Helpful Centers

Before the days when poker was on every channel, broadcasted by every major sporting network and countless others, the game of poker seemed a much different entity than the multibillion market it is now. Fueled primarily by the ESPN broadcasts of the World Series of Poker beginning the year Chris Moneymaker famously took down top prize for amateur players everywhere, each year the market of the poker industry grows a little further, taking over new heads that it might never have reached before.

Among this spread, the prevalence of televised play has likely had a great impact not only on poker’s popularity, but how poker online is played. Due to the countless hours a tournament takes to play out, producers have to whittle down that onslaught into a one or two hour event. The focus, then, often ends up being placed mostly on the ‘action hands,’ the all ins and the bluff moves, reducing poker less to a chess game and a more a violent free for all.

The effect of this is clearplayers now seem much more reckless and willing to put their money on the edge the way these televised representatives do. There is less of a meditative environment in many younger players, and more action. As things continue, we’ll likely see this trend shift again.

Microstakes online poker has experienced a bit of a boom in the last couple of months. Whether you are for or against the concept of tiny stakes, the fact is that everyone is talking about microstakes these days. I would like to suggest that one of the main reasons that microstakes have gone major is our current economic crisis. The constant doom and gloom on the television can get to be a bit much these days. If you are like me, you crave the blissful freedom of a online poker game. The calm reflective moments, free from worries about interest rates or taxable income. The problem with using poker as an escape from an economic reality is that the economic crisis inevitably finds itself into your bankroll. With less to spend, but more reasons to play it is easy to see why everyone seems to be discovering microstakes. Microstakes give you that guilt free indulgence that you can’t get at the real casino onlinetables. It is hard to feel bad about your spending habits when you spend less than $5 for an entire game of poker fun. Microstakes are the one little area of the casino that our current economic crisis has left untouched.

In no limit hold ‘em there is a certain bet that is rarely mentioned and greatly under used. It’s the sweetening bet. This is usually done in the form of a minraise or in the form of a very smallish bet that will encourage calls from lesser poker hands.

Here are the ingredients to sweeten a pot. First your hand has to be considered. You want to pull in people, so you want to have a very strong hand. It’s not usually recommended that you do this with a high pocket pair, as a high pocket pair is a hand you want to get one on one with someone against. Instead, your strong suited connectors and your monster draws with hands like AK or KQ suited are best suited for the task. The next thing to worry about is your position. If you’re in position, you’re probably going to try to take down the pot after you see the action.

The pot sweetener is a bet that is made in early position since it gives the players behind you a chance to call your little bet.

Now, if all goes according to plan, you’ll hit the flop and you’ll make a standard continuation bet. Your online poker opponents in turn will be more likely to call as you showed a tad bit of weakness with your first bet since it was so small. Likewise, they’ll more likely call your continuation bet for two reasons: the weakness in the first betting round and the fact that they may see your second bet to be a standard continuation bet or even a probe bet.

This is exactly what you want. You’re enticing them with a bigger pot. And you’ve hit your side of the flop hard.

But you have to be wary, as you may know what’s going on when you sense a sweetening bet, you may not know that the player you’re playing against doesn’t know what he’s doing to begin with. He may be making a micro raise just because that’s what he felt like doing on that street and it had nothing to do at all with trapping or even sweetening the pot. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t get brought up very much, the cluelessness of other online poker players. But it’s quite possible that you’ll be armed to know how to do it and since you know how to do it, you’ll also know how to avoid it being done to you.

A recent article prompted me to do a study of whether or not the rumor is true that ADHD meds help one when playing poker, specifically when multitabling. Me, being the pseudo scientist that I am, decided to try it for a few days and see if my play improved, declined, or stayed the same. Well a few things I’d like to comment on are as follows: fist, my actions became more automated. The standard lines I’d normally think about taking, I started doing almost subconsciously. I don’t think this is a significant benefit, as sometimes you need to be thinking about your lines so you can switch them up. As such, I’d say my play declined as I became the automaton. However, on the upside, it did increase the ability to play more online poker tables. I usually play 4, and I was easily able to concentrate on 8 and play to the same caliber (minus the automation of course). This makes me conclude that if you don’t have ADHD, you shouldn’t be using ADHD meds to play poker on. Sure, your focus and attention are better, but that’s something you learn with practice anyway, and besides, if you’re looking to play poker at the casino online, you should be passionate about playing, or just playing for fun. ADHD meds are designed to keep you focused on tasks you’re not thrilled about doing. Why mess up a good thing? *The views expressed herein do not reflect the views of this website and are solely the commentary of the author.

This column is dedicated to looking at a single hand and dissecting it to help poker players better understand the game and the mindsets of some of the top players in the world. Let’s focus for a minute on Dan Harrington’s hand at the World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio in April.

Dan’s in late position, blinds are 1500-3000 with a 400 ante. The buy in was 25000. Harrington raises 10,000 with K-9 off. One player calls, the big blind. Flop comes rainbow 2-10-5 rainbow. Obviously Harrington misses here, but could this help his opponent? Big blind checks, and Harrington makes a continuation bet of 12,000. Big blind calls. Interesting. So what’s Harrington thinking here? “I think he has a small pair or paired the 10.” Next comes the turn, 7h, which puts a flush draw on the board. Another continuation bet by Harrington, this time for 26000. Still, the BB calls, but “He thought about it a long time…” River comes 8h. If the BB was looking for a flush, he made it, or possibly the straight.

At this point Harrington is thinking “He has a pair and he thinks he’s going to make stand on the end, and he hopes I check on the end.” Now at this point we see that Harrington has nothing, but with good poker position and his betting patterns, this is a wonderful opportunity to pull off a bluff. After all , it won’t look suspicious as the betting signifies that Harrington has something, even though we know he holds a muck if he’s challenged. And unfortunately this time he is. He pushes 60000 in forcing the BB to bet his whole stack. And he does. And what does the BB turn over? Pocket fours. Now there’s lots that can be said for the bad play by the pocket fours, but in the end, it just goes to show you that even with the most advanced technical skill, such as that shown by Harrington, sometimes our love of our hand throws off any logic and “should have happened,” moments.

Still, it speaks volumes that Harrington was able to predict the poker hand so accurately.

When playing online poker, it becomes quickly apparent, especially at lower limit tables, that many players love to limp in.

I’m not just talking about limping in with the small blind, I’m talking about early position limping in, people who limp with monster hands like pocket kings and pocket queens.

I would assume that most of these players are subscribe to the low risk-low reward philosophy. These people don’t want to raise too much, and at the same time are content with winning poker pots that are not very big.

It can be very frustrating to play against limpers, but also very profitable. Most hands you can continue to collect their initial bets, and can take down the pot with strong bet or two. And in the event they flops some monster hand, you don’t even lose that much money out of it, because you didn’t pay that much to get in the pot and 95% of the time will clumsily overbet the pot when they do hit a hand.

I often hear some players complain about people who constantly limp in, or other instances of bad play, and I don’t know why. You should always welcome bad play at your table, it means more cash for you.