Playing Poker For A Living

Life of an Online Gambler

If you’ve ever dreamed about getting away from the drudgery of working all day long to make some other guy rich, poker just might be the answer. But be warned; playing poker for a living isn’t all roses and lollipops. Playing poker for a living needs to be treated like a serious job because your livelihood depends on it. I can speak from experience when I tell you that as nice as it is not answering to a boss, playing poker for a living can be a stressful job. At the same time, it can also be an extremely well-paying job.

In this article, I’m going to tell you a little bit about what it’s like to play poker for a living. This article won’t cover things like expenses, health insurance and rent. For a complete breakdown of that stuff, check out this article titled “How Much Money Do I Need to Go Pro?”

Typical Day as a Professional Poker Player

I would typically play poker for 3 or 4 hours in the morning and then go make something for lunch. In the afternoon, I would find something else to do, like clean the house, meet a friend somewhere or whatever. In the evening, I would start another session to catch all the recreational evening players. I’d play for as long as I could stay alert. If I started to get distracted or groggy, I would log off and call it a day.

That all sounds nice and dandy but not every day went totally according to plan. Sometimes I would start out and immediately hit a downswing and have to spend the rest of the day digging myself back out of that hole. Even though I understood variance and knew downswings happened to everyone, it was frustrating to start the day off like that. What I had to do was learn how to put those hands behind me and continue on playing like normal.

Benefits of Going Pro

The best part about being a professional poker player is the money. The freedom was also nice, but there are few ways for a college student to make ten or twenty thousand a month from home. It was nice having more money than knowing what to do with it all. I got to go on trips, buy anything I wanted and save money for my future. There’s nothing more a young college kid (or anyone else) could ask for.

The freedom was important to me as well because I couldn’t stand working for other people. It sickened me to work for such pitiful wages when I knew the owners of the places I worked at were pulling in several thousand dollars a day off the fruits of our labor. It was also good to be able to take off work on a moment’s notice to attend to any emergencies or check out a fun event.

Drawbacks to Going Pro

As nice as being a professional poker player is, there are several drawbacks that you need to seriously consider. First, the future of the career is unknown. Do you think you’ll be able to play poker for 20 years and retire from it? There are many unknowns there including government regulation and abundance of strategy resources for the fish.

Secondly, if you go pro, you’ll have a major gap in your resume if you ever decide to return to the working world. The general population is astoundingly ignorant when it comes to poker so if you tell a future employer that you were a professional online poker player, the odds are they will assume you were some kind of degenerate. It’s frustrating but that’s how it is.

If you have a family that depends on you to make a living, going pro is even more stressful. Not only do you have to worry about yourself, but you also have to worry about your family. If you have a major downswing, you need to have a back up plan in place to feed your family. Otherwise, you and them will just be out of luck.

Going pro also puts a major strain on your bankroll. When you constantly cash out for living expenses, it makes it harder to keep a steady bankroll. It’s difficult to move up in stakes and improve your winrate because you are constantly taking money out of your bankroll. When you play recreationally, you can keep that money in your bankroll for as long as you need.

Speaking of strain, being a professional is a seriously stressful job at times. No matter how great you are, you will experience the occasional monster downswing. During those downswings, it’s difficult to stay positive. If you hit an exceptionally vicious downswing, it can easily affect other areas in your life. It takes a special mindset to be able to separate your job from your personal life.

Should I Go Pro?

Only you can answer that. In the vast majority of cases, I recommend players against going pro. Your living expenses will constantly eat away at your bankroll unless you bring in a nice chunk of money every month.

Even if you have a good month or two, it doesn’t mean you should go pro. As a professional, you need to be able to win month in and month out. Every single month everything starts over and you need to win enough money to pay your expenses once again.

By not going pro, you can treat poker as a second income. If you work all day at a job and bring in extra money from poker, it’s like having two jobs at once. You’ll also get benefits from your job like health insurance and retirement. When you play poker for a living, you have to figure those things out on your.

12betpoker Pre-flop action and starting hands

One of the most common mistakes rookie players make is that they play too many hands. Poker is the kind of game that presents many temptations. Seeing hand after hand how others get hit by the flop on rags, can and will drive players to act on rags themselves, however, if you want to squeeze any long-term value out of your play, that's not the way you should approach things.

The very first thing you can do to improve on your play is to adopt some sort of starting hand selection method. Keep in mind that a good poker player can indeed beat a weak one on rags, but acting only on positive EV will give you much better chances, especially if you know you're not skilled enough for extreme plays.

If you do decide to adopt basic hand selection, you have to make sure you're disciplined-enough to stick to it. The downside is, you won't be involved in many pots, and you'll spend most of the game waiting around for good starting hands. The good side is, you'll have a lot of time to study your opponents, make reads and observe betting patterns.
Exactly which hands you can act on, depends on the number of players you're confronted with. The more opponents there are, the tighter you have to play it.

If there are 9 other people around the table, don't play anything other than AK, and if you get pairs, from 99 upwards. As the number of players decreases, you too can gradually loosen up (bear this in mind when playing in STTs)
When faced with 6 players, unpaired cards you can play are anything from AJs upwards, and the pairs are 66 and up.

If you're in a short handed game, or in a heads up, the starting hand values plummet. In a heads-up for instance, you should play aces with just about anything suited, kings with 9s and above suited, queens with T and above suited, and jacks with 9 and above suited. Play any air you get.

Remember, in a heads-up, you need to become really aggressive on all these hands, as aggression is the key concept here.

What exactly should you do with these hands before the flop? Raise and re-raise on QQ and above, and also on high connectors like AK. You want to make as many players holding low cards, fold as possible.

NL Hold'em is especially unforgiving with those who chase windmills on weak starting hands. Don't commit that mistake.
Make sure your raises do not get out of control. You want to leave some chips if you get re-raised or called.

Limp in with anything weaker than AA, AK, AQ, KK or QQ. you don't want to waste a lot of money on those hands.

Don't forget to mix up your play every now and then. You want to avoid becoming too predictable.

12betpoker Advanced Poker Tips

The Smarter you play,the luckier you'll be
Good Monday, Practice Play Makes Poker Perfect! - 12BetQoutes

If you were to ask one of the top poker players about the secrets to their success, they'd probably send you packing. Why on earth would they give away information which could be used against them?

Expertise in poker is built over time, and the more you play the better you'll become at assessing the table, choosing which tricks and tips would be useful and where. Here, we will walk you through the attributes a winning player possesses, what ways you could improve your overall game and the tell-tale signs to deduce which players are the weakest links. Having them in the back of your mind will prove invaluable and give you a competitive edge over your friends and acquaintances.

Here's a brief overview of the related links which will help you make the right decisions:

Working on your game

Players like yourself with little experience can elevate themselves to a higher level, even if it's just the next table up. All you need is some optimism, determination and an easy-to-follow guide. This section informs you about balancing the books, playing live, conquering your fear of intimidating players and playing for the right reasons.

Attributes of a winner

Professional players are a combination of sportsmen and businessmen, succeeding in an area which requires equal parts discipline, endurance and luck. How do they do it though? From money management to hand selection, psychological awareness to the initial table selection, here we have 10 attributes you could benefit from having.

Spot a fish

In terms of poker, a 'fish' is a weak player who doesn't know what they are doing and is liable to get eaten up. Their lack of experience can prove disastrous for them. This section goes into detail about not only the ways to spot a fish, but also how you can adjust your play accordingly, even if it's to show them some support and help them out.

Raising your game

Regardless of whether you're new to poker or not, overlooking important details is a rookie mistake. Here’s our list of 30 common mistakes you might be making and how you can improve your performance.

Improve concentration

Focus, focus, focus. One of the biggest problems poker players face, regardless of experience is concentration. Here, we suggest ways to help you build up your mental strength and improve endurance.

12betpoker Sit & Go top tips

 New to Sit & Go tournaments? Our 15-step guide shows you how it’s done.

Eat.Play.Repeat. - 12betQoutes 

1. Sit tight at the start

Play tight (stick to good hands) during the early stages, when the blinds are small. Small pots aren’t worth the effort and you want people to take notice when you start betting aggressively later. Play big hands strongly and fold everything else.

2. Watch for hands with potential

Some hands could surprise you. Suited connectors , small pairs and aces with a suited kicker (a tie-breaker card of the same suit) could turn into a major hand, so be prepared to play them. But if someone raises, or the flop doesn’t bring anything useful, you’ll need to fold. 

3. Bet big on big pairs

Big pairs (aces, king and queens) are your friend. If a few players have limped in (called the big blind) ahead of you, you should raise enough to double the amount in the pot. Either people will fold and you’ll pick up the money, or they’ll make a mistake and try to raise you with a weaker hand. If you’ve got kings and they’ve got aces, that’s bad luck, but statistically the odds are small enough to risk it. 

4. Seize the moment

If the flop brings you a big hand, act on it. A lot of players will call you with a top pair, even if their kicker isn’t up to much. So if you find yourself with two pair and a high kicker, don’t wait to make your move. 

If you check, and someone else bets, then raise big or move all-in. They’ll fold and give you a nice pot or, more typically, call, even though they’ve only got a one in three chance of winning. 

5. Hang in there

If you’re short stacked , don’t panic – you can come back from the brink. Just be patient and wait for something really good to come along. Make it as hard as you can for people to walk away with your chips.

6. Scare off the weak bettors

You'll see it time and time again – players paying the minimum before the flop and trying to steal the pot with a small bet. If you’ve got a hand, raise. If you have a drawing hand (halfway to something big) or something so-so then call. Usually they haven’t got anything, so you’ll come out on top.

7. Match speed with confidence

Turbo Sit & Go tournaments are great fun, but instead of playing patiently, you need to move fast. Overpairs, top pair/top kicker and even flush draws (when you're a big stack) are a chance to jam the pot (bet aggressively or go all-in).

8. Put the pressure on

Continuation betting is essential in Sit & Go tournaments and will win the pot a lot of the time. If someone re-raises and your hand can’t take it, then you can fold. But generally, a post-flop bet of around half to two-thirds of the pot is a profitable move. 

9. Know when to back down

In a Sit & Go, you can sometimes play hands you wouldn’t touch in large tournaments. But if someone raises and you’ve only got a top pair with a bad kicker, it's time to take cover.

10. Pick on someone smaller

If you’ve got a large stack, then put pressure on the short-stacked players. Raise their blinds, move them all-in (if you don’t mind being called) and they’ll make a mistake sooner or later. 

11. Watch the stacks

Chip stacks can go up and down quite dramatically, especially as the blinds increase. It’s important to keep an eye on that, as you’ll want to avoid head-to-heads with the chip leaders and hone in on the small-stacked players. Don’t give up if you’re in last place. As the short-stack you can use an all-in push to scare opponents when you can. You'll either pick up lots of blinds or potentially double-up and head back towards the top of the field.

12. Don’t fade away

If you're really short-stacked (with seven or fewer big blinds left) now’s the time to step up and to make the most of any opportunity. K-8 suited, J-10, 6-7 suited, small pocket pairs – these types of hands could be your lifeline and you should bet with confidence. If you pick up the blinds, great. If you get one caller, you’ve got about a two in one chance of succeeding, which is better than letting yourself get chipped away by the blinds until there’s nothing left. 

13. Burst the bubble

On the bubble, you’ll want to take control as people often get cautious when there’s a prize at stake. If you’re a big stack, move all-in when you can to pick up blinds and possibly knock someone out. If you're a short-stack, put your chips on the first big hand you get so you can double-up, or move all-in on the button with any two cards if no-one’s raised yet.

14. Get aggressive

When short-handed (down to three or four players) it's time to get in and raise pretty much whenever you can (as the blinds get bigger, you can’t wait for a rock-solid hand). Don’t do anything stupid, but raises and re-raises in the right position, followed by aggressive play after the flop (when you've made a hand) are the way to get through to the final. 

15. Finish them off

When it's down to two, you need to crank things up again, raising until your rival has nowhere left to run. Most of the time they won’t have a hand, and if your stack’s big enough, then that could be all you need. If you’re the one being chased, a big re-raise should stop them in their tracks (the pot odds at this point might tell you that it’s right to call anyway). Against one player, a top pair could be all you need, so go ahead and take the glory.

New Player Dos and Don'ts: Avoiding Emotional Play

If you’re around a Texas Holdem table long enough, it’s only a matter of time before you see someone going 'on tilt'. It can mean a lot of things, but essentially it comes down to a player not being able to control their emotions and then letting that emotion affect their decision making. Usually, it turns out for the worst. The more you play, the more you’ll realize just how critical it is and how often the worst case scenario becomes a reality. There’s definitely more to Texas Holdem than knowing that a flush beats a straight, or what blinds are. If it were that easy, everyone would win an equal amount of the time. So, as you go forward, take a few of the following recommendations about emotional play to heart:

Don’t: Play with ego
Good players love to see a big ego sit down at the table. They’ll goad them into making bad calls and outrageous bluffs and it will be easy to take their money. If you feel you have to go to war every single hand, you have no business coming to the poker table. And know that if you do, you’ll find yourself relieved of your bankroll very quickly. Playing good poker involves backing down. A lot. And picking your spots to be aggressive.

Do: Figure out how to calm down
Even if you come to the table with your emotions in check and the chip gone from your shoulder, it won’t take long for a bad beat or a run of bad luck for the chip to start creeping back up. So you’ll need to figure out quickly how to push the reset button and get back to where you were in the first place. Maybe a quick walk around the casino helps get you back on track. Remind yourself what your goals are. Learn to do whatever you need to get back to focused poker. And if your relaxation methods aren’t working, go home. Come back another day.

Don’t: Let opponents get to you
Whatever it is that’s upsetting you, don’t let your opponents know abou it. You folded the best hand, or tipped someone off and lost some action… whatever it is, a savvy opponent will see you’re upset about it and use it to their advantage. They’ll needle you into even more bad, emotional plays. Shake it off, and keep playing your best game. Don’t let them see you’ve been knocked off track. If you do, they’ll roll right over you.

Do: Constantly monitor your emotions
It doesn’t matter how many Texas Holdem strategy books you’ve read, how much online poker practice you have logged, or how well you understand poker strategy: A half hour of 'steaming' can ruin hours of solid play. To be successful at poker, you constantly have to assess your emotional state. Taking a bad beat and trying to show that opponent what a terrible player they are will ruin you. Playing a little poker to blow off some steam will also likely get you in the same boat.

Learn to identify when you’re playing with any agenda other than winning money with correct play. When you are, fix it. Fast!

12betpoker Guides to stay focused at the table

On top of deciding which game to play, one of the biggest problems you'll face as a poker player is maintaining concentration.

Analysing situations and assessing opponents for hours at a time can really take it out of you and studies suggest that humans can only concentrate fully for about 30 to 60 minutes at a time. This can hamper your ability to go deep in tournaments, or to come out winning from a long cash session.

There are a few key things to avoid:

• Boredom
  If you're getting a bad run of cards or you're playing tight due to the number of maniacs at your table, you won't be playing many hands and very soon you may not be paying as close attention to your opponents as you should be.

• Distractions 
  Distractions in your poker-playing environment pull your attention away from the task at hand. These can include kids, email and the internet when playing online to noise, passers-by or even a mouthy opponent in a cardroom.

• Feeling ill
  If you eat a big meal before playing, your digestive system will divert resources away from your brain to aid digestion. Not sleeping well, feeling ill or not being as physically fit as you should be may also contribute to a deficit in your concentration levels.   

• Mental state
  Make sure you're in the right frame of mind to play. If you're not mentally focused, lacking the motivation to play or not feeling good about yourself, then it's probably best not to play. 

How to improve your focus

The good news is that it's possible to improve your powers of concentration. And we’ve got 3 ways for you to try out right here:

• Make notes
  This is a simple way to stay focused on the task in hand. Keeping track of anything from your opponents' starting hands and where they play them from, to whether they limp in a lot or always come in with a raise will all help you in the long run. 

•  Narrow your focus 

Don’t focus on all of your opponents at once. Your head will be in a spin and you’ll have far too much to think about. Start off by concentrating on two players. Do they always raise you or do they vigorously defend their blind? Once this becomes an automatic process, add another factor to your focus of attention – but not until then. It’ll take time to achieve this, but if you work at it your concentration will improve and you'll eventually be able to process enough information about all of your opponents to make you a winning poker player.

• Self-talk

• Talk to yourself after every hand (it’s not a sign of madness – honest). Analyse the hand you've just seen or played. Tell yourself what was good and bad about it. Mentally reward yourself when you've done something good (like spotting a tell). A reward is the surest way to get someone to repeat something and you want to get into the habit of doing good things at the poker table.

 P.S

  One of the best online poker gaming in Malaysia is 12betpoker it offers alot of Promotions.

How to Win at Texas Hold’em Poker - Every Time

Poker is one of the greatest games on earth. The combination of skill and luck, the psychological element, and the fact you can make money from it all help with its popularity. But in order for you to make money from poker, you need to learn how to win at poker, which is actually easier than some would suggest.

Learning how to win at Texas hold’em can be broken down into four categories. (It can probably be broken down into many more, but for the sake of simplicity we’ve opted for four.) Those categories are:

• Learn the basics
• Learn advanced concepts
• Apply your new skills
• Continue the learning process

Learn the Basics

It should go without saying that in order to discover how to win in poker, you need to learn the basics of the game. When I first started playing poker, I didn’t know anything about the game, even including what hands beat what. You’d be surprised at how many people sit in a real money game and expect to win at Texas Holdem poker without even a clear understanding of the rules and other basics.

Those basics not only include knowing the poker hand rankings so you know what beats what, but also the various positions at the poker table and how they affect your strategy, pot odds and implied pot odds, and the importance of following solid bankroll management rules. Once armed with this information, you’re ready to add a few more strings to your bow and move one step closer to discovering how to be a winning player.

Learn Advanced Concepts

The next stage in your quest to win at poker every time is to learn some of the more advanced concepts. Fill your mind by studying such aspects of the game as three- and four-betting, as well as how to play against the various different player types — e.g., tight-aggressive, loose-aggressive, and loose-passive — because each opponent type needs to be approached with a different strategy.

“Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.”

This text may seem long winded, but the idea being expressed is quite simple. What the theorem is essentially saying is that the correct decision to make in any given poker situation is one that has the largest expected value, or “EV” as it is commonly abbreviated. If you were able to see your opponents’ cards, you would be able to calculate the mathematically correct decision and would win at poker every time!

Obviously, it is not possible to calculate the correct decision to mathematical certainty as poker is a game played with incomplete information. But you can use all of the available information presented to you to make a decision that would yield long-term positive results — decisions that are +EV.

Apply Your Skills

While it is practically impossible to learn how to win at poker every time in a monetary sense, due to the luck factor, by making decisions that are +EV you actually are winning every time you play poker, at least in the long term.

As a simplified example, imagine you are heads-up with an opponent in a hand where the board reads . You hold  and your opponent has accidently revealed , so you know that you need to complete your flush to win the hand. There is MYR 1250 in the pot and for some reason you opponent decides to only bet MYR 250. In this situation you should snap-call, because even if the river is not a spade you actually gain in the long run.

Why is this the case? Because the pot odds you’re receiving are 5-to-1 (calling MYR 250 to win MYR 1250) yet your chance of hitting your flush with one card to come is about 4.1-to-1. As the pot odds are greater than the odds of hitting the hand, you actually make money in the long run even if your flush misses! That is to say, if you faced the same choice many, many times and always chose correctly, you do stand to come out ahead thanks to your consistently “+EV” decisions. And that folks, is how to win at poker every time!

Of course, the game is more complex than that overly simply example suggests. But in essence the idea still holds. The key to how to win at poker is to make more +EV decisions that –EV ones, and then play enough for the math to make the results run true. Sadly, this can take longer than you could imagine, but it does happen eventually!

Continue the Learning Process

It may seem to an outsider that the best poker players have discovered the secret of how to win at poker every time, yet this simply isn’t true. What is true is those at the top of the pile are extremely skilled poker players, but they are also some of the hardest working people in the industry, constantly working on their game and trying to improve.

One way to improve your own game vastly and increase your chances of learning to win at Texas Hold’em is to play around with different scenarios to see what the mathematically correct decision would be. There are other tools out there that allow you to see how your exact hand fares against a possible range of hands, too.

Knowing this information and being able to draw upon it while in the heat of a hand could be the difference between winning or losing at poker or losing. Always look to extract as much value as mathematically possible, if you want always to win at poker.

Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Instagram!

Online vs. Live poker

It is often said, that online poker is so different from its real life counterpart, that the two of them can barely even be called two versions of the same game.

There are indeed differences, some milder, other more striking, but - at the end of the day - is that really a bad thing?

What exactly do you have to go through if you intend to play a game of live poker? First of all, you have to locate a casino, and if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll find one an hour or two's drive away from your home. Driving to the casino and back, means that you lose at least two hours of time you could've spent in front of your laptop screen playing poker.

That doesn't seem like much of a loss at first sight, but think about it like this: Being the kind of game that it is, Texas Hold'em is difficult to beat. If you manage to find a winning formula (locate some small edges that you can repeatedly put to work) you'll be a winner, but you'll only win small. In order to maximize your winning rate, you need to spend as much time playing as possible. If you look at it like this, you'll see why lost time equals lost money, in this game. Another way to squeeze the most out of your time when playing online is to play multiple tables at the same time. Now, there's something I'd really like to see you do in a real casino...

The time that you lose on the road however, is not all there is to it. Poker achieved tremendous popularity much faster than what the infrastructure could keep up with. You might just have to wait for a good while, until a place empties at a table featuring your preferred limit/stakes. Also remember, that operating a live poker room is not one of the most lucrative ways for a casino to generate revenue. For that reason, it probably won't represent as priority for them to develop their poker operation, when they can make more money by simply stuffing a bunch of slot-machines into the same room the poker is in.

Table selection is practically non-existent in real poker. Sure, you may have a few options every now and then if lucky, but where is that compared to the possibilities offered by online poker, in the matter of table and game selection?

Even as you take your seat at the table of your choice, you're just about to be confronted with another problem. Remember how I said you had to play for as long as possible, in order to generate maximum revenue? Allow me to rephrase: you have to play as many hands as possible. If you play faster, you'll be able to play more hands per hour, thus, basically, you'll be playing "more".

At a live poker table, you'll play around 30 hands per hour, whereas in an online poker room, you can play as many as 60-80 hands per hour, if you're not multi-tabling. The rake that you pay is bigger offline, not to mention the fact that you won't get any rakeback.

Obviously, there are certain things which live poker does better than the online variant. For one thing, skill gets a much bigger role in live poker than it does in online poker. When playing online, you'll be often faced with downright moronic calls from rookies. What's annoying though is that sometimes you'll lose on these calls just because luck is much more of a factor online.
"Schooling" is also an extremely irritating phenomenon, which blossoms online. When faced with a bunch of EV- calls, the EV+ you thought you had, can quickly vanish into thin air.

Because it's much faster, you can't really concentrate on your game as much as you should in online poker. Mistakes that you make will come about more often and they'll have more devastating effects that offline.

Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. - 12betQoutes

HOLD'em Basics: the Re-Steal

Hold'em Basics: The Re-Steal

Many poker beginners believe that in order to become more successful at the green felt and to reach a higher level of poker thought, they need some sort of a revelation, a breakthrough which will get them from A to B in the blink of an eye. Becoming a better poker player however is a gradual, one-step-at-a-time process which takes more or less time depending on the level of dedication of the individual player. In order to improve, players need to make sure they understand and master a set of basic strategy elements each and every one of which takes them closer to achieving their poker goals.

The re-steal is one such simple, easy-to-understand, yet often overlooked basic strategy element. Nowadays, most Holdem games are extremely aggressive. Aggression is not just a highly efficient approach, it is quite fashionable these days too. Beginners will often find themselves frustrated by their opponents’ aggression, looking for weapons they could use to turn it around and not finding any. Well look no further: the re-steal is one of the most efficient ways to take your opponents aggression and turn right around at him. The re-steal is also one of the most basic tools player will simply be forced to put to good use in SNGs. Attempting a re-steal is basically about firing out a three-bet against an opponent suspected of attempting to steal the blinds. In SNGs, the stealing of the blinds is the bread and butter of the game. Therefore it's safe to say that re-stealing is part of the same equation as well.

 Why exactly is the re-steal such a potent weapon in cash games as well as in SNGs? Most decent players nowadays know all too well that they have to take advantage of their late position, and most of them do indeed move to exert pressure from cut-off or from the button. Such a course of action is generally regarded as highly profitable. What happens though is that this sort of aggression leaves the perpetrators vulnerable to the re-steal.

Why exactly is the re-steal used most often in tournaments and SNGs? It is in tournaments where the size of the blinds increases as the action progresses. The point where the blinds are big enough to be worth stealing is guaranteed to come.

Where exactly is the re-steal most often used? Given that it's a weapon best used against players in late position, those in the blinds can and will use the re-steal to defend. Of course, players from late position can use it as well, against their fellow late position opponents. The best target for a re-steal is obviously an opponent who is decent enough to understand the profitable nature of blinds stealing and late position aggression.

 It is extremely important for players who plan on using the re-steal to understand and to be aware of the fact that they are bluffing. Indeed, if one is three-betting an opponent with a hand which he believes is better than that of his opponent, he’s basically raising for value. The re-steal is a bluff, which means that the player doing the re-steal knows that his hand is weaker than that of his opponent. Because it is a bluff, the re-steal calls for a number of required circumstances to be fulfilled: the player attempting to re-steal has to consider his position, his stable image as well as his opponent’s position and table image, corroborated with the reads that he makes on him.

It is extremely important to deploy this weapon against good players. It will utterly backfire against calling stations and maniacs who have no problems shoving all-in in response to any sign of aggression from their opponents.

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Improve Concentration

How to stay focused at the table

On top of deciding which game to play, one of the biggest problems you'll face as a poker player is maintaining concentration.

Analysing situations and assessing opponents for hours at a time can really take it out of you and studies suggest that humans can only concentrate fully for about 30 to 60 minutes at a time. This can hamper your ability to go deep in tournaments, or to come out winning from a long cash session.

There are a few key things to avoid:

• Boredom

• If you're getting a bad run of cards or you're playing tight due to the number of maniacs at your table, you won't be playing many hands and very soon you may not be paying as close attention to your opponents as you should be.

• Distractions 

• Distractions in your poker-playing environment pull your attention away from the task at hand. These can include kids, email and the internet when playing online to noise, passers-by or even a mouthy opponent in a cardroom.

• Feeling ill

• If you eat a big meal before playing, your digestive system will divert resources away from your brain to aid digestion. Not sleeping well, feeling ill or not being as physically fit as you should be may also contribute to a deficit in your concentration levels.

• Mental state

Make sure you're in the right frame of mind to play. If you're not mentally focused, lacking the motivation to play or not feeling good about yourself, then it's probably best not to play. 

How to improve your focus

The good news is that it's possible to improve your powers of concentration. And we’ve got 3 ways for you to try out right here:

• Make notes

This is a simple way to stay focused on the task in hand. Keeping track of anything from your opponents' starting hands and where they play them from, to whether they limp in a lot or always come in with a raise will all help you in the long run.

• Narrow your focus 

Don’t focus on all of your opponents at once. Your head will be in a spin and you’ll have far too much to think about. Start off by concentrating on two players. Do they always raise you or do they vigorously defend their blind? Once this becomes an automatic process, add another factor to your focus of attention – but not until then. It’ll take time to achieve this, but if you work at it your concentration will improve and you'll eventually be able to process enough information about all of your opponents to make you a winning poker player.

• Self-talk

Talk to yourself after every hand (it’s not a sign of madness – honest). Analyse the hand you've just seen or played. Tell yourself what was good and bad about it. Mentally reward yourself when you've done something good (like spotting a tell). A reward is the surest way to get someone to repeat something and you want to get into the habit of doing good things at the poker table.

TEXAS HOLD'EM

• Introduction

  Texas Hold'em is the most popular of all poker variations. All of the marquee tournaments around the world (WSOP, WPT, EPT, etc.) are played in a variation of this game.
  Don't let the simplicity of the game mislead you. The number of possible game situations is so vast that, when playing at a high level, the game can be very complex. Thus the renowned expression: "It takes a moment to learn, but a lifetime to master."
  When playing the game for the first time, you will be confronted with some of the basic rules which are explained below. For starters, each player is dealt two hole cards in Texas hold'em with the overall goal of making the best five-card hand. Play moves clockwise around the table, starting with action to the left of the dealer button. Generally, the first two players to the immediate left of the button are required to post a small blind and a large blind to initiate the betting. From there, action occurs on multiple streets: preflop, the flop, the turn and the river.

• Button

  The button determines which player at the table is the acting dealer. In Texas Hold'em, the player on button, or last active player closest to the button, receives last action on all post-flop streets of play.
  When playing in casinos or online, you won't have to worry about who the dealer is. When playing with friends, everyone usually takes a turn at dealing the cards. After each hand has been completed, the button rotates one position to the left. While staff dealers handle the duty of dealing out the cards in brick-and-mortar casinos, and the process is automated online, this isn't the case in home games. A small tip is to find the most skillful dealer in the game, offer him or her a beer or a small tip and have them deal the game while the button keeps track of which player is the "dealer."
  While the dealer button often dictates who the first players are to begin the wagering with the small blind and big blind, it also determines where the dealing of the cards begin. The player to the immediate left of the dealer button in the small blind, receives the first card and then the dealer pitches cards around the table in a clockwise motion from player to player until each has received two starting cards.

• The Blinds

  Before every new round, two players at the table are obligated to post blinds, or forced bets that begin the wagering. Without these blinds, the game would be very boring because no one would be required to put any money into the pot. In tournaments, the blinds are raised at regular intervals. As the number of players keeps decreasing and the stacks of the remaining players keep getting bigger, it is a necessity that the blinds keep increasing throughout a tournament. In cash games, the blinds will always stay the same for a given limit of which the game is being played.
  The player directly to the left of the button posts the small blind, and the player to his or her direct left posts the big blind. The small blind is generally half the amount of the big blind, although this stipulation varies from room to room and can also be dependent of the game being played.

• The Aim of the Game

  Winning, of course! But in order to achieve this, you need to be holding the best combination of cards.
  In Texas hold'em, every player receives two cards face down, called hole cards. Every player keeps these cards to concealed until the end of all of the betting rounds, which is called the showdown. Texas hold'em is a game of community cards, where five cards are displayed in the middle of the table to be used in conjunction with a player's two hole cards in order to make the best five-card holding.
  The five community cards are displayed in the middle of the table on the flop, the turn and the river. The flop consists of the first three community cards, the turn adds another and the river completes the board with one more. These five cards are visible for every player. Once all five cards are down, players have to make the best five-card combination from these seven cards. This can be done using both of your hole cards in combination with three community cards, one hole card in combination with four community cards or no hole cards and playing all five community cards as one's hand. The player with the best combination of cards wins the pot, which is the sum of all bets that have been placed during that hand.

• First Betting Round

  

  The first round of betting takes place right after all hole cards have been dealt to each player. The first player to act is the player to the left of the big blind, and this player then has three options:
  Call: match the amount of the big blind
  Raise: increase the bet within the specific limits of the game
  Fold: throw one's hand away
  If a player chooses to fold, he or she is no longer eligible to win the current hand.
  The amount a player can raise to depends on the game that is being played, but most commonly must be at least twice the big blind.
  Limit hold'em: you can only raise by the amount of the big blind
  Pot-limit hold'em: you can only raise a maximum of the pot size (the total bets that have been placed at that time)
  No-limit hold'em: you can raise by any amount you want up to the maximum that your chip stack allows, and betting all of your chips is deemed "all in"
  The players who follow have the same three options: call, raise or fold. In the case of raising, the minimum allotted amount for a raise must be equal to the original raise amount. For example, let's say the big blind in a game is $10 and the first player to act raises to $40 in a game of no-limit hold'em. The second player to act has the option to call for $40, fold and no longer play the hand, or raise to $70 as the first raise amount of $30, the difference between the wager placed and the original big blind.

• Second Betting Round

  

  After the first preflop betting round has been completed, the second betting round takes place on the flop after the first three community cards have been dealt. In this betting round, and all that follow from now on, action starts with the first active player to the left of the button. Along with the options to bet, call, fold and raise, a player now has the option to check if no betting action has occurred prior. A check simply means to pass the action to the next player in the hand.

• Third Betting Round

  

  The fourth community card, called the turn, is dealt face-up following all betting action on the flop. Once this has been completed, another round of betting occurs, similar to that on the previous street of play. Again players have the option to options to bet, call, fold, raise and check.

• Final Betting Round

  

  The fifth community card, called the river, is dealt face-up following all betting action on the turn. Once this has been completed, another round of betting occurs, similar to that on the previous street of play. Again players have the option to options to bet, call, fold, raise and check. After all betting action has been completed, the remaining players in the hand with hole cards now expose their holdings to determine a winner. This is called the showdown.

• Showdown

  The remaining players open their hole cards, and with the assistance of the dealer, a winning hand is determined. The player with the best combination of five cards will win the pot.