It has been literally ages since my past post and I have to apologise for that. So what have I been doing since January? Well my poker took something of a back seat for a while as did my blogging and so nothing much happened. However I am back with a bang and playing some poker again. Nothing to get too excited about really as I am still multi-tabling the NL100 full ring levels. I had a pretty hectic festive period where I was moving home and so this led to me becoming a little distant from poker for a while as a few personal issues needed sorting.
In this post I would like to respond to a PM sent from Gary who asked me what I felt was important in the modern online game at poker sites like www.888poker.com to make money? Well I think there are three key areas that a solid player needs to focus on. Firstly game selection is more important than what many players think. We can look at this by hypothetically rating our game as well as our opponents. Let us say that our game was rated as a 6 but every other player in our game was also rated 6…..how can you make any money in this game?
I know that it’s difficult to spot things like this in the heat of battle but my point is that if you do not bother at all to game select then don’t be surprised if you don’t make any money. Another key factor in not making money in my opinion in games like deep stacked no limit Texas hold’em is poor bet sizing and bet sizing errors. A post flop min-raise is a good case in point. Let us polarise your range for a minute between fresh air and the nuts. If you have the nuts and your opponent has already shown interest in the hand then why not raise bigger than a min-raise?
Over time you will make more money and raising to x2.5 or x3 will stack your opponent on more occasions when they have second best hands that are good enough to stack off with. Do not allow your opponents to get off light because over the space of a year those losses really mount up. Secondly if you are bluffing then you are giving your opponent excellent calling odds of around 9/2 depending on how much they bet. So in both cases it pays to bet more irrespective of what you are holding.
So when I see someone min-raise post flop then this is something that I perceive as a bet sizing error. Failing to successfully bluff will cost you entire pots and failing to stack players when you should also costs you a lot of money as well. This can literally be the difference between playing very successfully and recycling money or worse. The third failure in my book is poor non-showdown winnings.
While one can say a lack of bankroll management, poor poker game and a lack of emotional control are vital factors……these are factors that are obvious to everyone or at least they should be. However game selection, bet sizing and poor non-showdown winnings are factors that are far less apparent. Players work on their game, work on their emotional control and practice bankroll management……but this isn’t necessarily enough.
This is why I do not fear regs as much as many people do. If I feel that they are simply multi-tabling rakeback “pro’s” with very low VPIP’s and a lack of imaginative play then I simply look to combat that with more aggressive play especially when I suspect that their range is wider than normal.
Carl Sampson is a professional poker player who plays online at www.888poker.com
