Tournaments

Cheating in poker is less common than the movies suggest, but it is real enough that every serious player should know what to watch for and how to respond when they see it. Poker today […]

In tournament poker, mastering preflop tournament fundamentals is key to success. While postflop decisions often get more attention, your preflop choices set the stage for every hand, shaping your chances of going deep. This blog […]

A donk bet in poker is when an out-of-position player leads with a bet into the preflop aggressor, instead of checking and allowing the aggressor to continue the action. The play gets its name from […]

Texas Hold’em tournaments are the most exciting format in the game, and also the most unforgiving. I have coached thousands of tournament players over the years, and the same costly errors come up again and […]

Rake in poker is the commission the house takes from every cash game pot or tournament buy-in, typically ranging from 2.5% to 10% of the pot in cash games, capped at a preset maximum. It […]

Ghosting in Texas Hold’em Poker is a form of cheating that occurs when a more skilled player takes over another player’s account during a tournament or coaches a player through hands in real time while […]

Minimum defense frequency (MDF) is the minimum percentage of your range you must continue with, by calling or raising: when facing a bet, ensuring your opponent cannot profit by bluffing indiscriminately. Against a half-pot bet, […]

Take this 10 question quiz to test your knowledge of GTO Poker! True or False: Solvers will sometimes sacrifice the EV of a specific hand to strengthen your overall strategy. I.e. Not raising a hand […]

A c-bet in poker is a flop bet made by the preflop aggressor, regardless of whether the flop improved their hand. The name comes from the idea that you are continuing the aggression you showed […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]