Poker Stars for the iPhone?

Can you play Poker Stars on an iPhone? The short answer is yes, but with some setup and a bit of effort. This is a proof of concept, using the VNC viewer to display the poker table on the phone. As you can see, I had a bit of trouble trying to change my raise amount, as the pointer didn't quite line up. The VNC buttons were in the way too, but the screen could be moved. With a little effort, it could work. This requires a computer setup and running the PS client before you can view it on the phone. Obviously, a native poker app would be best. Poker Stars, are you watching?

Buy-in for the mininum or maximum?

You sit down at the 2-5 No-Limit table. The buy-in is $200 minimum, and $500 maximum. What should you buy in for? Does it make any difference?

For a long time I thought that buying in for the max was the best choice, as this gives you an opportunity to put the most money into a hand when you hold the nuts. It makes sense. But lets look at this from another perspective.

Hypothetical situation: let's say you are heads up, you have $200 and the other guy has $800 (or more.) You both go all-in BLIND 2 hands in a row. Who comes out ahead on average?

Here are the 3 possible outcomes:

You lose the first hand, game over. He profits $200.

You win the first hand, lose the second. Game over, he profits $200.

You win the first and second hand. You profit $600.

Even though you only win 1 of 3 situations, the amount you make is $200 more than the other guy's winnings combined.

This observation alone makes a clear choice that there is an advantage to buying in short. A good strategy (online or live play) is to buy in for the minimum, and stand up and leave as soon as you double up your bankroll. There is no sense in gambling your winnings back, just leave and buy-in short again later (live), or on another table (online.)

Poker Tells Database

Poker tells are one of the most fascinating an fun elements of poker. It's always great to hear about a new tell that someone has examined on a player. However, there is no convenient place to browse through poker tells and contribute your own. So, I built one.


www.pokertellsdb.com is an online poker tells database, where anyone can contribute poker tells, as well as rate and comment on them. I'll consider this in "beta" since I built the entire system in the course of a couple of days. Let me know what you think, and what features it could use. It's fairly sparse since I only added a few tells I could think of right off hand. Please contribute!



http://www.pokertellsdb.com/

Playing Pocket Aces

Sitting at the local poker room, you take a look at your hole cards and see pocket aces. A rush goes through your body. Now, what is the best course of action? How do you maximize your profit, and minimize your bad beats?

Generally speaking, raise with them. Raise and re-raise. If you are first to act, a good starting point is roughly 3-4 times the big blind. If you are behind a raiser, raise 2-3 times what he raised. The key here is to minimize callers. You don't want more than one or two. On the flop, no matter what comes out, put out a continuation bet. I like to mix it up from 75-100% of the pot. Usually you can take the hand down right here. If you get called or re-raised, then it is time to analyze your position, your opponent and stack sizes. Usually you aren't going to get out of the hand unless you are really sure you are beat. If your opponent out-flopped you then that is the breaks. But, the important thing is that you make them pay to see the flop. This will keep your aces on the winning side in the long run.

Some like to slow-play the aces. Although it is nice to mix up your play, typically you will have a chance at more money by raising. Let's take an example, and play the hand two different ways.

Let's say you hold aces, and a player across the table holds queens. You limp in with hopes that someone behind you will raise. The queens raise 3xbb, and you re-raise to 3x that amount. Now you have the queens suspicious. Your hand looks very strong from an early position check-raise, and they are right! You've basically given away the strength of your hand, and now the astute player may fold the queens right here.

Now lets rewind. This time we raise with our aces 4xbb. The queens re-raise 3x your raise. Now your re-raise again 2-3x his raise. At this point the queens have a LOT more money in the middle before they have determined the strength of your hand. Many times they will be committed, and call your raise, or move all-in. This is exactly the situation you want with your aces.

Regarding this whole raising strategy, it applies to most all of your poker play. Look for reasons to raise, and keep check-raises to a minimum. If you flop a straight, raise. If you flop a set, come out betting! You are likely to get more money out of those hands betting/raising than check-raising. Raising is a big part of winning poker, so don't miss that opportunity. About the only time you don't want to raise is if you have the board completely crippled, such as flopping quads or the nut boat. In that case, you may want to check and give your opponents a chance to catch a card or bluff at you.

It's never easy...

How often are you in this position: You are all in preflop against a dominated hand, say AQ vs AJ. You figure him for 3 outs. The flop comes 89T. No jacks, but now he is open ended. Then the turn comes and doesn't hit, but gives him a four card flush.

It just seems that more often than not, if the flop doesn't hit them perfect to beat you, they end up with more and more outs. Very seldom is the flop, turn and river dead for them. Doyle says "It's never easy..." and boy is he right.

poker programs steal window focus

One very annoying "feature" of most poker clients (such as PokerStars) is that they constantly steal the focus of your currently active window. How often have you accidentally typed a password or a private conversation to everyone at the table? Fortunately, there is an easy way to fix this for Windows (I'm using XP, I haven't tried Vista.) The instructions are here.

How to not go broke playing on-line poker

You consider yourself a good poker player, better than most. But, it seems like you relentlessly go broke. Bad beats seem to consume you. You can't overcome the inevitable sucks-outs that eventually deplete your bankroll. How do you survive?

Typically the problem is bankroll management, and this is coupled with self discipline. Even if you are the best player, you will get bad beats, and gambling too much of your bankroll is a big mistake. What is even worse, many players will gamble an even bigger chunk of their bankroll to recover, play on tilt, and lose the whole thing. That is self discipline that needs corrected. So instead of just preaching about it, I'm going to give you three discreet rules to follow.

Rule 1. Never gamble more than 5% of your entire bankroll. Don't sit down at any table, any game for more than 5%. One exception is if you only have $10 or less. You could stick to penny poker, or just gamble a bit more (10%) until you are lucky enough to reach at least $50. Once you hit $50, lock in this rule.

Rule 2. If you decide to play a no-limit or pot-limit cash game for 5%, leave as soon as you double up your stake. Why is that you say? If you are gambling 5% and you double that to 10% or more, you don't want to open yourself to the opportunity of getting busted for 10% of your bankroll. Leave and start over. If you like playing a monster stack, just play lower limits so that stack is 5% or less of your entire bankroll.

Rule 3. If you enter a large tournament, don't gamble more than 3% of your bankroll. Large tournaments are going to be more difficult to cash, and the payback may not be so much unless you get really deep. If you are entering a rebuy tournament, estimate your rebuy/add-on total into that 3%.

Now, about self discipline. If you end up on a losing streak (and you WILL), you must drop down to lower stakes until you recover. Sometimes that means dropping down two, or even three levels of stakes if the going gets tough. What you have to overcome is the frustration of moving down, and this is just a part of playing poker. You will get bad runs, and temporarily moving down to lower limits is just part of the journey. It is also possible that you are playing limits that you are not yet profitable at. Even so, moving down, then back up when you regain your bankroll is going to keep you alive while you learn those higher limits.

That's it. If you try these three rules, let me know how it goes!

Oh and by the way, these rules apply to live poker too. Keep yourself a bankroll set aside just for poker. The vast majority of poker players just take whatever money they have. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. They really have no concept of how much they win or lose overall. But with a bankroll set aside, all of a sudden you are faced with the realization of whether or not you actually win or lose playing poker. Good for you! If you can't keep that bankroll alive without a constant feed from the paycheck, you might want to try these rules :)

controlling tilt

I went up to the Horseshoe casino Saturday evening and played some 2-5 No Limit. I bought in for $300 and walked out with $800 about six hours later. It was a pretty successful night of poker. I thought I'd mention one interesting hand regarding tilt.

There was a guy at the table talking a lot most of the night. It seemed he wanted everyone to know he's quite the seasoned player. Good for him. At one point during the night he decided he was buying the blinds from the small blind, and raised a pot-size raise with four limpers. One caller from the button, the flop came 89J, rainbow. The small blind makes a comment "Well, if you out-flopped me, you got me." (weakness?), and moved all in for about the size of the pot. The button called and turned up TJs. The small-blind scoffed and turned up K9o. He didn't catch up, and started ridiculing the button's play. "Interesting play. You'll go broke playing like that. Just keep it up." Then someone at the table shook their head, and then he decided to get in their face about it.

The guy is shaking his head because Mr. brilliant raised out of position with K9 and lost his bankroll. Obviously he picked the wrong hand and the wrong time, and it was unsuccessful. But my question, why ridicule the winner?

To be honest, I can't think of a good reason to ridicule another player. If he outplayed you, you make yourself look even worse. If the other guy make a horrible play and got lucky, so what? You want those players at the table! A nice hand sir! is in order! Make him feel good about his chase, he'll give up his money sooner or later. Are you trying to teach something? What for?

OK, we know the most probable reason: tilt. You have to learn to control your emotions. Getting a bad beat can be a tough thing to deal with. The other players know what happened, you don't need to explain anything to them. But the better they see you control yourself, the more respect you'll gain from them. And, it makes you feel better about yourself, and thats a little something that goes a long way to making you a stronger player.

Poker Odds Calculator

This is a project I worked on last year. It is pretty useful for a lot of odds calculations such as poker, keno, etc. It has a very raw interface, but at the same time very flexible. You can also do simple Binomial Coefficient calculations, which is what the poker calculator is based on.

Monte's Poker Odds Calculator