What distinguishes poker from gambling is the fact that you can use your head to influence the game. That’s still the only way to make profit in the long run. By the way, it helps when your opponents don’t do this.

As I posted some time ago, it’s not unusual to observe this in micro-stakes homegames. This doens’t mean, though, that when the stakes are raised, people always become more focused. Last few days some of these professional gamblers sat down on my online tables, let’s watch:

So I wake up with QQ on the SB in a FTP-cashgame. I show some strength by raising preflop while I’m completely out of position after the flop. Ofcourse you can call this if you think I’m trying to steal the BB and a prolly loose late position-call. But just shove on the flop with middle pair after I betted again ?! Thank you very much. Subsequently in a micro-stakes cashgame on Titan, where I was clearing the final parts of my bonus, which expires in a while (click to enlarge):

After an early position raise, I just call with my pocket tens and position on the flop. The preflop raiser checks the flop and I take a shot at the pot. Then he suddenly raises all-in. I couldn’t think of any hand that would beat my TT which justified this move and I was right. Thanks again. The last hand originates from a multi-table tournament where I got American Airlines on my first hand :

So the button calls my preflop raise and my modest continuation bets (as it was the first hand of the tournament, I completely didn’t have a read on this opponent). After my check on the river he moves all-in which made absolutely no sense for obvious reasons. That pot provided me an excellent start which among others made it possible to finish in the money. I hereby summon everybody who recognizes him- or herself in those players to sit down on the table with the Queen of Diamonds .

Tags: american airlines, continuation bets, position after the flop, using your head

This entry was posted on zaterdag, november 15th, 2008 at 16:24 and is filed under Online Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.