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🎯DON'T DO THIS BET
You see this happen all the time.
An aspiring poker player will raise from the button with their A-5o. The big blind calls them.
The board comes K-5-T rainbow. The big blind player checks. The aspiring poker player checks back on the button.
The turn is an
🤬People always tell me they hate poker games where it seems like everyone is playing bingo.
❤️You should love wild games.
🫣Pick a decent hand, raise HUGE, and hold on for dear life. You can handle a little ego bruising if your hand doesn't hold up.
🎯Dont Be Stupid!
Before poker, I worked many jobs that made sitting all day in a cardroom seem appealing. I was a commercial fisherman. I did landscaping. I worked at a fast food restaurant. I moved carpets. I was a security guard.
Once I started playing poker and making
🎯Do you play low stakes games or daily casino tournaments?
Name the last three times you saw someone get caught in a triple barrel bluff.
You don't see it that much, do you?
🎯Are you ready to learn five more ways to win local live casino tournaments?
#1
Three-bet Squeeze More
This one drives me up a wall.
Lojack opens to three big blinds from an 80 big blind stack. Lojack is most likely an average punter. He opens any suited Ace here, unsuited
🙋♂️WIN! My bestseller
@DBPoker1
. Comment below to be part of a drawing to win the softcover ed! Answer this: What is the most underrated skill in poker? Answer below. Winners drawn on Super Thursday!
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UTG opens
UTG+2, the tightest player in the game, three-bets large.
You look down at QQ in the small blind.
What do you do there normally?
Ask yourself this:
Does this nit three-bet Jacks there?
Thoughts?
♠️♥️♣️♦️
I busted the Main Event last night. I got Aces all in preflop vs K10o. But unfortunately didn't hold. Good luck to everyone still in! Thanks to every who railed for the support! 🙏
🙋♂️Is no one folding at your table?
Good. This is a common type of game.
Learn to raise larger preflop and shove on more flops. Learn that you can't continuation bet bluff every single time you raise.
🤔1/If you're constantly short stacked in tournaments late then you need to open up your game.
Start the tournament on offense. Stop waiting around.
Play hard. Play in position.
♠️❤️♣️♦️
👍I would love to play a live poker tournament with ten second shot clocks.
🚫No timebank. 🚫No extensions.
Ten seconds and you've folded.
🤔What do you think? Would you play this kind of tournament? Let me know in comments...
🙄Busted last night a couple of 100 away from the money. That was a fun 29 hours.
But in all honesty, I had a ton of fun, and I can tell the new things I've been working on are effective. GL to everyone still in the Main!!!
🙋♂️Are you struggling with calling on the river too much?
Slow down.
So many people play better when they force themselves to take ten seconds on a decision.
🎯There are so many guys who play poker every day who don't know their leaks.
If your opponents know where you're weak but you don't, that puts you in an awful situation.
Pay some coach to tell you where you need to improve.
It doesn't have to be me. Just find someone.
NITS
Tight players become tight players because they always fold when they are confused. For this reason, your job is to confuse them as much as possible.
Most nits will not get involved from early position. Do not attack when they open there.
You should attack when they open
🙋♂️I see my students make this mistake all the time.
Someone opens from middle position. They're on the cutoff with unsuited broadways like K-To. They call.
Do not call there at an aggressive table.
We're going beyond the sim this week with
@pokerheadrush
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💃💃 come dive into the psychological strategies 🧠 of poker by joining us at
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🙋♂️Everybody plays too many tables.
How many tables are you playing when you feel most comfortable?
Take that number and subtract two. That's where you'll be able to focus.
🫣DON'T LOOK FOR THE BLUFF
Every poker player has two pitches they can throw at you:
A value bet.
A bluff bet.
Most players will not bluff enough. Why? Bluffing feels awful when it goes wrong.
One of two things happens every time you bluff big on the river:
You win a
🎯Why most people fail...
I was talking with my tournament coach the other day. We were discussing why so many players don't get to the next level. We came to these conclusions:
1. They don't understand the game is about uncontested pots
Tournament poker is unique because the
🙋♀️"Sometimes, the smartest race is the one you don’t win, but learn the most from."
I made a thousand bad river calls before I realized people never bluff enough.
I made hundreds of bad bluffs before I learned nobody folds enough.
I failed to secure a river value bet thousands
🤔
If you raise from early position and a solid player calls you from middle position, respect that range.
He's not doing that wide. He respects your early position raise. He knows how many people can still act behind him.
Don't fire a continuation bet into that range just
🎯HOW TO KNOW YOU'RE IN A BAD GAME
How do you know when you're in a good game?
There's talking at the table. There's tons of laughing, limping, and multiway pots. Weak hands are shown down on the river. No one judges people for calling down with mediocre pairs. The discussion
🎯You will see this happen all the time in a tournament.
People will enter an event without realizing how late it will go.
They get far into the event.
They have work the next morning.
They don't want to grind a short stack.
They implode.
Be prepared to play till you
🤔I love the look on a student's face when everything clicks.
I love it when they finally realize what the pros have been doing to them for all these years.
I love helping them turn the tables.
♠️❤️♣️♦️
Volume doesn't cure everything...
Many poker players act as if they can outplay any run bad. Their answer to every problem is to grind more.
This is convenient. Many poker players do not want to do anything but play poker anyway. It seems awfully coincidental that the cure for
🤪Just got done with another lesson. Quick Tip we went over: In some poker rooms there are guys who despise small 'weak' bets and will constantly raise them.
You need to make a mental note if you see one of these players. Bet small and look weak with a set. They will raise
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Everyone who likes & reposts this post will be eligible for the drawing. I will give away three softcover books (by
@DBPoker1
) to 3 lucky 🍀winners.
Drawing will be on Xmas Eve. Good
🎯Your best move is to not play most hands. That is the hardest thing to teach about No Limit Hold'em. People do not get into poker because they don't want to play poker. They watch it on TV and think to themselves that they could do the same thing.
But therein lies the rub.
🙄I've had entire years where I didn't get better at poker.
I've revolutionized my game when I spent 50 hours with the right materials.
I truly believe 2024 can be your year. Everyone can find 50 hours with the right materials over the next 365 days.
If you make some key
Do you play $1/$2? Maybe $2/$5?
It's breathtaking.
You raise. Four people call. You threebet. Five people call. Every pot is multiway. No one folds.
Don't you feel like you could be making more in these games? It seems like it should be easy to make money when everybody plays
🎯Two Hours with No Hands
I got this email recently from a reader.
"Hey, nice advice, but what do you do when you don’t get superior hands for two hours?"
You wait.
This is why people love to play the Main Event. It's easy to go two hours without picking up a hand. In the
🎯Exploitive Plays You Can Use
Everyone wants some exploitative plays they can use. Here are a couple you can work with today.
The most obvious exploitative play that no one uses enough is the thin value bet.
When your opponent calls you out of the big blind, they have half
"Discipline is doing what you're supposed to do, when you're supposed to do it, as best as you can do it, and doing it that way all the time."
They say a great way to hate your hobby is to make it your career.
If you make poker your profession, it will start to feel like work.
🙋♂️Study!
If you can find the love for studying, then you will advance.
You have to love studying and executing new plays. You can't care what the peanut gallery is saying. This is all about you. This is all about what you think is right.
Trust yourself on the felt. If the
I've been busy tonight at the poker premiere of the 2nd season of
@BallyLivePoker
Such a blast. Fun poker party. I came to celebrate & play at
@IAmMaverick888
's -
@maverickgaming
lower stakes game in the studio
@TropLV
. Great game. $1 / $3.
🤔Whoever can guess how much I won
🎯Patience = Profit
I was playing in Europe. Jet lag had hit me like a truck. The players to my left were excellent. My patience was gone. My reads were awful.
I said to myself, "let's try an experiment today. Don't do anything special. Everyone is three-betting you anyway, so
🎯 How to Pay Better Attention at the Table
I got asked this recently from a friend of mine.
"I noticed during a recent downswing of mine that my focus was off. I wasn't paying great attention during the hands. How do you fix that?"
Focusing on the table is not easy. The hours
🤔
No Limit Hold'em is a game of making the smaller mistake.
There is no such thing as a perfect poker session. Every time you play, you will make mistakes.
Your job is to make sure those mistakes are as small as possible.
♠️♥️♣️♦️
🎯Unpopular opinion:
I can live with getting caught triple barrel bluffing if the guy agonized before calling.
The best I can do is know he didn't want me to shove. I can't be perfect. He was just the better man on that particular day.
What drives me nuts is when they snap
🎯Blast the BB
Do you want to double barrel and triple barrel bluff more?
Then you need to pick a target at the table.
Your best target is going to be a big blind flatter.
Why do you want to pick on the big blind flatter? You want to pick on them because they are playing the
🙄You Know When Your Hand Is 💩
You don't need anyone else to tell you when your own hand is cooked.
You've played poker long enough. Trust yourself.
The only person who can make you play a huge pot is you.
When you are suspicious that your hand is no longer good you are just
😮
I am doing a meet up cash game in Vegas in two weeks.
Going to be a huge party & special superstar guests & give aways. Would love to meet you.
🥳Who wants to come play with me?
🙋♂️The average player?
One hand goes against them and they're done. They throw everything away over the next few hours.
A loose raise here. A loose cold call there. A loose call down. Shove the shortstack in. And it's gone.
🎯Coach Yourself
Getting the right materials is only half the battle.
We also need to coach ourselves.
What does a good coach do?
A good coach takes you places that you could not have gone yourself.
You need to get out of your habits. You need to push your normal poker
🥷"In combat, the simplest movements are often the most effective."
Everyone wants to turn a pair into a bluff on the river.
Everyone wants to triple barrel somebody.
Everyone wants to check-raise with air.
Everyone wants to do a huge hero call.
No one wants to fold.
But do
🤔Most people want to avoid the embarrassment of being caught in a bluff, so they only bluff in rare situations. It's usually when they're tilted or when they believe their opponent is super weak.
Because most players don't bluff enough, you should expect they are usually
🤔Always ask yourself what the point of your bet is.
People bust themselves constantly because they bet out of frustration.
It's only later they realize the bet wasn't getting value out of anything or bluffing anything.
It was pointless.
♠️❤️♣️♦️
Be chatty if you are a Nit. ;)
My opponent opened in early position. We were deep in the Main Event.
I looked down at pocket Jacks. I was just about to threebet them.
Then it hit me. I had been paying attention to the action. This player had not opened from early position all
The entire point of playing poker is to make money.
1/It does not matter how you make that money. We don't get style points in this job. We do not get paid for overtime. We do not get paid to entertain.
When you go to the grocery store to buy your bread and milk, they do not
🤔No Limit Hold'em is a game of making the smaller mistake.
There is no such thing as a perfect poker session. Every time you play, you will make mistakes.
Your job is to make sure those mistakes are as small as possible.
🎯The most obvious exploitative play that no one uses enough is the thin value bet.
When your opponent calls you out of the big blind, they have half the deck.
They're going to flop high cards and mediocre pairs.
If you flop second pair with a great kicker or top pair, you
🤔When you raise from early position and someone from early position cold calls you, they DO NOT want to fold on the flop.
🤡They're calling you from early position for a reason.
😳Stop firing on every board and pissing away continuation bets.
♠️♥️♣️♦️
🎯Is there a player at your table who wants to three-bet you every time you open?
Good. This happens all the time. Learn to open hands that want a three-bet. Learn to call down more and let him bluff his chips off.
🤔
People have three continuation bets fail, and they stop doing them.
When someone calls you out of the big blind, they have a HUGE range! They're missing a lot!
Keep firing. Most of them won't even check-raise you enough. You'll get the turn and river cards for a set price.
🎯Discipline = Ignoring Others
Discipline isn't just production.
Discipline isn't just how many hands you can play.
Discipline is also how much you can avoid.
The common world is now too complex for the common man. We are all overwhelmed. Our cell phones go off every 30
🤪Finished 11th in the $200 $5K GTD
@ResortsWorldLV
two nights ago. So close to the FT! Man, I wanted to keep playing. Oh well. I headed back to Colorado. GL to everyone still playing in Vegas!
🎯In a recent lesson, I had this exchange with one of my students:
"Hey, did you realize you're telegraphing your hands?" I ask.
"What do you mean?"
"Your bet sizes. You're changing them based on what your hand is. Preflop, you isolation raise to smaller amounts when your hand
🎯Do you have KQo in the small blind? Did the cutoff just raise?
Don't call there. You likely have the best hand.
If you call, it's likely the big blind will call. You will be out of position in a multiway pot. It will be difficult for you to bluff. You will be forced to hit a
"To be successful, you have to expose yourself to different situations—different types of people, different cultures, different environments."
If you want to succeed at poker, you must expose yourself to all types of games and players.
Is no one folding at your table?
Good.