There are 3 rounds of betting post flop, and the decisions you make are not automatic.

Small Mistakes vs. Big Mistakes

In Limit Hold’em, the bets are a small fraction of the pot. This encourages action because it is cheaper to see a showdown. This aspect of Limit appeals to fish and new players who like to ’see cards.’

Most bad players lose money at Limit Hold’em over time and not one any one big hand. This is because they continually make small mistakes and play every hand. They call when they do not have pot odds, or they continue to call when they are clearly beat. Every time you call when you shouldn’t, you are making a small mistake.

A big mistake at Limit Hold’em is folding when you should not have. I do not mean folding early and then later finding out you would have hit a miracle river. I mean folding when you have the best hand late in the pot. For example, suppose you have AQ. The board is KQ2 rainbow. You raised the pot preflop and there were 3 callers (8 small bets). It is checked around to you. You bet, someone raises, 2 people call, you call. A 5 falls on the turn. The raiser bets, the other players fold.

Right now, there are a total of 18 small bets in the pot (8 preflop, 8 flop, 2 turn- remember a big bet is equivalent to two small bets). What should you do? You are probably beat. However, if you call on the turn and the river, you will invest a total of 4 small bets. If you call to the river, there will be a total of 24 small bets in the pot, so you must win this pot 1/6 or more of the time in order for a call down to be appropriate. Assuming you have 5 outs (which is not the case if he has KQ or AK but let’s just assume), you have a 12% chance of drawing out. So, you roughly have a 1/8 chance of winning because you draw out. In this case, you only need to be roughly 4% confident that you have him beat (1/6-1/8). This is very small indeed!

So When to Fold?

Two major decisions to be made at Limit Hold’em.

1. The first is preflop, whether to play your hand or not, and the second decision is to be made on the turn. The flop decision is not that important because most of the time you will just be making or calling a small bet; this is a decision that can be made almost entirely based on pot odds.
2. The second major decision is on the turn. Assuming you call the turn, you should call the river because it would be a disaster to fold the winning hand on the river. Calling the turn and the river means investing 2 big bets, equivalent to 4 small bets. Assuming the pot is raised preflop and just one bet is made postflop, you would have only invested 3 bets to see the turn. Thus, you can fold at the turn and lose slightly less than half the money you would have lost had you called to a showdown.

The river is not the time to fold your hand. The only exceptions to this are when you missed a draw (such as a small flush draw) or if there is so much betting and raising that you know you are beat.

Well done to Christoffer Rabeling that came first.

Thanks everyone for the great support. We appreciate it

You want to play in a poker game where you have an advantage over your opponents. No matter how good you are, if you play in a game filled with sharks, it is virtually impossible to make any money. The luck factor and the rake would make profits slim in the long run.

Its is simple, find a game that is BEATABLE!

There are several ways to quickly analyze your opponents to figure out if you should play in the game:

1. Know the opponents. If you play at your local casino or an online poker room for a while, you will get to know the players. So keep notes!
2. Determine how loose-passive the game is. A loose game is  a good poker game. A game that is passive is also good. This can be determined by how much raising occurs. If people won’t bet hard when they have very good hands, they will let you draw out on them and let you get away with only small losses on your losing hands. Fundamentally, the two work well together because the loose game let’s you win big pots when you have your made hand and you are aggressive and the passive game let’s you draw cheaply and have small losses on losing hands.
3. Notice the number of fundamental mistakes people make and capitalize on it!

Be aware of your surroundings, dont just play any poker game- selective = profits.

Well done to Garrick North for taking the win.

Thanks to everyone for part taking.

Today, i played my first freeroll in well over a month on the Pigg’s. It started off fairly well and i quickly found my grove, my game has improved a lot over the past few months and it seems that my new approach and poker ethos is working. Anyway, i slogged it out in the hold’em tournament and managed a win.

I pocketed a nice amount of R350 ( about $35) which boosts my 2010 freeroll earnings to $61.95. Not bad considering i haven’t loaded any accounts with my own money!!!

Feeling in great poker shape, I took R80 from my winnings and played in the R5000 Guaranteed Tournament on the Pigg’s and played a similar game, applying the tactics i have been training for and WHAM… a top 10 finish in 7th with a nice R776.00 purse( No re-buys or add-on’s) and my freeroll earnings explodes to $141.95.

The key to my success at online poker. Poker Celibacy!!! Yes, you heard correctly! I have taken a well deserved break and feeling fresh, fresh enough to pick up from where i left off! I will continue to play once or twice a week but not more and concentrate on quality online poker sessions rather than long innings!

”All-in Stefk”

Tom "durrrr" Dwan puts out a heads-up challenge

Hello fellow poker fans, Jason Lindgren here with the first of hopefully many news articles for Poker Shuffle! I’ve decided to start with news regarding  Tom Dwan aka “durrrr” online, a young and unpredictable professional poker player who has won and lost several fortunes in his career. So lets begin with Tom Dwan’s “durrrr” heads-up challenge.

So whats the “durrrr” challenge all about? Well Tom Dwan  issued a challenge to the international poker world in January 2009 (anyone with the cash can accept the challenge). He will put up $1.5 million dollars to any opponent’s $500,000, guaranteeing challengers 3 to 1 odds.

The way it works is, the opponent plays “durrrr” in heads-up at 4 tables all at once, 50,000 hands. After the last hand has been played, the player who is up, even by one dollar, wins the challenge. So if  “durrrr” wins, he keeps any money he won during the challenge and the opponents $500,000. However if the opponent wins they keep their winnings and the $1.5 million that “durrrr” put up.

There are a few rules that “durrrr” has laid out:

• The game type must be No-Limit Hold ‘em or Pot-Limit Omaha
• The stakes must be a minimum of $200/$400
• Once the stakes have been decided upon, they must stay the same for the entire challenge
• Players must reload if their stack falls below 75 big blinds at any time be it No-Limit Hold ‘em or Pot-Limit Omaha

Patrik Antonius steps up to the challenge

Professional poker star Patrick Antonius has been the first in line to try win the $1.5 million dollars in the “durrrr Challenge”. Other big name players including Phil Ivey and David Benyamine have expressed interest in accepting the challenge.

After a year, have these two high-stakes experts played through all 50,000 hands?  They are yet to reach their  goal, so far 32,874 hands have been played of the 50,000

The problem here is that there is no set time for playing the challenge, only playing when they are both available and willing. For instance Patrik is not online or readily avalible when Tom is, or vice versa. So they struggle to get Challenge time.

However, often you will see Patrik Antonius online as well as Tom Dwan and they are not playing in the “durrrr Challenge”. The reason behind this is, the challenge is set to either “No-Limit Hold ‘em” or “Pot-Limit Omaha”, and as both players are professional Stud H/L, Razz, Stud Hi and other variants of poker they prefer to be playing other games, instead of only the one form.

The stats so far? Well after 52 sessions “durrrr” is up by just over 1.4 million dollars so it is clear Patrik has a lot of catching up to do with less than 20,000 hands left to play.

In the last session they played a total of 79 hands, which is not very much at all. With “durrrr” only going up another $22,000. I will be following the “durrrr Challenge” closely to see what unfolds, but with Tom’s lead it is not looking very good for Patrik, but this is poker, anything can happen in 20,000 hands!

Patrik in the "durrrr challenge"

9 Handed Table – Deep Stack 40 000

Pre-Flop

SB- 100 folds

BG- 200 folds

3rd- calls 200

4th- Hero raises to 1600 with pocket kings

5th- folds

6th- folds

7th- calls

8th-folds

9th- calls

……………………………

The Flop

Kh, 9h, 2s

Hero- Continuation bet of 1600 and now sitting with ”A set of Kings”

2nd player- calls 1600

3rd player- calls 1600

……………………………

The Turn

9 c

Hero- Continuation bet of 3600 and now sitting with ”A Full House, Kings and 9’s”

*at this point i know that getting the right betting amount is vital. The thought crosses my mind and wonders if these guys would limp in a hefty pre-flop raise with A 9 or J9…but i give them more credit.

2nd player- Moves all in

3rd player- folds

Hero- Calls but after some time, stressing and beginning to think that he might have pockets 9’s but call anyway.

* He turns over A 9 unsuited and i show my full house.

……………………………

At this stage i i’m leading by 99% and all that he can hope for is a 9 for a 4 of a kind.

He hits his 9 and i am out!

What a hand, i have been analyzing my betting structure all round for a few days now and i have realized that it was perfect- You cant account for luck, he got lucky!

Amalia das Neves taking the win with Reza Abrahams coming second.

Well done all the players that made top 19 and big thanks to those that attended. .

Great turn out of Poker Players.

Well done to Jason Lindgren for coming first.

Our second mistake was playing at strange times of the morning. The 7 day tournament took place from 1am and this odd time took its toll on us. On three occasions we overslept, one tournament we started and fell asleep after the first break and the rest we were just plain stale.

Lessons learnt from this experience:

1. Never play tired
2. Choose your competitions wisely ie. time wise
3. Never underestimate your competition
4. Play premium hands
5. Don’t play out of position

The above is poker 101 but every now and then we ALL need a reminder.

”All-in Stefk”