Calling all-ins at this early stage is also a no-no, unless you have something like Q,Q – A,A or A,K, which should give you enough firepower to tangle. Keep your eye on your position and avoid limping: being tight aggressive is aimed at eliminating this potential leak from your game.

Being tight aggressive will conserve your bankroll during the early going, but in 6-handed SnGs, it’ll take on another role as well: it’ll advertise and sell your tight image. Due to the short-handed nature of the game, selling the proper table image will be much more important than it usually is. The action will be more aggressive and starting hand values will plummet faster than in regular 10-handed SnGs, so making the right reads, and selling and taking advantage of the right table image will gain a lot of value.

By the middle stages, the blinds will have gone up to 30/60 or even 40/80, just significant enough to add an entirely new dimension to the game. Couple that with the fact that by then 2-3 of the original players will have been bounced, and you have a nice barrel of gunpowder just craving for someone to toss a match into it.

The fact that the game gets even shorter-handed and that the blinds seem to come about every other hand, will force you to loosen up more. This is the critical point of the SnG. You’ll have to slowly start thinking about making aggressive moves and going after your opponents’ blinds, still the situation may not be entirely ripe for that approach.

When the blinds go to about 50/100, that’s when you know it’s time to get rolling, and that’s when your early-stage tight image will come in handy. Getting down to 3-handed at this stage means the bubble will be just around the corner, so stealing blinds and ganging up on the short-stack will be the order of the day. This is when medium stacks will try to tighten up to ride it out and to slip into the money as the large stack takes care of the weakling. This is a common mistake. Don’t let the proximity of the money bubble influence your decision making. If you think you’re ahead, you should put the pedal to the metal. If you have a big stack though, try not to get tangled up with the other big stack at the table, but do take every opportunity to gang up on the weaklings.

The heads-up stage of every such tournament is pretty much a coin-toss. Your opponent has you figured out by that point and hopefully you have a few accurate reads of your own on him. Don’t let up, stay aggressive and keep taking the fight to him to force him to make a mistake. Sign up for poker rakeback too. While you will not be paying rake on every hand you play, you will pay tournament fees on each SnG you register for and that can go a long way towards crippling your bankroll. A poker propping setup or a nice rake rebate deal should take good care of that aspect.

At Poker Podcast Review we will dig into all of the current and most popular poker podcasts and rate them based on the subject matter covered as well as on the production value.

The website reviews all the current poker podcasts available to listeners and allows input as to which one is the best. So if you have a few minutes, take a look, see what podcasts are being reviewed and give some input if possible. Its well worth it.

While some players choose 7 card stud because they grew up with game, or appreciate its roots in American poker history, others select 7 card stud because there are more opportunities to play against weaker players, and therefore increase revenue from the game.

7 Card Stud Basics
7 card stud poker requires players to make the best possible 5 card poker hand from the 7 cards dealt to them in the course of the game. A round of betting follows each deal, with the first 2 cards dealt face down, the next 4 dealt face up and the final card dealt face down.

Players can use the “upcards”, or cards visible to other players, to bluff opponents, while the down cards are ideally used to create undetectable winning hands. The game structure introduces a great deal of complexity to play, with players required to pay attention to and memorize cards held by other players at the table.

The following 7 card poker strategy tips provide a basic guideline to making the most of this challenging poker format.

7 Card Stud Strategy
Trips: Trips are to 7 card stud what big pocket pairs are to hold ‘em. Being dealt trips first up gives a player very good odds of winning the ensuing hand, keeping in mind that the player should watch out for straight or flush draws amongst opponents. Many experienced 7 card stud players will attempt to slow play trips to extract maximum value out of the pot.

High Pairs: High pairs are the most desirable starting hand after trips. These not only give a player an opportunity to beat lower pairs, but also have the potential to hit sets later in the hand. The trick to high pairs is to eliminate drawing hands like straights and flushes with aggressive betting early in the hand. High pairs hidden by the down cards should be slow played to increase the size of the pot.

Flush Draws: Players dealt 3 suited cards in a game of 7 card stud will tend to attempt to draw cards for their flush without alerting other players to the fact that they are doing so. It is best to attempt completing a flush when the opening hand features high cards as these will provide additional opportunities to win the pot with high pairs. Players should abandon any attempts to make a flush if they are still two cards short of the flush after the 5th card has been dealt.

Straight Draws: Similar principles are used to play straight draws, with straight draws best pursued when the drawing hand features one or two high cards that will provide an additional opportunity to make a high pair later in the hand. Players should fold straight draws if they are not holding a four card open-ended straight draw after the 4th card has been dealt.

Always keep in mind

1. The greatest danger in 7 card stud is underestimating an opponent’s hand. Unless you’re holding the nuts you’ll need to work out what the strongest hand your opponent could be holding is and attempt to beat that rather than the cards that are showing on the table.
2. The first 4 cards are crucial to 7 card stud. If you’re ahead after 4 cards you’ll win more often than not, while if you still haven’t made your hand after the 4th card has been dealt you should consider bailing out of the hand and wait until you’re in a stronger position before putting any more of your money in the pot.

What made you start a website devoted to poker? Was there something missing online?
I have learned the most, whether it is about poker or technology, in a forum setting. There are many poker forums that do an excellent job at this and I didn’t want to recreate the wheel. So I decided to create a poker strategy site with the community as the focal point. All of the articles are open for comments and we have had some great discussions in the short time the site has been around.

Do you feel your education and/or professional background has helped you in poker?
I am an IT professional so I am used to researching methods for solving problems. When I first began playing poker I took the same approach. I bought every book I could get my hands on; listened to every podcast dedicated to poker; downloaded and started tracking my play with PokerTracker; and in general just geeked out about learning to play the game.

What advice would you give a beginner attempting to play in their first game?
The most important piece of advice that I could give to beginning players is to understand position. In games like Texas Hold’ Em, where the betting order is set by the movement of the dealer button, your position relative to the button is vital. You should be tight and play less hands when in early position, and looser and play more hands in late position. You can then build upon that understanding to formulate the selection of hands that you want to play that fits your playing style. But understanding position is a building block to that goal.

Do you play mostly online? Any live games? Stakes? All Holdem? Hours a week?
I mostly play online, though I take the occasional trip to Foxwoods or play in local charity tournaments. I am a small stakes no limit hold’ em junkie. I am currently 4-tabling $25NL and try to play at least 10 hours a week. After taking a beating at $50NL I had to move down. I am not sure if it was better competition, or variance, but my bankroll dictated the move down!

What types of reads/patterns do you notice with online players?
The average online players fold to aggression unless they have the goods. Be the one forcing the action when you are in position and if you get played back at, reevaluate the situation. If the player is skilled he may just be trying to keep you honest. If he isn’t, then he likely has the goods.

Who do you currently rank as the best overall poker player? Why?
I would say it’s Phil Ivey. He is skilled at so many games and beats the highest stakes available. He just has an uncanny ability to read people. He could beat an average player heads up without looking at his cards.

Many poker players have a nickname, do you? If not, what would you like it to be and why?
I actually don’t have a poker nickname, but if I did, it would definitely be “Hot Dog”. Unfortunately, the explanation is long and only funny if told while drinking.

What is your biggest poker pet peeve?
To be honest, I can’t think of a pet peeve in poker. Some would point to “donks” calling pot sized bets and hitting their obvious flush draw. Or calling and hitting a one-outer on the river. But that is where the money comes from. More often than not, they aren’t going to hit the hand and you are going to win. You always remember the suck outs, but those are the exceptions, not the rules.

Come to think of it, Open folding is a pet peeve of mine. I see it more often than you’d imagine.

What is the best piece of advice you have received from a player or a book that has helped you improve your game?
Not to be results oriented. Do not let prior results affect your current decision. The fact that your have had your AA’s cracked three times in the last 2 days should not stop you from stacking off with them this time.

Eric “Rizen” Lynch sums it up well:

The key to evaluating your game and not letting short-term fluctuations lead you to alter your game in negative ways is being able to evaluate situations and hands after they’re over without being results-oriented. Have confidence in your game and look back at the decisions you made. If you believe they were correct, move on even if the result wasn’t positive.

In the next few years, where do you see yourself in the world of poker?
I hope to be grinding it out at $100NL. But I also want to expand my game, perhaps into PLO8 and Razz. I also hope to grow the community over at Complete Poker Rules, host some tournaments, perhaps start a league. That would be ideal.

That being said, the book mathematics of poker is definitely for the “math player.” Some books will say that they are not for poker beginners, that people must have a grounding in basic poker strategy before attempting the book. Well, the Mathematics of Poker is not for math beginners, and people should have a solid grasp of mathematics before attempting this book.

Bill Chen, a PhD in Mathematics, and Jarred Ankenman take a fully mathematical approach to poker in the 382 pages of this volume. They use mathematical tools and online poker stats to analyze the mechanics of the game and which strategies are likely to produce the most profit. There is little philosophical debate here; this book is the hard science of poker.

If you are a “math guy,” there are a lot of interesting analyses to be gleaned from this book. If not, you will find useful principles to employ, but you will have to dig through some complex-looking math in order to find it.

Before we go any further: this article is about turning a profit at the SNG tables, it isn’t about how to get rich playing in low buy-in SNGs (because that’s what I’m going to discuss). If you’re looking for the big money, play in high buy-in MTTs because your investment/potential return ratio is much better there. SNGs (or STTs) offer a much smaller buy-in/payout ratio, but they do give individual players much better odds for reaching the money than any MTT ever could.

A typical MTT is a $1-$50 buy-in one (those which cost more usually feature much more aggressive play and harder-to-beat opposition), with 10 players (6 handed ones are kind of short handed so they too require a few strategy-tweaks). A regular 10-handed STT usually rewards places 1-3, which means there are 7 players you need to best to get to the money. Turn it around any which way you want to: that is not a superhuman feat. If you make it past the bubble, you’ll already make some money, so – in theory – you do not even need to win a STT to add to your bankroll.

Special “beginners” STTs feature more paid places (can be as much as 5 out of 10) but obviously, the payouts will suffer in this case.

From a strategy-perspective, a SNG can be divided into three stages: the opening stage, the bubble, and the money play.

The opening stage is the easiest to approach correctly: you need to play tight. Several factors tell you that you should act like that. First of all, because there are some pretty bad players in most of these low buy-in SNGs. As the tourney kicks off, many of them will adopt an all-or-nothing attitude and shove all-in on all sorts of drawing hands. Do not get in their way, these guys are out to beat themselves and I see no reason why you should step in to prevent them. Another – this time mathematical reason – is that the size of the blinds compared to that of the pots is small. Because of the pot odds that this situation generates, tight play should prevail. As the blinds get bigger and bigger in relation to the pot, you’ll need to gradually loosen up, right up to the point when the blinds will be so big that the pot odds will justify calling with just about any hand.

Anyway, the bubble is the most delicate stage of a SNG. As you approach it, play gets short handed, but not short handed enough to give individual starting hands a significant odds-boost. The blinds have already escalated so your stack is under pressure all the time. The best way to deal with the situation is to attempt to steal as many blinds as possible, and to win hands without showdown. The catch is, that while some players will be relatively easy to bully around (because they’ll be afraid to risk a bust on the bubble, so they’ll tighten up) others will fight back. This is where your player-reading skills will be called upon. On one hand you’ll be forced to take advantage of the pre-bubble situation, on the other hand you’ll risk running into a solid hand or a player who just refuses to be pushed around.

After the bubble bursts, I have an unhealthy habit of relaxing too much. Don’t commit the same mistake. Every player that you finish above in the tourney means significantly more money headed your way. Don’t be the farmer and settle for a cash finish. Always be the fox and aim to win. Some people just don’t have this “killer instinct” in them. These guys will have to work on developing it.

The same goes for the heads-up stage. At this point, the odds on starting hands as well as the pot odds will have been completely reshaped. Because of the huge blinds, calling becomes an option on just about any starting hand. Any call can mean an all-in though. Mind you that in heads-up play, the worst possible starting hand is no longer the 7,2o, but rather the 2,3 regardless of whether it’s suited or not.

Always sign up for a rakeback deal before you begin playing in SNGs. Every time you buy your way into one, you’ll pay a tourney fee. Rakeback will give you a nice refund on those fees, thus adding another little revenue-stream to your bankroll.

Like 7-Card Stud, 5-Card Stud begins with the deal. Each player receives 2 cards from the dealer, one of them face-up and one of them face down. Stud is not generally played with blinds, and 5-Card Stud is no exception. When played with bring-ins, the player with the lowest face-card needs to bring it in. Sometimes, it is the player with the highest face-card who acts first. When the lowest (or highest) cards are tied, suits are used as tie-breaker.

Betting (low limit) continues in a clock-wise direction. Players may elect to call, raise or fold. Those who remain in the hand move on to third street. Third street is another face-up card which is followed by betting again. On third street, it is the player with the highest face-up partial poker hand who has to begin the action. Fourth street is another face-up card. The action is begun by the player with the best 3-card poker hand he/she can make with the 3 face-up cards. High limit betting commences followed by 5th street, or the river. 5th street is yet another face-up card. The player with the best 4-card poker hand begins the action, as betting is done on the high limit again.

After the last round of betting is complete, the showdown follows, and the player who makes the best 5-card hand with the 5 cards dealt to him/her (4 face-cards and the initial hole card) wins the pot. If everyone folds around to a player at any time in a hand, he/she automatically takes down the pot.

There are a few problems that 5-Card Stud’s play presents, and because of which it is not accepted in casinos or in official high-profile tournaments. I’m not even 100% sure there are any online poker rooms out there which feature this game.

Because there is just one hole card, and exactly 80% of each player’s hand is visible to his/her opponents, game-play becomes extremely predictable. Even average players can easily read their opponents’ hole cards and they’ll fold in time, ignore any bluffs or they’ll just keep pushing forth, depending on what the situation asks for.

One has to be extremely lucky or has to face a complete numskull to be able to drag him along and make him pay in this game. For this reason, when played among hardened professionals, the game degenerates into a see-saw of winning and giving up pots that tends to even up over time denying each player a definitive edge.

Each of the players only get 5 cards too, there are no discards, no supplementary cards or community cards, so they’re pretty much stuck with what they start out on. Winning hands also tend to stay in the one pair – two pairs range this way.

This is why 5-Card Stud may be a good game to play amongst friends, but it is definitely not suited for professional play.

To mend the above presented issues, variations have been made on the game-system. In some cases, the card dealt on 5th street is also a hole card. That gives players 2 hole cards and thus only 60% of their eventual showdown hand will be visible to their opponents.

In some cases the first two cards dealt to players are both face down. While they do manage to add some more suspense to the game, these rather desperate attempts to get a long-broken cart rolling will probably do little to nudge 5-Card Stud back into the big international competitions. Winning hand values are still going to be low, and players’ options narrow when it comes to making their hands.

Apparently, as long as there are only 5 cards used in a game of Stud, the resulting game-play is going to be impossible to alter through any other means.

Sign up for a rakeback deal now and move your online poker game into a different dimension. Rakeback will add serious money to your bankroll each month (or week), money that you do not have to do anything for.

On higher limits, play will be less chaotic, but players will be much better and therefore your job won’t get any easier. Here though, you can no longer afford to stick to basic tight-aggressive play. You need to force your edges, and since this is not no-holdem territory anymore, you’ll be able to deploy some more advanced weaponry.

The Check-raise bluff is one such weapon. You cannot use something like this in low limit Holdem because you cannot bluff people there. Your $0.4 raise will not scare anyone, and you cannot shove any more into the pot.

In order for this move to be efficient, you need to play at a $10/$20 table at least. The check-raise is a weapon well-known for NL players. You check your turn in order to have someone else bet into you and then, when he does, you complete the trap by raising him. Good players will catch on immediately that they just walked into the trap, and good players are the ones most likely to fall for it too, because they’re tempted to bet into a pot that is checked around to them to steal it. Make sure you get fairly accurate reads on your opponents before check-raising them. A player who doesn’t understand the trap he just walked into will be much harder to bluff this way.

The benefits a check-raise bluff can provide you in Limit Holdem are obvious: it’ll enable you to scoop up some pots you would never have won otherwise. The risks are numerous though. If you get read and you’re caught red-handed on your bluff, it’ll be a costly business. If your opponent is too dumb to understand the situation, it’ll cost you a lot.

The check-raise semi-bluff is another great weapon, extremely deadly when used against tight-aggressive players. Its goal is the same as that of the simple check raise bluff, but it carries additional value: it gives you a shot at not only recovering when – for whatever reason – your check-raise bluff backfires, but also to take down a huge pot on it.

Again, only resort to these tools when you’re playing in a high limit game. High-limit tables feature experienced opponents, who – unlike rookies – will be vulnerable to your check-raises.

Bluffing on the flop should be another important weapon in your arsenal. If you get a fairly good starting hand and you raise preflop on it, you might want to fire a second bet on the flop even if it misses you. Sometimes it’s a great move, which – again – results in your winning a pot which would otherwise have ended up in an opponent’s pockets.

Sometimes, it’s easy to make the call. If you’re in position and the pot gets checked around to you, it is in a way your obligation to fire a second bullet. Sure, someone may have flopped a monster and may be slow-playing it, but if you get called at least you know you’re up against a hand there.

Slow-playing is something to consider, but only when you have a truly good hand and you’re fairly certain you won’t be outdrawn. Whenever you slow-play, you give up control, you let your opponents land free cards and that may often have fatal consequences. While I do not like to slow-play, sometimes it is indeed the optimal decision as you aim to get as much money into the pot as possible. Regardless at what limit you play, or whether you play NL or Limit, signing up to a rakeback deal will always give your odds a huge lift. While a good rakeback deal will have an immediate though minor influence on your pot odds, you’ll only be glad you signed up for it at the end of the month, or whenever the poker room delivers your rakeback money.

Omaha Hi-Lo is the most popular Omaha version (although it is played Hi only too, and in PL variations) so all considerations below will be about Omaha Hi-Lo.

An Omaha showdown hand consists of three cards off the board and two from the player’s pocket. Players cannot use one card from their pocket and four off the board or any other combination but the above said one. They may use the same or different hands for their Highs and Lows but they always have to stick to the “two from the pocket tree off the board” rule.

This is extremely important when it comes to the way one’s pocket hand cooperates with the board. Omaha is a game in which a hand can never be viewed in isolation, and in which reading the board is even more important than in Texas Holdem.

One of the most difficult things about reading an Omaha board is reading the low hands. Everyone is used to high hands, so that shouldn’t pose a problem, low hands are different though.

In the “game of nuts as Omaha is often referred to, the very least you can do is to be capable of reading the nut low. The “nut low” means the lowest possible hand on the given board, by the way.

The lowest possible hand in Omaha is 5,4,3,2,A. If you read it as a number (54,321), the hand which read out similarly is closest to this number is the nut low.

Let’s see a few examples of tricky low hands: Let’s see a board of 4,6,7,A,K. While you do want to have A,2 in your pocket hand because they are the two lowest cards, and you would indeed make an excellent low hand with these cards on the board given above, you need to be aware that yours will not be the nut low hand. The low that you can make with your A,2 will be 7,6,4,2,A. The nut low belongs to the player with a 2,3 in the pocket, because his low hand will look like: 6,4,3,2,A. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Now, if you were to read the numbers out like I said above, you’d get 76,421 vs 64,321 out of which the latter is obviously the lower.

You need to know what the nut low is on every board regardless of whether you have it or not. The reason is, you need to assess the strength of your low in relation with the nut low. No other method will give you an accurate idea of how strong your low hand really is.

Why should you even begin thinking about playing Omaha Hi-Lo? Well, the idea is quite simple: if you manage to master the game, it’ll be an excellent way to build up your bankroll. It is no secret that most Omaha players are abysmal. Its nature gives skilled players a huge edge over unskilled opposition. Playing good starting hands in Omaha can alone turn you into a winner. Schooling, which is so irritating in Texas Holdem has no place in Omaha. Loose Omaha games can be beaten simply by waiting for the nuts, and in that respect, it is somewhat mathematically simplistic.

In Omaha, a much higher percentage of your eventual showdown hand becomes available much earlier than in Holdem. You get a plethora of information, and you won’t have to deal with uncertainty so much.

To sum things up, here are a few basic Omaha strategy recommendations:

• Try to scoop the pot whenever possible, but remember, while taking down the entire pot is what you should really aim for, taking one half of it is still much better than nothing.
• Play a starting hand which has A,2, A,3 or 2, 3 in it. These cards give you a much better shot at making the nut low. Avoid taking your 6,7,8,9s to the flop.
• Be tight on the flop. Remember what I said above about the game giving you much more information on the flop than Holdem. Use that information wisely.
• Play your 2 usable pocket cards depending on how the other two pocket cards relate to the hand you’re trying to make.
• Play with rakeback. Whether you play Holdem or Omaha, rakeback will give you a huge additional edge.