Poker Strategy

Mystery bounty poker tournaments award a random cash prize every time you eliminate an opponent during the bounty phase, with prizes ranging from a fraction of the buy-in to amounts worth thousands of times what […]

Poker combinations, also called combos, are the exact number of different ways a specific starting hand can be made from a 52-card deck. Every pocket pair has 6 possible combinations. Every suited hand has 4. […]

VPIP stands for voluntarily put $ in pot, and it measures the percentage of hands in which a player voluntarily enters the pot before the flop. VPIP is the most important stat in any HUD, […]

PFR stands for pre-flop raise, and it measures the percentage of hands in which a player raises before the flop. Of all the poker stats available in a poker HUD, PFR is the one I […]

Leveling in poker is the practice of thinking beyond your own hand to consider what your opponent thinks you hold, and then potentially what they think you think they hold. The concept was introduced to […]

The squeeze play in poker is a re-raise (3-bet) made after one player raises and at least one other player calls. The squeeze strategy exploits the “sandwich effect”: the original raiser now faces pressure from […]

Crazy poker games are alternative poker variants specifically designed to create more action, wilder hands, and memorable moments than standard Texas Hold’em or Omaha. They include games like Irish Poker, Badugi, Pineapple, Short Deck Poker, […]

Poker HUD stats are numerical measurements of your opponents’ tendencies, displayed in real time over the table by tracking software, and they are one of the most powerful weapons available to online poker players. The […]

A poker straddle is a voluntary blind bet placed before the cards are dealt, typically by the player to the left of the big blind, for twice the big blind. It acts as a third […]

Limping in poker means calling the big blind preflop without raising, and it is almost always the wrong play in a cash game when you are first into the pot. You give up initiative, invite […]

The best Texas Hold’em starting hands are, in order: pocket aces (AA), pocket kings (KK), pocket queens (QQ), ace-king (AK), pocket jacks (JJ), ace-queen (AQ), pocket tens (TT), pocket nines (99), ace-jack (AJ), and king-queen […]

The biggest poker tournaments in the world are the WSOP Main Event, the WPT World Championship, and the European Poker Tour (EPT) series: live events that attract tens of thousands of players and generate eight-figure […]

Poker is a skill game in the long run: short-term luck creates the illusion of randomness, but over a large enough sample of hands, the better player always wins because every decision has a mathematically […]

A poker downswing is a prolonged period of losing results that stems from variance rather than poor play. Most players experience multiple significant downswings each year regardless of their skill level, and some lasting hundreds […]

Poker etiquette is the set of unwritten behavioral standards that govern how players are expected to act at a live poker table, from how you handle your chips to how you behave after a bad […]

Sit and go strategy is the approach you use to navigate SNG poker tournaments from the tight early stage through the critical bubble and into heads-up play. I have coached hundreds of students through sit-and-gos, […]

RTA in poker, short for real-time assistance, refers to any tool or method that helps a player make decisions while a hand is actively in progress. This ranges from static preflop charts consulted during play […]

A bluff catcher in poker is any hand that beats the bluffs in your opponent’s range but loses to all of their value hands. It does not have to be a strong hand in absolute […]

Poker tournaments have changed a lot over the years, and the introduction of online poker has certainly had a massive impact on the way tournaments are played. Online poker operators have introduced countless tournament formats […]

There are poker players you will come across who speak adamantly about how they cannot stand playing pocket jacks. Often their uneasiness with fish hooks comes from a lack of understanding on how to play […]

This chapter continues my discussion about specific poker strategies that have helped me, including board texture and bet sizing. If you wish, you can start reading at Chapter 1, or download the entire e-book as a […]