Blog: Cardplayer Lifestyle Poker Blog

To a large extent, your opponents bet the same way over and over. Their betting pattern becomes a habit. Knowing your opponents’ betting patterns can be valuable information. Poker is a game of partial information. The more you get, the better your decisions, the more you win. That holds true whether you're playing at a brick and mortar establishment or online on...

With a wealth of material on the market, the average poker player is swamped with ideas for poker coaching. From GTO to elite level coaching right down to the best training methods out there that can turn a hopeful amateur into a profit-making machine, self-improvement is everything poker. But how do you get the best out of poker coaching? To find out, we...

In poker, when the pot odds (reward) are higher than the card odds against you (risk), you have a positive expectation that you will gain chips by playing that hand. The inviolate laws of probability favor you. If you play your hands with this in mind, in the long run, you are bound to go home a winner. This applies to the game...

This is an excerpt from GTO Poker Simplified by Dara O’Kearney and Barry Carter. The new book takes the most important lessons from the modern era of poker solvers and explains them in a way that anyone can understand....

Let’s get you earning more profits from the weakest players in the game, the fish. In a prior article called “Fish Can Teach Us What NOT To Do”, I taught you the five biggest mistakes that fish make. Well, we’re flipping the script with this article and you’re going to learn simple ways to exploit these mistakes for maximum profits. If you...

Is there one player in the cardroom that is constantly playing back at you? Do you hate playing pots against this player? Let's discuss how to deal with a poker bully....

We all know about Maria Konnikova’s meteoric rise from absolute beginner to pro poker player as documented in her bestselling book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win. But what strategies has Konnikova employed to keep her place in the poker hierarchy? Let’s take a look at how she deals with the pressure of...

Much like when you begin a session of online pokies in Australia, when playing Texas Hold’em poker, the goal is to win as much money (chips) as possible. There will be times when you catch a monster hand. Plan your action so that you squeeze out every possible chip from your opponents. Slow-playing and sandbagging are common trapping tactics to accomplish that...

"It's good to learn from mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes." - Warren Buffet I absolutely love this quote from the world’s greatest investor because it’s not just applicable to life; it also suits us as poker learners extremely well....

Nicholas Goldberg, an erudite columnist on the staff of the Los Angeles Times, wrote these words: “We prosper not through luck or handouts but through hard work, gumption and discipline.” – Nicholas Goldberg, as per Elliot Fein; Los Angeles Times Editorials; June 27, 2021. It’s not hard to see how hard work, gumption, and discipline help us to enjoy happier, successful...

The mental game is a fundamental skill that poker players must work on. Not mastering the mental game can cost you a lot of money in a session or tournament, live or online....

Moving up in stakes is the ultimate goal for any professional poker player. Many professionals start by grinding online or live $1/$2 NLH until they have a bankroll to play full-time. The first jump for live no-limit (or PLO) professionals is usually from $1/$2 to $2/$5. From there, the goal is to gradually keep moving up in stakes until you are playing the...

There is no shortage of books out there that tell you how to play poker better than you currently do. They inform, inspire and entertain on the virtue of perfecting your poker talents. There is a flurry of them on the market at present, from applying GTO to your game or stepping up the stakes as you improve your skills in your preferred...

Have you ever heard of Bread & Butter Poker? This is the #1 strategy for profitable poker and it’s one of the best things I learned from Tommy Angelo’s book, Elements of Poker. Get it and read it today if you haven’t yet. He gives loads of great tactical strategy advice and a lot of useful poker mindset strategies, too. As...

Every poker player knows that prudent starting-hand selection is essential for winning. Next, one hopes their hand improves on the flop. After all, the best hand on the flop usually is favored to take the pot on the showdown. Or is it? The Power of the Raise Even modestly skilled players realize the power of the raise. A raise can help you take...

There is one leak my students have that makes me go absolutely ballistic. Let’s see if you have it. You are playing a WPT event in Choctaw, Oklahoma, and you look down at K-To. The two players to your left are excellent at their craft, but they’re talking. Are they distracted? The player in the big blind has been playing loose and...

Lou Krieger’s Tip 42 in his classic book, 52 Great Poker Tips, encourages us to play more aggressively. However, I wonder if his example limits the potential value of the concept. Perhaps it would be wise to expand on Lou’s example to make it all the more valuable to players. Much depends on the situation. I agree with Lou that “aggressively...

Phil Ivey is a poker celebrity. Among his accomplishments, he has won over $30-million in tournaments, while earning 10 World Series of Poker bracelets. He has also won a number of other major poker tournaments, and he has done extremely well in high-stakes cash games, both online and live. Last year, Ivey was interviewed by Joe Ingram (a.k.a., Chicago Joey), a well-known podcaster...

A student of mine emailed me recently: I don't like that online play is not a level playing field, since people with tracking software have an advantage over those who don't. Well, I would say that those who use tracking software have a potential advantage, but that doesn’t mean online poker is an unlevel playing field....

GTO or Game Theory Optimal is a strategy in poker in which players use mathematical concepts to find the best possible outcome given the available information. If you ever hear someone talking about a solver, they are talking about GTO. GTO poker has become the prevailing strategy among professional poker players over the last decade and has been embraced in particular by the...