Poker Winner Blog

At one point Ungar raised seven hands in a row. No one called. Was he bluffing? Of course he was — some of the time. Everyone knew that. But no one knew when. Every contestant hoped one of his opponents would be eliminated first. It didn’t matter which one. Every time someone was knocked out, the surviving players climbed another rung on the pay ladder. Ungar knew that.

Ungar’s mastery of the table seemed palpable. He was a shark among a school of fish, and he sensed blood in the water. Bao, short on chips the entire day, was the first to fall — eliminated by Judah. By 1:30 p.m. Ungar had more chips than his remaining four opponents combined. Read the rest of this entry »

Using Statistics to Predict Your Expectations

If you think you can beat the games you intend to play in for a living but aren’t certain, you can use statistics to help you assess what you might expect to win over the long haul. This involves calculating your standard deviation and using it to assess the kind of results you might achieve.

Let’s say that after 900 hours of playing $20—$40 Hold’em, your standard deviation is 20 small bets per hour, which is equivalent to $400. Everyone’s standard deviation is different. Yours will depend on a number of factors, including your playing style, your opponents’, and how aggressive or passive the game is. Read the rest of this entry »

Practice with Computerized Software

No matter how many hands you play at the table, using software like Wilson Software’s Turbo Texas Hold’em to practice against lifelike opponents and run simulations that will test your own theories will help you make rapid progress in your development as a poker player.

Computers can do things humans don’t have the time to accomplish. We’ve run experiments that simulated a lifetime of poker. We could have tested that same hypothesis by playing eight hours a day, five days a week, for 30 years, but what could we accomplish with that knowledge once we finished our research? It might be helpful if poker is played in the afterlife, but we’re more concerned with earthly uses for our know-how. Read the rest of this entry »

Deciding If the Prize Is Worth the Game

Winning poker players usually won’t draw to a flush when the odds against making it are 3-to-1 or more, but the pot promises a payoff of only two dollars for each dollar invested. They’ll wait until the pot promises a bigger payoff before risking their money.

The analogy is also true away from the table. While real-life payoffs can vary widely, your investments are usually time, money, or both. Is it worth your time to spend half a day trying to make a small sale without the promise of greater rewards down the road, or are you better off courting one of your bigger, better customers? Read the rest of this entry »

Is there a player out there who hasn’t observed that poker is a metaphor for life? That metaphor is probably one reason why poker is so popular. Not only does it frequently mirror life, poker models it. Poker is life in a nutshell. The entirety of our existence compressed into a single hand of poker is a compelling thought.

A metaphor and a model for life! If true, there should be important life lessons everyone can take away from the poker table. When learned and applied, these lessons should make it much easier for a poker player to survive in a world where most people haven’t been force-fed these life-lessons across the poker table.

Being Selective and Aggressive

In the real world you do have to pick your battles, just as you must in poker. Sometimes you have to draw your proverbial line in the sand (”You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em“); other times you have to carefully choose when to retreat (”Know when to fold ‘em”). Read the rest of this entry »