How often do you want to get all in preflop with AK? Take a look at how AK stands up against some hand ranges. The percentage is on the left, then the specific pocket cards that are make up that range. The columns on the right looks at how that range compares with AK and [...]

Why do we bet, or raise, or call? You are in the cutoff, one to the right of the dealer position. You are dealt AJ. Everyone folds to you. You raise. Why? Because you’re supposed to? Say that you dutifully raise and the player in the big blind calls. The flop comes Q52 and the [...]

One of my tilt/overaggression/spew issues comes up when I can no longer fold KK postflop. Similar situations apply to AA/QQ/JJ/TT or AK/AQ on K or Q high flops. Largely this comes from playing very low levels of poker and then moving back to more reasonable levels. At the lowest levels players will live and die [...]

My new mantra. I don’t think it’s for everyone ’cause some people will interpret the “cautious” part as meaning “don’t bet without a strong hand”, but I think it’s good for someone like me that, on the one hands sometimes falls into a passive mode and alternatively starts to spew when I think that players [...]

Time for some players stats from my rush poker stats. Now, something is odd, but so far I can’t figure out what. In the exported data I show me with 16,587 hands while the HEM Report Manager shows 13,145 which I think is accurate. I have around 8,000 hands on Stars during the month, so [...]

Picture yourself walking along a path on the side of a hill. Each step is like folding preflop. Fold, fold, fold. Then you decide to raise preflop. This is like a stomp, or a step off the path, a forceful step, asserting that you have a hand, that you’re not afraid to increase the stakes. [...]

In two hands in my Daily Grind I 4 bet on the small side, indicating that I want action. In one case I have AA, in the other AK. In the AK one I say that the other reason for 4 betting small is to be able to fold to a shove. But this may [...]

Ah, Clint Eastwood. Tough guy. Man’s man. “Dirty Harry”. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. In the spaghetti western, poker is as much a part of the lore as the Clint Eastwood stereotype character shows up as a part of poker. Just as Bogart in Casablanca never actually says “Play it again Sam”, the [...]