Pot sizes grow quickly throughout a poker hand in No Limit Texas holdem and you need to be careful that you are controlling the size of the pot relative to the strength of your hand. If you do not there is the danger that you become pot committed and there are scenarios where you can [...]
We haven’t talked about poker tells for a long time. Recently I revised Caro’s Book of Tells — The Body Language of Poker, and put it back into print. While I was working on that revision, I thought, reasoned, pondered, and concentrated. Sometimes I did all four at once. Pretty soon it became clear to [...]
Grand Island, Nebraska, 1965. I’m playing a little too conservatively, but winning nonetheless. I haven’t mastered most of the tricky tactics, tells, and psychological warfare yet, so I resort to just playing tighter than my foes. That, of course, is what you should do during your training stages – and even beyond. Tight turns out [...]
It’s a really powerful concept for those of you who play shorthanded or heads-up hold’em. And for players in full-handed games, it will help explain how to play a recurring situation, too. I’m talking about the small blind, my friends. About two weeks ago, I sent an E-mail tip to my Preferred On-line Mailing List. [...]
Somebody’s got to keep him honest,” Tom said, calling the bet. The next player to act raised. The original bettor reraised. And poor Tom folded. “Betting is more a matter of feel than science,” Dick explained to me years ago in Gardena. I had folded before the draw. He had drawn two cards to queens [...]
In 1988, I wrote a column for a newspaper called Poker Player. It offered some of my thoughts about how to play the small blind. I thought this would be a good day to revisit those decade-old thoughts and add some new comments. The title of that column was Today’s Word is “Small Blind.” While [...]
Today, we’re going to review the most important winning concept in all of poker. You’ve heard me say that, for skillful players, the key to winning is simply playing your best game all the time. Well, years ago, I addressed this in a much more profound way, and I’m going to share it with you. [...]