So I have had a couple of sessions since deciding to come back to playing and in the first I scored a ticket to the Merge 100k tomorrow. I decided to register, hey why not I have the ticket might as well use it right? With that in mind I sat down last night for a session to make sure that I am feeling comfortable and starting to apply what I know and shake some of the rust off. While I have to go back and look through everything I am pretty sure I made some mistakes, but overall not too upset with how I played. Managed to score a 2nd in the Fast Fifty and 5th in a $2 Bounty. I was $4.50 in for the evening and walked out +$40. While it isn't big bucks at the moment, [More...]

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I'm back. It is just that simple. I wobbled around the non-poker world for a while, lost my way with the game, got frustrated and come back full circle to where I started a year and change ago. I recently moved into my first house, so it had been taking up a lot of time, giving me some much needed distance from the game for a while to clear my head. After Black Friday like a lot of US players I struggled to come to grips with things. I was really starting to hit my stride in the game right around Black Friday and I felt cheated and deflated after it went down. I took a little time off, started playing free and eventually found my way back to Merge. I have dabbled there for a while. Not really doing [More...]

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As everyone knows from my prior articles about the best value tournaments, I'm always on the lookout for ways to maximize my return on my money.  I've been playing a little bit of poker on Bodog and recently came upon this promotion they are having.  http://www.bodog.eu/play-now/superbowl-freeroll/optin.html.  Basically if you bet opt in to the promotion and bet $25 in a given week on NFL you get entered into a $5,000 freeroll on the following Wednesday.  So I did this for week 2 of NFL and finished 23rd out of around 230 people and got paid something around $40.  I did the same for week 3 of NFL and ended up winning the $5,000 freeroll out of 240 players for just under $700.  The added incentive is the winners of all 17 weeks of freerolls get entered into a championship freeroll [More...]

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Part of your evolution in poker is watching training videos and reading strategy forums. Another part is playing hands. I think the biggest part, though, is experimenting to see what playing style you are comfortable with and what works well.  As a poker player you need to be brutally honest with yourself. If you have a negative ROI over many games you are doing something wrong. You're not just running into coolers or taking bad beats. Over a big enough sample size there is something else happening which is preventing you from winning money. No one person is inherently luckier than another person. Do some people run better in big spots? Sure. Look at Darvin Moon at the WSOP Final Table. Phil Ivey will never again in his lifetime get it in with AK vs AQ for tons of chips [More...]

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There is more than one type of fish and you need to be able to categorize them pretty quickly at the poker table in order to maximize your expectation.  Passive Fish – There are two types of passive fish. Type 1: The fish who doesn't fold to anything pre-flop but folds to many c-bets and 2nd barrels. With this type of fish you should basically be figuring out the absolute smallest amount it takes to isolate them at your table, and then ISO often. Since they won't fold pre-flop you don't want to bloat pots with vulnerable holdings, but you do want to isolate with those holdings since you will either be ahead in the hand or you will win it post-flop through solid hand reading and bet sizing.  Typer 2: The fish who opens many hands and backs down [More...]

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