

For more from Mike Caro, check out the EDUCATION section at Doyles Room. It’s interesting, informative and free! For more on Doyles Room poker read the detailed Doyles Room Review at PokerLabRat.com.

(Doyles Room is available in English, Spanish, German, Danish and Swedish languages and is one of the leading poker sites on the popular Microgaming Poker Network. Players from around the world including Americans from 39 States can join Doyles Room poker)