I hope you enjoyed all the Pot Limit Omaha tips I gave you the past few months. But recently I returned to the mother of all pokergames: No Limit Hold’em. I started to play some tournaments on Pokerstars, just for fun. Great thing is I have the opportunity to listen to all the great music out there meanwhile and that’s why I was also able to update my top 50 of greatest albums of all time.

So I’m completely in tournament mode again and I always love the first blind levels in these tournaments. You can play a lot of hands, trying to get a lot of chips in the beginning of the tournament. Certainly when you’re in late position, your range of hands that can be played is enormous and what’s important in these cases is the fact you’ll have ‘pot control’ after the flop is dealt. I picked out an example for you from the tournament I played yesterday:

So with only one middle postion limper in front of me and me sitting in late position, I like to raise in that spot with an Ace. I get called by the BB and the limper and the flop is perfect for me, as it’s paired. However, the BB calls my continuation bet and another small card comes on the turn. Now, most of the times when you’re called in those spots (with a paired board) it’s likely that your opponent holds a (small or medium) pocket pair and is not very likely to fold. But I have complete control on this pot which makes that he checks the turn towards me, which gives me a free card.  I make a wheel with that river and notice the fact you can still extract a nice amount of chips against such hands with a good value bet.

The 50 greatest albums of all time then. I published number 50-25 today and as always you can find them right here . There’s some beautiful psychedelic sixties music of course with Big Brother and the Holding Company and 13th Floor Elevators, two progressive Yes albums from the seventies, the beautiful sitar of Ananda Shankar and on top the amazing White Light/White Heat from the Velvet Underground. Enjoy!