Author: bernd

I am often surprised that only a minority of poker players prefer cash games to tournaments. While both have their appeal I prefer cash games when trying to make money instead of playing some tournament. I do make most of them when it comes to qualifying for some live event as there is an ever increasing number of satellites nowadays that allow you to compete for a lot of money at huge events like the WSOP, WPT or EPT for the proverbial peanuts.

With all the focus on tournament play (be it multitable or Sit & Go) I feel the “original” type of poker, the cash game, is being somewhat neglected. Here you sit at the table and play for real money. Just as you see in every mainstream wild west movie. Fortunately however you don’t risk staring into the barrel of an opponent’s gun.

When playing cash games your aim isn’t being the last player sitting at the table
nor is your evening over when you have lost all your chips (you can simply buy new ones) – it is over when you want it to be, either because you simply had enough poker for one evening or you have reached your goal (or – heaven forbid – you have squandered your whole bankroll). The chips that you receive when sitting down at the table represent the exact amount of money you used to buy yourself into the game. And the money you will receive when leaving the table is vice versa the exact amount of money represented by your chips at the table.

Be warned, playing cash games can be risky when you are new to the game and have not had any experience with playing for real money. I strongly recommend you play for play money first and handle it like playing with real money (even though some of your opponents may not do the same and play a bit wild) or play some tournaments, be it Sit & Go (I urge you to read Max’ posts on Sit & Go Strategy even if you will not play SNG tournaments as you will find a lot of tips that are generally useful for new players) or multitable tournaments as you will simply pay the buy-in and the tournament fee and will not risk losing more money than what you invested in the first place.

Ready to Rumble?

Now that you feel you are ready to play your first cash game I advise you to ease into it by playing very low limits at the beginning. Start from the bottom and work your way up slowly once you think you mastered a certain limit and manage to win on a constant basis. Keep in mind that your opponents will be tougher with the increasing amount of money that you play for. Always keep an eye on your bankroll and make yourself aware of what you can afford to lose. Nothing is worse than playing cash games with money you cannot afford to lose except maybe playing with borrowed money. This is something you should never do when playing poker – on the one hand it is simply a bad idea in general but on the other hand it is strongly frowned upon by poker players. You either have the money to play or you better don’t play at all.

If you manage to get a feeling for cash games and can emerge a winning player in the long run you can make some serious money. Looking at the amounts of money that people play for at cash game tables makes it easy to understand why more and more players who consider themselves to be better than the average player enjoy playing cash games instead of tournaments. You can make a lot of money in a short time – but you can also lose a lot of money in the same time!

Information is Key

Poker is a game of patience – and of gathering as much information as possible. Even before the actual game itself. I advise you to check and compare poker tables prior to taking a seat there. Compare the average pot, the percentage of flops seen and so on. Most poker rooms allow you to gather this information while waiting in the lobby which helps you determine whether there are many loose players or not (the higher the percentage of flops seen, the looser the game) and whether you are comfortable with the average size of the pot. Most of the poker rooms nowadays will offer you this basic information in the table overview inside their lobby.

Keep in mind that even though you are not bound to a strict time schedule as in a tournament you should not try and “squeeze” a quick cash game in if there are other matters on your mind that have to be taken care of. Take your time when playing poker or the quality of your decisions will suffer tremendously from lack of concentration. And you better focus when you play for money.

In my next post I will talk about position and pocket cards and will explain to you why you should never play KQ unless you should do so. Confused? Then there is still quite a lot that you should learn about – but don’t you worry, it is not that difficult to become a competent cash game player as long as you remember a few things and make sure to stick to your bankroll management at all times (this is something that I simply cannot emphasise enough). It helps to always have a general financial plan that decides the amount of money that you use as your bankroll – especially when playing cash games – and that you manage to slam on the brakes immediately when necessary.

Today I would like to talk about satellites, a type of tournament that often gets overlooked or even ignored by some players. While it is true that you usually won’t win any cash (there are a few exceptions that add some money) you should nonetheless consider taking the time to play them. Why? Well, the so called satellites (or qualifiers) are an excellent opportunity to qualify for bigger poker tournaments (possibly big live tournaments like the WSOP, EPT or Aussie Millions) without straining your bankroll too much. If you want to play in a tournament with a $500 buy-in this can really hurt your bankroll (depending on its size of course). In most online poker rooms you will find satellites for bigger tournaments which allows you to spend only a fragment of the otherwise required buy-in.

Let’s stay at our example of the $500 buy-in tournament. A typical satellite for this tournament would be a $50 buy-in. Now the poker room will wait to see how many players sign up for the satellite and then determine how many seats for the $500 buy-in tournament will be made available. In our case you would normally get 1 seat per 10 particpants as this would equal a buy-in of $500 (10 x $50). Let’s assume at our satellite there are 100 participants, therefore we are playing for 10 seats in the big tournament.

But why did I call this blog post Satellite Strategy? Does the strategy for a satellite really differ from a regular multi table tournament strategy? And if so, how? Well, you can argue that you should play a satellite just like any other tournament up until a certain point. The main difference is that in our fictitious satellite tournament 10 people will receive a seat for the tournament that we want to qualify for. And it doesn’t matter at all whether you finish first, third or tenth! Therefore you will want to play it very safe as soon as you are getting close to the bubble and have a decent stack as opposed to a regular tournament where you will still want to increase your stack.

In our example, if you are currently placed 4th and there are only 12 players left, do try to avoid showdowns for big stakes. What good is an all-in with KK or even AA if your opponent with a bigger stack makes a call and hits a straight or flush? The result: You ended up outside of the top ten and failed to qualify (which was your only goal for that satellite to begin with). Better let others make that mistake and wait patiently for them to exit the satellite until there are only 10 players remaining. That is definitely the biggest difference between a satellite and a regular multi table tournament.

Personally I play aggressively at the beginning of a satellite in order to build my stack quickly so I can live off it in the final phase of the tournament. So from the start up until the middle of the tournament I play as I would in any other tournament – but the longer the satellite lasts and the better my current overall place in the tournament, the more careful and conservative my game. With the tournament reaching the final stages I weigh my position at the table more and more and usually will try to play only out of late position and usually avoid trying to steal the pot.

In short: At the beginning of a satellite simply play your normal game that you are comfortable with but the further the tournament proceeds the more you have to keep in mind that it really doesn’t matter whether you end up winning it or ending up at the last position that still qualifies. Your only goal when playing a satellite is to end up winning a seat for the next tournament and preserve your bankroll doing so.

I wish you the best of luck!

I have been playing poker for several years now and all the TV advertisements caused me to switch to Texas Hold’em and also play online. Before that I primarily used to play the classic poker (5 card draw) in cash games. I also played some other variants but not on a regular basis. Generally not a good idea as you should concentrate on one version instead of trying to master 3 or 4 of them at the same time.

There are 2 main reasons for me succeeding despite that. On the one hand the amount of quality players was quite low when I started playing compared to now and you could be sure to find some easy prey on any given table. On the other hand I have always been a mathematics freak in school and poker invites you to put your mathematics knowledge to good use. I probably don’t need to point out that back then I have calculated all the chances for each hand with enthusiasm (and pen and paper and lots of spare time).

I remember at one point simulating poker games for nearly a month (and I am not talking about a computer simulation – I simply dealt the cards for several non-existing players and tried to roughly evaluate my hand). Of course that method was somewhat painstaking and tedious and by no means perfect but nonetheless I managed to find basic values of various pocket card combinations (I had no specific literature on this topic nor access to the internet – even if I had I doubt at that early stage I would have found any useful information on poker odds).

This exercise brought a certain confidence to my game because my little “experiments” made me aware of the simple fact that a winning chance of 60% meant nothing else than statistically losing 40% of the time. Not the perfect condition to bet all my money unless I am forced to since according to the laws of mathematics I would lose it all 2 times out of 5. You will have to decide for yourself where the magic number lies for going all-in, I personally usually draw the line very clearly above the mentioned 60%.

So how can you determine the odds of you winning? Well, of course it helps tremendously to know the hand of your opponent. There are various ways to draw some conclusions if you have paid attention to your opponent and his actions (for 5 card draw the amount of drawn cards is of course a huge factor, but in general you should pay attention to a lot more – and I am not talking about blinking, humming, clearing one’s throat and such). But even apart from my opponents’ betting behaviour it is important to know my chance on getting a certain hand. What good is it that someone else only has a small pair if I don’t even have that?

At the same time you should be aware that solely concentrating on your own hand can end badly. A good poker player “knows” the hand of his opponent. Take a close look at TV poker events. A lot of the time the remaining two players of a hand can guess pretty much what cards the other one holds. The poker pros usually guess correctly and that has to do with a lot of experience, instinct and intuition and of course the fact that they are experts in studying people before and during a tournament. While I am still an amateur in that area I already profit from that in most of the tournaments and cash games that I participate in.

Try this little exercise: whenever you have only one or two opponents remaining in any given hand that you play try to conclude what cards they hold and play accordingly. Whenever it comes to a showdown check whether you were right with your educated guess. Making yourself aware is the first and very important step. Even if you may have been wrong the first few times you will notice that you will be able to assess your opponents’ hands better and better with time and eventually you will be able to avoid stupid losses – at least if you have the strength to fold a hand and accept the loss of the money that you have bet so far.

In order for you to practice assessing pocket cards I urge you to try the Poker Odds Calculator – use any pocket cards that you like and try to evaluate the odds for each in your head or from your guts and then look at the calculated odds. Once you manage to get a rough grip on that you will realise that your game improves dramatically. I promise!

When talking about poker a lot of people will refer to it as a game of skill, a game of chances, a game of odds and probabilities and sometimes even a game of pure luck – and while they are all right in their assumptions I personally believe that the most common mistake is to overlook the importance of experience in poker. This surely comes as no shocker but it is nonetheless widely overlooked. If you look at the number of people starting at medium to high limit games you cannot help but wonder whether you should feel sorry for them for losing so much money in such a short time or whether you should envy them for being able to afford to do so. If you are like me you are not able to afford to lose hundreds or thousands of Euros per night on a regular basis – if at all. Therefore I assume that you will take the same road as I once did and play for minimum limits.

While this may sound boring let’s just consider this: do you honestly think that all the successful and professional players started playing for high limits? A new player is a losing player, simple as that. There may be the occasional exception where a spectacularly gifted person really starts winning straight away but I very much doubt that you or I know anyone who fits that description – even remotely. So I think it is safe to assume that none of us will be that Wunderkind Of Poker that the world has been waiting for. So do play on low limit tables and the smaller poker tournaments when new to the game – I can’t emphasize this enough. Know your limits!

I know, I know… if you play at a 5c/10c table your poker life can seem pretty boring. What does it matter if I win or lose 50 cents? Maybe in a whole evening I will win or lose up to €10 or €15? So what? Well, keep these numbers in relation to the limits in mind and let’s now have that example with a €5/€10 game. That would mean you would lose or win €1,000 or €1,500 in an evening of poker. And believe me – when you are new to the game you will lose more than you win at those medium limits. Why? Because at these limits you will meet much more experienced players than at the lower tables. There are quite a number of players actually counting on people to overplay their limits and they will have a great time helping you lift all the burden that money puts on you… I have been there on both sides of the table and I can tell you it is an experience you can really live without when you are on the losing end.

Once you are ready for higher limits you should of course seize the opportunity and elevate your game. Be prepared however to go down to lower levels again if your bankroll forces you to unless you want to lose all your money. The switch from low limits to medium and high limits can be a tough one. You will notice that the flow of the game is very different simply because a bet, raise or re-raise will weigh much more. In a low limits game with a pot of 40 cents a bet of 30 cents followed by a raise of €1 still is a low amount of money and a lot of opponents will call that raise as they don’t really care about losing a few Euros that night. However a game with €400 in the pot and a €300 bet followed by a €1,000 raise looks very different all of a sudden. Bluffing suddenly becomes an art in the higher levels as you will pay a dear prize if caught on the losing end of it. I have noticed that at really low levels you will always find players who simply call just about anything as it doesn’t matter anyway. So you will not be able to bluff as effectively as in higher levels. But there are many more differences.

You will notice at higher limit games that often there will be an aggressive player who pushes a lot and makes it very expensive to see the flop. If you haven’t learned to assess and fold your hand accordingly you will hand over your money very quickly. Same goes for your style of play. While at lower limits you will usually not have to worry about changing your personal style you will find out that at higher limits people will start to read your game quickly – so unless you are prepared to change gears every now and then and do something unexpected (and no, going all-in with 27 pre-flop is not unexpected, it is stupid) you will be an open book in no time.

That’s why it is vital to play at low limits first and learn about the game, learn to evaluate your hand, try to make an educated guess about your opponents’ hands based on their behaviour, assess the situation in combination with the community cards and the probabilities of various hands, learn about your own strengths and weaknesses, be able to adjust your game styles, learn to avoid playing on tilt,… If you still want to start playing at €10/€20 tables from the very beginning of your poker career be my guest. Just make sure to drop me a note telling me which table you will be playing at, I really want to meet you.