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While you might have watched high profile poker players playing 67s or even a 2 gappers like 46h with no fear and take down pot after pot on TV, a word of warning mastering suited connectors requires awareness of the subtler side of poker. Fear not, this introduction to suited connectors will get you well on the way to opening up your game. This won’t just make your poker game more interesting, it will bring Read more…

On the surface, the protection bets are very simple. You think you have the best hand so you bet or raise. Hmm, well I guess that’s it? Hardly. The beauty of games like NL Holdem lie in the control a player has over bet sizing. This little feature actually allows the poker player to manipulate the fundamental math of the situation and thereby having a control over his destiny in a way that tamer versions Read more…

There is a bluff move that works best in psychological variations of poker like NL Holdem. Essentially, floating the pot means calling a bet or raise with nothing, either to bluff a draw or to see if your opponent continues a suspected bluff. The move allows you to increase your share of pots won, without depending on actually having real hands, so it increases the real edge you have over other players and is an Read more…

The tournament poker concept of the gap was coined first by David Skalansky but most good poker players have a feel for this intuitively even if they have not read it. The idea of the gap is that you need better cards to re-raise than to open a raise. That is, you may be willing to open the raising with AJs but if there is already a raise in front of you AJs becomes a Read more…

Isolation bets are raises designed to thin out the field. You want to understand isolation strategies both to employ them in your own poker arsenal but also to recognize when someone else is employing isolation bets. So a standard isolation play might look something like, UTG limps and then there are two more limpers in middle position. Given the pot odds already, SB and BB are likely to limp to the flop regardless of their hole Read more…

For the beginner player, this is one of the most fun new moves you will learn. There is something very satisfying about the check raise because it is like springing a surprise ambush on your opponent. Often your image goes from weakness to strength in a moment. Never-the-less, there are factors to consider when using check raises but successfully using them keeps your poker dynamic and unpredictable. In theory, the check raise is a fairly Read more…

The online poker world has allowed a new generation of players to make a good living from just playing poker but the unusual thing is that many poker pros now play at stakes that are quite low compared to Vegas old hands. In the past, to make enough money for the good life, you would need to play at least at the $25/$50 level before you could make a living from poker. But now things Read more…