Monthly Archives: January 2014
4betting light – be fearless
4betting light is almost the new 3betting light… everyone it seems is doing it. That doesn’t mean you should treat everyone the same however. If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know I advocate tailoring all your bets specifically vs each opponent. Your 4bet hand selection, 4bet sizing, 4bet frequency, Cold 4 bets and game dynamics, are all things to consider.
Let’s address those individually (though they often tie into each other).
Hand Selection: By using ‘blockers’ like Qx, Kx and Ax we heavily reduce the hands that are available in the deck for our opponent to 5bet shove over our 4bet for value. When we have A♦2♦ instead of T♠9♠ the chances of them having a big hand are reduced by 20-25% therefore making a 4bet bluff even more enticing.
Poker Players Earnings
Should you try to become a professional poker player and what are poker players earnings? These are challenging questions to answer. In my last post on mortgages for poker players I talked about the difficulties that poker players can have getting financing for property purchases. Now lets focus on the big questions…. Should you be playing poker? What are poker players earnings in todays games?
Exploitive No Limit Holdem: How To Crush Mid And Low Stakes Poker
I am super excited to announce that my e-book Exploitive No Limit Holdem is now on sale at ThePokerCapitalist. Exploitive No Limit Holdem is also available in bitcoin if you so choose. If/when 🙂 you buy the book you will receive a download link that allows you to upload it in your preferred format(ePub, Kindle, or PDF). To learn more about this book watch my youtube video.
You can also find additional information about Exploitive No Limit Holdem here. Hope you enjoy the read!
If you have any questions or comments about the book I would love to hear them.
-By Paul Ratchford “ThePokerCapitalist”
Flop Cbet Success – Like a boss
You’ve probably read a hundred articles on cbet strategies relating to cbet frequency, cbet sizing, and cbet percentages etc. and are wondering why you even bothered clicking on this link at all. Cbetting (especially in position as we know) is hugely profitable. But let me ask you this… Do you know what Flop cbet success actually is? And no, I don’t just mean the green number is the $ won column.
Do you know your average success % vs your sites pool and vs 1, 2 or 3 opponents? Let’s break this down further; are you making money with the various portions of your range both IP and OOP? You don’t know?
If you have never done this kind of analysis before you are likely leaking money or leaving it on the table. There I said it… analysis. A dirty word for expert procrastinators. For some reason people hate this kind of deep analysis, but I don’t understand why. Just looking at the green number in $ won column just isn’t good enough. Guess what? we all make money cbetting! Chances are your tough opponents are doing this kind of work, and as we know, if you stand still in poker, you get left behind.
A Poker Misconception Quashed
Poker is full of misconceptions; limping is always bad, always raise your big hands, keep your bets the same size… yadda yadda. But this one annoys me more than most… ‘Fearing the Flush!’. You C-bet a two-tone board with your big pocket pair vs a Fish, who turbo-calls the Flop. The Turn is the 3rd Flush card… “Always a Flush!!” you exclaim as you pot control the Turn and the Fish overbet’s the River. But It’s all to do with selective memory; you forget what’s not memorable i.e when he checks down an Ace high one-card flush draw or a weak pair, but you remember when your Kings got cracked by the nutter with 93s.
Hopefully you’ve read my last article on poker combinatorics and be in tune here. Let’s prove using combo work and a little common sense, that once and for all this “But they have sooo many flushes!” is a myth.
Mortgages For Poker Players
As a result of my poker success, I was able to qualify for a mortgage and purchase the house I currently live in, but not without some difficulty. Of all the prime lenders available in Canada, I was only able to find one (a small local community credit union) that would give me a mortgage, and only after extensive consideration. The bottom line is that banks do not like lending to poker players. After all, who wants to loan large amounts of money to a professional “gambler”? These large financial institutions simply do not have the ability to understand how a poker player can possibly sustain a mortgage. Indeed, very few poker players are able to succeed over time, and in poker you essentially “get fired” when your bankroll is wiped out. In addition to that, from the bank’s perspective, not only are you likely to stop winning money, but there seems to be a strong chance that you could actually lose what money you have (even though we know that that is actually impossible with proper bankroll management!). Unfortunately, because of this “high risk,” banks are reluctant to deal with poker players, and it makes getting a mortgage incredibly challenging. Prior to the financial crisis of 2007-2008, it was not as much of a concern because mortgages were readily available with weak underwriting policies (ie. stated income only). However, since that time, underwriting standards have become quite strict, and it is now incredibly difficult for the average person, let alone a poker player, to qualify. Keep in mind the loan underwriters will want a 2-3 year history of income using federal tax returns, and any lapse in income or even decreasing income may prevent you from qualifying for prime lending rates, or even qualifying at all. This is a huge handicap when compared with the average employee who typically has consistent yearly income.
Poker Combinatorics: A Simple Approach
It’s a scary word isn’t it? Com-bi-na-tor-ics. So long, and so many syllables. The definition is just as overwhelming, “Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics concerning the study of finite or countable discrete structures”. (source Wikipedia)
Relating to Poker, this important concept doesn’t have to be so daunting once you understand the constraints and take the right approach. All poker combinatorics (or combos we’ll call them) really means here is how many times it’s possible to be dealt each type of hand.
Expert 3 Bet Strategy
Learning to implement expert 3bet tactics as part of your poker game is critical to your success. We all know we should pound on opponents with high fold to 3 bets with our junk hands, and pummel fish with big pocket pairs. But these player types are often generalized as ‘regular’ and ‘fish’ respectively and are not taken full advantage of. Some so-called ‘regs’ are borderline fish, and some high VPIP fish play fairly snug postflop, and aren’t just donating. 3 bets need to be completely tailored to every opponent and his overall tendencies, not just a basic fold to 3 bet number in your HUD.
New Poker Content Writer
ThePokerCapitalist has joined forces with a highly skilled poker player out of the UK to offer you poker content on a more frequent basis. Going forward, posts will be made by ThePokerCapitalist and “Cinch”. “Cinch” is a low stakes grinder up to $1/$2 NLHE who has achieved a solid win-rate of 3BB/100 over the past 170,000 hands. He is continuously striving to improve at poker and is looking to move up stakes in the near future.
“Cinch” will be writing articles on a wide range of topics including 3-betting, poker combinatorics, and his poker journey. I know that everyone will benefit from his high quality poker content.
-ThePokerCapitalist