7 Reasons You're Not A Poker Millionaire

Hi there, I just watched a video about reasons that you are not a poker millionaire.

The video was small and entertaining. Enjoy!

My Worst Live Poker Experience

Back again with a story from a local casino in Greece.

One night around a week ago, I decided to go to play a live game at a local casino in my town with some friends for fun. The stakes was 2/2€ 10 max table. That was a bad move in relation to my bankroll which is allowing me to play only up to nl25.

I used money for the buy in, from my life's bankroll and not from my poker bankroll because I was considering my move as an game for entertaining. I know that my approach was bad and my move was a mistake. What matters is to learn from our mistakes.

There was one full table, and around 5 players in waiting list. After a while we agreed to open a table and play 6max for some time. I considered all players as weak because they joined the table with 50 big blinds stack. I was the only one with 100 big blinds +. After around 30 minutes the first table broke and 4 players joined my table and 10 max game was started. I played around 60 hands with good decisions on average and one or two small mistakes. I finished with a loss of 15 big blinds but that was not the point.

The point is one hand that left me with my mouth open. No, it's not a bad beat or a bad play or something like that. It was one mistake that dealer did. Watch out carefully:

During a hand, there are two players on the river. The first player bets around 20€. The second player raises all-in and he has bigger stack than the first one. The first player calls around 50€ more and the chips didn't joined the pot! Both players kept the chips in front of them. They opened their cards, second player won the hand, the first player dropped his chips to the middle, and the first one took his bet to his stack! After that, the dealer counted the pot to take the rake without the second players bet! That was so silly and bad mistake from an unexperienced dealer which took my attention! Unbelievable mistake.

Add this to your game today: Floating the flop

Floating the flop is a really effective (and relatively cheap and safe) way to pull off a bluff

It involves calling a bet on the flop in position with a weak hand in order to take it away with a bet on the turn or the river.

It works best against players who aren’t too passive or aggressive, but play their hands in a pretty straightforward manner, and open with a narrow range of hands. These players will often c-bet the flop, as they know that’s what they’re supposed to do, and then give up if they’ve missed.

Take the following hand from a tournament, with blinds at 100/200. You’re on the button and call a mid-position raise with 8♥-9♥. You’ve noticed that your opponent will often fire the flop but he doesn’t double barrel unless he’s got a hand that he wants to take to showdown. You’ve got a hand that could connect well with a flop, but you’ve got another plan if you miss…

The flop comes down K♦-2♠-7♣ and your opponent bets 600 into the pot of 1,200. You call. The turn brings the 4♥. Your opponent now checks and you bet 1,000 into the pot of 2,400. Your opponent folds what is probably the best hand.

It’s a really effective move against predictable players as, once they’ve shown weakness on the turn, they’ve generally given up on the pot. By calling on the flop you’ve convinced them that you’ve got something and you’ll win a lot of pots with a simple turn bet that you can make with more information than if you just raised on the flop.

Keep it simple

It’s also an extremely simple move. Your only job is to work out the right and wrong times to attempt it. We’ve said it works on straightforward players with high c-bet frequencies, but it also works well against bad aggressive players who will always bet the flop regardless, without thinking much beyond that. Here you’ll also have to take their wider opening range into account.

Floating won’t work against good aggressive players, who will sniff out floats, and maniacs who typically c-bet and barrel the turn and even river with made hands or air. You won’t even get the chance to execute your bluff.

You should also avoid trying to float complete beginners, calling stations and passive players who will check-call with top pair-like hands.

The ideal flops to float on are dry ones, such as J♠-2♣-2♥ or K♣-8♦-4♥. There’s more chance they’ve missed your opponent and a flat call from you looks stronger. Flops like T-Q-A are much more dangerous to float.

You also need to take your image into account. If you’ve been caught bluffing it could be trickier to pull off. Conversely, if you’ve shown that you’re capable of calling preflop with a wide range of hands, you can represent a lot more on the dry flops that are perfect for floating.

You should be in position and against a single opponent – floating is possible in multi-way pots, but it becomes a much trickier move. It also helps if your hand has some equity, as you will get called some of the time. If you’ve got the chance to improve on the river (ideally to some disguised straight or similar), it gives you a second way to win the pot. And it’s always good to have a back-up plan when you’re playing no-limit hold’em. Finally, use it sparingly. You can fool most people some of the time, but vigilant players will wise up to your floats very quickly.

Source: http://www.pokerplayer365.com/poker-strategy/add-this-to-your-game-today-floating-the-flop/

3 Ways To Move Up Your Bankroll

Hi there, I saw a very interesting video by Nick Wealthall about growing up the bankroll. It is worth the 25mins of you time in my opinion, if you are searching ways to build your bankroll. Good luck at the tables! Video

How to Become the Best Micro Stakes Poker Player in the World

Becoming the best micro stakes poker player in the world is a little bit of beat and a brag. You make more nickels, dimes and dollars than anybody else but you aren't likely to get rich this way. At one point in time I probably held this title thanks to an infamous website publishing everybody's results whether they liked it or not.

I learned very quickly that everybody and their dog was now going to have an opinion about my poker career (again whether I liked it or not) as well. Due to my results, my profile on that website was getting the same kind of views and comments as Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan for awhile.

I quickly got sick of listening to every anonymous person on the internet telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing with my poker career. And I also got tired of dealing with the little hater kiddies who followed my every move and relished in every downswing that I went through.

Yes, there really are people on the internet who have this much time on their hands.

So this is a large part of the reason why I started this website blackrain79.com. No more anonymous comments and I could have the discussion about my poker career and views about the game on my terms.

And this really ties into what you have to do if you want to be the best in poker as well. You have to simply stop caring what (almost all) other people think.

Most People Lose at Poker

The simple fact of the matter is that the large majority of people who play this game will lose in the long run. But even in the face of this undeniable fact most people think that they are "around break even" or it's just a run of bad luck that is keeping them down.

Poker is much like driving. Most people tend to rate their own abilities much higher than they actually are.

And because of this everybody will also have an opinion about you, how you play, the correct move and so on. They will in fact argue until they are blue in the face about it in places like internet poker forums, the poker table chat box or even just in a chance encounter at a social event.

You Have Got to Learn to Tune The Noise Out

You will eventually drive yourself nuts if you listen to all of these people. You will also waste an incredible amount of time that could have been better spent actually playing and profiting at the game. You can go to poker forums and see people with 10k+ posts in the space of a few years.

They barely even play the game. Getting their point across about some poker hand/theory on the internet to a bunch of random strangers is actually more important to them than playing the game itself!

I would suggest not wasting your time in these places at all. Close the poker chat box, stop wasting your time on poker forums. If you want to discuss the game a bit and get some feedback on your play then finding a small circle of committed winning players and forming a Skype group for instance is a much better idea.

Pick a Few Training Materials and Ignore Everything Else

The same thing goes for poker training materials. There is an absolute massive amount of information out there in the form of video training sites, books, coaches and so on.

Pick one and ignore everything else.

If you try to join every training site, read every book and hire 10 different coaches the only thing that you are going to achieve is a lot of confusion and information overload.

Find an educational resource that you have heard good things about and just focus all of your attention on studying that one thing. The truth is that you don't need to know everything on earth about poker theory in order to beat the micros.

Heck, I can assure you that you don't even need to be some super genius to become the best micro stakes poker player in the world!

Your Success or Failure in Poker is 100% on You

Most people don't even give themselves a chance to succeed in this game. I have said it many, many times on this blog. The one thing that separates nearly all of the elite players from everybody else is this:

They always seem to be at the tables playing the actual game!

They aren't on poker forums getting in flame wars and wasting their time arguing about another close decision. They aren't wasting their time listening to losing poker players whine in the chat box. They aren't reading 28 poker books, joining every training site and looking for that next messiah coach.

No, they are at the tables putting in the work. They are playing millions and millions of hands and learning from their own mistakes.

They probably spent some time in the beginning learning a basic strategy for success and then they built their own game around that.

Do Something Totally Different and Don't Apologize to Anybody About It

That last point really is the most important one.

After you have learned a basic strategy in order to beat the stakes that you play you need to inject your own personality into your game. You need to do things because you think they are right even if everybody else thinks that it is wrong.

Years ago when I used to 24 table the micros all day long I noticed that every time I would raise with my big pairs and big aces the entire table would call me (the good ole' days of online poker).

So I just said screw it, I will make it 10 times the big blind every time then.

People laughed at me and told me how terrible I play at the poker tables and on the poker forums again and again. And yet oddly enough just a few short years later you couldn't sit at an NL2 or NL5 game on Pokerstars without everybody copying my strategy.

They copied it so much in fact that you can't get away with this anymore because literally everybody knows what it means now.

There used to be a famous mid stakes poker player on Stars back in the day as well who did something similar. He would mini-raise open with literally all of his hands preflop. Again, they made fun of him endlessly on poker forums and at the tables. Now the mini-raise is a standard open in many of these games.

The Bottom Line:

Learn some basic strategy and keep updating your knowledge periodically as you rise up the ranks as well. But once you have this foundation learn to play the game your way. Don't listen to the masses of losing players or those too busy talking about the game to actually play it.

The people who are the biggest winners in poker are almost always ahead of the curve in some way. They do things a little bit differently than everyone else.

Expect some pushback. The crabs in the bucket won't like you for it. It's not "standard" after all. But if you find that what you are doing works then ignore them and keep doing it.

Conclusion

I hope that this short piece helped inspire a few of you out there. There really is no reason why you can't get whatever you want from this game.

You won't get there by sitting around obsessing over every new poker theory and listening to every opinion though. That is a sure-fire recipe for failure in fact.

Cut through all of the nonsense and tune 95% of people out. Listen to a select few authoritative resources or friends who you trust and believe in.

Then go put what you have learned into practice at the tables, develop your own distinct style of play and don't be afraid to experiment.

Furthermore, be known as the poker "doer" and not the poker "talker" by consistently putting in the hours at the tables and keeping the chit chat to a minimum.

This really is the only way to real success in this game. Who knows, you might even become known as the best micro stakes player in the world some day :p

Source: http://www.blackrain79.com/2015/08/how-to-become-best-micro-stakes-poker.html

I am a dreameeeer

You Have to Build the Pot For Them

Most micro stakes players are passive. That is, they don't really like to make aggressive actions unless they have a really strong hand. They would rather just limp along or call unless they have the nuts.

This is not the key to winning poker. But it is the Friday night home game mentality that most of us grew up with. And it is also the style of play that we often see in Hollywood depictions of the game.

So this leads many players at the micros into thinking that they have to slow-play their big hands. After all, they don't want to "scare them off" by betting too much!

The reality though is that many micro stakes players love to call if they have anything remotely decent. This is why you are doing yourself a huge disservice by not betting your good hands. I basically wrote an entire book about this very topic.

The biggest mental hurdle here is once again short-sighted thinking. It is focusing too much attention on the times that they folded and conveniently forgetting about all of the times when they called.

The key to changing this mentality is understanding that most of the time when they fold it is because they simply had nothing. There is no amount of slow-playing in the world that you can do to make somebody call when they have 7 high, no draw.

Micro stakes players love to call a lot. But they are not going to call you with two napkins! They have to have something. 

Most of the time in this game nobody really has anything good. So the next time you have aces, make a bet, they fold and you curse BlackRain79 for it please remember this:

You did the right thing. You didn't "scare them out". They just didn't have anything to pay you off with this time.

Source: http://www.blackrain79.com/2015/07/15-mental-tips-that-will-double-your.html