Any successful regular player develops his game and evolves. One of the components of this development is constant work at the mistakes made. We’re speaking about live poker right now – cash games and tournament play. Hopefully, this material will help you find some clues on becoming a poker player

Professional players MpethyBridge and Spikeraw22 from 2+2 forums have started big thread where they talk about all the details of their off table work. Basically, they  share info on how to become a good poker player. There is a lot of info, we’ve read the whole thing, analyzed it and now publish the main info.

First thing’s first is motivation. Working at your mistakes is often boring but really necessary. YOU JUST HAVE TO DO IT! AT LEAST START IT! That’s the key answer on a question “How to become good at poker”

Those who have problems with procrastination should see this video (watch till you have a will for action):

What makes the difference between professional poker players and amateurs? Actually, a lot of things. Pro player develops different skills which help him to get additional profit. One of those skills is ability to profile the opponents.

It is not very hard to play profitably at the lower stakes in casinos and live poker rooms, this is not a rocket science. Using basic principles of ABC-strategy would be enough: just play preflop and flop aggressively, use only good pocket holdings and respect the position.

But with time players development in that direction significantly slows down. Besides, basic strategy works mainly against certain types of players – amateurs, gamblers and tourists who consider poker some kind of roulette.

To develop yourself further, to play with much wider range of hands, you need to get acquainted with certain set of skills. One of these skills is profiling.

Overbetting (betting the amount bigger than a pot) is risky, but very effective if done right. Poker betting is a science within the game. On lower limits it could be used much more often: most of the players play “I call, or I fold” strategy.

Here is a little introduction.

One. Don’t overbet if you’re inexperienced. Just don’t. You’ll lose money in the long run.

And two. To value overbet you need to have a good skill of hand reading. The more precise you read opponents supposed ranges, the more effective overbets are. Over bet poker is dangerous to those who are blind.

Poker Notepad: Tournaments are fun, but cash is cash

Here is thesis: you can’t earn for a living playing live poker tournaments. At least, in the USA. The statement is made by the person who understands a thing or two about poker. So is it true that poker earings can’t buy you living?

The article about disability of making money for a descent living playing live tournaments in America was published on deadspin.com.

In the beginning author quotes Brian Devonshire:

Why in the most cases poker and casino games are being looked at different angles? That is because there are completely different principles in poker. There is no “Cash-in” button, where you supposed to press for coins to fall down. There is no jackpot you’re supposed to wait for.

Today’s “Poker Notepad” is quite unusual. Usually we’re trying to deal with practice and today we’ll talk about theory. Just because it’s important. Well, theory isn’t that important all the time, but in this case it is.

We are going to use thoughts of Ed Miller, professional poker player, author of many books, poker couch and a man who has university degrees in several fields. Kind of person to listen to.

Real clubs and casinos have much bigger numbers of those. Those guys and dudes who open raise 10x and bet on every flop and turn. They are considered as bad players and awaited as warm spring day in the cold mornings of January. However, there is not much of players who know how to play against them.

“This man opens too wide and his raises are wild, he is fish anyways, so let’s have a party,” – this is pretty much all thoughts of players at the tables when they see another maniac. That is basically definition of what is a fish in poker.

The only problem is that they have no idea how to crush this poor fellow fish. Many make same mistakes and become another victim of this poker maniac.

Live game has its own rules. Playing online you can earn decent money using “standard lines” with the help of intense multitabling, but in offline poker you’ve got to invent 5-wheel bicycle (in a good way) every freaking time.

The main problem with live poker in that it is slow. You can’t have good win rate playing similar all the time (well, you can, if opponents are the same and in general this is only partly true). Live player must maximize his value in any favorable situation and his online vis-à-vis can score the same result with playing bigger amount of hands. Here are few tips on poker strategy.

In the second part of “Poker Notepad” we’ll try to cover or at least discuss a little such a matter as relative value. This concept helps to determine hand’s strength in specific situation.

First, let’s make several requirements:

• You have to at least have understanding of hands value
• You have to at least have understanding of ranges
• You have to at least have some experience of playing on real money.

Now we can continue.

In this first part of series of theoretical articles “Poker Notepad” we are going to talk on one very significant topic for those who play live: being pot-committed. This is especially important for those playing cash games as they have absolutely no clue about it.

Let’s get through the “terms used” as all the nerdy articles seem to start like this, aren’t they?

It is very common to hear or see the following logic in cash game: the player invest more than a half of his stack into the pot and calls on the turn and river just because he is “pot committed”, or “too much involved”. And the main focus is the invested money, not pot odds.

Weird.