Part One - Defending the Big Blind
Everyone knows that not defending your blinds enough, can easily turn a profitable poker player, into a break even one at best. This is because we are paying out so much every time that button goes around the table, that even a solid poker player can struggle to make a profit, unless he learns to defend the money he has been forced into placing into the pot.

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The things I have learned since deciding to play poker for a living not in any particular order:

Set goals
What do you want out of poker? Do you just want to make some extra money for a vacation? Do you want to play big stakes poker? These are some questions you should ask yourself when you decide to play poker. I would suggest not to make goals that are unattainable but I would not make your goals easy either. When I first started this blog at the beginning I told myself I wanted to make $15k this year and be playing $5/10 Limit Hold’em by the end of the year. I never thought about how I would get there just figured I would play and my bankroll would get bigger and I would move up the levels. So know I set weekly goals and monthly goals to keep me focused. My goal is still to get their but not sure if it will be there by end of this year or not. I am still currently playing $1/2 limit and some $2/4. I would say I am playing 80 percent $1/2 and 20 percent $2/4.

Don’t burnout
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There comes a point in your poker career when checks, bets, calls, and raises have much more distinct meanings than when you start playing poker. When you are a novice at poker, it’s doubtful that you care to think about what the other player may have, you are concentrating on your own hand and the board cards. However, once you get to the point of actually thinking about what the other players may or may not have in their hands, that’s when the checks, bets, calls and raises start “speaking” to you. Lets give an example from a typical mid stakes No-Limit Hold’em cash game. (more…)

Every poker player, whether new to the game or seasoned pro, knows that being able to build a good read on your opponents is an all important key to profitable poker. What few poker players know, however, is that making solid player reads is simply deductive reasoning, not divine intervention. (more…)

I’ve always enjoyed playing sit and go (SNG) and smaller multi-table tournaments (MTTs) on medium sized online poker rooms. The reason I prefer the medium size rooms is they tend to have a lot of regulars the same way the large rooms do. The regular poker players at the medium sized online poker rooms are much easier to spot because you get a chance to play with them often. The reason I enjoy playing with the same players often is because I’m very observant and have a great memory. It’s easy for me to recall previous hands and remember what a certain opponent is capable of. (more…)

There’s a lot of advantages to online play versus brick and mortar, but none more profitable than all the information that you can have at your fingertips augmented by the information that others provide during play.

First and foremost, before sitting down to play, you’ve got to be prepared. Every serious player should sign up for an account on thepokerdb.com and keep a browser window open next to your poker screen. I’m in no way affiliated with thepokerdb.com except for having an account on there myself, but I have found it so useful that I don’t hesitate to laud its praises to anyone who will listen. It keeps a record of all the multi-table cash tournament results from PokerStars.com, searchable by screen name (and they’re in the process of adding results from other major sites as well). (more…)

If you’ve played any amount of online poker, you’ve undoubtedly come across conspiracy theorists who claim that the websites you’re playing on are rigged. Some will try to convince you that if you cash out too much money from your account, the site will penalize you by dealing you bad hands and bad beats. Others will tell you tales of supposedly rigged “action flops” designed to get good players to pump money into pots with solid hands, only to leave plenty of outs for fishy callers to suck out (the implication being that it’s more profitable for a site to reward weak players to keep them playing rather than letting the better players beat them into submission, never to return). Then, of course, there are those hands where multiple players are dealt pocket pairs and everybody thinks the system has got to be suspect. What do I think? All these conspiracy theories are just a bunch of nonsense invented by players who are either inexperienced or delusional. (more…)

Since my last essay was on the subject of luck, specifically bad luck, I thought it might be a good idea to delve a little further into the subject and discuss the worst thing that can befall a poker player: the dreaded extended losing streak. Bad luck in reasonable doses of course is not really such a bad thing. In the normal course of events, it kind of flies around indiscriminately, like some restless bird, landing first on this guy, then that guy, usually staying just long enough to deliver a painful peck or two to the top of the head before flying off in search of another victim. (more…)